7 > Build Yourself and Your Network
As my businesses grew, cracks started showing up in me.
I sat on the curb outside my business, watching the ambulance pull away. My heart was still beating fast. We had to call 911 to deal with a medical and/or psychological emergency in an employee whose life and health were in chaos. It wasn’t caused by work, but it sure affected work. That was way more drama than I wanted for one day, or any day. I felt so stupid. That employee was the worst hire I’d ever made, and I knew it. Why didn’t I listen to my own better judgment in the interview process? By making bad hires like that I hurt my businesses financially, and I added stress all around me.
On another day I walked back to my office feeling rattled and defeated. I’d gone into the factory to ask a severely underperforming worker to focus on work and pick up the pace. I brought up the issue timidly, and when he seemed to be getting angry I just walked away. I’d planned to be clear and say, “I need you to meet these performance standards in order to continue to have at job our company.” Instead I avoided the confrontation that needed to happen. By failing to confront unacceptable performance, I cost my businesses money every day. Why didn’t I stick to my guns?
On many days, after everyone else had gone home for the day, I’d sit in my office staring at the charts showing upward trends in sales, employee count, product offerings, and profits. Instead of simple satisfaction and gratitude, I felt anxiety that somehow this whole enterprise was going to come crashing down. I didn’t feel qualified. My anxiety hurt my quality of life, and because of it, I didn’t take the risks that would have maximized the growth of my businesses. Why didn’t I have the confidence to take on my competitors, win, and feel good about it?
There’s one answer to all these questions: My character as a person had cracks and gaps. I hadn’t developed the core abilities I needed, as a person, to make the decisions and take the actions that would improve my quality of life and my investment returns. I was smart enough, and strategic enough, but my personal, emotional, relational development was a problem.
At the same time, I had another problem: I didn’t have relationships with mentors and peers to reach out to when my own resources and my own character were not enough. I hadn’t developed connections to a network of personal and professional supports. I was far too isolated to be healthy and live up to my potential. The solitary computer programmer didn’t have what it took to be an effective CEO. I was in trouble.
These cracks and gaps in me, and my lack of relational network, were disadvantages that hurt my investment returns.
One Saturday I started reading a book about healthy, connected relationships. The book included stories from a personal development event for business leaders. I was intrigued, and I Googled the event to see if it still existed. It did, and there was one coming up in two weeks on the other side of the country. I went.
I’d never been to anything like this. I’d never even traveled by airline before. At the week-long event I learned about character, emotional intelligence, leadership, and personal growth. We interacted in small groups all week long. We learned about how we came across to the rest of our group, and how we could grow. This week cracked the door open to a whole world of growth and development I’d never known before.
I became a voracious consumer of growth resources. Once a month I flew from Illinois to California for the Leadership Coaching Program. I found a great psychotherapist and went consistently. I hired business coaches and talked to them weekly. I learned about myself, and better ways of leading. Over years, my isolation began to diminish, and the cracks and gaps in my character began to fill in. As a result, my businesses reached new levels of growth and profitability.
The growth of my businesses would have been stunted if I hadn’t worked on myself. The dysfunctions of the leader become the dysfunctions of the organization. I was the bottleneck, and when I grew, the businesses grew. I spent a lot of money and a lot of time on my growth, and I made that money back 100 times over in increased business results.
I invested in myself, and built into me the character to face the demands of the roles I was filling. In addition to improving my quality of life and the quality of my relationships, I grew into a person and a leader that made me one of my own greatest investment advantages. I am still investing heavily in my own growth because I love to grow, and the ROI is off the charts.
Your Character as a Person Affects Everything Else
As an investor your job is to decide how resources will be used. Your health and maturity as a person affect every decision you make. Rational judgment during emotional stress, discernment of integrity and motives in others, perseverance during difficulty, the ability to form trusting relationships, and many more abilities flow from personal character. These personal abilities underlie successful investing.
It’s not enough to be smart and strategic. No matter how much you know, a person (you) still has to do it. A person has to maintain judgment and resist clicking the “sell” button when markets are shaken. A person has to manage fear and show up at the firing meeting with a difficult employee who needs to go. A person has to manage envy and wait patiently while others overindulge in debt-fueled consumption. A person has to establish connections and build trust with key business partners. Smart people who know better still make a lot of bad investment decisions.
