Dan Waldschmidt's Blog, page 34

It’s Always That.

It’s always about the communication. Not what happened. Not what was said. Or not said.

Bad news doesn’t get any better the longer you wait to tell it.

So why is it that many business leaders fail so horribly at delivering clear, concise strategy and updates?

Most leaders are afraid to admit it, but they’re hoping the problem will go away on its own.

And so they wait and hope that things change.

And then when they finally realize that things aren’t going to change, their problems just got a whole lot more difficult.

That’s the crazy thing about communication. It’s best delivered continuously and strategically.

You don’t need to try to sugar coat bad news so your team doesn’t get freaked out. On the other hand, you shouldn’t be a jerk —  callously threatening your employees just to get the short-term benefit of a little bit extra hard work.

Neither are great strategies.

But it’s how many leaders run their business.

Most of that has to do with stress. As a leader you bottle it up inside. You keep it to yourself. Trying to protect your team from the pressure you feel.

Communication allows you to let some of that stress ago. To alleviate the fear and doubt you have by enrolling your team in the pursuit of an audacious mission.

You replace your own worry with progress.

It’s always about communication. Figure that out and you’ll solve the rest of your problems.

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Other than that, all rights are reserved to you to change your life. If you are ready to be amazing, now is the time to get started. Onward...

If You Aren’t Wound Up About It Don’t Do It.

Stop doing things that don’t matter to you.

If you can’t get passionate about what needs to be done or the reason while you’re doing what you’re doing, then you shouldn’t be doing it at all.

You’re just wasting your time. Going through the motions.

You’re just staying busy.

If you’re not careful, that’s how you’ll find yourself spending most of the day — checking off boxes instead of exerting passion into efforts that could catapult you exponentially forward towards where you want to be.

Do things that matter. Get passionate about the things that should matter.

That’s not an excuse to avoid doing hard things or a license to ignore the details.

It’s a reminder that just because you’re busy throughout the day and tired at the end of the day doesn’t mean you are closer to where you want to be.

Momentum comes from movement in the right direction.

Focus and militant inertia.

It doesn’t take massive amounts of progress each day to get you to where you want to be. You can just do one thing. And if you do that one thing that matters each day, your life will be forever changed.

You’ll be wildly successful — no matter what that means for you right now.

Just find one thing that matters and do it. Every day. No matter how you feel or what other people say about you.

Never forget why you’re doing those actions in the first place. Never lose the passion that pushed you in that direction in the first place.

You’re going to need it.

That fire is the energy you’re going to need to finish this journey.

Without it you’re just going to sputter to a stop.

Momentum lost. Game over.

Get wound up about what you’re trying to do. Stay that way.

Do one thing that matters today.

The post If You Aren’t Wound Up About It Don’t Do It. appeared first on Dan Waldschmidt: Author of EDGY Conversations.

Copyright by Waldschmidt Partners Intl... Not sure that all that legal stuff really matters. If you want to share this material, do so. Just don't charge for it and don't tell people you wrote it. Both of those are uncool.

Other than that, all rights are reserved to you to change your life. If you are ready to be amazing, now is the time to get started. Onward...

Use What You Do Have.

Don’t have enough time to get everything done you want to do today? Use the time you do have.

Don’t have enough money to invest in the support that would accelerate your growth? Use the money you do have.

Don’t have enough experience to know where all the potential problems exist? Use the experience you do have.

Don’t have enough of the right friends to help you network and navigate faster? Use the friends you do have.

Don’t have enough of the right answers to silence your critics? Use the answers you do have.

You’ll never have enough of what you think you need.

If you wait until it’s the perfect time to get started, you’ll never get started.

There is always more that you can learn. There will always be times when you feel inadequate and unprepared, scared, and cautious.

That doesn’t mean you should wait.

It just means that what you’re about to do is big and audacious — with a huge reward on the other side of the battle.

Use the resources you do have. Use them smartly. With focus.

And think about what you’re doing instead of just repeating a series of steps that someone else told you you “should be doing”.

You’ve got everything you need to be amazing. Go out there and get it done.

The post Use What You Do Have. appeared first on Dan Waldschmidt: Author of EDGY Conversations.

Copyright by Waldschmidt Partners Intl... Not sure that all that legal stuff really matters. If you want to share this material, do so. Just don't charge for it and don't tell people you wrote it. Both of those are uncool.

Other than that, all rights are reserved to you to change your life. If you are ready to be amazing, now is the time to get started. Onward...

What’s In Your Water?

What was in the water that the Laconians were drinking?

They were Greeks like the rest of their countrymen. They knew the odds of losing a battle where they were outnumbered 100 to 1.

The smart choice was to negotiate a favorable surrender. To surrender annual payments of gold and goods in exchange for keeping your life and some bit of humanity.

