The "Invisible to Power" Model to Set Goals In Business | Blair Singer

Everybody would like to go here. But what I was taught many, many years ago that there are various steps to getting there. And if you understand the formulas of going from one step to the next, you can get there pretty quickly. If you don't, you may never get there. Everybody understand? Yes. Because some of the steps are a little counterintuitive. Make sense, because when you start, let's say you start a business or you're starting a new relationship or you move to a new city, you. You actually don't start in power. You start in a place I call. What's it called? Invisible. What's the word? Invisible. Invisible. Nobody knows who you are. Nobody sees you, you're not around. How many know what I'm talking about? Yeah. It's like you open a business and everybody goes, who, where? What? Where are you? Or you go, like I said, you moved to a new town, nobody knows you, or you start a job or you join a team. Better yet, you join a team. Nobody knows who you are. They don't even know your name. Everybody understand? Yes. You are what? Invisible. Invisible. So at that level of invisibility, what is the typical emotion that goes along with being invisible? Being the new God. Being, you know, not knowing anybody. What is that? What's the emotion? Aloneness. Yes. Insecure. Insecure. Very good. Insecure. A little anxiety. Yes. Yes. So let's say we call that anxiety, for that matter. Now, the next level above this, by the way, what you're trying to get to is you're trying to get to a place called up here, called. What's it called? Stability. What's it called? Stability. You want to get your business to a stable place. Yes. You want to get your income to a stable place? Your health to a stable place, Your relationships. Yes. Yes. Okay, but right here, you're an invisible. So the next level above this. Whoops. The next level above this is what we call. What's it called? Emergence. Emergence. Emergence. Now, what emergence looks like. Now, before I tell you what emergence looks like, how many people would not like to stay in invisible very long? Okay, good. It's not a great place to be. It's anxiety. Nobody knows you, you're alone, all those things. So what is the strategy? Some of you have seen this before. Don't say. But what would you guess the strategy is? Going from invisible to the next level up. If you go in new, in a new business or a new team, and you want to gain some power, what's the first thing you should do? Set up first. What's the first thing you should do, I know you've seen before. Okay, what's that? Establish relationships. Establish relationships. Good. What do most people do? Start marketing. Start marketing. Right. Wrong. Wrong thing to do. What do you do? Yeah. There's a strategy here, is to listen. What is the. What is the strategy? Listen. Find the lot, what I call lines of communication. Who talks to who? Right. And then by doing that market research, you serve. What? Serve first. In other words, you're on a team. The team's busy at work. Maybe you need to go get them coffee. Maybe you need to go run some errands for them. Maybe you do it. Put some extra hours in everybody. Understand? Yes. Hello? You understand? Yes. So you serve first. Can you read? Says listen. That's just an L. Listen and look for lines of communication. Who's talking to who? In other words, you shut up and listen and find a way to serve the group. Does that make sense? Yes. What most people do is they join a group and go, hi, I'm here. Let me tell you what I can do. Don't do that. If the receptionist needs help answering the telephone, help them answer the telephone. Whatever you need to do to serve everybody. Understand? Yes. Otherwise you become a big mouth, obnoxious, and people resent you right out of the gate, you'll move to what we call emergence. Now you're emerging people. Now you're serving. I have people that are like in property, real estate. Well, I said they're trying to sell. They're not selling anything. I said don't try to sell. Just join the parent teachers association, community organizations, go to softball games, volunteer for anything and everything in the community. And just what? Serve. Because the law of reciprocity says if you serve, if you give, sooner or later. What? If you give, you shall what? Receive. So let's say you find ways to serve and that's working for you. Now you're in emergence. Now, emergence. If you're to graph. See, down here, if you're trying to put a graph of results, you have no results because you haven't done anything yet. But here, emergence, you're on the board, but it kind of looks like this. I mean, your stats are not good. By the way, this is called. What's it called? Emergency. What's it called? Emergency. That says if you hit it on the way up, if you hit this on the way down, it's called emergency. Everybody understand? Yes. Right. And this happens to companies all the time. They lose market share, they go into emergency mode right here. Their stats start to go. Start plummeting like this. Everybody understand? Yes. Now, in that mode, what is the emotion that goes along with emergency? Emergency