“Life requires no particular genius or courage or faith when it is going well. Any idiot is capable of standing in the warmth of the winner’s circle and soaking up the applause of an adoring crowd (and many of them do.) But life often does not go well. Life is often frustrating, frequently unfair and sometimes downright scary. Happy moments are easy for us all, and can’t be used to predict who will win and who will lose. It is the quiet moments of exhaustion, pain, boredom, fear, uncertainty, THESE are the moments that sort us into the groups of failure and success. Some of us will start out with more money, more advantages, more intelligence even, but all of us will have to deal with tough moments. Few people are willing to work hard enough to handle the bad times moments. Fewer still will do the work to learn to handle them well. But all of us can. Greatness is not learned in the winners circle. Greatness is developed in the storm, by learning to navigate around the tough times that will sink the ships of lesser men. If greatness is what you’re looking for, deal well with the storms that find you and seek storms worthy of the person you wish to become.”

Copywright © 2009 Alecia Huck

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1. La Brea Syndrome: You’ve Been Stuck for a While
2. Repeating Patterns
3. Borrow a Brain
4. Develop New Skills
5. You Have Plenty of $ but No Life
6. You’re Working Hard but Have No $ AND No Life
7. Crunch Time

1. La Brea Syndrome

You’ve Been Stuck for a While The La Brea Tar pits are a legendary collection of fossils. Animals would wander into the tar, get stuck and eventually die there. La Brea Syndrome is when you’re too stuck to be able to get yourself out. When you’ve spent weeks or months thinking you need to make a change but still haven’t made it…it’s a good idea to get professional help. You may not be able to get unstuck on your own OR it may just take a long, long time to do it. You don’t necessarily have to sign up for a year long package…a really good coach might be able to get you unstuck in a single session. How much work you need, and how long it will take will vary from situation to situation. Don’t kid yourself about whether or not you’ll be able to deal with it on your own. If it’s been going on for a long time you’re wasting money, energy and time spinning your wheels. Get help. It will definitely be worth it.

2. Repeating Patterns

Over the course of your professional life, you’ll find some patterns repeating over and over. When you have one that is particularly damaging, it’s usually worth the investment to work with someone who can help you create new processes and paradigms so you don’t keep doing the same thing over and over. One example, you overbook yourself, work really, really hard for a while and then retreat into a work coma where almost nothing gets done. This type of cycle can kill a business if it’s not properly managed. The worse the impact of the pattern is on you and those around you, the more important it is to get help dismantling it. If you’re not sure it’s all that bad, check in with the people around you. They can usually provide clear feedback about the true impact.

3. Borrow a Brain

We can’t all be experts at everything. A good reason to hire a coach or consultant is that you want to borrow their brain. An expert, or someone with a lot of experience in a particular area or industry can add enormous value to your business for the cost of just a few hours time. If a project’s success hinges on a factor or area where you don’t have expertise, consider hiring one and borrowing their brain. Technology upgrades, major changes to your sales process, even hiring decisions are all events that often justify an investment in coaching to produce the desired result or avoid costly mistakes.

4. Develop New Skills

Professionals should be consistently and strategically growing their skill sets. If you’ve identified a set of skills you want to develop, executive coaching can be a very cost effective way to get the results you want. Unlike classes which are generally designed for a general audience, a professional coach can design a program specifically for you. You’ll avoid reviewing lessons you’ve already learned and can often learn your new skills inside of a real project you’re currently working on. That way you’re producing great results as you build your skills. This is a great way to improve the R.O.I. on a coaching investment. Great examples would be leadership skills, confrontation, marketing, time management, etc.

5. You Have $, But No Life

It’s not unusual for life to get wildly out of balance. We tend to focus our energy on the places where we feel good and confident, places where it’s likely we can produce results. For many of us, that’s our work. If you find you have plenty of $, but not much of a life, a coach is a good investment. Look for one who won’t just tell you how you should live your life, but who can help you understand your true priorities and motivations and design a good life to fulfill those needs and desires. Plan to work with this person for several weeks to help you design a life you want and develop the strategies for putting in the new priorities and breaking old habits.

6. You Don’t Have Much $ OR Much of a Life

If this describes you, it’s likely you’re missing a critical component of a successful business. You may not be charging enough, you may be giving away too many freebies, you might just be working with the wrong people. You might be in an unworkable business altogether. It’s more likely however that your approach is off. A good coach with experience analyzing and diagnosing business processes can help you isolate where you’re going so wrong and get things back on track. Remember that not all of what’s true is true everywhere…meaning a solution for a corporation may not work for your small one-man-show and vice versa. Make sure you’re working with someone who has experience with either your symptoms or your specific size business, industry, etc.

7. It’s Crunch Time

When you’re buried in an avalanche of projects, when you’re getting ready to go public, when you’re growing really fast, all of these are good times to get help. When it’s crunch time, every minute matters. A coach can help you pause to do the big picture, strategic thinking and short-term planning that can make the difference between success and failure. If you don’t feel like you have time to meet with a coach, that’s probably a good sign that you need one. Just like a hiring a trainer helps get you into the gym, a coach helps get you to do the pausing and planning that often produces your best thinking and best results. They can also provide an emotional outlet to help you deal effectively with a high pressure situation.

But PRETTY isn’t what makes marketing effective. Visually, I imagine The Pretty Problem as a RED ROSE. All over the internet and in hundreds of thousands of unread brochures, you’ll find RED ROSES. You’ll find pretty graphics and big words and talk of taking things to the NEXT LEVEL with EXCELLENT CUSTOMER SERIVICE and HIGH INTERITY. You’ll find people talking about organizational dynamics, cultural initiatives and integrated blah, blah, blah. It’s a LOT of RED ROSES.

As people focus on sounding smart/looking pretty, they tend toward the safest, least offensive, most used, most common, most general descriptions and language. They lean toward the clichés and jargon. They think they sound smart and many of the sites do look pretty. You end up with another RED ROSE in a sea of RED ROSES. The problem is, aside from being disgustingly boring, it’s a ridiculously ineffective way to attract new customers. Your clients work with YOU presumably because they LIKE something about you and how you do business. If you look like a RED ROSE in a sea of other RED ROSES, how will new clients ever find you?

New marketing is all about knowing which qualities and characteristics your clients like/love about you and AMPLIFYING those qualities and characteristics. It’s about making yourself EASY TO RECOGNIZE. If you’re a BLUE FISH, it’s about being a BLUE FISH. If you’re funny…be funny. Uptight? Traditional? Downright Anal? Your materials and communication style need to reflect that so the clients who love it about you can tell that YOU are the one they’ve been looking for. When you put YOU on loudspeaker, you make yourself easier to find. You separate yourself from the pack…not based on vague (and absurd) promises of better customer service, but based on differences that are both REAL & DESIRABLE to YOUR CLIENTS. When YOU be YOU, you’ll stand out to new clients like a BLUE FISH in a sea of RED ROSES. And THAT is the kind of connection that takes the potential out of potential client and puts money in your bank account.

If you’re looking for help figuring out what your BLUE FISH characteristics are, and how to put them on loudspeaker, contact us today. We currently have 3 OPENINGS for one-to-one projects and will have another small group session starting in early August. We’re rebuilding the website to, God help us, make it both prettier AND more Blue Fish compliant so time and space in our programs is limited. If you’re interested please send an email with “BLUE FISH” in the title and we’ll send you a quick questionnaire to help you figure out if our programs might be for you. Please send requests to info@maverickandcompany.com