I’ll try not to go into too much boring detail about the specifics of this particular scenario, but today I learned that sometimes you just need to suck it up and bite the bullet. It’s usually never as bad as you think it will be.

I had a task at work to complete that had been hanging over my head for a few days. I was first told about it on a Wednesday. I was only told about it in passing in the kitchen though and my boss told me what to do. It made sense, or I thought it did anyway, but without actually seeing it I didn’t totally grasp what was required. It was due Monday. I had to get a powerpoint pack sent from a colleague (which took two days and I had to chase up on the Friday). So I got cracking, but being late on a Friday afternoon, I kind of decided to go home instead. ‘I’ll get it done on Monday,’ I thought to myself.

Monday rolled around and I had some computer issues. Then my boss came up to me in a visibly displeased manner due to the fact that she hadn’t received the finished product yet. I’m pretty passive at work and don’t like to rub people the wrong way or cause conflict so I just apologised and said I would get it to her before I left the office that day. I had to wait until a friend left the office for the day at 5:30 so I could borrow his computer to get access to the files I needed. I was at work for almost three hours and I felt like I was bashing my head against a brick wall. The spreadsheet was so big that it kept crashing whenever I tried to manipulate the data. In the end, I got to the point where I seriously couldn’t do it anymore. I had told my boss that I would have it to her that day, and there was no way I could do it. I honestly didn’t understand what she wanted. Looking at the data I had and looking at the graphs my colleague had produced, I just couldn’t see what she wanted. I was honestly getting a little worried, almost scared… I knew she already wasn’t happy with me, and me not delivering this piece of work wouldn’t help that! I thought about just ignoring it and going home and trying again in the morning, but I decided I had to just bite the bullet and tell her.

I sent and email detailing what it was that I thought she wanted, what I had done to that point, and where I could see it going. I finished the email with an honest statement explaining my situation. I said something like “I’m really not sure what this is meant to look like. A little more guidance would be greatly appreciated so that I can delivery exactly what you want as soon as possible”.

I walked in to work the next morning to an email along the lines of “come and see me at my desk at 9am”. Having seen my boss’s discontent the day before, I was more than a little scared as to what this meeting would entail! I thought I was in a bit of trouble… But my boss gave me a nice cheery “Good morning” and a smile and I was instantly relieved. We only had to spend 3 or 4 minutes sitting at her desk. She was able to clearly articulate exactly what she needed done and how she wanted it to look. I was able to go away and complete it quickly and accurately and got it back to her that day.

It was in her best interest to support me so that I could get the job done, and my honesty and humility allowed me to show her that I needed help, which she was more than happy to give. I was pretty scared sending that email telling her that I hadn’t completed the task, and I was a little worried heading in the next day that I might be on the receiving end of a bit of harsh feedback. But in the end, there was nothing to worry about! I was able to get the instruction I needed, I was able to get the job done, and it was no where near as bad as I thought it would be!

Become a Key Person of Influence – by Daniel Priestley

Background:

Daniel Priestly and Glen Carlson created the Key Person of Influence program in Australia in 2010. It has now expanded and they offer their 40 week “Growth Accelerator” program in the UK, USA, Australia and Singapore. They take entrepreneurs through their 5 step sequence of Pitch, Publish, Product, Profile and Partner to help their businesses succeed. In 2014, they were awarded Australia’s 9^th fastest growing company. With a strong track record and over 2,000 alumni success stories, it’s pretty safe to say that becoming a Key Person of Influence can work for you too.

 

Quick Summary:

Become a Key Person of Influence is a really good read for anyone who wants to grow their personal brand. If you have a business, or plan to create one, I would definitely recommend reading this book as a starting point. I like the fact that it’s quite prescriptive and they tell you exactly what you need to do. I see this and really benefiting smaller operations and people providing a personalised service, but it would also be a really clever tool to use if you wanted to climb the corporate ladder because you could really differentiate yourself from your peers quickly.

From their website, they say the book “gives you an overview of how to become more visible, valuable and connected”. The book starts off by shedding light on how we’ve progressed well past the industrial age and we are sitting firmly in the Ideas Economy. Then they show you exactly how you can use their 5 Ps method to help you achieve more.

