How to create a peak performance business - Part 1 SWITCH ON

Over the next 8 blog entries I will describe the GREAT 8 activities in creating a peak performance business.

SWITCH ON

Switch on to your people, your business, your market and your industry better than anyone else. Switching on means putting important knowledge front of mind, it means becoming a student of the game.  The things you need to know about, and what you need to know about them, are always right in front of your face – you just don’t see them until you switch on.  Here is an analogy for you: when you want to buy a new car and you know what you want, you actually start to see plenty of those cars on the roads. They were always there but now you see them because you are switched on.

Switching on takes practice.  It requires you to keep a journal with you at all times so you can make notes about your observations and the ideas that come from them.  Once a month also write notes about each of your staff or team so you create an on-going commentary for yourself about these important people who make your business tick. You can revisit these notes at performance review times and when coaching your team.

Read the newspaper about the economy, your market and your industry.  Read your industry magazines and websites.  Learn everything you can so you are switched on to how to do business better than before. Write important things down in your journal.

The key thing to understand about switching on is that you should  never try to switch off – it is mentally impossible.  You can only switch on to the next thing.  When you go home from work you will not be able to switch work off, but you will be able to switch on to your home, your children, your sport or community activities. As you switch on to one activity, everything else takes a rest.  

www.peakperformanceguru.com

Leverage an ancient business tool.

I recently checked out an article regarding ancient Greek laughter -I have no idea why - perhaps I was just intrigued by the joke that was on offer. I was more intrigued that somebody a few thousand years ago wrote a joke book in Greece and had it published. A Greek comedian called Laupheis Histeriopolous was the first comedian of note to be recognised as the founder of comedy or laughter as a form of formal entertainment in ancient Greece.

The story goes that he used to observe what was going on in his local community and then mimic things and turn them into something funny. While the ancient Greeks were incredibly civilised they lacked laughter and humour. Histeriopolous became the ancient version of Robin Williams or Chris Rock and took great delight in taking the absolute mickey out of Greek society.

From what I have read I believe he accumulated quite a lot of wealth and was actually sponsored by a Greek nobleman called Givitonomy. Givitonomy literally gave away money to people in need and then learned that he could give money to people and get back in return quite a lot of recognition, which meant he could make more money to give away. So the early version of sponsorship was created and by all accounts it was very profitable.

Histeriopolous used to promote Givitonomies business. Givitonomy was is the business of teaching farmers and herdsman how to better manage their herds -and eventually branched out into all forms of agriculture. He would be paid mostly in goods, of which he would keep what he needed and sell the rest to other people. Because of Givitonomies advice the farmers looked after their farms better, grew more and harvested more and so Givitonomy became quite famous(and rich) and gathered more clients. This is where it all gets quite interesting; because his business grew, he had to employ and teach others to do the same job as him and it is recorded that one of Givitnomies employees was a man called Consultiopolous who went on to establish his own teaching school and so the word consultant was born into business language.

It just keeps getting better because Consultiopolous thought a better way to do business was to get others to do it and he would have a share in their business - basically the equivalent of a modern day franchise. While the word franchise was not used in ancient Greece - Consultiopolous first franchise holder was a man called Levaria who was very successful with his franchise. Consultiopolous told new franchise holders that they to could teach and earn money 'Levaria's Way' - or by what we now refer to as Leverage.

So a chain of events 2-3000 years ago was the set up for a modern business language, a chain of events set in motion by a man called Laupheis Histeriopolous who got some financial help from a Greek entrpreneur.

Fact or Fiction???

Fix a Time and Date to Peak - don't be a loser.

 When it comes to goal setting there is a lot of generality around time lines - For example; we will be debt free in 2011, I'll be a millionaire by 2016, I will have three staff by March 2012.

In sport you have your shot for glory at a specific time on a specific day and in a specific place. If your late you miss out. Your whole life is dedicated to that time and place and making sure you peak for your best performance.

When you have a baby the guestimate is usually within a few days so you know when to be prepared baring emergencies.

When you take a flight you know the time and place and most of the time your plane leaves and arrives on time.

But what about our own goals -there are a lot of variables that need to come together to create the end result. There are plenty of things to sidetrack us and lead us off in various directions. The key to our success with goals is SWITCHING ON everyday to what they are. They need to be prominent so you can see them and remind yourself what they are. They need to have a date of completion attached to them so you remind yourself of that date. This date should be specific - 'I will be a millionaire on the 16th June 2016'!  Do your time line and be specific. Athletes win gold medals using this method because they have to be ready at a specific time. You can to.

