Kevin W. McCarthy

The Professor of On-Purpose

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Do You Want A Balanced Life?

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Download A Balanced Life

Do you want balance in your life?

If you said “Yes!” then chances are you’re singing what I call the “Work-Life Balance Blues,” a sad song of addictive striving but never arriving.

In a previous blog post titled Striving for Balance, I shared my thoughts about this misguided yet pervasive notion that you can obtain balance your life.

It is hogwash and the sooner you come to understand this, the sooner you’ll be able to get on with your life.

In today’s On-Purpose Minute, I share “The Balanced Life,” a poem I wrote back in 2004. My hope is you’ll begin to see the folly in living the false ideal of a balanced life. At the top of this post, there is a link to download the poem.

Now, let’s touch on the alternative approach to living your life: integrating your life.

So just how does one integrate life? Integration needs a point of integration. Here is where knowing your 2-word personal purpose statement is essential. If you don’t know who you are, then any old you can show up anytime. A great place to start learning about your 2-word purpose statement is our newly launched online tool that helps you know your purpose. Visit ONPURPOSE.me for more information.

The absence of a unifying identity leaves us at risk of dis-integrating. Very simply, your life is either integrating or disintegrating—being pulled together or torn apart.

Beginning in the 1970s, people would talk about “getting my life together.” Implied in this fragmented existence is the longing to be whole and peaceful.

Balance is a devilish “ideal.” Balance pits two opposing forces against each other to create a fragile momentary emotional truce. Balance is marketed as being so sane and wholesome. Yet it is insanity and destructive.

Seeking balance avoids the deeper questions of life and leaves us thirsting to do more, earn more, and to “have it all.” Sadly, the risks of obtaining balance in one’s life produce just the opposite effect of the desired outcome. Instead, we’re running hard and fast, busy, burdened, always feeling behind, incomplete, and ragged mentally and physically. Unquenched, we press onward in a lost war of static attrition until finally we crash and burn out on the sidelines of life.

Integration is a divine gift, a workable progression rather than an unstable state of frenzied efforts. When you are approaching oneness of body, mind, and spirit, you’re moving toward a more productive and positive state of practical living. Your focus shifts from a fragile existence built on sandy soil to the solid bedrock of your inherent essence.

Integration demands a unifying core — a point that forms, informs, and transforms the realities of the world. This window on the world helps us to make sense of the senselessness and to find meaning in the otherwise absurd.

Purpose is your dynamic point of integration.

Integrate your life around your purpose so you can be on-purpose.

Cut yourself free from the balanced life mantra that kills your energy and spirit with a distracting illusion. You don’t want a balanced life because it can’t be had. Live your life integrated around your purpose, and you’ll inevitably be an on-purpose person in creation.

How To Get To Business Clarity

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We have just started a New Year. 2018 is rich with possibilities—so rich, in fact, it can be overwhelming.

My word for you for this coming year is this:

Depth through business clarity.

We’re all a bit ADD these days with the pace of life and the demands on us at work. It is easy to bounce from activity to activity. Playing in the shallow end of business typically produces meager results. You’re ready! Wade into the deep end of the pool.

Be more mindful in 2018 to keep your business simpler and more focused on what matters most.

Work on depth of

  • thinking
  • planning
  • relationships
  • business performance

Instead of being scattered across the plainsThe On-Purpose Business Person book cover of busyness, get focused on the gains in business that await when your team and you pursue excellence over expedience. Once you’ve positioned your business to be a leader, then you can focus on doing more of what you do best more profitably. Sounds like The On-Purpose Business Person to me. Re-read it this New Year.

Need some executive coaching or small business advisor services or consulting? We’re here to help! Email me.

Are You Full of “Should”?

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Stop “shoulding” on yourself and others.

Should is a powerfully debilitating word. It combines the spirit of good intention with a built-in disclaimer of failure. It is more potent than wishful thinking but far less honest. At least when we wish, we don’t really have the expectation of it coming true. Should—however directive and well intended—is deceptive and shame inducing.Should

Shoulds can be self-proclaimed.

Here are examples of typical shoulds:

  • “I should lose 20 pounds.”
  • “I should exercise more.”
  • “I should call my mother.”
  • “I should make that sales call.”
  • “I should save more money.”
  • “I should speak up for myself.”

