I have two big theories.

One is that nobody can be good at everything, and you — and those around you, need to get over what you’re lousy at, and make the best of what you’re good at, and be done with it.  This idea of constant and broad self-improvement is overrated.

Two, is that most successful people fail at what they set out to do much of the time.  Sometimes it works out anyway, and sometimes it doesn’t.  Successful folks just jettison whatever mess they’ve made, scrape it off their shoes, and move on.  If you aren’t willing to step in a lot of shit, I don’t think you get very far.

Or as the more politely phrased cliche goes, even a turtle has to stick his neck out to get anywhere…

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Being a consultant also means having the means to go out and get more clients. This allows you to accrue even more experience…so that you can become an even better advisor. If you have a client base of one or two, a consultant you are not. You have nothing new to bring to your client’s table. Call yourself a contractor.

You also have to ‘keep your game up’ by staying abreast of developments in your field. It’s not easy. In my mind its part of the tacit agreement you make with your clients. Otherwise, once again, you are a contractor.

And finally – your clients should not be aware of your professional or personal problems. They don’t care (they don’t!). And they shouldn’t. I have gotten divorced, gone through surgeries, and had other family issues. I have never, ever discussed any of this with my clients. It is NOT the relationship they want with you. My unstated rule is to be friendly, but not friends. There is this and there is that.

Over time with some clients there is a professional intimacy that happens. I have this with quite a number of people, and when it happens it is very nice. Usually you have been through a few professional wars together and a closeness develops. But, in my opinion, there should always be a little reserve – similar to being a parent. I have never been friends with my children – their friends are their friends. Your kids want you to be their parent – and your clients want you to be their consultant.

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But let’s say hypothetically that you know something and that what you know is needed in the market.

Now back to Grace’s question to me: What does being a consultant mean? There are a lot of jokes out there about consultants…one that comes to mind is the cartoon of the homeless man standing on a corner with a sign that says, “Will Consult for Food”.

My model or template, which has evolved through the years, is that of a straight-shooting parent. Parental in that I feel the need to take care of my clients – to not let them do things that are not in their best interests. Keep in mind that a large core of our business is helping clients migrate from one software platform to another. This is a difficult and stressful endeavor for our clients – some of them ‘freak’. I must not. Thus, the parental model – for me.

The straight shooter portion is partly due to my genetic disposition. Can’t help it – to be any other way doesn’t make sense to me. But also, clients appreciate the truth, even if it is hard to hear. It can be delivered gently, but it still needs to be the truth (and must be done). It also means leading our clients and doing what is in their best interests which is not the same as doing what they ask you to do. Sometimes they are one and the same, but not always.

An example of this: On more than one occasion, during the discovery portion of a software implementation I’ve been told that the implementation has to be done by ‘X’ date. I usually ask why that date. The answer (reason) given back to me is either a good one or a bad one. If it is a bad reason then I do not necessarily create their implementation materials to coincide with their date if I think their date is not in their best interests (meaning a lousy and more-painful-than-necessary software implementation). When it is time to present the implementation approach, I demonstrate the approach that I feel is in their interests, and why. Confrontational? Yes. Difficult? Yes. Parental? Yes. In Their Best Interests? Usually.

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Long ago, when sailing ships ruled the waves, a captain and his crew were in danger of being boarded by a pirate ship. As the crew became frantic, the captain bellowed to his First Mate, “Bring me my red shirt!” The First Mate quickly retrieved the captain’s red shirt, which the captain put on and lead the crew to battle the pirate boarding party. Although some casualties occurred among the crew, the pirates were repelled.

Later that day, the lookout screamed that there were two pirate vessels sending boarding parties. The crew cowered in fear, but the captain calm as ever bellowed, “Bring me my red shirt!”. The battle was on, and once again the Captain and his crew repelled both boarding parties, although this time more casualties occurred.

Weary from the battles, the men sat around on deck that night recounting the day’s occurrences when an ensign looked to the Captain and asked, “Sir, why did you call for your red shirt before the battle?” The Captain, giving the ensign a look that only a captain can give, exhorted, “If I am wounded in battle, the red shirt does not show the wound and thus, you men will continue to fight unafraid“. The men sat in silence marveling at the courage of such a man.

As dawn came the next morning, the lookout screamed that there were pirate ships, 10 of them, all with boarding parties on their way. The men became silent and looked to their Captain for his usual command.

The Captain, calm as ever, bellowed, “Bring me my brown pants!”

