Christopher V. Flett

Is anyone else concerned about the sheer volume of men who are refusing to grow up? A guy that works for one of my clients was looking a bit tired a week ago. I asked him if he had been out the night before and he said that he had been waiting for a game to get released at midnight. I looked at him confused and asked what type of game. He said a new game for the Xbox 360. There was a huge lineup to get a copy and he and his friends waited in line for 9 hours and then played it through the night. He mentioned this like a badge of honor in his accomplishment.

I looked at him and said, “Jason. You are fucking 35 years old. You stayed up all night to get, and then play, a video game?” His smile disappeared at the scolding and I shook my head and walked away. Is this what happens when men don’t grow up with fathers? I don’t know about you, but if my dad was sitting cross legged on the floor playing packman when he was 36, I’d think (then and now) that he’s a douche. I’m not saying that a guy can’t play games (video included) with his kids, but….with his kids. He shouldn’t be standing out in the Vancouver rain so he, and his fellow man-boys, can get ejaculatory over some new version of a game coming out. Then they wonder why their employer thinks they are a loser, they can’t keep a job, and real men (those that have matured) don’t want to engage with them.

I asked a cousin of mine, who has a ‘gamer’ boyfriend what the attraction was for these guys. She said that these types of guys enjoy the interaction with one another and it’s fun. Is anyone drawing the correlation here between guys who play these games and these same guys lacking motivation, not dependable, and in dead-end jobs. They take pride in being ’skilled’ players and a feeling of ‘accomplishment’ when they get to the next level.

I played arcade games as a kid and even in high school, but my dad would yell for me to “get my shit together, quit wasting time, and go do something productive.” So I got my shit together, quit wasting time, and did something productive. I wonder if mom’s have these conversations if there is no dad in the picture? I don’t know, but I would assume most do. If they do, then why are these guys still hiding in the dream world of virtual reality? Another friend who works in the gaming industry said that more and more women are getting into gaming so they have something to do with their gamer men. Can you say co-dependent behaviour for women who won’t hold their men to higher standards? My friend who works in the gaming industry doesn’t completely understand it either, but admits that it is big business. With an economy where people are getting laid off, these gamers are the ones most likely to go, yet the least likely to do anything about it.

Truth be told, maybe it’s best that these guys sit in front of the game console and escape into their dream worlds. They attract one another and stay out of the way of people who are contributing in some meaningful way to business. But note to these man-boys. You may be a hero in your game, but when the power goes off, you go back to a sad ‘real’ life.

Ladies, if you have guys like this in your life, remember that 90% of success is related to the people you spend your time with. If you have a guy like this in your life he isn’t going to do anything to create a better opportunity for you. He will be too focused on ‘teaming’ up with other geeks to get to that next stage.  Join me in encouraging these man-boys to re-engage in real life and put away the games. Reminds me of a famous quotation:

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child:but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

Are we propagating a slacker mindset in society with these virtual reality options? Is there ‘dream world’ really better than what they can experience in the real world? If so, it is sad for us, but even more sad from them. Ask the gamers in your life what, exactly, it is they are looking to escape. Maybe it’s a question they have been waiting to be asked? What’s sadder is the people in their life who simply accept that this is the way they are going to be and do nothing to correct the behaviour. They will argue that it’s different, but I see a grown man who plays x-box 4 hours a day no different than a middle aged man playing with Lego or GI Joe. You can say that they are young at heart, or you can simply admit that they will never grow up and become men.

C/

I’m reminded today on the importance of focusing on a model and not the money. We’ve brought on a handful of new coaches into the Ghost CEO in the last quarter and I tell all of them, ‘focus on the model and the money will come.’ If you have read this blog before, you know the love I have for money. What I have learned is that the more you focus on, obsess, micromanage, and fear money, the farther it stays away from you. Money will either drive you or it will cripple you depending on your relationship with it. Doesn’t it seem like those that have money always get more and those that don’t never have enough? I believe it’s because when you are successful, you don’t sit on pins and needles waiting for a client to come in. You just keep going with the work and putting more fishing lines in the water. When you are obsessed about a deal closing so you can pay your rent, you focus only on that deal coming in, rather than focusing on creating more opportunities. This is what I did when I first started in business. I’d check email 100x a day, pick up the phone to make sure it was working, and do crazy things waiting to hear back on proposals. Now, I don’t sweat it. I just keep on working the model and the model always brings in money. The more irons in the fire, the more money that gets made.

If you find yourself pissing around with the same prospects that want to see more and more proposals, cut them loose. You get to a point of diminishing returns when your efforts to get the work start to outweigh the effort of doing the work itself. I know people that put 25 hours into a proposal/presentation so they can get 25 hours of work. Ummmm, you just cut your billable rate in half you knuckle head. I think that no more than 5% of time should go into any proposal. If you are trying to get a one month consulting gig, you should put no more than one day into getting it.

“What the hell are you talking about Chris, it takes me days to write proposals, do the research, budget…blah, blah, blah.” People, don’t waste time pitching ‘wood’. If it isn’t a sure deal, don’t engage. You don’t do yourself or anyone else any favours by putting countless hours into something that you have little or no chance of getting. Focus on building your model through connections, champions, clear niche markets, knowing the three questions, and engaging with a hunting pack. You need to either clean house or it will collapse on top of you.

C.

