Greg's Right FIT #446

Quick notes to help you grow your business in less time with less effort. . . sometime next week. 

In this issue: 

- Thoughts on Visioning
- Being Human
- Random Stuff

Thoughts on Visioning

• Most of us want change/the future result, we just don't want to go through the muck to get there. Help your people by repeatedly describing a clear vision of the future. 
• Open up your brain to possibilities by asking yourself, "What would have to happen for [future result] to come true?" Don't discount any idea to start, just soak in its potential. 
• When thinking about the future, catch and re-frame any self-talk about outcomes outside your control. "They won't call me back," is an example. Re-frame that.
• Make a big plan next week. Talk to a travel agent, get a brochure, read a guidebook, and ask a friend for advice. Go from a high level abstraction into the details. 

Being Human - Breakfast meetings     

"Events are magical things creating bonds between people."

On occasion, I assess sales and marketing teams. Part of the assessment is looking at prospects/buyers and thinking about where those people congregate. If there is a watering hole they gather around, is the company I'm assessing there too? A shortcut to selling is getting in front of groups of buyers instead of one-by-one. When there is no obvious gathering spot, I check to see if the team has their own ways to get buyers together. Like for breakfast.

A few years ago I did a series of breakfast events for executives. We tackled suggested topics including key executive compensation, building better leaders, and developing Millennial/Gen Z talent. I stopped running them because they led to projects, then Covid, then post-Covid, and now I'm back to planning fall and winter get togethers. 

Reviewing my notes a few things jump out. One is not to order a hot breakfast. No one seemed to want it. A few people grabbed fruit or breakfast bars, but the hot breakfast sandwiches and pastries went untouched. Coffee, on the other hand, needs to be doubled or tripled. Whatever the hotel recommends, get more. 

I held these in Omaha. Other cities were harder for me to get going. I know more people here, but the note I have to myself is "venue less important than location." I hosted these in some of the new, up-and-coming hotels popping up downtown. There was some resistance to traveling, even in my little city! I suppose other cities have similar travel issues to be overcome. 

The last note is that participants want to know who is going to be there. A few high-powered types even called to ask/demand who was going to be attending. Managing the list of attendees to keep it from being a prospecting event for others was a challenge. 

The topic, the list, the venue. It has always been thus. 

Get a great topic people want to talk about. Bring along people they want to meet. Do it in an easy or fantastic place. It works. 

(If I were really brave, in the middle of winter I'd invite my dream prospects to the beach for a few days, rubbing shoulders with a famous author.)

Narrator: He's not really brave.

Random Stuff

"You walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht
Your hat strategically dipped below one eye
Your scarf it was apricot
You had one eye in the mirror, as you watched yourself gavotte"

– Carly Simon, "You're So Vain"

This week I saw someone's photo and thought, "oh, that's me!" I was in the foreground, not the subject of the photo, and the shot was taken from above. It's not often most of us get to see ourselves as others might. 

Years ago I read a study trying to model the effects of being attractive.They followed subjects around with cameras, similar to how an attractive movie star might be pursued. This unblinking eye made the subjects self-conscious. After weeks of this, they started acting differently. Specifically, they started spending more time on their appearance. I may be remembering this wrong, but I swear one of the conclusions was the subjects even got dumber because they spent less time doing whatever they used to do, and more time on vanity. 

The first moment I saw the picture I thought "balding" and then "oh, that's my head." I never see the top of my head, so I assumed it was, well, I never thought about it. Once I was watching a recording of a zoom call and when I bent over to grab something I noticed some scalp, so it's not a new thought. But this time it was followed by, "I wonder what I can do about that?" 

My lovely bride has a mirror that magnifies by 10x or something horrid. I used it to get to a stray eyebrow and, yikes. 10x Greg is craggy. This was all the same day. Balding. Craggy. Who knows what else? 

My bride's cousin is married to a plastic surgeon. I tell you this just in case we meet up in the future, and after we embrace, I say something dumb, my face doesn't move, and I'm buried underneath a thick mane of jet black hair. 

Don't act surprised. You've been warned.