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The United States and the world just lost the last in a long line of Kennedy warriors.  U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy died this week after a long and courageous battle with brain cancer.  Edward was the youngest and the last of four Kennedy brothers to serve this nation with honor and distinction and to die while in service to their country.  Joe Kennedy, the eldest died during WWII.  John Kennedy was President of the United State while assassinated in office.  Robert Kennedy was a sitting U.S. Senator and was also assassinated while running for President.  And Edward Kennedy died while still holding office as a U.S. Senator. 

Throughout his life, Edward Kennedy dedicated his life to helping the under-privileged.  Partisan politics aside, Edward Kennedy’s most courageous act might have been his unsuccessful campaign runs for President.  With one brother was assassinated as a sitting President and the other brother assassinated while running for President, can you only imagine the courage it must have taken to put yourself in harm’s way of every radical nut in the country who would have liked nothing better than to go down in history as the person to assassinate the third of the Kennedy boys while he ran for or held the office of the President?   

I understand that, due to the nature of politics in this country, generally speaking, the Kennedy’s could have a polarizing effect on the right-winged population of our country.  I don’t expect that everyone will line up to praise Edward Kennedy and his life.  But politics aside, his family has given blood, sweat and tears for the betterment of our country and our people.  So what I don’t understand is the hate that is spewing forth since his death.  It’s time to cool down the tone of the rhetortic, the hate and the anger that underlies our political differences of opinion in this country.  As Abraham Lincoln said when faced with the biggest challenge that this country’s ever had, “A house divided upon itself cannot stand.” 

Hate and division is so much more easier to facilitate and sustain than it’s polar opposite, love and unity.  As a country founded upon the basis of protecting religious and spiritual freedoms, isn’t it time we returned to those principals?  It is possible to disagree without being disagreeable, but it’s not necessarily an easy thing to do.  But it is the right thing to do.  The road to healing the rift in this country and in the world begins within each and every one of us.  As Gandhi said, “Be the change that you want to see in the world.”  You can either manifest love and unity in this world or you can manifest hate and divisiveness.  It is up to you. 

You can do your part by turning off hate radio when you hear it.  Turn off the television commentators that try to spur fear and loathing among our populous. Quit listening to music and quit buying the records that demean or diminish women and/or other minorities.  Hate is losing it’s cool factor.  Love is the new way of cool.  As you learn more and more ways to manifest love, respect and civility in your life and into this world, you’ll uncover the secret of karma.  Your health will get better, your finances will improve, your outlook will brighten and your world will begin to transform forever.  Why not give it a try?  What have you got to lose?  

One of my favorite books is “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”, written by Stephen Covey.  The book is a classic and is a must read for everyone, irregardless of what your career path may be.  One of the “seven habits” is “Sharpening the Saw”.  The chapter starts off with a little allegory about a guy trying to cut down a tree with a dull saw.  The guy has been at it all day long and is making very slow progress.  When someone recommends that perhaps he should sharpen his saw, he responds that he doesn’t have time to stop and sharpen the saw.  I hope you see where this is going.  The moral of the story and of the chapter for that matter is that with properly maintained equipment, we can be much more effective in whatever our pursuits may be. 

Our bodies and our brains are our main tools, if not our only tools.  Only with proper routine maintenance can we expect to produce at our optimal effectiveness.  How you chose to do that is your business, the important thing is that you just do it. 

I recently read a post by a well-known, nationally syndicated sales columnist, author and consultant.  In the article he basically advocates that sleeping is equal to wasting time and cuts into his productivity.  My personal opinion is that this is dangerous advice to be dishing out.  In fairness to him, he does mention that as he has aged, he requires less sleep, and I can attest to that fact.  But nonetheless, I worry that with his large sphere of influence, many people might get the wrong idea and start trying to cut down on sleep.  The quantity of work that will be gained will not make of for the quality of work that will be lost.  Sleep is extremely important to your ability to reach your peak performance and is one of the ways that you ”sharpen your saw”. 

