I’ve just wrapped up a 7 city speaking tour with EO & YPO in India.  Crazy schedule to hit this 7 cities between Jan 8-19th – but we pulled it off.

Too many business lessons to cover in just one post, however, one that jumped out at me in every city was that Indian entrepreneurs focus differently.  They almost never own or run just one company, they all seemed to run between 4-7 companies each.

They see running multiple companies as diversifying, and hedging their risk.  They don’t build companies for the purpose of selling them, they build them to give themselves cash flow for better lives, and to re-invest in other business ventures.

Prior to coming to India, I’d have pushed entrepreneurs hard to only run one company at a time.  Now, I truly see the value in running multiple companies at once.  However, to do it right, Indian entrepreneurs put solid CEOs or Presidents in place to run each of their companies.  They don’t micro manage them.  And they don’t stay overly involved in each of them.  They build them up, one at a time, then like children they set them free a little bit at a time, allowing each company to grow up and spin off it’s own rewards.

Focus on growing your leadership teams, and you could own multiple companies at once too…

Every company, and every person in a company should have their one thing to focus on.  Why everyone shows up and dives into email each day blows me away.

What’s your ONE thing that you need to get done today.  What’s your ONE thing that you need to get done next week, next quarter ?

Are you focused on it ?

For 3 years I’ve worked hard to build my name globally.  I’ve done paid speaking events at YPO & EO chapters in 18 countries, on 5 continents.  I coach CEOs in Geneva, Berlin, Mexico City, Australia, the UK, USA & Canada.  However, I realized when I was writing my 2013 Painted Picture that I’d forgotten my home market of Vancouver.

So I recalibrated.

During the next three year sprint, I’ll still work to deliver awesome speaking events globally, especially with EO & YPO.  I’ll still mentor and coach CEOs globally as well.  However, I’m now going to work hard to build my personal brand in the Vancouver market as a coach, mentor and board member for entrepreneurial companies. I’m going to hyper focus that effort even further, on companies that are Angel, VC and Private Equity funded to grow.  I’m the guy to help them grow from $1 Million to $100 Million.  And with less travel time, I can really dig into their companies even more to help them be successful faster.

Last week, I attended Mentor Tuesday and also attended the largest CVCA conference in 23 years (Canadian Venture Capital Association), with 650 attendees including about 100 from the United States, Europe, China and Brazil drawn to Canada’s economic stability and a private equity scene that is having successes not seen since before the global economic crisis.

This is the first time Bing Gordon of Kleiner Perkins came to Vancouver.  He was fantastic. And I sent out about 20 Tweets during his panel appearance as well.  Some other people too like Jeff Clavier of SoftTech VC attended and the whole room stopped buzzing to hinge on his every word.

American VCs coming up here like what they see in Vancouver.  There is a crisis of venture capital supply available in Canada and a surplus of innovative Canadian technology companies that could use the funds.

Steve Hnatiuk, the CVCA Conference Chair said:

“(Here in Canada) we’re funding fewer and fewer SME’s with less and less money and we’re working very hard to attract more domestic and foreign capital into our industry so we can recycle that money into more high growth companies.”

“Venture capital tends to move in long-term cycles. This particular one has been a bit more long-lasting and a bit deeper than usual. But, there are increasing signs of green shoots starting to spring up – there have been some quality exits lately and new funds being launched.”

“The giant tech firms (the Microsofts, Intels and Ciscos of the world) are sitting on $500 billion – and are going to have to invest some of that money in the companies in our portfolios if they want to keep one step ahead of the competition. Just look at Microsoft and Skype as one indicator of what lies ahead.”

On the PE side, it’s much brighter for Canada:

“Canadian buyout (private equity) returns are 16.8% over 5 years, compared to 5.3% in the US and 8.3% in Europe.  So Canadian private equity returns outperform the US by a factor of more than 3x and Europe by a factor of more than 2x.   Canada outperforms both the US and Europe by a wide margin over a 10 year horizon as well.”

These are all pretty exciting numbers – and it certainly feels like a wave of activity in the PE & VC space is starting to happen in Vancouver.  We’re fast becoming the Silicon Valley of the north.

It’s a surprisingly small, focused & vibrant community here in BC too.  I’m on a plane to Kelowna right now to attend MetaBridge as a VIP.  It’s a joint Silicon Valley & BC Tech mini-brain trust of about 50 big thinkers in the space.

Sure feels good to be focused for the next three years again…  Fun to be learning again too.

Over the years, I’ve kept an updated list of tips I’ve read about to stay focused.

