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Guest: Mark Moses, founding partner of CEO Coaching International, author of Make Big Happen: How to Live, Work, and Give BIG
Episode in a Tweet: Hugely successful entrepreneur, business coach, and athlete writes a book that details how he built several multi-million dollar businesses.
Quick Background: Starting from zero in a small town in Canada, Mark tasted initial success and then decided to pack up the truck and head to southern California. He quickly started his first company and by age 26, had built it up to 250 locations and 3,000 people. Company two quickly followed and in 13 years was doing $1.6 billion in annual volume. Today, he leads a team of highly skilled coaches who are guiding some of the world’s leading entrepreneurs on the road to make big happen. In this episode, Mark discusses some of the highlights from his new book, Make Big Happen: How to Live, Work, and Give BIG.
Transcript: Download the full transcript here.
Key Insights
Four questions set the stage to make big happen.
The first question is the clarifier and simply asks, what do you want to accomplish? The second question delves into specific actions and asks, what do you have to do or what actions are you going to take to get what you want? The third question understands that things could block your way and asks, what could get in the way of making your desired outcome happen? And the fourth questions ties them all together by asking, how do you hold yourself accountable to achieving the results you want?
Question 1: What do you want?
It all starts here, said Mark. You have to know with great certainty what you want. Without this clarity, the circumstances of life will determine your results, instead of you grabbing the proverbial bull by the horns and intentionally living, working, and giving the way you want, with whom you want, and where you want. With clarity, you’ll get the results you specifically desire. The Crystal Ball exercise can help you gain this clarity.
Question 2: What do you have to do to get what you want?
The rubber meets the road when you get specific on the actions you need to take to make your desired outcome happen. Figuring out what these actions should be can be difficult. You have to identify the specific and measurable leading activities that will lead you to the results you want to have. It’s about identifying the specific activities you need to implement on a consistent basis to generate what you said you want. It’s like the laws of physics. Implementing a certain activity will lead to a predictable result.
Question 3: What could get in the way of getting the results you want?
By anticipating what could get in the way of achieving the plan ahead of time, you can determine what you need to do to overcome them and systematically knock them off. For example, all of us have blind spots–damaging behaviors that everyone but ourselves can see clear as day. For CEOs, these blind spots create unwelcome consequences: They corrupt decision-making, reduce our scope of awareness, and sabotage business results. Work with a business coach or other outside expert to help you uncover those blind spots, rectify them, and check them off your list of things that could get in the way of achieving your results.
Question 4: How do you hold yourself accountable to get the results you want?
It’s way easier to run the business when you’re measuring the leading activities and have broken them down into small size daily and weekly bytes. As a CEO Coach, I know that if you achieve your daily goal you’ll ultimately achieve your weekly goal. If you achieve your weekly goal, you’ll ultimately achieve your monthly goal and so on. Things that get measured get done. I also know that if you can’t define it, you can’t measure it. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Using a scoreboard to keep track of the leading activities that you and your team said you would do will enable you to achieve what you really want.
Coaching Takeaways
1. Four key questions set the framework to make big happen. Use the four make big happen questions as your roadmap for success in living, working, and giving big.
2. Use the Crystal Ball exercise to help you determine what you want and what you need to do. In just a few short questions, you can gain a lifetime’s worth of insight.
3. Read Make Big Happen: How to Live, Work, and Give BIG. Get your copy of the book right here.
Transcript: Download the full transcript here.