Archive for Leadership

    Lost my compass, time to realign

    Posted by: patrick | Comments (3)
    Sunday, December 20th, 2009

    Greeting my friend,

    If you’ve read any of my past musings you will see that every now and then I talk about losing focus when it comes to life, goal setting, business, social media, personal development, etc. When that happens you just have to put on the brakes sometime and say whoa horsey. It is time for me to do that again. So if you are a friend, follower, or fan of mine here are the corrections/changes I will be making:

    1. I will be talking more about goal setting. I will probably even be getting up my list of goals and the progress I am making on each one. This is to drive/motivate you and to keep me in check. (UPDATE: See the bottom of this post. The list of goals is up.)

    2. I will be working hard to be less cynical. This goes very much for Social Media (threw up a little there) and the players in that field. Man there are a lot of annoying people in the world. And there are a lot of people over hyping something that is very simple and very powerful. If I am lying I am dying. But every second I spend on those people and what they have to say is a second I am not making forward progress for me, my family and my customers. That just has to stop.

    3. I’ll be taking my friends to task more on their goals and dreams. I’ve got a good friend William “RB” Bruce who has a very similar outlook on life that I do. You’ll see me kick his ass a lot more in public. And he will probably be kicking mine. Bring it on! I’ve got a couple of good local friends that I’ve had some in depth conversations with about what they want to do. I’ll be coming after them too.  If you ever share with me what you want out of life I’ll do everything I can to push you that way.

    4. I’ll be working harder on forming stronger connections with people on a deeper level. Screw this casual networking stuff. I want to know people and what they do more so I know who I can help, and who can help the people I know. I am a connector, always have been a great one,  but I can get better.

    5. I’ll be doing more video. I believe so strongly in video for the web, and I have for the longest time. I have a Flip Mino HD on me just about 24/7, but rarely take the time to fire it up. For that, I suck.

    Feel free to take me to task when you don’t see my going where I say I should be going. Hop on twitter and bark at me. You can follow me on Twitter by clicking on this sentence.

    Have a great day!

    12/20/2009 7:36 pm Update: First Draft of list of goals can be found HERE.

    Categories : Attitude, Goals, Leadership
    Comments (3)

    Leadership Series Part IV: Leadership Traits 1 of 5

    Posted by: patrick | Comments (4)
    Thursday, November 27th, 2008

    Continuing the series of a leadership speech I gave in Oklahoma City.

    Leadership Trait 1 of 5:

    1. Leaders are not afraid to stand up and say “I’ll do it”.

    When I was younger I was taught somehow somewhere – I don’t remember exactly where – that volunteering to help and raising my hand was a bad thing. You didn’t want to get called on by the teacher. And when the teacher or somebody else called on people to help with something you should slink and hide out of the way and hope the teacher didn’t see you.

    Do any of you do that?

    I know I did. But as I starting getting older I learned something that I am going to share with you right now. I learned that raising my hand and volunteering to help was the coolest thing around. It was not to be feared. It was something to look forward to. Why? Because when people see that you are willing to volunteer to help them or your class they remember that. They remember that that person is not afraid of a challenge. They are not afraid to do something hard.

    And as you get on in life you are going to learn that people LOVE people that volunteer. Because people that volunteer to help other are showing one of the traits of a great leader. They are not afraid to stand up and say “I’ll do it”.

    Categories : Goals, Leadership
    Comments (4)

    Leadership Series Part III: Why would you want to be a leader?

    Posted by: patrick | Comments (1)
    Thursday, November 20th, 2008

    3rd part in the series.

    You can see part I here and part II here:

    Part III
    It is incredibly rewarding. Your ideas get to be used and implemented. Leaders start things.  They get the ball rolling.

    Being a leader means that you are going to have to do things that MOST people do not want to do. You are going to have to stand up and say things that most people are afraid to say. And you are going to have to believe things that most people do not want to believe. And for the long term you are going to have to have the courage to stick to what you believe in and follow it through to completion.

    Sometimes you are going to have to embarrass yourself. [Bring up audience member for example]

    You are going to have to put yourself in front of your friends and your foes and tell them “I
    believe this is what we should be doing and this is where we should be going”. They might
    ridicule you and put you down. They might tell you that what you want to do cannot be done.
    People have tried it before and have failed. But you have to have faith in yourself and your
    ideas. Sometimes you may be the only one that does.

    Leadership is scary sometimes. Here is an example of family leadership: My wife and I had decided that we were going to take a different direction than all of our friends had taken: We were going to go into business for ourselves. I had to visit another business in Sacramento, California that I was going to be doing some work for. As I was laying on the bed in the hotel room thinking about what I was getting ready to do – to become a leader/entrepreneur this panic overwhelmed my body all of sudden. I remember that it came over me like a wave starting from the tips of my toes and consuming me all of the way to my head. I started having doubts about whether I could do it or not. What if I fail? What if I fail so badly that it hurts my family? What if we run out of money and we cannot eat? These are the things you have to look at and find a way around as a leader. You have to know that you might fail, but you have to believe in your soul that you will succeed.

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    Categories : Attitude, Leadership, Productivity
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