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Resolve to Never Make a New Year’s Resolution

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I hereby resolve…blah…blah…blah

The best resolution you could make in January is to not make a New Year’s Resolution. They rarely work, and tying them to the New Year nearly ensures they never will.

Last year I reported that 97% of people who make New Year’s Resolutions to lose weight actually weigh more 12 months later. New Year’s Resolutions enrich companies selling diets and ab-duction machines, but they don’t effect real change.

Later, Dude…
A New Year’s Resolution is almost always focused more on celebrating the decision than on resolving to be different. There isn’t a wit of difference between Mardi Gras and New Year’s Resolutions. Both of these “decision” mechanisms are built on putting things off until a special date where you can then celebrate the decision to start losing weight, working out, spending time with family, or giving up smoking.

Until then, you can go on pigging out, being mean, ignoring family and smoking like a chimney. Now that you’ve announced you will quit on some future date, your self-destructive behavior is actually permissible to “get it out of your system”. Mardi Gras and New Years makes your actions downright celebrated – get your glutton on, because soon you’ll be in a forsaken and tortured desert of good living.

Getting Ready to Get Ready to…
Here’s a clue – the more you need to point to January 1 as the day “I will absolutely start doing or stop doing x”, the less you probably mean it. If it’s important, change now. If you have to walk on coals or chant at your vision board to prepare for the big day, you can save yourself some self-imposed guilt and just keep going with what’s not working.

My mother passed away a few weeks ago. She used to tell me, “Chuck, there’s no such thing as excuses, there’s not even reasons, there are just priorities.” She lived that out well, making no excuses and simply doing the things she found important. She didn’t live to make decisions on special days; she just DID what she VALUED.

How to Change Something
We do what is a priority, not what we SAY is a priority. Last year I gave you three few practical suggestions on how to DO our priorities. I added a fourth this year:
1) Don’t “get motivated” Most of this walk-on-coals stuff is emotion-based and has no lasting power. You’re either committed or you aren’t. I don’t get motivated to brush my teeth. I either do it or I don’t.
2) Run toward something, not away from something. People who want to lose weight rarely lose any. “I want to stop being fat,” is running away from being fat. “I see myself living a great lifestyle,” is running toward something. Run toward a great life, not away from being fat. Read, Get a Second Planet.
3) Make decisions through a new lens. See yourself and/or your business AS IF YOU WERE ALREADY THERE. Read last years New Year’s Resolution post on how Peter Arnell went from 406 lbs to 150 lbs and stayed there. If you can’t already CLEARLY envision yourself exercising three times a week, don’t even start.
4) Diligence, not Discipline – Anybody can have the DISCIPLINE to do something for 30 days. But few people will have the DILIGENCE to continue for the rest of the year. Diligence is a drip system. Do the right thing a little bit every day – it will add up to something big down the road. Diligent rules; discipline drools.

The above four steps are all about intentionality vs. hope. Intention is the key because:

You get what you intend, not what you hope for.

New Year’s Resolutions are full of emotion-based “hope”. Real decisions are full of intention and don’t need a special day or audience to be walked out into the open.

Don’t get there. Be there.
Don’t gin up the motivation to do something on a special day. Just start living the way you know will make you more successful. Today. It’s OK to cheat on your New Year’s Resolution and start it a few days before January 1. Especially if you actually want to change.

Where do you want to be in 2013? Tell the world here, be there inside today, and then let’s go do it on the outside for the whole year. Carpe Diem – seize TODAY and enjoy doing changing something that will make your life, and maybe even your checking account, richer.

Yesterday I Met a Rich, Self-made Hostage

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Riches vs. Wealth – the big lie.

I was stunned when I heard it – “Next summer is our 30th anniversary, and I’m planning a full two-weeks off work to celebrate with my wife.” This proud declaration from a man who owns a $30 million a year company demonstrates what a sad life he has. This is a man who lives in abject poverty with no clue how to run a business.

I see it all the time. Business owners whose personal lives are train wrecks, with no time to invest in their kids, spouse, or non-existent hobbies, and no time to even think about creating meaning in their own lives. They are hostages to their businesses with no end in sight for their incarceration.

People think this guy is a great business owner because he works all the time and has a lot of toys he doesn’t have time to use. I think he lives in abject poverty.

Riches vs. Wealth
Riches is just money. Wealth is freedom. Freedom is the ABILITY TO CHOOSE what to do with my time. Time is more valuable than money. It usually takes money to buy time, but unless the specific goal is to buy time, money can make us hostages.

Money does not bring freedom. Time brings freedom. This man has millions and has no freedom. He readily admits that if he is gone from his business for a few days things begin to go awry. He has built a $30 million business that depends on him personally being there every day! He is a hostage to his business. He is not a business owner; his business owns him. He lives in abject “time poverty”.

