I just got back from a conference for EO Injected Forums in Sonoma, CA where I had a great time with my Forum mates sharing and learning together. It struck me that I talk about Forum lot in my blog, but not everyone has had the opportunity to be in a forum or even understand what a Forum is, so let me tell you about the Forum experience.
I am in two Forums. One is a local EO Forum that I have been in since 99, which meets monthly. The other is a regional Forum made up of EO members from the South East who have been in EO for more than 7 years, and meets quarterly.
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The Power of Forum
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The Power of Forum
I just got back from a conference for EO Injected Forums in Sonoma, CA where I had a great time with my Forum mates sharing and learning together. It struck me that I talk about Forum lot in my blog, but not everyone has had the opportunity to be in a forum or even understand what a Forum is, so let me tell you about the Forum experience.
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What does your business card actually say about your business?
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of watching a presentation to my local EO Chapter by Simon Mundell Head of Business Development with RESULTS.com out of New Zealand. Simon shared some interesting material about how companies can operate better to get the results they are striving to achieve.
Of all the many things that Simon discusses, one stands out above the others; something so small that most of us tend to overlook its significance. Typically Simon will ask everyone in the group to pull out their business cards and swap with the person next to them.
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A Lesson in Listening
There are times when you have to make business decisions that are painful. Those decisions are often accompanied by the feeling that your work, effort, worry, and money have all been a waste.
For 4 years now, my partner Rich and I have owned a franchise of 1-800-GOT-JUNK. These franchises have been successful all over North America, and we wanted to bring it to Knoxville. The founder of 1-800-GOT-JUNK is a fellow EO member that I met in 2001. For 4 years I watched the business grow and become successful before we bought the rights to the Knoxville market.
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How Important is the WHY in your “Why?”
My entire life there’s always been this ingrained curiosity about the world, people, how things work and especially about business. “Why?” is and always has been commonplace in my vocabulary, asking anyone about anything I came across. My family, business partners and team hammer back…..”WHY! WHY! WHY! Why do you ask why so much”?!
It makes me pause and wonder why it bothers them at times or why they joked about it, because I see it as something so natural that everyone should do it.
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SWOT your Way to Focus and Flow!
When you run a business, various opportunities often present themselves and persuade you to run off in different directions, pulling you away from your focus. This happens to me frequently, and I find it difficult to avoid being sucked down a path that sounds like the next great avenue for huge success.
Thankfully, my partners, EO Forum, or my team usually slap me back into reality. Taking a closer look at what you are doing can also help you discover if these opportunities are worthy or if the current focus is best.
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Designing Your Life at EO Barcelona
I’ve attended EO Universities for several years now, but this year was unlike any I’ve ever attended. I went for the first time to Barcelona, Spain. The theme of the University was “Design Your Life”. The idea was to focus on what you really want out of life, and what you’re doing to get there. It’s like choosing a personal BHAG – your very own Big Hairy Audacious Goal.
As entrepreneurs, we set goals all the time, but experience has taught me that we tend to view are business goals and life goals as one in the same; that by reaching our business goals we receive all we want out of life. Shouldn’t our businesses really be the means to our personal goals and the life legacies we want to create? This isn’t the case, in that, more often than not we let our businesses consume our lives and distract us from our families, spousal relationships, and our own personal paths.
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The S Curve
On my trip to Canada for the EO Conference, Peter Thomas, who I introduced in the last blog, (founded Century 21 in Canada and took it to 9 billion in sales) spoke to us about the S Curve.
I spent many years in the investment world and back in the early nineties I went thought the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) program. We discussed the S curve in depth, which depicts the life cycle of a business. With the S tilted forward a little, you can see how a growing company starts out flat for a bit, then takes strong spurt upward and then levels off and starts to decline. This is the life cycle of most businesses, usually lasting 5 to 7 years. Hang on for a second if you think this may not be relevant to you.
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What are your dreams?
What an interesting week! Last week, I traveled to New York City to participate in the Entrepreneurs’ Organization Injected Campus event, which brings the regional EO Forums together. We met in lower Manhattan to be close to the New York Stock Exchange.
This year during our event, the NYSE opening bell was rung by InvenSense, a company that makes the motion possible in the Wii and in smartphones. InvenSense was launching their IPO and was going public. I had always wanted to be there in person to see the opening bell, but it also made me think of my own dream of being up there to ring the bell with the IPO launch of my own company. That evening, it felt a little closer as my friends on the Global EO Board got to be on stage and ring the closing bell! WOW! Click here to see the video I took of the opening bell.
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Creativity… how do we get more?
Many people say they are happiest when they are creating. Maybe it’s because we are made in the likeness of our creator and are doing what comes naturally. Just like an artist or musician, entrepreneurs are creating and bringing things to life, out into the world and the marketplace to solve problems.
I’ve spent the last few days in Asheville, NC on an EO Forum retreat with my long time Knoxville Forum. Asheville is known for its community of artistic people, and like artists and musicians, we like to be in places that stimulate us to create. Many of us know that being in environments like the islands or the mountains stimulate us to create, but do we know why?
