Do you want to grow in business and in life?
Are you looking for ways to make this growth sustainable and happen every day, so you can continually step into your greatness?
As a leader in several industries for decades now and a successful one by every definition of the word, I know a lot about growth.
And I’ve learned a lot about temporary growth.
As a leadership coach, I don’t want you to make the mistakes I did. I don’t want you to go for temporary growth.
I want you to develop systems for sustainable growth in business and life through a process of release, reinvent, and replace.
Don’t you want your business and life graph to show growth throughout your whole time?
I want that for you, so let’s do it together.
Be Mindful Of Your Sustainable Growth Choices
Today, we’re going to dive into sustainable growth through release, reinvent, and replace.
There’s a lot of talk around growth.
In a recent post, I talked about growth mindset and the importance of being mindful about how you think about the world.
Think about life, how you show up as a driven leader, how you acknowledge your team, how you make decisions that either move your life forward radically and rapidly or even put the brakes on and block where you want to go.
I think it’s important when we take a step back and think about sustainable growth.
There are many areas in life that we can grow with a shot in the arm that we can, you know, advance very quickly and do different things.
That buddy of mine, Joe Polish, talks about the concept of “you better be nice to the people on the way up because they’re the same people you’re going to see on the way back down.”
I don’t necessarily agree with wanting to plan for heading back down, but I think it’s important to be nice to everybody.
As you scale, as you grow your capacities, capabilities, wealth, all the different things influence whatever you’re focused on at the moment; be nice because you never know what life will throw at you.
But I think sustainable growth is one of the keys to life.
As we spend our time together here at Leadership In A Nutshell, I think that give yourself a chance to think about your thinking.
Sounds circular, right?
But that’s the goal.
And that’s a reason why we spend this time together.
Growth Comes From Fear; Accept It
Growth is just a lot of fear.
I just had a coaching call before working on the post, and the client was asking me a lot of questions about why people sell their businesses and why we coach and train around the decisions that lead up to selling a company.
Quite honestly, I see many businesses sold in fear of “can I do it again?”
I want you to think about sustainability with growth because if you’re committed to growth, you can do it again.
Last week, we talked about setting priorities in business.
If you have those in order, and you’re focused on your purpose, your passion, and your profit (in that order), then you think about sustainability.
That’s where I want to talk to you today.
I want you to take a step back and set yourself free, and have the confidence that you’re going to sustain growth.
Baseball And Sustainable Growth
I was sharing with this client, you know, I’m a previous baseball player and grew up playing ball and different things and selling a business or deciding how you’re going to handle certain levels of your career is much like a baseball player.
One year, I have a breakout year, and I hit 50 home runs this year.
Then, all of a sudden, I’ve got another year left on my contract, but I’m offered a one-year deal or one-year extension at X amount of money.
I could take that one-year at more money, or I could play for long-term growth.
If I play the rest of my contract out, I might get a better deal for multiple years later.
But in the back of my mind, I’m just not sure if I can hit 50 home runs again.
That is where the sustainable growth conversation comes into our minds as leaders, you know.
50 home runs is a metaphor for the business that you do, the tasks, the services you offer, or whatever it looks like at the end of the day.
I want you to think about as a leader:
Are you growing sustainably?
Meaning, are you getting burnt out?
Are you having fear-based thoughts around cash?
Are you worried about markets?
Do you worry about team capacity capability?
Are you worried that you’re not going to be able to attract top talent?
Are you worried that the business environment is shifting and changing?
Do you worry that taxes will impact you at a level that you won’t be able to keep up with whatever that is and whatever the tasks are that you do?
I want you to be mindful of those and then implement the simple three-step release, reinvent, and replacement process.
3-Step Process For Sustainable Growth In Business And Life
#1 Release
Several posts ago, I talked to you about delegation, and I’m a massive delegator.
I continue to learn about myself and my unique ability and primary purpose when it comes to delegation.
And there are certain things I love to do like this right here.
I plan on delegating my Leadership in a Nutshell content.
Why?
Because this is something I enjoy doing.
I believe that I bring value to you.
If I do, please do me a favor and comment below or share this article with someone who would get something from it.
Or join the private group on Facebook.
Help us grow the community.
Anyway, little advertisement over; back to business.
I want you to realize I won’t delegate this.
Why? Because I enjoy this task.
Now there are tons and tons of things that I do delegate because I don’t enjoy it.
It’s not my purpose or my passion.
When I talk about this process, step one is to release.
Where are you spending your time that doesn’t serve you when you think about energy drain or when you’re doing tasks that aren’t in your unique ability?
My Unique Ability
For me, I love spreadsheets.