 

Who should read this:

People looking to progress, succeed and achieve a lot more. It gets you to move away from your current ‘functional’ thinking of being good at your tasks and moves you towards becoming ‘vital’ so people feel they can’t do thing as well without you. Functional people are replaceable, so if you’re an employee, you’d better start taking action and become Vital. If you’re a business owner, following the 5 steps could really accelerate your growth. Overall though, I’d suggest that this book is most applicable to entrepreneurs/wantrepreneurs who are looking to grow and make the path to success a lot shorter and smother

 

Favourite Sections:

 

Your Best Thinking Five Years Ago Is Your Baggage Today

Dan begins his book by showing us that “many people are great at what they do, but aren’t fulfilled”. He explains that all of the decisions you made years ago about your career, technology, friends and thought leaders were all based upon the world BACK THEN, and that’s a world that no longer exists. Thing that we used to have to drive to the shopping centre to buy are now freely available online.

He says that we need to “let go of everything we currently think and do [so we don’t] fail to see the opportunities of tomorrow”. He uses a Steve Jobs example to illustrate this. When Steve return to Apple in 1997, one of his first decision was to get rid of the Apple Museum in the foyer, sayig he refused to be in a company that was living in the past. Rather than being affected by the best thinking of its history, he wanted to be living up to the best thinking for the future. Dan finishes this section by getting us to think about our own lives… “If I was starting completely fresh, in a world where anything is possible, what would I love to be doing?”

 

Vitality Is More Valuable Than Functionality

A big part of the introduction of the book is the comparison between Vitality and Functionality. Functional People may be great at what they do, but ultimately, their value comes from efficiency in completing the day-to-day tasks and they are replaceable. They are trying to get better at the current processes and they’re making marginal improvements and are worried that someone might come along that can do it better than them. On the other hand, Vital People see themselves as being key to the result, rather than just another part of the process. They can adapt quickly to changing situations and they can rapidly accelerate results and outcomes. Da talks through a few good comparisons between Functional People and Vital People to help illustrate the differences.

Note: If you haven’t realised already – you want to be a Vital Person.

 

The Eiffel Tower And The Parisian Landscape

A great analogy that is really appropriate later on in the “Product” stage. As a business, you need a “Product Ecosystem”. As Glen Carlson, the co-founder of Dent Global, says: “Products don’t make money – product ecosystems make money”. You can’t just have one product. You need an Eiffel Tower. This is your major drawcard that gets people talking. People come from all over the world to spend thirty bucks going up the Eiffel Tower and get a picture with it. But then… they spend thousands walking around Paris in accommodation, food, activities and everything else. So once you draw people in with your Eiffel Tower, they can spend more money walking around your Parisian Landscape.

 

The game has changed.

They do a good job of setting up WHY we should become a Key Person of Influence before they get in to HOW we can go about getting there. A few more points the share with us is that competitive advantage used to come from building up incremental improvements by working harder than everyone else around you. Now however, the new competitive advantage is more about “thinking expansively, connecting with the right people and spotting fresh opportunities”. They are also big on the belief that everyone already has everything they need to establish themselves as a KPI:

• “Your greatest asset is your existing passion, the skills you already ave and, most of all, your own personal story”
• “Your journey thus far has not been a waste of time; it’s been perfect.”
• “You are already standing on a mountain of value. Your story is valuable, your experience is unique, and you are worth your weight in gold… just as you are!”.

I just remembered another great analogy they used! Let’s place ourselves in a mountain range. As we’re climbing up the mountain, we climb and climb and climb. Then we eventually get to the top. (This is a metaphor for our life’s journey so far). If we look around, we just see the tops of the other mountains and can’t see that we’ve done anything special because we are just on the same level as the other peaks. But once we get some perspective, we can gain an understanding that we’ve truly accomplished something special and we are in fact “standing on a mountain of value”. Everyone’s story is different – we need to leverage our own stories, connections and experiences to position ourselves as an authority in our micro-niche.

 

PITCH

Step 1 of the KPI method. You need to be able to quickly and clearly convey an interesting answer to the question, ‘What do you do for a living?’. This section goes through a few good examples and a few aspects you should include in your pitch. Check out my review of the “3 Hour Brand Accelerator” event I went to that was hosted by these guys for another good structure you can use for introducing yourself to new people.

