Recently I had to face some uncomfortable facts. As someone who is working hard on creating a Personal Transformation System with my pal Nick, part of my goal is to help others be organized, focused, happy, successful, and motivated. But ironically, I suddenly found myself disorganized, unfocused, unhappy, and not feeling especially successful. At least I was still motivated! But what had happened?

Being Organized – The Map is not the Road

One of the little dangers of having a lot of organizational tools is that if you’re not careful, you spend more time working on planning than actually DOING things. I’ve always been alert to this; I’ve seen people spend weeks setting up software like ACT! and then using it for nothing more than storing contacts. Or setting up QuickBooks, and using it primarily as an invoice generator. Or loading up their smartphone with email functionality, and then never being able to find a message or attachment on their phone OR their computer.

Another thing you may run into once you do a lot of elaborate planning is that you probably have lots of deadlines – some of which affect each other, some of which don’t relate to others at all! Your head can quickly become a spaghetti bowl of overlapping timelines and goals, and leave you feeling more disorganized and plan-less than if you had never organized a plan! It’s like driving down the freeway with a bunch of maps on your lap, but not knowing what town you’re in.

Scope Creep and Product vs. Process – The Destination is not the Road Either!

If you have a “one widget business”, I envy you. Sometimes I’m tempted to chuck all my activities, and open a chocolate chip cookie shop. I know there’s a demand, I make a pretty mean chocolate chip cookie, and what could be more fun than baking cookies all day! Plus, you could make employee performance jokes with your staff constantly, like “whaddya want, a COOKIE?” But alas, I am gifted/cursed with a brain that explodes with pretty decent ideas on a regular basis, and my real challenge is filtering things down to the achievable ones and focusing on them.

Most of what I’m about to say would be different if my ventures were well-capitalized, but like many of us, my business is about 80% sweat equity at the moment. So the problem arises when I take one of my product ideas and walk it through the logical steps. I’m going to reference some basic items here that you may have to work through to roll out a product. They may overlap, they may not ALL be necessary as discrete steps, but they all are necessary in ONE way or another. And the list is by no means all-inclusive:

Creating the Product:

Ideation & Conceptualization
Prototyping/Designing/Outlining
Sourcing Services/Materials
Package Design
Setting up production

Taking it to Market:

Identifying place in market
Marketing
Sales
Advertising

Okay, that’s already a lot of stuff. I’m lucky in a way, in that I have the skills and knowledge to execute almost all of those tasks. But that can also quickly devour me. Walking a single product or service through this is not rocket science, it’s just work and persistence. But what if it’s necessary to create two or three products at the same time? Or if – as is often the case these days – the product is sort of a marketing piece in itself, and is interdependent with other products, services, or marketing strategies that have to be rolled out at the same time? Like social media, websites, seminars, and an actual retail product? Where do the product and business end, and the marketing and sales begin?

This is where I personally got derailed recently; as well as trying to wrap up some other projects, I was creating a book with Nick. After completing the writing and distribution arrangements for the book, we got so focused on marketing the thing that we kind of forgot that it wasn’t our magnum opus, or even a “core product”. It was originally meant to be a vehicle for building out our production and sales channels, and creating a standard product development process. In this case for a book. It should be simple – write the book, find a way to publish and distribute it (we did, it’s on Amazon now), and then do some promotion. But several things then came into play. They can be summarized with a just a few concepts:

Robot-Brained Marketing Strategies

Be thorough, but use some common sense or simple analysis before you roll out that multi-platform marketing campaign! Just because we have hundreds of marketing channels at our disposal doesn’t mean we have to utilize them ALL. There’s a strong tendency at present to put a lot of effort into “social”, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, etc. Facebook in particular is a possible paper tiger and time-sink rolled into one. Yes, there are a HALF BILLION USERS. But how can you really connect? Sharing in your own network? Maybe, but that’s likely to come across as spam. Advertising? Sure. So you place an ad. It better have lots of cha though, or you’re wasting your time. And assuming you DO get users to click, where do you take them? To a page to buy a product? Why would they do THAT? Is it remarkably unique? Is it REALLY CHEAP? Is there some other reward? I’m focusing on Facebook here, because it’s still so popular right now, but I could do the same with any channel that one might think is of value as a marketing tool. CHOOSE YOUR CHANNELS INTELLIGENTLY.

