Started the new gig.

Great.

Period.

Sure, there are new things to consider.  New people.  Possibly new drama.

But one thing I’m grateful for is IQ.

It’s always an elitist sounding thing, but I am serious when I say IQ matters.

Of course, you say “my IQ is very high”.  “I’m the smartest person I know”.

You’re not.  In fact, of all of my friends and colleagues past and present only 5% have an IQ that carry them through the toughest of times, the hardest of negotiations, and the drama of human interaction.  Those that aren’t distracted by the minutiae that kills deal-making are high volume thinkers.  Also, most people don’t even understand the concept of capacity and IQ.

I was thinking today that many of my past work environments haven’t simply had the people with capacity.  And while I don’t agree with anyone 100% of the time, the dilemmas, the challenges, the processes we must filter to accomplish our common goals (in my case, sales) is always easier if my superiors have the capacity.

Thank goodness they do today.  And I think that makes all the difference.

Is it the stage where you show your real self?

Is it the cringe of necessity that you avoid everyday?

It’s entirely up to you.

I recently became active in an astute network of sales professionals and I’d have to say, they make the old adage “it’s what you make it” — and today it’s also where you make it. These folks each rock $200k+ from their cars and nearby restaurants and if they’re like me maybe a little league ball field once in a while. What struck me most is that with the new face of work, work exists in all corners.  I knew this but it was clear again. The folks that are tied to desks in a remote location far from home don’t want you to know this but it’s true.

The main ingredients to someone being successful at work and away from the old norm is asking the right questions:

• Is what I do relevant to the stakeholders in my organization?
• Who am I scaring today?
• What risks am I taking today?
• What parts of the standard equation for my company, service, or products needs to be completely deleted?  And how can I get managers to change their notions of how that company, service, or product works better?

Every day, and even in dire, down times, I make sure that I keep the outside edge of my “work” on the fault line.  I try to push norms into not-so-norms and I bring new concepts to surface for the entire organization – whether that be my clients, prospects, bosses, or family members.  And even today, new forms, concepts, and approaches at my current company slowly rise to the surface that I had a hand in.

It’s not a solo world – yet.  But protecting who you are as an individual and making sure you’re able to stay in front is paramount right now.

I saw on Springwise that RAK is winding its way into day to day business now and that’s a great thing. I will always be one of those that believe the little, tiny, things we do every day without any thought of what it may return will always have a more profound effect long term.

Get out and think of something that you can do each day that moves the world a centimeter or so. Call your kid’s school and offer some time you don’t have. Offer to walk your neighbor’s dog or care for them when their out of town instead of their normal dog-sitting service.

Move the world. You’ll be glad you did.

Thanks to BCBCBC, I was able to show you. Please take 10 minutes on your coffee/smoke/doobie break and watch this. You might need the full screen mode to get out of my small blog limitations.

Are you a purpose motivator?

You should be.

This approach always careens of course.

In the years of being a seller I’ve learned to guide my prospects to a place that is sincere in it’s outcome. Lots of times in business we want to please and make the money and sale more than we want to be perfectly open about what will really happen or be delivered. Most times we find the prospect wanting a very specific outcome or scenario and because it might be close to the product or service we actually sell, we go for broke and bridge reality with hope. That hope almost always rings false and we upset our new customers. We then realize that it would have been better to have a sincere approach and to deliver what we had in the first place. Your company has spent so much on developing a good service. Stick with it. Sell what you know. Sell what IS, not what might be.

In our personal lives this happens all the time. There are so many people I know that have a delusional view of how they might be perceived and what they’re selling to their friends and partners. I’ve been there too.

It’s the subjective vs the objective.

Most people are in the middle somewhere. It’s hard to admit that you’re sailing along with a false perspective. The thing I try to do about the incongruences in my life is to live in the space where I’ve recognized them mutually with the ones I love and I commit to continue to work on them. It is always better to actively be working the issues at hand rather than avoiding them. It’s not a perfect approach, but the healthiest one. You’ll definitely find, as I have, that people will be quicker to forgive. In sales and business it’s the same — “I don’t have that, but I can deliver this 100%…” is going to prove way more successful in the long run. Give up on being all things to all people, especially your family.

