EngelFish.Net

Nobody reaches their goal alone. Tiger Woods wins the tournaments, but his trainers, caddies, and consultants helped prepare him. Writing is a solitary pursuit if ever there was one, but Stephen King has editors, assistants, and his beloved Tabitha supporting him. I challenge you to name a single business or political leader who climbed to the top without first building a team to bring their ideas to life.

The lesson here is that you need to look around and figure out who is on your team. Even if you haven’t stopped to consider if you have one, you do. Your friends, your family, your significant other, your instructor, your coach, your mentor, your therapist, your doctor, your babysitter, your lawyer, your electrician, your webmaster, your cleaning woman, and your barrista. You rely on them to keep things moving forward, to provide the building blocks you assemble into your life, to take care of the things you can’t while you write your novel, build your business, or train for your triathlon. They are many, and they are your team.

I’m a people person, energized by the company of those I find interesting and motivated . I have always known that the wonderful people around me bring color and opportunity into my life. But I have only recently started thinking of them as “my team”. That small shift in perspective made a difference.

My doctor (actually, she’s a physician’s assistant) is part of my team, and a visit to her is more than paying a co-pay and getting treated for what ails me. She is my subject matter expert for medical information, and I go into my visits with notes & questions I’ve jotted down since we last met. I also feel, and cultivate, a personal relationship with her. We joke, catch up, and enjoy one another’s company. I make sure she knows how important she is to me, and that I realize how my health & fitness successes wouldn’t be possible without her. I make sure she feels appreciated. If she were to move to a new medical practice, I would follow her, and she knows it.

Since you are heading up a team, you need to do several things to maximize everyone’s benefits from being on the team.

Carefully select your teammates. If you are going to invest your time and emotional capital in them, make sure they are folks you can rely on. When you meet someone with potential, as an advisor and/or friend, consciously decide if they are the kind of person who you want around you. Are they optimistic? Do they have an attitude that you respect; serious minded, light hearted, pragmatic, etc.? It’s said that you are most strongly influenced by the five people with whom you spend the most time. Think about those five folks in your life, are they them shaping you to be the person you want to be?

When you spend time with your team members, be 100% present. They’re investing in you too, and it’s both respectful and productive to give them all of your focus when you’re around them. This probably seems obvious in the case of a fitness coach or financial advisor, but it’s true of your friends and family too. When you’re with them, be *there*. If there’s something more important to you than spending time with them, then either go do that or put it out of your head until you can do something about it.

As the leader of your team, you need to cultivate and reward those supporting you. Take a real interest in them; learn what their interests are and how they intersect with your own. I know that my masseuse, like me, is an avid reader, so I’ve picked up a copy of a book I particularly liked as a gift for her. I keep my eye open for information on yoga and massage, and talk about it when I’m with her. Usually she already knows more about it than I do, but eventually I’ll bring her something new. I also recommend her to everyone I know who’s interested in massage. Helping her grow her business is something I want to do, because I really appreciate her contributions and I think very highly of her talent.

Expanding your team is also an ongoing projects. You cross paths with plenty people during the course of your week. Friends of friends at cookouts, casual chats with someone behind you at Starbucks, the parents of the other kids on your child’s soccer team. They might be an account, a graphic designer, a school teacher, or a car salesman. You can be pretty certain that you’ll need someone *just like that* at some point in your future, so wouldn’t it be wise to get to know these folk before the need is urgent, see if they would be a good fit, and make an effort to “recruit” them? Constantly meeting people, listening to both their stories and their needs, and then keeping in touch with them (also known as ~gasp~ networking) sounds an awful lot like making friends, doesn’t it?

