Life Lesson

Unlocking Potential: Interview #6

Garth Beyer

People can hate on Twitter as much as they want, but the Twitterverse is where I met Clemens Rettich, a small business consultant. Having sent a few tweets back and forth with him, as well as contributed to his #smbfunchat where I learned a handful of tips that helped me jumpstart my passion in consulting, I could not think of a better person to participate in the sixth interview of my Unlocking Potential series.

Whether Clemens is aware of it (obviously now he will be), he was a great inspiration for me to learn more about what it takes to successfully run a business as I often studied from his website/blog which there is a link to at the end of this post. It is an honor to be the one to share with you a bit more about Clemens, his worldview, his operation for consulting and some of the most straightforward life lessons you will learn one way or another, by Clemens or by life.

Without further ado,

Q: Everyone can read your bio by clicking on your name, so let’s dive more into what you do. What is your passion? Do you have a daily routine?

I love the beauty of things done well, of things and processes beautifully designed and executed, of those points where art, business, science, or sport come together to create something magical. My passion is to have some role to play in making that happen. In particular I love to help it happen in small businesses, teams, and organizations.

My daily routine is only moderately routine. It happens many days, but not every day. I work with clients 4 days of the week. I take 3 days to recharge, create, reconnect, rest. My days start with brisk walks and fruit smoothies… making coffee for my wife and I to talk over. Then it is time for email, client conversations, travel, shopping, organizing life… I love cooking so that is my late-in-the day pause to shift out of work for a while before diving back in again for the evening. I work about 70 – 80 hours a week.

Q: What is the biggest decision you have had to make?

To act without fear. And it is a decision I have to make every morning. Like paying your dues, this is one that you never stop doing. Paying your dues is never a thing to think of in past tense. A life to be lived fully, has to be paid for handsomely. There is nothing wrong with being afraid. True fearlessness is just another form of stupidity. It is the choice to act on those fears that matters. And I have to make that decision each morning… and sometimes several times in the day. This conversation I am about to have, or this decision I need to make, or this action I have to take, scares the hell out of me. But it needs to be done. And that decision to act without fear is the biggest one I make.

Q: How do you tug your client’s imagination and motivation? What is the core of your professional relationship between them?

The core of my professional relationship with my clients is active listening. Listening until my bones ache. When I do presentations or keynotes, I tell people that if you aren’t exhausted after a day of communicating, you haven’t been listening hard enough. Listening to every word, every implied word, and every telling silence is exhausting. That I why I try to limit my day to 2 – 4 coaching conversations maximum, and only 4 days a week at that. I’m no good to anyone after more than 4 or 5 hours of conversation.

I evoke imagination and motivation by responding to what I hear with suggestions from outside my client’s frame of reference. Nothing new there. It is the old lateral thinking, disruptive creativity, non-linear connection of ideas that still works. Most of the time the best ideas are my clients’. They just can’t hear themselves say them. So I just tell them what they just said. And I use a gift I have had since childhood: I connect “unrelated” things easily. A client can be telling me of a financial challenge, and for some reason it makes me think of another client’s story about a motorcycle they just bought. Something in the intersection of the two things creates a fresh approach to reframe the question or problem. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard myself say “Your problem isn’t A, it’s B!” The answer wasn’t coming because the question was wrong.

There is nothing particularly unique or gifted about my mind. 90% of the time there is a great idea or breakthrough of some kind it’s not because I am smart or anything, it is simply because I have outsider status and have my client’s permission to speak my mind. There are few things more powerful than an outsider’s perception, when the currency between the insider and the outsider is complete honesty.

Q: Would you mind sharing one of your biggest failures?

I can’t go into details because they usually involve others. But I can say they almost always involved one thing: a failing of confidence on my part. I fail when I make decisions based on “settling for second-best” or on not having the confidence to push through a tough patch. Dodging conflict has also been pretty consistently a disaster, so I do a hell of a lot less of that in this part of my life.