Panic. Okay. Panic. Fear. Yeah. Okay. Now, particularly if you're hitting this on the way down, if you're a business and you starting to lose money, you're losing recruits, all that stuff, you're an emergency. What is the normal. What is the instinctive reaction strategy plan? Instinctive. Put more force. Huh? Put more force. Put more force. Go back to being. Well, maybe go back to being invisible. Typically, big companies, what do they do? Is that what actually happens? What do they do? No. Reduce costs. Yes, reduce costs. Now, typically in an organization, what's the first area of cost that gets reduced sales and what. Which is exactly the wrong thing to do? Okay. At emergence, at emergency, counterintuitive is to cut corners. Cut, you know, cut cost is what. The strategy here is exactly the opposite. The job here is to. Is to. What? What's the word? I can't hear you. I can't hear you. Spend. Spend. You got to spend money here. Even though you don't have any money, you got to spend money. I mean, you've heard countless stories of entrepreneurs that were completely flat broke, took their credit card. The last marketing strategy that hopefully was going to drive some money into their business. How many know what I'm talking about? How many have done that? If you haven't done it, you're not in business. I've probably done this more times than I should have. Everybody understand? My wife is back there nodding her head. Yeah, no kidding. Okay, everybody say, hi, Lee. Okay, so what are you going to do? Hello, what's the word? Spend. But not just spend frivolously. Spend to promote you. Spend to promote you. Spend to promote you also spend to produce, prepare for production. You got to make sure that if you're going to go out and sell something, that you got something to sell and something to deliver. Everybody understand? Yes. Now, by the way, this is normal. This is what? Normal. Every. Think about it. Every relationship, every business goes through this cycle. It's not a cycle you can avoid. Everybody understand? Yes. What you can avoid is taking the wrong strategy at the wrong step. Everybody understand that? Yes. Now, I wish I could tell you this is original. This is not original. This was taught to me by many mentors over the years. Alan Walter and Carol Lacey, and lots of people have taught this one to me. Does this make sense? I got my own twist on it because I'm gonna put one level in there that they never put in. And as an entrepreneur, there is A level. Because if you do this, you should move here. Yes. Hello. Yes. But for some strange reason, that doesn't seem to happen all the time. Because there's another level in here that looks similar to emergency. It's called. What's it called? Chaos. Chaos. And what chaos looks like is something like very similar. It's basically all chaos is. Is emergency that's gone on too long now. Emergency, you know, for a year, nine months, 18 months. That's normal in a business. Yes. You guys with your teams, when you first got started, you were kind of an emergent place. Yes. In the volleyball court. Yes. A couple of teams popped out of that into stability kind of quicker. Others stayed in what. In what? Who's gonna be the winning team? Thank you. All right, so what chaos looks like is something like this. It's just like emergency, but it's like more pronounced, like. Like this. It's feast. Famine. Feast. Famine. It's an entrepreneur, like work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work. Does this sound familiar? Hello. Yes. You go out there and you pound it like crazy. You pound it like crazy. And the money's coming in, and then you take a little bit of a break because you're so worn out and you're trying to fulfill all the stuff that you've done. And then all of a sudden, the. The well dries up. I gotta go back out and sell again. Does this sound familiar? Hello. Somebody give a high five. Say, been there, done that. Okay, that's emergency. That's gone on too long. And the reason is this. And this is what I am crystal clear about myself down here where you're in initiate and create mode. Everybody understand? Yes. There's something different required here. What do most people. Well, let me ask you. What is the typical instinctive response to that pattern of chaos? Quit or not quite quit, but while you're competing, clearly at that stage. Burnout. How many people have been there? Yeah, I mean, how many hours a day working? It's like work, work, work, work, work. I mean, you don't even have any energy anymore. Your spouse isn't yelling in your ear, how come? I thought we were going to be making money by now. You're never home on the weekends. You're never around. You're never. Does this sound familiar? Anybody ever hear this before? Hello. Yes. We've invested all of our money. We've been doing all this stuff, and we're not getting paid back, and our relationship's not getting any better. Your Health is not getting. Yes. Hello. Yes. The reason for. Is this. Is that the solution? So the emotion around this is what I call. What's it called? Frustration. Hello? What's it called? Frustration. Frustration. Working your butt off. Not seemingly getting ahead, falling back. Seemingly getting