Create To Be Great: Coaching and Speaking





"to challenge and inspire people 
so that we can realize our full potential"
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Amazing!

7/7/2014

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What will it take to get to Amazing?

Many promotional products professionals are really getting beat up on price and see the industry’s products as becoming commodities.  Many people tell me that their customers are demanding them to match or beat impossibly low prices. What is happening out there?

The answers lie in the fact that if you are not growing, you’re dying. It’s brutal, but true. Buyers assume that you will give them quality, service and a low price. The assumption is that you will deliver goods as pictured or promised on time done right. This is the first level of a transaction based sale between a buyer and a seller.

When you raise your performance and give more, you gain a happy customer who expects that you will perform and provide them with peace of mind. Your customer expects and trusts you to make them look good.

What if you can get your client to be impressed?  What would you have to do to impress them? Perhaps you’ve anticipated their need. You may have researched their market position and brand and created some really custom, personalized and “wow-worthy” design. Your client is impressed. They will tell others.

But if you want to move to the fourth level of customer experience?  What will it take to amaze your client and seal your partnership? If you want to be an integral part of your client’s business, to be the go-to resource and problem solver — you need to be nothing short of amazing.  Amazing is hard work. Not everyone can be amazing. Can you?  

These are the four levels of customer service.  

  1. Your buyers assume that you will deliver.
  2. Your customers develop expectations of how you will deliver.
  3. Your clients are impressed with your professional service.
  4. Your loyal clients are amazed by what you do, how you do it and just how good you are.  

Here’s the thing. What customers are amazed by today will just impress them tomorrow and by next week they’ll expect it and by next month, it will be assumed.

Creating value and being the best is a journey. You need to get up every morning and ask yourself. “How Can I Be Amazing?”







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Two Ways To Find Your Why

4/29/2014

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Do you know your “why?” Why are you doing what you are doing? Please don’t tell me to make money. Money is a result of what you are doing, it is not the why. Your “why” is your purpose. When you find your purpose and live it, you discover meaning and you get to do what you love. When you do what you love, you never have to work a day in your life.

When you find your passion and your purpose and live out your “why”, your work becomes a labor of love. Work is what we do by the hour, while Labor sets its own pace.  Living out your mission, you tap into a creative stream that allows you flow — an intense focus and crisp sense of clarity that others notice.  Simon Sinek has a TED video with more than 12.6 million views on YouTube in which he explains the importance of finding your “why”.  He points out that “people don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe.”  

What is your cause? What are your beliefs that drive you and get you out of bed every morning? Why should anyone care? Most of us can explain what we do. Most of us can explain how we do what we do. But can you articulate your “why”?  Are you passionate about solving problems? Are you driven by continuous improvement? Does helping others succeed drive you? Are you trying to make the industry more professional? Do you love being part of the creative process and watching an idea germinate, blossom and flourish?  Find YOUR Why and live it courageously. Steve Jobs said, “the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. Don’t settle.”

It is your responsibility to discover your “why”. Once discovered, center your life on it and allow it to flood meaning into your life goals and daily activities and become an everyday source of integrity and pride. Your purpose should be rooted in love, not fear; aligned with your fundamentals, your passions and desires; something that moves you emotionally and not just mentally; be energizing and nourishing; inspiring and worth building a life around.

Here are two ways to help you find your “why”.
  1. You’ll find it inside. You already know the answer, but you will find it close. So step back and look inward and then trust your gut. Let go of self-interest and control and reflect with honesty on your values, your beliefs and the things that matter most to you. Ask yourself if your life serves something of value in itself and not just what you think you can get from it. If you can direct your energies in the service of creating a greater good, it will return to you. Allow yourself to have moments of “awe” that put you into the moment. Watch the leaves change color and drift to the ground. Stare at the fire and smell the smoke and hear the pops and crackles. (Hopefully around a campfire or fire pit). Get up and watch the sunrise and see how the colors of the world change and hear the birds greet the new day. And then, listen. To yourself. The answer is inside of you.
Be for the sake of being. Love for the sake of loving. Give for the sake of giving. Trust the world to give it back to you. It always does. It’s the law. The law of the universe. Pursue your purpose with a sense of service to it. When you keep your self-interest at bay, you’re able to find your true purpose.


     2.  You’ll find it by working at finding it.  Steve Pavlina suggests that anyone can do it in about twenty minutes. Begin with an open mind and a commitment to work at it until you get there.  On a blank piece of paper or a new document file if you’re more of a computer person, write “what is my true purpose in life?” Write the first answer that pops into your head. Now repeat that with each new answer that you think of. When you get to the one that makes you cry, you have found it. It could take you one hundred, two hundred or even a thousand answers but when you hit one that hits every emotional nerve in your body, you will have found it.

