Maverick and Company

On November 1, 2004, exactly 5 years and 5 days ago, I did a terrible, stupid, beautiful thing. I started my own company.

I didn’t really know what I was doing. I didn’t have a plan or a marketing strategy for finding new clients. I didn’t have a mentor to show me what to do or a coach to help me get it done. I didn’t have enough cash reserves for tough times. I didn’t really even know how to explain what I did. I would not recommend starting a company the way I started mine. Deciding to work for yourself is a foolish, foolish thing to do. Your company is a version of you, your mistakes, your immaturity, your impulsiveness. Everything you wish were different about you will become an exponentially bigger problem inside your business. It will, often, be uncomfortable even when it’s going really well. So you see, it was a terrible, stupid thing to start my own business. In fact, it still is.

WHAT I LEARNED FROM MAVERICK

But as I stop to look back on these past five years and five days since I became the Maverick of MAVERICK & COMPANY, I still love the terrible, stupid beautiful mess I’ve gotten myself into. Because just as your business will show you all your faults, it will also show you where to grow. If you’ll let it, your business will help you fill in the gaps of who you are as a human being. If you let it, your business will turn you into a better person, a bigger person. In that spirit, here are 5 things MAVERICK has taught me in the past 5 years and 5 days:

1. THE RAIN ALWAYS COMES—No matter how bad it is, it will always get better. Even in the dessert, even if it takes 100 years, the rain ALWAYS comes. Your job in life is to remember that, store some water and hang in there.
2. GO TO THE ZOO—I’ve learned I can’t force life to go the way I want. Often, the harder I push, the harder things become. I get more tense, less happy and opportunities dry up. In these instances, I got o the zoo to see the gorilla babies. They romp and play and tease the big male gorillas (also a terrible, beautiful, stupid thing to do.) And something about watching them, brings me back to me. When it isn’t working, stop working, go play.
3. GROW YOUR OWN CONFIDENCE—Many people get their confidence from their results. Doing it that way severely limits the amount of good you can do in the world. Your confidence level is critical to your effectiveness. You need to know how to grow your own, protect it and restore it, whether or not your have the results RIGHT NOW.
4. EVERYBODY’S AN IDIOT—I’ve now worked with thousands of people and hundreds of groups. What I’ve noticed is that everybody is an idiot. Almost nobody does all the stuff they should. Everybody could be doing it better. They’re all imperfect and it mostly works out anyway. Everybody’s an idiot, including me, and we still manage to run great companies, raise great families and make a difference in the world. MAVERICK taught me that being an idiot is the beginning, not the end.
5. I’M AWESOME—I sort of knew this before but working for myself, the way I’ve dealt with the hard times, the stuff I’ve built and the sense of humor I’ve (mostly) maintained prove to me that I am, in fact, awesome. And if that didn’t do it, the fan mail, the fan emails, the grateful phone calls, the tears of recognition and the way I see faith come back to the faces in the audience…THOSE things tell me that I am (mostly) being the person I said I would be. Knowing THAT is, as they say, priceless. I am awesome and awesomely blessed.

It’s not just beautiful, it’s a true miracle, a divine event to be able to do something you love, give the gift you’ve been given to give, and pay your bills all at the same time. The very best parts of my life are coming up with new ideas and hearing how people use them to have more of what they want and these are things I get to do ALMOST EVERY SINGLE DAY. I don’t know what will happen in the next 5 years and 5 days…I’ve at least learned not to guess or try to predict. But I can say that if the next 5 & 5 went half as well, if I was half as blessed, if I got to make half the difference I have so far…that would work for me.

Here’s to this terrible, stupid, beautiful dream of mine that came true and here’s to YOURS. Thank you, Alecia

If your computer crashes, it’s pretty easy to see that you need help, and fast. When it comes to YOUR performance however, it can be tough to tell when it’s worth it to call in some professional help. Here are 7 Times When Business Coaching is Worth the Money.

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.