ahead, falling back. Everybody understand? Yes. Requires something we call management. What's it called? Not entrepreneurship. This is management. This is a management issue right here. Everybody understand? Hello. Yeah. You have to have management. You have to have management of what? Systems. Systems. Because most of you are the system. You're the selling system. You're the marketing system. You're the accounting system. You're the production system. You're the charisma system. You're the recruiting system. You are the system. You don't pass what we call the revolver test. You know what the revolver test is? Yes. If I pull out a revolver and shoot you, what happens to your systems? They died. Yeah. They died with you. Everybody understand? You have no business. It's you. Everybody understands what Robert calls the S quadrant. Self employed. Everybody got it? Yes. How many have been there, done that? How many know what I'm talking about? So what you need is you have to have management. What do you have to have? Management. You have to have systems. What do you have to have? And thirdly, the other solution in this level is you also have to have laser. What? Focus. Laser what? Focus. Can't hear you. Laser what? Focus. Because here's what happens. Check this out. You get up here, right? Everybody look up here. You get up here right now. You get big. Yes. You get visible. Yes. Money's rolling in. Yes. You become very attractive. Yes. And all of a sudden, all these people notice you. Yes. And people come up to you and go, hey, you know, you really ought to join my network marketing company. Did I say that? You really need to join my network marketing company. You really need to do this investment over here. Really? This opportunity over here. You really ought to try this business over here. How many know what I'm talking about? Yes. And you become like this kid in a candy shop. He's like, I want to do that. I want to do a little of this. I want to do a little of that. I want to do a little. And you're running around in circles. Look, how many of you. How many of you know what I'm talking about right now? And you justify by saying, well, by throwing up things up on the wall, something will stick. How dumb is that? Everybody understand? Yes. How many realize it's hard enough to take one thing across the line? Let Alone, trying to divide yourself into sixes. Everybody understand? Yes. Hello. Give them a high five. Say, been there, done that. The folks that make it to stability find a way to either bring somebody else in that can manage, create systems and keep it on what? Focus. What is your business? What are you doing? Stick with that. There's a ton of to defocus, but not here. See, what happens is you don't. Up here, you can start doing that stuff. Down here, you still haven't. You're not even making money yet, and you're diffusing your resources. Everybody understand? Mostly your own energy. How many know what I'm talking about here? You'll get to what we call stability. What's it called? Stability. What stability looks like is like this. I mean, it's still got some bumps in it, but at least now you're trending up and you're making money. How many people like the idea of making money? Making a profit. Yes. Turn somebody, give them a high five. Say profits are good. Okay. Profits are good. Okay. Now, so let's say you got some management, you got some systems, you got some focus. All that stuff. You reduce the frustration. You're now stability, making money every month. Every other month. You're doing pretty good. You're able to pay the bills, all that stuff. Everybody understand? Yes. Okay, good. Now that. Over a protracted period of time, what is the emotion that comes along with stable? Now, I'm not talking about massive amounts of money. Just make nice little profit month after month after month after month after month after month after month after month after month. Yeah. What's it called? Comfort zone or what? Boredom. Particularly if you're an entrepreneur. Everybody understand? Yes. Remember I was saying before, there's some people that have to. There are compulsive problem solvers. You see it here. Compulsive problem solvers live and thrive in chaos. If there's not a problem, they're gonna make one because they don't feel like they're alive unless they've got some drama in their lives. Everybody understand? Yes. Yes. How many know people like this? How many people are like this? How many know. If you know somebody like this in the room, point to them. Okay, so the emotion. I'm sorry, this is a little messy, but the emotion that comes along with this could be boredom. And in boredom, what do people do? I just said, what do people do when they're bored? They create what drama. By the way, does this happen in relationships? Hello. Yes. You know, you're looking for, let's say, your Goal is to find your mvp. Is to find the love of your life. What do you got to do? Listen, serve first. Got to pay for a few dates. You know, you come in an emergency, you got to spend money to promote, buy a few dinners, go to a few movies. Yes. Yeah. You got to spend. Yes. How many? Know what I'm talking about? And you fall in love. Okay? We fall