Will finding your “why” help your business? It will if you make the decision to live it, love it and be it. 
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Resilience

9/16/2011

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“You may have a fresh start at any moment you choose, for this thing that we call "failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down.”  Mary Pickford

Resilience def:  the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress.

Tired of this “new normal” we’ve been optimistically calling a recession?  Three years is a long time to be subject to the compressive stress of clients not spending, prospects who are price shopping everything, our once strong value propositions being commoditized, banks not lending and companies not hiring. 

Know this.  You were born with Resilience.  You were born with the ability to bounce back.  From anything.  To anything.  This moment brings you everything that you need.  It is all here.  Now. 

This doesn’t mean it will be easy.  It doesn’t mean that it’s without stresses of its own.  It requires a leap of faith.  It requires being able to let go of old beliefs and old habits and old familiar places and yes, even old familiar faces. 

Believe in your dreams and create your new path.  What is it that you are passionate about.  Do it.  Live it.  Open yourself to life. 

When we are inspired by others who overcome seemingly insurmountable odds, it is easy to not identify that resilience in ourselves.  If we do find it in ourselves, it is easy to attribute it to faith, to grace, to God.  Psychologists have identified several factors that seem to contribute to a person’s ability to bounce back from major life stresses and be stronger than before.

▪Avoiding identification with the sad story
▪Seeking help
▪Holding the belief that there is something one can do to manage your feelings and cope
▪Letting go of negative emotions and experiencing forgiveness
▪Being connected with others, such as family or friends
▪Self-disclosure of the trauma to loved ones
▪Spirituality
▪Having an identity as a survivor as opposed to a victim
▪Helping others
▪Finding positive meaning in the trauma

          Keep moving forward.  Keep reinventing.  Get creative.  With yourself.  And believe.  It is not that you are powerless.  You are powerful beyond belief, so leap forward.

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Ultimate Creativity: Living Life to Your Core Values

3/30/2011

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I was on the floor.  My knees gave out.  My life had collapsed.  I came home from Hong Kong to an empty, dark house.  My life had become empty and dark at that moment when I turned on the lights, but the emptiness remained.  The bedroom was eerily empty.  Nothing on the dresser.  I pulled a drawer open.  Empty. I opened the closet. Empty.  A note.  Two lines.  “I met someone.  I’m leaving you.” Thirty-two years of past and a future full of plans gone in two lines.

The phone call was like a 9-1-1, but to a friend.  By grace, the friend said, “Paul, this is a defining moment.  What you decide to do with this moment will determine the rest of your life.  You must decide who you are and who you want to be.”  That grace touched the core of my being.  My core values.  I chose my attitude.  I chose to live out who I wanted to be rather than who I was expected to be.

The core values became the bedrock that sustained me.  I am a kind person.  Things and stuff and money can be replaced, relationships cannot.  I do not want to allow negative emotions to control me.  I want others to forgive her.  I don’t want to ever regret something that once made me smile.  I will model what I want from others.  I will let go of everything except for love.

Forgiveness is a value.  It is an act of love for oneself.  It is the most selfish thing one can do.  I didn’t set out to forgive.  Forgiveness was a grace that came to me.  Because I lived my values.  I modeled to others what I wanted to see in the mirror. Forgiveness is such a wonderful gift.  The negativity is gone and all that remains is love.  In its purest form.

Your core values are your core.  They will provide a solid foundation when life rocks you. We don’t get to choose the events life will bring.  We do get to choose our attitude about them.  We can learn to not take anything personally and not to make assumptions.  Reality can create enough drama.  We don’t need to add to it by thinking the world or others are acting against us personally or making assumptions on motives.  Life is reality and reality rules.  It’s a godlike property that we need to respect.  We can choose the God-like quality of creativity, of choosing to create joy, peace, satisfaction and a truly fulfilled life.

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Leadership: Rise UP to the Challenges to Find Opportunities.

3/23/2011

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To flourish and remain relevant in this highly competitive and rapidly changing environment, you must be very clear about who you are, what you are and what you deliver in terms of value, meaning, leadership and professionalism.  This requires a consistent, integrated message and experience with your brand for your clients, your employees, your industry partners and the community you serve.

Clarity and Consistency.  You are called to be a leader.  Leadership demands clarity and consistency.  You need to demand NOT that you are consistently good.  You must be consistently “world class.”  You must consistently deliver great experiences.  You need to change the dynamic so that you are the standard that your competitors aspire to and not the other way around.

