Sleep improves mental and physical health.  REM sleep is one of the biggest factors of nurtured creativity, a skill that is extremely valuable to the modern job market.  Sleep dramatically reduces clerical errors and mistakes, making it easier to get tasks done right the first time.  The effects of sleep aren’t just mental.  A greater amount of sleep also leads to a stronger immune system, a critical trait in a world ridden with disease.  1.2 million working days are lost due to the poor sleep workers receive.

If you do have dysfunctional sleeping habits, don’t worry.  It is always possible to improve your sleep routine.  First step to better sleeping health is to do away with all nighters.  Adults going without sleep for 48 hours have similar mental impairments to someone with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.1%.  On the subject of alcohol, reduce consumption where you can.  2 or more servings of alcohol a day reduces sleep quality by 39.3%.  Above all, make it a priority to receive 7-8 hours of sleep. 

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For many, organization begins at home with chores. Making beds, taking out trash, washing and putting dishes away, folding clothes, putting toys away after play, mowing the lawn, or washing the car establishes an early appreciation for structure. Having an assigned duty at home gives a person purpose and allows him to grow and mature. A mature person is not only an organized person, he is also responsible and dependable. Organization is often associated with being tidy or clean. When the household duties mentioned above are assigned and performed on a regular basis, a home and an office will be clean and free of clutter. An organized house or office is an inviting place that makes all who enter there comfortable.

Organization also speaks volumes about a person’s work ethnic. When organization is displayed in a house there is usually a schedule. A schedule helps save time and brings order. Time is a valuable commodity that can not be redeemed. The organization that a schedule provides in a home enables a person to carefully plan and execute projects, but more importantly it teaches a person to respect time, his and someone else’s. Organization is instrumental in helping a person plan, prioritize and achieve any goals he sets for himself in life.

For many successful people organization is a must. One such individual is Diego Ruiz Duran. One of Mexico’s leading criminal defense attorneys for over fifteen years, his success points to the role organizations can play in a life and a career. He has a Master’s Degree in Criminology and Criminal Justice. He studied at many prestigious schools. He is an alum of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, University of Oxford, and the University of Cambridge. With these heavy hitters, organization would be a requirement for academic success. His rewards and accolades in his professional career are there also because he is an organized businessman. He learned that being organized improved his work performance and made him as a young attorney feel more in control.
Being organized like being a lawyer is a choice. Diego Ruiz Duran is quoted as saying that being a lawyer is not an easy career choice, but it is a passionate one. Just as passion makes one diligent organization makes one conscientious; both require accountability and can lead to success. Organization is the skill that makes it happen.

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These are the thoughts I’m exploring in my own life and I’d love to share them to get your perspective.

The answer to success isn’t hard work

Perhaps, our success in the past and the future isn’t about hard work. What if success was really about finding the things that we are the best in the world at? What if those things were effortless? What if the things we have a true competitive advantage at are the things that come easy? What if the things we should be focusing on are the things we can do absolutely hung over and at the end people are still in awe at how we did something so amazing?

What if hard work is getting in the way of us finding the things that put us square in our zone of genius. Gay Hendricks revealed four zones in his book, The Big Leap. The Zone of Incompetence, the zone of competence, the zone of excellence and the zone of genius. You can read a review of the book and an explanation of each zone here. For today I’m going to focus on the zone of excellence and the zone of genius.

Hard work is found in your zone of excellence

What if you could generate even more success by removing hard work from your vocabulary?

What if I told you that hard work is found when working in your zone of excellence? In your zone of excellence you will find things that you are really good at, but after you do them you’ll find that they have actually reduced your level of energy.

This is where most of us have found the most success in our lives. We push and push and push and ultimately we realize that the harder we push doing the things that are in our zone of excellence the more we get rewarded. But at the end of the day we find our energy is drained. Our resources are depleted and we need to replenish our energy. This is what most of us recognize as success.

