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Are You Stuck?

August 21, 2018 By kwmccarthy

(This video originally aired as an On-Purpose Business Minute. In rewriting the blog post, however, I decided to make it an On-Purpose Minute—where it seemed most appropriate.)

Being stuck comes upon us gradually until one day we realize it.

At first, a small panic settles in. We know we can’t afford to waste our days.

Yet hours, days, even weeks go by when we’re “busy”

shuffling papers
staring at bills
responding to emails
watching the news in a dulled sense of a former, more confident self

A life stuck in a job, in a marriage, or in the midst of a job search is terrifying and depressing at the same time.

What to do?

My hope is to offer a spark plus the fuel to get you moving again … and, importantly, back to being on-purpose.

How you get going is a personal matter that is frankly unique to you. There are many ways to get unstuck. The best way is the way that works for you. What matters is that you get unstuck!

Six Steps to Un-Sticking a Stuck Life

First, stop blaming yourself, anyone, anything, or any circumstance. The sooner you can Think Inc! or take 100% responsibility for yourself, your mindset, and your condition then the better and sooner you’ll stop living the blues.

I’ve been there several times in my career. Those dark places where I shut the door to life and wallowed over the injustices “done to me.” Except for true tragedy and grief, most “first world problems” are lifestyle afflictions to our preferences rather than our very existence. Perspective helps!

Second, reconcile your part. In every instance where I’ve been wronged or taken advantage of, I played a part. Generally, I made wrong assumptions, didn’t do my due diligence, allowed impulse to overtake my values system, or somehow denied the best of who I am.

Third, forgive! Admittedly, you may feel wronged or unjustly punished but dwelling on the offenses of the past is chewing up your present. Now you’re the one victimizing yourself! Stop beating up others and yourself. Forgive generously to live positively.

Fourth, be on-purpose! Life is meaningful and conspiring to make you a better person. “Character building moments” are more than an adage. They’re real if we’ll see them for what they are—lessons in leading our lives. Typically the harshest lessons are the most meaningful in the light of time and distance. Start by uncovering your purpose.

Fifth, decide to be joyful. Yes, that’s right, decide to be joyful. It is a decision of the heart unattached to circumstances, people, and conditions. The book Happiness is a Choice spells out the clinical foundations and practical methods for choosing to live “happily ever after.” Joy is happiness of the heart.

Sixth, take small positive steps daily. Writer Joshua Becker provides 12 intentional actions one can take to choose happiness and joy.

Need a bit more inspiration?

Watch this inspiring video from IAmSecond.com featuring Eric Metaxas where he talks about being trapped in a way of life that is fruitful but isn’t working. Listen and watch as he shares how a different point of view of one man and a meaningful dream transformed his life. Eric also speaks of how “blind faith” is bogus. Eric is the author of the NY Times best-selling biography Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.

Will You Be a Boom or Bust?

August 16, 2018 By kwmccarthy

The following text of this On-Purpose Business Minute is dedicated to Baby Boomers, but the video is applicable to anyone in, entering, or exiting the workforce.

Think of a Baby Boomer you know—he or she may be your parents or you.

Three big trends are converging to create an economic swirl of circumstances that will define their next twenty to thirty years.

Baby Boomers are now hitting retirement age in record numbers.
The world economy is unstable and so are many retirement and pension plans.
Baby Boomers are retiring from jobs, but not from life, or the desire (need!) to keep earning.

Many Boomers will find themselves with

an empty nest
plenty of time on their hands
a desire to make a difference
a smaller retirement nest egg or pension than anticipated

Rather than heading for assisted living, they’ll be doing a “working retirement”—some by choice and others by necessity.

So what’s your plan for retirement?

Many of your friends may be saying, “I want to retire to Florida or Arizona to play golf, eat out, see movies, read books, relax, and visit my grandchildren.” Some of you may be thinking, “I’m interested in beginning my own business.” I hope so!

Perry James is a character appearing in both The On-Purpose Person and The On-Purpose Business Person. He’s a retired gentleman who provides mentoring and consulting services to a variety of small- and medium-sized business owners.

Perry is based on a dear friend and mentor of mine—Perry Nies, an MIT graduate with a Harvard Business School MBA, and retired business executive and owner. When I was in my early thirties Perry engineered me through some true business challenges. To this day we remain friends and are connected through church. At over 90 years of age Perry is an engaged and vital contributor who still consults and is involved in ministries. He’s also a role model for many Boomers of how to have an On-Purpose retirement.