Q: What did you learn from it? What would you do differently if a similar situation occurred?

It took me about 40 years to learn, and much of that in the last 10 years, but these days I stick closer to my own sense of right and wrong. I don’t mind conflict over something I believe in. I have started to see that the worst that can happen is not a hell of a lot. I trust my own experience, my own sense of things.

Q: This series is a lot about giving credit where credit is due. It’s about reaching out to both, people who could use a little help unlocking their potential and people who can help with that unlocking. Do you have a business mentor who helped curate your passion for small business consulting? What were the mentor’s practices? In other words, how did this person make an impact on you?

Where credit is due is first and foremost to my wife and family. Their passion for great moments, for things done right, for finding that place between standing your own ground and understanding the value of others, has been critical in making me who I am. On the small business side I don’t have any direct mentors. My biggest mentors are my clients. Every one of them owns a small business that is everything they have on the financial and other levels. Yet they trust me and have the confidence in me to invite me in and work with me to change the game. This can be incredibly scary and requires huge trust, particularly if I am asking an owner to change something that they have done for years, and is connected to their own personal values. Every time the change happens, and the owner let’s go, I am in awe. I know from personal experience how incredibly hard that is, even terrifying, yet they do it with me. That makes life worth getting up for each morning.

Also, I am the collective wisdom of every small business owner who has ever brought me into their inner circle and shared with me the workings of their businesses, their successes and failures, what has gotten them out of bed in the morning and kept them up at night. All of that is in my head. Any wisdom I bring to a coaching conversation now is 90% the collective wisdom of a lot of tough, hungry, street-smart business owners who have spent almost every day of their own lives pulling on their shoes and making life happen.

Q: What is your worst fear?

Missing something. I’m not like all those wise ‘old souls’ out there in the world of patchouli oil and Birkenstocks. I can’t get enough of anything. I love being alive and learning and consuming and enjoying. I guess I’m a young soul if you believe in that kind of thing… I don’t believe in that ‘vale of tears’ nonsense or that our bodies are “just material”… I love being alive and on this earth and have no interest in waiting for some ‘other later’ reality. I like this one. A lot. There is a reason why Walt Whitman is one of my favorite poets. So ya, I’m afraid of missing stuff. I want to live 1,000 years and try it all!

Q: What is the biggest obstacle/challenge you have had to overcome?

All that stuff about fear I talked about above. The rest is relatively easy. Following a close second would be bootstrapping my business. You build up a lot of debt in the first few years, and you have to be crazy careful not to let that cross the line where it erodes cash flow in a fatal way.

Q: What is the biggest challenge todays small business leaders are facing?

Gerber got it right: failing to understand that baking and owning a bakery are two completely different things. The biggest challenge they are facing is a world of ignorance and bullshit. All that “do what you love and the money will follow” nonsense. Running and growing a small business successfully is probably the most complex thing a human being can do. The number of things you have to know about and do right, and do right consistently, every day for a decade or two, is staggering.

So no, it isn’t the economy, or competition, or offshoring, or anything else like that. Those things are huge challenges, but they are not the biggest. The biggest challenge is the romantic mythology, especially in America, of owning your own business.

Q: What do you do to continue your growth as a consultant?

Listen to my clients. Listen to the market. Respond with an ever-broader and more diversified and responsive set of products and services. My new book Great Performances – The Small Business Script for the 21st Century is a piece of that. It is setting up a whole new way for me to connect with and support more small businesses to be successful.

And never forgetting who brung ya to the dance. I am a passionate believer in the power of follow-through and great long-term relationship development. I drop the ball lots, but I don’t ever stop trying to stay in touch with and add value to every business I have ever worked with.

Q: What are the golden life lessons you have learned and are willing to share with the readers from your experience as a small business consultant?

