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Bob Olmstead

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  • October 28, 2017 at 9:27 pm #175385
    Bob Olmstead
    Participant

    Ooh! That sounds great just by the title (sushi). While I do love food, the big passion for me on Chef’s Table is how visionaries think, craft, beat the odds and such. Its a masters class in that regard. Some episodes (Massimo Bottura, Dominique Crenn, Jeon Kwan) I have watched around 7-8 times.

    In my response above, sigh, forgot to mention the SUBJECT of the PBS or Biography  3 part  series. Doh! Its a deep dive about Walt Disney. A very complex, very human man who was a visionary in so very many ways.

    October 28, 2017 at 11:42 am #175367
    Bob Olmstead
    Participant

    You know what book is the still the first book I always recommend? LOL  How to Win Friends & Influence People- Dale Carnegie. I have clients read it with one color highlighter and then put it away for a month. Reread with another color, then keep it handy for regular reference. It was written in 1930s, but so timeless.

    I get a TON out of the podcast, 99% Invisible. I also really like Melissa Gilbert’s podcast, Big Magic. Im big on reading biograhies or reading them. The 3 part series that, either PBS or Biography, is super powerful. I also have a handful of chefs from the Netflix show, “Chef’s Table”, I rewatch those episodes over and over. I find those very powerful, because they teach many powerful tools, from mindset and being a visionary, to everyday – believe in the dream stuff.

    Sorry for the delay. I dont think I set something up right, because Im not getting notifications even though I checked box.

    Hope that helps!

    October 26, 2017 at 10:00 am #175057
    Bob Olmstead
    Participant

    Ah, Senge … your post brought back many memories. Did you buy the workbook? Senge is heavily anchored around process thinking, process mapping and the like. I’ve used the teachings from the workbook many times, doing process mapping, when I was a management consultant. Onto personal mastery.

    When I left management consulting a little over three years ago, I dove headlong into that very question, to develop a framework that I could coach from. Almost 600 pages later, to include, ironically, many a Senge inspired process maps, I had a few workable frameworks that I felt really good about.

    One of the concepts I bumped into and then later developed a framework around, was “personal leadership”. It’s a hot concept right now with more and more MBA programs and the like, incorporating its concepts into their curriculum. More than anything, it mirrored my own beliefs about leadership and effectiveness, personal and professional mastery.

    There are many frameworks to explore under the global concept of “personal leadership”. What hit me was, even though my management consulting practice focused on triage, solving big problems, my clients often spoke of the personal impact I had, which I didn’t get, to be honest.

    Well, flash forward, and the answer was there in personal leadership.

    Rather than learning how to be a great leader on the job, why not learn how to be a great leader in all aspects of life? And not so much, charge the hill, take the mountain, leadership- but more kin to owning your own journey in this life.

    I really liked the idea of taking an internal approach to external effectiveness, the kind of peak effectiveness that follows you no matter where you go or what you do. Which brings us full circle to the lovely space you’re exploring.

    I’m not a big fan of the term of mastery. I think it puts a lot of undue pressure to live up to an impossible standard. Life and work is filled with lots of highs and lows, moments where we’re rocking it, other moments when we fail. That’s what it is to be human.

    But, if we can assemble a core sets of tools and concepts that helps us to be the best version of ourselves, no matter what we might be going through at the moment, that seems a lot more doable. I think this is the secret sauce to Covey’s seven habits.

    For my work, I created ten fundamentals that anchor personal leadership that I call, The (10) Fundamentals Of Personal Leadership. The first of ten looks like this:

    #1 Take Ownership
    Don’t make excuses and don’t blame others. Take personal responsibility for your life. All of it. Own your mistakes. Rise above your obstacles. And don’t avoid the truth. Face it head-on. Because ultimately, it’s your life. It’s your path to walk.

    So whether your Richard Branson, a yoga instructor, a painter, a brain surgeon, or anyone else – habitually taking ownership as a way of life is key. It’s the thing that I see people most struggle with thus it’s position as the #1 fundamental. Absent ownership, we can’t effectively build our brands, fix our marriages, heal our hearts, boldly walk on the paths we crave to explore, so on and so forth.

    So it’s far less about mastering business, relationships, being (fill in the blank), and it’s far more about embracing key concepts that will stand the test of time, that will always serve us no matter our mindset at a given moment or our skill level at a given in a given area.

    I have moments when I am an epic being. I have moments where I am a total asshat. I have a lot of moments in between the two extremes. Such is the human journey. In my view, its all about learning how to be optimally effective, no matter what we are facing in a given moment.

    I can be terribly lonely at a given point in time, but if I Live In The Solution (the 5th fundamental), and if I dedicate myself to learn how to more Meaningfully Connect (the 7th fundamental); and if I Take Ownership of the issue , with time and work, I’ll get more effective at solving my isolation problem. And I get to do that as an imperfect, broken, occasionally awesome meat suit.

    Just my ten cents

    October 24, 2017 at 5:42 pm #174679
    Bob Olmstead
    Participant

    Hello Alexandra

    Helping people build businesses is what I have done for a living for about twenty years now. I say that only so you know my expertise. I read through all of your responses, so here is my ten cents. Hope it helps.

    There is the idea of owning a business and then there is the reality. Like anything where that is the case (being an actor, a monk, a Navy SEAL, so on and so forth), the reality does not always match the idea. And it’s super important to plug into that truth, here is why.

    While business is complex, the things that fuel success are rather straightforward:

    1. You need to find something that you are VERY passionate about. It doesn’t have to be a calling, per se, but strong passion has to be in there somewhere. Business has many highs and lows, lots of pain and lots of joy. The only way people stick with that rodeo is the core passion that fuels them. More this later.
    2. You need to be rather good at your one thing: executive recruiting, blogging for moola, retail jewelry, restaurant, ad agency, pet tricks specialist, on and on the list goes. Ya gotta be good at it.
    3. You need to be good enough at business to not go under. If you really want to thrive, you also gotta be good at business on some level. And being good at business is different than being good at your one thing.
    4. Your capital needs to be sustained, not a Hail Mary pass. This is super important. Not enough start-up capital is one of the top reasons early start-ups crash. Lots of dreams, enough cash to launch, then crash. But why does that happen? Because you don’t know what you don’t know. A huge part of the initial learning curve is making mistakes.

    Ok, back to that passion thing. There is a big difference between being a passionate person, or being passionate about an idea, and having a passion you want to monetize. A passion for independence alone, will not be enough. Now, that passion for independence alongside a business that you get real passionate about, that’s a winning combo. But it takes both.

    For example, you could become financially independent selling real estate. You kinda sorta own your own gig. If you’re a broker you definitely do. But the frameworks for success tend to already be established, so you can just plug into one of those frameworks and find independence.

    My executive recruiter client, doing several million, second generation, is very passionate about placing top-tier managers in the industry they serve. They are also very passionate about having integrity and having an amazing culture. My health food store client is very passionate about wellness. I have a young client your age that is very passionate about digital marketing.

    So finding your one thing is very important. And clarifying whether you simply want to lock down a profession that allows for a lot of independence, or rather, you would like to build a business around your one thing.

    So where to begin? If I were coaching you, based on what I have read, I would recommend a three-pronged approach. #1- Continue your career to keep your revenue solid. #2- Explore as much as you possibly can, without spending money, what your one thing might be and look like. #3- Take a few crash courses like you are, to get a better feel for the world of business.

    Until you are extremely confident about “one thing”, I would not spend any of the money you have set aside. I also think it would be wise to explore professions that allow for independence, versus starting and building a business.

    Make sense?

    Hope that helped-
    Bob

     

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