Today’s interview is a special treat. Not only do I have the normal 5 questions that I ask of all business owners, but I got to conduct my first ever live interview. This is all courtesy of Wendy Y. Bailey of Brilliance In Action Enterprises, Inc. She suggested the longer interview, she had the software to get it done, I came up with some questions, and we just talked for almost an hour. I hope you listen to the interview; there’s a lot of great stuff there, and I think everyone can learn a little something.

Now, the normal interview format:

1. What is Brilliance In Action Enterprises, Inc.?

It’s my group coaching business, where I teach coaches how to provide group coaching for their clients.

2. What made you decide to go into this business?

After spending several years in IT/Telecommunications industry, I was “voted of the island” in 2001. Rather than look for another position, I decided to focus on doing something I loved at all costs. All roads led to coaching so I hung out my shingle in 2002 after training with CoachVille, Coach Training Alliance, Coach U, The Fearless Living Institute, and more. I don’t regret a thing!!

3. What types of challenges have you had along the way?

Initially the challenge was getting clear about what I do and who I truly wanted as my clients. Then, I found getting my name “out there” felt really daunting. I found my stride about two years into some really focused marketing activities and I haven’t looked back. Getting over the marketing hump was easy when I began to embrace a particular marketing style. It became an extension of me! How kewl is that?!

4. Have the positives outweighed the negatives, and if so, how?

Without a doubt!! The triumphs have far exceeded any of the negative stuff. I love saying that and knowing how true it is on a DAILY basis sometimes. A friend of mine used to say, “Life is simple, people make it difficult.” I like making my life simple even if that means putting myself in check at times.

5. What would you recommend for anyone looking to go into business for themselves?

Make sure you have a strong foundation, personally. Continue to work on keeping a strong personal foundation through personal and business coaching. Build a support system with colleagues, family and friends. Finally take really great care of yourself so you can go the distance. The race doesn’t go to the swift but to the one who endures.

Last night I was talking to another health care consulting friend of mine who just ended a long assignment. She was asking how things were on the health care front, and I told her things were a bit slow, but probably ready to start warming up again.

We started talking about some of our shared experiences, because many of us who work in this business will encounter some of the same things, even if we’re at different hospitals. There seems to be some running themes in what we try to do.

The first syndrome is coming in after someone else who didn’t do a good job. That may be a permanent employee who just wasn’t working out, or another consultant who couldn’t get the job done. Right off the bat, you’re under pretty tough scrutiny, which consultant’s usually are anyway, but people are wary and mistrustful; they feel they’ve been burned before, and don’t want to get burned again. Eventually, if you’re pretty good, you’ll get people to come around, and some will even embrace what you’re trying to do, but it might take a little bit of time to get them to warm up to you.

The second syndrome is walking into a situation where the politics are intrusive. When you’ve been brought in by one person to do something, but someone else who’s either just above or below either you or the person who brought you in wants something else done, even if that something else is to do whatever they can to make you fail. That happens, believe it or not.

Unfortunately, not every person in management is really out for the best of the organization; sometimes it’s all about “me”, and who cares about anyone else. That can be difficult to deal with, and the way I work through it is to talk to the person who brought me in and tell them that they need to somehow take care of these things because I’m going to ignore them and do what I came to do, and that’s that.

No, it’s not very consultant like in a way, because many consultant’s feel they’re supposed to defer to every whim that someone else has. But I like to think I’m building my reputation on getting things done right, not always giving everyone exactly what they want. At a certain point, if they’re insistent, I will give them what they want, as long as it’s not illegal, but I also make note of it and make them confirm they said it so that no one can come back on me later on and say that wasn’t accurate. That’s usually where I’ll win, because no one wants to commit themselves like that, I’ve found.

