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Measuring the Wrong Things Right

You’ve heard the cliche in business meetings “If you can’t measure it, you cannot improve it.” It’s nice to sound smart in a business meeting, but be careful. It maybe time to be an anti-conformist with the cliche use. You can measure the wrong things right.

Be care to not measure the wrong things right.

3 Considerations in Measuring Things Right

Here are 3 considerations on measuring the wrong things right in your business and in life:

1) You can improve things without measurement. You can evaluate periodically and decide are things getting better. For instance you can evaluate whether or not you are becoming a better manager or coach. There aren’t a lot of object measures for improvement on these personal areas of development but by occasionally reflecting and evaluating you know you are getting better. No measurement needed. No wasted energy and resources. Evaluating is enough in some cases.

2) When you do end up measuring a thing, you might actually only be improving the measurement, and not actually be improving the underlying thing. So now you are wasting energy and resources focusing on the wrong thing and not making any real progress. We don’t want to get better a measuring.

3) You can end up measuring the wrong things right. In this case you start steering the business in the entirely wrong direction and make things far, far worse. This is a HUGE issue that is a silent killer of businesses.

Conformity creeps into everything and is the enemy of authentic and real leadership.    We need the courage to think differently in our business meetings and not jump to cliche conclusions. Take a courageous path and not the well trodden pathway that has been portrayed as the road less traveled.  Take the time to reflect and evaluate before you jump into measuring the wrong things right.

Grab some other new #personal and #professional #insights from me here: https://us17.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=d3a271ec25edc892d966d0973&id=3ffc1f5ae4

Increase Your Quality Inputs

As I previously wrote, Readers are Leaders, I have really tried to dramatically increase quality and quantity of my book consumption. It has worked. I’ve gone from 10-20 books in 2019 to 30-40 a year (past 12 months). My ideal target is 52 plus — 1 book a week. This year I did a few more than last, but also wrote a book (more on that later), so I’m pretty happy with the effort.

Without more delay, here is a list of most of the books I have read in the past year.  Most of them were recommended to me and now I recommend them to you. If you ever want specific book recommendations please reach out.

  • Sons of Wichita by Daniel Schulman
  • What Makes Sammy Run? By Budd Schulberg
  • Never Finished by David Goggins
  • Onassis by Frank Brady
  • You2 by Price Prichett
  • Finding Mezcal by Ron Cooper
  • Atomic Habits by James Clear
  • $100M Offers by Alex Hormozi
  • Abundance by Steve Kotler and Peter Diamondis 
  • We Should All Be Millionaires by Rachel Rogers
  • Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke
  • William Tecumseh Sherman by James Lee McDonough
  • Unshakable by Tony Robbins
  • Courage is Calling by Ryan Holiday
  • The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson
  • Contagious by Jonah Berger
  • The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that will Shape Our Future by Kevin Kelly 
  • Essentialism by Greg McKeown
  • 10x Rule by Grant Cardone
  • Raise Your Healthy Deserve Level by Gary Kadi
  • Coaching for Performance by Sir John Whitmore
  • Peak (New Science of Expertise) by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool
  • So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport
  • Build by Tony Fadell
  • Dare to Lead by Beene Brown
  • The Antidote: Happiness for People who can’t stand positive thinking by Oliver Burkeman 
  • Guerrilla Marketing for Coaches by Jay Conrad Levinson and Andrew Neitlich
  • Art of Gathering by Priya Parker
  • Greenlights by Mathew McConaughey
  • High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard
  • Business of Belonging by David Spinks 
  • Originals by Adam Grant

An Invitation

Deep down we all know that we can be more, much more.

There is a future picture of ourselves in each of us that is much bigger and more exciting than where we are now. But are we ready to take the courageous path to become that new version of ourselves?

“Wanting what you want” is not only about being free and living life based on great choices and new commitments, it is also about painting a much, much bigger picture for yourself and those you lead, while also getting on the right path that looks scary and full of unknowns.

Most of us are avoiding the courageous pathway to get us to that bigger future. What we are each missing is an invitation to become courageous — to become a new version of ourselves. Sadly, most will never get that invitation. But now I am extending that invitation to you. I’d like to invite you to take the remainder of this year to be much more so that you can swing through to a transformational 2023. I want you to be intellectually excited and emotionally committed to that new big future.

If you are reading this post, please know that I believe in you, perhaps more than you believe in yourself. As a result, I want you to dream of a bigger future for yourself and remember that in life you don’t get what you deserve. You get what you think you deserve. You need to have courage to want what you want and at the same time eliminate lesser goals that are distracting you. I invite you to dream and take the right kind of risks that play to your distinctive strengths and discovery a bigger present.

Keep dreaming because when your future gets bigger, your present gets better.