These decrees of self-deception are mere words tossed off our tongues so we sound like we’re on top of a matter and knowledgeable … when, truthfully, we are not committed. Words without action amount to just a pile of sh… shoulds.

These “I should … ” statements are weasel words that neither inspire nor encourage.

Instead, we exile ourselves to be mired in mediocrity.

In the pairings below, which statement do you find more believable?

  • “I should lose 20 pounds.” Or “I will lose 20 pounds.”
  • “I should call my mother.” Or “I will call my mother.”
  • “I should get a better job.” Or “I am working to find a better job.”

The bottom line: Strike should from your vocabulary whether talking to yourself or someone else. People of strength don’t mince their words by shoulding on themselves or others.Detail_discoveryfree

P.S. As promised, here is the link to the free Discovery Guide preview. Use this preview version to gain clarity and direction for your life so you can say “yes” to what’s important to your life, career, and work.

Be On-Purpose!
Kevin

How Do I Focus My Small Business?

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How do I focus my small business?

This is one of the more common questions asked of me when I’m at speaking engagements or events. Candidly, it is a struggle I face as well. Opportunities abound for those of us with entrepreneurial instincts. But where do we plant our flag or make our stand?

For me, it was the idea of On-Purpose® well over 25 years ago. I can’t explain to you why this message came into my spirit and into my life. I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t seek it.

I expected to be a real estate mogul as a Florida-based commercial real estate developer. Through a bumpy series of twists and turns and near bankruptcy, I landed on On-Purpose. And I’ve stayed there with my focus.

Here’s my dirty little secret, however. There’s an old expression about niches that says, “You’re better off being an inch wide and a mile deep.” But what do you do when you are an inch wide, a mile deep, and then you go a mile wide again?

You see, being in and out of focus is risky at any depth. Some of the world’s largest brands will lose focus and go away. Ask shareholders from Polaroid, Enron, Bethlehem Steel, Pets.com, PanAm, DeLorean Motor Company, and Washington Mutual Bank.

Stuck Staring

I’ve been there sitting in my office staring at the walls or my computer monitor. My mind swirls with a hundred different items on my mental To Do List, but I watch another stupid YouTube video of bloopers, flash mobs, or pets or people doing funny stuff.

You’ve been there, too. You haven’t a clue what to do next because everything seems important.

Your brain is fried so you need a mental break. By default, you open up your email so at least you’re keeping up with something. A couple of hours pass at the keyboard and your true “To Do List” is only 50% longer, and a half of a day is now spent passing around pixels.

A sinking feeling leaves you even more overwhelmed and now adds personal disappointment with yourself. Ugh! How do I go about organizing the business? How do I get more focused and productive?

Admit it, you know this scenario all too well. I do! And it bugs you because it is sabotaging your business, your dreams, and your finances. With so much on the line, you wonder, How can I be so stuck? 

The Really Big Problem

Over the decades of working with business owners, this “Stuck Staring” pattern is most often associated with an ill-defined business—one being run ad hoc, in the absence of a plan.

While brilliant ideas abound in your brain, there’s no blueprint to build the business. Would you hire a home builder to construct your house who didn’t have blueprints? Yet, you’ll build your business without a blueprint.

There’s a reason most SOHO (small office, home office) or what I call Solo Owners don’t write their plans. It is rationalized as “the desire for flexibility and responsiveness to opportunity.” It’s BS. Unfortunately, keeping your options open typically results in a cycle of learning—but not one of earning.

The secret to building your business is to create an economically efficient engine of profit that is anchored deeply in your purpose and one for which you’re willing to pay the price. In other words, you’re passionate about it. Once the engine is up and running, you can afford to invest in your other ideas. Depth, not breadth, is essential. This takes discipline and commitment … to a well-designed, thoughtful, written plan.

Most small businesses don’t have written business plans or even powerpoint presentations. They would benefit from them. At On-Purpose Partners we offer a unique way to orient and organize your business around what matters the most—your purpose.

Learn more about the On-Purpose Business Plan. Using this link, invest the time to watch a 9-minute video about On-Purpose Business Plans and why they are different and helpful for solo owners to CEOs.

Candidly inquire of yourself, Just how is my plan working? If you’re not getting the results of speed to market, cash flow, and profits, then please consider a mentoring On-Purpose Executive Coaching program.