There are 168 Hours in a Week

I learned that with my very first business, a small 24/7 telecom company. Most people sleep at least 56 of those hours. That leaves 116. Subtract about 21 hours for eating-related activities, and you have 91 left. If all you want to do with your life is eat, sleep, and work (like me, apparently) then you’re all set. But seriously. When do you plan to execute all these crazy marketing ideas? Assuming you already have a product, how long does it take to create a good campaign, with decent images and copy? How long does it take to actually place the ads? If the marketing ideas are meant to generate user-engagement, how much of that can be fully automated? Do you have time for the parts that can’t if you get a good conversion rate? Have you scripted all the nice responses for your registration thank you emails? After you’ve laid out all these plans and executed them, ask yourself – could you have sold more copies of your book by standing on a street corner for the same amount of time? BE REAL ABOUT TIME AND USE IT WELL.

Are You Happy?

Oh yeah. Isn’t that why we started a business in the first place? Of course, there’s that whole “making money” thing, but let’s face it. Unless you’re fueling a business with outside capital (an entirely different game) you’d probably make a lot more money with a high-paying job than by starting your own business. So you might as well be ENJOYING things, right? And that, to me, is the number one priority. It’s just that my passion for keeping things moving, doing things in the smartest way possible, and being as thorough as possible can all work at cross purposes. If you ever find yourself in the same boat, step back and ask yourself some reasonable questions:

Am I doing too many things at once?
If so, thin things out, and extend deadlines if necessary. Give things the attention they deserve.

Who made these deadlines, anyway?
Oh yeah. That was me. And I’m a FREAK. Let’s just revise those a bit when needed!

Is this task even in the right bucket?
Don’t confuse advertising with marketing, or marketing with sales, even though they overlap.
Don’t confuse website development with product development. Unless of course the website IS the product.

Am I thinking like a businessperson?
This gets me a LOT. I love some of the creative work I do so much that I often forget that time equals money.

Can I outsource this?
Just because you have the skills to do something doesn’t mean you’re the best person to do it.
Could someone do it just as well, and a lot faster?
Can you AFFORD to outsource it? If you’re not prepared to pay to have it done, ponder its value in the first place.

Are you enjoying your work?
Because no-one is MAKING you do it.
Take a break and hit a lot of reset buttons if you need to.
Get back to the things that launched you on the journey in the first place.

When you find the right path, you’ll know it, because success, happiness, and wealth will simply be happening.

Although the polish has dulled over the years, I was raised to be a bit of a stickler when it comes to the use of language. One of my great mentors was Mrs. Lane, my eighth grade English teacher. She was an alternately sweet or stern old black lady who spoke “White English” with vastly more precision than any of her uptighty-whitey peers at the mostly white midwestern middle school I attended. She taught us useful things like the fact that “snuck” isn’t a word, made us articulate our consonants, and vigorously prohibited prepositional endings. She enforced these rules with a policy she announced at the beginning of the year, which was that violating any of her carefully outlined golden rules meant the offending party would be the target of a high-speed projectile in the form of a blackboard eraser or a paperback version of Catcher in the Rye. This would probably get a teacher fired these days, but it was one of the best lessons I ever learned. Communication isn’t only about words, it’s really about engaging people. We loved Mrs. Lane, and she taught us much more by building this relationship than she ever could have with a pile of textbooks and writing assignments. Which she had plenty of too, by the way.

Later, I was influenced by George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” (one of his Collected Essays), in which he skewered the bloated language that is so handy for influencing political thinking, and pointed out that “if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought”. He focused especially on things like “dying metaphors”, “verbal false limbs”, and “pretentious diction”, and pointed out how people who think they have something important to say will spout an ornate phrase like “In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that” rather than simply saying “I think“. I also was influenced by something the Nobel Prize winning Richard Feynman shared in his autobiography Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman. He was talking about how some fields of study were really all bluster, with little if any science to back up their “facts”. He was attending a series of seminars presented by other professors from various fields, and shared his bemused contempt in this passage:

There was a sociologist who had written a paper for us all to read – something he had written ahead of time. I started to read the damn thing, and my eyes were coming out: I couldn’t make head nor tail of it! I figured it was because I hadn’t read any of the books on that list. I have this uneasy feeling of “I’m not adequate,” until finally I said to myself, “I’m gonna stop, and read one sentence slowly, so I can figure out what the hell it means.”

