matters not whether we live up to the expectations of our fathers, but rather, we as fathers, live up to the expectations of our children.
Is there a moment in time you can look back on and recognize that fate, Divine Providence – or whatever you want to call it – steered you in a certain direction and changed your life?
That happened to me. Four years ago, I was in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota, hanging out in a spacious condo atop the Saint Paul Hotel. The residence belonged to my good friend Craig Leipold, the owner of the Minnesota Wild National Hockey League team.
We were killing time before walking to the Xcel Energy Center for the start of the Minnesota Wild game. A green leather-bound book on the coffee table caught my eye. The title was Reflections of Lake Owen, and the author was Samuel C. Johnson, who was Craig's father-in-law and the patriarch of a family company that bore his name and made consumer products, including Johnson Wax, Windex glass cleaner, and Ziploc bags. The book was some type of memoir.
I sat down on the couch and flipped open to the first few pages. Johnson's words from the prologue hit me like a dump load of snow from a full Zamboni.
“My dear grandchildren” is how the prologue began. What followed were the words he hoped his grandchildren would read some day. After wishing he could protect them from the pains and hurts that would surely happen in life, he said that unfortunately, there was nothing he could do after he was gone, which is why he wanted to share his advice and lessons on life in the form of a book.
His words and insights resonated with me and inspired me to do the same for my family. This was exactly what I wanted to do for my children and grandchildren – to teach them the lessons I had learned in life.
After flying back to my hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I couldn't get Johnson's message out of my head. I had to share the lessons I'd learned in life with my children. Having never written a book in my life, I wasn't about to produce a 200-page memoir like Johnson did, so I settled on 14 one-page chapters. Each chapter had a message and a moral to it.
A few weeks later, I was having dinner with a few of my close friends at a downtown Milwaukee restaurant. These were the guys I could trust implicitly and whose advice I respected. They wanted to know how things were since our youngest child, Brendan, went off to college.
“Well, I've written a book,” I joked, choosing not to tell them it was only 14 pages long. My buddies asked to hear more, so I shared what I did and some of the lessons I learned.
My friend Mark Pacchini slapped his hand on the table and said, “That's a book people should read. You could help so many.”
I was flattered that Mark would say that. He ran the ad agency Foote, Cone & Belding in Chicago – it represented international corporations, including Boeing, KFC, Kraft Foods, Taco Bell, and the MillerCoors brewing company.
“What you have to say could help CEOs, sales organizations, college students, and members of the military coming back from the service,” he said. “You should publish it.”
I was pleased that Mark had faith in me. He believed my business background and life experiences could translate into a powerful business tool to benefit others. I was an investment banker with Corporate Financial Advisors in Milwaukee, but during my nearly 30 years in business, my favorite times were those spent consulting, speaking, and training. Over the years, I have been a businessman, an entrepreneur who bought and sold companies, as well as a sports agent for NFL players, baseball players, and golfers.
So I took the plunge. I worked with Mike Yorkey, a Southern California writer, to get the prose right. The result was Networking Is a Contact Sport, which was released in 2010. I learned early on that the relationships I made while running my business were more valuable than any ad campaign, cost-saving initiative, or product launch. The art of truly connecting with another – and all that entails – can at once be the simplest, most complex, and most rewarding talents one can endeavor to develop. We are trained in how to use systems, how to prepare presentation decks, and how to negotiate contracts, yet we are never taught how to engage, connect, or build a network. I wanted to write a book that would help others in business overcome insecurities, learn more effective networking skills, and establish deep, loyal, and meaningful relationships.
The message resonated so much that I developed a Networking Is a Contact Sport workshop and workbook that showed people how, through a series of exercises, they could actually develop skills to be better at building relationships. After attending my networking workshops, people asked me whether I had anything else that could help their teams operate at this elevated level in other aspects of their roles. “Can you help move the needle at our company and improve our overall performance?” the managers asked.
Hearing their requests got me thinking again. Was there a need for an in-depth, ongoing training program that focused on business and personal development? There had to be because when business leaders were asking me whether I had anything else to share, what they were really asking was this:
“Can you help us change human behavior?”
Part of what has made me so interested in the field of networking has been my insatiable curiosity about what makes people tick. People love sharing what motivates them or makes them behave in a certain way; showing interest in learning about them creates an instant bond. Here are two questions I always ask people I meet:
Why do you do what you do in life?
Why have you made the decisions you've made?
So, when dozens of business leaders approached me about what other programs I had in the works, I asked more questions. The leaders told me they were not looking just for motivation or inspiration. They wanted to know how they could improve their performance as well as that of their employees.
Invariably, three issues consistently popped up. Whether they were business leaders, managers, employees, teachers, or parents, they all reported having a hard time with:
• Getting clear
• Getting free
• Getting going
This observation applied to their professional, as well as their personal, lives. They were glued to the ground, unsure of the path they should take or whether they had the freedom to move forward. They weren't getting anywhere, be it in life, in business, or in relationships. In other words, they couldn't get clear, get free, or get going to achieve their goals.
Because of what the marketplace was saying, I decided to write Moving the Needle and share a collection of innovative tools that I've used over the past several decades to help me get clear, get free, and get going. To ensure the lessons of this book are adopted, I also developed a 52-week program to help people get clear, get free, and get going. (You can find out more about the 52-Week Winning Game Plan for Business and Personal Development in the back of the book. If you don't have 52 weeks to get going, this program can be adapted to shorter times, such as 16 weeks or 8 weeks.)
That said, Moving the Needle is about changing human behavior. For example, if you want to lose 50 pounds, I could help you accomplish that goal, as I've done with a few close friends. Much like changing behavior after reading a book or listening to a 1-hour keynote is challenging, losing 50 pounds after 1 hour in the gym is just as difficult. That's why I have developed a program to help you change behaviors.
So ask yourself:
• Am I stuck?
• Am I having a hard time
