Success at the highest levels requires change. This series is written to individual family members and other stakeholders engaged in their family business, family office, foundation, or other enterprise. The teachings are there for us all.
A life-changing truth - Something we can read fast, and more or less ignore. Or, we can really hear and contemplate deeply. These words have the power to create a direct path to your transformation.
Our beliefs of who we were in the past create our actions in the present. Those, in turn, can only create a future steeped in the past.

Transformation

Who me? I’m not perfect, who is? But, my life is pretty good.
I could use a word like evolution. That is a good word. I always say that as entrepreneurs we must reinvent ourselves every day. That really means that most of us do want to get better at what we do. We want to be able to not do the same things we have been doing. We want to be able to take a fresh look and go to a higher level of performance and creation.
A simple word like “change” is OK. But, transformation has horsepower. Transformation means walking through life differently. Creating and contributing “bigger, better, faster”. It’s about experiencing life beyond anything you have known before.
Why? – Great question. Here’s the thing, you have to get clear on the things you want to change. You have to have a very high “want”. People tell me, I want this or that. I ask, how much do you want that? How important is it to you? What would your life and business be like if you had that thing? On a scale of 1 to 10, how high is your want? Sometimes, they might say “Oh, right now I’d say it’s a “6”. My reply is swift and to the point. “I don’t work with 6s. They never get done.” If it’s a 6, more exploration is needed.
So why would someone in a family enterprise, anyone for that matter, want to transform? Transform their way of thinking, their way of showing up, their way of contributing, and their way of experiencing? Let me share the most important example I can think of with clients I am working with right now.

Inner Peace

I come right out of the shoot here with one that is perhaps the squishiest and definitely the biggest. I sometimes say my work is creating peace and productivity. The people I meet are already successful. But only partially successful. We often try to put percentages on it, just to give a way to think about it. How much of life and/ or business is really working? And, how much isn’t? These are folks with a lot of wealth or sometimes in the wealth creation mode. It is sometimes something like 50/50. Let’s say its 75% great and 25% not so great.
That 25% falls into, on the surface at least, a few different categories. Relationships that aren’t all they can be. Stress, working too much – that’s common. Maybe there is a transition. Maybe there are aspects of one’s leadership that aren’t creating the desired outcomes. Those we love are struggling and we want to help them. I could list out a dozen more. Some around business. Some around life. All the same.
People usually don’t say in our first conversation “Don, I am really looking for inner peace.” Yet, before you know it that becomes front and center for them. These are often those hard-charging CEO types that others think would never slow down and contemplate the squishy underbelly of life. They probably wouldn’t have seen themselves doing that either, in the past. Yet, they come to a clear picture of what it means to live with inner peace.

Let Me Regroup

These darn blogs take on a life of their own! I started off today with a truly powerful statement. I intend to drill into that more as this series unfolds. I’ll probably shoot for one blog post per month, as I have done often in the past. In any event, back up to what I’ve written above, I next put forth the idea of transformation. Not just change, and certainly not just more of the same. Not settling, no matter what the goal line accomplishments or accumulations. I then asked why, and pointed out that if you don’t know why and don’t have a very high level of want, as in a 9 or a 10, you’ll never make the commitment and get it done.
I then came around to inner peace. That is a good label to use, and I want to talk through what I really mean by that in subsequent posts. Meanwhile though, it’s the thing almost everyone I work with truly wants the most. In part because they understand that is the launching pad for everything else they desire to create at this point in their lives. I will think through all of this with you as we move forward. And, for sure I look forward to coming back and exploring that life-changing truth set forth above. Stay tuned!

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