Your personal character, what you are capable of as a person, is a central resource, and a potentially powerful advantage. It’s easy to access the same financial news articles as everyone else. It’s not easy to react in mature and balanced ways to emotionally provocative economic events. It’s easy to contact sources to raise capital for your business. It’s not easy to build a trusted, credible connection that wins the deal. When your development as a person enables you to do difficult things others can’t or won’t, you have an advantage that’s hard to imitate.
You can be your own biggest advantage.
Invest in Yourself, on Purpose
Significant personal growth doesn’t happen automatically through the routine of daily life and work. Even dramatic life events don’t usually change a person’s core character. It takes an intentional, active practice of investing in yourself to raise your personal capabilities to new levels.
As an adult, you are responsible for arranging for your own growth and development. You must be the CEO of your own growth. Nobody is else going to take that role in your life, nor should they.
Personal growth happens through relationships. Intentionally pursue relationships with people who are for you, personally and professionally, who take a no-judgment approach, and who tell you the truth without sugar-coating. The best relationships for your growth and development are no-shame, no–B.S. zones.
It usually takes money for therapy sessions, seminar registrations, plane tickets, coaching fees, and similar resources to engage in the personal growth process. It certainly will take a big investment of your time. Growing yourself might be the highest-ROI investment you can make.
Take Initiative to Engage in Growth
A life coach isn’t going to knock on your door and invite you to start working with her to take your career up a notch. The organizers of a workshop focused on just the skills you need probably don’t know you’re the perfect attendee to market to. Good mentors are typically busy, successful, and in demand. They probably won’t come looking for you.
When we are very young, we have a right to expect our caregivers to take initiative to ensure we get the growth and development experiences we need. By the time we reach adulthood, that right has fully expired. Healthy development requires us to transition to taking that initiative on our own behalf. Some of us struggle to make this transition, and can let time go by waiting for opportunities and growth resources to come to us. We all need to get out of our passivity, and get active as lifelong leaders of our own growth and development.
Here are some practical ways to do this that have been fruitful for me.
Reach out to people you admire. Make contact with authors, business leaders, or trailblazers in your areas of interest. Ask for time with people who embody personal and professional characteristics you aspire to. These may be prominent figures, or relatively unnoticed individuals behind the scenes. It takes courage to take the initiative and ask for a connection. In my experience, successful and admirable people are almost always motivated to pay it forward and build into others who are earlier on the path. Many people “above my pay grade” have generously shared of themselves with me. Be brave and make the ask. Sometimes this will involve you paying for a coaching or consulting relationship. I’ve found this works well and is worth it.
Read. You can learn a great deal from the stories and insights others share in books and articles. Learn about the experiences of others doing what you want to do, or struggling with what holds you back. This is not a substitute for relational growth experiences, but it is a valuable complement.
Engage with groups of peers. Most industries and interests have affinity groups or cohorts of various kinds that you can join. Support groups exist in most cities focused on addictions, emotional struggles, or difficult life events. Take the initiative to find and explore the resources that fit your need. Evaluate the quality and suitability of those resources for you. “Together” is a powerful force. Get around people who value growth, and your growth will benefit.
Look for conferences, workshops, and similar events that are relevant to your growth goals. Travel a long distance if you need to. Take the initiative and make the investment. In addition to valuable content, attending events also provides opportunity for new relational connections, and focuses your time and attention on the forward motion you want.
Invest in a few best-friend relationships. Everyone needs an A-team of two to five close friends. If you have some acquaintances that you see potential for a deeper relationship with, take the initiative to invite them to coffee more often. Courageously lead the conversation to what’s really important in your life, which probably means risky and vulnerable topics. Most people need this just as much as you do, and will respond positively even though they might not take the initiative. Over months and years of consistent investment, those relationships can grow to provide remarkable mutual benefit.
Hire a professional. Professional life coaches, business coaches, psychotherapists, personal trainers, and other helpers are accessible even when your network of connections is small. Professional helpers can devote time more consistently to working on your goals than most friends can. And professionals may have greater experience and insight to share than your peers do.
Evaluate and Develop These Personal Abilities
As you engage in growth resources, build your awareness of specific personal abilities you want to develop. These abilities are highly relevant to your investing success, and group into a few broad categories. Take a look at yourself in these descriptions. Look for relevant resources and ask for specific help with these from your growth-promoting relationships.
The Ability to Connect
The need for human connection is wired deep into us. When we connect well, we earn the trust of others and learn whom we can trust. Connection requires attuning to emotion in yourself and others, and responding with empathy. Connection depends on relating vulnerably to others, and responding gently to their vulnerability.
