People fall down, winners get up, and gold medal winners just get up faster.

-Bonnie St. John

Bonnie St. John lost a leg at the age of 5. Several years later, she would go on to become the first African-American to win an Olympic medal in skiing as she was awarded a silver and two bronze medals in the 1984 Paralympics in Innsbruck, Austria.  This week on my radio program, I asked Bonnie to tell her story about how she won the Silver. She said, “I was leading in the slalom after the first run. Then in the second run, I slipped on an ice patch and fell down the hill. I thought for sure this would cost me a medal, but I got up and continued racing.  Several other competitors hit the same patch of ice and also fell…even the one who eventually won the gold.  The only difference, however, between her and I, and the Gold and the Silver, was SHE got up faster…and THAT won her the gold.”

So what about your business? In this tough year, do you feel like you have “slipped on a patch of ice?” Well if so, NOW is the time to get up…and get up FASTER than your competition. Because there is only one gold, and it’s either going to you or them.

Here are three ways to get up faster in your business:

•    Get out of bed 30 minutes “faster” and earlier each morning.  Then use that extra time to learn something new about your Product, Industry or Competition.

•    Stop procrastinating! It’s time to quit talking and start doing. Write down a list of high value activities that might be painful but necessary to make you famous in your company then schedule time each day to do those things.

•    Network and Cold Call more than the competition. If you are speaking to 10 accounts each day, pump it up to 15 accounts each day.

And remember, the common fuel to “getting up faster” is URGENCY. Make your body feel it, then help others use it to make decisions more quickly. And by this time next year, you will look back on the autumn of 2009, as the greatest FALL of your career…the fall that couldn’t keep you down.

“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”
-Albert Einstein

Quick question. Can you make something out of nothing? For instance, if I handed you a stack of Post It Notes™, told you to get with six of your closest friends, then gave you six days to CREATE something of value using only the Post It Notes™, what would you create? Well that is what groups of aspiring young entrepreneurs from around the globe were forced to do as part of Entrepreneurial Week sponsored by Stanford University. And the ideas that came back six days later proved that imagination is truly the gasoline of progress. To see what they came up with view the YouTube video below.

So what are the lessons learned from an exercise like this? For one, it teaches how imagination is vital to creating value from minimal resources. For instance, you may have a new sales territory with few established customers. So what!  Stop thinking the way you are thinking now. Your imagination can help you make something from nothing. Or perhaps you are a corporate executive trying to put together a plan to take market share away from your biggest competitor. If so, stop thinking like every other executive and start using your imagination. Or perhaps you are an operations manager facing exploding costs that are ruining your balance sheet. If so, it’s time to let your mind go “Post-al.”  Because the sooner you realize that your imagination is more important than your Excel spreadsheet, the sooner you can create the well-oiled company that you always dreamed of.

So here is this week’s exercise. I want you to assemble with one or more people on your team or in your company and engage in an imagination exercise. You may choose to grab some Post It Notes ™ and take 20 minutes of pure imagination time to create something of value using the notes. Or pick a business related challenge that your company can’t seem to overcome and ask everybody to come up with the wackiest ideas they can to overcome it. Then open your mind to the possibility that one of those crazy ideas might just be the solution to make you and your company famous in your industry.

We should be dreaming.
We grew up as kids having dreams,
but now we’re too sophisticated
as adults, as a nation.
We stopped dreaming.
We should always have dreams.

-Herb Brooks
Coach of 1980 US Olympic Gold Medal Hockey Team

“Do you believe in miracles? YES!” were the words play-by-play man Al Michaels yelled as the 1980 US Olympic Hockey team defeated the “unbeatable” Soviet Union hockey team. If you are old enough to remember that game, you are old enough to remember the exhilaration and pride that all Americans felt as a band of college and amateur players took on an opponent that was bigger, more talented, more skilled and a whole lot faster.

The lesson we learned was that talent alone does not create winners. This week I had the opportunity to interview Rob McClanahan, one of the key players on that team, and everything he said applied to business: These were his lessons from that victory over the Soviets on the way to the gold:

•    You have more ability than YOU even know
•    Enjoy every moment of preparation as much as you enjoy the victory
•    Understand your coach doesn’t have to be your friend to care about you (Coach Herb Brooks would often unite the team “against” him)
•    Outwork, out hustle, and practice more than your often more talented competition…and you can win!

So this week, take a few minutes to think about what your business “Miracle” would look like. Dream about winning that impossible account. Then imagine the elation you will feel when you, despite the odds, do something that even your peers never thought possible. And when somebody asks you if you believe in “Miracles,” think of that day when a coach and a group of young Americans taught us the answer to that question is a resounding, “YES!”

Trust me, I am not what you would call “fashion forward,” however, I love this quote. Coco (that’s different) reminds us of a super lesson. Whether you are a salesperson, regional sales manager, or the head of a hospital department, you can’t do the things that everybody else does if you are to become irreplaceable. This week, challenge yourself to come up with a new, irreplaceable, different and creative idea that gets the attention of the people you either serve or workwith. And how will you know that you are being different? You will feel a sick pit in your stomach that is telling you that you must be “nuts.” That, by the way, is a gift from above reminding you that you are still alive! So this week, LIVE a little!

“I want to discourage you from choosing anything
or making any decision simply because it is safe.
Things of value seldom are.“

Toni Morrison (1931 – )
American editor, writer & teacher
first African-American to win the
Nobel Prize for Literature

So you like to play it safe, do you? Well…stop it! Few people in this world, and in your industry, ever become famous by being wimpy. So take a calculated risk in your business that stirs up the pot a bit. Might you fail…absolutely!! But WHO CARES?! Isn’t there freedom in those two words?

You see, there really are only two types of people…spectators and players. So if you are sick of sitting in the stands and instead want to get in the game, do something this week that tells those around you that it’s game time. And then swing for the fences!