Every six months, I’ll come across it and re-read it, and it always gives me a little boost of focus to get more done.

Hopefully some of these ideas will help you and your team focus more, too.

· Breathe – I saw a great speaker, Victoria Labalme, and during her talk she was quoting the famous mime Marcel Marceaux, under whom she had studied.  Marcel used to say, “breathe, breathe.”  And it’s amazing how just slowing down to breathe like they do in yoga really helps the brain focus.

· Compress Time - Pretend you only have two hours a day to work.  What three to five things would you do during those two hours a day? Once you know what those are, delegate or stop doing everything else that you currently do. And start doing only those three to five things all day, every day.

· Eat – Something! It’s hard to concentrate when your tummy is rumbling, so have a light snack before you settle in to work on your top priorities. Not only will you avoid the “When is lunch?” thoughts, a healthy snack will give you more energy and help you to think better, too. Cathy Stucker gave me this advice, and it’s one I always remember.

· Get out of email – Email has got to be one of the worst time-wasters ever.  Start your day working on one of your TOP 5 projects for the day.  Check email at 4pm and no earlier. It really can wait.  As soon as you start checking email, the temptation will be to get sucked into it, draining your productivity.

Years ago, at 9am, I sent all eight of my direct reports the same email: “Don’t tell anyone, but come find me in the boardroom right away.”  I then walked calmly to the boardroom.  Within three minutes, six of my eight reports were in the boardroom.  The other two were there by the five minute mark.  It quickly showed me and them how little they were focused on the critical projects and how distracted they could be with emails. I’ve even tried this with CEOs whom I mentor and coach.  Most of them fail terribly, calling me instantly.  A few are awesome, and don’t call until the following day, saying, “Sorry I didn’t get to you sooner, I’m doing what you told me and not checking email’.  AWESOME.

· Let Fear Guide You – Nothing helps you focus quite like it. Harness it.

· Minimize Distractions – I think there is actually a Latin phrase for this, but I have no idea what it is.  Essentially it means, “a messy desk is a messy mind.”  The more clutter you have on the desk, workstation and walls around you, the more distracted you are. Keeping a clean work area will help you focus.

· Put Your Headphones On – Put ‘em on, put on some great tunes, and crank out your work. I actually can be hyper-productive listening to a genre of music called “Psy-Trance.”  It’s gets every ounce of me pumped up and focused.

· Reward Yourself - Break your projects into small achievable parts and upon completion of each part give yourself a reward, like a night out.  I don’t allow myself a glass of wine with dinner unless I have the next day’s TOP 5 in writing.

· Set Timers – It may seem crazy, but you can use a simple timer. Set it for thirty minutes and then focus on ONE THING until the thirty minutes is up.

· Slay the Dragon – Figure out what the big ugly task is that you have to do today.  Then, start with it first. Once you have the thing you are dreading out of the way, the rest looks easy.

· Tell Two Others – Tell two to three people that you are going to do something and by when. Be very specific about the date and what the outcome will be.  Get them to tell you the key projects they will get done today, too.

· Turn Off The Damn “DING” – Turn off the notification on all software on your devices.  The last thing you want if you’re trying to focus is something telling you your attention is required elsewhere. Remember the old AOL,“You’ve got mail!” announcement? Evil. But it’s been replaced with a million other “dings,” “pings,” and “pop-ups.” You don’t need any of this when you’re trying to be productive.

· Write ‘Em Down – Know that saying, “out of sight, out of mind?” It applies to the items on your daily to-do list, so put your weekly and daily lists on a white board, flip chart, or even a Post-It note on your monitor.  I used an app called “Stickies” on my Mac.  Seeing your key projects in front of you all day will force you to focus.

Setting SMART goals is a powerful goal-setting strategy.
My version of the word SMART stands for:

•          S          Shared
•          M         Measurable
•          A          Attainable
•          R          Relevant
•          T          Time Based

Shared
Both the Manager and Employee have to feel it’s a good goal.  The goal has maximum buy-in when the subordinate sets it and both people commit to hitting it.

Measurable
The goal can be quantified or is at least tangible.  For example, ‘Move average contract size from $1,500 to $1,650.’  All goals should have a #, $ or % sign – otherwise they are too hazy.

Attainable
While it’s great to set lofty goals, you want goals to be achievable in order to build a culture of achievement.

Relevant
The goal has to be relevant and aligned with the objectives or goals the business area or company is working towards.  Otherwise, in a vacuum it may seem like a good goal, but no one really cares about it.