Just finished reading the book “Distracted:  The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age” by Maggie Jackson, in which she warns of  “an institutionalized culture of interruption, when your time is taken by a never-ending stream of phone calls, e-mails, instant messages, text messages, and tweets.” — rendering the afflicted incapable of deep thought, creativity or peace of mind…

People have given up their souls to this stuff (just saw in a news article where a high school teen said:  I would DIE if I had to go to school without my cell phone), as if, because you own a car, you must be in it driving somewhere 24/7, non-stop, endlessly.  Or because you own a toaster you must stand there making toast every minute you are awake…

If you can make the time, it’s a good read…David

In my bathroom at home, I have posted a quotation by William Locke. Its there so I can remind myself of it every morning as I start the day:

I believe that half

the unhappiness in life

comes from people

being afraid to go

straight at things.

Find something you have been avoiding. A creditor to communicate with. A relative to make an apology to. A person at work you’ve been moaning to have a heart to heart meeting with. Then do it. Go straight at it! Jump into the deep river like Butch and Sundance, without a huge amount of worrying ahead of time. After you’ve felt the joy that comes with action, vow to go straight at something else tomorrow. Soon you’ll come to enjoy and respect the life you are inventing.

“Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

This is something I have done in my 30 years as a professional. But to be truthful, probably goes back to my earliest years…never was comfortable going the easy, popular route. Just never made sense to me. Possibly some genetic deficiency…

It’s why Lupine Partners’ website looks different than our competitors. It’s why my personality and beliefs are so prevalent on the site and in all of our products. NOT because I am that much of an ego maniac, but because all of my competitor’s sites are so homogenous and bland, that you cannot get a sense of who they are and why they exist. Companies are founded and consist of people – real human beings. To me it’s always been good business to show who you are and why we are good for you – using real words and real emotions. To be different, and to stand out from the crowd.

YOU may choose to move from one group to another by ‘moving’ your ambition, thinking, acquisition and use of information, initiative, and effort. But regardless of your choices, the fact that the majority of your peers are dead-wrong won’t change a whit. For the most part, where a particular person gets to in this continuum from the top 1% to the bottom 40% has much less to do with differences in genetics, upbringing, education, opportunity or luck than it does decisions. Associations matter a lot, but they are or can be chosen. The first critical decision for upward movement is to ALWAYS distrust the majority. It’s not an easy decision to make. It’s even harder to stick to. To see a majority stampeding north and stubbornly turn south. Not easy at all. Remember that whatever ‘everybody’ is infatuated with – you should spurn.

It’s worked for me…

In 2007, a software sales professional friend of mine and I commiserated with each other over our shared conservatism toward money, that kept us sitting on the sidelines, out of highly leveraged real estate investments pyramided one atop the other. We both knew the same fellow, somebody half as smart as either of us and less industrious, who was making $100,000.00 to $150,000.00 each time he bought and flipped a pre-construction high rise condo contract, then using that profit to tie up three, then that to tie up nine. It is, of course, all gone now. The sunny clime buried in a blizzard of bad paper. Never taking any chips away from the table and parlaying every wager as if the idiotic appreciation and frenzied buying would never end came to a conclusion I’d predicted from day one. It took a little longer than I’d envisioned. But neither of us envies his easy profits now.

The obvious point is that most of what we see shining from afar is covered with grit and grime when you get up close, and is often really nasty if you get inside. It is easy to envy the illusion. Comparing your own situation to the fiction of others’ is certain path to real disaffection and discouragement, but to what end? It’s also easy to envy the temporary, the star of the moment for whom success greater than yours appears to be so easily obtained.

But the teams that look best early in the season are not necessarily those winning late and through the play-offs. In a small snapshot of a brief window in time, we can make just about anything seem smart – even lending to people without ability to pay, even pyramiding debt and calling it income.

It is usually best, as Tom Peters observed about the behavior of ‘the excellent’, to stick to YOUR knitting. To invest in what you know and understand, including yourself. To “focus tight” on your business, your products, and your customers – the economy you can make and mold and largely control through your own initiative and imagination. A new year is upon us, in some ways, just the rollover of an artificial, made-up page in a calendar; it must occur for the calendar business to exist. But in other ways, an inspiration, a motivation, to re-think priorities, renew energies; re-make the world around you to your preferences. While everything seems changed, nothing has changed: we still prosper one good customer relationship created and sustained after another after another, multiplied as best and as rapidly as resources permit.

Headline: Britney Spears’ Mother’s Publisher Delays Release of Her Advice Book, ‘Motherhood,’ In Light of Britney’s 16 Year Old Sister’s Revelation She is Pregnant

No, in case you missed this, it is a real news item. Incredibly, Britney’s mother did have a book of parenting advice and stories from raising Britney coming out, and it was not a joke book. It was intended to be taken seriously, and presumably would be and eventually will be by a media that has become a bunch of ‘professionals’ barely able to read teleprompters and in perpetual drool over celebrity. The fact that this is news at all speaks volumes about the sad state of affairs. But what’s REALLY comical, yet also instructive from this three-way train wreck is the mother’s statement expressing puzzlement at her 16 year old’s pregnancy because, quote (honest)

“she always came home before curfew.”