Intending to receive time, not just money
You get what you intend, not what you hope for. You can just hear this man starting his business. He intended to do two things:
1) “I’m going to work REALLY hard” and
2) “I’m going to make me some money.”

He got exactly what he intended – hard work and some money. And he is trapped by the hard work. He did not go into business intending to get both time and money from his business, just money. He HOPED that getting money would give him time and create freedom, but we don’t get what we hope (wish) for, but what we intend to get.

A Day a Week, a Week a Month, a Month a Year
I built five businesses like he did and was trapped as a hostage every time. This time around I intended to do something different – I decided this next business was going to give me both money AND time, and everything I did from the beginning was driven by forcing my business to produce both.

As a result, I now have every Friday off, the last week of every month off, two weeks every three months, and the month of February. I also now get the unintended bonus of every other Monday off, and only work a half day on the other one. A three-day, to three-and-half day week, with 16-20 weeks off each year is something I’m getting used to. I use only a few weeks for vacation, and CHOOSE (freedom) to invest the rest in Africa and helping others build businesses around the world.

A recent American Express OPEN survey found 66% of business owners haven’t taken time off in several years. And of those few who do take vacation, 68% of them check in daily to try to run things from their beach chair (we didn’t call once from New Zealand for 3 1/2 wks last February).

The famous Framingham Heart Study found those who took regular vacation are 32% less likely to die from heart disease and 20% less likely to die from anything else.

The objective of your business should be to build your Ideal Lifestyle. If you’re proud that you finally get two weeks off, you need to reassess how you are running your business and your life, and refocus on WEALTH (time/freedom), not just RICHES (money).

Is this just for special people? No. I built five businesses and never got off the treadmill. The sixth time I simply decided/intended to do it differently, and, what a surprise, it turned out different.

You get what you intend, not what you hope for.

What are you intending to do with your business and your life?

Why I’m going to the Congo on Wednesday.

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Live well by doing good.

Four and half years ago we started The Crankset Group and 3to5 Clubs to help business owners get to their Ideal Lifestyle, and to fulfill my vision of focusing on solutions to poverty. On the latter, we’re taking a radically different approach.

Non-profits vs. Capitalism
500 million people (1 2/3 U.S’s) have come out of poverty in JUST 20 YEARS in China and India alone. And it wasn’t the result of non-profits or other traditional means. It was achieved through [ugly, evil, horrible, by some accounts] capitalism, which has been exponentially more effective in attacking poverty in those countries than any other methods.

In the last 100+ years of well-meaning non-profit intervention in Africa – a few trillion dollars and tens of thousands of incredibly dedicated lives later – the rosiest of studies says the long-term impact on economic growth is not “tranformative” and “peters out” (The Effects of Foreign Aid in Sub-Saharan Africa, Aug 4, 2010). Some research says Africa is actually worse off economically then it was 100 years ago.

Using Business to Effect Change
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is the second poorest country on earth . We’ve been asked by business leaders and the government to come get involved. I’m doing it by getting personally involved, long-term, with national as well as local business leaders and government there, and starting a company in the Congo with an investment where I will purposely take a minority position to native Congolese.

We intend to effect permanent change by rebuilding the economy with the revenues from the business, and by working to build and rebuild many businesses around that one by the velocity of the dollar (capitalism). This is when the same dollar moves through multiple businesses in a local area and creates wealth multiple times for many people. We’re looking forward to using it to kick start local economies in the DR Congo.

It’s Time to Give Local Capitalism a Try
Some people and some non-profits have a negative view of capitalism because of the high visibility of giant corporations making bad macro decisions for micro (local) problems – see my blog on The Problem of Big . But capitalism at the local level is a very positive, stabilizing, long-term solution, as demonstrated by the incredible successes in China and India.

One of the big issues in the DR Congo has been giant corporations coming in, pulling out resources and money for a few years or more, then leaving. Because there was no local or national ownership, the net effect was never sustainable. We intend to create local ownership, keep a significant portion of profits local, and see the Congo transformed one business/locality at a time.

I could have given this money to any number of charities that do incredible work to solve short-term problems (hunger, disaster, health, etc.). And we’ve been offered thousands of dollars by non-profits to fund the large potable water project and the clinic we’re putting in before we do any business. We’ve also been offered millions in loans by the U.S. government to accelerate the start up process exponentially.

But in both cases my Congolese friend and I believe these improvements should come from the profits (and in this case the initial investment) of the company. It will provide a “no strings attached” approach, but more importantly it will show people the direct benefit of having capitalism and our company working in their area.

Giving Money or Building a Business Are Both Risks
As with any investment, there are risks, and with this kind of investment, the risks are much higher than normal. However, this isn’t a typical investment in a company, but the decision to focus on capitalism instead of charities to build a different future for the DR Congo. If we were giving these funds to a charity, I would expect no return. If our company grows and prospers we will be able to give this money (in the form of starting other locally owned companies) many, many times over.

