As discussed in the X-Factor Blog, I attended and spoke at the Nerve Conference in Atlanta just over a week ago and had a great time! We listened to some interesting speakers and 
had a fun spending time with our EO friends and meeting some young aspiring entrepreneurs. The breakout went well! The X-Factor content leads to such powerful discussions and opens us up to the possibilities of creating breakthrough opportunities for our businesses.
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Crowdfunding, the Savior for the Entrepreneur
Something exciting has happened in the entrepreneurial world, and I want to share it with everyone. The JOBS Act, passed by both houses of Congress in March and signed into law on April 5th, will generate big changes for the growth of small and mid-sized businesses. One of the major amendments in this bill would allow crowdfunding. I see this evolving into a significant means for companies to access increased funding, and it is a great way for small investors to find more opportunities to devote their money to companies with which they are more closely involved. Given how connected we are through social media and the internet, this is ripe for the times!
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Discovering Your X-Factor
I have been working on putting together some content for a breakout session I’ll be doing at the EO Nerve Conference in Atlanta next week. This content was created for Insignia and Quantum leap EO programs to help Forums engage in more stimulating discussions around your businesses with the other business owners. I really enjoy these events, catching up, and sharing with my existing EO friends and meeting new ones.
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Making Tough Decisions
On my entrepreneurial path, I have realized many things come down to a few key decisions. Sometimes they are very tough decisions that can have a significant impact on people’s lives. This is what being an entrepreneur and leader of a company is all about. It is about making the big decisions that will either lead you to your success or demise. The demise part comes by not acting and putting off these tough decisions that need to be made.
These decisions can come in the form of people that should or shouldn’t be with your company, products or services that you should or shouldn’t have, or in the strategic direction of your company.
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Solving the World’s Problems with Abundance
Let’s continue our discussion from last week’s blog. How does Abundance solve the future problems that seem to loom before us like population growth, water needs, hunger, and power?
Abundance Thinking holds the understanding that we have the capability to solve our pains with the technologies we have already created. Those technologies are at such a level that the continued connectivity of each of them creates exponential opportunities for solving all the issues of the day and the problems out ahead of us.
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Abundance: Why Are We Lacking?
The pervasive worldview today suggests limitations and scarcity, and this restricted perspective seems to be spreading with all the negative feedback we are continually inundated with at every turn. When human civilization and technology repeatedly prove the limited and scarcity thinking wrong, why do we let it consume our consciousness?
If this scarcity mindset was accurate, we would have mostly starved to death by now after all the cries in the ‘70s that insisted the exploding population would consume all the food. Have you been to a grocery store lately? What about how we were scheduled to run out of oil a decade ago? We should all be walking now and burning our furniture to heat our homes.
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How Am I Here Now?
What is the opportunity that you find yourself in today? What people did you meet to get here? What are you going to do to create more such opportunities?
I am on my way to Ft. Lauderdale to meet with my EO Insignia Forum. My close friend Joe has a place there, so we are going to spend some time at his condo. I really enjoy going to meet up with my EO friends and spending time with them. It is always a very stimulating and worthwhile experience.
I come away with a greater connection and understanding for their struggles and successes, as each one walks their own path. It opens me up to what life has to offer and awakens me to my limited perspective when the diversity of these successful entrepreneurs come together to share their minds, experiences, and visions.
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Time Has Limitations, But You Don’t!
Being an entrepreneur, I have a mind set to create something better and to “maximize” the future. One of the things that I like to maximize is time. The problem with that is time is not scalable; it cannot be expanded with increased
use. What do we do then? Since you and I can’t change the fact that we all have 24 hours to utilize in a day, we need to approach it differently. -
Creating Your Vision . . . How?
Do you have a great Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG), core purpose, core values, painted picture, and hedgehog strategy? These key aspects of a company’s vision drive it to become everything it is striving to be. Do you have yours? In my experience, most do not. Why? Because it’s hard! After many years, we at Efficience are solid in all of them except the hedgehog, which we constantly struggle to pin down. However, that is the way it’s suppose to work; it takes time and an iterative process to get it done.
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It’s All Relative!
Check out this picture from my trip to India. This is my office manager Mukesh and his family.
Umm . . . are you thinking, “Whoa, my car doesn’t seem quite so small anymore?”
You may speculate, “Wow! This family must have had an emergency! They all had to jump on the bike and race off to the hospital or wherever on an impromptu moment!” Well, that is not the case.