Look at your goals and put specific dates and times on them and remind yourself each day - you might be surprised just how close you get. You might say that setting a specific date could create pressure - yes it does you are right - but the pressure is actually a positive pressure. If you are out by a few days it doesn't matter - unlike sport, where if you miss the Olympic final there is no second chance.


As someone who has done this my whole adult life, first in sport as a coach and now in business I know it works.

Make people take notice

Richard Branson is the king when it comes to stunts on how to promote yourself and your business. He does it so well that he is a billionaire.  I watched on TV recently about small fashion business that created a massive sword fight using candy canes in a very public place - every body stopped to watch them. When they had enough people they then handed out flyers promoting the shop and its opening. Sales went through the roof. It is all about getting noticed. Check out this video for some ideas from  Charlie Todd at TED

Free for Fee

  Dropbox have 50million subscribers of which 48million use the free service - Only 2million use the pay service - (I am one) - at the lowest fee of $9.95 per month they turnover Approx $20millio/month. That's a lot of free to get a huge amount of Fee.

The fee payers are keeping the non fee payers in a service and the company still makes great business - Having the free members will eventually increase the paying members because they will fill up their free 2GB of space.

It's like having a business pipeline from free to fee. Don't we all want a pipeline of business

What do you have that will be a pipeline from free to fee?

The four ages of ambition - where do you fit

In a recent group meeting with one of my biggest clients we had a surprise visit from one of the directors John Erkkila. He outlined the four ages of ambition as I am calling it, which can help you frame your service offerings to clients.

Stage 1.  20-29 - Discovery. You are learning, discovering and figuring out the ways of the world. You are starting to get some big ideas and working out how you can get ahead.

Stage 2. 30-39 How far and how fast.  How far do I want to go and how fast can I get there. This is the formula one race for the 30's. Highly ambitious and in a real hurry to be a success. Want to make big cash, get an executive position, own my own successful business, find the right partner for life, still party and have a good time. Be the youngest billionaire in the world. Bullet proof.


Stage 3. 40-49 Decision making time - it is in these years where people start to make the big decisions about the future. About their kids education and learning opportunities. About their own futures and being set up financially by having their mortgage gone or nearly gone and about what career moves they need to make before they reach that no mans land at 50+.

Stage 4. 50+ Celebrate or Panic - If things have gone well and you are set up right with a good income and a secure future you celebrate. If not you panic about what to do next and how to catch up.

As a business owner, coach, consultant, advisor or mentor these stages are worth understanding.  I have presented to these several clients who immediately identified with them.  It opens up opportunities to assist people in their journey by finding out where they are at with each stage. What do you have to offer each or maybe just one stage - does this description of the four ages of ambition open your eyes to niching yourself or targeting an age group to attend to?

5 ways to improve productivity if your self-employed (or not).

The cool thing about being self-employed is you are your own boss - you don't have to answer to anyone other than your clients. You can make the rules about what work you do and when you do it.

The important thing is however that you actually need to be productive so you generate enough cash without burning yourself out and not being able to enjoy your lifestyle choices.

Here are 5 simple activities you can do to be more productive as a self-employed professional

1. Use your diary properly - I cluster my appointments with clients from the same franchise so I stay switched on to their businesses. I work from home and have done so for 23 years and now I hardly travel at all  because I meet my clients face to face using Skype.  I colour code my diary by client, personal, national and international activity. Once again it helps me to switch on to what I am going to be doing. I have used the same colours for 10 years now so it is a language to me and at a glance I know what space to get myself in.


2. Turn your email off for at least 2 hours a day so you can pick up the phone and make calls to clients or prospective clients. Clicking the send/receive button in your inbox will not grow your business.

3. When you are working on a new idea, service or 'value add' always ask this question - "is what I am doing a return on investment activity or a distraction"? Distractions are not productive so dump them. ROI activities make you money or get you business so put your energy here. 

4. Turn your cell phone off at lunch time and sit in the sun.  Being available all the time to your clients is slavery - you are not a slave. You are a valuable resource that needs to freshen up and energise so you can maximise your productivity and your value to your client.

5. When you are working on a project that needs your undivided attention put a sign on your door that says "I am psycho and will shoot in the big toe if you knock or open my door".  If you work at home it may be your kids who want to come in so be more softer about what you say e.g. "Only come in here if you don't want a 21st birthday". If it is your wife who wants to come in - are stupid - let her in of course. You get the idea.  Let people know you don't want to be disturbed.

There are more tips for you atwww.theknowledgestadium.com

Are you an in-betweener

Are you an in-betweener? Inbetween good and great. in-between stagnating and growth, in-between walking and running, in-between not making a decision and making a decision.

When I was coaching international athletes the very worst place was 2nd or 1st loser. It was gutting not to get the gold. When you have had a taste you want more.

