The Challenge of Taking Free Days

Sometime soon I am going to do something I have not done in years.

Take a family vacation.

That may not seem like such a big deal, but I somehow lost the ability to do that after a parent became ill in 2007.

Oh sure. I have taken days off, but not for real, get out of Dodge, turn off the cell phone, and ditch the lap-top time.

A community of entrepreneurs I am a part of, calls these days "Free Days." Those are defined as 24-hour periods, midnight to midnight, where you are completely disconnected from work.

How will I possibly do it?

By investing some time and energy in delegating to a crack team, and outsourcing some things that need to be done, but are not my unique ability.

AND by planning for a productive week of both revenue generation and business tuning upon my return.

Thinking on this, I realize that to stay fresh and creative, I have to keep Free Days in the mix as part of my regular schedule, not as treatment for burn-out.

That is how to make sure I can continue to create value.

The Importance of Staying Inside Your Unique Ability(R)

I start this post with high praise for my good friend - Julia Waller of Strategic Coach in Toronto, Ontario. Julia took a day with me in January to do what she does better than anyone on the planet. She helps entrepreneurs identify their Unique Ability(R). In other words, she works with a business owner to bring into focus that unique thing or group of things he or she does - not just in business - but in all of life. You find out what that is, and then delegate, outsource or eliminate everything else.

Which brings me to - you guessed it - HOME REPAIRS.

To be more specific . . . PLUMBING.

I will try not being prideful in saying that I am - - - well - - - a pretty good plumber - - - no - - - I am an EXCELLENT plumber.

Excellent. Excellent in the way Kim Kardashian is a gifted concert pianist, or Newt Gingrich is a successful Thighmaster owner.

You get the idea.

My Reason for Living asked me to have the kitchen faucet replaced. Being the national poster child for high testosterone levels, I not only got her a new one, but decided to install it myself.

The guy at Home Depot said it was a one-tool job. How hard could it be?

My Reason for Living, and our daughter - She Upon Whom Sun and Moon Rise and Set - went out for the evening.

My wife expressed the opinion that SUWSAMRAS was building her vocabulary fast enough without the addition of - - - ER - - - more advanced words.

Okay. Have a nice time.

I carefully removed the various cleaning products from under the sink - organizing them for a neat replacement upon completion of the project.

Then, I shut off the water to the sink. Next, I took the tool suggested as the only one needed, and disconnected the lines from the sink to the water supply.

So far, no worries!

I got out from under the sink and began working the old faucet to pull it off.

It was not coming off.

I looked again and discovered, to my surprise, that the faucet was secured by a couple of - pay attention here, my storehouse of home repair knowledge is about to gush - a couple of twisty-things that were so far up another tool - NOT THE ONE TOOL THAT WOULD BE NEEDED TO DO THE JOB.

My family would be gone for at least another hour.

I am now left with three choices -

1. Drive like a bat out of hell to Home Depot, in hopes of getting the OTHER one tool that would be needed to do the job.

2. Contort my body and complete the job without the other tool - - - and I could expect success just about the time Kim Kardashian's book on How to Marry for Life is released.

3. Suppress my pride, protect my confidence, and help my daughter maintain a quality vocabulary. This I would do by suggesting to my wife, that the faucet is lovely, and deserves a professional installation.

I chose number three.

My Unique Ability includes among other things, the ability to ask questions that transport others to a point in time that repesents a bigger and better future.

Plumbing is not really inside that definition.

Now if you will excuse me, I have to go listen to Kim Kardashian's rendition of Mozart's Opus No. 40.

And where is my Thighmaster?

Lightening strikes, Microchips, and Dan Sullivan

My law firm has finally gone into the 21st Century.

We were hit with lightning recently. The strike turned the voicemail card on our analog phone system from original to extra crispy, if you catch my drift.

Cost to replace the card, plus service to the system? $750 to $1,250.

We had been pitched replacement analog phone systems two years earlier at $10,000.00 plus.

This year, we were pitched a digital system at $7,500.00.

Both analog and digital were feature rich.

My brilliant law partner did some research, as we had to do something.

What did she find?

Digital phone system, retaining one analog line for fax and security system.

Total acquisition cost?

Try 685 bucks.

Yep.