The Baby Boom began in 1945. Today, the wave of Baby Boomers is being presented with a remarkable opportunity to dream and plan their “retirement.” Many will become “retired professionally” but seek to keep an active hand and mind in the affairs of business and life. I know for a fact that the Millennial and Gen X Generations need their wisdom, experience, and skills. I’m at the tail end of the Baby Boom and I value their counsel.

What if the most on-purpose years of your career are just around the corner … and you never make the turn because you hadn’t planned on it?

This blog post is simply my way of putting the challenge before the retiring Baby Boomers—keep Booming (and blooming).

Plan new businesses
Outline books you’ve always wanted to write
Offer your talent
Be a mentor
Stay connected
Think ahead
Develop your business plan now not later

Once they’re out of the flow of activity, most never return because they’ve fallen behind and the effort to get back up to speed is overwhelming.

Avoid getting caught short at retirement without a life and work plan. Without one, you’re likely to become a Baby Buster instead of a Baby Boomer.

To Do: Begin writing what your future could be. Download the Discovery Guide to help you get started.

Analysis of vintage cars representing economic outcomes.

How Good Are Your Questions?

August 14, 2018 By kwmccarthy

Is the mark of a leader his or her ability to give solid answers or to ask great questions?

In this On-Purpose Minute, ask yourself if you are interested in exploring some of the benefits of being one who listens when others are talking. There’s much gain from planned silence and saying nothing.

——-

Barbara Zerfoss is a personal and professional friend. I highly recommend her wisdom and insights found in The Power of Nothing. Click the book cover to order. Kevin

Along the lines of having an open mind, my good friend and business colleague Barbara Zerfoss wrote a Simple Truths book called The Power of Nothing.

The book starts with a simple, yet powerful premise … we can start anything in life or business with a blank slate. Too often we bring along a matched set of psychological and relational baggage and preconceived notions that get in the way of true progress and doing what’s right.

The back cover says “Whatever your background, you can choose to create the future you desire from a blank sheet of paper. The past doesn’t exist, and the future hasn’t happened yet.”

So what are you waiting for? Nothing to it … just buy your book today!

Salesperson Turnover? Why it matters.

August 9, 2018 By kwmccarthy

Salesperson turnover is a consistent problem in businesses small and large.

Being a salesperson is a tough profession. It is typically hard work requiring a variety of skills that can often be contradictory within one person. For example, one needs to be persuasive and a leader, yet also a good listener and a servant. The On-Purpose Approach reconciles many of these qualities by placing purpose first and foremost.

Today’s On-Purpose^® Business Minute explores 3 important elements to set up salespeople (and solo owners) for success and avoiding salesperson turnover.

Culture of belief
Marketing
Sales training

After decades of advising thousands of business owners, the patterns of poverty jump at me. If you are a business owner, sales manager, or a salesperson, then pay close attention to this message. Benchmark yourself against my comments and see how well your selling system operates to support your field. Perhaps there’s a reason why you can’t find and keep good salespeople!

If you are a Solo Owner, then benchmark yourself against these three measures.

Being the salesperson and the production person presents a unique challenge. Far too often I see small business owners veering into the realm of thinking, Yeah, I think I can do that.

Instead of staying with what one does best and finding clients who truly value your services and where you are expert, we drop down the learning curve and grab work for the money instead of realizing we’re losing profitability and diluting our brand by confusing our target audience. It is a dangerous cycle of being money-driven instead of being on-purpose.

Be On-Purpose!

Kevin

Want to learn more?

Purchase your copy of The On-Purpose Business Person. Click on the book cover to order.

Are Your Leadership Skills Maturing or Just Growing Old?

August 7, 2018 By kwmccarthy

Are you maturing as a leader or just getting older?

The fear of being exposed for who we really are is likely the greatest fear gripping us and keeping us from realizing our leadership potential. This is especially true for those who bought into the lie of “fake it until you make it.”

Even a “successful” life built upon posing and lies lives in the shadow of discovery. Immaturity causes us to be afraid of what other people will think of us. This sophomoric pride keeps us from growing, improving, and testing ourselves at the next level.

On the other hand, none of us are perfect. In effect, we’re all goofballs at some level in some place at some time. So get over the pretenses of perfection and live into the real you. Being authentic is in the foundation of great leadership qualities.

So how good are your leadership skills and, importantly, your leadership attitudes?

Are you …

Learning (for a lifetime)?
Leading (your life so others want to follow you)?
Loving (unconditionally)?
Leaving (the world a better place)?

Many cite the absence of leaders today. Actually, we’re suffering from an absence of mature leaders stemming from the reality that we’re still trying to figure out what to do with ourselves when we grow up.

