"...keeping you great"
HEADLINES:
Raising Entrepreneurs -- more on this below, but first...
Selling to Large Companies? - if the Fortune 1000 are on your radar, here's a must download Fortune 500+ web ap that runs via your browser - no tablet needed. Where data is king, this gives you loads of info and contacts inside the 1000 largest firms with which you can arm your sales team. There is a two-week free preview available. This is a serious and inexpensive marketing tool.
Peer Coaching Update -- taking a page from the top executive coach in the world, Marshall Goldsmith, who keynoted our Fortune Leadership Summit, I set-up a peer coaching relationship like he suggested - and the outcome, so far, has been life-changing. A dear friend and fellow entrepreneur in Barcelona is serving as my peer coach. We've started with just five areas in each of our lives we want to improve anchored by a question i.e. did I do my morning breathing exercises. Rather than talk each day, we simply email each other answers to our five questions - takes literally one minute. We then try and meet once per week for breakfast or lunch. It's amazing the changes you can make and the habits you can break when you have to answer to someone besides yourself every day!
No Such Thing as Self-Help -- this experience of a daily peer coach, so far, underpins Darren Hardy's idea (author of The Compound Effect) that there is no such thing as self-help! Find someone to be your peer coach, choose several areas in your personal and professional life that need improved, and then hold each other accountable on a daily basis - the key is daily. Plus it gives you someone to commiserate with! Please share with me some of your own peer coaching stories if you embraced Goldsmith's strongest suggestion for becoming a better leader.
Coaching is Hot -- this is the title of a recent Fortune article reporting on a July 2011 American Management Association survey that showed half the participating companies had coaches for their promising middle and upper managers. The coaches are focused not only on helping those struggling but more on optimizing strong performers - the best have coaches. What I find lacking in many firms is someone focused on Talent Development - I would like to see this specific accountability assigned to someone in the firm. And let me know if we can help you find a coach - we have 91 coaching partners around the world, most of who will be at the Fortune Growth Summit continuing their education -- something required of our professional coaches.
Inside/Out Coaching -- Joe Ehrmann, former NFL superstar often referred to as "the Most Important Coach in America" has a new book out entitled InsideOut Coaching: How Sports Can Transform Lives. This is a must read for any parent who has children participating in sporting activities - and a book to give to their coach. In essence, your child's coach can make or break their spirit, self-esteem, and souls. Ehrmann shares his own coaching experiences growing up and how there are various types of toxic, mostly volunteer, coaches: the Dictator, Bully, Narcissist, Saint, and Misfit. Today, a coach to many of the NFL coaches and coach of one of the winningest high school teams, Erhmann offers an approach to sports coaching that is transformational vs. transactional.
Raising Owner/Entrepreneurs -- Steve Mariotti, founder of the global organization NFTE (Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship), wrote an excellent article for The Huffington Post on why we need to coach/teach more young people to be owner/entrepreneurs - worth giving it a 3 minute read. One recent success story is NFTE alum Zoe Damacela, who is on the October cover of Seventeen Magazine as the "Real Teen Model" winner who launched her clothing business when she was 14. Here's a link to her interview and cover shot
NFTE Adopt-a-Class Helping Entrepreneurs -- think about having your company sponsor a NFTE class for $10k per year (or co-sponsor for $5000) - these classes as part of the regular curriculum, which is the key to their success -- it's not an after school activity. And have your executive team and managers spend time in these NFTE classes teaching students about business - there is likely a class in your own city around the world. We all have our favorite charities, but this activity most directly aligns with your everyday activities - we first and foremost must be growth firms that help other growth firms so we have vibrant economies that can purchase our goods and services. Here's a link for more info - please sign-on and support NFTE - thanks.
