Serve your way to a Successful Career/Business

For those readers coming to this post from my email, go below the grayed out type to pick up where you left off reading.

(Listen to Audio Version Here)

Busyness, information, hard work, reacting, pleasing, multi-tasking, fast-paced = Success, Money, Happiness, Free Time, and finally, Retirement.
 
Sound familiar? It is really a set of limiting beliefs. Things we have been taught since childhood that really don’t work. They are bad habits that ensure we never reach the ultimate goal and we don’t enjoy the journey towards it.  

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence or Failure are therefore not acts, but habits."

  - Aristotle

How do I know this?

It is no secret. It has been talked about, written about and explained by people for hundreds of years. I’ll demonstrate as you read this - you may get tired of hearing from these historical figures. They knew the truth, but few listened. And that’s good in way - less competition at the top.

A better set of words:

Purpose (Busyness), Transformation(Information), Creative (Hard work), Proactive(Reactive), Serving (Pleasing), Focused (multitasking), Slow down(Fast paced)= Success, Money, Happiness every day, More Free Time, Don’t want to Retire.

This is no warm and fuzzy, psychobabble - this is the truth. And these are truths that will set you free and ensure success if you know your PURPOSE and are focused on SERVING.

"The only certain means of success is to render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be."

- Og Mandino, author

Purpose

We all know what we do and how we do it. We need to add to that WHY we do it - a core purpose - something that is exciting and something we can be passionate about. Think about the old phrase - doing something ON PURPOSE. This purpose will provide the path we will follow that will allow us to prioritize and focus proactively on the Right Things and Actions every day. A deeper reason for showing up, something we are passionate about. (Hint: it is serving and helping people in some way).

Focus

The sun shines on everything and warms it to a livable level for life to thrive on this planet. It’s nice, it’s pleasing. The Sun is you, pleasing and unfocused, warming everything all day. The emails, the phone, the knocks on the door, the answer to questions, solving problems, the request to please others, are you, shining on everything. But at the end of the day there is no fire. No results, no forward movement. No fire, no results, no serving, just pleasing.

How do you get fire? You use a magnifying glass and focus the rays of the sun on a dry leaf. That is focus, it gets results, it lights the fire, that’s letting the sun’s rays serve.  “Anything we focus on grows.” “Winners focus, losers spray.”

Show me someone’s calendar and I can tell you how successful they are and will be.

You look for the activities that are SERVING people. Money and success and happiness come from serving. All day long most of us focus on pleasing other people. Employees, customers, friends, everyone. We have been taught since childhood to please people. Say thank you, smile and buy them lunch, answer their email immediately, stop what we are doing to talk to someone that enters our office, answer that phone call now, say yes to every demand, be busy, busy , busy trying to please everyone.

Service and serving are where success, happiness and money are made. Find someone who has a problem and serve them by helping them solve it and teach them to solve it in the future. Serve them, employees, customers, vendors, friends , family , people. Serve don’t please.

"It is literally true that you can suceed best and quickest by helping others to succeed."

- Napolean Hill, author

Marketing and Sales

We have always been taught that we need to get our name out there and GET prospects to know, and like us. People buy from people they like is the old slogan.  In other words, please them in some way. No wonder we “hate” selling. We believe it is all about Getting people to like us - Pleasing. When we hate something we automatically put it into the procrastination file. I know I need to make those calls and I need money, I need to GET some new customers. It is the difference between get and give. Desperation vs. doing something on purpose, serving someone in way that keeps us on the path of our core purpose.

Serving is different, we are not focused on getting someone to like us, we are focused on serving them first and getting them to trust us.

If you are pleasing you enter into a conversation with a prospect and begin thinking “I need to GET this person to be my customer”.  Pressure sets in, desperation, what can I say that will PLEASE them, run through the benefits, talk about me and what we do to Get them to see our value. Smile, take them to lunch. Get them to like you!

"If you go looking for a friend, you’re going to find they’re scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere."

- Zig Ziglar

"You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you."

-Dale Carnegie

Now let’s look at the world of GIVING, of SERVING.

Now we are thinking how can I SERVE this person? I ask them to tell me about themselves and their company. Everything is great. But I know they must have something that is troubling. I ask what keeps them up at night? What great challenge do they have presently? Because if I can solve it for them I have truly SERVED. By SERVING first, I have demonstrated my value, not just talked about it. I have built trust because I’m not selling, I am serving first.

