The Entrepreneurial Savant

Listening is a skill that has become increasingly vital in our busy self-centered society. Active listening means listening with your full attention, in the here and now. It means listening with a clear head, without making judgments. More importantly it means listening with your other senses. What is the person’s tone of voice? Is it calm and relaxed, nervous and jumpy, high pitched, slow and hesitant? What about their physical presence? Are they intimate or reserved, breathing slowly or rapidly? Are they perspiring or red-faced? Do they make eye contact or do they appear to be looking inward? Where are their hands? Do they gesture or hide? Non-verbal communication is as much as 60% of the message-bearing part of our interaction with others.
Once you’ve become aware of the other person’s non-verbal communication you can start to match it, relaxing with them, walking along when they get up and move around, responding quickly when their thoughts are moving at a fast pace. If they are leaning towards you and speaking in something close to a whisper, lean in, match their tone and volume and listen to the message behind the words. These techniques will help you achieve a rapport with the other person, bringing you both in sync and establishing common ground for the expression of ideas, desires and questions.
You cannot successfully listen when you are preoccupied with your own agenda. And unless you learn and practice active listening skills you will have difficulty communicating and sharing your vision with others.

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Every salesperson knows what a ‘cold call’ is. Its a telephone call to someone you don’t know that you make for purpose of furthering your cause. If you’re selling something, you may be seeking an appointment to make a presentation. If you’re raising money for a cause you may have a similar goal. If you’re trying to learn about a new career or resource you may simply be trying to find the right expert for advice. Whatever the reason you make the calls, they are often the only way you can accomplish your goal(s). Unfortunately a very human and common fear of rejection keeps most of us from making cold calls and we get stuck, unable to make forward movement.
There are many methods of beating the fear. Use a script so that when fear freezes you up, you can keep going with what you wanted to say. Rehearse your script ahead of time with a co-worker or spouse. Find common ground ahead of time through research so that you can turn a feared encounter into an opportunity to share interest. Most importantly, make a certain number of ‘cold’ calls everyday. These shots into the dark can lead to many new resources and profitable relationships.
Give yourself an incentive to make your calls everyday. Think of them the way a salesperson might. A good cold caller knows exactly how many calls they need to complete to make an appointment and how many appointments it takes to make a sale. Knowing their average profit on each sale, they can assign a dollar value to each and every call, no matter how successful. For instance a real estate agent may call on homeowners to get houses to list and sell. She knows that for every twenty calls she completes (reaches a person), she gets one appointment. One half of her appointments result in listings for which she averages a commission of $1500 each. The math shows each call she makes to be worth $37.50. ( 40 calls = 2 appointments = one listing @ $1500. 1500/40=37.50) It kinda warms up those cold calls doesn’t it? Take your goals and reduce them to the value of a phone call done three times a day, day after day. The value of each of those dials may be a pleasant surprise.

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Synergy is defined as the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. Synergy is what makes planning so important. By planning how to reach your goals through a well defined set of steps you get the added bonus of synergy. It works like this: Every effective action you take multiplies the effect of any other actions you take. If you are seeking publicity for an event you’re working on you make a plan to reach every potential source of publicity. You call the radio and TV stations with a good story about your event. You send press releases with pre-written anecdotes about the organization, perhaps its history or influential founders. You build a website, place ads on Google and send out an email blast, all according to your basic plan. What happens? People hear your event announced on the radio on the way to work. You’re in their E-mail later that morning. The paper features a story about the eccentric millionaire who started your group and mentions the fund-raiser. That night, they flip on the news and there you are again, building the decorations. Wow, they think, this event must really be the thing to do. And the power of synergy reinforces and reminds them about something that now seems much more than just an event in the paper.
Professional promoters and public relations people do this all the time, but there is no reason why you can’t get in on the action. The event you are promoting might be yourself. Maybe you want a new job or a new client. Make a plan and use the power of synergy to make it many times more effective.

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Are you surprised when things don’t turn out the way you planned?
When unexpected events turn things around in unexpected ways?
When it seems that Murphy’s Law should be named after your experiences?

It is said that entrepreneurs are risk-takers. Perhaps that’s why so many fail. Most successful people are risk-avoiders because they know that it is very difficult to make up a loss, whether a monetary one or a loss of momentum. They build in risk protection using a variety of techniques. One of the most effective is rehearsing scenarios. All this means is that they look into the future and imagine as many possible scenarios (What-if? situations) and how they would react to them. They look at how different variables could affect their plans and they make contingency plans to handle those crises and profit from them. In cases where they cannot profit, they plan ways to exit with the least amount of damage.
Perhaps you have a business dependent on one customer. What if the impossible occurs and they pull out? Rehearse your actions now and you’ll be ready ahead of time. Suppose a partner pulls out of a project or a relationship? Or your distributor goes out of business? Or you don’t get into the college you wanted? Simply rehearsing these scenarios and developing back-up plans can do a great deal to ensure your success.

