Kevin W. McCarthy

The Professor of On-Purpose

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The Job of Your Life … Finding A Job You Love?

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Finding a job you love is challenging, but it can be easy as 1, 2, 3. It takes a plan and a process along with patience. How do you go about creating or finding the job that is fulfilling and on-purpose? That’s the job of your life.

This video was originally aired on November 17, 2011, when the unemployment rate was over 10%. In the years since, the published unemployment rate is lower. In many circles today the underemployment rate and out-of-the-job-market rate remains very high. 

Every day I run into people who are underemployed or unemployed. This breaks my heart on many levels. Aside from their loss of income and financial struggles, what I often observe in their situation is a point of view that is detrimental to their current and long-term state of well-being. They’ll never get the job of their life. It is like the movie Dead Poets Society, where the one young man decides that a life of just pleasing others is worse than death.Kissing Cobras

Many people think a job equals security and identity. This erroneous, yet prevalent, worldview on work creates a cycle of being in and out of dissatisfying jobs or workplaces. Or, if the pay is sufficient, staying in a job one really doesn’t like all that much. The pain of change appears worse than the suffering on the job.

For a few dollars more, we’ll trade our precious life. What a waste! Yet, I fully understand and deeply appreciate the dilemma. Money is important to function in society, to eat, to be housed, etc. 

Don’t blame your job for your state of well-being. Instead, take responsibility for bringing meaning to the job! That sounds easier to do than it really is. But how?

First, don’t quit your day job just yet because I struck a nerve with you!

Second, let my 1-2-3 approach (see this On-Purpose Minute) settle in your spirit. Even if you think it is impractical, do you find yourself wishing you could actually do this? Do you imagine what’s really possible if you pursued your passion? 

Third, do your heart work! On-Purpose Peace and My On-Purpose Folder are remarkable workbooks for personal or small group study.

Fourth, if you’re thinking of starting your own business then connect with me. We have coaching and programs that can help you accelerate your planning process and success ratio. We even have healthy lifestyle coaching with On-Purpose Partners for a select few people.

The job of your life is to live your life on-purpose. To be as fully you as God intended and designed you to be.

What Are Your Answers To Life’s Great Questions?

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Dare You Risk Leading Your Life Better?

Here they are: The 7 Great Questions about life that haunt us until we answer them, deny them, or simply overwhelm them in a soulless chase for gain and/or pleasure. 

  1. Who am I?
  2. Why am I here?
  3. Where am I going?
  4. How will I get there?
  5. What is important?
  6. Is life meaningful?
  7. Does God exist?

You may think, With all I have to get done, I realistically don’t have time to mess with these questions. Here’s a tip for life: until you begin answering these questions, they will mess with your life. The sooner you start, the better off you’ll be.

Don’t put your life on hold until you have definitive answers. Simply explore your possibilities. Make it a joyous adventure of daily discovery as the layers of your life unfold before you with a sense of wonder and excitement.

Think it’s impractical with all you’ve got going on? Hardly! Stop wasting your life in trivial pursuits.

Answers to these questions fill in the soul gaps—those places within us that we know are there, but aren’t quite sure we want to or know how to get there. It can be a scary place to visit, like a closet of dashed hopes, painful memories, unrealized dreams, disappointments, and pain. On the other hand, it is also a journey of hope and healing to the heart of who you authentically are. Here’s the only place on the planet where you can discover your true identity and begin the process of reorienting your life on the strength, function, and contribution you have to give. Transformation begins in the spirit. Knowing and bringing expression to your purpose will raise the spiritual and practical trajectory of your life forever.

On-Purpose Leadership Experiences: Helping you process your answers to Life’s Great Questions

One-on-One Coaching with The On-Purpose Person and either My On-Purpose Folder or On-Purpose Peace as the coaching agenda. This is typically 8 coaching sessions in 8 weeks with a trained coach. Your investment is $1,500 to $5,000 depending upon your coach, circumstances, and needs.

Do-It-Yourself. Buy The On-Purpose Person and On-Purpose Peace. Work through the content on your own or with a small group. Your investment is $35 per person.

 

 

 

Who Cares About Leading The Business?

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Leading the business carries responsibilities. Being aPurpose of Organization business advisor and strategic management consultant for more than a couple of decades, I can tell you the single, simplest, most overlooked root of more problems in organizations is the failure to articulate, communicate, and execute based on the purpose of the organization (Po). Its absence is massively expensive; its presence nourishes the corporate culture for productive and efficient growth in people and profits.

Someone in charge, however, has to care. Is that you who is leading the business?

This lack of deep strategic clarity muddles every aspect of the organization. People, process, performance, profits, customer service, and operations are just a few of the functional areas informed by a potent, simple, 2-word purpose statement. 

Yet, purpose statements are amazingly misunderstood, unappreciated, and under-engaged. In businesses, I’ve seen the benefit of the leadership team knowing and executing on their purpose produce a 25% or more increase in sales and even greater percentage increases in profits. 

