What are your Spikey Points of View?

I read an interesting article a while back that mentioned the idea of having spikey points of view and I thought that sounds just like me. So after some thought and consideration, I realised I have quite a few but not all of them have rounded thinking yet. I have done talks on them, coaching sessions on them and just chatting over a cuppa and the more they are talked about the more they are spoken into life.

They are intended to provoke thinking and perspective and challenge conventional thinking and are not intended to be contrary for the sake of it.?The fact I believe in them and would stand up for them has been a good guiding light whilst writing this article. (12 iterations later)

They are not points made to antagonise or to suggest I am right and everyone else is wrong, it's just what I think and has done for a while and that I have never given them any depth of thought before now. ??

That is the point, it's what I think now and that will likely change sometime as it should. To interrogate our thinking and reassess whether we continue to agree or not is important in shaping our thoughts and who we are BEing.?

Here we go!!??

1. Slow Down. Go Slow to Go Smooth to Go Fast. Want more success, slow down, stop 'hustling' and enrich your mind through reading, watching and listening but most of all add time in your calendar to think. Having thinking time will create some space and all sorts of magic happens when there is a bit of space to think. (Not an excuse not to take action)??

2. The greatest Value is created before you work with the client. If you want more clients, create more value and serve with no expectation of a return. When you work with a client they will already feel valued and cared for long before they pay you anything. Serve them so powerfully that they will never forget. True value is created up front and given away. ??

3. Who do you want to BE rather than what do you want?. Who do you want to BE, what is the best version of you that you can imagine? Who do you need to BE to realise your dreams? Your BEing is your force within, how will you use yours!?

4. Stop sending proposals and instead send a summary of the conversation but only when they are committed to the next meeting. If you have not served them powerfully enough then no fancy pdf that has taken you hours to craft will change that. Remove the no man's land of a sent proposal. Tell them what will happen early in your conversations, set the expectation of no proposal and eliminate their ability to hide behind it.?

5. Not everything should be automated. In a world of going faster, more efficiencies and wanting more there must be times when the longcut is best for you and your clients. When it needs a human approach and to be slowed down to people serving people. Systems are good, but where does the individual fit into the systems??

6. Say Yes. It has been said many times that saying No is the best thing to do - I disagree. Say yes, yes to new experiences, yes to opportunities and yes to not knowing what might happen. Not everything has to have an immediate return and nothing you do is ever wasted, you just don’t see it yet. Every time you say yes it opens a door to what could be.

7. Serve don’t please clients. It's so much easier to say what we think others want to hear but that is not good for you or them. Serving is saying what needs to be heard even at the risk of someone not working with you. Serving is having the courage and integrity to say what's needed, which is admired by many who are used to people pleasers all around them.? It is not an excuse to be unkind or rude it is however the reason, to be honest, and open with kindness and fairness.??

8. You don't need confidence or clarity to do something - you need a drop of courage. If you look back over your life I am sure courage has cropped up more than once and is the evidence that you already have the courage required. Now take the first step towards whatever it is. Courage will get you a long way.?

9. Not everyone wants to be a millionaire. Many people have much greater desires in life over money and are often based on relationships and BEing. Shoot for those dreams, work on those dreams and the money will follow maybe, maybe not.?

10. Intentions get confused with commitments and they are not the same thing. An intention is a thought that you might do a thing maybe and lurks in the back of your mind gathering dust. A commitment, a rock-solid unshakeable commitment is actions taken for the cause. Commitments are powerful and infectious and compound over time the more you do about them.??

11. Lower your expectations of yourself, everyone and everything around you. Holding high expectations is a one-way ticket to endless disappointment and anger. You want to find more happiness more often then lower your expectations. In the famous words of Elsa ‘ Let it go, let it go’.??

12. Business is definitely personal. All business revolves around people in one way or another therefore it is personal and should be. ‘It's not personal, it's business' is a phrase taken from the movie Godfather as Michael Corleone is about to have two people ‘whacked’. Assuming you are not a mafia boss then business is personal and the more personal you make it the better.

13. Stop selling and start Creating clients.?If you want to have more clients, for longer at higher values then you need to create them. They do not magically fall out of the sky and give you money do they?! Creating a client is underpinned by the premise of helping and serving with no expectation of a return. Rather than looking for people to sell to, look for people to help. Now here is the spikey part - give loads away, give up more than you are comfortable with, really really help people. Because no matter how much you give away in articles, talks, posts etc nothing will ever replace people engaging fully with you and your paid for services.

These are just some of my spikey points of view and I expect many of you have weird and crazy views on all sorts of stuff. Good! In a world that keeps telling how and what we should BE I say go crazy weird, truth is we are all a bit crazy weird so we may as well love it and go all in.

Want to know more about my spikey points of view, message me I love talking about this stuff. ??

David Greenaway

www.davidgreenaway.co.uk