The third syndrome is the one where people are afraid you’re going to come in and make them look bad. That’s actually one I haven’t had to deal with all that often because many times I’m going in to a situation where the people who should have been doing the job aren’t there, so none’s the wiser. However, that type of thing has prevented me from getting other gigs, because I might produce results that the top dogs would then ask someone else “why didn’t we know about this before?” That’s a question some folks hate answering, and it’s not a difficult question because not everyone knows everything. I’ve said this many times, in health care, people are often over things that they have no practical experience with, and are too busy to learn it, so why should they be expected to know it all?

But the jealousy factor is a tough one to overcome. I know many consultants who have had good plans overridden because the person they’re reporting to decides they don’t want it done. They might not have a good reason, which unfortunately happens often, and if there’s not a good reason, then there’s not even any discussion that can take place.

If someone needs me for an interim position, one of the first questions I usually ask is how much latitude will I be given to do what I need to do to get the job done. They almost always say I’ll have as much freedom as I want; that’s not quite always true. For one gig, I wasn’t told until I was there about the division between management and the union; that was ugly, but what can you do? For another, I was told there was this big issue with one thing, only to find there wasn’t that issue at all, but I couldn’t get anyone to listen to me on it. Happens sometimes; consultant’s aren’t omnipotent either.

Think about your own work situation, if you work with others. Are you able to allow others to find something wrong with whatever you might be doing? Are you able to accept an idea from someone else and possibly act on it in some fashion without worrying that it might make you look bad? Are you forthcoming with enough information so that proper decisions can be made? If you had to think about yourself as a consultant, would you be a good one or a bad one?

Yesterday was Election Day in America, and people from all over the country went to the polls to vote for, or against, candidates of their choice. My wife and I went, and had to learn a new way to vote, as they’ve gone away from machines to paper ballots here; this is progress?

I vote because a lot of people were willing to give up their lives so that I could have the right to vote. That’s how I honor those people who were able to help force the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and I’ll never be able to thank those people in any other way for the right than to exert that right.

However, there weren’t many people who went out to vote last night. There were some hot spots, such as the states that had governor’s races, but for the most part, the numbers were way down. But there were 4 big races in particular to briefly talk about.

In both New Jersey and Virginia, Republicans were elected as governor. In Florida, a Republican governor was reelected, although some members of his party were trying to get rid of him because he willingly accepted stimulus money to help bail out his beleaguered state. Here in New York, the seat for congressman was won by a Democrat, as it became a national focal point that said it was all about how the people felt about President Obama and his policies.

This was close to my district, which means we had to see a lot of these ugly commercials. It was actually 3 people running, but the Republicans had turned on their own candidate for not being “conservative enough,” and were supporting the third party candidate. She was so hurt that she dropped out in the last weekend and supported her democratic opponent instead. This drew one of the worst, hateful lines anyone could ever say about someone else, from none other than Boss Limbaugh: “We can say that she’s guilty of widespread bestiality.”

What the heck was that? Why the big national interest in an area that, when all the votes are counted, will barely have broken 100,000 votes? And, by the way, what kind of referendum was this for or against President Obama, a northern New York district that, in the end, has just elected its first Democratic representative in 23 years?

That’s really the issue here. Things aren’t always what they seem, and neither were these elections. The incumbent governor in New Jersey had issues that were going to be hard to overcome, such as a drunk driving citation and some issues of corruption in his cabinet. Virginia’s economy has been in a tailspin for awhile, way before candidate Obama even began his campaign. And, the sitting governor of Florida won big, even after taking administration money; where’s the indictment there?

It’s like working at a job. When someone people complain, the reason they give you isn’t always the real reason for something. When someone says “so and so gets away with murder” or something like that, their complaint isn’t necessarily about the other person as much as it is that maybe they’re not getting enough credit for the job they feel they’re doing. It’s why almost every study of employee satisfaction that’s ever been conducted rarely has money at the top of the list, and often has it showing up somewhere in the middle of the list. That’s proof that one can’t just throw money at a situation and expect everyone to be happy.

In any case, I’m just so glad these elections are over. I hate this season every year; I wonder how long it’ll take for people to pull all those signs up and throw them away.