in love. And it's we're on again, off again, on again, off again, on again, off again, on again, off again, on again, off again, on. How many of you know this one? Yes. Somebody give them a high five. Say, I've been there. Okay? Or ultimately, your relationship works, but over time you get what? Bored. Does that ever happen? Yes. And so what some people do is when they're bored in a relationship, they try to create a little drama on the side. Everybody understand? Yes. We all know how that works out. Everybody understand? So what is the solution to getting out of stability and up into power? You're not. You don't have resource yet. You probably incurred a lot of debt down here, too. Everybody understand? Yes. Stability. What do you got to do? Set new goals. Infrastructure. Test and measure. Quality control. Find out what's working. You look at each one of these little bumps. What's working here? What's not working here? What's working here? You make little changes, not big changes. Don't throw any drama into the system. Do investors like drama? No. They want to see a return every quarter. Yes. Hello. Yes. Huh? You give us nice, boring returns. Yes. 7%. 7%. 7%. 7%. 7%. 7%. Yes. Got it. Now, I invest some of my Money with Ken McElroy in his properties. Right now, what he's doing is when I'm into a property, when I'm into one of his 500 unit apartment buildings, what's he doing? Testing, measuring quality control. Trying to drive the net operating income up and the cost and obviously the cost down. That's all he's trying to do. Everybody understand? Yes. No major changes. No big. Not taking that money and putting it any other place. Staying focused. He's got property managers on site driving the property. Everybody understand? Yes. Hello. Yes. Test and measure. Say it. Test and measure. Quality control. Say it. Quality control. Just take what you've got and make it better. It's not the time to be introducing new programs. Everybody understand? Yes. The good news is if you just. You don't have to do anything dramatic. If you just keep doing this, keep improving small improvements, you'll reach another level in here, which is called Abundance. What's it called? Abundance. What's it called again, please? Abundance. What abundance looks like on the graph is something that looks like this. How many? Kind of like that? 1. How many like this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what a balance, what abundance is. All of a sudden, floodgates start to open and a surge of continual income, cash, wealth, love, health, whatever it is, comes flowing in. How many people kind of like that idea? How many would like more of that? Okay, good. So if that happened to you or when it's happened to you in the past, what is the emotion that comes along with that? Huh? Yeah. Or joy, right? Yes. Yes. Okay, now watch this. Joy. You're making lots of money. Lots of money. Lots of what? Money. Okay, now you got a little bit of a tax problem, but you're okay with that. But you got money coming in. Yes. What is the natural tendency for most human beings when money starts rolling in? Spend it. Right. Two. Check this out. Where on this chart is the formula for spending emergency? Right here. And one of the rules that I was taught many, many years ago is you get assigned to the condition level that you're behaving at. In other words, if I start spending here, that's the formula for here. And I will go right back to here. Ooh, yeah. See, people that win the lottery, right, they immediately strike it in where. What's it called? Abundance. And what do they do? Spend it. Where do they go? Emergency. Everybody understand? Yes. Entrepreneur, they make all this money or they sell their company or whatever, they get this big sum of money and they go out and blow it all and they're back in emergency on the balls of their heels again. Athletes, you see the same thing. They're making all this money and they spend it all. Now they're broke again. Everybody understand? Yes. Hello. Yes. How many people know what I'm talking about here? See, as I say, part of it's counterintuitive. So what do you do in abundance? It's quite the opposite. Yeah. Instinctively, what do people do here? Not what you should do, but what instinctively do we say they do? Cut costs, right? This is where you conserve appearance. You don't start conserving till you get up here. Up here. You conserve. You conserve. Now you retire the debt. Start retiring debt. Because now you can service the debt now, right? Retire the debt and now you can start. You reinvest. You don't go spending the money. Everybody understand? Yes. Hello. Yes. This is where you start talking about a franchise or replication, licensing and all that stuff. Not here. People going, yeah, I'm gonna license. I go, what are you licensing? You don't even have anything yet. You don't even have a proven system yet. Everybody understand? Yes, hello. Yes. I learned this the hard way, man. Okay, so you reinvest. Does this make sense? Yes. Now, if you reinvest in what ultimately happens and you follow this formula, you ultimately get to this place called. What's again called at the top. What's it called? Power. Say it like you mean