by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Growth, Habits, Leadership, Mindset, Opportunity, Tools
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 15 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Cultivate generosity
— From The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader: Becoming the Person Others Will Want to Follow by John C. Maxwell
John C. Maxwell, one of the foremost experts and authors in Leadership says, “Nothing speaks to others more loudly or serves them better than generosity from a leader. True generosity isn’t an occasional event. It comes from the heart and permeates every aspect of a leader’s life, touching his time, money, talents, and possessions. Effective leaders, the kind that people want to follow, don’t gather things just for themselves; they do it in order to give to others.”
Maxwell offers 5 points to keep in mind for cultivating the quality of generosity in our lives:
- Be grateful for whatever you have. “It’s hard for a person to be generous when he is not satisfied with what he has. Generosity rises out of contentment, and that doesn’t come with acquiring more.” The idea behind this is that if we’re not happy with little, we won’t be with a lot; and this projects into our giving: if we’re not generous with little, we won’t be either with a lot.
- Put people first. “The measure of a leader is not the number of people who serve him, but the number of people he serves.” This is beautiful because it turns the widely circulated concept of leadership on its head by putting others first.
- Don’t allow the desire for possessions to control you. In our culture of consumerism, “if you want to be in charge of your heart, don’t allow possessions to take charge of you.”
- Regard money as a resource. In here, Maxwell quotes E. Stanley Jones as saying, “money is a wonderful servant but a terrible master.” The way to put money to work as our servant “is to hold it loosely—and be generous with it to accomplish things of value.”
- Develop the habit of giving. “The only way to maintain an attitude of generosity is to make it your habit to give—your time, attention, money, and resources… If you’re enslaved by greed, you cannot lead.” Maxwell quotes writer John Bunyan who drives this point home by saying, “You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.”
I’ll leave you with this wonderful quote as food for thought:
“No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.” – Calvin Coolidge, U.S. President
ACTION
TODAY: Think of your 3 Ts: Time, Talent and Treasure (money and other valuable resources). Where are you giving of each? Where are you adding value to others? Are you being as generous as you can? Note that generosity starts with you, and you have to make sure that you are ok in order to be able to give to others. It’s similar to the instructions on board a plane: if the oxygen mask drops from the ceiling put it on yourself first, and then assist others. That’s the only way in which you can truly help. With this in mind, how are you generating value and being generous to yourself first, in a way that will enable you to give to others in a meaningful way?
FUTURE: If you’re not already there, get involved in something that will outlive you: a cause that you really care about. This way you’ll be able to channel your generosity for creating and adding value to others. Also, keep in mind that the best and most valuable thing that you can give is yourself. If you’re at a point in your leadership where you can do this and mentor others, that’s fabulous. If you’re not there yet, why not do the inverse? Get mentored so that you can learn how to do it, and pay it forward when you are ready.
Be generous and please share this post with someone who will benefit from reading it! You can share it via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you. 🙂
by Helena Escalante | Collaboration, Creativity, Habits, Leadership, Mindset, Opportunity
Estimated reading time: 1 minutes, 0 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Bake a bigger pie
— From: Habit Changers: 81 Game-Changing Mantras to Mindfully Realize Your Goals by M. J. Ryan
Today’s idea is brief, but very insightful. It comes from the book Habit Changers, by M.J. Ryan, where she shares this concept from Guy Kawasaki, renowned entrepreneur and author of 13 business books.
Baking a bigger pie is “a great metaphor for the art of collaboration. Many people think that collaborating simply means agreeing with others, but in reality it’s the process of jointly coming up with previously unthought-of solutions that expand the pie to satisfy everyone. It requires open and honest communication and a focus on creative and novel solutions.”
Whenever you are stuck, instead of “splitting the difference” or having to compromise on a result that leaves everyone wanting, simply ask: “how can we build a bigger pie?” Creating the habit of asking this will result in bigger and better ideas for the benefit of all involved.
ACTION
TODAY & FUTURE: When you find yourself stuck, ask, ask, and ask again, “how can we build a bigger pie?” You’ll be surprised at the possibilities that this opens!
Know someone who needs to build a bigger pie? Please share this post with them via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!
by Helena Escalante | Creativity, Growth, Habits, Mindset, Opportunity, Tools
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 5 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Where do baby (carrots) come from?
— From Hunch: Turn Your Everyday Insights Into The Next Big Thing by Bernadette Jiwa
Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group, has been quoted as saying, “Opportunities are like buses – there’s always another one coming!”