Certainly, there’s a benefit to having a childlike curiosity and faith. But let’s talk growing up here—stepping into adulthood with both feet firmly planted on the ground as a leader of one’s life who is growing in experience, wisdom, discernment, and judgment.

Our dearth of leaders may well reflect deeper challenges—the absence of mentors and the value of relationships over time. Accepting those rationales, however, are excuses. If you want to be a leader, you’ll find the mentors, experiences, and relationships that will grow you so you are learning, leading, loving, and leaving—the four attitudes of mature leaders.

At On-Purpose Partners we serve up heaping portions of maturity through our one-on-one On-Purpose Executive and Personal Coaching Programs. Is this your time to nakedly take your place in the front of the pack?

Is More Money Your Answer?

August 2, 2018 By kwmccarthy

Ask most business people what they need and the likely answer is “more money!” That’s like asking a football coach what he needs: “More points to win the games.” The real issue is What does it take to produce the points or the money?

Money (or points) is a self-deceiving answer or an easy target to articulate.

While Stephen Covey’s Habit #2 is “Begin with the end in mind,” it is as promoted just a beginning to the end. When we only have the “end in mind,” shortcuts are probably even ethical compromises.

The “Management by Objectives” movement has suffered many of these challenges. While never the intention of its creators, it became a rationale for sloppy management and the abdication of leadership and strategy.

Having worked as and with business owners for five decades (I started very early), I can tell you that money may be the obvious answer, but it is rarely the right answer.

Money is a specific commodity with well-defined functions, mostly as a measure.

Oddly, the lack of money in business may be more valuable than the money itself. It forces us to get real, to be creative, and to assess what’s working and what isn’t working. In the end, we’re apt to become better prepared and more capable of adding higher value and better services at a lower cost. Ergo, we make more money.

Being in business provokes us and pushes our buttons emotionally.

I’m not saying go out there and look to take stupid hits. On the contrary—avoid them, but some number of hits are inevitable. Rather than letting them take you down, let them build you up by learning, growing, and maturing.

In this On-Purpose Business Minute, I’m sharing with you the three most common attributes that attract money to businesses: law, order, and opportunity. If you’re a business owner or entrepreneur, this is a must see Minute.

Need some help with your business? On-Purpose Business Advisors has worked with start-ups and entrepreneurs to Fortune 100 CEOs. Email me to learn more.

Resource

Invest 9 minutes to learn about The On-Purpose Business Plan. This maps out the essential infrastructure to create sustainable growth and profitability.

Are You A Success and Feeling Successful?

July 31, 2018 By kwmccarthy

Success takes on a different meaning for each of us.

For those of us with high and noble ambitions success is mostly momentary. Success opens our eyes to new vistas off on the future horizon that are only reached by going back down the mountain, into the valley, and climbing the next higher mountaintop. It’s work disguised as adventure and the exploration of possibilities.

Far too often I suffer from feelings of failure because of all that I imagine and have yet to accomplish.

Recognizing success is different, however, from resting in it.

It’s odd how sometimes I can be restful and satisfied, yet at other times so restless and frustrated. What gives with that?

Unfulfilled ambition easily draws me into being a smaller, stingier, melancholy occupant of my being. I don’t like me in these flashes of embracing failure. My 30-plus–year quest of pioneering the planet to be on-purpose continues to be a financial battle to fund the next project on the horizon. Fighting feelings of frustration, nonrecognition, and financial shortfall wear away at my heart in doses of discouragement.

When I find myself tending toward hoarding and worry, I know for a fact that my better character is not at work. That devil of fear is pounding on the door of my heart and I have to decide whether to let him enter or tell him to go away.

To regain my sense of perspective and rejuvenation, I force myself to reconsider my personal and professional accomplishments over the long haul. Counting my current blessings fills me with a gracious gratitude and a spirit of generosity.

Whether it be 30+ years of marriage, a son and daughter who make me proud, two truly best-selling books in The On-Purpose Person and The On-Purpose Business Person, and more—much more—I’ve learned that none of “my success” was done by me alone. I’ve been forever surrounded by a supportive cast of family, co-workers, friends, classmates, and colleagues who’ve each invested in my work and life. Love has uplifted everything “I’ve ever accomplished.”

I’ve also dealt with people who “throw bricks” by stealing, cheating, lying, and taking advantage of me when I trusted. About every 7 years I get a major AFGE (Another Frigging Growing Experience) that keeps me from a sense of self-importance.

These “lessons” have made me wiser and stronger.