Regular vacations and time away from work are another way to “sharpen your saw”.  I recently returned from a 5 day trip with my son where we took in two days of amusement parks, a zoo and a trip to the beach.  I’m pretty sure that my son enjoyed the trip, but for sure, I had a ball.  I could literally feel my batteries being recharged, in big part because I was able to leave all of my work behind.  Before I left, I changed my e-mail to automatically respond to all messages that I would be out all week and I gave other contact names and numbers of people who could assist them in my absence.  Of course, I gave them permission to call me if they wanted, and told them that I’d be checking e-mails on a very limited basis.  As a result, I received two or three calls during the entire trip, and all of the matters were either handled routinely by others or could wait till my return.  In order to do your best work, you need to make sure that you take routine time away from your office and your job.  And that means disconnecting from e-mails and phone calls.  If you’re convinced that your job won’t allow you to totally disconnect in this way, then your organization is disorganized. 

Good sleeping habits, regular vacations, recreational activities, exercise and meditation are just some of the ways that you can “sharpen your saw”.  As I stated before, it’s not how you chose to sharpen your saw that is important, what’s important is that you routinely have time built into your schedule to do it.    

For the past year and a half or so, I have been discovering Brian Tracy and his many books on self-development.  Much of Brian’s focus is on selling, but even if you don’t consider yourself to be in the category of salesman, you owe it to yourself to read some of Brian’s books.  “Many Miles to Go” is a true story about a sojourn that Brian and two of his mates made when he was young, from the western coast of Canada, they headed east, across the North American continent, over the Atlantic, down through Europe and ending with a perilous trip through the Sahara desert to the tip of the dark continent in the country of South Africa.  Brian ties the trip to many lessons that he learned about himself, people and business.  Brian has books that cover self-development topics from time management, to money management, to business management and everything else in between.  I highly recommend any of his books if you are working to develop yourself to your full potential.

One of the more interesting discoveries that I have encountered in the past ten years of my research into self development is the importance of spirituality.  It is amazing how many experts in the field of self development have all reached the same conclusion about how important faith, spirituality and karma are to your ability to develop yourself to your full potential.  And I must say that after several years of field research and using myself as a “ginnie pig”, I have seen the remarkable results first hand.  There was a time in the not too distant pass, that I was the center of my own universe.  Every action that I undertook was designed to benefit me first and everyone else second.  The results from this type of thinking was not very good.  I struggled financially, career-wise and in several other areas.  I finally decided to try and turn things around for myself by educating myself through reading books about selling.  It was through my reading that I soon discovered there was a common theme running throughout most of the books that I was reading.  That common theme was “karma”.  You reap what you sow.  Having tried just about everything else I could to increase my income and make a better life for myself, I figured I had nothing to lose, so why not try giving this “karma” thing a try.  It was the most amazing transformation of results within an unbelievable time frame.  You really do reap what you sow.  I could talk about it for hours and you could chose to believe it or not.  But the best way to see if it really works is to put it to use for yourself and see what your results are.  Have faith.  If you’re in sales, have faith that you can be the best in your field.  Put others first.  Work hard and study hard.  When things don’t go your way, as they inevitably won’t sometimes, just remember that you grow best through adversity and have faith that there is a reason that things go bad sometimes and try to find the lesson in these things.  Life first has to get better in your mind before it can get better in your world.

I’ve heard it said time and time again, “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”.  Well, yesterday was a perfect example.  Yesterday I attended my very first motivational seminar.  It was called “Get Motivated” and was produced by Tamera Lowe.  Up until yesterday, I really had never heard of Tamera or her “Get Motivated” seminars, but after attending, it is readily apparent that these seminars are well produced, professionally run and highly organized.  The list of speakers included, but was not limited to Colin Powell, Suzy Orman, Zig Ziglar, Robert Schuller and Rudy Gullianni.  The event was an amazing series of informative topics and speeches, but what impacted me most was the effect that I was left with.  Recently, I have been wrestling with certain decisions about where to invest my spare money and my spare time.  I have a small nest egg that I have been wondering what I should do with and given the current economic climate, I couldn’t make up my mind.  It’s like God was reading my mind, because this seminar was the answer to my prayers.  Not only was it educational, but additionally, it opened my eyes to further opportunities that await someone with enough initiative to only take the first move and grab the bulls by the horns.  I signed up for two week-end classes, one about learning to use some software tools to help with investing in the stock market and the other about setting up an online web site and online store.  Both offer possibilities for potentially additional income, but even more exciting to me, is that both offer possibilities for additional education in two areas that I have a dramatic interest in. 