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When things aren’t going your way or you ‘blocked’ and can’t seem to resolve a problem or begin to take the steps required to solve that problem, there are exercises that can help to break out of your ineffective state of mind. One, from Dr. Van K. Tharp, a psychologist who specializes in the psychology of successful investment traders, goes like this:
“Get up out of your chair. Walk away about four feet and then look at how you looked in that chair. Notice your posture, your breathing, your facial expressions. Then imagine how you would look if you had the sort of mental state you would like. When you can see that clearly, sit down in the chair again and assume the position that you just imagined.
The exercise works for almost any situation as it involves several important principles–changing your body posture, seeing yourself from a more objective viewpoint and imagining a more resourceful state.”*

*As quoted in Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, Harper & Row

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Have you ever wondered what it is that makes it possible for some human beings to regularly perform at levels far above average? Why some athletes, musicians, counselors, communicators and leaders get far better results consistently than their peers? It used to be an accepted fact that these people were exceptionally gifted in ways that the rest of us could not hope to emulate. Recently there have been breakthroughs in the study of exceptional performance that make it possible to learn from these prodigies. By using a technique known as modeling, people are studying the personal strategies that highly skilled individuals use and putting them into form that can be taught to others.
Classically trained musicians are required to memorize extremely complex pieces of music, taking into consideration a very large number of factors including tempo, pitch, tone, feel, the interaction with other musicians, physical and mental technique, the response of the audience and many other elusive factors. By modeling the interior techniques used by musicians talented in these skills, it has become possible to teach others the process they use to achieve. They may use visualization techniques, mnemonic devices, and other techniques to help them get through a piece. By breaking these strategies down into processes, they can be taught to others.
Is there someone you admire who has abilities you would like to develop? Talk to them about the thought process they go through to prepare themselves. Observe the physical rituals they use. Read biographies and interviews for clues about the mental techniques used to get to that highly capable state. Modeling is a very complex process but even a rudimentary awareness of how it works can help you to learn faster and more effectively.

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Breaking down your goals into steps is important and making those steps achievable is even more important. You can go even further and break them down into steps that can be accomplished on a daily basis. This really gives us the sense of getting somewhere with our plans.
An important thing to keep in mind when planning these incremental gains is to think them out ahead of time and make sure they are realistic in the context of your overall goals. Don’t set them each morning but rather, know them ahead of time. This done by taking the bigger steps in your plan and breaking them down into a series of tasks. These tasks may overlap each other or be unrelated activities that are spread out over time. Just try to identify the ones that can reasonably be accomplished in a day and put them on your calendar.

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When we set goals for ourselves or others, we have to also determine the steps required to achieve those goals. A common mistake in goals work is to set goals that are so distant that it is difficult to imagine reaching them. Even when we make our goals more realistic, we often define steps that are too far apart. This makes it difficult to stay motivated and on track.  It is important to put achievable steps into your planning so that you give yourself and your co-workers something to celebrate. These early victories serve to recharge your engines and get you psyched up for the next stage of your project. So, even if you include difficult steps in your goals process, put in some intermediate ones so that you can celebrate some early victories.

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If we all had stores this one wouldn’t need any elaboration. But maybe your ‘store’ is a desk or a pick-up truck full of tools. Either way it is a good idea to set things straight before you start your workday by doing some cleaning up around the shop. It conveys a great deal to a prospective customer or patron about your style and efficiency and makes you and your co-workers feel better about your jobs.
By the way, this rule apples to big shots too. We’ve all heard stories about company founders who still set examples by being on time and involved, even if it means grabbing the occasional broom. Next time you see a piece of litter on the company lawn, pick it up yourself.

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Superficial knowledge and borrowed experience are the rewards of being an observer rather than a participant. No matter how much expertise you accumulate by watching, reading and listening, you will never truly experience success unless you take the plunge and go out into the deep water. When you become fascinated by a subject and go beyond the contemplation stage into the action stage your entire perspective changes. All kinds of opportunities open up. I’ll give you what may seem to be a far-fetched example.
A friend’s father is nearing retirement from a job with a large company. In the past few years he has become interested in carved duck decoys. These decoys have evolved from a utilitarian aid for hunters into an art form. In fact there are  competitions with categories for non-functional decoys that are judged solely on the skill of the carver. Our retiree has read books and articles on the subject, has calendars featuring photos of decoys and has often contemplating trying his hand at carving. One Christmas he is presented with a book of patterns and goes beyond reading and actually tries his hand at making a bird. His first attempts are amateurish but because he has actually done it, his insight into other’s work is radically changed. He begins to look at how they resolved certain problems and learns about carving competitions with categories designed for novices. He begins to enter and receives awards and encouragement from people who he had revered as experts.
After a few years of carving, his birds begin to sell for respectable prices. By now he specializes in certain birds and certain positions and has developed a style that is recognizable to decoy aficionados. His armchair interest in an esoteric discipline has become an important (and profitable) part of his life, opening up whole new groups of relationships and providing an interesting second career.
As soon as you explore an interest beyond what you can absorb through observation you are in new waters. To continue the metaphor, you may get swept along into an entirely new and fascinating life.

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