Great, effective marketing works the same way. Note their pain and problems, offer free information or a service that can solve it and then over time continue to provide information that SERVES them and helps them solve their problems.  (TIPS that nurture trust).

Most marketing today is an attempt at PLEASING -  it is all about us and what we do and how we do it. Look at landing pages on websites – they all start talking about them, how long they have been in business what and how they do what they do. They  give coupons, discounts, funny ads, anything to GET their "name out there" and GET some new customers by getting them to like them.  

To make your marketing effective start asking and talking about their pain and problems and then offer solutions that SERVE and demonstrate your value. You will have prospects trusting and buying from you. SERVING makes you and your company REMARKABLE – meaning people will remark about you, right? Word of mouth, referrals are the # 1 source of new customers for all businesses.   And I might add people who refer are doing what? SERVING both you and the person they tell about you.

Serving is the only way to build a great customer base of ideal customers.

Employees

"The great leader speaks little. He never speaks carelessly. He works without self-interest. And he leaves no trace. When all is finished, the people say, 'We did it ourselves'. "

 

- Lao-tzu from the ‘Tao Te Ching’

Do you spend your day PLEASING your employees or SERVING them.

The scenario most commonly observed is one of PLEASING. Open door policy, expectations, managing, more money to motivate, being the “answer man”, doing things for them, training on the fly, no goals, no purpose, no alignment, etc. 

This all results in disappointment, lack of accountability and little trust.

"People are not lazy. They simply have impotent goals - that is, goals that do not inspire them."

- Tony Robbins

"Give me a stock clerk with a goal and I'll give you a man who will make history. Give me a man with no goals and I'll give you a stock clerk."

- JC Penney Businessman

The best companies, the real winners, are places where the owner is SERVING the employees. By the opposite of the above.  SERVING the employees with Weekly Scheduled focused one on one Coaching Conversations (not yearly reviews, open door ), understanding their problems and coaching (answering their questions on the fly, in the middle of the battle), understanding their dreams and helping them reach them, coaching - not managing, Agreements not Expectations, alignment with goals and purpose.  Provide them with focused coaching to ensure they believe they have mastery of their job, provide them with autonomy to be creative and a core purpose for coming to work every day. These are the 3 things employees say ensure a place where they love to be and thus are able to SERVE others all day .

Make sure they don’t come to you with problems expecting  you come up with the solutions for them. Instead put a sign up that says "come to me only with solutions". Give them feedback on their solution but help them grow, serve them, build their confidence and skill set. Don’t please them by being the crutch and allowing them to go through the day relying on you for all of the answers.

“Give someone a job and they will work for your money, find people who believe what you believe and they will give you their blood, sweat and tears.” 

- Simon Sintek

You

“Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.”

- William S. Burroughs

Information can be detrimental . There is too much of it and it grows every day. We can literally spend all day at the computer and waste the day "learning".  Information is only valuable if it is transformational, if it convinces you to take ACTION. If it changes the way you are living your life. Knowing is not enough. It is all in the doing. Nothing happens without ACTION.

Action alone is not the answer of course. It has to be action that is focused on your path, your purpose and is serving , instead of pleasing.

An old Japanese Proverb

“Goals without Action are dreams, Action without goals is chaos. “

For this information to be transformational , to change your habits for the better, you must take action.

1. Slow down – take some time and focus on your Core Purpose, your why you do what you do. Write it down. (Hint: it will have something to do with helping , serving.)
2. Slow down - Write down your Vision of what, how and why of your life, your business, your career in 2020. 
3. Slow down – Write Goals for 2013 and the ACTIONS you need to take to accomplish them. 
4. Set up weekly 15 minute coaching Conversations with all direct reports- find ways to serve them. Be a coach not a manager. Think about the difference in what a football coach does and you as a manager of a team. He serves, you try to please. 
5. Set up and block one hour per day on your calendar to stop, think, focus on the actions above with one thing foremost in your mind how can I SERVE. No interruptions, no moving the appointment for anyone. No pleasing , serving. You will be serving yourself, your employees and your customers, and people in general. Over time you will form a habit and more and more of your day will be spent focused on serving, creating, passionate about your purpose and your future. The journey will the happiness not the destination. Money and success will come if you start to focus on SERVING.

"We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give."

 

- Winston Churchill, British prime minister

Thanks to Steve Chandler, my coach for the inspiration.  If you want to learn more buy his book Wealth Warrior.

Rick Wallace