You could live in your old house.

Go about your day like usual.

Enjoy your traditions and practice your religion.

It would be ludicrous to sacrifice your life and your happiness for an impossible chance at freedom.

The Greeks knew it. And agreed to surrender.

That is until the Laconians decided to stand up and fight.

What were they drinking?

What special human qualities did they possess?

How is it possible that 300 fighters from a small region in the southeast corner of a big country were the only ones with the insight to see what no one else thought possible?

What made those warriors of Laconia  — known as Spartans — so invincible wasn’t what was in their water or in their lunch pail.

It was what was in their mind. What they thought about.  Their values. Their beliefs about destiny and hard work.

They were exactly the same as everyone else.

Except for what they thought about. What they believed to be possible. The ideals for which they lived — and were willing to die.

And that is why they live on forever in history.

They thought strong. And lived strong.

The post What’s In Your Water? appeared first on Dan Waldschmidt: Author of EDGY Conversations.

Copyright by Waldschmidt Partners Intl... Not sure that all that legal stuff really matters. If you want to share this material, do so. Just don't charge for it and don't tell people you wrote it. Both of those are uncool.

Other than that, all rights are reserved to you to change your life. If you are ready to be amazing, now is the time to get started. Onward...

Movement Builds Momentum.

Without momentum you will always struggle to get to where you want to be.

And without movement you can’t build momentum.

When you stop and start continuously — chasing quick fixes and easy options to hard solutions — you make your journey to success exponentially more difficult.

Almost impossible.

You find yourself taking two steps forward and forty steps backward.

Without momentum you lurch between doing what is right and what is easy right now.

Momentum is the result of you doing small things with discipline and militant focus, regardless of how you feel at the time.

Over time, doing the right thing leads to success.

But you can’t build momentum without first moving. Movement builds momentum. Not the other way around.

Success isn’t about feeling like being successful. If that were the case, no one would do the uncomfortable, painfully disciplined hard work that is required.

What you feel doesn’t matter. What you end up doing does matter.

Never forget that.

On those days when you’re wishing you had the energy or inspiration to do what success demands, remind yourself of how you’ll feel looking back on your life wishing you wouldn’t have wasted your opportunity at greatness.

And then get moving. Do one thing. Well. Every day.

The post Movement Builds Momentum. appeared first on Dan Waldschmidt: Author of EDGY Conversations.

Copyright by Waldschmidt Partners Intl... Not sure that all that legal stuff really matters. If you want to share this material, do so. Just don't charge for it and don't tell people you wrote it. Both of those are uncool.

Other than that, all rights are reserved to you to change your life. If you are ready to be amazing, now is the time to get started. Onward...

You Can’t Play It Safe And Win Big. (Pick One)

Awesome is a cumulative effect. It’s not one thing you do.

It’s a little bit of everything, combined together.

There’s no one thing you can do to achieve it. And rarely any catastrophe big enough to undo it.

It’s a process. The result a thoughtful execution. And tireless discipline. A mastery of the details.

Being awesome demands a different type of conversation. There’s no room for passive aggression and small thinking.

Accountability is demanded.

The only thing worse than an excuse is not executing in the first place.

And while everyone wants the results of being awesome, getting there is a tortured process.

Every step of the way is wildly uncomfortable. It feels wrong to be in that much pain.

Coupled with the fact that everyone is telling you that you’re doing too much. Trying too hard. Aiming for something that is not practical — maybe not even achievable.

You look crazy and feel horrible.

Your natural inclination is to start thinking logically. To reconsider your commitment to this idea of being awesome. To lower the bar for yourself and your goals.

That’s where you lose your way trying to look reasonable while attempting to pull off the unthinkable.

You can’t do both at the same time. You can’t play it safe and win big.

You might not need to win big right now. Small changes might be enough to get you to where you want to be.

But if you’re looking for more, you have to be all in.

Whether you look crazy. Whether you feel wildly uncomfortable. Whether you fail a thousand times in a row attempting greatness.

Because when the day is done, and the winners are separated from the rest, half measures only achieve full regret.

Don’t spend the rest of your life wishing you would have pushed through the discomfort a little bit longer to get to where you want to be.

Now is the time to do that. Even when everyone else thinks you’re crazy.

The post You Can’t Play It Safe And Win Big. (Pick One) appeared first on Dan Waldschmidt: Author of EDGY Conversations.

Copyright by Waldschmidt Partners Intl... Not sure that all that legal stuff really matters. If you want to share this material, do so. Just don't charge for it and don't tell people you wrote it. Both of those are uncool.

Other than that, all rights are reserved to you to change your life. If you are ready to be amazing, now is the time to get started. Onward...