So I stopped – at random – and read the next sentence very carefully. I can’t remember it precisely, but it was very close to this: “The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic channels.” I went back and forth over it, and translated. You know what it means? “People read.”

There are many examples of this in modern life; and in some cases, the results of this language abuse are not only confusing, they might be downright dangerous. Let’s use the DSM-IV as a sort of case study itself. The secret cabal of psychiatrists that engineer this monstrosity of diagnostic recommendations are in a sickening symbiosis with the pharmaceutical industry, and make a business of cleverly crafting disorders out of common human behaviors to market new drugs with decades-long marketing cycles. Take, for instance, the DSM’s parameters for defining AD/HD. For a positive diagnosis of the disorder, the subject must exhibit the following symptoms of inattention for at least 6 months to a degree that is “maladaptive and inconsistent” with their developmental level:

Inattention

a) often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in schoolwork, work, or other activities
b) often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks or play activities
c) often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly
d) often does nor follow through on instructions and fails to finish schoolwork, chores, or duties in the workplace
e) often has difficulty organizing tasks and activities
f) often avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort (such as schoolwork or homework)
g) often loses things necessary for tasks or activities (e.g., toys, school assignments, pencils, books, or tools)

Hyperactivity and Impulsivity

a) often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat
b) often leaves seat in classroom or in other situations in which remaining seated is expected
c) often runs about or climbs excessively in situation in which it is inappropriate (in adolescents or adults, may be limited to subjective feelings of restlessness)
d) often has difficulty playing or engaging in leisure activities quietly
e) is often “on the go” or often acts as if “driven by a motor”
f) often talks excessively
g) often blurts out answers before questions have been completed
h) often has difficulty awaiting turn
i) often interrupts or intrudes on others (e.g., butts into conversation or games)

Forgive me, but having been influenced by the plain and incisive speech of folks like Orwell, Feynman, and Mark Twain, I’d venture to suggest that not only is that all relatively normal behavior for a kid, you might state it all a little more efficiently by saying “boy, that kid’s fidgety”. I jest a bit, but this is a serious issue. Language is manipulated to label children as social deviants, merely on the basis of their ability to sit still and pay attention, and this is accomplished by plastering polysyllabic pseudo-scientific jargon on top of airy fairy descriptions of behavior. This phenomena is equally dangerous in politics. We live in an era when even a neoconservative thinks that neoconservative means “the new way that conservatives think”. It doesn’t. It means that the person wasn’t always a conservative!

So where where am headed with all of this? Well, to be honest, I sometimes wonder if my own inability to speak the convoluted language known as “corporate speak” has prevented me from being more successful in business. This topic came up for me the other day when my associate Nick used the term “edgecrafting” in a sentence, without missing a beat. The term is of course from marketing guru Seth Godin’s book Free Prize Inside, so I knew what Nick meant. Or did I? It’s a handy phrase; it really makes it sound like you’re doing something innovative and cool, when in fact you’re just doing finish work and driving your idea to completion. But that sounds really dull at a meeting, so suddenly we’re edgecrafting.

But this isn’t some outline for a dataviz-driven preso for extensible, frictionless, and future-proof strategies for reconceptualizing your core competencies to re-invest in and empower your intellectual capital to optimize your quality vectors and leverage existing potentialities for envisioneering economically sound strategic theme areas to architect your new clicks-and-mortar brandgagement. No, I just want to point out that sometimes, language might get in the way of what you’re trying to say, and more importantly, what you’re trying to DO. One of the funniest examples I’ve ever seen of this was when I was presenting a design comp to a client several years ago, a small local bank. One of the executives sitting in on the meeting was a VP with the bank. I had used Dreamweaver – the software commonly used at the time for website development. Dreamweaver had a plugin called “Lorem & More” which would let you replace the classic Lorem Ipsum with other styles of filler text. One of the options was “Corporate Mumbo Jumbo”, and I had used a block of auto-generated gibberish something like:

As knowledge is fragmented into specialties an investment program where cash flows exactly match shareholders’ preferred time patterns of consumption measure the process, not the people. Benchmarking against industry leaders, an essential process, should be a top priority at all times in order to build a shared view of what can be improved, an important ingredient of business process re-engineering. To focus on improvement, not cost, building flexibility through spreading knowledge and self-organization, in a collaborative, forward-thinking venture brought together through the merging of like minds.