It’s not all about adding to your team too. You should regularly take the time to review all your relationships, and see if there are things you need to do to develop them. Over time people and businesses change, moving in their own directions. This might mean that your review brings to light the fact that one of your relationships isn’t mutually beneficial anymore, and that it’s time for you both to move on. While sometimes it is a matter of cutting away a relationship that is costing you more than it’s benefiting you, it’s more often a matter of realizing that the situation that moved you to bring someone onto the team has been resolved. When this is the case, I have found it best to be straight-forward with the person. I talk about the situation, face to face if possible, and how I think we’ve solved the problems that brought us together. I make sure I let them know how much I appreciate their help, and how I wouldn’t have been able to achieve that success without them. Don’t say, “I’ll keep in touch”, if you don’t mean it. You’ve got to be as good as your word, and when I say I’ll keep in touch, I follow through (even going so far as to put a recurring reminder in my calendar to call or write them).

Like most things in our lives, it’s alot more work to mindfully approach our relationships with others and take responsibility for them. Seeking out, investing in, deepening, reviewing, and pruning all take effort. I found that the benefits are worth it, and I hope the folks on my team me agree.

It’s always good to go to bed a bit wiped out on Sunday night.  In the past, I’d always get a bit of the “dreads” on Sunday night, knowing that I had to get up in the morning and go back to work.  Now, as my own boss building two businesses, the “Sunday Dreads” are gone.  I fully enjoy my weekends, right up to the last minute when I put head to pillow.  Sure, there are stresses along the way, some of them even pretty major, but my day-to-day life has been far happier on average these past few months than back during my corporate life.  I’ve read, and believed, that you cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can control how you respond.  Sometimes, you just have a great weekend, and I’m choosing to respond to this one by being grateful that it happened.  I hope yours was a terrific weekend too!

IMAGE:  Dinner Sunday night was at Red Robin at Brier Creek in Raleigh, after an afternoon hanging out at the pool with Taryn, Baron, Jen, Kendall, and Kelly.  I snapped off a few shots while waiting for my pineapple  & jerked chicken sandwich.  These are Baron’s hands, and wedding ring.  And to think he met Jen only a year ago today!

This has been quite a week.   There has been lots of work on the consulting front, and a couple of challenges/projects I’ve been working on have either been solved or are moving into the final phase.  I always like that.  I also had two gigs assisting a commercial shooter here in town.  There was a third gig lined up (it involved helicopters) but it was posponed due to the weather that day.

I’ve been walking/jogging, plus doing the situp and pushup stuff as well. Two of our friends had birthdays this week, so I had a drink with Gennie at Helios one day, and then dinner with Kendall at Lucky32 another.  Kendall‘s boyfriend, Tommy, gave her an amazingly awesome gift, which brought tears to her eyes.  We were all impressed.

We have had a bit of automobile drama as one of our cars needs about $600 in repairs, and another failed the state inspection and needs one engine repair and a set of new tires.  I’m working quite hard to keeping my mind calm and thinking clearly about the various projects I have and need to complete quickly.  I’m having a bit of success in that area, which bodes well for the future.  I’m also, as always, on the lookout for a realistic and implementable task/project management system to help me keep all these things under control and on focus.

Taryn & I had a nice bit of downtime last weekend too.   We drove up to Virginia Beach last weekend and visited with friends on Saturday and Sunday.  It was great to be away from home, although the dogs came with us, and not have to worry about all the stuff we normally do on the weekends.  We did a bit of visiting, spent some time on the beach, and were taken parasailing!  We both had a blast, and we’re looking forward to doing it again (with a waterproof camera next time too!).

Looking forward to this weekend, we’re going to be quite busy.  I’ve got buckets of work to do, as well as plans for yardwork, compost bin building, blog-twitter-flickr training for a friend, and hitting a few yardsales with T.  I don’t see much relaxing going on, but we *are* going to see DARK KNIGHT at the IMAX theatre Saturday night.  It is *so* going to rock.

Speaking of movies, go to the apple website and check out the HD trailer for THE WATCHMEN movie.  I cannot wait for it.

Bookswise, I just finished listening to the audiobook version of David Sedaris‘ “When You Are Engulfed in Flames” and I’m currently listening to Orson Scott Card‘s “Shadow of the Hegemon”.  Sedaris had me laughing out loud in my car, and getting strange looks from other drivers at intersections.  OSC, as always, is brilliant.  I’m working my way through his ENDER’S GAME series.  Excellent stuff.