And Bernadette Jiwa, business and brand strategist, as well as a fantastic author of many books, echoes Branson’s thought: “every day is filled with opportunities, either seized or missed, ours for the taking if only we can learn to listen for them. Every breakthrough idea starts not with knowing for sure but by understanding why it might be important to try.”
Jiwa goes on to say that we are all able to generate insights to see those opportunities and make the most out of them. Being insightful is not dependent on being special or having resources, innate gifts, special circumstances or any other advantage; on the contrary, anyone can develop killer hunches.
But how?
By cultivating curiosity, empathy and imagination “we become more attuned to opportunities that would otherwise go unnoticed. A hunch happens at the intersection of all three qualities:
- Curiosity
Interest + Attention: Learn to see problems and discern which ones are worth solving.
- Empathy
Worldview + Understanding: Understand how it feels to be the person with the problem.
- Imagination
Context + Experience: Build on what is already understood in order to connect ideas and describe new possibilities for the future.”
Here’s an example of an opportunity that Jiwa calls a case study in imagination: baby carrots. Spoiler alert: there’s nothing baby about them. (If you’re heartbroken by this realization, read on, the story of how they came about is remarkable and will make you smile!).
Mike Yurosek was a concerned farmer: from his yield of 2,500 tons of carrots per day, he’d have to cull 400 tons because “they weren’t ‘pretty’ enough to be sold in grocery stores. Carrots that were misshapen, broken or bent couldn’t be packed for selling.”
One day, he had an idea: he cut the ugly carrots into uniformly shaped 2-inch pieces, and then sent them to a packing plant to be peeled. The edges were smoothed out in the process right before bagging. Ta-daaaaa: “the bagged baby carrot was born.”
Yurosek sent the bags of baby carrots to a supermarket in Los Angeles. “The next day [the supermarket] called and requested that he send them only baby carrots. […] The baby carrots were not only popular with customers; they were also a terrific earner for store owners. […] While other farmers focused on perfecting production techniques in order to minimize waste, Mike reimagined the problem by thinking creatively about what it was that customers wanted, boosting carrot sales by 35 percent and transforming the industry.”
Now every time you see baby carrots you’ll think about this story!
ACTION
TODAY: Take a project you are working on and make a list of things that need improvement or that don’t work well. Then brainwrite for possibilities to solve those issues. Let your curiosity, empathy and imagination flow. What did you come up with?
FUTURE: Whenever you come across something that frustrates you, let that be the fuel to reimagine the good or service in a new, improved light. By doing this, you will be developing and strengthening your curiosity, empathy, and imagination muscles. Take the time and make a game out of it. How many things can you change to make it better? How can you redesign it from scratch to take away the flaws? How can you use it for other purpose? How can you add additional features? How can you strip it to the bare minimum? Your answers will surprise you. Keep asking, keep reimagining.
Know someone who loves baby carrots? Or someone who needs to develop their imagination? Please share this post with them via email, Facebook or Twitter, thanks!
by Helena Escalante | Goals, Growth, Habits, Leadership, Mindset, Opportunity, Productivity, Tools
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 32 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Selective quitting
— From Born For This: How to Find the Work You Were Meant to Do by Chris Guillebeau (Here’s a book review I wrote and here’s my interview with Chris at the New York Public Library.)
A quote that is frequently attributed to Einstein is, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” In Born for This, Chris Guillebeau makes the case that “most of us are smart enough to realize that if we try something new and it doesn’t work we can’t just keep doing the same thing and expect different results.” When this happens, we quit and move on, but the key word here is new.
What happens when it’s not new? Guillebeau continues, “the greater problem comes when we’ve become conditioned to success according to a certain method or plan of action. When something works for a while and then it stops working, that’s when it’s tough to change. We don’t keep attempting the same thing over and over because we’re stupid, and it’s not because we don’t know any better. It’s just that we love the familiar and change is hard.”
What to do?
We must go after the right opportunities and selectively quit projects or courses of action that are not in our best interest. But “knowing when to give up and when to keep going can feel like an unachievable superpower,” says Guillebeau. Fortunately, he offers four strategies you can put to work whenever you find yourself in this situation.
1. When the stakes are low, make changes or give up quickly. The best time to make a change is earlier in the project, when the stakes are low and, preferably, when the investment of time, effort, money, etc., has not been as significant as closer to the end (but more on this in point 3 below).
2. Fight your FOMO. FOMO, or Fear Of Missing Out “is a very human and natural human emotion, it can be dangerous if it prevents you from quitting when it’s long past time to give up. After all, if you want to be successful, you can’t live your life out of fear.”
