The E1™ CEO Rebellion

Most are familiar with ING Direct (ING), the online bank that, since 1996, grew from a simple concept to a global enterprise, with more than 20 million customers in nine countries. This internet-based bank, initially launched in Canada, focuses on serving everyday people who feel deserted by their existing financial institutions. In an industry dominated by massive banks with not much tolerance for their customers, ING goes all-out to be uncommon – a rebel with a cause, if you will. An E1™ cause.

The idea of creating an enterprise with a foundation could appear impractical and naïve in theory. Not anymore. The position of success accomplished by ING holds significant E1™ schooling and presents much desired stimulation to a business world that at this time requests both.

ING stated it was a rebel with a cause when highly structured business models were the latest thing, when the quest for venture capital outpaced the pursuit of customers, and when being clever surpassed being reliable. Insert the actuality that no one believed consumers would fancy what no-brick-and-mortar ING sold, and it’s evident that measly supervision would not accomplish something with this plan. E1™ leadership was required.

For ING’s founding CEO, Arkadi Kuhlmann – AK – the rebellious leader’s job description was unambiguous: Carry the torch. Be convincing in the marketplace. Place self-belief in the people you hire. AK argued that the primary items to be a leader with a cause aren’t from the typical CEO playbook. They aren’t warm and fuzzy. But, they do carry your business cause to market – profitably – in opposition to all odds.

I’m starting to like these new rules for the E1™ CEO playbook.

• Rule 1: Have a calling. ING’s vision was to lead Americans back to saving. Seeing as the savings rate for Americans in 1996 was bleak, ING was a radical business tackling the ground-breaking idea of saving money.
• Rule 2: Have some guts. Make it personal. Lay your name on the line. On the whole, a “calling” can look like a marketing creation and the CEO’s influence can be flimsy and two-dimensional. If you don’t generate the vision and presently shill, it’s thorny to endorse your plans.
• Rule 3: Find your enemy. With no wrong to right, who needs a White Knight? However, a busted status quo does more than create a business opening or a tactical convenience. Having something to point the finger at and rout creates a terrifically efficient leadership tool. Your competitors become a colossal rival, a dragon to be slain. Coming to work is a bit heroic – you get to save the princess.
• Rule 4: Build an inner circle. Picking a team is one of a CEO’s most indispensable responsibilities and too vital a job to rely on strict interviews and shipshape curricula vitae as bases for making decisions. Drive and spirit separate steadfast, wholehearted workers from paycheck-collecting journeymen. Hire people who have experienced rebuff and have something to prove to the world.
• Rule 5: Be open to the prospect of collapse. The steady state of creative destruction is not for the faint of heart. It creates a long-lasting feeling of becoming would-be kill to some outside force. As we get larger and more successful, we run the risk of becoming unworried and thinking that we know all we need to know. Creative destruction is a technique to keep your enterprise’s frame of mind undersized, as if it were a continuous startup thankful and pleased its doors are still open.

What’s the cause of your business? Why do you really do what you do? If you went out of business tomorrow, would anyone care? Why?

Are you “all in” for the strategy and plans for your venture? Does your team recognize that you’re more than financially invested in your enterprise’s achievement? Do they feel your emotional investment?

What status quo are you about to turn upside down on its head? How does business-as-usual transform because of your company? How do your customers start to win in a way they have in no way won before?

What does it really take for your idea to do well? What skills are truly compulsory? What outlook is fundamental? Does your team cleave to these qualities, talents, and ways of thinking and behaving?

While you’re full of activity changing the status quo, do you appreciate that your revolution soon becomes conventional wisdom? What are you and your team doing to keep on redesigning the blueprint of your business operations?

The E1™ CEO Rebellion is here. It’s time to scrutinize what The Elite One Percent™ carries out and mold these principles to your business. Then, you can identify with avant-garde approaches to business strategy and direct your company in a manner others want to try to be like – if they can.

Elite thinking. Elite choices. Elite actions. Elite results. That’s E1™.

 

 

If “Its and Buts” Were Candy and Nuts, What a Christmas We’d Have!

If you’re like me, you’ve heard – maybe made – oodles of excuses. And, naturally, from those with honorary degrees in platitudes, we find out:

• “You’re either winning or you’re whining.”
• “Get rid of your stinking thinking.”
• “Second place is first place for losers.”
• And the list goes on and on and on.

Whatever. Losing is advantageous for winning. Failure is a magnificent instructor on the road to triumph. What we discover and complete with the schooling we get from failing is most crucial. It’s a key ingredient in E1™ thinking.

During unsure times, many of us have a tendency to hark back to better times and contemplate, “How did I get myself into this jam? Where did I go wrong? How could I have been so stupid?” We sense, more intensely, our overlooked chances and letdowns in a mode of final verdict. Regret – the common sense that things could have turned out enhanced if only we made different selections – becomes insidious. We flounder in it and never move forward. And occasionally, it’s one step forward and two steps back.