685 bucks.

Is my partner that smart?

Well, yeah, she is, but that isn't what caused the costs to plummet.

It was microchips.

No, not a snack item from Jenny Craig(r).

The brainy stuff in computers.

Dan Sullivan was right. Dan is a mentor to entrepreneurs around the world. He and his wife, Babs Smith, founded Strategic Coach a number of years ago.
If anyone has insight into microchips - he is the man!

Dan pointed out several years ago, that the microchip revolution was a fourth "Great Cross Over" as he puts it.

A great cross over is a breakthrough in communication and transfer of information. Dan says the first was speech, then writing, and the printing press was the the third.

Dan also points to an interesting effect of the microchip - one that a member of the team credited with the development of the chip has opined on: "Speed doubles/price drops by half every five years."

The guys who pitched us systems that would have taken four to five figures viewed what they were doing as selling a commodity.

Well, they lost.

How could they have gotten our business - or in the case of one company - sold to us again after making the original sale ten years ago?

By creating unique value - doing something for us that we could not have gotten anywhere else.

You see, we are entrepreneurial lawyers. If someone could come in - take the technology and show us how to leverage time and create extra value for clients, we would stay with them forever.

The sad thing is that the guy we bought our first system from knows more than most people in his industry have forgotten. He has ways to take that knowledge and create solutions that companies would gladly pay for, and probably pay him more than his profit on the $10,000 system - the one we just bought.

For $685.

His unique ability, however, stayed in his head, when he could have sold it to us.

For more than

$685.

Some Thoughts on Unique Ability, Delegation, and Dog Poop

Thursday morning, Medusa, my daughter's Rottweiler-Yorkie mix, experienced what can only be described as DOG-HELL.

The cat next door, an animal who to Medusa represents the embodiment of evil on earth, ran through the back yard at the very moment the dog began to poop.

The dilemma of how to engage her enemy while dealing with a present urgency was emotionally, and functionally, gut-wrenching for her.

Of course, this scene naturally made me think of - well - the challenges entrepreneurs face.

All of us with entrepreneurial DNA have a passion for something, a unique process that will create value, and we will benefit from a sense of having made things better, and a profit to boot.

Medusa had opportunity run right in front of her. Unfortunately, dealing with the crap of her operations meant that opportunity quite literally passed her by.

Now, to be fair, Medusa did not have a choice.

You and I do.

We can make sure we stay fresh by at least once a week taking a 24 hour period, midnight to midnight, disconnected from our work. And when we take "vacations," we have to be faithful, and not sneak away for clandestine trysts with "Blackberry."

Then we stay rejuvenated, ready to identify opportunity and create value.

But don't forget to concentrate days devoted to working on the business, acquiring and building capabilities, and to deal with the messes of life.

Finally, concentrate time on the Unique Abilities(R) I alluded to above. Everything else delegate, or outsource wherever possible. You and I have an advantage over Medusa. We can delegate the things we find to be poop to people who are ready, willing and enthusiastic about taking it on.

You can find some great insight on how to do the above in two great books - Unique Ability: Creating the Life You Want, by Catherine Nomura and Julia Waller, and The Time Breakthrough, by Dan Sullivan. You can find them at private.strategiccoach.com.

And as to Medusa? Well, outsourcing the byproduct of her success is - er - just not a doable.

Value Creation and Multiple Income Streams

Each year, I do an exercise called a "One Year Planner."
It has ten objectives I want to achieve to make progress in important areas of my life.
The "OYP" I laid out in May included an objective of developing new income streams.
Why?
Dan Sullivan is co-founder, with his terrific wife - Babs Smith - of The Strategic Coach in Toronto, ON. Dan points out that if one is an entrepreneur who happens to be a CPA, the creative possibilities are much greater than being hemmed-in by the reverse.
In our law firm, we have had several ideas for related businesses, for which we have identifiable demand, that are not professionally legal in nature, and could create value for clients and their other advisors with Unique Processes(tm). Maybe it is time to act on those.
Recently, I have been exposed to ideas that MDs, CPAs, pharmacists, and educators have leveraged into various multiple income streams.
The point is, this is still an economically free society. God made us in His image, and He is creative.
The possibilities are pretty much endless.