Better yet, come to Orlando and let’s invest the time needed designing your business so it is on-purpose. My team and I will bring order, focus, clarity, and direction to your business enterprise by guiding and codifying your business plan and model. Organizing the business is a couple of clicks and a few hours away. The ROI will be amazing!

Are You Getting Smarter?

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As you learn more and get smarter, are you gaining in arrogance or humility? You’re headed in one direction or the other. 

Here’s an On-Purpose Proverb to ponder:

Humility is knowing self relative to God.

Knowledge is a good thing, but going all the way back to the original sin in the Garden of Eden, let’s not mistake our smarts with being a self-referenced deity.

As you learn and experience more of life do you ever find yourself asking, Has the world gone crazy or have I? No one of us knows everything. Be gracious toward yourself and others that the smarter you’re becoming the more you are realizing all that you don’t know.

Ignorance isn’t the absence of knowledge. Ignorance is knowing better but doing nothing with it.

Learning is the basis of personal and professional growth throughout life. There’s a downside to learning, however, called frustration. This sets in when we’re in a situation and can prophetically see what’s unfolding next, yet the crowd remains blind.

The elderly are often knocked with being grumpy. Maybe they have good reason. Imagine watching person after person repeating the same stupid mistake you made 50 or 60 years ago. Wouldn’t you want to help them too? Yet when you voice your insight you’re discounted as being too old and out of touch to have a worthwhile perspective. As events happen and a pattern repeats, the quieted elderly person watches and shakes their head knowing that life lessons are very hard to borrow.

We all have a measure of personal pride bordering on arrogance.

Humility, when partnered with curiosity, makes for an inquisitive mind and heart. Asking, rather than telling, opens up someone’s world and lessons to us. It expands our bubble of knowledge.

The truth is somewhere in between. Seniors in years can learn much from seniors in high school and vice versa. Rather than writing the kids off as moral vagrants, the older generation can benefit from the kids’ adaptability, pace, and technological prowess. Teens can benefit from the perspectives of lives lived long, mistakes made, lessons learned, and the humility found in frailty and from wearing Depends.

It can all resolve itself with one word: respect. Despite the riches of the internet, no one has a monopoly on information and knowledge. These advantages are relatively flattened in minutes or seconds thanks to an internet connection and a Google search. WiFi, however, will never replace wisdom.

This On-Purpose Minute provides answers and insights into why knowledge is power and why it can also be confusing and confounding.

Use your power respectfully. True humility is quiet confidence in action.

So the next time you experience a “grumpy” elder, invest a minute or two to learn what they see and understand it from their point of view. Ask questions. Borrow their wisdom. Learn their lessons. You might even bring a smile to their “grumpy” face. More importantly, you might walk away all the wiser.

Will You Have A Happy, Healthy, & Prosperous New Year?

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(This video was originally recorded in 2011. While the year mentioned is not current, the message shared is timeless.)

To kick off the New Year, I’ve gathered a handful of On-Purpose Minutes and Business Minutes relevant to the popular New Year’s toast for a Happy, Healthy, and Prosperous New Year. Rather than it being a mere sentiment, why not make it a reality or at least invest your self in making your good life even better?

Put your good intentions into action!

For each aspect of this New Year gesture, dig deeper by clicking on the provided links to relevant Minutes.

Happy On-Purpose New Year!
Kevin

A Happy New Year

Happy is rightfully a great word to be associated with New Year’s Day. Much like time itself, happiness is fleeting, yet so desired. Who doesn’t want to be happy? The term “Happy New Year” embraces the chronological odometer as it turns and makes a fresh start for 2018. Relish the reminder.

Comparing Christmas Day to New Year’s Day reveals an interesting shift of words and implications. We will say Merry Christmas, but the word most reverently associated with this Christian holy day is joy, as in the song, Joy to the World.

Joy can be one’s reality regardless of whether circumstances are happy or unhappy. Trading in happiness is a far less stable currency of emotion. Joy is the gold standard.

Are You Happily Distracted?

How Do You Get The Job Of Your Life?

How Do I Find Peace In My Life?