After commenting on the color scheme and asking if we could “punch it up a little”, he said “and I think some of that copy needs to be tightened up too”. Yes, this man was so used to seeing meaningless gibberish in his line of work that even knew how it could be refined. To his credit, the guy was making easily five times what I make, and his day seemed to consist largely of saying he didn’t like stuff and wanted it fixed.

So is this bizarre and inflated language really a necessary component of a successful business? Well, if it’s an organization with 500+ employees which adheres to things like the 80/20 workforce rule and believes in daily strategy meetings, probably so. How the hell ELSE would you fill the time? If you’re an up-and-coming cubicle farmer, fear not – there are plenty of resources for meaningless twaddle to pad your PowerPoint deck. The Business Jargon Dictionary is one, or if you’re too lazy too actually cut and paste the phrases, Andrew Davidson’s Corporate Gibberish Generator™ does the heavy lifting FOR you.

But if you actually just want to get crap done, and convey to others how to do it, there are some really simple tricks. Many of these are no-brainers, but that’s exactly the problem. Our brains get so worked up trying to make our ideas sound important that we forget whether or not they actually ARE.

1.) Are you preparing a “deck” merely because you have nothing to say and a PowerPoint or series of infographics will make it seem like you do? If it’s the latter, ditch the PowerPoint.

2.) Do you really mean “Accelerated Emergence of High Maturity Behaviors” or are you trying to say “faster results”? If you’re actually looking for faster results, you’ll get them with the latter.

3.) If you strip your descriptions of a product or service down to the simplest possible form, and it sounds like the product sucks, there’s a good chance it does. Ditch the product AND the language.

4.) Does your deck consist mainly of slides with 3 to 5 bullet points? Try a whiteboard, and write them as you deliver them. It keeps both you and your audience more engaged.

I could go on for hours about PowerPoint, and am sometimes tempted to do so with a PowerPoint. I’m the guy who you can quote for saying:

“PowerPoint. Helping people who don’t know what they’re doing prove it since 1984.”

What it all really boils down to is this: Talk Normal, Stupid.

So what the heck does this have to do with substitutions? Well, the other day I was having a business breakfast with Nick, and we went to this local diner that has been around since we were kids. As we ordered breakfast, Nick made a pretty sane request about getting something instead of the toast, and before the words were fully out of his mouth, the waitress uttered the all too familiar “we don’t do substitutions”. We both sort of raised an eyebrow, probably thinking the same thing, i.e.: “when did this place hire the chef from the Culinary Institute of America with the pompous my menu is PERFECT don’t eff with it attitude”? We didn’t contest. This place has been in the same location, with about the same level of business for over thirty years. But you know what? About two blocks away, there’s a multimillion dollar business that was originally just a deli, and was started by two hard-working guys, who probably at some point grabbed breakfast at this diner in their early days. I couldn’t help thinking about one of the main reasons the nearby deli had exploded into the stratosphere of success, while this diner puttered along for decades. The deli guys – to this day – have probably BUILT THEIR BUSINESS around doing substitutions. In fact, I think some of their more popular sandwiches years ago were named after the customer that “invented” them.

I think the next time someone asks me to do something a little differently, I might try it. Who knows what might happen!

This got me thinking about what I’m doing, and reminded me to have some clearer goals. It’s sort of burned into our brains in western culture that being a millionaire is a desirable goal. But is it? Or is it likely that you’ll ever be one? The information in this Deloitte Development summary suggests that globally, your chances of becoming a millionaire are about one half of one percent. If you want to make that sound a little more like it’s likely, that’s a 1 in 181 chance! Next time you’re surrounded by 200 people, look for the millionaire. But what will a million dollars buy you? Well, about 60,000 pizzas. Or an Aston Martin Vanquish and a Ferrari F430. Or a closet-like apartment in Manhattan. Frankly it’s not that much money these days, unless all you want is a lot of pizzas.