Spend more resources on keeping customers and employees than getting new ones. Don’t ever make the mistake that solid systems and procedures, creativity, and relationships are mutually exclusive. That is a myth that simply doesn’t exist in the world of the performing arts. Any ballet dancer, classical violinist, or rep actor could run circles around business people when it comes to getting that. Discipline, practice, organization, systems, all those things aren’t killers of creativity, they are the world’s best support for it.

So work harder to hang on to people, and work harder to bring more organization and systems to your business. Don’t shy away from that stuff.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Some great places to find Clemens’s work:

Have more questions, topics of discussion or simply want to give a shout out to Clemens, you can tweet him @ClemensRettich.

 

Stay Positive & Stick To The Fundamentals, Or At Least Learn Them First

Garth E. Beyer

Select Motoraction

Garth Beyer

Once you decide:

You can live your life to the maximum, you can eliminate fear and fully succumb to every urge, every desire, every temptation. But there is a catch. (there always is)

Just because you can now go HUGE, not just big, in whatever you want, you still have a consistent choice to make.

Now that you will go all the way through, reach your highest potential, give it your all with whatever you do, what is it you’re going to do?

I call this Select Motoraction. It’s the choice each of us has to make. Your actions are now motorized, there is no hesitation, creation of a safety net or fear in anything you do. It’s a trait so few people have and even fewer people can handle because they don’t understand you have to be selective with it. You don’t have to be careful any longer, but you must still be smart. You can be as reckless and risk taking as you want, but you can’t be stupid about it. You have to be selective of your motoraction.

Living a full life is simple:

1. Decide to give it your all

2. Be selective of what you give your all

 

Stay Positive & Do The Two Step

Garth E. Beyer

Temporary Satisfaction

Garth Beyer

is a lot like cautious optimism.

Optimism is very one-sided, direct, a subjective view. But when you put the word “cautious” before it, you are tugging the true meaning in order to find balance, to play it safe.

Why?

Why seek balance, why settle for temporary, why try to make a net in case you fall? Why, when you can have complete optimism, complete satisfaction, complete certainty in your temptations, emotions, and attitude.

All it comes down to is your decision. And I never see anyone fail who says and lives the saying “Go BIG or go home”.

 

Stay Positive & Decide (and don’t look back)

Garth E. Beyer

The Moment Your Work Becomes Easy

Garth Beyer

It means that you are playing it safe, that you have gotten comfortable.

Yes, you can be painting 25 portraits a week, writing 11 hours a day, starting a new business every 13 months and that is A LOT to do. But if it’s easy, if it has become habit, a routine that you know you have to do and you do it half-consciously, then it loses its meaning.

The saying goes that if you aren’t getting better, you are getting worse. There are millions of artists, writers and entrepreneurs painting one more portrait than you, writing for one more hour than you, and starting one more business than you. The experience they get from doing just a bit more trumps you considerably. 

By being “trumped”, I mean, you’re fired and they’re hired. All because you quit pushing yourself and increasing the difficulty level.

— I’ve written every day, typically winding up publishing what I write. I also have a steady writing/editing job. On the side, I write in every category of writing words will stay and force the words where they wont stay just for experience. But it’s gotten easy. It’s natural for me to type anywhere from 300 – 3,000 words a day whether they are worth a damn or not. I think I may be standing still. —

And when that happens, when you stand still, when it becomes easy, there are two choices: settle a stay comfortable or do more, work harder, experience extra, invite challenges, and not go one mile further but aim for 10, 20, 30 miles ahead.

By the way, if you aren’t willing to run/paint/write/create/etc. more than you are now, drop out and find what will never be easy for you. Being comfortable and having your routine means that you are standing still.

And if you click the link, you know what I say: People die standing still.

 

Stay Positive & Aggrandize Your Passion

Garth E. Beyer

Die Early On To Live A Full Life

Garth Beyer

Death is meant to be superfluous, but it’s not. It’s important, it’s vital, I may even go so far as to say that it’s the meat-and-potatoes of your mom’s cooking – no meal is complete without meat-and-potatoes.