When 10X Isn’t Enough

Most leaders understand the core elements of personal and professional achievement: write down goals, make a plan of action to achieve the goals, share the goals with a friend or coach, and have a weekly check-in with that friend or coach.  This method has a 76% success rate.  This is a great approach to living and growing.  With a coach there to help you through these steps you could really see an appreciable difference over the course of a lifetime or even over the course of a couple of years in a specific realm of life.  Some coaches go a bit further and go beyond obstacles to help address Beliefs and Inner Conflicts.  These added realms of consideration could get you to a 10 X difference over a lifetime.

When I began thinking about what it would take to be a great coach I had a 10 X mindset.  However, I wasn’t feeling great about it.   Reflecting on my readings of the top coaches, top leaders, and how top athletes of the world operate and applying my learnings to my coaching practice, I sat unsatisfied.  One night my brain kept me up, literally.  I was chewing on this dissatisfaction.  I was hitting back with advice I had already given to countless other people, particularly in the past 2 years of the pandemic: we are entitled to the limits we put on ourselves.  That was the revelation I needed. 10 X growth seems like a lot and most leaders would be very satisfied with 10 X personal and professional growth.  However 10 X isn’t extraordinary.  We are in the age of unicorns and now have decacorns.  We see multi-trillion dollar market caps in public companies built in our lifetimes.  We have several multi-billionaires running multiple companies.  Three of these went to space on their own rocket ships in 2021.  Maybe we are leaving some life on the table with 10 X thinking.  

It is not just about the money and fame.  A life can be unlived in many ways.  However, navigating blindly and with self-imposed limits – in a world where technology, knowledge access, and more allow us to experience and accomplish way more than prior generations – is flat out very hard.  If you are reading this you have come face-to-face with yourself and your own life and even the truth that you may be “leaving life on the table.”   We now understand that there is much more we can do than even our childhood selves could have imagined.  There are way more people that we can help and impact.  There is a bigger legacy or institution that we can leave behind.  There is a daunting personal pursuit that we are avoiding.  

An order of magnitude difference would have been fine, but now you know there is something else.  Deep down you know there is a more courageous path that you are avoiding or have yet to discover.  For those that understand this, 10 X mindsets just will not cut it.

Speaking at a Wedding on Lasting Partnership in Love & Business

I was recently asked to speak at the wedding ceremony of two of our founders (in separate businesses) that met in Memphis by participating in our accelerator. They asked me to speak on, and this is a direct quote: “Relating characteristics of 1) creating a great partnership as co-founders to build a successful company to 2) creating a great partnership in life / marriage for a successful relationship.” Here is what their prompt and their love inspired. I have altered the names and some facts to give some privacy to the couple. Enjoy and let me know what you think.

Spoken on the Occassion of Your Wedding

Good afternoon. I am Eric Mathews.  I’m not the best man.  And thankfully so.  Sam you are certainly the best man for putting up with James for these 9 plus years.  Nonetheless, it is a great honor to be here and be asked to speak. 

For those who don’t know me, I’m the first investor for many business partners who come to Memphis, Tennessee to build and launch a new, amazing technology based business.  James and Kimberly entered into our program in separate businesses in 2013 and found way more than business in Memphis – they found each other.  With this in mind, James and Kimberly asked me to speak at their wedding ceremony on how business partnerships and lifelong loving partnerships are, at their core, the same.  

For those gathered here today wondering, the answer is YES.  

I was apprehensive to speak in business terms at a wedding ceremony.  However, given the trust and love I’ve felt from and between James and Kimberly, I got comfortable with the words.  More so I hope their love that inspired these words will inspire each of us to bring more love and care back into our daily lives and to the world of business. James and Kimberly, I’m grateful for the trust you have placed in me here.  

So let’s start at the beginning and the first foundation.  In the first days of our business accelerator program, we have the new business partners review their personality types to better understand one another.  Next, we ask them to answer tough questions openly and honestly with each other.  We also place them into tough and uncomfortable situations where they will have to come together and rise and fall as a team.  This is all done because one the biggest causes of business failure is having a dysfunctional team with poor interpersonal dynamics.  I think we can all identify with the importance.  We all need strong partners that have complementary strengths to account for our weaknesses. We need the strength of honesty, when things are going wrong.  We seek mutual respect to understand that failure is an event and not a person.  We need the personal strength to accept and solve our own problems, our partners problems, and your collective problems without blaming the other person.  We need open communication so that nothing is hidden including unspoken expectations, personal needs, or opportunities for growth.  

All great partnerships require a daily commitment to these relationship principles to be lasting.