3. Ignore sunk costs as much as possible. The term sunk costs is used in accounting and finance to mean “a cost that an entity has incurred, and which it can no longer recover by any means. Sunk costs should not be considered when making the decision to continue investing in an ongoing project, since these costs cannot be recovered.” (Source: AccountingTools.com) But the fact that this term is used in finance doesn’t mean that it doesn’t apply to us if we are not in the field. Why do we keep watching a really bad movie and hoping that it gets better, when the logical thing would be to stop watching or leave the theatre? Because we have invested our time (and perhaps our money) in it, and we’d like to see if we can somehow make the most out of that investment. Why don’t we get rid of things that clutter our homes and offices? Because feel bad about getting rid of them when we think of all the money and other resources that we’ve spent on acquiring them. Why do some people keep working at a job they don’t enjoy? Because they’ve spent years at the company. When you take sunk costs into consideration you become chained to a false commitment, and this prevents you from choosing better options. Do not take into account sunk costs when making a decision.
4. When the stakes are high, ask yourself two questions. The questions are very simple, but don’t let that fool you, the answers will give you much clarity:
- Is it working?
- Do you still enjoy it?
The answers should come to you quickly and intuitively. If both answers are yes, then keep going. If both answers are no, then quit. The tricky part comes when the answers are different: when it’s working but you don’t enjoy it, or it’s not working but you do enjoy it. In either case a change is needed to get you to where you want to be. Here’s a brief diagram of what the questions and answers look like:
- Is it working? → Yes → Do you still enjoy it?→ Yes → Keep going
- Is it working? → Yes → Do you still enjoy it? → No → Change something
- Is it working? → No → Do you still enjoy it? → Yes → Change something
- Is it working? → No → Do you still enjoy it? → No→ Give up
And while giving up or quitting has a bad connotation and we don’t want to think of ourselves as quitters, just remember that by quitting something you’re not giving up on you. On the contrary, you are giving yourself the opportunity to fully chase those goals and dreams that you want to achieve.
ACTION
TODAY: Think about one project or commitment that you have going on and that is spreading yourself too thin. Apply the four strategies above and figure out whether it merits continuing or not.
FUTURE: Adopt these four strategies for figuring out what you want to keep and what you need to give up. Once you take on additional projects, make a point of evaluating your progress every so often by running your projects through these strategies. This way you’ll ensure you’re involved with projects/actions that are moving you forward, instead of weighing you down.
Know someone who needs to selectively quit a thing or two? Please share this post with them via email, Facebook or Twitter, thanks!
by Helena Escalante | Celebration, Goals, Growth, Leadership, Mindset, Opportunity
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 45 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: It’s never the right time
— From What to Do When it’s Your Turn (and it’s Always Your Turn) by Seth Godin
In What To Do When It’s Your Turn, Seth Godin talks about our fear of doing things because it’s “not the right time.” He concludes that, “It’s never the right time. When you are starting a family, it’s not the right time. When your kids are about to go to college, it’s not the right time. When there’s an elderly parent depending on you…” You simply have to take the leap because the right time will never come.
Godin mentions that when Gutenberg launched the printing press it was “a foolish time to bring a book manufacturing system to Europe [because] 96 percent of the population was illiterate.” It was indeed too early to launch considering the following: only one in 25 knew how to use the product and learning to use it (reading) would take years. Can you imagine if Gutenberg had decided not to move forward because it was not the right time?
And “when Karl Benz introduced the car to Germany, it was against he law to drive a car. He had to get a letter from the King granting him permission to use his new device. And, worth mentioning, no one knew how to drive a car. And there were no roads. And no gas stations.” Too early again…
We have a million reasons to give up because it’s too early, too late, or simply not the right time. On the other hand, when we take the leap, we are giving ourselves, our loved ones, and those who surround us, the gift of a project that can benefit us all. Godin says, “This is the chance of a lifetime, our lifetime. Not someone else, us. Not later. Now.”
I’ll leave you with this quote as food for thought:
“Do it or not do it—you will regret both. … To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose one’s self.” – Soren Kierkegaard
ACTION
TODAY: What have you been postponing lately because it’s not the right time? Ask yourself: if not know, when? Set a time to get started. Even if you begin with a tiny step, it will be a step in the right direction.
FUTURE: Think of all the things you have postponed because it’s never been the right time. Which of those are still part of your life/business goals? Pay attention to them and set up a time to start. We need you to share your gifts with the world!
P.S. – I have a favor to ask today, please: for a long time I postponed launching my blog because it was not the right time. I’m so glad I finally took the leap to share these ideas with you daily! Since EntreGurus will be celebrating 100 posts soon (woo-hoo!), I want to learn how the ideas have been helpful to you, what your favorite post has been, what other books/topics you’d like me to feature, and what I can do to improve or enhance EntreGurus. Could you please help me by sharing your comments with me in here? Thank you so, so much!