Laugh. But are you similarly guilty of such ‘insight’ in the operation of your business (department, organization, club, etc.)? Particularly with regard to the software that runs the operation of your business…

I recently completed a quick strike effort at talking to some of my customers with regard to the pain associated with their daily jobs. One of the issues that was discussed quite a bit was the notion of stepping back and looking at what you have from a system perspective – particularly when you have just completed a major implementation effort. I noted last month how Phil Jackson at Price Edwards and Company did just that. Finished the implementation – took a breather and then invested in an effort to see where the holes were.

We have a wide and large client base in the real estate industry. Very few of you are doing this. Stepping back and taking a look. Not saying all of you, but most of you are not doing this.

As part of that review you should be looking at some of the peripheral, non-ERP solutions as well. Chris Stopps at Yes! Communities has done just that…except she hasn’t done her review after the fact, she has done it before. Yes! Is a brand new outfit and Chris in her role as CFO has determined out of the box that she wanted to outsource as much as she could. So along these lines she has outsourced one aspect of her accounting operation to one software company and simultaneously outsourced another accounting function to their bank. Both outsourcing service providers ‘pitch’ and ‘catch’ transactions to their core property management system. Kent Barner at Behringer Harvard has taken a similar approach with regard to outsourcing.

Many of Lupine’s clients, after going through the rigors of a major implementation, think they are done dealing with software vendors. They take the big breath and say something to the effect of “I am SO glad we are done with that”. This is a mistake.

I recommend that you maintain an ongoing dialogue with the software community. This will pain you to hear this – you should always be on the lookout for your next solution. The re-implementation timeframes continue to get tighter and tighter as your competition gains competitive advantages through software solutions, and as the software packages add new functionality. You just think you are done. Rich Danhauer, IT Director of Pinnacle Realty is a very big practitioner of this as is Doug Prichard at Kennedy Associates Real Estate Counsel. (Both in Seattle – hmm..) They see having a continuing dialogue and review of real estate software products as part and parcel of their job.

I see a lot of software hopping going on in my client community. Sometimes, just sometimes, it is because of functional advantages of one product over another. The real reason, and the reason most people don’t want to talk about, is that the software vendors for the most part do a terrible job of ‘touching’ their customers. Of keeping in contact with them on a frequent, recurring basis. Of adding value through a newsletter, by providing weekly tips on best use or insider strategies on getting more use out of the software. Or by informing their customer base that a new upgrade has come out and is available.

To my software company readers: And the most ridiculous part of all this is that the marketing ‘touch’ can be handled, to an extent, by software! High ticket expenditures require high ticket marketing strategies. I talk with lots of software salespeople. It is not unusual for a software company to have a person or team in charge of ‘troubled’ accounts. This person is responsible for going around and talking to customers who have grumbled or threatened to leave. I have never made this comment out loud before – but they are missing the point. This team should be abolished and the monies allocated to a customer retention program that starts at the point of sale and provides so much value to their customer base that they can’t imagine leaving – even if there are problems with the product.

Sorry Mrs. Spears, you really can get pregnant and still make curfew.

When I started working, my response to any directive was: YES SIR.

On CNBC the other night I saw yet another ‘instruction’ for business owners on the need to provide the ‘new employee’ with (I swear to God), breakfast cereal in the morning and free buffet lunch, a game room, afternoon naps, daily grades and praise sessions, and “meaningful emotional connection” to every “request.”

I’m not big on turning the workplace into kindergarten…and the first person to skateboard through my office would be shot on sight.   I do not believe this is the right path. This seems to me something being packaged up and sold via media and fad-gurus-of-the-moment like other liberal, fantastical ideas. The workplace is not called the amusement park or the sports bar or the gymnasium or the playroom for a reason. Further, I don’t see this stuff going on in most successful businesses – it seems province of California-weird public companies awash in Wall Street investors’ capital, and such companies have a funny way of rising to ridiculous over-valuations than dissolving and imploding.

You have to go to great extremes to surround yourself with productive people – employees, vendors and associates – who do not require back rubs, peppermint candies and coddling as if you were their nanny. Hard-driving, high-flying, in-a-hurry entrepreneurs need to find and surround themselves with particularly thick-skinned people who are “about” getting the job done. I rather doubt Donald Trump needs to give George Ross free manicures and Pop-Tarts, applause, and “emotional connection sessions” with every negotiating project put in George’s hands. And I rather doubt George is dispensing such new-age niceties to his subordinates either. Yet they do seem to be running very successful businesses and minting money.

Of course, the first person you must hold ruthlessly accountable for self-directed, self-motivated, consistent high performance behavior is: you. If you need a boss (or nanny), you can’t be a leader.

Here’s a simple thing that remains a mystery to many throughout their lives: achievers are all about achievement. Non-achievers put a long laundry list of other things before achievement. A dog needs a belly rub. An achiever does not.