Try it at home and on the job.

You’ll be glad you did.

Along life’s trail and as the road turns, we all come upon places where we need assistance to make it across a ravine or maybe even an ocean-sized gully in our life.  It’s a place where we are lucky to find that needed glass of water in what can be life’s example of a very dry desert.  The people that are there for us are called friends.  Some are called family.  But family and friends can intertwine.  I looked it up — Friend comes from the Old English word “freond” and it’s present participle base is “freon” or “to love”.

Love indeed.

You’re my friend.  I love you.  Simple.  I really do. Some people – especially dude friends – wiggle on that notion.

I caught up with a friend the other day that I hadn’t seen for more than four years.  He lives on the other side of the country.  We talk and email all the time, but don’t get the pleasure of hanging out much. We hung out over a very good pizza and then he went back to the airport and home.  I’m not sure if I’ll see him in person for a while, but I know we’re always going to be friends.  After we talked again by phone a few days later he said “love ya bye!” when he hung up.  It’s just how we are.  It’s kind of funny actually, especially if you knew this person. But this is how I am in some sort of fashion with most people I know.

There’s a value to friends.  A worthiness to human interaction that validates the crappy part of existence on the planet.  Even though I embrace the folks close to me, I am not a fan of humans overall.  I’ll probably never get into it here full speed, but let’s just say, IMHO, that we really and truly are the most selfish living specimen on Earth and I think we all know we will ultimately pay one day.  And helping a human IMHO is not the answer.  Trying to re-patch the devastation caused by our ways might be.  [And you thought I was a gardener for the hell of it.]  When I meet humans that take and take and take, I run. Recently, I’ve been a taker.

Some people love life because they have and need literally 100′s of friends and family members always in their life.  I’ve always been one to keep that paired down.  I always figured I could give X% more if I had less to handle.

Since I’m out in the business world every day, I am privileged to know a lot of great entrepreneurs who run businesses.  The successful ones are always enlightening.  One in particular that I met this week told me how her 23 year old business suffered last year due to the economy drop but was back up by 14% this year.  She and I wistfully reminisced about the three years before today.  The hey day.  The F. Scott Fitzgerald of it all.  Endless ATM withdrawals from our homes.  People in restaurants ordering that “extra bottle of wine” (I sell to restaurants) just because the financial pain was masked.  As she said, “it wasn’t going to end”.  “We all thought that”.

We did indeed.

Well, not only did it end, it crashed, and lots of pieces went every which way.  Because I’ve helped a lot of homeowners hold the line on foreclosures I can tell you that the folks out there with problems are in every single earning category.  I’ve been awakened to a new dawn.  And I take calls from past millionaires and paupers just the same.

In recent posts I have brought on a new outlook to life.  Rising.  Fresh.  New.  In so many ways, I have brought back the old me.  The bright outlook guy.  And I love this version of me.

But before that I (we) have been able to survive because of the generosity of many of the same types of friends that I mention above.  Because generosity means that there is a giver and a recipient, many times there are fractured relationships as a result.  Expectations set the baseline.  If expectations are high, there will be a crack somewhere. I know this for rote and therefore don’t usually set expectations.  It makes some people furious that I don’t.  They think I’m not strong somehow .  I am optimistic and I don’t define anything by one flash of time and I know it will always be OK, but I also know that can frustrate others.  I don’t mean to.  I also know that you don’t want me to base our friendship on your worst day or month or even year.

As Peter notes, we are using the emotional side of our lives to manage in places like business and with our day-to-day friends.  This place can be dark.  And until it comes completely to the surface, it’s difficult to address publicly.  But in the wake, people you work and live with get hurt if you’re not careful.  Dividing that in your mind is not so easy.