I’ve known many smart, strategic, and driven leaders who benefitted when they improved their ability to connect. They bravely practiced the art of speaking from the heart, not just the head, and speaking vulnerably about their own weakness and failure. They learned to attune and respond to the emotional content, not just the practical content in what others were saying. They learned to connect with and express their own emotion. Their effectiveness and their quality of life improved.
The ability to connect has a direct bearing on your investment returns. A healthy ability to connect helps to build teams, evaluate partnerships, make sales, and resolve conflict. Any activity that involves interacting with people benefits from this ability.
Connection is essential for another reason. It’s how you get what you need. Connection gives you what you need to recover from loss, take on scary challenges, and keep your perspectives realistic and grounded. Your brain comes alive in the context of social connection. Your resilience, courage, creativity, and energy all improve when you are well connected.
These skills are learned and practiced in relationships, whether one-on-one or in group settings. Spend time in honest relationships with people are who better at this than you are, and you will absorb their skills.
The Ability to Confront
Connection brings us closer to others. Confrontation gives us the ability to be different from them at the same time. It’s based on a strong definition of oneself. Confronting is at the core of enforcing standards, saying no to a sales pitch, making an unpopular leadership decision, or holding an opinion that’s contrary to the majority view. Business itself, engaging in a competition for a market, is an act of confrontation.
We all probably know people who are remarkably clear and defined. They say yes without resentment, and say no clearly and respectfully when they want to. People like that enjoy more peaceful and aligned life experiences, and people around them benefit from their clarity and strength.
Without this ability you’ll be taken advantage of and overpowered by people around you. Most of us are naturally conflict-avoidant, and thus our lives and work can benefit a great deal by strengthening our ability to confront. Grow in this area to be clear about what you want, and say no to what is unacceptable or simply not your best choice.
Your healthiest and most growth-promoting relationships will support your freedom, your strength, and your clear “no.” Spend time in those relationships to strengthen this ability. Push outside your comfort zone to practice it. Your investment returns will benefit when you have a strong ability to confront.
The Ability to Accept Bad Things
This is the ability to respond honestly and realistically when faced with negative realities in ourselves, other people, and circumstances around us.
None of us likes it when bad things happen. An investment loss, a personal failure, a disappointing performance by a team member, or simple bad luck can all bring out an ineffective response in us. We might deny that it’s bad, see it as turned all bad, rationalize that it’s not our fault, blame and criticize, or insist on perfection.
Maturity in this ability means embracing the truth when things go badly, no matter how uncomfortable or disappointing it may be. Without this ability we hang on to losing investments too long, fail to adjust what’s not working, or give up on one imperfect person or investment after another in search of a new “ideal.”
Life is a mixed bag, and mature adults accept that and function effectively within that reality. This is something you can work on in your personal growth contexts, if you need to.
Investing in relationships, in financial markets, in business, or in any other area requires taking the good with the bad. Investors who do that well generate superior returns, financially, in relationships, and in all endeavors.
The Ability to Be in Authority and Under Authority
Human development involves changing from a child, to an adolescent, to an adult. Children know they aren’t equals with other adults, and default to a lesser position. Adolescents often push against authority, testing the limits. Adults have the flexibility to take on roles in which they cooperate with authority, and roles in which they are the authority. This ability also relates to the development of specific expertise, and finding one’s purpose and calling.
Investors who take a child position might lack confidence in their own views, be susceptible to manipulation by others, or shrink back from competitive situations.
Investors who take an adolescent position might have insufficient regard for rules and regulations, or take too much risk in the face on reasonable warnings.
Adults don’t automatically submit just because someone wants them to, and they don’t automatically rebel just because someone is in charge. Instead of a default reaction, adults make values-based decisions about the most appropriate and effective response in any given situation. They can say, “I’ll follow your lead on this” when that’s appropriate, and they can say, “I’ll take the lead on this” in situations that call for it.
Investors need the ability to cooperate with authority, and exercise their own personal authority, to maximize their success.
The Ability to Create Endings and Let Go
Sometimes it’s time for a good thing to end to make way for something better. As humans we are wired to hold on to things, to preserve attachments, and to avoid losses. This tendency is useful in many arenas, but it’s too simplistic to guide wise investment decisions.
If you can’t end your attachment to an investment, a business, an employee, a relationship, or a good-but-not-best activity, you’ll get stuck.