IMAGE: This is Ian, a friend who works at my favorite coffeeshop, Helios.  He’s also a pretty talented photographer.  I was setting up my laptop so that I could shoot photos while tethered to it, which would allow me to see the images on my laptop screen (which is way larger and clearer than the camera’s LCD).  Ian swung by to visit with friends at the next table, and I shot him as he was checking out the test images coming up on my computer.

Like most weeks, this past week consisted mostly of working.  The really nice exception, is that we were able to A) go to a really fun 4th of July part at Jenn & Baron‘s place, and B) we had a party at our place on the 5th to celebrate Taryn‘s 29th birthday!  A good time was had by everybody at both events, in spite of the summer rains which dumped both nights.  Friday night they even lost power and we had to resort to ghost stories by candlelight.  Saturday we kept our power, but I personally got soaked while grilling… but it was totally worth it.  Lots of food was eaten, lots of mojitos/margaritas were drank, and everybody seemed to enjoy themselves.  Taryn’s phone rang off the hook on Saturday, with calls from all over the world to sing to her.   I’ve already started thinking of what we can do next year….

IMAGE: While working this morning at Third Place, I talked Hide into stepping out front for second to enjoy the beautiful weather.

I only just realized that it’s been almost a month since my last post.  Slap my hand and send me to the “time out” chair.  Is there such a think as Blogomucil?  Because I am *far* from regular about my posting.  Regardless, let’s see if I can update on most of the things which happened this June.

I spent quite a few days working with Scott Dingman.  He’s a terrific commercial photographer, with 20+ years behind the camera.  I’ve been trying to keep my mouth shut and my eyes/ears open, and hopefully learn a thing or two about how to be a professional.  I know one thing for sure, I’ve learned that making a living with a camera is even more complex than I’d thought… which is saying something.  I’m indebted to Scott for so frequently hiring me for assisting jobs.  Without those opportunities, I would be making far slower progress than I am.

Speaking of slow progress, this year’s NYC Marathon is not going to include me.  Our annual running club was snubbed this year, with only 1 person, Dan, getting accepted.  We’re still going, of course, but most of us will be play the “support crew” role.  Not having the marathon to motivate me, I’m not doing as well with running as I should be.  Although Kim, David, & I make a spit-pact to work on our goals (one of the many reasons they’re laughing so hard in the photo), I have yet to really start working on my running.  There’s always tomorrow.

Another thing that is best done regularly, is cutting the grass.  That, unfortuneately, is proving a bit difficult for me.  When the inherited-with-the-house lawnmower came out of the crawlspace this spring, it was on strike.  After disassembling it and trying to reverse engineer the problem, I realized I had no clue what I was doing.  Luckily a friend of ours, Stan, is a whiz with small engines and came to my birthday party.  It took him under 60 seconds to diagnose the problem, which turned out to be a $0.75 part.  It arrived in the mail the other day, and I’m planning on rebuilding the mower before this weekend.  I hate to take away the employment of the neighborhood lawnmowing kid, but some things just gotta’ get done.

Two weekends ago was the Susan G Komen Race for the Cure here in Raleigh.  Too keep our streak up, Taryn and I both participated.  I’d like to say we ran it, but that would be stretching the truth like cheap spandex.  We enjoyed a brisk walking pace, and finished feeling pretty good.  As every year, I was amazed by the turnout.  About 28,000 participants turned out.  My first year running the NYC Marathon (2000) had 35,000 runners, and Raleigh is a damn sight smaller than NYC.

Additional June events included  seeing a few movies (The Happening, Iron Man, and The Incredible Hulk).  I thought all three were were great, and I’m looking forward to the rest of the summer movie season.  I’ve also caught up on a few films via Netflix (The Signal, Cast Away, The Gangs of New York, and City of God).  This past Saturday we helped Mary & Cristina move, which was fun since most of the Flickr Raleigh Social Group showed up to help.  We also attended a gallery night at Rebus where our friends Abby, Rob, and Tom had work showing.  All things considered, it was a pretty good month… if a bit on the hot side.