I am currently in the midst of reading three books by Brian Tracy and coincidentally enough, one of his suggestions in the books is to invest in yourself.  If you’ve followed my blog at all in the past, you’ll know that I have always been an advocate of continually education.  So that’s why I’m excited.  I am embarking on a couple of new fronts and as a result, I continue to control my future. 

Don’t wait till a seminar like “Get Motivated” comes to your town, seek them out.  Look them up, find out if they are coming to your town, or if not, find out if any are coming close to your town.  Then buy a ticket to as many as you can afford and then some.  If you have to take off from work to attend, then do it.  That’s what I intend to do from now on.  It’s a habit that you can not afford to begin.  If you don’t invest in your future, who will?

The end of the week is the best time to start planning for the beginning of the next week. The end of the month is the best time to start planning for the next month. And the end of the year is the best time to start planning for the next year.

So now that it’s the last month of the year, December is the perfect time to start planning how you are going to improve your sales for 2009.  Goal setting is the first step to take.  Decide here and now what you’re going to sell in the next year.  Make it a stretch goal, so that you have something to work for, but keep it realistic.  If the goal is too low, then there is nothing to be gained from setting it.  On the other hand, if the goal is too high, it could work against you and act as a big de-motivator.  A good benchmark would be to take your best productive year that you’ve had in the past 5 years or so and set a goal to increase it by 15-20%.  And by the way, goals and quotas are not the same thing.  Quotas are externally set and goals are internally set.  If you’ve got a sales quota, and just about every sales person does, obviously, you need to meet or exceed your quota or else your job could be in jeopardy.  So make sure that the sales goals that you set for yourself exceeds the sales quota that your boss sets for you. 

Once you have established how much you want to sell next year, break the goal down into smaller sub-goals.  With a little bit of math, you can now deduce your quarterly goals, your monthly goals, your weekly goals and even your average daily sales goals.  These are your benchmarks.  For instance, if you set a goal of $1 million in sales for the year, then you know that you have to sell $250,000 per quarter in order to reach that goal.  If you divide your quarterly goals by 3, then you know that you have to sell $83,333.33 each month in order to stay on track for your annual goals.  Subsequently, if you divide the monthly goal by 4 weeks, that gives you your weekly goals, ect.  Keep in mind that the benchmarks are averages.  You could have one down week, or one down month, or one down quarter, but by tracking your benchmarks, you’ll know exactly where you stand in your path to your annual goal, and you’ll know early in the process if you have to make up for loss ground.

And don’t rely on your memory.  Write down ALL of your goals.  Whether they are daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annual goals, make sure that you are writing them down and reviewing them on a regular basis in order to keep you focused and on task.  In fact, you could take it to the next level by writing out your 3-year goals, your 5-year goals, your 10-year goals and your 20-year goals.  By writing out your goals, you are taking an active role in your future and not just letting the winds of circumstance take you where ever they may be blowing.

Once you have set your goals and your benchmarks, the next step is to sit down and write out a detailed plan about what you intend to do to achieve your goals.  The goals are the map, the benchmarks are the path and your plan is the detailed directions.  Most intelligent people wouldn’t dream of embarking on a trip to a new destination without a map, yet the majority of people take the most important journey of their life, their future, without any advanced planning whatsoever.  Your plan should detail what you are going to do differently and better than what you did last year in order to improve your results.  Goal setting should top that list.  If you write out your goals and the detailed plan to achieve your goals, and you diligently work your plan, you can and will accomplish anything you set your mind to.  See you on the road to success.       