Amongst my friends, I find a comparable ratio of happiness amongst the affluent ones when compared to the not-affluent ones. In my experience, wealth really doesn’t guarantee a person will be genuinely happy. Personally, it was a strange realization over the last few years that my real desires aren’t based on “being wealthy”, but will require some wealth generation to achieve. Give me a piece of land that I’m not in debt for (and I’ve avoided the homeowner debt monster by the way), and some good friends, and some time to do things I enjoy, and I’m good to go.

But back to the “too many ideas” thing. My point will all these meandering thoughts is this: if your plan for success is simply to make a certain amount of money, there’s a good chance you’re going to fail all around. This isn’t breaking news or anything, but it’s easy to lose sight of, and why I’m glad I took a look at my values about why I want to generate a bigger revenue stream in my life. If you finally buy that multimillion dollar home, who is the person that’s going to be living there, and what will they DO in it?

We were applying our usual rigorous process to organizing a sales strategy, including the basics like defining areas to rep, basic terms, and even some inventive ideas for point of sale displays. Somewhere in the midst of researching items to create the point of sale displays, it hit me. Were we overdoing it? Were we trying to do it TOO well, when we didn’t really have the resources? Were our great ideas simply getting in the way of doing what we needed to do in a simpler fashion?

So that’s one of my goals for the near future. To develop a system for assessing the question of “do it now, or do it right?” This is a peculiar area, because while the problem of perfectionism getting in the way of results is familiar, and although I find it easy to identify this happening with others, I don’t feel like I have a good system for assessing this in my own work.

Any ideas?

Okay, this is a little embarrassing. Normally, I don’t like to talk about myself or toot my own horn. Well, at least not more than once or twice an hour and not in front of more than 100 people. But in this case I’m sort of trapped by the topic I’m writing about, which is “Your Personal Elevator Speech.”

Recently, in our Daily Fix column, I wrote about how you can leverage your hard-wired responses to your own name to increase the positive effect of your personal elevator speech on your psyche. You can see that post here. But we all understand things better when we can see examples, so I thought I’d share a personal elevator speech I wrote a few weeks ago when I was trying to get my ass moving on a project and having some doubts about whether I would be able to get through it.

I have to warn you, it’s nauseatingly positive. You can hate on me in the comments if you want, but keep in mind the purpose of the speech – it’s for me to tell myself in moments of self-doubt, and to leverage the sound of my own name. Here’s goes:

“Nick, you are smart, hard working, and successful. You can do anything you put your mind to. You know how to team up with creative and productive people, Nick, and how to get the best from them, and this time will be no exception. You entered law school on a bet, became an editor on the law review, and graduated with the top students in your class. You opened the Japanese Martial Arts Center after putting together a group of investors and built it to 100 adult students in record time. Nick, starting with a list of suggestions from your friend Don Prior, you learned the SEO business, mastered it, and now you have a successful SEO business that provides a really valuable service to business people all over Southeast Michigan. You’ve written five books, Nick, including 101 Ideas to Kick Your Ass into Gear that you co-wrote with Ian and Budo Mind and Body which made Black Belt Magazine’s list of Essential Gear. Nick, remember all the great things you’ve done, and how you set out with passion and determination. You can do anything you put your mind to, Nick, and this latest project is no exception. Nick, now is the time to get started!”

That’s it. You know that funny feeling you get when you address yourself by name? That’s your nervous system responding from a very deeply programmed place, just like it did when your parents said your name when you were about to be punished, or when your lover coos your name in the candlelight. It’s a very powerful tool, and it can help you remake your self image. Use it wisely, and it will help get you to a place where you can do anything you set your mind to!

Each week for the next few months, Ian and I will be riffing on a theme from our recently published book 101 Ideas to Kick Your Ass Into Gear. This week’s theme is “Tell Your Story”

When the story was written, even I was surprised by how much violence I had experienced as a kid. I shared the story with my sister, and she said she was saddened, but not surprised, by the memories. I don’t feel damaged by the experiences, but I did wonder if being around all that violence was what led to my passion for martial arts. In the end, besides having a therapeutic moment with my sister, I did get some great insights into how to tell the story of JMAC.