The biblical concept of the tithe (See The On-Purpose Person in the chapter titled “Giving”) is remarkably practical on this point of managing success and failure. Tithing is designed to be a joyful, intentional, and proportional (10+%) expression of our time, talent, and treasure (our success). For our benefit, the tithe offers us a periodic and healthy time for reflection regardless of the size of our accomplishments.

Giving can be off-purpose when used to control, manipulate, or lord it over another. Giving is free and without strings attached. Investment, however, comes with expectations, controls, terms, conditions, and covenants. You can be a giver and you can be an investor—just acknowledge the difference when you’re in the act.

When giving, discretion and discernment are our allies. Stewardship matters. We’re not to be gamblers in our giving but we are to take risks by stretching our comfort zones so our faith and trust are extended.

Giving freely, not from duty or obligation, is the healthy outpouring of a successful soul. This kind of success and giving are knit together. You can’t have one without the other. As my friend Steve Brown of Key Life Ministries would say, “Now, you think about that.”

Do You Have Killer Goals?

July 26, 2018 By kwmccarthy

“You need to set goals.” In business and in life we’ve all heard those words. It is hard to argue with the advice. It seems so simple. Yet for all the talk of goal setting, how effective is it really?

Setting goals is an important aspect of the strategic planning process.

But it is part of a process, not the ends and means unto itself.

Several years ago the CEO of a multi-billion dollar publicly traded company hired me to help revive the business. As he said to me, “Kevin, we need a crusade. Something we can believe in that’s bigger than our day-to-day.”

During my on-site time at the company headquarters, I met with the Director of Worldwide Strategy. In gathering initial information, I asked this question: “What are your income and profit goals for this year?”

That’s normally not a challenging question. Except here I was met with the answer, “We don’t have any goals like that.” This was a stunning revelation to me. How could they not have goals?

I promise you that the point of this On-Purpose Business Minute is an endorsement for setting reasonable goals but within the context of a strategic planning process. In my client’s case, it had me wondering just what the heck the Director of Worldwide Strategy was doing. He wasn’t happy to see me show up in the first place and now this question ensured a sabotage was in the works. He won!

Setting goals in a new fiscal year is commonplace in most work settings.

It is the natural time of the year for reflection and planning so the new year can be better than the previous year. There’s a reason why, however, all those good intentions often fail to live up to expectations. Business can’t be run by numbers alone. Metrics have a role, but they’re the result of a strategic process, not the lead.

This form of “Management By Objectives” was made popular in the 1970s. However well intended it was, the execution of it fell to a minimalist “numbers only” approach. Unfortunately, that is an indication of under-performing management.

Goal setting — everyone uses it, right?

You know the routine. You show up at an organizational retreat for work, church, the PTA, a ministry, or some other group. After the introductions, the person with the agenda says it is time to set goals.

Suddenly a knot appears in your stomach. Something about this doesn’t feel just right. You go with it because goal setting seems so right … and yet so wrong. After an hour or so, the team comes up with a list of goals and everyone goes home satisfied that a great deal was accomplished. And it has, but you have this gnawing feeling that very little is really going to happen next.

Why, you wonder, is it so unsatisfactory? Why is the group so excited, yet you’re so worried? You understand that goals without a plan are merely imaginary—but still better than no goals at all! Regardless of whether the organization is falling short or falling flat on its face, it is failing to complete the strategic process. That means that someone in charge doesn’t really know what it means to lead an organization. Uh-oh—Killer Goals of the worst kind.

There are Good Killer Goals!

Here’s an example from when we were in active production of The On-Purpose Minutes. Our killer goal was to produce and post an original On-Purpose Minute every Tuesday and an On-Purpose Business Minute every Thursday.

Sounds easy enough, right?

Hold on for an On-Purpose Minute! Consider the creative thinking, planning, equipping, and many disciplines needed to meet this simple “killer goal.” I invested nearly a year in researching, experimenting, and learning what camera, lighting, and editing software to use. In the end, the technical and production stuff is actually the easy part.

The concepts and brand of the On-Purpose Minutes had to be conceived, developed, and tied to the business strategy of On-Purpose^®. An audience to reach had to be in mind. Finally, the content for each On-Purpose Minute had to be conceived, written, recorded, edited, posted, and embedded using YouTube.com and my blogging service.

Here’s one example where a Killer Goal with a clear purpose, plan, people, and process to support performance produced a video library of over 200 Minutes.

Avoid setting Killer Goals that kill the team.

Take your leadership and management duties seriously so your team can thrive and exceed its goals. Learn to think more deeply about the breadth and depth of the assignment.

The more you can talk about and plan early on, the better things will go for all involved.

Learn that the slow path to achieving your goals is almost always the sustainable and more profitable fast track for reaching your Killer Goals.