Get Your Head Straight.

What are you thinking about right now? What’s been bothering you the last few days?

Maybe it’s something so personally scary and uncomfortable that you haven’t been able to even say it out loud. You haven’t had the courage to share it with anyone else.

It’s all inside your head. Bottled up.

Under pressure. Ready to explode.

What you think about most determines what you do and if you’re successful or not.

The things that are the easiest to think about are the most hurtful to your long-term success.

It’s not natural for you to automatically believe when things look really really bad that you’re going to be the one who makes it.

What you automatically think about is “how hard it is for you” and “how you never seem to be able to get a break” and “why does this sort of thing always happen to you.”

You don’t think about the positive, inspired possibility.

Fear and doubt and panic take over the thoughts in your mind.

Unless you do something about it. Unless you are proactive about controlling what you allow yourself to continue thinking about.

To stay focused and productive you have to disrupt the negativity that your brain automatically feeds you.

Take a break on the outside so that you can give your thoughts a break on the inside.

Stop what you’re doing. Take a deep breath.

Disrupt the pattern of allowing your mind to follow the scariest path. A path where your productivity slams to a halt.

Where your dreams die. Where the best you’ve got going is to give up now and hope the worst doesn’t actually end up happening.

What are you thinking about? What have you been thinking about?

If you’re not where you want to be it’s probably because you’re not controlling what you allow yourself to think about.

Get your head straight.

The post Get Your Head Straight. appeared first on Dan Waldschmidt: Author of EDGY Conversations.

Copyright by Waldschmidt Partners Intl... Not sure that all that legal stuff really matters. If you want to share this material, do so. Just don't charge for it and don't tell people you wrote it. Both of those are uncool.

Other than that, all rights are reserved to you to change your life. If you are ready to be amazing, now is the time to get started. Onward...

The Only Two Rules You Need To Be Successful In Business.

There are many rules to business. There are many things you’re told you “need to be doing” if you want to be successful.

But despite all the complexity about getting business right, there are really only two rules — two philosophies really — that dictate success.

It doesn’t matter what you’re selling.

It doesn’t matter what you’re planning to do. It doesn’t matter where you’re at or the industry you are in.

Massive success is rooted in these two rules.

1. Be incredibly easy to do business with.

Ubiquity is the new exclusivity. Helpfulness is the best strategy for driving awareness.

In today’s app-driven sales economy it’s easy to force prospective customers into a funnel where they have to fill out a form, download a white paper, or make a dozen frantic visits to your website before your technology scores them high enough for you to want to care to get to know them.

No wonder you’re not successful driving new revenue. You’re not flexible enough to meet people where they are.

No one wants to feel like an idiot to have to do business with you. More importantly — no one wants to have to do work to give you their money.

They want you there to help them and support them and give them guidance. And when you’re not easy to do business with it just adds to the frustration and chaos they already feel.

So abandon the strategies where you hide your contact information on your website. Make it incredibly easy for people to cancel your service or product if they’re not happy. Ditch all the complex contracts.

Be everywhere your prospective clients will be looking. Be there with a smile and a helpful hand instead of a gimmicky sales pitch and awkward marketing process.

2. Be so good they come back for more.

Obsess about ways to provide surprise and delight to your customers.

Think about all the frustrating things in your industry that you could remedy, even in small ways.

Deliver service with a smile, even when you’re stressed out and anxious. Put a plan in place to follow up on the promises you make.

A simple productivity platform or to-do app can help you stay scheduled and focused on delivering on your best intentions.

There is nothing particularly genius about doing what you say. But it makes all the difference in the world to your customer.

And it has a massive impact on your growth. Your customers want to believe in you. They want to give you a second chance when you screw up.

All you have to do is be willing to try. Apologize when you get it wrong. And keep trying to get it right.

These are the rules that make business awesome.

Be impossibly easy to do business with.
Be so awesome that they ask for more.

No amount of sales automation or witty marketing satire can trump the impact you create when you execute these two rules.

Being awesome isn’t an accident. Changing the world doesn’t happen by chance.

It takes focusing on the details. It requires you playing the game by a different set of rules.

These are those rules.

The post The Only Two Rules You Need To Be Successful In Business. appeared first on Dan Waldschmidt: Author of EDGY Conversations.

Copyright by Waldschmidt Partners Intl... Not sure that all that legal stuff really matters. If you want to share this material, do so. Just don't charge for it and don't tell people you wrote it. Both of those are uncool.

Other than that, all rights are reserved to you to change your life. If you are ready to be amazing, now is the time to get started. Onward...

It’s Not Easy.

It’s not easy. None of it.

Being successful isn’t easy. Getting past the obstacles in your life isn’t easy. Progress isn’t easy.