Time Based
Goals should be broken down into a sequence of goals based on time.  For example, ‘Ten calls per day this week.’  And those goals should be placed directly into your calendar for the exact time & day you’ll do the work.

Also, break the habit of allowing people to have all their goals due on the last day of the quarter.  It’s better to pepper the goals throughout the month/quarter/year.

How SMART are your goals for 2nd Quarter ?

The four areas that SMART Goals in your business are needed for are:

1. Revenue. Determine a solid revenue goal for the next twelve months.

2. Profit. Employees need a profit goal to guide them.

3. Customer Service. I highly recommend using the Net Promoter Score here. It’s the single easiest way to measure true satisfaction.

4. Employee Satisfaction. I also recommend using the Net Promoter Score for establishing the benchmark for employee satisfaction as well – one number from one easy question.

For each of these areas, leadership needs to determine a goal for each area. To ensure that the goals they come up with are SMART, I use these guidelines to help me (mine feature a slight variation on the popular business acronym):

S – Shared – Sharing goals with a coach, mentor or team member adds a little extra pressure to hit them.  I even share them with suppliers and clients.

M – Measurable – Put a number on each goal so you can easily say if the goals were hit or missed. Make the goals clear. Hazy goals produce hazy results.

A – Attainable – Your goal has to be remotely possible for it to be included.

R – Relevant – Ensure that all goals are worth working on.

T – Time-based – Put a date on goals if they’re due before December 31^st.

Once you have the goals set and the team is committed to hitting them, the next thing you need to do is discuss boundaries. That is to say, yes, you want to hit these goals, but to what extent? Would you work 90 hours a week to hit them, or at maximum, 45?  Would you give up equity in the company to raise money to help you hire people to hit the goals? What won’t you do?

Here are some example points that are worth discussing while you create your own list of boundaries:

· Amount of debt you’ll take on

· Number of hours you’ll work

· Number of days traveling you’re willing to put up with

· Percentage of profits you will share, 0-100%

· Percentage of equity you will give up in the company, 0-100%

· Will you complete any acquisitions? If so, how many?

· Would you fire ‘C’ or ‘B’ players? When?

It’s critical to have the discussions in advance.  Boundaries are like values–you can’t compromise them to win.

Years ago, Brian, the founder and CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, came up to my desk and said, “I’ve found it!”

And I was thinking, “you’ve found what?”

He explained that he came up with the “formula” to create the “flywheel effect” Jim Collins talks about.

Basically it amounted to this:

F x F x E = Success (being the flywheel effect kicking in)

Focus x Faith x Effort = Success

· Each letter is scored as a percentage out of 100

· You simply ask yourself on any given day:

o What percentage of today was I focused?

o What percentage of faith do I still have in my business?

o What percentage of effort did I put in?

Let’s say you were 50% focused, 50% faith, 50% effort– that only comes out to 12.5% chance of success, which is pretty crumby odds that you’ll succeed.  I wouldn’t bother starting.

But if you’re 80% focused, with 80% faith, and 80% effort on every day, or every week, if your whole business or you were that focused, have that much faith, and had that much effort being put in, then you have a 51.2% chance of success. Better but still not great. You might as well go put all your start-up money on red in Vegas and take one spin of the roulette wheel to see what happens and save yourself years of heartache.

If you want to build a great organization and double your revenue, double your profits and take the amount of days you’re working at and cut them by 50%, you’ve got to start getting in the range of 90 x 90 x 90 – which still only gets you to 72.8% chance of success.

To build the kinds of businesses like we did with College Pro Painters, Boyd Autobody, 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, you need 98% focus, 98% faith, and 98% effort – that gives you 94% chance of success.

I’m convinced that not doing this is why 85% of businesses in the United States and Canada fail within the first year.  Most of them don’t wake up in the morning doing this stuff.  They read great books and they don’t put any of it into practice.

Most companies and most employees wake up and start working on email with not a thought put into goals.  Most companies aren’t focused.

Flywheel

In Good To Great, Jim Collins described the Flywheel. In rough this is the analogy:

Are you doing what it takes to get your flywheel turning?

Picture a huge, heavy flywheel.

It’s a massive, metal disk mounted horizontally on an axle. It’s about 100 feet in diameter, 10 feet thick, and it weighs about 25 tons. That flywheel is your company.

Your job is to get that flywheel to move as fast as possible, because momentum — mass times velocity — is what will generate superior economic results over time.