it. Power. Come on, say it like you mean it. Power. Power. And what power is, is. I mean, just cruising up here, you don't sell anymore. You don't have to sell anymore. People just buy. You're not even doing hardly any marketing anymore because you have such market presence. You are so big, you're so attractive, people are coming to you to turn people away. Everybody understand? Yes. That's power. That's what power. Now, it doesn't mean you're big. It just means maybe you're the last man standing in your community. Maybe it means you're the only person weathered the storm of the recession. It could be a lot of different things. Does that make sense? Yes. Like Max said. What do you say? There were 32 fitness centers in about a mile and a mile stretch of Indian School Road. And after the recession, there were only about a dozen of them left. And he was one of them. Everybody understand? Yes. Hello. That's called power position. What's it called? Power. Power position. Now, what is the emotion that comes with power? Arrogance. Did you hear what he said? Arrogance. And we go, oh, ouch. Arrogance. Arrogance. Gave you the classic corporate, US corporate example, company called IBM. How many have heard of IBM? You remember in the 80s. I remember reading about them in the 80s when they had such market share, they got cocky. Arrogant. Disconnected, wasn't it? That was the chairman of IBM. Yeah. When he said that the world had all. No, no, no, no, no. That's not what I'm talking about. Okay, that's something else. What they said is the world only had room for one or two big computers. Remember that? No, he said the world only needed like two or three major computers. Their whole concept was big centralized systems and online systems. Yes. And then came a little company by the name of Microfibers. Well, not Microsoft. Well, Apple was one of them. Nico was another one. Xerox. Even Xerox, all these other computers. And they lost market share. As a matter of fact, companies like Xerox went through the same thing. They got arrogant in the marketplace. I went to a breakfast talk in New York City back in the late 80s, early 90s. And the. Forget his name. But he was the chairman of Xerox. Who's saying, we got a problem? The problem is the Ricoh copier. You were called Rico, right? Karen? Yeah. She was a head sales manager for the west coast for Puerto Rico for years. And he said, we got a problem. You know what the problem was? He says. How did he say it? The retail price of the. Of the comparable Ricoh office copier. The retail price was less than zero Xerox production cost. Everybody understand the problem? Yes. You understand what I'm saying? And because they were so arrogant, they were so cocky, they almost took themselves out of the market. They went all the way back down to what? Emergency. They went all the way down to emergency and they almost took themselves out. Because the first thing that Xerox did, Burroughs did, all those companies did, is they cut their sales forces. I was part of it. What they did when I was selling for Burroughs is I made my quota. I was on a 6% commission. 6% commission? Yeah. What? Percent? Six. So I made my quota, right? You know, I made my quota the first six months. You know what they did to my commission? Cut it to 3%. And then I doubled my commission. I doubled my sales again. Cut it to one and a half percent. I'm going, what are you guys doing? You know what their explanation was? You can't make more money than your sales manager. Whoa. And it was. Xerox did the same thing. Burroughs did the same thing. At the time, they had a wholesale exit of their. Almost their entire sales force. What's the solution? Stay connected. Very good, David. Stay connected. Don't lose connection with what's going on in the rest of your organization. Don't lose connection with your kids. Look, let me give you. Can I give you another example here? Maybe more closer to home. And my significant other can vouch for whether I'm telling the truth on this. Does this apply to relationships? Yeah. Oh, yes. How many people in this room are speakers? Okay, good. So when you're up here speaking, or when I'm up here speaking, I'm on the road speaking. What? Where? And I'm doing my thing. And I'm in full flight. Where am I on this chart? Power. Where? Power. How many know what I'm talking about? How many ever felt that you're in power? Okay, Now, I come home. I come home. When I enter the house, where do I enter? No, look, this is a little word of warning for some of you guys. This business those of you who want to get into it is fatal to relationships. Eileen and I know. Eileen and I and Rodrigo are probably the only people that I know in this industry whose relationships have survived it. Right. Everybody understand? Yes. Because one thing that I learned is that when this is not just true in your relationships, if I went into a new business, if I went over here back into the trucking business, where do I enter? Yes, you always enter here. I don't care who you are, what your credentials are, what your business card says. You start where. What's it called? The strategy is to what? Serve first. Serve first. What is it? Serve first.