However, guilt does not have to be a tearing-of-the-clothes-self-flagellating passion. As an alternative, it can be rather helpful and constructive. New research from the Universities of Victoria and Illinois explains that most of us hold regret in high honor. Of all the harmful emotions, regret was acknowledged as the most appreciated for the reason that it helps us make sense of life’s events and take care of what went wide of the mark.

In plain English: We can choose to learn from our mistakes.

Regret is hardwired into human biology, highlighting its significance in conduct. Developments in imaging of the mind demonstrate that when we feel remorse, a piece of the brain involved in both logic and feeling—the frontal cortex—becomes full of life. Emotion is in high gear at this moment. In truth, this part of neuroscience also informs us that education almost certainly works best when there is a concentrated poignant factor to it, so it could be that regret boosts our capability to gain knowledge from this occurrence.

In plain English: We pursue and learn from that which grabs our attention.

After-the-fact favoritism can initiate an unsightly preconceived notion here. What we should have completed, forever and a day seems more obvious in retrospect. As the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard put it, “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” Og Mandino, in The Greatest Secret in the World, wrote:

“Can sand flow upward in the hourglass? Will the sun rise where it sets and set where it rises? Can I relive the errors of yesterday and right them? Can I call back yesterday’s wounds and make them whole? Can I become younger than yesterday? Can I take back the evil that was spoken, the blows that were struck, and the pain that was caused? No. Yesterday is buried forever and I will think of it no more.”

In plain English: What happened – happened – now, move on.

Let’s decide to make use of regret to upgrade our decision-making. Instead of chewing over what might have been, let what happened point the way. The regret we may well sense from a blunt re-examination of our decision-making need not chip away at our poise. To a certain extent, it can help us prioritize our relationships, business ventures, healthiness, and wealth strategies. Instead of picking out less uncertain opportunities that we are least prone to apologize for, let’s opt for the one that will take full advantage of our probability of attaining levelheaded aspirations.

In plain English: Take well-planned and calculated risks.

There is not anything innately erroneous with having misgivings. It is making excuses, for those qualms, that keeps us from growing. Choose to be different. Choose to learn from disappointment. Choose to prevail from reservations. It’s an elite choice that leads us to elite results.

Elite thinking. Elite choices. Elite actions. Elite results. That’s E1™.

Multi-Million Dollar Weekend

This past weekend, in Minneapolis, I attended the National Speakers Association’s CSP/CPAE Summit. The Summit was a limited gathering of 60 top level professional speakers. In reality, the CSP (Certified Speaking Professional) and/or CPAE (Council of Peers Award of Excellence) are held by fewer than two percent of the world’s professional speakers. It was an exceptionally elite assembly – an E1™ group, some might say. I was proud and excited to be a component of this assembly.

The design of the weekend’s sessions was straightforward – bring and present, to all, a proposal that could or did produce a minimum of $1 MM in revenue associated with the industry of professional speaking. Following each presentation, each presenter would be given (from the other 59 professional speakers in attendance) observations, approvals, assessments, and congratulations intended to strengthen the presented business plan and increase the odds of success. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of a group like this?

Throughout the weekend, the meeting had a sense best illustrated by Napoleon Hill in his classic book, Think and Grow Rich. In Chapter X: Power of the Master Mind, Hill writes that, “Economic advantages may be created by any person who surrounds himself with the advice, counsel, and personal cooperation of a group of men who are willing to lend him wholehearted aid, in a spirit of perfect harmony…When riches take the place of poverty, the change is usually brought about through well-conceived and carefully executed plans. Poverty needs no plan.” Ladies: My apologies for Hill’s lone use of “men/him,” but you catch the thought.

My results from the weekend were staggering. Within the initial hour of our event, I knew that my $1 MM idea would be successful. I also added fresh thoughts for my enterprise from scores of the additional presentations. During my Saturday evening flight home, I scrutinized one hundred pages of notes to produce 29 action steps. By Sunday afternoon, in the quiet of my office at home, my plan was worth $14 million. Nice multiple.

I’m even designing an E1™ weekend for a small group of top leaders who direct the clients I serve. Watch for details.

Do you have a Master Mind-like group that you take a dynamic part in? Do you have a set of peers willing to meet, on a regular basis, and follow the same format described above? Do these colleagues generate the kind of “fruit on the tree” that you have a high regard for and want to learn? Are you ready to reveal your imaginings, receive some direction, fine-tune as needed, and sally forth and do well?

The E1™ life – professional and personal – is ready for it all and more.

You’ve read the E1™ statement numerous times: Elite Thinking; Elite Choices; Elite Actions; Elite Results. Add an Elite Master Mind group to your leadership. You will discover elite results that astound even you.

That’s E1™.