The hard truth is that anything worth doing isn’t easy.

And the things that seem to be easy aren’t the solutions you really need.

That’s the frustrating reality you figure out all too late.

You think you want what is easy. But once you have it, you realize that following the easy path is what is keeping you mired in the exact place you’ve been trying to escape.

The easy choice is never the most helpful choice. The easy choice is never the most fulfilling choice.

The easy choice is never the life-changing choice that gets you unstuck and propelled towards where you want to be.

It’s not easy to fix what’s broken in your life.

It’s not easy emotionally. Or financially. Or physically.

You have to make the choice to save when you want to spend. To work when you want to sleep. To keep going  when it’s easier to make excuses and give up.

The easy choice is what happens automatically. It’s wired into your subconscious. The path of least resistance.

Unless you go out of your way to change that.

Deliberate, uncomfortable change.

Want to lose weight? You have to viciously disrupt your current eating and exercise habits.
Want to make more money? You have to work like an obsessed mental patient.
Want to make your marriage work? You have to start having those absurdly candid conversations you’ve been avoiding.
Want to dominate your industry? You have to be crazy different and weirdly focused on the details.
Want to get out of debt? You have to commit to rice-and-beans until you turn things around.
Want to get promoted? You have to be willing to do what everyone else avoids doing.

There’s always a good reason to do the easy thing.

Just remember that success is never easy. Or predictable. Or likely. It’s painful and gritty and fabulously uncomfortable.

Look at what you’re doing now. Is it easier than it should be?

A future of awesomeness begins with hard choices today.

Really hard choices. It’s not easy.

The post It’s Not Easy. appeared first on Dan Waldschmidt: Author of EDGY Conversations.

Copyright by Waldschmidt Partners Intl... Not sure that all that legal stuff really matters. If you want to share this material, do so. Just don't charge for it and don't tell people you wrote it. Both of those are uncool.

Other than that, all rights are reserved to you to change your life. If you are ready to be amazing, now is the time to get started. Onward...

Go the Extra Mile.

Matt Williamson, Dan Waldschmidt’s Chief of Staff here. I got fired up over something this past week, so Dan let me commandeer the blog for today.

Here’s what happened…

 

“That’s too much work.”

“Do I have to earn points?”

“We’re never going to win.”

“I don’t want to do this.”

“I’m only 7.”

Those are the excuses I deal with in my Sunday School classroom every week.

It’s the same excuses Dan & I often hear in boardrooms.

Each week, I pit my 3rd through 5th graders against each other to see which group can arrange the books of the Bible faster.

Each week, the boys complain that they’ll never win, that the girls always win.

But they’ve lost before they’ve started.

Those same girls, with the exact same amount of time in the week as the boys, practice. And practice. And practice and practice and practice until they’re lightning quick.

Now, there’s one lone boy who’s busting it to win our game time — but he’s drowned out by his classmate’s whining.

I was so angry about the blatant laziness I have to deal with week in & week out that I decided to go for a run after church.

I’ve been running either 3, 4, or 5 miles on any given day, but I had someone once say I didn’t have 8 miles in me because I’m “not patient enough”.

So I decided to go 9.

I decided to go the literal extra mile.

I hadn’t run at all that week after I’d blown out my arch the previous Saturday running my first 10K (also with no training).

About 3.5 miles in, far away from my usual stomping grounds, I finally felt the mental clouds lift, and I thought about turning back.

But I kept pressing, knowing that if I quit now, I’d never forgive myself.

So I kept pushing.

and pushing.

And even when I got halfway, my mood didn’t lift. I didn’t magically become reenergized like I thought I was.

I still had to slog it out for another 4.5 miles.

It wasn’t until I was 5.5 miles in that I finally started to feel better. By then, I was back on “home turf.”

And it dawned on me…

When you’re willing to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes, what can stop you?

Nothing.

I realized the same dejection from Sunday School can be solved with the same solution that solved the mental pain in my run.

It’s the solution that works for every other problem I’ve ever faced.

Go the extra mile.

(then go 1,000 more if you have to).

 

Yes, those kids are frustrated they’re losing. My co-teacher’s frustrated they won’t behave. I’m frustrated they won’t do the hard things.

But I’m going to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes until I figure this out.

I’ll see you at the 1,000 mile mark.

Game on.

Want to talk about it? Say “howdy” on Twitter.

 

The post Go the Extra Mile. appeared first on Dan Waldschmidt: Author of EDGY Conversations.

Copyright by Waldschmidt Partners Intl... Not sure that all that legal stuff really matters. If you want to share this material, do so. Just don't charge for it and don't tell people you wrote it. Both of those are uncool.

Other than that, all rights are reserved to you to change your life. If you are ready to be amazing, now is the time to get started. Onward...