Thanks for closing the Q on time and even squeaking in those last few orders on Friday afternoon before the closing bell ! This morning, whatever the number was, it feels good to have the wind at your back and a new page open to a new week, a new month and a new quarter ! Still lots of room between now and the end of December.
Most importantly this morning, let the natural rhythm of the tides of the ocean or the early morning cool air of Vermont create your direction this morning.
Don't try to change Mother Nature. Embrace the heat since after all it certainly beats February. And, don't stress out that you're in the office and your prospects and customers are not. This is just the natural rhythm of the seasons right alongside and deeply intertwined with the natural rhythm of sales. Don't overthink it...but plan around it by detailing out your time over the next eight weeks.
It's The 4th of July Week !
Everyone, or almost everyone, takes this week off. People packed up on Friday and went to the Cape or the Islands or the NH lakes. Even a few of us made it successfully through the border checks leading into Vermont, where I'm safely living alongside the Winhall River this week...writing a few chapters of the new book. Just too many distractions at the NH beach to even attempt the same since the sound of all of those noisy crashing waves gets too deeply into my head.
Celebrate the real Revolution this week!
Right this minute take your mind of this page!.
Stop reading and writing emails at the same time while you're thinking about keying up your next call.
Now take yourself 100 feet off the deck and just think for 30 seconds about the reality and the power of these words taken into the context of celebrating the event of the 4th of July taking place 242 years ago. 240 years is simply a tiny pencil point in time, but the dynamic impact of these words has lasted for centuries and remain powerfully with us still today.
- "Revolution"
- "Freedom Fighters"
- "Terrorists"
- "Patriots" & "Loyalists"
Thinking about the power of these words when taken individually, and which we hear every single day related to Syria, Palestine, Afghanistan, Angola and 30 other hot spot locations, you immediately have the common language of what occurred in this country 240 plus years ago for almost 20 years between 1765 and 1783, led by those "terrorists" named Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Washington and a core band of another 50 "patriots".
This week, while you're keying up your work for the balance of the summer, and thinking about taking Wednesday and most probably the rest of the week off, just reflect for a minute, maybe five minutes, on the power of these opening words in a tiny document that's only 1,300 plus words long.
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for
one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and
of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which
impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Celebrate this 4th, not for the barbecue, not for the party with friends, and not for the day off from work, but for the reality and the depth of the word "Revolution" and then take that word back and apply it to your work and your career, and, as I say to my students of entrepreneurship at Tufts, where I have the privilige of teaching, "Break some Rules!".
Enjoy the day!
Coach & Advisor to Derby Management
Director, Entrepreneurial Studies, Tufts University
Cummings Family Professor of Entrepreneurship