In business the worst place is in-between. In my experience so many businesses and so many business owners are stuck in-between not achieveing their business goals and achieving them. They haven't yet found the tipping point or reached the tipping point. They just keep on hoping it will show up.

So how do you move away from the in-between acid bath.  The answer to this is a one word answer - DECIDE!  Decide that you want to move forward and then get on with it.  The single greatest mental blockage is the ability to decide.  To many people are scared to make a decision because when they usually do things dont work out for them.  In fact they carry out a self-fulfilling prophecy because when they make a decision they immediately go to the negative about the outcome - therefore make a proactive positive decision becames a hindrance. 

Typical negative thoughts are - it will be to hard, cost to much, haven't got enough resources, to many other people are doing it, my staff wont buy in, a meteor will hit the earth or a flying pig will land on my head and kill me.

The in-betweeners dilemma - to go forward or stay behind or make myself a nice little comfort zone in the middle.

As a peak performance coach there is only one answer 'decide to go forward and stop being an in-betweener'!


HOW? 5 little words!

Clarity - be clear about what you want to move forward to and only see the proactive positive picture.
Specificty - write down the specifics of what you see in your mind as you go forward including the positive things that will happen to you.
Capability - value your own personal capabilities and then decide on what capabilities you need to source through coaches, contractors and specialists. Everything is out there you just need to identify it and ask for it. Sure it might cost you money but that is what budgets and forecasts are for.
Simplicity - whatever you do make sure it is simple - no sophistication or complexity. The basics work. Keep in mind that 'excellence is doing the basics everyday all day in every way'
Discipline - there is no escaping this one and ultimately this is the one that can trip you up. Discipline means staying on task - or being a disciplie to the plan. To stay disciplined ask this question regularly - "is what I am doing a return on investment activity or a distraction?" If it is a distraction get more discipline and stay on task. Set your plan and follow it.

 NO MORE IN-BETWEEN  - Peak Performers are never in-between they are always moving forward sometimes slowly and sometimes fast but they never stagnate - they make a decisions and then get to work.

 You can to and be winner. Mind-set + Activity + Persistence

How to Win the Rugby World Cup

 With the Rugby World Cup coming to its final blows I thought it might be worth a trip back in time to learn some lessons from the coal face of the 1987 World Cup. To do this I am reviewing some sections of David Kirk's 1997 book ‘Black and Blue’. I recommend this book to anyone who loves sport and would like some genuine insight into the mind of a world champion athlete and a successful businessman.  I will relate each excerpt from the book directly to business.

1. Page 22, on being good enough

Why wasn’t I being selected?  I certainly wanted it bad enough. I was ambitious enough, I was playing enough, I was training enough, the only answer could be I wasn’t good enough.

That’s a conclusion you avoid as long as you can.  But if you succeed in avoiding it completely you never get any better.  So I finally came to it and asked the next important question: why wasn’t I good enough?

In your business you'll have moments when business does not go well at all. You will have the ambition and you will have the will and you will think you're doing the right things but it's just not happening. You need to ask the question, why is it not happening for me?  It can be difficult facing the fact that you might not be good enough. The great thing is you can actually turn it around, because there are no limitations. It just takes time, energy and determination. Are you up for it, David Kirk was, he became a world champion.

2. Page 71, on doing your best

If the kick was to long - as it frequently was - Kirwan would have run down the pitch for nothing.  The fullback would have cleared the ball with time to spare. But every time, JK faithfully chased the ball as hard as he could because it was his duty to do so. That I’d made a mistake didn’t in the spirit of the team absolve him of the necessity of chasing the kick.  In some way he was doing it for me - to try and turn a bad kick into a good one; but also he was doing it for himself, his own pride, his own compulsion to do the best he possibly could.

This lesson is a simple one, do your best for your business, your business partners, your team and your clients, period. Your compulsion should be the same as JK – to do the best you possibly can. By doing this you become a leader by example to your team and you become someone your clients can trust.

3. Page 110 - on preparing to win the world cup.

Rugby changed for me at this time. We had always played to win. That was our constant purpose, our strategic objective. But then, in training, in discussion, out of our collective spirit, another aim evolved. Our ambitions increased. There had been a goal of winning the world cup.  It changed to become a larger one - the goal of playing the best rugby in the world.  This distinction may have seemed slight at the time but ended up becoming a whole new philosophy of play. We stopped playing to win; we stopped playing against our opponents. We began to play against the game itself, pushing back the boundaries of what was considered possible. The opposition simply became the means by which we brought our vision of rugby into the world.

It was a reincarnation of the amateur ethic. Winning was not the most important thing anymore. Winning wasn’t the point. Playing the best rugby was the point, and winning was the by product. The distinction is real.