A couple of days ago, my wife and I happened to be in the kitchen at the same time. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve started making my week’s meals on Sundays so that all I have to do during the week is get my container, heat up my food, and go about my business. It’s also helping me regain control of my glucose level.

My normal process was to remove my food from the container, put it on a paper plate, heat it up then go about my business. My wife asked me why I was doing that. It caught me off guard as a question, because I’ve always done it. I said I do it so that once I’m done eating, I can just throw away the plate the forks, as I also use plastic forks for many meals.

She said that was a waste, because the containers are plastic and microwave safe, and that I was going through paper plates without having to do so. Just because I eventually had to bring the containers back to the kitchen was no excuse to go through so many paper plates.

This is one of those times when our logic clashes. For years, my wife has always had to remind me to bring my dishes back to the kitchen, so I thought I had solved the dilemma by just using paper. Also, I figured paper was cleaner, it was biodegradable, and therefore I was being “green” in my own way. My wife’s thinking is that the container is reusable and that going through all the paper was being wasteful and not “green” at all.

Who’s right? I’m not really sure. But I see her point, and mine isn’t worth debating over, so I’m doing it her way for the moment. Sometimes, when a point isn’t going to make much difference overall, it doesn’t make any sense to keep pounding your point of view in an effort to be correct when the end result won’t really matter anyway.

It’s something many leaders and managers need to learn when dealing with employees. Unless it’s something that makes the company look bad, there’s nothing saying that everything has to be worded or formatted exactly how someone else wants it to be. Most things in life really aren’t so important that absolute adherence to a particular process is the only acceptable way to get something done.

When there’s a clear cut choice, it makes sense; if not, just go with the flow.

A couple of days ago, when my wife left for work, she had a funny feeling and decided to lock all the doors before she left. The thing is that I was still home, even though I was asleep, and usually she wouldn’t have locked the garage door. When I asked her about it later, she said she just had this feeling that maybe it was something she should do.

Tuesday night, I was talking to a friend of mine about something she was thinking about exploring. As she talked more about it, I had this feeling that I had heard of something like this before. Actually, I felt like I’d actually gone through it. As I asked a few more questions, I realized that I had gone through it almost 30 years ago, and I warned her away from it. She said to me that she had a feeling something was strange about it, and hadn’t been sure what she wanted to do.

Back in 2006, I asked people how much they listened to their intuition, and I got no response to it. The thing about intuition, to me, is that almost everyone has it, has that feeling sometime that something isn’t right, or that maybe they should be doing something else. Most people, though, decide it’s just their imagination, and go ahead and do whatever else is on their mind.

I might be overboard in listening to my intuition at times. I really do believe that sometimes things happen for a reason, and I shouldn’t push the issue too much. For instance, there are many times when we have an appointment for someone to show up at the house, and for whatever reason they never show. I never call to ask them where they are; I always feel that it wasn’t meant to be, and I move on with life.

This happens with relationships, and it happens in business as well. Sometimes, with relationships, the wish for love and happiness trumps good sense, especially when that good sense is telling you something’s wrong. In business, sometimes you’re trying to work with someone, and their actions or words are sending you bad signals, but those dollar signs are dancing in your head.

I’ve had only a few times in my adult life where I didn’t listen to my intuition, and each one of those times it’s turned out to be a bad thing for me. Now, I listen to it with all my soul, even if it’s possible I might be overdoing it. I’d rather play it safe and cautious than get burned on the back end.

So, as I asked in 2006, are you listening to your intuition? I hope so; it’s there to protect you.

As many people know by now, 3 people passed away due to their participation in something called a sweatlodge ceremony.

In essence, this is a Native American ceremony where people go into a little handmade hut of coverings with some very hot rocks. Then someone pours water over them, creating a lot of steam, and for about 45 minutes to an hour they go through either a bunch of chants, meditations, and prayers, or sit around in total silence. It can get really uncomfortable, but participants are encouraged to try to stick it out, being told they will attain a spirituality that will change their lives forever.