This leads to the next foundation that our entrepreneurs learn in Memphis: start with “why.”  Why do we wake up each day? What is our collective purpose and intent?  Purpose drives great entrepreneurship but also great love. You and your partner wake up with a shared purpose to change the world and each other for the better.  Money is not a sufficient motivator in business and marrying for money can lead to far worse.  Money is not sufficient because of the amount of sacrifice needed for mutual success.  You need a purpose around which you wake up everyday and are motivated to help each other succeed as individuals as well as a unit.  You will need to understand and contextualize your purpose so that you can celebrate the small victories, lift each other up in defeat, be excited to discover the unknown together, and to work together to leave the world a better place — these are the true rewards.  

All great partnerships require a daily commitment to purpose to be lasting in the good times and in the harder times.  

Finally, there is a step beyond the foundations of building a great team relationship and defining and living with great purpose.  A great team and a great purpose will get you started, but over time we’ve found that you need something that helps guide you over the long haul.  You need a manner in which you can evaluate whether your partnership is on track or whether you need to course correct.  You need a lens by which you can evaluate tough decisions where perhaps there are no good solutions or the opposite scenario where there are too many good options.  You need a way to evaluate the unexpected together.  We find that the best partners in life and in business mutually hold the same core values and beliefs. These guideposts are unique to each partnership and help all partners make great decisions daily in service of one another and the purpose and intent of their relationship.  

All great partnerships require a daily commitment to core values and beliefs to help them stay on track.  

Kimberly and James, arriving at a business accelerator in Memphis, I think we would all expect to find great business opportunities and great friendships.  However, I don’t think love and marriage would have been an outcome that any of us would have placed bets on in May of 2013. Yet here we are and it is testament to each of you.  You have the kind of love that empowers not only each other, but also empowers those gathered here today who can feel it and be better for it. 

May your commitment to each other, to great purpose, and to your core values and beliefs be your guide forever and always.    

Anti-Conformity in Authentic Leadership

I have experienced feeling out of place and that made me who I am today.  Some tried to sand me down, and at times I thought conformity was the best way to get ahead, but once I got to college, and even more so when I started my own business, I realized I needed to be my authentic self to succeed and lead. Now that I’m even older and wiser I realize how conformity can creep into so many aspects of life. 

For instance, I’ve been working in the tech startup world for a while and it is easy to get caught in comparisons with Silicon Valley.  Silicon Valley is held up as the standard for disruptive anti-conformity and innovation.  However, most in Silicon Valley are conforming.  Leaders who draw comparisons between themselves and their communities and Silicon Valley are using conformist thinking that is limiting. Conformity in Silicon Valley looks like fitting into founder archetypes like being either highly technical or highly visionary.  Conformity gets you a startup executive coach that has his or her own conformity mindset on what coaching is.  Conformity gets you looking for examples to follow from the books you read.  Can we truly lead with fancy business school degrees and majority views of success?  I think it maybe the hardest way to lead.

Conformity creeps into everything and is the enemy of authentic and real leadership.  Conformity is what we are fighting inside ourselves and in the world.  We need the courage to think differently and take the most courageous path and not the well trodden pathway that has been portrayed as the road less traveled. 

To lead yourself and others on courageous pathways, you need to be true to yourself — not a sanded down, conformist version.  When you aren’t yourself or acting authentically, people detect that and then they try to find out why you are not acting authentically.  Trying to find out why you aren’t acting like your true self breeds distrust in you and your leadership.  When we are trying to lead others and move to the next levels, we must realize that people prefer leaders who are authentic and different because it makes leadership appear accessible to all in the care of our leadership and they in turn will strive for more too.  You thus inspire others to lead themselves. 

So my invitation to you is to have the courage to be yourself, get out of the comfort and conformity of life, and find your own path so that others will be inspired to find theirs too.  

You Can’t Give Something You Don’t Have

It’s hard to learn how to live and lead [a great life] while you are living, let alone consider leaving a legacy.

You know deep down you can be more . . . We all feel that way.  We want to be more so that we have more to give.

And we want to become more in many dimensions of life, because a life can be unlived in so many ways.

What we are each missing is an invitation to take a courageous path.  

And sadly most will never get that invitation.

I’m extending that invitation to you. Build your life, leadership, and legacy, because you can’t give something you don’t have.

Reach out to me anytime to learn more. If you have gotten this far, let’s talk for 30 minutes about life, leadership, and legacy. Let’s talk about your future and how coaching gets you there faster and how it is different than anything else you may have encountered.

Readers are Leaders

One of the Spots in My Home Where Books Reside

Books and reading are important and central to my work in building myself and others.  I only recommend what I have read and in the pandemic I picked up quite a few books whether it be by Audible, Kindle, or physical copy (I usually have 3-5 books going at a time).  Important books get shipped, sent by link, or handed directly to someone straight from my bookshelf.  Jim Rohn said that “Success leaves clues.”  John Maxwell said, “Readers are Leaders.” Others have said that instead of having the knowledge of one lifetime, you can garner the knowledge of a thousand lives through books.  