Right now, the flywheel is at a standstill. To get it moving, you make a tremendous effort. You push with all of your might, and finally, you get the flywheel to inch forward. After two or three days of sustained effort, you get the flywheel to complete one entire turn.

You keep pushing, and the flywheel begins to move a bit faster. It takes a lot of work, but at last the flywheel makes a second rotation. You keep pushing steadily. It makes three turns, four turns, five, six. With each turn, it moves faster, and then — at some point, you can’t say exactly when — you break through.

The momentum of the heavy wheel kicks in your favor. It spins faster and faster, with its own weight propelling it. You aren’t pushing any harder, but the flywheel is accelerating, its momentum building, its speed increasing.

This is the Flywheel Effect. It’s what it feels like when you’re inside a company that makes the transition from good to great.

***So for the next two weeks when I’m on vacation, let me know in the comments here, what % chance you’re creating to get your flywheel spinning.

Christina Harbridge – an EO’er from SF asked – “What are the top 3 crushing (universal) problems facing an executive team?” These are my thots…

One day a management consultant, Ivy Lee, called on Schwab of the Bethlehem Steel Company. Lee briefly outlined his firm’s services, ending with the statement: “With our service, you’ll know how to manage better.”

The indignant Schwab said, “I’m not managing as well now as I know how. What we need around here is not more ‘knowing’ but more doing; not ‘knowledge’, but action; if you can give us something to pep us up to do the things we ALREADY KNOW we ought to do, I’ll gladly listen to you and pay you anything you ask.”

“Fine,” said Lee. “I can give you something in twenty minutes that will step up your action and doing at least fifty percent.”

“Okay,” said Schwab. “I have just about that much time before I must leave to catch a train. What’s your idea?”

Lee pulled a blank 3 x 5 note sheet out of his pocket, handed it to Schwab and said: “Write on this sheet the five most important tasks you have to do tomorrow.” That took about three minutes.

“Now,” said Lee, “Number them in the order of their importance.” Five more minutes passed.

“Now,” said Lee, “Put this sheet in your pocket and the first thing tomorrow morning, look at item one and start working on it. Pull the sheet out of your pocket every fifteen minutes and look at item one until it is finished. Then tackle item two in the same way, then item three. Do this until quitting time. Don’t be concerned if you only finished two or three, or even if you only finish one item. You’ll be working on the important ones. The others can wait. If you can’t finish them all by this method, you couldn’t with another method either, and without some system you’d probably not even decide which are most important.”

He went on, “Spend the last five minutes of every working day making out a ‘must do’ list for the next day’s tasks. After you’ve convinced yourself of the worth of this system, have your people try it. Try it out as long as you wish and then send me a check for what YOU think it’s worth.”

The whole interview lasted about 25 minutes. In two weeks, Schwab sent Lee a check for $25,000—a thousand dollars a minute. He added a note saying the lesson was the most profitable he had ever learned. Did it work? In five years it turned the unknown Bethlehem Steel Company into the biggest independent steel producer in the world, and made Schwab a hundred-million-dollar fortune, and the best known steel man alive at that time.

This story has been re-written in so many books and blogs, but the aforementioned version is the one with which I’m most familiar. The beauty of this story is that it outlines one of the simplest tools for setting goals that I’ve ever encountered. I’ve found it so helpful in keeping me on-task and on-time that, in addition to using the “TOP 5” method on a daily basis, I use the same concept to stay focused on quarterly, monthly, and weekly goals, too. Although the original story may involve drafting up your top six goals each day, I use variations on the number—“TOP 5” and “TOP 3”–depending on the area of business with which I’m working. The thinking is simple: The lower the number, the more focus I hope to impart.  No matter which number you use, or which version of the story you’ve read, this is pretty darn close to exactly what happened.

And I’ve just recently begun using Teamly to totally manage my TOP 5 program daily & weekly.  Try it.  Or stay stuck in email.

Oh ya, and if this helps you grow your company, you’re welcome to send me a check for what ever you think it was worth to you too. 

I don’t need to push many Entrepreneurs to set goals.  We do that naturally.

I do, however, need to push them to see how far they’ve come.

A great way to feel good about yourself, and to relax a bit, is at the end of each week reviewing everything you got done.

Write down a list of the TOP 5 things you accomplished and let it sink in.  Allow yourself to feel good about what you got done before you set next week’s tasks.

If you’re always focused on the horizon you’ll never relax.  When was the last time you got to the horizon? It keeps moving.  Just like you keep setting new goals.

Look in the rear view mirror to see how far you’ve come.  Then celebrate.  Then & only then, should you set your new goals.