DeepThinking - The Advantages of Being A Complete Ass

I just finished my seminar with Richard Koch on How To Build A Star Business and I ended it feeling depressed and disgusted that I made a complete ass of my Self. BTW - this was a life changing seminar. Richard is destined to move into a new career as a leading biz mentor on a mass scale - there's a new book coming which will blow people away. But me? I got depressed. I was an ass in the room. At least, that is what my mind is telling me what happened. Whenever I feel depressed like this, I ask my Self four questions. 1. Is it True? (that I made a complete ass of my Self) YES. I stood up in front of 100+ biz owners from all around the world and was asked by Richard: What did I think BodyChance's annual revenue would be worth by 2020? I gave two answers. The first was reasonable - I predicted we could continue our consistent growth of 20% annually. That has been the case for the last 14 years. Someone in the room calculated that for me and it came to $3,583,180 by 2020. Reasonable. Yes, can do. Then… (this is the embarrassing part) I imagined a new biz where I would walk into Toyota and half a dozen other big league companies and promise them a 20% increase of productivity over 5 years - what would that be worth to them? I based my premise on Victorinox's experience of applying Alexander Technique over that period and experiencing a 40% increase in productivity due to reduced absenteeism. Richard continued asking me: What would that revenue be worth by 2020? I answered, oh "5 billion" (cringe! cringe!) I am sure I lost everyone in the room when I quoted that outrageously unrealistic figure. It was obvious I was clueless. 2. Can I absolutely be sure that it is True? (that I made a complete ass of my Self) Well, no. People who know me well realise I have this hyperbolic, delusional streak to my personality. Part of my delusional optimism is why I have been able to achieve what I have. I am sure some people laughed with an affectionate "Oh Jeremy, don't be silly" kind of reaction, but did not lesson their opinion of my ability to deliver something extraordinary. 3. What Happens, How Do I Feel, When I Believe That Thought? (that I made a complete ass of my Self) I felt stupid, incompetent and unable to fathom the truths of my own dreams. Self-hate kicked in again, and all I wanted to do was get a box of chocolates and watch a movie. (I basically did that) 4. Who Would I Be If I Didn't Have this Thought? (that I made a complete ass of my Self) Relaxed and joyful that here I was in a room full of high achievers, and they were actually listening to me. I'd remember that in over a century I am the first person to crack a biz formula to grow a company over 14 years based on Alexander's discoveries. I would remember I have created a school that is 2x bigger than it's closest competitor, and 5~10x bigger than any other school in the world today. Not bad. After going through these four questions - and feeling a lot better - I started the process of turning it all around. This means giving equal opportunity for my wonderfully wild brain to think other thoughts that are the opposite of the thought depressing me. "I didn't make a complete ass of my Self" Meditating on that I realized how wonderful it was that I said that stupid figure so publically. It made me sit down at the computer and go to this website: http://home.ubalt.edu/ntsbarsh/business-stat/otherapplets/compoundcal.htm I started to look at the realistic implications of growing revenue to $5,000,000,000 by 2020 and discovered that I would have to grow the company at 300% annually. I laughed out loud. Then an interesting thing happened. BodyChance was never going there, I realized that. And yes, getting to $5B by 2020 was ridiculous, but I started to wonder what would happen if I could increase our current annual growth of 20% to 25% or even to 30% (which we have achieved in the past). How would I do that? What would I have to change to make that a real possibility? All sorts of new questions and possibilities started flooding into my mind. I guess most "real" biz people are thinking of these kinds of things all the time, but I was a total neophyte in 2005. This doesn't come to me naturally at all. I still have a lot of catching up to do. This experience taught me to think futuristically in a more rigorous and realistic way. Tantra Might Just Grow Your Company! It reminded me of Tantric Buddhism. For those who don't know it, Tantra (or Vajrayana) is Buddha's fast-track method to enlightenment. Take 16 lives to become enlightened, instead of three epochs to get there. (BTW - an epoch is the length of time from the big bang to the final return to singularity that initiates a new big bang in Buddhist cosmology. Long time huh?) I thought: what does tantric Alexander look like? In Tantric Buddhism the fundamental formula they follow is "use the result as the path". Putting that into a modern vernacular, it becomes: "Fake it till you make it." Standing in the room that day - this is what I was doing. I was faking it. But unless you fake it, you may never make it. There are definite advantages to making a complete ass of your Self.