Death is an angel in disguise, a miracle worker’s shadow, god’s secret power, the greatest treasure in all the world, it is a stronger truth bearer than the greek mythological messenger, Iris.

Death has a message of its own. This message is one that should never need to be delivered but must. This message, once delivered, forces you to challenge every theory you have, it makes analyze your worldview, and it eliminates your perception of risk which is made by the amygdala.

Hundreds of thousands of cancer patients get this message every week. The message is that they only have three months to live. Or six weeks. Or twenty days. And just like that, life begins for them. Honestly. Passionately. Truthfully begins.

Jim Rohn says the following in his book The Seasons Of Life,

“It’s when a human, with sufficient disgust, desire, and determination to change his life finally steps up to the bar of human justice and shouts for all the world to hear, ‘I have had it with defeat and humiliation, and I will tolerate it not longer.’ That is when time, fate and circumstances call a hasty conference, and all three wearily agree, ‘We had best step aside, because we are powerless to stop that kind of resolve.'”

Must you die early on to live a full life? A life which uses your muse, passion, and creativity as the foundation. A life absent of fear, regret, self-degradation and hate. A life that remains intolerant to failure, set-backs, or humiliation. Must we die early on to live that life?

This is not a rhetorical question. The answer is yes. We really must die early on to live a full life.

Contrary to belief, terminal cancer patients are not the only ones who are lucky enough to die early on and live a full life. A rare headcount of people are lucky enough to die early. For some people it takes half of their lives to die and that only leaves half a life left to live, really live. For most, people never die until they are much too old to live. That is the death of death.

You’re likely confused, so let me elaborate. The death in which I write about is the death of the ego. When a person is diagnosed with terminal cancer, or hits rock bottom in life from drugs and alcohol, or gives so much love to one person and then that person leaves them, there is a shift in the psyche of that person. That shift is the death of their ego.

Upon their death, they question everything: tradition, their fears, their relationships, their work, their ethic, their personality… to discover what truly matters and to live a full passionate life.

The only thing I don’t know then is whether the miracle is being told you will die soon or the fact that after you are told, the cancer goes into remission, the addict never touches a drug again, the alcoholic never drinks, and the lover begins to love themself as much as they loved the other?

 

Stay Positive & Diagnose Yourself

Garth E. Beyer

What Is It That Drives Your Motivation?

Garth Beyer

Dear Garth,

I have been engaged in a series of processes, trials and tribulations in enacting a major lifestyle change, choosing to best emulate my thoughts and emotive responses in a physical manner. I find the faith in human ambition frighteningly low amongst many of my peers and I have a pressing question on my mind, as a friend. What is it that drives your motivation? You are perhaps one of the most influential and inspiring people that I have come to know and even the slightest of conversation on the question would be unfathomably appreciated. As always, I feverently wish you the best and I hope to talk to you soon. Feel free to respond at your leisure, I understand you are a busy man!

With the out most sincerity,
Seeker (maybe not so obviously not the real name)

 

Dearest Seeker,

If you are willing, I can offer even better assistance if I had more background knowledge on what has produced this current state of mind and tribulation.

However, I will still go ahead and explain a few theories of mine. Please note that I have made these realizations after much mind-ache and set backs, but I believe these are the golden nuggets of the little wisdom I have.

1. This is the most complicated one, so I thought I would put it first. You have to choose not to have a choice in whether you can be motivated or not be, whether you will kick out your to-do list or not, whether you can sleep in or not.

When people have a choice, it’s easy to choose the easy route, follow the status-quo, and do little. If you revoke this choice upon yourself (don’t feel that I am suggesting a dictatorship of humankind, only YOU have control of yourself, that is was I am aiming at)… as I was saying; If you revoke this choice upon yourself then “getting **** done” so-to-speak is not an option, it’s a life style.