Here are the books that I can recommend to you that I read in the past 12 months.  Most of them were recommended to me and now I recommend them to other leaders.

  • The Great CEO Within by Matt Mochary, Alex MacCaw, Misha Talavera
  • 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
  • Machiavelli for Women by Stacy Vannick Smith
  • Levels of Energy by Frederick Dodson
  • Everybody Writes by Ann Handley
  • The Weekly Coaching Conversation by Brian Souza
  • The Trillion Dollar Coach by Alan Eagle, Eric Schmidt, and Jonathan Rosenberg
  • Humankind by Rutger Bregman
  • Daily Stoic Journal by Ryan Holiday
  • How to Measure Your Life by Clayton Christianson
  • Creative Confidence by Tom Kelley and David Kelley
  • Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harare
  • Culture Map by Erin Meyer
  • The Art of Community by Charles H. Vogel
  • People Powered by Jono Bacon
  • Range by David Epstein
  • Say What You Mean by Oren J Sofer
  • Trailblazer by Marc Benioff and Monica Langley 
  • Customer Success by Dan Steinman, Lincoln Murphy, and Nick Mehta
  • A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
  • How to Not be Wrong with Mathematical Thinking by Jordan Ellenberg
  • Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins
  • The Laws of Success by Paramahansa Yogananda
  • Golden Book by Dale Carnegie
  • Relentless by Tim Grover
  • Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke
  • The Startup Community Way by Brad Feld
  • The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley
  • Living with a Seal by Jesse Itzler
  • Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman 
  • Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin
  • The Little Book of Talent by Daniel Coyle
  • Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday
  • Turn the Ship Around by L David Marquet
  • Die with Zero by Bill Perkins
  • New Localism by Bruce Katz
  • Talking to Strangers by Malcom Gladwell
  • Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek
  • The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver

Reviewing 15+ Years of Accelerator Dividends

This quarter GAN released my industry report on the past, present, and future of startup accelerators entitled: “Reviewing 15+ Years of Accelerator Dividends: Innovation and Entrepreneurship Returns and a Roadmap for Future Success. “

You can grab your own free copy through this link (https://bit.ly/15YearsOfAccelerators) and we’d welcome feedback and also recommendations on what I should write about next.

How do we start a coaching relationship?

TL;DR: The first step in building a coaching-client relationship is scheduling up an introductory session of about an hour to learn more about each other, where you want to go, and how I can help.  This introductory session doesn’t cost anything — you and I both co-invest our time and see where that takes us.  At the same time, I can send a couple of digestible emails to give a little more background on my coaching .  After this I can introduce the client to references if needed.  You can set up a this introductory call to learn more here. Or if you are ready to dive in we can schedule up our first 1 hour coaching call by emailing me at eric@ericmathews.com.

More Background on Building Our Coaching Relationship

I like to crawl before I walk and walk before I run.  I think it is incredibly important to be vulnerable and build trust for our relationship to work and for you to get the quantum leap level results desired.  Building that relationship doesn’t come easy and sometimes it won’t arrive at all.  And that’s ok.  But we’ll want to figure that out quickly through structured “dating” and figuring out if our relationship will empower each other.  I will see how self aware you are. You’ll see if I am self aware, too.  We’ll make sure I know your strengths and weaknesses and you know mine.  We will find our blind spots. 

Some things we’ll want to cover and consider and even try out during the relationship building process:

  • What do you want to get out of coaching?
  • Can we see each other in a variety of contexts and enjoy each other’s company?
  • Are we adding energy to each other’s lives when we are together?
  • What are the quantum leaps and the big ideas?  
  • Do we complement each other?
  • Are you coachable and am I the right coach?

Overall the right fit for those I work with looks like:

  • Willingness to dive deep and view all angles and aspects as contributing or holding us back from very big wins
  • Honesty
  • Humility
  • Grit and Perseverance 
  • Willingness to go to the “gym” (all of the gyms) and do the hard work
  • Curiosity and openness to learn
  • Realizing the journey is the reward . . . to celebrate success and lift each other in defeat.

My job is to make you better and enable you to serve your team better through enhanced self awareness and quantum leaps of goals and action noting that we all must be a servant to something bigger than ourselves. 

While I seek anti-bullshitters who work to end dishonesty with others and dishonesty with themselves, I am not without sensitivity to imposter syndrome and other fears that can hold us back. Our prior history shapes the present.  We’ll sort it all out together.  

Schedule you up a free 30 minute zoom call to learn more directly with me by clicking here.