Empowerment 

From Six Degrees Leadership

Special for this Edition

Ely Delaney

Voice From the Past

The Story of Henry Ford

Workshops this Month

EMPOWERMENT

Why do nine out of ten businesses fail in the first five years?  Most people run into the room of success at full speed, put one foot on their drive and try to jump from there to the business and empowerment.  That’s exactly what I did. I thought business was sexy and if I understood how it worked, I could do it.  I’ve got the personality to do it and gosh darn it, people like me.  I mean, I’ve taken soldiers to Iraq and back.  I can handle any business that doesn’t actually have the threat of death.  These were serious thoughts that I had.  So, I just wanted to know HOW to do it.

            Knowing HOW TO put a business together or create the best processes is not the skill in business we are concerned with here.  In fact, business, when it comes to processes such as technology, equipment, accounting, marketing, etc. is rather simple.  When we go back and do an autopsy on a failed business, it’s usually one of these processes that comes up as the cause of death.  But I assure you, the process is almost never the real reason.  The skill in Business is being able to use your influence to surround yourself with and empower great people.  Robert Kiyosaki, in

            Here is what I mean by saying business processes are rather simple.  Business processes are similar to calculus, a subject that is daunting at first.  However, once you begin to learn it and understand it, you realize that there are only so many different ways to manipulate the formula.  So when your teacher gives you any formula you can solve it.  Another example, have you ever talked to an electrical engineer?  Electricity is a topic that fascinates me but it seems so complicated.  I get lost within minutes of starting a conversation about it.  But if you speak to an electrical engineer they always say it’s not really that complicated.  You just have to understand how the flux capacitor works with the dilithium crystal and …. at which point my eyes are glazed over and I’m in way over my head.  So, wouldn’t it make sense that if I needed electrical work done in my home or business that I would get an electrician to come and do the work?  The same is true for business.  You want to surround yourself with experts in the fields of each process.  This seems obvious, and leads to the obvious objection… I don’t have money to pay these people yet,  I’m just getting started.  Jim Rohn puts it this way, “You don’t lack money, you lack an idea.”  This is where the skill comes in, where you really need to exercise your influence.  You really have to get to know people and what they want.  You have to create a solid visualization of where you are going and learn how to cast that vision of hope.  Your Hunger, your reality for tomorrow, and the hope that that reality brings is what creates the influence.  This is why every great business has someone in it that has Hunger, Attitude Skills, People Skills and Relationship Skills.  Sure, it’s possible to make a lot of money without all of these things.  But there is no way to make a multi-generational business and legacy without them.  Keep in mind that it’s not always the business owner who has these qualities or skills.  Lee Iacocca is a great example of an employer who brought these skills to the table and made Chrysler a great company in his time.

            Generating this type of influence comes from demonstrated understanding of the true relationship between TIME and MONEY.  This understanding does not happen overnight and it requires changing one's thinking.  In Part I of this book I talked about how changing one's thinking is arguably the hardest thing we could ever do in our life.  Well, here is a time that if we really want changes in our business, we’re going to have to do the hardest thing of our life.  Let’s take a look at what I call Jesse’s Model.

            Jesse’s Model combines three concepts from two different books.  I highly recommend that you grab these books and devour them yourself.  They are Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Robert Kiyosaki’s The Cashflow Quadrant.

            If you created a perfect blue print for the perfect business and handed it to two people, one could be wildly successful while the other might crash and burn.  I’ll tell you why.  The reason today is not always "Location, location, location".  I mean really, where is the “location” on-line?  We see this happening often all around us.  One business goes up, another goes down.  One person does well all the time, another is always struggling.  Usually, the difference has nothing to do with the business itself.  It’s almost always the people who run it.