But what if there was something better? What if you could generate even more success by removing hard work from your vocabulary?

Brilliance is found in your zone of genius

The talents you will find in your zone of genius are literally effortless

When you are working in your zone of genius you will notice that afterwards you have more energy than when you started. You feel passion and rejuvenation within the work that you are doing. The talents you will find in your zone of genius are literally effortless. They come easy and at the end you are left scratching your head because people are amazed by what you did. They can’t understand how you did it and they will tell you they are ground breaking, genius and brilliant. You don’t understand why it’s so special because for you it was…well…effortless.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to find my zone of genius. What I’m realizing is that the effort of trying to find my zone of genius is the exact cycle I’m trying to break and trust me; this is a really hard to come to terms with. I’m literally trying to unlearn everything I’ve ever been taught about success and failure. It’s not easy to fight the urge to fall into our old patterns.

I’ve realized that this is kin to finding your soul mate. Have you ever experienced the desire to find the “right” person and looking everywhere and coming up empty? Then the minute you stop looking you suddenly meet them. That is what I’m working on. Letting go. I’m trying to let go, lay back and relax so that my zone of genius can find me.

I’ve always thought my zone of genius was in finding ways to create revenue. I’m damned good at that, it’s what I’ve built my entire career on. But I half suspect that finding ways to create revenue are fueled by my desire to solve complex problems with simple solutions. As such, I’m hoping some really complex problems will come my way so I can test my theory. I will figure out how to solve them and then I’ll measure my energy level. If it gives me more energy, it’s definitely in my zone of genius. If it doesn’t I’ve likely found passion in my zone of excellence.

What would happen if you worked in your zone of genius all the time?

The key to your zone of genius is that you are literally the best in the world at what you do

What would happen if you could work in your zone of genius all of the time? Your energy would be higher than it ever has been before. You will probably make more money than you ever have before. You see the key to your zone of genius is that you are literally the best in the world at what you do. Others can’t do what you do and frankly can’t even begin to understand how you do it. As a result, people and companies are willing to pay you a lot of money for it.

The biggest benefit I see in finding my zone of genius and staying there is that it no longer is a conversation of work life balance. There is no balance. At that point it is just life and my…what a fulfilling life it would be. If we could surround ourselves with only the things that raise our energy rather than deplete it we would have the energy to continue to create and expand amazing things and hopefully leave a mark on the world that no one else could. This is something I’m truly passionate about and something we encourage all of our employees at SME Digital to find for themselves.

Because just imagine what would happen if we had an army of people who worked squarely in their zone of genius. Imagine the power and creativity it would bring when solving our clients problems. To me, that is the biggest gift we can bring to our clients and to the world.

Have you ever paid attention to the things that bring you more energy? Do you think you are working in your zone of genius or your zone of excellence most of the time? Share your thoughts in the comments below and let’s have an inspiring conversation about what is and isn’t working in your career and life.

Hear more about my thoughts on zone of genius in this interview on The Work Talk Show with DJ Waldow and Nick Westergaard

The post Is Hard Work What’s Holding You Back From Success appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

His response, “I don’t know.”

Defining Success

When you’re constantly working to meet the next goal, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture.

As a digital marketer, I live and die by goals. Every single moment of my work week is spent ensuring that some metric is being met. Increase Twitter followers by 25 a week – boom, met. Receive zero client complaints and three client compliments every month – big ol’ check-a-roo. Ensure that there are exactly 24 jellybeans… well, you get the picture.

However, when you’re constantly working to meet the next goal, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture.  You might be successful in growing your Twitter reach, but does that mean your business is successful?

Think about that for a second. How many people can honestly say that they know what success is for their business? Can you?

And don’t give me that cop out, “We will be successful when we meet our goals.”  That’s a cheap answer and you know it.