Are you finally ready to set a strategic cornerstone and write your purpose statement? Remember, it is just a beginning but an essential start. I recommend that all business clients first write their personal purpose statement before they do the business statement.

 

Are You Feeling Successful?

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You are more successful and, frankly, abundantly blessed than you realize! Success is measured in many ways, but what if the real measure of success is not in what you get but in what you give. Later on in this post, watch the video below and learn how $10 can give you a chance to transform your perspective and the life of another person on the planet.

There’s a mental snare that catches many of us. The thinking goes along the lines of, “When I have plenty, I’ll give from my excess.” Your willing spirit is being derailed by a misconception of abundance. It is the donor equivalent of seeing the glass half empty. You already have everything you need to be generous.

Years ago, a friend showed me a website called The Global Rich List. You enter an income and it shows you where you stack up in the world in terms of wealth given the 7.3+ billion people on the planet. For example:

  • If you make US$30,000 per year, you are in the top 1.23% of worldwide wage earners and rank as the 73,638,782th top wage earner.
  • If you make US$60,000 per year, you are in the top 0.19% of worldwide wage earners and rank as the 11,425,778th top wage earner.
  • If you make US$100,000 per year, you are in the top 0.08% of worldwide wage earners and rank as the 5,067,405th top wage earner.
  • If you make US$225,000 per year, you are in the top 0.04% of worldwide wage earners and rank as the 2,359,669th top wage earner.

Chances are that if you’re reading these words, you are in the top 2% of the world in terms of income. You have an abundance already. You’re just seeing a 100-ounce glass that’s missing 2 ounces as being 50% empty. In other words, by financial standards, you are successful on the scope of the planet.

Avoid getting caught up in what you don’t have. Appreciate what you do have and become a better steward. Give from your existing abundance.

The $10 Idea to Make A Difference

Ready to put your newfound nearly full glass of abundance to work? Here’s an idea for you. Find a meaningful way to give away $10 to any charity or person you meet today.

The only attached string is that I want you to feel the prompting of your spirit that this will be meaningful to the person receiving it. It can be a gift of charity, or of appreciation, or simply a love gift. It can be a stranger or someone close to you. There are no rules except you need to feel prompted to do it.

Repeat The $10 Idea again if you feel prompted.

Top 2%er in the World … Need an Idea? How about Clean Water?

Keri Kuffel, my friend, is running in the Orlando Utilities Commission half-marathon to raise money for charity:water. I’ve given $25. How about you? Please donate $10+ to her effort using this link.

The Bible tells us in Luke 12:48b (NIV), “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”

You are successful. You have abundance. Practice stewardship and generosity for you have been entrusted with much, especially as a top 2%er. 

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. What words of advice have you heard for getting unstuck when you find yourself disappointed with something important?

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?

What works for you in managing disappointment? What you have to say may be the very words that help transform another person’s perspective. Be courageous and share your ideas when opportunity arises. Now don’t disappoint me!  : )

Check out this 10-minute excerpt from a keynote address I did where I was talking about changing the punctuation point in your life from a question mark to a statement to an exclamation point.

Need help going from a question mark to a period to an exclamation mark? Read The On-Purpose Person and get one of the companion workbooks.* Better yet, engage an On-Purpose Professional to coach you through the process of becoming an on-purpose person in creation.

*On-Purpose Peace is a workbook for Christians.

 

Do You Have a Sense of Purpose?

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Look for it! You’ll hear it. Perhaps you’re even one who says it. “I did (such and such) and I had a real sense of purpose.” A “sense” is an inkling, a tiny bit, a nibble, a whiff, a morsel.

Why are you settling for so little? A sense of purpose is merely fumes on the combustible fuel found in truly knowing your purpose.

Invest 30 minutes to watch The POWER of Your 2-Word Purpose Statement. Learn what you’re missing and what you have to gain by knowing your 2-word purpose statement and learning to live on-purpose. Tip: When watching, click the “Listen” button. Next, place your cursor on the video controls and drag to minute 10 to the actual start of the webcast.

How Do I Focus My Small Business?

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As you stare at the walls of your office, your mind swirls with a hundred different items on your mental To Do List. You haven’t got a clue what to do next because everything seems important. 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 list is only longer and you’re further behind than when you began. A sinking feeling leaves you even more overwhelmed and disappointed with yourself. Ugh! How do I go about organizing the business? How do I get more focused and productive? I’ll deal with it … tomorrow.

Admit it, you know this scenario all too well. 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? 

Over the decades of working with business owners, this shallow pattern of performance is most often associated with an ill-defined or out of focus business. 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 the most basic of plans.

There’s a reason most SOHO (small office, home office) business owners don’t write their plans. It is called flexibility and responsiveness to opportunity. 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. 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.

