The Most Asinine Pressure?

From Bode Miller, top Olympic skier, today:

"My pressure is to do what I expect of myself," Miller said. "To go out there and say I have pressure on me to win a medal, that's the most asinine pressure to put on yourself. It's not in your control at all. Whereas, my intensity is under my control. ... It's not like you just push the button and go. You've got to get the right setup, all your ducks in a row mentally, and let it go."

Are you putting "the most asinine pressure on yourself"? Making the sale? That's no more under your control than winning a medal is for Olympic athletes. What you can control is getting the right intensity, and to do that:

"You've got to get the right setup, all your ducks in a row mentally, and let it go." More here.

So your task is to figure out -for your business - how to get the right set up, get all your ducks in a row mentally, and let it go.

And that's not as easy as it sounds. How do you get the right set up? Or get all your ducks in a row mentally?

Suggestions welcome.

The Wrong Approach?

Here are two questions Yahoo asked U.S. adults in a survey not long ago:

1. "What kind of work would you prefer to do late in life?"

Over half (55%) want their own business. Other big groups want to do something that they 1) love (volunteer work, public service) and/or 2) help others do things they do well (consulting and teaching.)

Even more interesting is WHY they say they want their own business.

Given what these folks have said their reasons are, would you still lead with the big (or any) money? Of course you can lead with the product. But, if you were looking for a business type, how would you lead now, given how few want a business to "get rich" (3%)?

P.S. I posted about this when the study first came out, but I hadn't created these cool tables then.

How Hannah Kearney honed her preparation

The USA's Hannah Kearney just won the women's gold medal in skiing. Thought you'd like to see what she did for the last nine months, to prepare.

Over the last nine months:

"Every day, following her workouts, she punched data from that day’s activities into a computer. Before the preliminary round Saturday, her trainer, Alex Moore, handed Kearney a card. When she opened it, she saw a lightning bolt on the front. Inside were the totals: more than 25,000 steps climbed, 14,000 jumps with a rope or off a trampoline, 1,000 tricks off ramps into a pool of water and 126 hours spent on a bike.

Following the epic sessions, Kearney would drive home visualizing winning gold. Never did she imagine doing so by such a large margin.Nor after the 22nd place by her previous run four years ago. Story here.

What if you, starting right now, were to track your business building activities each day for the next nine months? (Business building: finding customers or recruits and any activities related to improving your skills there. I'm starting with you because you can't rely on others for sure, can you?)

1. Which activities would you track each day?

2. How would you track them each day?

It's Not The Load...

"It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it." ~Lena Horne

Who Else Fudges Their Numbers?

It won't be news to most of you that public companies tweak, adjust, or sometimes just fudge the numbers each quarter "to meet investor expectations." (PDF here in case.) Why?

To 1) avoid a stock sell-off, which would depress the stock price and obviously the value of the management's holdings, or 2) trigger a buying rally, which would drive up the value of the shares.

This seems like bad behavior, but it's unavoidable given the incentive.

Money - as a primary motivation - seems to undo us all at some point. Why do we hype or exaggerate how easy the business is? So they will buy. And we get money.

Why might we overstate a product's effects? To make a sale. And we earn money.

All of the exaggerations in business, from little to big are all made for one reason: the money that might come our way if they buy our story.

Yes, people need to make a living doing something. But perhaps we can reorder the incentives.

What if we do and say stuff first because it's meaningful to us AND others, or because it fulfills us and makes us genuinely happy, and because it's an extension of ourselves?

Wouldn't the money then follow because people like us would follow us and want to be around us?

Am I being too idealistic?