HOW DO YOU KNOW UNLESS YOU PUSH IT RIGHT TO THE WALL

Just returned from a fun Entrepreneurship Conference with my father, eldest son Aiden (18), youngest son Brody (11), my nephew Jeffrey (13) and Niece Larissa (21). Each of them are all entrepreneurs some having existing businesses and others giving it a go. What a great time. My son Brody on the right and Nephew Jeffrey with Rosemary Siemens. Rosemary Siemens. My father Vic Lindal did a very unique interview over lunch talking about Rosemary's Vision as one of the leading violinists. Amazing. Her story of following her dream from visioning playing in Carnegy Hall to playing the Sistine Chapel was inspiring.

I had an opportunity to sit on a panel to talk about Innovation. My main point on Innovation right now is derived from hearing Brad Feld Co-Founder of Techstars, Jill Hellman talking about finding Innovation in unique places and to be scanning the globe to learn about new patterns of thinking, and business models from the diverse Innovation Ecoystems around the world like Toronto, Israel, Africa, Bangalore, Vancouver Island and others.  Ideas come from introducing new patterns of thinking and thought into your Unconscious minds and wrapping that with a big bold transformational vision and purpose.  

The main point of the article is on How do you know?  (pardon the Segway up above. ) 

My father and I got talking about the principle of How do you know.? The HDYK was taught to me at a young age when I was one of the top age group swimmers in Canada. He and then coach Fellner used this visual that when finishing the race see yourself pushing so hard to the end that you almost punch the wall and break through the wall to the other side. In their words "You just never know"

I have applied this to business and I wanted to share two stories and a few small tidbits on never giving up.

In 1993 I was afforded the opportunity by a member of then YEO in San Diego to live is a young 20 something young buck (me) from Canada in his extra home in Pacific Beach San Diego California. What a heck of a time. A 4 bedroom home with a pool, walk to the beach, Garnett Avenue to chill and play pool and hang out with friends. All the while I was tasked with helping fire up YEO's first regional conference, help open the Phoenix chapter, Vegas Chapter, Orange County Chapter and shore up the Los Angeles Chapter.

Back in the early 90's when opening YEO Chapters we relied on alliance partner YPO, referrals from other members in other cities, media, direct mail and the trusty old tried and true cold call.

In the case of the the launch of the YEO Phoenix Chapter we relied on the trusty direct mail list from Dunn & Bradstreet which we direct mailed, and hand faxed from the spare bedroom in the home at Pacific Beach.  

5 days before the event we had 4 RSVP's and I knew I had to pick up the phone and hammer the list from morning to night giving these Entrepreneurs the pitch as to why they needed to come out to the launch function of the Phoenix Chapter of YEO. 

As I look back on it, it was quite nerve wracking but once you got into a groove of cranking calls and making up a spiel it got fun.  "Heh, do you have 30 seconds.   I help run the largest peer network of entrepreneurs. We have a launch function at x country club. We have some of the top entrepreneurs in the city coming.  You should be there." It was something like that and then the call proceeded with them asking me the value proposition.

The day before the launch function I decided to continue to crank calls as you never know what might happen.  I got on the phone with this local entrepreneur Greg Sprunk who was pleasant and quite interested in what we were up to.   He ended up coming to the launch function where we heard talks from a number of YPO mentors, myself and others.   

At the end of the night we had to go for the close to figure out who would be the Chapter President and board of directors. Having been involved in these launch functions many times it was an eery silence when I threw out the call to action.  Very luck we had the great Ben Brooks Sr. in attendance.

"Oh heh folks. Now we come to the point in our evening when we go for the hard close"  We need a group to step up to form a board and take things forward and then I think I paused and said nothing.   The silence nearly killed me.     Lucky for me Ben Brooks III said "Heh why doesn't Sprunk do it" and then one more person chimed in I think it was John Corpstein who we called the "Janitor" because when I went for a tour of his office he had a key ring with 25 keys on it"  I think there was an entrepreneur named Jay Jennings also, Thaine Fischer and others. 

The moral of the story. Never give up..... push it right to the end.... as you never know what you might monetize for one more phone call, one more meeting, one more coffee.

I will do the next How do you know story in part III later this week.

Dean o