Whether you tell your story for therapy, just to share it with people who care about you, or to re-cast your life in a light that helps to embolden and energize you, I highly recommend it. Find a place that helps you write well, grab a tasty caffeinated beverage, and dig in. After all, what’s more interesting than YOU?

Each week for the next few months, Ian and I will be riffing on a theme from our recently published book 101 Ideas to Kick Your Ass Into Gear. This week’s theme is “Tell Your Story”

It seems like almost every book on self-development suggests that you take control of your inner dialogue – that stream of self-talk generated by your brain. You comment to yourself on almost everything, and virtually everybody I’ve had a conversation with about it says that the self-talk is mostly negative. There are some serious problem with that: (1) it colors your view of existence and often blinds you from noticing all wonders of life surrounding you; (2) the self-talk often comes out in the form of “other-talk” – the things you say to people often sound like the things you say to yourself and you aren’t always much fun to talk to; and (3) negative self-talk seems to take the form of “I can’t” way too much of the time – leading you to pass up opportunities for accomplishment that people with positive self-talk would likely take on.

About 3 years ago I decided to take the advice offered by many of these personal development authors and actually try to change my self talk. I tried two approaches. The first was to learn to stop it. That’s more or less what Zen disciples try to do, and I find it VERY difficult. Sometimes during meditation I can live in the space between the thoughts for a while, and that’s a very enjoyable feeling. But out in the real world, since I find it almost impossible to stop the dialogue, I’ve learned instead to replace it.

Instead of saying “that guy who just cut me off is an a**!” I try to say to myself, “Boy, he’s in a hurry!” Instead of saying, “So and so (somebody I’m working with) will probably screw this up,” I’ll say, “Let’s give her a try and see if she gets it done.” And probably the one thing I’ve learned to say to myself that’s made the most powerful difference, the real game changer, the thing that’s helped me get more done than ever before, and to take on new and more profound personal and business challenges, is, instead of saying, “I probably can’t do that,” I say, “I can definitely do that if I approach it the right way.”

Quitting is hard, but it can be really helpful. Ian and I wrote about it in our new book 101 Ways to Kick Your Ass Into Gear. But if you can’t quit, then you can try to replace your current habits with ones that help you become happier, more motivation, and potentially more successful!

We’ll be riffing on chapters from the book each week in The Daily Fix for a while, and the first chapter is “Quit”, which happens to dovetail nicely with the fact that it’s the end of the year. We’ll be back throughout the week with more interesting angles on the idea of “quitting”, but just for today, I can’t quit talking about our new book. Learn more about it at the KickYourAss101.com, or buy it on Amazon.

This isn’t your standard-issue self-help/motivation book. It’s lighthearted but heartfelt, with punchy, entertaining chapters that would be great while you’re sitting on the pot or on the plane. And when you’re DONE sitting wherever you sit to read it, hopefully you’ll Kick Your Asterisk Into Gear! And speaking of the holidays, this is an ESPECIALLY fun gift idea for this time of year, when we’re all pondering where we’ve been and where we’re going.

If you write one page a day, you can have a 365-page novel by the end of 2012. But consider this: you can write one crappy page each day, or you can write one great page each day. I leave it to you to guess what kind of novel you’ll get with each approach.

In martial arts, golf, or any other physical pursuit, figuring out how to correctly do a single component of a technique and mastering it is the “one thing” you ought to focus on. Of course, if you’ve done any important physical activity, you know that it often takes longer than one day to master even a single component of your sport. But even if it takes a week, you still end up with 52 solid aspects of your chosen activity in the bank, which means your overall execution can be greatly improved in one year.

In business, choosing one aspect of your marketing, client relations, efficiency, or cash flow to focus on at a time, and making sure you not only understand it, but have put into place a system for carrying it out, will ensure your continued success. You can maintain a business or limp along during good economic times without this approach, but when the economy struggles, those competitors who are getting one thing right each day will quickly put you out of business.

One caveat: most single aspects of any activity require maintenance even after you’ve “mastered” them. So you might want to build in to your plans not only some time to focus on your “one thing,” but also some time to review the last “thing” each day. Eventually you’ll create some kind of routine that lets you review, refine, and master the essential aspects of your chosen mission, and you’ll rocket towards success!