You Are the Brand.   You cannot be everything to everybody. You need to discover your purpose and live it.   It is your reality.  The reality of today’s economy demands that you react faster, deliver more consistently and never settle for “good enough.”  The standards keep getting tougher and you may either chase them or set them.  I challenge you to set them.  It’s going to require creativity, innovation, and a consistent push for higher standards.  You must work every moment of every day to make Brand You the standard of excellence.

New Thinking.  There are some very, very old standard operating procedures in every industry. You need to in the words of Steve Jobs, “put a dent in the universe.”  You need to get excited about innovating around the changes and challenges that are yours to conquer in today’s marketplace.

Leadership is not about being liked.  It’s about doing what’s right.  That means being visionary and looking beyond your corners of your world.  It means you must connect with all of the stakeholders in your universe and engage and interact. You must ruffle feathers or you’re probably not doing your job as a leader.  You were hired or started your business to lead — not to be a caretaker.  You need to have the courage to describe the current landscape and define the ways to strengthen your clients’ organizations in the context of today’s market realities.

Windows of Opportunity not only open and close, they get bricked over and disappear.  Your destiny will be shaped by how you respond to opportunity when it presents itself.  You cannot allow yourselves to be blinded by fear nor paralyzed by it.  And if you want to look for opportunity, you need look no further than your fears.  Usually, if you will just pick up your fears and turn them over, you will see the beautiful opportunity that it presents.  We are currently living in a time of the most opportunity that we will ever see in our lifetimes.  If you are in the business of solving problems and taking away pain, you are living in what should for you be – the best of times.

Commitment starts at 100%.  Leadership begins at the extra mile.  If you are to become the organization that your competitors will try to emulate rather than the other way around, you need to have skin in the game.  You cannot fear failure.  Tom Peters said, “Screw-ups are the mark of excellence”.  The most successful people on the planet have failed more than ordinary ones.  The only failure is the failure to try and dream and dare.   But not dreaming big, setting big hairy audacious goals (thanks, Jim Collins “Good to Great” http://tinyurl.com/cyjh7a), not setting new standards of excellence and possibility would be the greatest failure of all.  It is learning to be discerning enough to realize that when you say yes to something that is unimportant, that you have just said “no” to something that is.

Reinvent.  What would you do if your very survival were at stake?  What if you faced a challenge so enormous that immediate, drastic changes and shifts were needed and need now?  Pressure and challenge will make you bigger, stronger and more relevant.  It can be your catalyst to greatness.  But you cannot afford to wait.  The small, independent, mom and pop business landscape is littered with the corpses of those who failed to have a value proposition relevant to today’s world.  Office supplies.  Travel Agencies.  Book Stores.  The Internet demolished some.  Giant competitors crushed others.  Only a few who have differentiated themselves and created unique value have flourished.  It may be time to burn your boats, and move with courage to completely overhaul your structure, your message, and your ways of doing business so that you can be an example to your employees and your clients and inspire them.  (Recommend: http://tinyurl.com/aq8tl4)

Create To Be Great.  This is my theme and my passionate belief.  I do not believe that you can have relevance as a commodity business.  I do not believe that you can survive if you fall into the price trap.  That means you need to educate, motivate, inspire and to identify and increase the value that inspires loyalty and builds brands.  As a marketer, you need to create value for your clients.  You need to lead by adding value to your offerings in ways that amaze your clients and create unique experiences.  You will do that by being real, by touching them and allowing them to touch and move you.  Yes, this is touchy-feely stuff, but I fully believe it.  All business at its core is about love.  It is that emotional.  The CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi, Kevin Roberts (http://tinyurl.com/bonnmr) said, “By touching emotion you get the best people to work with, the best clients to inspire you, the best partners and the most devoted customers.  The essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions.”  Wouldn’t be wonderful if you could instill a culture where every employee woke up every day and asked, “What can I do today to add value and solve problems for our clients?”

More opportunity exists today than you have ever seen in your lifetime.  This recession will end.  There will be winners and losers.  Which are you going to be?  How are you going to get there?  With a sense of urgency, with the knowledge that today is the day that you can end the bad times and start the good ones.  Go out there and Create To Be Great.  Create opportunity.  Create solutions.  Be the aspirin for the pain that your clients are facing.  Whose pain are you focused on?  If you’re focused on your own, you are not creating value.  If you’re focused on serving your clients and taking away their pain, everyone wins. You are a leader. You define leadership.  

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    Paul A. Kiewiet MAS CIP CPC
    Coach, Speaker, Facilitator



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