When I was still in my early 30’s, I remember a conversation that I had with my physician.  I had been experiencing some stomach issues and was visiting my doctor in order to try and determine what was causing the problem.  I had always been fit, active and healthy, and since I was relatively young at that time, I couldn’t imagine what was wrong.  Anyway, as part of his examination, the doctor asked me what I did for a living.  When I told him that I was a salesman, I’ll never forget his response.  He just laughed.  Not like a big, boisterous laugh or anything.  Just a little chuckle.  And then he said something to the effect that “no wonder I was having stomach issues and that it was probably just related to stress”.  The way he said it, I know that he wasn’t trying to be funny and he wasn’t just making some off hand comment.  He said it in a matter-of-fact way that I knew at the time he was just trying to be, well, factual.  Being so young at the time, I dissmissed his comment as being prejudicial of sales, but looking back now, I realize why he said what he said.

Sales can be a high stress, high pressure environment to work in, day in and day out.  Especially if you allow it to be.  It’s our job to find business and whether we are successful or whether we are not successful can affect a lot of people.  Sales is almost like the old ”hunter/gathers” of years past.  Sometimes the lives of entire tribes of people depended upon a few select individuals to go forth and hunt for food.  Imagine how difficult it must have been to hunt before the advent of guns.  That’s sometimes the way sales is.  It’s not like you can just get a prospect in the crosshairs of your scope and just pull the trigger.  It’s more like hunting with a spear.  First you have to find a good hunting ground (good leads).  Then you have to be able to skillfully stalk your prey (prospecting).  And finally you have to make sure that you’re in good position to go in for the kill (make the sale).  It took a lot of practice and experience to become a great hunter and not everyone was cut out for this type of work.  Imagine the pressure these hunters must have felt, knowing that they had a hungry family or large tribe waiting and counting on them to return with a bountiful feast.  Sales is lot like that.

So what can you do about it?  Well, first you need to understand that just like hunting, sales takes skill, practice and experience.  I don’t believe that anyone is born to sell.  You might be born with some natural talents that can transfer well to a selling career, but no one can become a great salesperson without hard work, dedication and time.  I’m reading Brian Tracy’s book “Eat That Frog!” right now and in chapter 4, entitled Consider The Consequences, there is a sentence that says, “Successful people have a clear future orientation”.  What the author is saying in this chapter is that in order to make good decisions in the present, you have to have a clear picture in your mind of what you want in the long term future.  This is especially relevant to selling.  If you want to be great at selling at some future point, you need to dedicate yourself to that goal right now.  You cannot sit on your butt all year, doing nothing, and then decide that you need to make some sales today.  Do something everyday that leads you to greatness and eventually you’ll get there.  Commit yourself to reading great books on selling.  By becoming a student of selling, you will remove the pressure and stress of selling because you will understand your field better than anyone.  And knowing in your heart that you are seriously doing everything that you can do to become the best in your field will go a long way to relieving you of the daily pressure of selling because you are focused on the long term and you will come to realize that if you just keep studying, you will one day soon get to where you want to be.  

Sales is all about focusing on the future.  When you know more about selling than your sales manager knows about selling, there will no longer be any pressure on you, because you will know that not only is pressure unhealthy, but it also makes for bad sales habits.  Like any performance, the less pressure you put on yourself, the better you will come across to your prospects because you’ll be more natural and more relaxed.  And one more thing.  As I said, stress is also very unhealthy and can lead to serious medical issues.  No career and no amount of success is worth getting sick over or dying for.  So chill out, study hard and relax your way to sales success.           

If you are completely satisfied with your current station in life, then keep doing whatever it is that you are doing.  But if you’re like most people, and you feel like you haven’t peaked and can still continue to improve your life in some way, then I want to ask you, what are you going to do different today than what you did yesterday?  Human beings are creatures of habit; really bad creatures of habit.  We want our lives to improve, but we refuse to recognize that in order for our lives to improve we’ve got to change the way we think and change the way we do things.   How can our lives get better if we aren’t willing to do the work that is required for US to be better? 