A true definition of success should boil down to a single statement, something that starts with, “Success is…” and ends with a few words that then define that success. Ask yourself, “If I was at a party and someone asked me if my campaign/business/love life was successful, what one thing would have to happen for me to give an immediate yes?”

Some example success definitions for me:

Campaigns: This social media marketing campaign will be successful if both the client and I are happy with the campaign results.

Startup: Our startup will be successful if we are on target to have an exit event worth at least $1,000,000 for each senior officer involved.

Revenue: We will have a successful revenue stream if we can continue to give raises to all employees and afford to bring on at least 3 new staff members each quarter.

Unlike goals, which should never be ambiguous, having an ambiguous definition of success is fine. After all, everyone’s definition of success is going to be slightly different (Although if you’re working under a supervisor, make sure you’re working off of their definition of success).

Set Goals To Meet That Definition

Can you be successful without meeting your goals? Absolutely.

Once you know what you’re aiming for, setting goals becomes way easier. If my definition of success for an upcoming campaign is to ensure the client is thrilled with our results, I know my next step is to identify what the client’s expectations are and to quantify those expectations into a goal.

Goal: Drive 10,000 new customers over the course of 12 months.

Keep in mind a goal should never be ambiguous. You show me a goal that’s ambiguous and I’ll show you a person that’s too afraid of failing to do their job right.

Once this initial goal is identified, (I refer to it as a master goal) I can then ask myself what needs to happen in order to meet this goal. From there an action plan develops, more goals are identified and a campaign begins to take shape.

If I hadn’t identified success first, and just started creating goals, I would have no idea on whether or not those goals were doing me any good. If you’re going to make a sandwich, turn on the light in the kitchen first. Don’t go around trying to find the bread in the dark. It’s great to grow your Twitter following, but if that has no bearing on your success at the end of the day, then it shouldn’t be a high priority.

By focusing on goals and objectives that drive the success of your business, you can better ensure that your energies and resources are spent working on the things that truly matter.

Can you be successful without meeting your goals? Absolutely. That’s the whole point. Goals give us something to measure against. A feeling of success however can come from any part of the project. Perhaps your campaign was an utter flop. Does this mean you were unsuccessful? Not necessarily. Maybe the client’s thrilled with the results you did get. Maybe they’re excited with the learnings, or maybe they understand that they themselves had unrealistic expectations.

Conversely, can you meet your goals and still be unsuccessful in business? You bet your ass you can, especially if you’re setting superfluous goals without clear direction. Striving to meet the wrong goals can pull your attention away from the areas of your business that truly matter.

Success is something that must be constantly strived for. If you ever feel yourself bogged down by senseless goals, take a second to think about the success you are trying to attain and realign yourself.

Remember, success is a state of being, not a destination.

The post Don’t Let Goals Get In The Way Of Your Success appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

As a business owner myself, the reason I love Shark Tank is because it serves as a constant reminder that it’s critical to focus on the bottom line, to ensure that I’m growing a healthy and sustainable business and that we are building something that is “special” and “unique”. Frankly, we are building Social Media Explorer | SME Digital to be more than a top marketing blog and “agency”. We’re building a company that helps to make innovation safe. We’re building a path to help more marketers land CEO positions. I want to help break the pattern that most CEO’s come from finance. And yes, we rock some serious awesome at showing companies how to leverage the digital channel and social media in ways that even risk-adverse companies get excited about.  But is that enough? I went through and did some searches around what defines a successful startup and was seriously disappointed at what I found. The problem is we are using the WRONG measures of success.

The Ability to Raise Venture Capital is Not a Measure of Success

How about we start celebrating start ups who don’t need venture capital?

Almost every headline on TechCrunch about a startup starts with how much funding they’ve raised. Seriously? Is that really the measure of business success that we are using today? Let’s start by understanding that if a company needs venture capital, it is likely because they’ve burned through their own cash, miscalculated the cash they would need when they started the business or aren’t generating enough revenue to support the expenses of the business. At the core, isn’t the need for venture capital a sign that a business isn’t cash flow positive or that the founders don’t have the capital to continue to grow the business and run the business? We’ve essentially replaced getting a business loan to solve short-term cash flow issues with taking other people’s money so we don’t have to “pay” it back in a loan payment. No, instead, we give up part of our “equity”, something that feels intangible.