• You want an “emotionally-charged response” when you tell people what you do. You want them to either love it or hate it. The WORST outcome is that you get a “polite response”. If the make a friendly remark but obviously aren’t enthralled by your response, you might want to rethink how you delivered your personal pitch. If people emphatically tell you, “that won’t work!”, you’re probably onto something good…
• You need to think about your “big game”. This must be something that is fun, has rules, has distinct, players, has a prize, has a way to win, and has a way to lose.
• The 6 Ps of Pitching: Position, Problem, Projection, Proposal, Proof, Project.

 

PUBLISH

Step 2. I’m a big believer in this one. “It’s no coincidence that the word ‘authority’ has the word ‘author’ in it”. They emphasise the fact that have a book, a physical hard-copy book, can really set you apart from your competition. Check out some of Gerry Robert’s stuff too for more info on book publishing. By actually writing and publishing a book, you prove to people that you can actually stick to a mammoth task and see it through to completion. It positions you as a serious expert, it has a massive perceived value to other people, and it can open A LOT of doors. Just thinking and talking about writing a book has opened so many doors for me.

Note: I’m currently “writing a book” myself. I have been for a little while now, but I’m going to finish it! I’m also going to be starting up a book publishing company soon, so keep an eye out for that too.

Types of books:

They present 5 different types of books and talk about the pros and cons of each type.

• Your take on things (pro: positions you well as an expert, con: you need to be able to write 30,000+ words on your own)
• A compilation of interviews (pro: shows that you’re well connected, con: if not done right, it doesn’t really demonstrate your own personal skill, knowledge or expertise)
• A book of tips (pro: it can be easier to write 500 words each on 60 quick tips and you could write two short articles a day and be finished writing in a month, con: can show breadth of knowledge but you can’t really delve too deep)
• Book of pictures (pro: highlight your artistic skills if you’re a painter/sculture/photographer etc, con: very expensive to print high quality colour images in a book)
• Creative piece, like The Richest Man in Babylon or Who Moved My Cheese (pro: shows your skill and creativity, con: hard to do, really hard to do well)

They talk a bit more about planning, choosing a title, finding a ‘writing coach’, publishing your book and promoting you book. I’ll expand on this later when I can give my own personal views from my book too! You can email me at adam@adamashton.com.au if you want to know about these now.

I’d strongly, strongly recommend going to Gerry Robert’s bootcamp the next time he comes to your city. Genuinely the best two days and BEST $97 I’VE EVER EVER SPENT.

 

PRODUCT

Step 3. You need to have some way of productising your business. This way, people can buy these at any time. You don’t need to personally deliver the content yourself. They can buy from anywhere in the world. Obviously, your product has to give some kind of value to the people that buy it. Having products means you have better avenues to positively influence others. Check out my review of the “3 Hour Brand Accelerator” that these guys ran for a good overview of their “Ascending Transaction Model” that you should apply to your Product Ecosystem.

 

PROFILE

Step 4. These days, you are who Google says you are… So you need to boost your profile so people can find you and verify that you’re the real deal. Dan also talks about using social media marketing instead of mass media marketing like newspaper, television or radio because you can hone in o your targets so that you’re only advertising to the people you want to see your stuff. As a quick hint, content that’s on youtube, facebook, twitter, linkedin, slideshare and wordpress get rated very highly by Google’s tools, so if you want to climb up those rankings, you have to publish content here.

 

PARTNERSHIP

Step 5. This is where it all comes together and where you start making MONEY. This is where it starts to become a lot easier and you’ll feel like you’re getting a lot better results from less work. The catch is, you can’t just skip to here. You HAVE to go through the first four steps so that you’re established. Only then can you find the right partners that will provide you with the right opportunities.

The type of Partnership deals Dan mentions include affiliate systems, mail swaps, product teaming, packing up and free bundles. The key to any of these efforts working out is that you have to be providing VALUE. These can be serious win/win/win arrangements – you win by getting in front of a new audience, your partner wins by getting exposure to your audience or from providing their audience with good value, and the customers win by getting great value.

 

Don’t Let ILR Ruin Your Life

After showing you HOW you can execute the 5 steps, the final section is “Making it happen”. But most people seem to suffer from the “Illusion of Limited Resources”. The issue is not that we don’t have enough resources, it’s just that we aren’t resourceful enough to be able to use them to their fullest capacity. Dan uses the analogy that oil was just a dark sludge until we worked out how to use it to create energy. You need to become more resourceful so that you don’t see limited time or money or relationships as holding you back.