A Healthy New Year

Several years ago, this over-50 former athlete turned business advisor, author, and speaker was resigned to wearing “my fat suit.” This is going to sound awful, but I was so accepting of my extra pounds that I used to say, “Unless I have a cancer, I probably won’t lose this weight.” Ugh!

Fortunately, that changed in March 2008, when I was booked by Dr. Wayne Andersen (sight unseen) to be the keynote speaker at the Take Shape For Life National Convention. I did the program, lost the weight, and haven’t really looked back at my old weight since. Admittedly, the holidays are the hardest part for me because I get so out of my normal routine; it is a festive time, and I’m addicted to sweets.

Are You Starting A Diet Monday?

Do You Want To Grow Into Maturity?

A Prosperous New Year

Prosperity is so overused, abused, and misunderstood. Let’s set the record straight.

Are You Prepared to Prosper?

Blessed Are The Profitmakers For They Shall Enrich The Earth

 

Why Is My Business Struggling?

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Fortune 1000 company CEOs and small start-up business owners who have yet to make $1,000 often share the same problem—a business struggling to succeed. Economic conditions can definitely have an effect.

Many of the business challenges I see, however, are self-inflicted!

Business problems due to lack of sales revenue are most often addressed at the surface level—”We need a new website, lower prices, more salespeople, and so forth.” Sales and marketing are obvious places to look by the entrepreneur or even seasoned CEO.

Business solutions like these are where hordes of consultants and advisors earn their fees. Most often they are well earned and justified.

But wait—there’s more!

My experience as a business advisor for CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies and one person start-ups tells me that these tactical plans and approaches to problem businesses are often futile. It leaves the business struggling and focused on the wrong activities, even if well intended.

The culprit of many a business challenge lies below the surface.

If the basic business design, model, and plan have flaws then the entire business is off the mark. The larger the business, the more it lives within the corporate culture—for better or worse. Even a small defect at the core of the business can be expensive.

What To Do

  1. Watch this video on The On-Purpose Business Plan. Invest 9 minutes right now. This will help you find undiscovered wealth within your business. As you’re watching ask yourself if your business has this kind of thinking and structure in place and developed. Better yet, ask yourself the value of it if you did have it in place. When you build your business on your purpose, then you’re capable of offering a full-bodied expression of your business instead of the typically tactical and anemic offerings of today.

If something is missing in your business … it is probably here!

    2. Do This: STOP! = Start Thinking On-Purpose! 

How to do that: Try this simple exercise. Write down your “truths” about your business. This could include your assumptions about your customers, the market conditions, what it takes to sell, the benefits and features of your product or service, costs, the quality of your team or delivery … you get the idea. Jot down what you hold as a reality or truth in your business. These are your assumptions and concepts.

Next, take your list to two or three people outside your industry and ask them to review the list and to tell you their take on your observations plus their thoughts and perceptions. Avoid defensiveness. Wear your R&D and market research hat and listen—don’t tell—and just ask.

Finally, interview a few customers or targeted prospects to learn if your truths are reality or simply impressions that constrain your business development and growth. Ponder it and then adjust accordingly!

How Do You Manage Disappointment?

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Disappointment is inevitable but it need not be debilitating.

How you manage it, however, is a choice with profound implications to your well-being, relationships, and opportunities. The easy route is to react negatively and stay there, but what good is that? You have a better choice.

I got to thinking about the word: disappointment.

It led me to this chain of words: disappointment > disappoint > point > appoint > appointment. The common word is “point” as in a mark or dot or direction. When we’re disappointed, the mark has been missed. It does, however, provide an opportunity for redirection.

What if disappointment is really intended to direct us to a greater appointment?

So when we stay in a negative place, aren’t we the ones who increase the price of the initial disappointment and risk missing where we’ve been appointed to shine?

(To see another use of “the point” you can watch this 9-minute video about the punctuation of your life. Is your life a question mark, period, or exclamation point? It is an excerpt from a keynote speaking engagement I did a few years ago.)

The holiday season sets high expectations, which can lead to great disappointment.

How do you turn that around?

As one year rolls into the next, take some time to refocus on-purpose.

I would love to hear your words of advice for getting unstuck when you find yourself disappointed with something important.

What works for you in managing disappointment? Share your thoughts in the comment box below. What you have to say may be the very words that help transform another person’s perspective. Now don’t disappoint me!  : )