Entrepreneurs – A Long Distance Dedication

I have been blessed to have been an entrepreneur for many years and many of my dearest friends are entrepreneurs.

When we get together we laugh, swear and weep over the world that we live in, a world that can only be appreciated by a fellow entrepreneur.

As we used to joke years ago in the software company that I co founded in New York - “Some day we will look back on this day and nervously change the subject” – and then we would laugh.

Many people suggest you should be doing something else – “get a real job”, they say.

Sometimes they almost have you convinced that they are right.

And then you think – would I REALLY want to be doing anything else?

No way.  This is where you are meant to be.

This is how your passions come alive.  This is an expression and extension of you.

Of course, these things apply to the entrepreneur who eventually made their dream a success.

What about the ones that didn’t?

If you didn’t make your current dream a success, you didn’t fail.  You were merely offered an extraordinary set of life lessons.

The key lesson if you didn’t succeed the first time is:

Will  you get back up and try again?

Because in the end, that’s the real lesson of entrepreneurship.

Despite everything you will learn about networking, financing, execution, business plan writing, exit strategies, negotiation, IPOs, mergers and acquisitions, HR rules, real estate, contracts, pipelines, lead generation, deal closing, reports and everything else, the real question is:

How badly do you want your purpose and passion to be fulfilled?

If I were to write a long distance dedication to entrepreneurs for Kasey Kasem to read, here’s how it would go:

Harry writes:

Dear Kasey.

I am a chronic entrepreneur who is sending words of support to all other entrepreneurs.  For the great obstacles they will either step over, around, go under or learn that they need to be doing something else, the world of the entrepreneur is filled with the greatest rewards.

They create friendships that last a lifetime.  Friends like RL, CDT, MdC, JP, NN and others will live in my heart forever.

Being an entrepreneur allows your purpose and your passion to manifest – to provide an opportunity for you to have a lasting impact on others.  It helps define your legacy – that marker that says “I was here”.

Being an entrepreneur is rarely easy.  In fact, many times it will knock you to your knees.  But we get back up, learn from our challenges and move forward.

In the end, we always win.  Sometimes the victory is obvious.  Sometimes, the lessons are not obvious until much later.

So, Kasey, for fantastic entrepreneurs out there, people like MP, AG, BJ, KC, MB, RM, HJ, GP, MC and all the other people who dare allow their purpose and passion to fly, could  you please play “Don’t Stop Believin” by Journey?

Most sincerely,

Harry

Ok, Harry, here’s your long distance dedication.

To the entrepreneurs I have served with, I thank you – you have blessed my life tremendously and I owe you a lifetime of gratitude.  The lessons we have learned together are deep, broad and rich.

To all entrepreneurs, you are closer to your dreams than you realize. 

It all comes down to how badly you want it and what are you willing to do to make your dreams come true?

In service and servanthood.

Harry

PS I would be remiss in my duties if I neglected to write about the importance of family and friends.  While you may think that others don’t understand the world of entrepreneurs, they know more than you realize and they care more than you know.  One of the greatest lessons I learned despite all of my so-called confidence in my own abilities was the ability to be able to ask for help when I needed it and to be open to receiving help.  I have my friend Leonard to thank for this lesson.  When all is said and done, humility may carry you further than confidence.

In addition, if you are a person of faith, hold onto it, however you define it.  It will be an incredibly powerful, guiding, nurturing light when darkness seems all around you.

For a much more detailed insight into the world of entrepreneurs, I invite you to read my detailed blog “Entrepreneurs – A Long Distance Dedication” by clicking here.

Authentic Leadership – Looking the Part Versus Living It

It is with a mix of gratitude, amusement, disappointment and sometimes downright anger that many of us look at today’s leaders, whether they be in the community, corporate world, government, church or any other organization of influence.

What appears to attract the most press are the ones who either let us down or infuriate us with stories of how they acted in their own best interests at the expense of someone else.