            Business is actually pretty simple.  As noted before, it’s alot like calculus.  It seems very daunting at first, but once you understand it, you’ve got it!  There are only so many ways you can manipulate the formulas.  Then it becomes easy.  I remember sitting in my cubical at a large engineering company doing my analytics when my cube-mate came back from lunch.  He was an electrical engineer.  He was holding this funny looking device.  Imagine a one foot long 2x4 that was hollow, twisted into the shape of an “S”  and had a couple of magnets on the outside.   I asked him, “What’s that?”  He gave me an answer, but he might as well have said, “a flux capacitor.”  Anyway, he showed me how an open wire goes in one side of the hollow opening and doesn’t touch anything, with the same arrangement on the other side.  So I asked him how this thing works.  He said, “The wave comes out of this wire, the magnets direct it through the hollow area, and then it goes in this wire at the bottom.”  I replied, “But the wires don’t even touch anything in there.”  He rolled his eyes and said, “It’s pretty simple really….”  Let’s just say that I didn’t get it that day…or ever.  But it was simple for him because he understood it.   Business is much the same way.  The science of business is easy once you get it.  Let me explain.  Each business has its own way to produce it's product, whether it is a service or something physical.  Once you understand the mechanics of how to get things produced, there are only so many ways to refine the process.  I don’t think Pepsi will gain a huge advantage over Coke if they find a better way to cap their bottles.  The other components that every business needs, such as accounting, marketing, entity set up, etc., are readily available to reseach in the new Business for Dummies book.  The “how to” is never the cause for success or failure.  If you’ve got the world's greatest process, the sexiest marketing ever, and all of the other business processes lined up, you won’t arrive at a successful business if you've neglected to value and develop the first four steps, i.e. Hunger, Attitude Skills, People Skills and Relationship Skills.  In fact, I’d venture to say that you’d never get to your goal without mastering these first four skills.

             I watched a very successful commercial real estate empire crumble in the hands of the original owner’s son.  The son wanted to do a great job.  He wanted his new business to grow and in fact, it did for awhile.  Unfortunately, his hunger was not nearly high enough.  So although he worked alot, he was not very productive.  In relationships, he was caring, but he had a habit of getting emotionally high-jacked.  The company paid a consultant to create their vision and help build a culture with core values.  This was a step in the right direction, but it was far too late by then.  The science and process of operating a commercial real estate company is easy.  Influencing people in a productive vision-driven direction through your example, character, and conviction, is not.

            The Skill in Business Skills is understanding the true relationship between time and money.  In other words, people who have great business skills understand that time does not equal money.  If that were the case, then money would equal time, as well.  You would be able to buy more time before the end of the month.  Robert Kiyosaki explains this relationship very well in his book, The Cashflow Quadrant.  He explains that as long as a person solely trades his time for money, he’ll never have both.  Business skills require finding other things to leverage, like systems, instead of your time to make money.  The key word here is leverage.  People with great business skills realize that time is their most valuable asset.  They want to use their time in the most value producing way.  And that is in building relationships.  Most of us use our time, our most valuable asset, to only acquire money.  People with great business skill  tend to use money as a tool without getting too emotionally attached to it.  I like to think of it this way.  If Bill Gates were walking down the street and he leaned over to pick up $1,000 that he saw on the ground, he’d actually lose money in the exchange. This is because he makes more than $1,000 in the time it would take him to pick it up.  Would you agree that his time is worth something?  Imagine if he lost all of his money.  Then also, his entire network of people died in a plane crash.  Do you think he would be able to build his fortune back?  You’d better believe he could.  Even without the money, Bill Gates knows that his time is still worth over $1,000 every few seconds because he's learned the true worth of leveraging his developed influence of relationships with people.

            The distinguishing mark of a person with great business skills is his ability to maintain a specific lifestyle for an indefinite length of time without lifting a finger to work, solely from the passive income of his business.  This is the power of leverage.      

 This Month’s Special 

That's Your Intention?
by Ely Delaney

            The other day, I had a phone call with a friend of mine talking about something big I have something coming up and we had been talking about how it's going to go. The thing is, I didn't talk about how it “might”go or how I “hope” it does. I talked about how it “is” going to go.

            I set an intention. I planned it out. Played it in my mind exactly what is going to happen through the day, how people will react and how much they will love what I am doing.

            The funny thing is that she got exactly what I want talking about and how I felt about the event. We ended up talking about how I didn't doubt myself or second guess how things might turn out. I know exactly what will happen.

This is the power of full intention at work.

When was the last time you put something out there with FULL intention?

It's something that you should do too.