Intending to Succeed
My Congolese friend and I intend to change the Congo. He said, “I want you to see the Congo today because I want to stand with you on the edge of Kinshasa 10 years from now and say, “See what we have done!””.

If we succeed we’ll see a very different Congo down the road. If we don’t, we’ll call it practice and go back to the drawing board to see what else we can try. Either way, we will Live Well by Doing Good.

We intend to succeed.

You get what you intend, not what you hope for.

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Our Intention – New Zealand

When we started this business four years ago we decided we wanted it to grow up and make money while we’re gone. Today we leave for New Zealand for 3 1/2 weeks while others run the business. We’ll do things like that regularly going forward. We weren’t lucky, just intentional.

What do we usually decide to do? Work hard for 40 years and make some money. So what do we get? 40 years of hard work and SOME money.

We decided to do it differently and USE our business to build our Ideal Lifestyle.

We decided we wanted our business to give us back both time and money, not just money. And we decided we didn’t want it to take 40 years, but only four, so we could have decades to create significance in the world around us; not just after we “retire”.

We decided we wanted our business to give us a day a week, a week a month, and a month a year – 52% of the year to wake up each day and ask the question, “What should I do today?”. We decided that if we did this, we would never have to retire – it would become a non-question. We decided to replace retirement with an Ideal Lifestyle that we could reach long before the age of 65.

And we decided to do it by growing a Mature Business in exactly four years.

Four years ago we decided to celebrate our Business Maturity Date on this date, Friday, February 18, 2011, by having an 8:30am meeting with our staff, have some Mamosas, and leave at 10am to head for New Zealand. When we decided that, we didn’t have any staff, just the beginnings of a business.

Today, four years later, we have 22 people working with us throughout the U.S. UK, and Ireland, and we’ll grow exponentially this year worldwide. All 22 of those have come on in the last 11 months of this four year journey, starting with our cornerstone, Nora A’Bell, who had the courage to join us March 1 of last year.

We couldn’t be more excited about the world class people who will carry the business forward while we’re gone, and over the next few decades as we go international. This isn’t ours anymore. It has grown up and is leaving home. This isn’t even a business anymore, it’s a movement.

Four years ago and over that first year of our business we made a lot of decisions that are now coming into full bloom. We’re not lucky, we’re not even smart. We’re just relentless.

You get what you intend, not what you hope for.

1) Make a decision
2) Put a date on it.
3) Go public.

It’s time to get ready for our Business Maturity Date celebration in an hour with those running our business, then head to the airport. That over-sized bottle of champagne sitting our our dresser for the last few years is going to get a work out at 8:30am this morning.

We decided to Live Well by Doing Good.

What are you deciding?

A Business Maturity Date Really Works

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We bought our tickets to NZ today.

Two years ago, in March of 2009, I wrote this blog http://chuckb.me/xF about how I started my business 3 1/2 years ago in March of 2007. Four years after we started we’ll have a Mature Business, which is what we intended to do.

In March of 2009, I wrote about March of 2007:

“2 years ago this week, March 6, 2007, I started my business…

But something is different. I have a Business Maturity Date…

In 3 years, 11 months, 2 weeks, and 22 ½ hrs. from when I started, I expect to be done building a business that makes money when I’m not around. I’ve got a lot of work to do and the clock is ticking relentlessly, the train is screeching, belching, and going in circles, and at the same time I’ve got little time left already to build this business to maturity.

My Business Maturity Date? Friday, February 18, 2011, at 10am – 1 year 11 months and two weeks from now. At 8:30am on that morning I will have a staff meeting and turn over the business to them to run, leaving the office in good hands, and be out of the office by 10am to pack my bags. At 6:10pm that evening my wife and I will be on a plane to Auckland, New Zealand, her dream vacation, for three weeks of celebration. We land in Auckland at 7:25am Sunday morning. The trip will cost $12,380.”

There were three problems with that blog post nearly two years ago. 1) The plane now leaves at 5:30pm, not 6:10, 2) it lands at 7:05am, not 7:25am, and 3) the trip will cost $12,840, not $12,380.

But other than that we’re on schedule. Our business will be making money while we’re on vacation for three and half weeks in New Zealand and it will be in great hands while we’re gone. In most ways we’re farther ahead than we thought we would be in 2009 when I wrote that blog post.

It shouldn’t be surprising because I’ve said for four years “You get what you intend, not what you hope for.” And for a number of years we’ve been intending to build a business that would make money while we’re on vacation.

We stopped intending to work hard and make money a long time ago because that always gave us exactly what we intended – hard work and SOME money.

Does it change you a little bit even reading this? Imagine what it’s done to me, and what it will do to you when you make the same commitment. It will change you forever.

What are you intending to do?