I was struck this morning by a LinkedIn posting by my friend and colleague Eileen McDargh. Here’s what she wrote:

Get in control by reading only what matters. And what matters concerns your business, your future, your soul.

Another friend and colleague of mine, the late Charlie “Tremendous” Jones, was famous for saying:

You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.

Reading is becoming a lost art. What used to be “reading time” has now been taken over by television, Facebook, Words with Friends (BTW, I just played “civet” for 57 points!), and aimless Internet browsing. And this is a shame, because time spent reading great books—books about your business, your future, your soul—is like time spent digging in a vein of pure gold. Biography, history, great fiction—these can all pay rich dividends.

So why aren’t we doing it? Why, instead, do we find ourselves saying things like:

“I’m so behind on my reading.”
“I’ve got a stack of books I’ve been meaning to get to.”
“I’d love to read more if I could just find the time.”

Really, would you ever say, “I’d love to dig in a vein of pure gold if I could just find the time”? Of course not. You’d find the time!

So why not make reading a priority? Instead of saving it until everything else is done (which, by the way, will never happen), make it an appointment. “I can’t play Words with Friends right now—this is my reading time.”

I encourage you (and by “you” I mean “me” as well) to schedule reading time every day. Another friend and colleague, Randy Gage, begins and ends each day by reading something motivational and uplifting. That’s not a bad practice.

Finally, I’d like to invite you to share your insights with other readers. What are the books that have made—or are currently making—a positive difference in your life? Please leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

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I was at an event recently where one business speaker asserted that there were four words you should never tell a customer: “I can’t do that.” And he had some very good reasons for this assertion:

Your competitors love it when you tell a customer, “I can’t do that.”

It’s music to their ears.

When you tell a customer, “I can’t do that,” you’re giving them an excuse to look elsewhere, and you’re opening a window of opportunity for your competition. This is a bad thing.

Except when it’s not.

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What does award-winning performance mean to you?

I mean specifically.

In your business, in your work, what does award-winning performance look like, sound like, feel like? How do you recognize it in yourself?

It’s been said that what gets measured gets done. Others have said that what gets measured gets managed.

I disagree with both of those statements.

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Some of you know that I used to produce a sketch comedy TV show in Seattle called Almost Live! It was on the air for fifteen years, and number one in its time slot for ten straight years. During those fifteen years, my team and I won more than 100 Emmy Awards. At the risk of sounding immodest, we were really, really good at what we did. Our goal was to give an award-winning performance every week, and most of the time we did just that.

So here’s the thing that always amazed me.

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It was 4:00am yesterday morning, and I was driving to the airport for a speaking engagement in Pittsburgh. This is a pretty common occurrence for me (not necessarily the Pittsburgh part, but the rest of it). All of a sudden I had one of those, “Oh no, did I leave the iron on?” moments. I forget what it was that I was actually worried about—it wasn’t the iron. Probably, “Did I lock the door?” or “Did I water the plants?” Something like that. But rather than fret about it, I was able to dismiss the worry from my mind almost the instant it appeared.

Why?

Because I use a checklist.

As a professional speaker, I fly for business a lot. And after a few years of worrying about things like locking the door and watering the plants, I eventually came up with the brilliant idea of using a checklist (something most of my fellow speakers figured out within days, or, at the outside, weeks). The difference was amazing. No more worrying! Just go down the list, and everything’s taken care of! I now have a packing checklist and a “leaving the house” checklist.

“Good for you, Bill,” you say. “But why should I care about your packing checklist?”

Because checklists aren’t just for packing or leaving the house—they can also help you in your business. Anything you do that can be described as a system or a process can be turned into a checklist. A colleague of mine has a marketing checklist that she uses every time she develops a new product. It includes items like “Possible Domain Names to Buy” and “Online Marketing Tools to Use.” She’s a true award-winning performer, and she runs her entire business using checklists like this.

I found that I was going through the same process every time I was booked for a speaking engagement, so now I’ve developed an automated checklist: “Send contract,” “Schedule conference call,” “Book flight,” and roughly 20 or so other steps that I do before and after each presentation.