2. There are two hard parts in the process of being motivated. The first is getting started. Starting an addiction that isn’t based on nicotine is as difficult as stopping an addiction that is. It’s going to suck and your life is going to try and reject your pursuit. I can’t tell you how many times I got headaches, sick, and all symptoms of sleep deprivation from trying to wake up earlier to write or stay up later to write. My understanding is the more times you bounce right back after getting knocked down, the more durable you become. It’s like building calluses around your passion.

The second hardest part I have come to find is what I call “the last 3,000 words”. It is gathering that positive mindset that starting and writing the first 32 thousand words will be easy and if you are going to believe that any part of it is going to be hard, let yourself believe the last 3,000 words will be the hard part (your goal is obviously 35,000 words). The reason being is that naturally we want to have reasons to stop, to not finish, to fold and throw down the towel. Too many people think the first 3,000 words are hard, or that halfway through, it will be too difficult, so they quit early. Fight that feeling. Imagine the last 3,000 being more difficult than everything else added up. The reason being is that when you go that far, when you get to 32 thousand words, the last 3,000 are easy, they always are and you will never quit that far into the game.

3. This one is simple. You have to fall in love with shipping. Shipping a product, shipping a song, shipping an idea, shipping a poem. Whatever it is, find a way to ship something everyday, fully completely finish something every day and give it to someone, share it, spread it. Once you start to ship, you can’t help but fall in love with it, so just keep shipping.

— I hope this helped and I look forward to discussing any matter further with you. I am never too busy for a friend.

Alas, reading over your request I fear that I may have neglected to answer your question specifically. You ask, “What is it that drives your motivation?”

To answer that question, it is my desired combination of selflessness and selfishness. I want as phenomenal of a life as possible, but I refuse to be the only one. The more happy I can make others, the more motivated I make others, the more I love others, the more happy, motivated and loved I can be.

With hope that I inspired,
– Garth E. Beyer

 

Stay Positive & Fearless: to ask, to try, to ship…

Garth E. Beyer

This Week’s To-Do List

Garth Beyer
  • Never stop improving
  • Learn the power of participative leadership
  • Share better choices
  • Have a position and support it
  • Anticipate counterarguments
  • Play the game differently
  • Motivate yourself with competition
  • Command the lectern
  • Collect feedback on your current project
  • If you don’t have a project, start one
  • Shine under scrutiny
  • Practice civility
  • Isolate your problems
  • Formulate workable solutions
  • Speak to the heart, with logic, with authority
  • Connect the audience with each other
  • Create prior credibility
  • Forget the “next big thing”
  • Adapt your story to the listener
  • Make buying less risky
  • Create momentum
  • Prepare dynamic meetings
  • Speak to outside groups
  • Value you
  • Keep your edge
  • Express your inner entrepreneur early
  • Embrace problems creatively
  • Pursue passion
  • Face the fear
  • Conquer hopelessness
  • Make a small difference
  • Determine your best time of day
  • List a handful of goals
  • Commit to a peak performance partner
  • Journal
  • Take a time out and get grounded
  • Narrow your focus
  • Take personal responsibility for everything
  • Remember your “why”
  • Outsource
  • Ask questions
  • Ask more questions
  • Autograph your excellence
  • Manifest several new ideas to keep the big idea going
  • Perform twenty mental push ups
  • Free your imagination
  • Find enthusiastic support
  • Don’t expect anything in return
  • Remember all the basics apply
  • Laugh a bit louder
  • Be human
  • Workout/Exercise
  • Practice prepared cleverness and unprepared cleverness
  • Keep being yourself
  • Punctuate and pause
  • Remain humble and teachable
  • Delegate
  • Create room at the top for other potential leaders
  • Accept, overcome, and adapt
  • Track time or find a way to make sleepless nights worth staying awake for
  • Do a vice check
  • Pump up the visuals
  • Focus on what you have, not on what you’ve lost
  • Keep moving – it’s harder to hit a moving target
  • Take breaks to do some cost cutting
  • Get ready to be wrong
  • Try

 

Stay Positive & Now You Have A To-Do List For Life

(It’s long, I know. But so is life)

Garth E. Beyer