Here are three On-Purpose® tools to help you gain focus and sustain it:

  1. Use The Discovery Guide to clarify which of your many options is the best. This “Want List and Tournament” tool is a free download and can be used for many situations, such as clarifying which opportunity makes the most sense for you and why.
  2. The Service Model is a simple tool to map out why and how to design and build your business on one page starting with purpose. 
  3. My On-Purpose Folder is a self or small group guided process to develop your personal leadership capacity. When you’re in mental disarray, your business will reflect it too.

You may think you have a plan, but you may not. Candidly ask yourself, Just how isFocus my plan working? If you’re not obtaining adequate results, speed to market, or profits, then please consider a small business advisory package. Let us help you bring order, focus, clarity, and direction to your business enterprise by guiding and documenting your business plan and model. Organizing the business is a couple of clicks and a few hours away.

Ambition. At What Price?

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Click on text for more information about the On-Purpose Small Business Package

The desire to make a positive difference is the sweet, soulful heart of ambition. In contrast is blind ambition that tramples all in its path to accomplish an end, perhaps even a noble end at that, which is fraught with unhealthy costs. Much of this rests on your view of people.  

Which will mark your life, career, and legacy?

Herein lies the rub for many a business person. To what lengths are you willing to go to realize your ambitions?

Results, especially in the form of company sales and profits, are outward and tangible measures of success. Measurable signs, however, tell just a portion of the story. If you want to know the full story, ask the people along the way who helped to produce the results.

Here’s a painful example. For 12 months spanning 2008 to 2009, I worked nearly full time with a CEO client to author a book that codified his corporate culture, leadership development moves, and business strategy for internal use. Intending for the company to go public via IPO, the book also targeted Wall Street analysts and investors so they could readily grasp what truly made this company great.

The IPO market at that time dried up with the challenges in the economy. Instead, the company was purchased by a national competitor for $130 million. By the CEO’s own admission, the book helped them get more than $15 million in greater value for shareholders over the IPO price, plus they kept their name, and the CEO was offered the position of President over the merged companies.

“Wow!” you may be thinking, “That CEO had to be a happy man.” You would think so. Eight months after delivery of the manuscript, a client satisfaction clause I wrote into the contract was used to deny issuing me an “earned” six-figure stock bonus despite personal assurances from the CEO to the contrary. My concern for my client’s satisfaction and best interests was used against me. Ouch! That hurts on so many levels.

Just because one can take advantage of another person, does that mean one should? Best-selling books on the art of war and being a prince would say go for it. But I say there’s nothing noble in selfishness and greed. True nobility is knowing one has the upper hand and using it to raise up the other person instead of jamming them down further.

The deeper value is seeing people as being above things. Translation: relationships are greater than transactions. Results with responsibilities and citizenship can coexist and produce true greatness.

For a couple of decades I’ve worked with my CEO clients to get them to stop saying things like, “Our people are our greatest asset.” Assets are bought and sold as in slavery. Relating people to assets dehumanizes them and places them on par with the photocopier. By the way, the investment in the photocopier maintenance agreement often far exceeds the equivalent “maintenance agreement” for the people in training, development, and benefits. How sad is that!

Along this same line, the term Human Resources certainly isn’t endearing and doesn’t advance the cause of people as human beings. Resources is just another name for commodities or assets that are traded, discarded, and otherwise moved about indiscriminately. The Human Resources Department is a blind co-conspirator in the loss of human identity and dignity. Instead, rename the department to something like, “People Development” or “Talent Management” but not “human resources.” It is degrading.

I hold no delusions of grandeur that either the perfect person or company graces the face of the planet. Self-serving serpents slither the planet preying on others. We are all capable of being this way, yet deep within our spirit we yearn to a higher self, call, and standard. We’re better to aspire and fail than to have no aspiration at all.

Gazing with admiration upon the shells of “successful” men and women may provide inspiration, but it tends to deliver little instruction. You know better. Get the true back story from the secretaries, bookkeepers, janitors, clerks, delivery persons, and cafeteria workers in corporate headquarters. Look at their personal life. Are their personal lives as captivating as their business headlines? You’ll soon discern whether the person capturing the headlines and your attention is gold-plated or 24 karat solid gold.

Do this: Whether you’re leading your life, a team, or a business, you need to decide: Ambition, at what price? Knowing your purpose and defining your values is a great start to building a life and a career where you can put your head to your pillow at night and sleep soundly.

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Here are some famous quotes about money for your consideration and amusement.

“Money makes the world go around.” $100 bill stack

From the song Money (Watch the performance!) in the Broadway play Cabaret sung by Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey.

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”

 1 Timothy 6

“A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.”

Jonathan Swift

“Get all you can [money], without hurting your soul, your body, or your neighbor. Save all you can, cutting off every needless expense. Give all you can.”

John Wesley

“With money in your pocket, you are wise and you are handsome and you sing well, too.”

Yiddish Proverb