I’m a private pilot (nothing big, just little Cessnas), and as a pilot I use a checklist every time I fly. Even though I’ve done a pre-flight check on a Cessna 172 hundreds of times, I still use a printed checklist each and every time. It’s that extra little insurance policy to make sure that nothing important gets left out.

My daily calendar is a checklist as well. The last thing I do before leaving my office for the day is map out the following day. Every thing that needs to get done goes on the calendar. My day then becomes a simple matter of following the checklist. “9am, time to write the blog,” “10:15, call my Pittsburgh client.” No more relying on memory, no more wondering what I should do with my day—and most important, no more important things falling through the cracks.

What are the systems and processes in your business (and in your life) that you could put into a written checklist? What are the tasks that you find yourself doing over and over again on a regular basis? Are they steps in a sales process? A marketing sequence (“Send email two weeks before product launch”)? Vacation planning (“Research hotels online”)? Make it into a checklist.

The last thing you want is to have your own award-winning performance derailed because of a forgotten detail.

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I’m getting ready to board a plane, something I do several times a week. Each time, I’m putting my trust—and my life—in the hands of the pilot. This is, in all likelihood, a person I’ve never met, and never will meet. But I rarely, if ever, think about it, and I’ll bet you don’t either. The trust is so implicit that you don’t even think about it.

So my question for you today is a simple one: Do your customers have that kind of trust in you?

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It’s a cold, gray, rainy day here in Seattle, and I noticed fewer people at the gym this morning. Coincidence? Perhaps, but I don’t think so.

See, I almost didn’t go to the gym myself. Who wants to go to the gym on a miserable day like this?

For that matter, who wants to go to work? It’s a dreary, depressing day—a perfect day to rent a few movies, pop some popcorn, wrap yourself in a blanket, and take a break from it all.

Some people might do that. But not the award-winning performers.

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Last night I heard a television commentator say that the Republican nomination is going to come down to “who wants it more.”

I sincerely hope that this is not the case.

Republican or Democrat, I sincerely hope that we’re not going to choose our leaders on the basis of who wants it more. I mean, really, would you make any other choice that way?

“Honey, where would you like to eat tonight?”

“Well, the Mexican place is always great. The Italian place is kind of grimy and the food’s not that good, but I think they want it more.”

“Italian it is, then!”

Or:

“Which one of these guys should we pick for the basketball team?”

“Well, the guy on the left is seven foot six, lightning fast, and can dunk the ball without leaving the ground. On the other hand, that little fellow next to him—the one who comes up to his waist—really, really wants it.”

“Welcome to the big leagues, little guy!”

Sounds kind of preposterous, doesn’t it? That’s because in the real world (which apparently excludes the world of politics) we reward performance, not wishes.

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Would you hire you?

A friend and I were talking recently about Michael Gerber’s seminal book, The E-Myth Revisited, and that got us talking about the by-now-almost-cliched concept of “working on the business” rather than “working in the business.” The basic idea is that a baker (to use Gerber’s example) decides to open a bake shop, and then spends all her time baking rather than running a baking business. To grossly oversimplify, Gerber is saying that, as business owners, we need to step back from being a “technician” within the business and look at it from a larger, more entrepreneurial perspective.

I propose we step back even further, and look at our businesses not as technicians, not as entrepreneurs, but as customers.

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See that guy on the left? The one at the Steinway? That’s Andras Schiff, one of the greatest concert pianists alive today. Andras and I have a few things in common: 1) we both play the piano; 2) we both play Steinways (although his preferred instrument is a Bosendorfer); 3) we’ve both had dinner with my sister (but not at the same time; I’ve never met Mr. Schiff, whereas I’ve met my sister several times).

I want to talk about #1. We both play the piano. We have that in common. Here’s where we differ:

I play notes; Andras Schiff plays music.

I enjoy playing the piano. I’ve played in a few bands, and I can play well enough to entertain myself, and—on a good day—others. But I’m not a master. Unlike Andras Shiff, my playing doesn’t rise to the level of award-winning performance.

Here’s the difference.

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