If You Could Do It Over...

(Thanks for reading the 4th Quarter Newsletter. I am a personal strategy coach to powerful leaders - dedicated to helping you finish strong in your professional and personal life. If you are ready to have a conversation about your personal strategy, CLICK TO SET UP A CALL .)

What Would You Do Over?

Man, o man, if I were to answer that with complete openness this article would be so long, you'd need the next 3 hours to read it!

You and I have something in common. We both have a relationship with the rearview mirror. When we look into that mirror we see things we said or did or didn't say or didn't do that we wish we'd handled differently.

My Story

Remember 2008? I certainly do. Turns out it was the beginning of the end of my nearly 30-year career in the design/build construction industry. I had been serving as the COO of our family business for about 20 years. We designed and built churches across America. In 2013, just five years after the 2008 financial downturn, we were completely perplexed about the downward slide in our sales numbers. The board of directors asked me to assume the role of CEO to reinvent our business.

Boy, what a job!

I spent over 2 years working on a new business model. It was starting to show some signs of success and we were getting excited. Plus, we had over $20 million in design waiting for us to eventually bring it into construction (where we made our money).

Then it happened.

I got a call from the project manager on the church that was supposed to start in June 2015. This one single project was the bridge between where we stood from a cash flow standpoint to the $20 million on the horizon. This one single project was the bridge to our future. My project manager, however, informed me that news came out of the pastor's affair he'd been having with the secretary.

Uh oh!

That killed the project for us and with it, our business. Because of our cash position, we had no other choice but to close the doors and mitigate the damage.

Time doesn't permit me in this article to go into all the other ugly details (and were they ugly!). But I want to point out one main thing:

If I had to do it all over again, I would have built a life strategy long before 2015 ever happened. I would have committed to living life by design and not by default. I would have been able to more quickly see the context around the decisions I was making leading up to June 2015. I would have recovered much quicker from the loss.

So that's my answer when ever anyone asks me about my rearview mirror and what I'd do over:

Live life by design, not by default

There is a very distinct difference between living life by design and living life by default.

Life by design allows you to

• be more insightful
• see more opportunities
• leverage those opportunities
• recover from setbacks quicker
• make better decisions

Life by default means you

• look to others to blame
• don't learn from mistakes
• make poor decisions
• miss opportunities
• react to setbacks with no strategy

Are you living by default?

If your answer is yes, I wouldn't be surprised. That's how most of us live life most of the time. There are so many demands on our time that we have precious little time to work ON our life because we're so busy working IN it.

If you get nothing else from this issue of the newsletter, get this: Start your journey to a life by design today. Don't wait.

If you need a kick start, email me. I have a free strategy building document I'd love to send you -- [email protected]

Thanks for reading today.

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