For years I have been telling people in business that profit and growth are by-products of playing the best possible business game you can. As an Olympic coach I fully understood that any medals we won were simply the outcome of 180,000 minutes of training every four years. We aimed to do our training better than any other athletes on the planet and it worked.  In your business you can do the same, you can push the boundaries of what is considered possible. No matter what the market place is like you can still do business!  It comes down to acknowledging the situations and then pushing against it delivering something special, something that others have not thought about. It is about generating a collective belief within your business team that they can be successful. Getting the deal is not the most important thing anymore, getting the deal isn’t the point. Providing the best service and outcome possible to your client is the point. By doing this you make a distinction between an average mortgage broker and a professional mortgage broker and getting the deal is the by-product. 

Go the All Blacks

What a Superhero can do for your business.

 I spend a lot of my time telling clients that Superman and Wonder Woman are and always will be comic book characters.

Right now however I want to ask you who your favourite superhero is.  I want you to identify why you like this superhero, what is it that your superhero does, how do they go about it, what's their driver and of course what cool outfits do they wear?

So why am I asking you to check out your favourite superhero? If you could package up the qualities of your favourite superhero how would it change the way you do business? How would it change the way you view your clients and customers and how would it change the way you view the world?

For example let's take Superman.

"Faster than a speeding bullet!

"More powerful than a locomotive!"

"Able to leap tall buildings at a single bound!"

"Look!"

"Up in the sky!"

"It's a bird!"

"It's a plane!"

"It's Superman!"

Just reading these words makes you want to say them out loud, they are full of energy, excitement and anticipation; you can see the Christopher Reeves movies and the comics in your mind with Superman speeding across the skies with his red cape.

Superheroes provide us with energy, excitement, values, consistency, a never say die attitude, and they always want to do good and what is just. Superheroes also have an arch nemesis, somebody who is annoying and frustrating and hell-bent on trying to do things to suit themselves out of greed, like taking over the world.

I have read in various publications and heard various speakers talk about creating super fans for your business. To create super fans I believe you have to be a superhero. This means you have to be prepared to go the extra mile and provide a value proposition that will make your clients continually want to do business with you. Two things you can do that can make a difference to your client as well as generate cash flow and profit are to introduce consulting and coaching to your mix.

Are you the superhero or the arch nemesis? The superhero runs their business with energy and purpose, the arch nemesis is only after one thing and that is greed. The superhero understands that if you do the right thing by the client the outcome will be cash flow, profits and a loyal client.

Consulting means solving a problem which is exactly what the superhero does. They take charge and they solve the problem. Coaching is about instructing, guiding, and empowering people to do better so they can solve the problem. Consulting and coaching can be added to any business whether it is in product sales or services.

I heard somebody once ask "do Black & Decker sell holes or drills?" The answer is they sell holes. By knowing what type of hole is wanted they can then offer the appropriate drill to the customer. By asking questions about the hole, the salesperson has become a consultant and a coach. They have become a superhero to the customer. They solve the problem of what drill is needed and then can coach the customer to use it the right way and maximise the use of their drill. This creates a super fan.

Here are some of the activities that superheroes do that can relate to the way you do business.

1. Do no evil - they are on the side of right and justice. Your business is about fair trading and   quality.

2. They know their mission and purpose - you should have a mission and purpose for your business.

3. They have a distinctive brand - Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman - they wear their brand and live to it - so should you.

4. They have knowledge of their patch. Superman patrols the skies, Batman cruises Gotham city in his Bat mobile.You should be observant about your market place trends.

5. They team up just like the Fantastic Four - Mister Fantastic, The Invisible Woman, Human Torch and The Thing - together they are formidable. Who are strategic alliances with - they can grow your business

If business is about having super fans then you need to be a superhero.  Hey you can even wear the costumes – that will get your clients attention

www.peakperformanceguru.com

Motivation

If there is one thing that athletes know, it is how to stay motivated - I have had the privilege of coaching some of the worlds greatest athletes.  They are dedicated, disciplined, focused and have extreme confidence.  None of them have been born with natural talent - they have worked their butts off to achieve their fitness, skill and ability to perform.  Want the proof that they are not born with the talent they own - read 'BOUNCE - How Champions are Made' by Matthew Syed. 

It takes 10,000 hours to be really good and I mean really good. I know this to be true.  When I look back at the athletes I have coached they all have 10,000 under their belt by the time they become Olympic and world champions.

The bottom line however is that everybody is capable of achieving their goals whether it be in business or sport - This blog is about helping you to learn the skills and tips of how athletes get and maintain their motivation to stay on task and how you can use these same skills to achieve your business goals.

It is all about mind-set + activity + persistence.