How about we start celebrating start ups who don’t need venture capital because they built a cash flow positive business and know how to manage growth within their means? How about we celebrate founders who maintain the ownership of their company and create profitable businesses?

Users Are Not the End All Measure of Success

Do Free Platforms Really Have a Business Model?

We can’t have a conversation about startups without talking about the social media start up and the quest for users. Instagram, Pinterest, SocialCam and the plethora of other “companies” who tout users as proof of their success are creating a whole new investment bubble that is going to burst. It’s great that there are a “crap ton” of people using these platforms. I’m an avid user of many of them and there’s nothing I love more than a free app that makes my online experience better. But where’s the revenue? It seems that monetization has become a secondary focus because startups know they can get venture capital if they can get into the millions of users. This is one of the reason’s I love Shark Tank. That crap won’t fly there. It’s not that the number of users isn’t interesting, but it certainly isn’t more interesting than the bottom line. I would argue that these startups are not “companies” until they have a monetization model that is generating revenue. Personally, I have a hard time getting behind the “advertising” monetization strategy because it just feels like you’re selling out on your users. One of Social Media Explorer’s former business partners, Aaron Marshall was smart with his startup. While everyone was building free mobile apps, he understood the quickest way to real success was to combine the quest for users with the quest for revenue. He took the road less traveled when he launched Over, an iPhone app that allows you to quickly place text over photos and share them on your social networks. And guess what, it’s not free, but he was still able to make it into the top 15 photo apps in the app store. I think he was able to do it because it is seriously one of the best designed apps I’ve ever seen. When you use it, you can’t help but tell all of your friends about it. It’s simple, smart, elegant and it forever changes the way you share photos. And totally worth the $1.99 I paid for it. That’s a business model.

An Acquisition is Not a Measure of Success

What Happened to Succession Planning as a Respectful Exit Strategy?

The other thing I found in my searches is a list of stories of companies being acquired by Google, Facebook, or some other “big” technology company only to suffer through a painful, drawn out death. What happened to companies that were acquired and actually continued to exist, thrive and get bigger? The companies whose employees still had jobs 5 years after the acquisition? The companies who built a culture and sold to a company that actually believed and helped that culture flourish? The minute we started celebrating founders who planned their “exit” strategy while leaving their employees to deal with the demise, we created a pretty disgusting business model. One that personally, is really hard to celebrate if you actually care about people. Personally, I still have a ton of respect for companies who actually focus on “succession planning” as an exit strategy.  The founders who actually want to build sustainable businesses that give back to society, build careers, and create legacies that become a Harvard Business Review Case Study are the ones we should be celebrating. I study and learn from the successes and mistakes of leaders like Tony Hseih, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Sam Walton, and Charles Coffin. Personally, I have a hard time getting excited about the founder looking for the quick payout.

What do you think? Are we celebrating the right kind of startups? Are we creating a dangerous view of business success that is hurting society? If you own a startup, what legacy do you want to leave? If you are an investor, do you think you are investing in the right type of businesses for long term sustainability? Let’s have a healthy debate on the right success measures for a successful start up. Leave a comment and join the discussion.

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Breakdown

Moliere is attributed with the artful phrase:

“It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do.”

These days, I’m thinking about how this nugget – doing and not doing – applies to business, building a strong pervasive culture, and empowering well-intentioned passionate people.  I’m not a human resources or recruiting professional by any stretch, but it’s clear to me how top-down methods, values, and management styles affect subjective and frequently minimized issues like employee satisfaction, career aspirations, and general life outlook.  If you think this is just “soft fuzzy stuff,” that doesn’t have a wit to do with the bottom line, just wait up a minute.  You can go buy your first clue over at Sametz Blackstone Assoc. by reading Tamsen McMahon’s post covering real-world management lessons.

