390 | Creating the Courage to Lead

Having the courage to lead is often overlooked. I want you to bring your courage front and center. I talk to dozens of leaders and founders each week. I am never surprised that successful people struggle with fear and hesitate to make big decisions, especially when it comes to money and investing in their business. Today, I share with you how to have the courage to lead. Much of this episode is not even about leadership. I relate how learning to lead and learning to dance are similar. Discover how you can increase your capacity for courage and how you can increase your courage to lead.

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Creating the Courage to Lead: The Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.

Are you committed to your success this year? Are you truly committed to everything that you have in front of you, to make that a reality?

I love the new year, I love the whole process of ending the year on a little bit of a downtime so that I have time to think, I have time to look back at the year, and to have time to look forward and make some new intentions for myself. This video is about how I do it. But also, hopefully you can pull from this to help you make the most out of 2019.

My name is Gene Hammett. I work with and I study fast-growth companies, the top 1%. These are the Inc. 5,000. If you know that list, the first 10 are growing so astronomically, it’s not even, seem possible for most people.

I interviewed someone a few months ago, Ben Wright, who has grown his business, sorry, got tongue-tied there. Has grown his business 39,000% over a three year period. 39,000%, how is that even possible? He has just under 50 million in revenue with the time of that. He has grown since then. And I love to understand what it takes for companies to grow that fast. Now, part of that is their intention to success, their intention to new strategies and new growth.

Many times I’m talking to companies, they can’t do what they did last year, just a little bit better. That’s what big corporations do. They look for a 10% growth, and they’re happy with it. They’re very okay with 10%. Now, if you were growing at 10%, maybe you’re happy at that. But your employees, the people that have trusted in you to grow their careers and their values, are they happy with a 10% growth? Not just in their revenue, but in their ability to deliver value in this world? Probably not. So one of the things that I do in making a commitment to the new year is I look back at the numbers.

I look back at the revenue, I look back at the profit, I look back at my expenses, I look back at some of the key metrics is around how many speaking gigs did I get. I’m sure you probably have a different number that’s important to you. But what are the numbers that are important to you? And I look back, and I can give myself an honest assessment of how I performed on that period.

Now, if you’ve done your accounting right, if you’ve done your key metrics, and you understand your business, then this should be pretty easy. You should be able to look at that. And be honest with yourself. That’s the hard part. Of how did you perform on those numbers? You know, if you add into it what you intended to do, your goals, it doesn’t always match up. And then, sometimes, people beat themselves up and they start to exist in a place of fear and doubt, and I don’t want you to go there. I want you to just look at this objectively and say, well, who was I being to receive that? Because what you have created is all about who you showed up as, your being in this world. And you must be clear about that. Now this next phase I look at is, I really start thinking about what’s most important to me.

What are the most important projects or most important goals for me to hit? Now, I don’t have to get very specific with this, but I just have to look at my business and go, is my most important thing from last year different? For me, this year, it’s not any different. The most important aspect of my business is the speaking because the speaking is a 70% of all of the new clients I get from my consulting or coaching business, and is a huge part of my business overall. So it is still the most important thing. So you need to make the decision, what is the most important aspect of your business? Not three things, what is the one thing?

I love that I have Jay Papasan on the show a long time ago. And I’ve had many people talk about the importance of that one thing, finding out that one thing, would really help you. Now, when you have the one thing, then I’m gonna ask you to go into phase three, and that is looking at your systems. Which systems are actually feeding into that one thing? Do you have them optimized? Do you have everything that you need? If you had the chance to double your revenue in the next year, would you be ready for it?

For me, I would be. I would totally be ready for new so I can go out there and confidently build my business, get more clients, get more speaking, do all that stuff, I can double my business without a shadow of a doubt. I could probably triple my business and maybe even more. And that is exciting to me because I know that I can focus on the right things. But you have to look at the systems inside the business. Now, phase four is about the goals, where I get very specific about what I want and when I want them by.

Now, I get this, I do this for the year first, and then I break it down into the quarter, and then I break it down into the month, and then I break it down into two week increments. I had Todd Herman on my show, and some of this work comes from his program, 90 Day Year, but I really believe that if you had the foresight to know what you needed to do over a year, you can easily get to the first 90 days. And then from there, you can go to the month. And then you build a two week game plan so that you can move forward with complete commitment to who you are and where you’re going. You would have, and can shut everything else out that doesn’t matter, and you just stay really focused on those things, committed to that. So if you’re committed to the new year, you must be committed to yourself and about you becoming the person to receive those goals. And so, part of that process is about what do you need to let go of from last year to move into this new year? For me, I need to let go of the marketing that I put so much time and effort into. And I actually think these videos are part of my marketing. I’ve been streamlining this, I’ve been trying to create systems around it, I’ve been working with my team, so I have people to help me edit the videos and help me get them out into the marketplace, help me put social media together. All of the stuff has helped through my team. And I wanna make them better for you. But I also wanna make them take less of my time so that I can focus on what’s most important in the business, which is the sales side of getting the speaking gigs and bringing up clients.

Now, I do care about serving the clients, I do care about delivering amazing speeches, but I know that for me to grow the business the way I want to and to be able to hire more people and to be able to make the impact I want in the world, I have to speak more. So I get really clear about that. And everything gets aligned around that. Even my team is aware of what’s most important to me and to the growth of the business. And when all that alignment takes place, you can do a lot more things with leadership and casting the vision you need to cast. So that’s my take. My question is, if you’re committed to the new year, are you committed to the new you? So as always, lead with courage, and I’ll see you next time.

Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.

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