In this case, it wasn’t run by Native Americans, but by motivational speaker and author James Arthur Ray, who played a very prominent part in the movie The Secret. Supposedly, Ray was there, encouraged people to stick it out even though there seemed to be a higher number of people who were complaining of being in distress, and was there when the first two participants expired. A quick call to his lawyer, and the next time anyone heard from Mr. Ray he was out of town, saying he was dismayed by what happened, saying he would continue holding these sweatlodge ceremonies, saying he was conducting an investigation, but saying nothing else. He didn’t own up to being responsible for anything, and isn’t answering questions.

Logically, I understand a part of why he can’t own up to anything. If he does, he opens himself up to a lot more problems and issues than he has now. Then again, I’m not so sure. He left the scene of a crime, and was a participant in the crime, which they say is being investigated as a homicide, so that could bode worse for him in the long run.

However, the biggest problem I have with him in this instance is that he’s supposed to be a leader. Leaders don’t back away from their responsibilities. When things go wrong, leaders don’t go hiding behind the law, or the fear that they’re going to get in trouble. Three people have died; someone has to take the responsibility for it.

If you’re a leader, do you know how to take responsibility for when things go wrong? I’m betting you know how to take credit when things go right. Sometimes it really isn’t the leader’s fault. They certainly don’t know what everyone who works for them is doing, that’s for sure. If it’s not work related, they can’t take responsibility. Even if they are, some things are their responsibility, some things aren’t. But true leaders know how to tell the difference, and when to own up to it.

I’m disappointed in Ray; to me, it diminishes him and everything he supposedly stands for. And that’s a shame.

Do you know what a typical work day is for me?

I usually wake between 9 and 9:30. That may seem late to some, but stay with me. I’ll then spend most of the next 18 hours or so at my computer, doing something. I might be writing or researching or creating something. Almost everything I do, I do at the computer. And therefore, often, I’m getting to bed between 3 and 3:30 in the morning; this past weekend, I went to bed at 5AM Saturday morning.

I also take in all my entertainment from the computer. In the evenings I turn on the TV and I watch TV while I finally get to most of my business email. And I have a lot of it to get to; luckily, I read fast. I play online poker, free of course, and while I’m playing, I’m writing. You might think I should just be concentrating on my poker playing, but the truth is that the best thing for me in playing poker is when I get to talk to people at the table when I’m at the casino. At home, it’s just something to slightly distract me while I’m working. I also listen to all my music from the computer, which is pretty sad since I have my stereo system here in the room with me, including a DVD player and expensive speakers. Overall, I like the convenience of having everything at hand, whereas, with the stereo, at some point I have to get up from the desk; it’s not lazy, it’s not wanting to take much more time away from what I’m doing.

Because of how I am, I have to plan when and how I eat. I don’t mean just saying I’m going to eat something at noon. I have to actually book the time to eat, or set the alarm on my watch to go off at certain times. I don’t eat when I first wake up; sometimes it can be 3 or 4 hours before I eat, which I need to change. After that, because I’m diabetic, I try to eat every 2 1/2 to 3 hours, small meals, to help control my glucose levels. When I’m not eating like that, I definitely go astray, and my body pays for it.

So, I can easily say that I work hard. What I can’t say is that I’m working smart. I don’t think I’m working all that smart at all, and that’s not good. Like many other people, I need to plan break times also. I was doing that for awhile, and I need to get back to it. The thing is, when I was working a traditional job, I never took breaks, and had to eventually learn how to at least eat lunch. I also had to learn how to take vacations when I was working; at this point, I haven’t gone away on a vacation in more than 10 years, and the last vacation time I took was in 2001.

I ask this question again; how hard to you work? And, if you’re a manager, how hard do you make your employees work? I’d like some sharing with this one; maybe we’ll figure out how to improve our quality of life together.

A couple of days ago I wrote a post where I talked about my friend George Chapman and his unique idea, which I still think is a pretty good idea, on a health care plan.