“…people are at the heart of any change. To make change happen, you have to have people who can make change happen.”  To which I add you need to have people you inspire to pursue change.  And you need to have people who believe you’ll support their methods and defend the outcomes.

If you have the mentality of “They get a paycheck, a darn good one, too.  They better be doing a great job!” you’ve adopted a serf-and-lord mentality that only serves to keep people in check, where they belong, performing rote tasks without hope.  Yes, people should meet the expectations of the role they hold – but if, as a boss, what you really want is innovative calculated risk-takers who think about your business in the middle of the night and Saturday afternoons, then you have to really ask yourself – better yet, ask a management coach – if you’re limiting their outcomes through your own shortcomings.

Shut Up When I’m Talking To You

Adam Singer draws a line between insufferable omnipotent people of power and confidence-inspiring stalwart leaders as he explores marketing and bureaucracy.  His point, as I interpret it, is businesses that empower (support) talented, creative people lay the groundwork for success because by allowing employees to explore options, push conventions, and take educated risks, the company is building an emotional bond with its most valuable assets.  Trust that the people you’ve hired want to achieve – even exceed – goals and they will.

But you say, “It’s not their department/company.  It’s my department/company.  Why would they care about it like I do?  No one cares as much as I do.  I have to look out for things, I’m accountable.  It needs to be done my way or there’s too much risk.”  Baloney.  Give people more credit than that.

Comfortably Numb

Your way is based on your personal world view, and the cynical and disparaging notion that others can’t cogitate as good as you can.  Granted, your world view and talents have served you well, but are you so arrogant as to think yours is the only path to achievement?  Enter clue number two, from Bnet – rob people of their passion and their ownership enough times and you’ll end up with a self-fulfilling prophecy and a cube farm full of drones.  They learned there’s no point in surfacing ideas or ardently defending recommendations.  You’ll have to continue doing things your way.

At the most basic level, employees depend on you.  You’re the boss, after all.  But don’t over-simplify or obfusicate the issue.  Most of us really want more out of life than routine tasks and “Satisfactory” evaluations.  We’re looking for inspiration, for the people and the opportunities that make the daily grind something of personal choice and a source of pride over practical necessity.  We want to succeed and make the boss – the one which encourages our ideas – proud.  Can you honestly you’re creating a nurturing environment?  Or just giving it lip service or a token gesture?

Slippery When Wet

Perhaps this issue of autocratism – trust – was best addressed by a lady sporting tight buns:

“The more you tighten your grip [Tarkin] the more [star systems] will slip through your fingers,” prophetized by Princess Leia in Star Wars:  Episode IV –  A New Hope (1977).

Best of You

The point?  Let go.  Trust that they’ll do what it takes to do a good job.  Give them permission to flounder, even fail.  And trust that if they miss the mark, despite their best efforts, it will matter as much to them as it does to you.  And next time will rock.

“I must follow the people.  Am I not their leader?” –Benjamin Disraeli

Revolution

Alright, so I’m using humor, pop culture, and music trivia to help illustrate my points about leadership and management.  Some of you may deem my approach sophomoric, and I’m okay with that.  Why?  We all have gifts.  I think one of mine is taking seemingly disparate bits, weaving them together, and coming up with something new.  You may get it, you may not.  S’okay, it takes all kinds, right?

In any case, I hope that if you’re a manager you’re now holding that mirror up a little higher and taking a long, hard look.  Change can start with you, and it can start today.  Serve the needs of others through your leadership.  Be open, allow yourself to become vulnerable, and you may be surprised – even humbled – by those around you.

Song title credits:  Seether, Linkin Park, Pink Floyd, Bon Jovi, Foo Fighters, Tracy Chapman

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