            When was the last time that you planned out your day exactly how you wanted it to turn out without fear, doubt or thought to anything happening except exactly what you wanted?

It's amazing how your day can turn out if you plan it out with full intention before it actually happens.

I've been experimenting with this a lot lately and I want to share some results so far.

                I planned out how things would go when I announced that I was auditioning to have my own show with Oprah. Not only have I got a ton of votes and a lot of people jumped on board to help promote it pretty much within the first hour but I have since been asked to do interviews, contribute to their books, and guest blog on other sites. All in a week.

I didn't hope. I didn't “Give it a shot”. I just put it out there with full intention.

This is a powerful tool.

I want you to just try this. You have to give it your full effort though. It will not work if you don't believe it will.

            Just one day, before you go to bed. Stop and find a place you can sit in quiet and focus on the next day. Run through the day like it is happening all in your head. But... Run through it the way you want. Picture the perfect day. You land a great new contract. You check your email and get a bunch of new orders from our website, whatever you want it to be based on your plans for the day.

            Intend to make it happen. If you've never done this before it might be a bit difficult to do at first but just let it work. Trust that it will happen. Don't doubt it. Just picture it with full intention.

            And... if it doesn't work out quite as you had in your mind, don't think of it as a failure. Look at what did happen. I bet it worked out a lot better than if you had done nothing at all!

What's your intention for the day?

            Ely is the creator of MyBusinessMarketingMentor.com, a company dedicated to giving motivated entrepreneurs the tools they need to market their businesses both online and offline. Check out the site and while you are there be sure to claim your free downloads to begin expanding your marketing knowledge today.

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Voice from the past

Henry Ford: A Rise and Fall of Critical Business Skills

Upon a close review of anyone’s life there can be found struggles conquered and succumbed to, skills honed and left unutilized, good intentions fulfilled as well as set adrift.  In short, a panorama of humanness is the lot for us all.  The size of our chosen playing field puts some of us in easier view of the world than others, however.  So it was for a farm boy of Irish immigrant parents, Henry Ford.  Some consider that he may have been the most influential man of the 20th Century, having changed the economy and social character of the United States.  He is the clearest symbol of the transition from agricultural to industrial America.  A powerful leader in business skills indeed, yet also, when faced with very trying times, even he gave way to pride, arrogance and poor people skills.  For our purposes, we’ll view some highlights of both sides of this very significant and complex business man from our past.

Beginning with a vision, a wise start for us all, Henry Ford set out to make the simplest, sturdiest and most affordable car ever for the “great ordinary multitudes” in rural America.  An initial step to that dream was designing the first gasoline-powered engine in a horseless carriage, which he fulfilled in 1896.  Three years later, from one ride around town, a local banker, gave him financial backing.  Though that backing was short lived, only a year, Ford persisted in his strict standards of perfection for his envisioned multi-million customer base.  When ready, he easily influenced ordinary citizens to put up cash to back the Ford Motor Company.  In short succession it produced 500 Model A’s in 1904, to 25 per day of the Model T, then finally the mother lode idea of moving the car chassis in an assembly line for greater efficiency, rolled out 2500 cars per day.  Talk about a realized dream.  At one time, half the cars in the world were the Ford Model T, becoming the most widely used vehicle in human history.

Despite that phenomenal success, there is another element of vision Ford did not keep.  That is having awareness and adjustability to notable trends in society.  For example, while other company’s grew, he refused to offer choices of new innovative features, such as different colors and styles.  That stubbornness cost him.  Not only did pricing and sales drop, worker’s pay was also slashed below prevailing industry wages.  The unhappy atmosphere in the plant became so bad Ford hired labor spies and policing to prevent unionizing.  Ford had general success after finally unveiling the new Model A, with options, and another surge later with his V8 engine.  The lesson in cost and public loyalty was harsh, though.  In the later 1930's, fear and coercion dominated the working conditions to such an extent that a labor strike occurred in early 1941.  It took Ford’s wife threatening to leave him if he didn’t settle to finalize a resolve.  Needless to say, for a business to remain steady, it must have a vibrant, applicable vision in all aspects that impact it’s success with people.