3 Roads To YOUR SUCCESS

We all want to be successful. But what is success for you? For some it's making lots of money, for others it's fame, for others it's leaving a legacy and for others it's providing well for their family. The list goes on and on. Everyone is individual and so everyone's view of success is different.

However, what we do know is that everyone has two fundamental wishes:

1. to be happy, and
2. to be free from problems

It's as simple as that. Everyone and I mean everyone has these two wishes. Because everything we do is in effort to satisfy one or both of these two wishes. Check your last action. Which may have been to click on this article, why? because you thought you might learn something interesting about success, why? because you believe if you're successful you'll be happy. And your right!

Successful at what?

At Power of Seven (Your Personal Advisory Board) we focus all our energy/discussions on three areas. 1. Your Self, 2. Your Family, and 3. Your Business.

We believe that if your satisfaction levels are high in these three areas your are being successful. At the beginning of every meeting we do the 'Update' process - looking back over the past two months since our last meeting. Everyone fills in a template which asks us to give a satisfaction rating on the three roads to success (above). We then answer questions on these three areas such as best thing that happened since the last meeting, worse thing, thing most looking forward to and thing least looking forward to. All of this helps us to do a mini audit on the three most important areas in our lives. The three roads to success.

Success For Me Is 'Making Progress In The Right Direction'

CLARITY

Obviously it's critically important to be clear on WHO you want to be in each of these three roles 1. You as an individual, 2. You as a family member, and 3. You as a business owner/professional.

Again in the first year of membership of a Po7 group you are invited to do a two day retreat called CLARITY. This is about establishing a roadmap for your life. Just like you'd expect any business to have a roadmap for where it's going, here we expect you to have one for your life! This roadmap results in you identify up to six roles within the three roads to success. For example:

1. My Self - 1. Wellbeing role, 2. Spirituality role
2. My Family - 1. Father, 2. Husband, 3. Son
3. My Business - 1. Leader

Story

Des at the time had the fastest growing business in Ireland (according to some growth metric we were told). Upon sharing his Update with his Po7 group Des took pride is giving his business a 9.5 out of 10 with a throw away comment that he never gives 10 out of 10 for anything! When Des moved on to talk about himself he was less enthusiastic and we noticed the body language change. He announced a score of 6/10 with a slight burst of enthusiasm (what we perceived to be a false burst). Finally he announced his score on family. Now the body language had completely changed, the head dropped down, and the voice spoke lowly with a quiver. He announced a score of 2. Clearly there was something wrong. However, he finished by saying that overall things were not too bad and anyway he was delighted with how he was exceeding business targets, awards his great team were getting, etc, etc.

When asked about his low family score Des told us he was due his fourth conversation that night with his wife about divorce. He went on to say how he was becoming a stranger to his two daughters (always travelling with work). And how maybe his score on self was a bit high considering he was referred to a cardiac consultant by his GP with concerns about his blood pressure due to stress and unhealthy lifestyle.

The conversation went on to include some challenging reflections for Des on how his success in one area was not success considering the the state of his marriage, the relationship with his girls and the state of his own health.

Des arrived at his next meeting which happened to be February. Immediately we knew things had got better. He had lost two stone! He went on to say on the way home from that last meeting he was feeling defensive about his situation, thinking how his group didn't understand the details, how much work was needed on the business, how his wife was at fault too, and how there was a history of heart disease in his family, etc. Then upon looking into his rear view mirror (which was skewed) he caught a glimpse of his own face. He could't believe how wrecked and old he looked. Then the penny dropped!

"What am I doing with my life?" he asked himself. "So what I've got a business that really successful", "what's the point?" "I'm going to lose the love of my life, the mother of my children" "My kids don't know me anymore" and "I driving myself into my own grave"

During his update he told us how he had a great conversation with his wife the night of the last meeting, they stayed up until two in the morning, he apologised profusely for being such an idiot. Over that Christmas he booked two family holidays for spring and summer. He went to a nutritionist who got him on a healthy diet and encouraged him to go to the gym which helped him loose two stone, he read his first book in five years, he took a full day out with each of his daughters, he even signed up to be on the school board. What's more, he said he never worked past 6pm for the full month of January AND to boot he reckoned he had been more productive and effective in work than he had been for a long long time.

That's the power of focusing on getting balance and alignment on the three roads to success. That's the power of having a personal advisory board, a board of other business owners who've got your back, who help you make better decisions. That's the Power of Seven.

Notice: ‘THE NEXT LEVEL’ – New Power of Seven group starting this month.

For business owners who want to take their business & life to ‘The Next Level’.

Applications close Fri 22 Nov.

Contact me ([email protected]) to find out more if you’d like the tools, life skills, strategies and support to travel the three roads to success.

Barry Walsh: Founder of the Power of Seven providing a personal advisory board of peers for ambitious business owners . 20 years experience in helping business owners and their teams develop winning strategies for business growth. Barry’s facilitation style creates a space for shared learning that leads to learning and action. www.po7.ie

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