 

Stretching Into the Unknown

Right at the end of the book, Dan drops the unfortunate truth. Even though he’s talked us through WHY we need to become a Key Person of Influence and even shown us HOW to become one, most people won’t actually DO it. The main issue is that most people are waiting for the ‘perfect opportunity’, which really will never come. If you’re waiting until you have more money or more free time or you meet one more big customer… It’s like waiting for all of the traffic lights to turn green before you leave your house to go to work – it just won’t happen. Similar to Derek Siver’s thoughts on the topic – just START NOW.

 

Favourite Quotes:

“At the centre of every industry you will find an inner circle of people who are the most well-known and valued people”

“Many people are great at what they do, but aren’t fulfilled”

“Your best thinking from five years ago is your baggage today”

“Unless we can let go of everything we currently think and do, we will fail to see the opportunities of tomorrow”

“If I was starting completely fresh, in a world where anything is possible, what would I love to be doing?”

“In the future your most valuable asset is the number of people who know you, like you and trust you”

“In the future you will discover that what you do has changed, but that your passion has only become stronger”

“The competitive advantage is in thinking expansively, connecting with the right people and spotting fresh opportunities”

“Success isn’t about engaging in a struggle; it’s about getting into the flow”

“Every KPI needs an ‘Eiffel Tower’ – something impressive and unique that others can talk about with their friends”

“There is always a lag time between the release of a new technology, its uptake and the impact it has”

“Small if faster. Small is more dynamic. Small is cheaper. Small is more flexible. Small is more fun. And small can look big.”

“Your biggest asset is your existing passion, the skills you already have and, most of all, your own personal story”

“Your journey thus far hasn’t been a waste of time; it’s been perfect”

“THEIR thing might not be YOUR thing”

“All of your future learnings will come from the process of producing value”

“Until you are a Key Person of Influence on the inner circle of your industry, your full-time job is to become one.”

“The inner circle is rich with good opportunities shared between a small number of people. The outer circle is full of many people fighting over the poor opportunities.”

“It’s no coincidence that the word ‘authority’ has the word ‘author’ in it”

“When someone asks the quintessential networking question ‘What do you do?’, your enthralling answer will have the power to unlock all of their resources”

“When you know ‘what you are up to in the worl’ you become a magnet for opportunity”

“Choose a micro-niche that you identify with personally, with genuine concern and interest”

“Use a sniper rifle, not a shotgun”

“Some of your best insights will come from your critics, and success wil be that much sweeter when you prove them wrong”

“So many people say they are ‘working on a book’ but few actually get it published”

“Two hundred year ago the wealthiest people owned tracts of land and sprawling farms. One hundred years ago the wealthiest people owned massive factories and bustling production lines. Today the wealthiest people simply have big ideas that spread like wildfire.”

“If you create a product that helps solve a very real and specific challenge that people have, it will sell.”

“Before every boom in creativity comes a new way to connect”

“In-built into these five outcomes for becoming a KPI you will find that there is clarity, credibility, visibility, scalability and profitability”

“The most powerful way to save time, money and mistakes is to learn from others who have walked the path before you”

“A resources is only defined by our ability to use it… There are no resources without resourcefulness”

“No matter what you need in your business or your life, getting it will be a function of your resourcefulness rather than whether the resources are available”

“Make sure you know what makes you happy, and don’t forget it”

“You will never sustainably increase your wealth without first increasing you network”

“Given time, a strong network leads to more wealth, more fun and more success”

“Resist the temptation to chase the new thing and keep taking steps closer to the iner circle of the industry you love”

“Most people believe that when the conditions are right they will act. This attitude does NOT work. Ever.”

“If something comes along that you know you should do, the do it, and figure it out along the way”

“Resources show up AFTER resourcefulness… Resourcefulness shows up AFTER you make a commitment”

“Ask yourself what it is you actually want to do. Then go and do it.”

“Bite off more than you can chew and then figure it out along the way”

“Your ancestors would shake their head in disgust… The faced wars, plagues and disasters to create a better world and you’re not taking full advantage of all it has to offer”

“Most television is a waste of time, but the news is just a pitiful waste of time”

“You have virtually no downside in perfecting your pitch, writing your book, producing a product, using social media and talking to some people about a joint venture. The upside, however, is awesome.”