Sometimes big losses early in life, or highly impactful losses at any stage of life amplify our natural tendency to hold on to things. Sometimes we view the world as a place of shortage and scarcity, and we try to hold on to everything out of fear there won’t be enough to go around. Working with your growth resources to heal and gain confidence will increase your ability to let go of things and make space for new and better things.
Healthy people and effective investors know how to say hello and goodbye.
The Ability to Stand up to Dangerous People
Some people are wise, are responsible, and listen openly to feedback. Some people only learn the hard way. Other people are malicious and willing to intentionally hurt others for their own gain. You need the personal character abilities to respond effectively, and differently, to each of these.
If you naively assume everyone is wise and responsible, you’ll scratch your head wondering why repeating yourself didn’t get the message across. Some people aren’t malicious, but they are irresponsible, and they need consequences, not more words.
When you encounter a truly malicious person, you must see them for what they are, or you’ll leave yourself open to serious harm. When someone intends to hurt you on purpose, bring out the cavalry (law enforcement, the court system, whatever it takes) to protect yourself from them.
My mentor Dr. John Townsend and his partner Dr. Henry Cloud have written many books about personal character qualities, and how they impact personal life and professional performance. I recommend them for further reading.
I’ve found executive coaches and similar mentoring relationships to be invaluable in the development of my own leadership and personal character. I still have them. I also work with entrepreneurs and other leaders as a business coach. Much of that work focuses, directly or indirectly, on the development of personal character in these and other areas.
A Trusted Network Is a Precious Resource
Earlier this year I received a phone call from a business owner interesting in selling his company to me. Though I’d never met him, the first thing he said was, “The president of my bank told me I could trust you.” I was struck in that moment by the immense value of a network of trusting relationships. I got access to a deal I never would have known about otherwise, and I had an advantage before we even started talking.
Your relational network connects you to resources that can support your weak points, help solve problems, or assemble a team to tackle a project that’s bigger than one person. Your relational network can provide encouragement, a foot in the door with a supplier or partner, or the support of an influential person in government or your industry. And the benefits are mutual. Networking relationships are two-way streets with no losers.
At the other extreme is isolation. Isolation is deadly. In isolation we are limited to our own resources, and we begin to lose perspective on reality around us. A lone ranger approach is a recipe for disaster.
A valuable relational network is not just a bunch of people who know each other. At its best, it’s a bunch of people who trust each other. Trust is the core of intimate relationships. It’s the lifeblood of teams performing toward a common goal. It’s the heart of making a sale. It opens the door to opportunities of all kinds. Without trust, everything in business and in relationships grinds to a halt.
When I visit the drive-through at McDonald’s, I hand the cashier my money at the first window, then drive forward and pick up my meal at the second window. If we didn’t trust each other, I might demand to see the food before I hand them the money. They could demand the reverse, and a silly standoff would occur. Even something as simple as that drive-through transaction only works because of trust.
Your reputation is the sum of the trust people all across your network place in you. A “brand” is another name for the reputation of a business. A trusted reputation is a tremendous asset in all kinds of investment activities. It’s the advantage for many prominent figures in business, investing, public speaking, and many other ventures.
Invest in Your Relationships on Purpose
Like other resources, a valuable and trusting relational network is something you can build. Networks like that are built through engagement and trustworthy behavior.
Engagement is making the choice to reach out, to say hello, to start conversations with people not knowing how they will respond. It’s genuine interest in others, without a specific agenda. It’s choosing connection over isolation, one interaction at a time.
Trust isn’t sustained through presenting the right image, or crafting the right message. Trust is earned from a track record over time. Trust comes from consistent behavior.
We trust people who listen to us, tell us the truth, and do what they say they will do. We trust people who look out for our best interest even when they have the upper hand. We trust people who admit when they are wrong and do what they can to make it right.
Earn deep and broad trust by consistently doing those things. Like financial savings, trust is built a little at a time over a long time, and it can be blown quickly through bad decisions. Live in a way that makes you widely known as a deeply trustworthy person, and the network you build will be a remarkable and mutually beneficial advantage.
Action Points
Connect the dots between your personal character and the results you get investing your time and money.
Invest time and money in resources and experiences to grow yourself and make your personal character abilities a powerful investment advantage.
Choose engagement over withdrawal and connection over isolation to expand your network and tap into resources much bigger than your own.
Consistently behave in trustworthy ways to strengthen your relationships and earn the big advantage of a widely trusted reputation.
Engage Online
See a list of reader-contributed ideas for investing in your own growth, and add to it at www.aardsma.com/investingbook.