Fear is what keeps us from changing.  That little voice inside all of our heads knows us better than anyone.  That familiarity allows that voice to push our hot buttons of fear in ways that are so effective that we don’t even realize what’s happening.  “You’ll never be successful”.  “You can’t do that.”  “It’s never been done before.”  “What makes you think you’re so special”.  “You’ll fail and everyone will laugh at you”.  And on and on and on…  These thoughts and many more just like them echo in our heads over and over and over throughout the course of everyday.  It’s such a constant drone that we don’t even pay much attention to these types of thoughts anymore because we’ve become so used to them.  Unfortunately, they are silently controlling and shaping our future by convincing us over time that we are stuck with who and what we are and that there’s just no reason to even try to change.  We have convinced ourselves before we even begin to try some new endeavor, that there’s no reason to try.   This is called pre-conditioned for failure, and we do it to ourselves.   Sometimes you’re best friends or your closest family members, all well meaning and with a desire to save you from the pain of failure, allow their pre-conditioning for failure to influence you.  But it’s you that allows them to do this.

Even when we finally somehow manage to sum up the courage to try something different, our pre-conditioning for failure usually has us give up and quit at the first signs of resistance.   Remember, nothing of any noteworthy accomplishment ever comes easy.  And even more important keep in mind is the fact that it’s in the struggles and striving of changing that we learn the most and it’s in learning that we succeed.  Resistance is how you make a muscle stronger and your brain is you’re most important muscle.  Stephen Hawkins is a quadriplegic, stuck in a wheelchair, unable to talk, but he is one of the smartest men that ever lived.  If you have full use of your limbs and your voice, what are you afraid of?  If the answer to this question is that you aren’t afraid of anything, then I ask you again, “What are you going to do different today”?    

Lee Iacocca wrote a book this year entitled “Where Have All The Leaders Gone”?  In the book, Iacocca takes acceptance to the present day politicians that are running our country.  And with good reason.  The book was written well before anyone ever knew about or could possible have predicted the economic tsunami that has it’s beginning in the United States and seems to be plundering the entire global economy into a recession.  The United States sees itself as a world leader, but yet we led the rest of the world into a financial disaster of unprecedented historic proportions.  What the final results will be from this economic collapse is impossible to foretell.  But I can tell you what led us to this point; pure, unadulterated greed stemming from our leaders that have pointed us in the wrong direction.

If you look up the word “leadership” in the dictionary, it means to “guide” or ”provide direction”.  That’s what leadership is supposed to do.  Great leaders motivate us and inspire us to reach our full potential through higher principals and moral, ethical behavior.  And the best way to lead is through example.  But if you take a look around at our so called “heroes” and ”role-models”, you’ll find out what our leaders really are pushing.  Who and what you worship says everything about you, and in the United States of American, money, fame and quick fortune have replaced God, ethics and morals and hard-work.  Americans have grown up and become so indoctrinated in a culture of more is better that we have lost our way.  ”Success at any cost” is our new mantra and we’re spreading that message around the world like it’s the word of God.

When I think of our national leaders, I am reminded of the Hans Anderson story “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, in which everyone was trying to pretend that they could see the Emperor’s clothes, when in reality, he was really naked.  Our leadership is naked; they are nude of ideas, nude of direction and nude of humility.  And we are all buying into the lie.  The leadership in this country has us all convinced that all we need to fulfill our potential is bigger houses, newer cars and more money.   But these things don’t lead to happiness, they only lead to gratification.  And if you think about it, most of the things that provide us with gratification actually lead you away from long-term happiness and vice-a-versa.

It’s time to reshape our national culture of “more is better”.  And I think the first place to begin is with term limits for Congress.  The less our politicians are concerned with re-election, the more likely they will be focused on leading and serving their constituency, and less likely they are to be seduced by the siren songs of money, fame and fortune that seem to be the ubiquitous beck and call of Washington politics.

It can be argued that the most successful companies are also the firms that turn out the most leaders. Harvard, for instance, develops an inordinate amount of our country’s leaders, and of course, Harvard is one of our country’s most notably successful programs of educational excellence. You might argue that Harvard is, by nature of being an educational institution, in the business of developing students into leaders. But I will argue that so is every other school that Harvard competes against and most of them don’t turn out nearly as many leaders.