Today’s leader faces many great challenges – the challenges of the world are broad, deep and complex.

What makes the challenge of today’s leaders even more complex is how we define and establish our leaders.

Think about we seek in a leader.  At a minimum, we expect them to be charismatic, passion-filled, visionary, connected, value-rich, idea-abundant, brilliant in statesmanship, powerful in negotiating skills and plentiful in morality and ethics.  Some of us expect even more than this.

We expect them to be perfect.

In a world that rewards people who embrace this model and then punishes them when they almost inevitably fail to live up to the expectations of others, who owns responsibility for these leaders?

Is it the fault of the people who erect a facade in order to obscure who they really are or is it the fault of the people who prefer to vote for a facade than someone who is truly authentic and transparent, even if the news is bad?

We all own the responsibility of choosing the type of leaders who attains a position of influence over us. 

Perhaps we should be less disappointed in the leaders that the system produces and be more cognizant of the type of system that causes leaders to have to be something other than that which they are.

We need to embrace a dialog built around transparency and authenticity and then perhaps we will find more opportunity to select strong leaders whom we can collaborate with to produce a better result.

In service and servanthood.

Harry

For the detailed version of “Authentic Leadership – Looking the Part Versus Living It”, please click here.

“Saving The World at Work” – A Call To Action

I am a passionate person.  Anyone who has met me can attest to my passion – my passion to try to be the best I can be and to encourage others to be the best they can be.

In a beautiful world filled with potential, the need for each of us to be the best that we can be resonates more than ever.

Our world of unlimited beauty, potential and sustenance is being assailed by the challenges of war, hunger, disease, poverty and pollution.

Our phenomenal potential to create a world of unlimited health, peace and prosperity is in need of someone to step up to make that potential a reality.

Who of all of us can save our beautiful planet?

You can.

I can.

We can.

We must.

Perhaps many of us think this is too big.  How can one person possibly make a difference in this large, complex world?

As my friend Tim Sanders notes in his powerful book “Saving the World at Work”, one person can indeed have a profound impact on the world.

That person is YOU!

In his book, Tim tells the stories of individuals whose hearts are gripped by the need to do something, to do anything, to make a difference on this planet.

His book is a powerful call to action.

When Tim was looking for stories of people whose passion influenced the direction of large corporations, I was proud to be able to connect Tim with Joan Krajewski, a member of the Microsoft Personal Empowerment Group that I incubated with a number of friends at Microsoft.

Here is Tim describing Joan’s passion and her impact. 

 

Tim’s book offers us hope and examples of how each one of us can do what we thought to be the unthinkable – each one of us can leverage our vision, our purpose and our passion within the organizations that we work with to have a profound impact on the planet.

That is an incredible thought, isn’t it?

Check out Tim’s book “Saving the World at Work” and his website here.  It has links for where to find the book, including free goodies such as DVDs, that you can read and watch; to inspire you and the people  you know and convince you that YOU can make a difference.

The earth is calling.

The world that we are leaving to our children is calling.

The legacy that we leave to our children is calling.

What are we waiting for?

Let’s get engaged and make the difference we are capable of and called to create.

In service and servanthood.

Harry

For the longer version of “Saving the World at Work” – A Call to Action, please click here.

Authenticity – A Personal Assessment 8 Years After 9/11

Today, many of us honor those lost during the attack on 9/11.  Regardless of what terrorist theory, conspiracy theory or anything else people subscribe to, what is important today is to honor those who were lost and to offer love and support to those they left behind.

I have some poignant memories of that day and the days that followed that are as fresh in my mind today as they were eight years ago.

With these memories in mind, I wonder how we as a society have grown since the events of that horrific day.

Greed, apathy, indifference and lack of foresight have allowed us to create one of the greatest financial collapses in history.  The governments tell us that it is near an end.  Tell that to the many who lost everything.