“The Law of Inertia – an object at rest will stay at rest, until acted upon by an outside force. The Law of Momentum – an object in motion will stay in motion, until it meets a resisting force”

“Inertia weighs you down and it takes more and more effort to get moving. Momentum is the feeling of being in flow. It’s a rush and it’s the domain of creativity.”

It’s an understatement to say I’ve got a bit of an addictive personality. When something tickles my fancy, it tickles hard and long! It might be a game that I get addicted to and play nonstop for three weeks, or it might be things as serious as gambling at the casino or on sports and racing. It’s the same with music – when I really feel a song, I play it on repeat for the next 6 days. My latest attraction was mmmBop by Hanson that just had it’s 20th anniversary, and now it’s Growing Up by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis featuring Ed Sheeran. Such a good tune!

This week I’ve been reading The Alchemist and when I was telling a friend about the book, she told me she wanted to read it ever since Macklemore mentioned it in his song Growing Up. The song is a list of advice to Macklemore’s newborn baby daughter when he became a Dad for the first time. It’s well worth the listen. You can download the song for free and read his letter to his daughter at webpage they created specifically for this song here.

 

My favourite lines and pieces of advice from the song include:

“Tell the truth, regardless of the consequence”

“Put the work in, don’t worry about the praise”

“The quickest way to happiness is learning to be selfless; ask more questions and talk about yourself less”

“Do yoga, learn about karm, find God but leave out the dogma”

“Every day, give your mother a compliment”

“Don’t try to change the world. Find something that you love and do it every day. Do that for the rest of your life, and eventually, the world will change”

I’ve seriously been loving my parables. I really enjoy re-reading The Richest Man in Babylon and now I’ve nearly finished The Alchemist. They must be so tough to write well, but I feel like it’s such a fantastic way to give advice through story telling.

My latest revelation comes from reading The Alchemist this morning:

“Maybe God created the desert so that man can appreciate the date trees”.

Out of context, this probably sounds a little confusing. At this point in the story, a young Spanish shepherd had sold his flock of sheep and moved to Egypt. He was in search of treasure near the pyramids, but not long after he arrived at the port, he was robbed of all of his gold and was left with nothing. He worked and saved money and eventually joined a caravan to rode a camel towards the pyramids. They had spent days and then weeks riding through the hot, dry desert. Then one day, just as the sun rose, the group finally caught a glimpse of the oasis. “After weeks of yellow sand and blue sky, they finally saw the green of the date palms”.

Like most parables, the lesson here is something deeper than the beauty of date palms. I myself have never seen what a date tree looks like, but I know this is simply a metaphor for our lives. The ‘desert’ are the tough times, and the ‘date trees’ are the moments of happiness. If life was all date trees, we’d become complacent and we’d lose sight of how good our lives really were. Sometimes we might need to suffer a few setbacks in order to become truly grateful for what we have in life.

So maybe God created the desert so that man can appreciate the date trees. And maybe God created the tough, sad moments so that we can appreciate the good times in life.

A funny thing happened last week. I bought an app called “Days of Life” after a recommendation from my ‘What You Will Learn‘ co-host, Adam Jones. I’ve got notification set to daily, so every day it tells me how many day I have left to live, based on the average life expectancy for an Australian male in today’s society. It’s a little daunting to see that over a quarter of my pie chart has been used up, but it’s a little bit of inspiration each day when I get that notification. It gets me back on tracked and helps me stay focused.

I only bought it after a brief moment of hesitation though. When he told me about the app, I loved the idea and went straight to the App Store to download it. But I paused… it wasn’t free. The app cost $0.99 (it might’ve been $1.99 or even $2.99, I don’t remember exactly, but it was under $3 but it wasn’t free). I’m used to just downloading apps for free… I even download them for free then get sucked in to making ‘in-app purchases’ that would far outweigh that 99 cents. But We’ve been conditioned to expecting free apps. When I think about it, a few bucks is really nothing. It’s less than the coffee I was sipping on at the time. But it’s that notion of ‘pegging’, a cognitive bias, that meant the 99 cents seemed an enormous price to pay for something I expected to be free.

I eventually sucked it up and forked out the buck or two to get it. And I haven’t regretted it! I’m sure it’s a pretty easy thing to make, but that dollar or two has helped me regain focus and motivation every day since I first downloaded it.