Leadership is a rare trait. I’m tempted to say that leadership is rare in these days and times, but honestly, if you study history, great leaders have always been in short supply. Being the head of an organization does not automatically qualify you as a leader. And vice-a-versa, the fact that you may not head up your department or your office or your firm does not disqualify you from assuming a leadership position. Leaders can come from all walks of life. Anyone can be a leader if they so desire. All that is required is a concrete set of ethical behaviors, moral standards and emotional intelligence.

My point is not to belabor what constitutes leadership qualities, but rather to impress the importance of developing future leaders. I believe that in order for a business to be successful, it must first and foremost focus a majority of its resources on leadership development.

Yes, it’s true that the first order of business for any and all enterprises is survival, and for most businesses, that means economic sustainability. Profitability is the life-blood of most organizations and must be high on the list of priorities. But I want to point out that most small businesses operate on the assumption that profitability is the chicken and everything else that comes after it is the egg. How do we know that leadership isn’t the chicken and profitability isn’t the egg? Maybe the products and services that our businesses render are not really the main products and services that we think we render. Maybe our main product is really leadership and leadership development. And perhaps by focusing on developing leaders within our businesses we can increase our firms productivity, market share and profits. After all, wouldn’t most of your prospective customers rather engage with a person whom displays extraordinary leadership abilities?

This coming November, the United States is faced with a clear choice, between more of the same old politics or change.  McCain has tried to steal Obama’s catch-phrase of “change”, but come on, let’s get serious.  What does a 72-year old know about change?  John McCain has been a US Senator for over 25-years and during that time, our country has stuck it’s heals in the sand and fought change tooth and nail.

I was a child when John Kennedy was first elected president, but I can still recall the excitement that hung in the air like smoke on the water.  The United States fully rebounded from the Second World War and our stature as a world leader was confirmed.  By electing a young and charismatic president, we sent a strong signal to the world that our country was ready to move into the future brimming with confidence and we were electing a young, new leader to get us there.  In his short tenure as president, John Kennedy inspired a nation of young people to look beyond their own self interests and to reach for their full potential by striving to serve the world’s greater good.  John Kennedy was a rare and visionary leader and because of that, he posed a threat to the old guard.  True leaders are far and few between.  Leaders cannot be created or promoted.  Leadership cannot be taught or learned.  Real leadership come from the soul.  Leadership is derived out of an ingrained sense of purpose and servitude.  There is no substitute for leadership.

Our form of government is the world’s greatest not because our leaders created it, but because it has created leaders.  Democracy is the best form of government because it fosters an atmosphere of leadership development by creating the environment and the conditions that allows for men and women to strive to reach for their full potential.

As Peter Drucker wrote in ”The Practice of Management”, “Leadership is the lifting of a man’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a man’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a man’s personality beyond its normal limitations. ”  “Nothing better prepares the ground for such leadership than a spirit…that confirms in the day-to-day practices…strict principles of conduct and responsibility, high standards of performance, and respect for the individual and his work.”

This entire campaign has put on display an old man striving desperately to cling to his good old boy power with old ideas and worn out tactics of bullying and disrespect for anyone that may disagree with him against a brash, intelligent, young leader with new insights and fresh creativity borne of his multi-racial cultural upbringing and his advanced education.

Obama understands better than anyone that our country needs a change in direction.  As every business 101 student can tell you, change is inevitable and change is almost always for the best.  Change makes us stronger by keeping us on our toes and preventing us from resting on our laurels.  And more importantly, whether you like it or not, and whether you are ready for it or not, change is coming.  You might as well accept it and prepare your best to meet the challenge.  Nothing stands still.  The world continues to revolve and not acknowledging it won’t stop it. 

The United States stands on the precipice of a changing future.  We can either lead the world with new ideas or we will be surpassed by others with new ideas.  Barack Obama has the vision to lead our country into a new tomorrow.  A vote for Barack Obama is a vote for hope.  Vote for Barack Obama.