Disease, hunger and poverty continue to kill millions every year, including 29,000 children under the age of 5 every day for lack of clean drinking water.

Wars continue for the standard reason – primarily political agendas that kill our young people to satisfy the need of some administration or dictatorship.

Now I’m an optimist – perhaps fatally.

Despite all of the things that continue to go on in the world, I believe that we can solve all of these problems.

I also know there are a lot of great optimists in the world striving to solve the world’s challenges.  They need our help to make solutions a reality.

We won’t solve them by simply pretending the world is all good (as in the rose-colored glasses optimist) and assume this will make it so.

We won’t solve it with positive thinking alone although belief in our ability to solve these things is essential.

We won’t solve it by prayer alone although for many, it brings strength.

We won’t solve it by refusing to collaborate with others. 

We won’t solve it by expecting something for nothing. 

We can only solve it when we return to a place of authenticity, a place that says we need to be more accountable for what we do in this world and we need to hold others more accountable for their actions and results.

We have to start naming the elephants in the room when it comes to accountability and responsibility.  We must do it with respect and with an eye towards collectively solving the great challenges in the world.

We can’t just name the elephant and say “my job is done”.  Once we name it, we need to play an active role in deciding what to do with it.

When we do this, we choose to unleash our phenomenal potential to love, create, cure, share and solve problems to make a difference in the world.

I know that we all prefer to envision a world of unlimited potential.

I know that my friends Eric, Narender and Stephen believed in this also.

Let’s not delay releasing our fullest potential to make this world a better place.

Let’s do it now.

Isn’t that the best way to honor those who are lost? 

Is that not the greatest legacy we can leave to the next generation?

Yours in service and servanthood and in dedication to those who were lost and those who grieve their loss.

Harry

For the full version of this “Authenticity - A Personal Assessment”, please click here.

Accountability and Authenticity

As I dressed this morning, I donned a pair of jeans and a yellow polo shirt and prepared to meet the day - nothing significant to report there.

However, to a small band of entrepreneurs in New York in the late 90’s to early 2000’s, Tuesday was Yellow Shirt Day.

Every Tuesday, my team and I would all wear yellow shirts and would go for a walk during our lunch break and compliment other people who wore yellow shirts.  The reaction from strangers on the streets of New York covered a broad spectrum, ranging from humorous to angry.

The co-founder of Yellow Shirt Day, Narender Nath, was killed in the World Trade Center less than a year later during the horror of 9/11.

Narender came to mind this morning as I realized I was wearing a yellow shirt on Tuesday and I thought about how he lived his life versus how the media tells us we should live.

The media encourages us to focus on the disaster all around us under the guise of informing us.

If only we could get some breathing room from all of this gloom and doom, we reason, then we could be more true to ourselves.

Narender looked at this challenge differently.

He knew that if he waited for the opportunity to be authentic with himself and with others, he would wait forever and would be incredibly frustrated as he waited.

Narender believed that our world is what we believe it to be.

The media wants us to believe it is all coming apart.

Narender believed it to be one of unlimited opportunity for living, loving, learning and leaving a legacy.

I know you believe this also.

As many experts say and as Narender practiced:

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

Yes, it is an overused statement.

But perhaps it is overused because we still haven’t learned the truth within it and so we need to keep hearing it.

How do you see the world today?  How badly would you like to see it in a different light?

Look around you – there are many people who are ready to collaborate with you to create that world.

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

PS – A guy by the name of Mike walked into the coffee shop as I was writing this.  He was wearing a yellow shirt also and so I couldn’t resist introducing myself and telling him the story of Narender and Yellow Shirt Day.  As he left, he laughed and said “maybe we can start Yellow Shirt Day where I work”.  That would be cool, Mike!

It sometimes doesn’t take much to influence someone else in a positive way.

Simple actions touch hearts and in turn influence minds.  Whose heart are you touching today?

For more detailed musing about Accountability and Transparency, please click here.