I’ve probably mentioned this in the past.
I love spreadsheets, but I don’t love putting them together.
I love analyzing the data in spreadsheets.
And I love to build content, but I don’t like it creating the same content over and over.
When I sit down to create one of these articles or podcasts for you, I think about what’s top of mind for me.
I think about who I’ve coached recently.
I think about conversations and topics.
You know, I think about what’s coming to mind when I meditate.
I think about what I’ve been reading and putting into my mental food recently, and then I come up with content.
So as you read or listen to me over the course of years and years to come, we may revisit topics unconsciously from time to time because I have a new perspective around them.
I’m clear about that for me; it means I can’t do the same thing every single day.
So I have to release it.
I have to be mindful of where my unique ability and primary purpose intersect the daily activity that will create sustainable growth for me.
I just wrote a book in 2020 called the Six Dimensions Of Change 2.0.
If you haven’t read it, please make sure you get a copy of that.
It’s on audible and in paperback form.
It’s an eBook and whatever platform you want.
Yes, I am working on a new book that will be titled soon too.
That’s going to be around purpose and leadership and really helping you tap into your purpose to grow your community, to grow your influence, to grow your income, to grow the businesses, or whatever you’re involved in.
But I can’t do those things that align with my purpose if I don’t release the other things.
I sold a service business.
Why? Because it was time for other people on my team to graduate, to go to the next level.
And it was time for me to step deeper and further into my own unique ability with a little bit more primary focus.
I want you to be mindful that there are some things right now that you need to release, that you need to say no to.
You need to run a task evaluation exercise and look at what you’re doing daily and decide what you’re going to release.
#2 Reinvent
Now, I talk about that in the delegation article, and that’s all well and good.
However, here I want to help you avoid the pitfall of being like so many leaders that I work with.
My team at Blue Collar works with where we ended up realizing that you’re a leader and you’ve delegated a lot of your tasks that you’re not enjoying, but then you end up not sure what to do next.
You’re not sure what you “should” be doing.
I remember early as a young entrepreneur in the service business when I got out of the truck and into the office, I was a fish out of water.
I didn’t know what to do in the office.
Then I got some mentoring, and I started understanding where I really need to spend my time.
I had to reinvent myself as a leader, being an in-the-office leader rather than the field leader.
Sustainable growth needs to come from reinventing yourself to find what you need to do and what you want to do.
As I reinvent myself, now I can replace my daily activities.
I didn’t really reinvent myself until I released certain things.
I don’t have enough time if I’m doing it, doing it, doing it, and rocking and rolling.
We’re busy, and we have so many things going on.
Until we release and create some space, we can’t go:
Okay. Now, what is it that really works for me?
Where do I want to spend my time, my energy, my focus?
Where can I apply my purpose and ability to the best level that will grow this business that will grow team members that will grow influence in the proper way?
Now I can reinvent into that level.
#3 Replace
Now I can replace my tasks with things that are tied to this next level of myself.
I believe in constant never-ending improvement.
One of my favorite sushi restaurants in the Phoenix market is called Kaizen, the Japanese philosophy around constant and never-ending improvement.
I believe in that.
I believe in always growing, and I believe in always making my future bigger than my past.
This means I’ve got to create sustainable growth, which also means that we evolve as human beings.
We evolve mentally, physically, technology-wise.
By completing this process, ending with the relatively simple task of replacing your acts based on how you reinvented yourself (which can’t happen without releasing the things that don’t suit your purpose), you make sustainable, never-ending growth.
So I’ve got to release some things.
I’ve got to reinvent who I am:
- What’s Important To Me
- Where I Want To Spend My Time
- Who I Want To Spend My Time
- Where I Want To Invest My Income
- How I Want To Invest It With
- Who I Want To Invest It
Then I replace those activities.
There was a time I spent all my time in the plumbing, heating, air conditioning service business.
There was a time when I spent all my time training technicians on communication and sales processes.
And there was a time when I spent a lot of time doing one-on-one and group coaching.
Now there’s a time that I’m creating a lot of content.
I’m writing books, building platforms for the next level of leadership coaching, recording podcasts, making videos, and writing articles.
I release, I reinvent myself, and then I replace my daily activities with the things that make the most sense.
Final Thoughts
You have the ability to do the same.
It takes discipline.
It takes commitment.
You need desire.
You need clarity.
Take steps into your sustainable growth in business and life by replacing the things you don’t need to do or aren’t part of your purpose, reinvent your job or goal to match your purpose and replace your daily activities to suit this new purpose.
It’s an everyday process, but it’s the key to growth, happiness, and stepping into your greatness.
Now go make it a better-than-fantastic-day!