I’ve got a lot of shit on the go. 25 companies under management, more forming, launching Campus CEO, Glass Ceiling Solutions, writing for 5 blogs, and other initiatives next year. For me, I like to read how people do their day to day life. I like to see what Bill Clinton did each day in the White House (minus the cigar incident), I like to read how Richard Branson built companies, I like to hear where people are traveling and trends they are finding and following. Every day, I see something interesting and think to myself, “I should blog about that”, but then shit comes up, I let the ADHD kick in, and I lose it. I’m giving my partners a lot of space next year to do their thing while I got into strategy mode for the empire, but thinking that it might be good for me to start to document all this crazy shit we have happening (good and bad). In the last two weeks, I’ve been on two planes, 24 business meetings, spoken to women as old as 70 as young as 17, and seen a lot of wierd and wonderful shit in business. I’ve started exploring opportunities in Dubai, am planning a six-week vacation to get away from the olympics, revisiting profit models, managing various personalities, all well trying to keep sane.

Do you give a shit? I don’t know and I don’t think I care. I’m thinking that something like this is more therapeutic (through the humour that will undoubtedly come out of it) than anything else. Are there any business voyeurs out there that would like to weigh in on the decisions I make? Maybe I’ll say, Business trip: India, China, or Dubai? Then I’ll invite you to weigh in. I might still go against your advice, but maybe I won’t. With Campus CEO, I’ll be thinking of business ideas that I’ll fund/support. What if we recorded those presentation and put them on a webcast for you to advise me on?

The question is…could I blog  365 consecutive days? Would any of it be interesting or verbal diarreah? Maybe it can be used in my memoirs when I become leader of the UN assembly? Who am I kidding. Dimplomacy blows. Maybe grand overlord of all things profitable? I like that a bit more.  What if I took a ‘Hanging Pig‘ approach to business.

I’d be interested in your thoughts, voyeurs of the web.

C/

I think it takes a certain type of person to be successful as a business adviser/coach. You have to have the right mix of experience, success, empathy, and discipline. It is too easy for clients to come in, throw up their hands and want you to ‘fix’ their business. Same goes for all relationships in your business. From clients to employees, and vendors to alliances, you will come across people that want you to do it for them rather than learn how to do it on their own. Where this becomes an issue is when you start to do it for them, rather than with them. We have some new coaches joining the Ghost CEO, and the first thing I say to them is, “you must learn the difference between a consultant and a coach. A consultant creates dependency by doing the work for a client; a coach teaches the client how to do the work and empowers them to make it happen.

Clients are explained the difference when they start, but more times than not, they want the coach to fix it for them. I used to be this type of coach. I’d know that I could do it quicker then the client could, so I’d get in there and do the fixing. What I realized is that they weren’t getting the tools. Instead, they were becoming more and more dependent on me, knowing that I could get them out of most messes they get themselves into. Then one day, an advisor of mine told me that I was life guarding rather than swim instructing. She said that clients would ’swim into deep water’ knowing that I would rescue them if they got into trouble. What I should be doing is swimming out when they are in trouble, and asking them if they wanted me to ’show’ them how to swim back. It wasn’t about ‘dragging’ them back to shore. Rather it was about teaching them how to get back on their own. They would either A) follow my instruction and swim back, or B) drown.

That might sound a bit cold, but all of us need to realize that we must only take responsibility for our own path. We can leverage the knowledge of others to guide us the right way, but in the end, we should live or die on the decisions we make. I see women trying to ‘fix’ those in their lives. “Help their husband find a job he likes better”, “Re-write a friend’s resume who is looking for a job”, etc. The problem with this is you are dis-empowering those that you are trying to help. If they don’t want the change bad enough to take action, then leave them alone. If they come looking for help, offer them support by pointing them to resources. Husband to a recruiter; friend to a website on how to write a good resume. I find that with partners, I have to hold myself back from trying to wrangle the reins away from them to run the company. That’s not my job. My job is to be the adviser plotting course for the company. Their job is to run it. When I step into this role, one of two things happen. The partner steps up and leads or the company sits idol waiting for a driver. It kills me to watch this happen, but it is something I now can deal with. If I want it worse than the partner wants it, it’s a bad deal for me. If I wanted to do all the work, why would I share in the revenues?

Look to the areas in your life where you are supporting something and ask yourself, “Am I trying to drag this person somewhere with my horsepower, or am I empowering them to do it on their own with the right tools.” If you are doing the former, you aren’t doing them any favours; if doing the latter, you are giving them a gift that keeps on giving.

There are millions of people to do business with, but it can feel like you can’t get into the bigger game sometimes. The guys that are making money seem to only partner with other guys making money. There’s a reason for this…they know how to talk to each other. I had a young protege from years ago who I recently reconnected with. He’s a go-getter and after a discussion, we talked about me helping him with some ideas. Then I threw him the curve ball: “What’s in it for me?” The line went silent and then he started throwing out ideas. I put him on the spot (which I love to do to people) but I wanted to share with him an important lesson. When you are hunting big game, make sure you loaded the gun.

Before you start any discussion with a prospective business partner, already have thought about how you can make money together. This is the important word…together. Once someone has their shit together in business and knows how to get things done, others will come out of the woodwork looking to learn how to duplicate the results. This isn’t bad as long as the pace setter is getting something out of it as well. I get the whole mentorship piece, but the reason why mentorship doesn’t work is that no one talks about the ’selfish interests’ of all involved. We know what the person getting mentored wants, but what about the mentor? What do they get. Warm and fuzzies? A feeling of giving back? No, they are looking for something selfish or they lose interest. I’m sorry to burst the rainbow and butterflies of business, but folks, it’s all about the money in partnerships.

For me, I like business models that:

• have immediate cashflow
• are not investment intensive
• can be run by the partner
• have an obvious market
• can be licensed
• have a connection with something else I’m already involved in.

Aside from those points, I’m open to hearing any business ideas, but as I said in “What Men Don’t Tell Women About Business“, I need to hear how it benefits me in the first 30 seconds or I lose interest. It needs to be clear with how we both benefit, what i’ll do, what you’ll do, and what the numbers look like. Easy…yes?