Compared to Who?

In the last post, I made a reference to learning that the harder something is to prove the harder it will be to disprove. I also shared something a mentor taught me about there being very little value in being second best. To that point, I believe it was the late Dale Earnhart that referred to second place as being the first loser… I’m not a NASCAR fan so that’s all I’ll do in stirring that pot today. With all that in mind, I also want to call your attention to the point my mentor made about the importance of authenticity in everything we do.

If you don’t get anything else from today’s message, take that to heart!

OK Wes, got it… Where are you going with this?

As I closed that last post, I mentioned the idea of approaching our respective businesses and our own personal leadership journeys as though there’s no stopping point. We’ll look at specific action steps we can each take in doing that in the next few messages. For now though, let’s get very clear about who our competition is when we begin playing this type of truly infinite game!

When I registered our business name in 2015, I really struggled to get my head around the target marker I wanted to focus on serving and what type of statement I should be making to that market. At some point during that first year, I landed on something to the effect of The Shenandoah Valley’s Best Leadership Resource for Small Business. And to be very transparent, it felt like quite a stretch to make that bold of a claim…

Fast forward several years, an addition six-figures invested in licensing and training, and tens of thousands of hours invested in becoming really good at what we do, I don’t hesitate at all in promoting what Cindy and I offer our clients as the absolute best value available for their leadership, workplace communication, and strategic growth needs. I also have no reservations whatsoever in referring to our annual LIVE2LEAD:Harrisonburg event as Virginia’s premier full day leadership development experience. 

Quite honestly, I don’t share any of that out of arrogance. I believe both those statements with every fiber of my being because I know how much time and energy Cindy and I have invested, and continue to invest, into delivering the level of value that backs up both of those statements. (In addition to the investments we’ve made in ourselves and our business over the last five years, I also realize we did that much and more to prepare ourselves for this in the fifteen years leading up to that…)

Before moving on, please know that very little of what I’m hitting on here has anything to do with paying for a license or a certification. We all know folks with the financial resources to buy their way through a college degree or any other type of credential that looks good behind their name. There’s a world of difference between being certified and being qualified!

So how can I be so confident in making those statements? What data am I basing it on? And who’s the competition I’m measuring myself against?

Again, don’t lose sight of just how critical authenticity is in anything we do as we engage in an infinite game…

The competition I measure myself against on a daily basis is my own best effort the day before! I don’t get hung up comparing myself with anyone else; there’s no one else that I know of that does the same thing I do. I’ve learned that everything I’ve done to this point needs to serve as the foundation for what I need to achieve moving forward. And quite frankly, comparing myself to anyone else only muddies that water…

In regards to any data to support or defy those statements, I’ll leave that to someone who’s not actively engaged in making a positive difference in anyone around them…

So here’s the challenge I’ll leave you with today: what do you need to do on a daily basis to make that move from comparing yourself with others to comparing what you do today with your best from yesterday? If we play an infinite game, our best competition is going to be ourselves! But that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t do well to have some worthy rivals, and we’ll dig into that next time...