Focus “Daniel Son”

Cover of The Karate Kid (Special Edition)

Like most of you I have had a really busy week with lots of DISTRACTIONS. However the most distracting thing for me lately has been the Buffalo Sabres. They are horrible, they finally won a game after losing twelve straight games. I even attempted to watch all of them. The news reports are hinting that the Sabres are going to make some big trades and that they are going to fire the GM and the coach and make drastic changes to the lineup. This is exciting to a Sabres fan because we just want to have a winning team, but it has also become a HUGE distraction to me. I caught myself constantly checking ESPN and the Buffalo News for updates this week. I was getting annoyed with the new owner for not doing anything, but I was even more frustrated with myself because I couldn’t stop checking the websites for updates. I felt like a sixty year old guy trying to quit smoking for the hundredth time. Finally I realized that I was becoming unfocused and distracted. I hated the person I was becoming and we all know one of them. I knew I had to change. In every office there is that one person who is distracted by everything and 25 years later after failure after failure finds himself living in a 1 bedroom apartment wondering why he is still working at Best Buy

It is so easy to get distracted, I get it. Before our employers would block certain websites from our work computers, or limit us from personal calls at work. Well all of a sudden we can text our friends, check emails and random websites from our phones (it is kind of awesome). There seems to be a TV every ten feet with either a different sporting event on or a new reality TV show. Distractions are everywhere for us, but how focused are you on your goal or the project in front of you today.  Before I had this beautiful office and amazing team, I used to work from home.  I had TVs, couches, my bed, my dog, friends, food, every imaginable distraction, but I chose to work, to be focused and to be successful. I cannot lecture you on how to be more focused or how to tune out the distractions at this point you just have to choose what is more important and have your eye on the prize!

Much of life really comes down to the Karate Kid (the first Movie of course.). Mr. Miyagi always had good life lessons for Daniel son thru out the movie. The lessons were so good they made 3 more movies, I refuse to count the remake

I have worked alongside a few amazing people in my life and they all have had the eye of the TIGER. I’m not sure how Mr. Miyagi would feel about Daniel son having to fight Rocky Balboa but I’m sure they would both be focused, not distracted and ready to win.

What kind of leader are you?

I was driving to a meeting  this week when I turned on ESPN radio just as the Colin Cowherd radio show was about to start. I am not sure if I like him or not, but I am pretty sure that is part of his marketing/branding of himself.  He says just enough to get your attention and get you to agree with him and then just enough to get the other half not to like his thoughts or opinions for that day.

 On this particular morning Colin started off his show talking about coaches and the difference that they can make. I think his point was not that one coach really knew a secret play or had a great trick play, but that certain coaches have higher expectations than others. Colin used an example when he was watching Nick Saban from Alabama yell at one of his wide receivers for dropping a catch in PRACTICE. Colin had remembered that the previous year he was watching another college coach during a practice and how that coach did nothing and did not react to a dropped ball in practice. One year later, one coach is playing for the National Championship and the other Coach is out of work.

 That got me thinking about my expectations here at Search Solution Group and how I can make an impact. I am not a Nick Saban fan, but I do appreciate and respect winning. I am not sure that yelling at one of my employees for not making a call or getting a sale would be the right motivation for my team or an example I want to set on a regular basis. I like to think that the last few years the approach that I have taken is that most situations are teachable and that we can learn from them. Sometimes it is easier to just yell or get made or make people run around a tree (inside joke), but in the office it is so much more challenging. It is so important to me that we are all learning and getting better. For most of us that means making a few mistakes and learning from them.

Sales is so tricky in the recruiting world. No two candidates are the same and no two clients are the same, what works for one might scare the other away. How do you teach that???  How do get a sales person to understand that just because the last ten people said “NO” that you should not take it personally?  All of them are weekly scenarios that we encounter and need to get over to be successful in the sales world. But what I learned from Colin’s radio show is that I need to get better and I need to make sure that I am paying attention to my team. I need to listen, mentor and coach them to success. I am not trying to be Nick Saban and make people cry (Manuel Wright) but I certainly would not mind being lumped into a conversation about Nick Saban and all the success he has had in coaching.