P.S. 2 — Know someone who is waiting for the right time? Please share this post with them via email, Facebook or Twitter, thanks!
by Helena Escalante | Growth, Leadership, Mindset, Opportunity, Planning, Resources, Sales, Tools
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 30 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: The listening matrix
— From Dynamic Communication: 27 Strategies to Grow, Lead, and Manage Your Business by Jill Schiefelbein
We’ve talked about listening before (here and here), but always focusing on you: how you listen and how you can listen better. But have you ever stopped to think how others listen to you? This is especially interesting in a business setting, when you need your listener to take action (sign the dotted line, for example).
In Dynamic Communication, Jill Schiefelbein broke down the listening modes into a very handy matrix to understand how people listen. “In order to move people to action, you need to understand how they are listening to you. […] Are they listening for information, or are they listening for knowledge? The answer is the difference between action and inaction—making a sale or missing an opportunity… People who listen for information do not decide. People who listen for knowledge decide.”
The listening matrix is a four-stage continuum: stages one and two comprise the time when people are listening to gather information; stages three and four comprise the time when people are listening to acquire knowledge and make a decision. The goal is to move the listeners from any of the first three stages towards stage four so that they can take action, whatever form this action may take (buy, go, do, donate, vote, enroll, etc.). The examples below are mainly focused on sales, but you can adapt them to whatever situation you need where the goal is for the audience to take action.
This is what the matrix looks like:
INFORMATION [1: The Writer → 2: The Thinker] → KNOWLEDGE [3: The Interpreter → 4: The Decider]
Stage One: The Writer
The writer is simply taking notes and collecting information, but is not there to make a decision. “Transitioning your audience from a writer to a thinker… can be done with a relatively simple line of questioning.”
- What do you think about [insert topic]?
- What is your opinion on [insert topic]?
- What are your feelings on [insert topic]?
- What is your view on [insert topic]?
- What is your perspective on [insert topic]?
Stage Two: The Thinker
At this point “your audience is still listening for information, but they may ask questions to clarify facts, figures, details, etc.” Once they take a breather from their notes, you can further engage them with these questions:
- What do you know about [insert subject]?
- Would you share with me what you know about [insert subject]?
- What does your company know about [insert subject]?
- How do you see that process working for your business? (This question is not designed for a yes/no answer; it’s used to generate further discussion.)
Stage Three: The Interpreter
Your audience is past the Information half of the matrix and is on to the Knowledge half. At this stage is when your audience “starts to interpret how something will apply—its consequences, its benefits—in their business.” By asking the following questions you will gain intel that will enable you to understand how your audience will adapt your information to their context. Schiefelbein says, “Remember, knowledge is information applied.”
- How would your business change if…?
- What would it look like if your organization used…?
- How would your job be easier if…?
- What would be the best outcome for you if…?
- How would you react if…?
- What would it take for this to work in your…?
Stage Four: The Decider
“Your success at this stage will be determined on how well you’ve connected with your audience and how well you articulate your request… Your job in this stage is to get the action.” Here are the questions that will help you get there:
- Can you see this working for your business?
- Do you see this meeting your needs?
- Are you comfortable recommending this to your board?
- Is this solution within your budget?
- Do you want to get started today?
- Is this something you feel your sales team could benefit from?
- Shall we talk about some solutions that we can work on together?
“No matter what, at this stage you need to get a “yes” or “no” and move to the next step of the relationship.”
ACTION
TODAY: Pay attention to the stages that your listeners are in, especially if you are having any conversations that require action. Adapt the questions above to move your audience to the next stage until they agree to take the desired action.
FUTURE: Adapt the questions above for your desired outcome whenever you are going to have a conversation where you need to move your audience from The Writer to The Decider. Document what works best for you and keep it as handy reference to use in a future. Don’t be afraid to test out new questions according to your project or situation. Once your audience takes the desired action, celebrate your success! And send me an email to let me know, I’ll be cheering for you. 🙂
Know someone who could benefit from this info? Please share this post with them via email, Facebook or Twitter, thanks!
P.S. – If you are in New York City next Monday, April 23 and want to meet Jill Schiefelbein (she is lovely and brilliant), she will be speaking at the same event as I: Unlearnings Live. This is a two-hour event to help you expand your world, your thinking, and the actions that make your work urgently important. Unlearnings Live is going to provide you with ideas to clear out any negativity surrounding you and create amazing environments that inspire your important work to scale. This will be an opportunity for your story to be told and for your ideas to be put into action. Please join us, we’d love to see you there!