I wanted to mark a note here that none of the help and sustenance received by us in the recent past was taken for granted.  None of it will go unpaid.  None of it is a simple story with a quick ending.  I am always paying it forward for the very reason that the universe requires us keep the good news flowing whether it’s about money or just “enjoy your day” as I leave them.  We can all use good news right now and we’ve been fortunate enough to have good people in our lives for a very long time.  Some of you just call to be a very good ear and only want to know what I’M doing and it’s not forgotten.  Some gave lots of themselves, including dollars, blindly and without an expectation.  Others want the love returned ASAP.

To this end, we will live together and make good things happen for each other.  I know this and I hope you do too.

The news out there is not good.  Don’t stand in front of a television or near a radio these days.

You’ll cry and probably burn your eyes.

Remember that every motion in the universe is cyclical.

Great notice I saw on the wall of a pizza shop yesterday :: Don’t let yesterday fill up today.

You have an iPad for sale.  A stranger arrives at your home.  He kills you instead.  I’m not making light of the real-life incidents that had some relation to CL.  But look at the subjective vs the objective (or vice versa)  CL was just a spice in a very large pot called murder.  The murder would have happened without CL.

For sure, in all the classified newspaper ads that have been run for free puppies, an old set of mag wheels, or to announce your garage sale, I am sure that some grist occurred along the way.

We personally embraced the instant posting game when CL was in it’s early stages.  We would have an older printer that just needed a new home and not a landfill.  Post it.  Calls ensued.  A few hours later, it was being loaded into the car and off to a new home. The savings on landfills space by CL is something that should be studied at Stanford.

The real story is that the old line newspapers are angry.  Their business was decimated by CL.  Sometimes it works out: TV didn’t replace radio.  Airplanes didn’t replace cars.  But in this case, instant and free is the winner.  They had a business that was there for the taking because greed got in the way.

We have hired three really good nannies through CL.  One, in fact, was working part time for a major celebrity and we were able to share the time.  Try to find that at an expensive agency — for free.  They were so good that I would often get questions as to a secret sauce that we must have had in hiring.

Not really.  It’s simple.  It’s called Blink.

Recently, I dug around on CL and looked at open jobs for fun.  Remember, it’s the 10 or 11% unemployment world.  At least that’s what the news agencies want you to believe and with that we are supposed to believe that “no one” can get hired.  I don’t know “no one” but I know there are always good jobs out there.  Not jobs making Chevys, but certainly in industries that are what I call “Facebook Era” jobs.  I saw crap jobs, sure.  But have you looked at the LA Times’s classifieds lately?  It’s ugly.

Low and behold, there was a very interesting opportunity with a big player in an industry that I wanted to get back into.  I sent my resume over that Sunday afternoon and was called Monday morning.  Many hard core interviews later, I now work for that company and it’s going great.

Relax people. Use the gut you were given and get that cool iPad that’s for sale….. Or, I’ll beat you to it.

It’s the best part of scary.  Leaving the ground in a plane to get to some place else.  Scary maybe, but worthy.

We are rising now and it’s great.

Glad we continue to test scary and think you should too.

Unglue yourself from the tired and old.  Open those eyes to something fresh.  Give up something not working and give the other option a try.

You know where to go.

Up.

You opened the new toys and gifts you received with haste and abandon.  Everything smelled new.  It was pristine.  There was no history.  No bad mojo.  You’d go to bed that night and see lots of the previous Christmas’s stuff in your closet and realize that it wouldn’t be long before the new stuff would fall to the side.  As we got older, things kept moving through our lives and being enjoyed for periods of time that fit our place and time.

New is coming our way. But what’s cool about New and especially in this case is that it’s a very zero, very barren starting point.  The “old” isn’t without worth and there’s lots to have experienced and learned by. But, now the New offers us the opportunity to stop and take in all we’ve learned and use it wisely.  Embrace New when you find it.

That’s my plan.

See you in New.