We talked about a lot of things, and one thing in particular came up. I was saying to him how I can’t seem to break into my own local market when it comes to health care, that I always am working out of town and can’t even get local people to talk to me; at least those who are responsible for making the decisions that apply to things I do.

He was saying that he talks to some of these people on a regular basis, and one of the things they’re always talking about is there not being enough minorities in skilled positions that they can interview and hire, and that he can’t believe I would have problems in that area. I looked at him and said “George, you’re not that naive, are you?”

Without calling out specific hospitals in my area, let me give some history here. When I worked at this one hospital years ago, I got the position, entry level, only because I was a black male. Back then, there were almost no black males working in the hospital at all except in housekeeping positions. I was an anomaly, plain and simple. More than 25 years later, there still aren’t many black males at this hospital, and the same goes for black females outside of housekeeping and food services. There are more nurses, but when you get to the skilled positions, my wife is pretty much it.

There’s another big hospital near this hospital. It’s got a reputation as a place where minorities are wasting their time trying to get a job at. How true is this rumor? I have my own story. Twice within a 5 year period I went to that hospital to try to get an interview for a position I knew was open. Twice I walked in with a resume. Twice I walked out without even being allowed to fill out an application. I was told by the person who took my resume that if they were interested they’d call me and have me come back to fill out an application. Where else does that happen in business when there’s a position open? My friend George used to work for this particular hospital, and he said that was hard to believe; I told him that’s just how it is.

One other hospital in this area just did the same sort of thing to my wife. They actually called her and said they needed some emergency help, and could she give them a hand. She decided to do it for a few dollars, and went there. Before they would let her touch a single patient, however, they said she had to have a full physical. Folks, she works at a hospital, and these hospitals are in negotiations with each other right now talking about a possible merger. After that, they told her that she was going to have to provide a lot of proof about her skills and background before they could use her again, but that it would be okay for the first day. Remember, they called her and asked her to come; she didn’t apply for a job there. Later on, she asked some other people about these requirements that were put on her, and she was told that none of the other people had ever been asked for any of that stuff, and that it didn’t make sense, especially since they called her, at her hospital, to request her assistance. Now, if she had to do some things that no one else has ever been asked to do, and there’s no other reasons for it…

There’s only two hospitals in the area where this type of racism doesn’t seem to occur. In both of these hospitals, the people running human resources are minority. In both instances, this doesn’t guarantee that minorities will get a job. What it guarantees, though, is that everyone will be treated fairly, and if qualified will get a job if one is open for them. People know that, and these two hospitals get most of the applicants. Both of these facilities have a proven track record that people will be given a fair chance, and have been hired.

As I said, it’s subtle, in a way. In another way, it’s not so subtle, because the points have been felt, and acted upon. As for myself, I continue to market myself to these and all other hospitals because it makes some sense to do so. But I know where I stand, so I don’t count on it locally, as far as hospitals are concerned. And I think that’s a shame; we really haven’t gone as far as Dr. King would have hoped after all.

I came upon an epiphany this morning that almost lifted me from my seat. This isn’t a political post, although I begin with a political premise to help me explain things.

I was thinking about a post on leadership, and how President Obama has some very tough decisions to make over the next couple of months. Not that he hasn’t had tough decisions all along, but they keep getting more critical as time goes on.

I was also thinking that, when he was elected, he said he would reach across to the other side and work towards bipartisanship. This is actually one of the biggest fallacies in politics, for the most part, and my epiphany pretty much came to that in a bold way.

Here’s the problem. Think about if two people decided they wanted to share a meal. They agree that they want pasta. However, one wants spaghetti, while the other wants noodles. Well, there’s a minor impasse, but both parties at least have a starting point of agreement; they both want pasta.

This may be an oversimplification of things, but here it is plain and simple. You can’t have any type of negotiation about anything if both sides don’t even agree on the need for something. When we look at this big health care debate, the truth seems to be that one side wants health care and the other side doesn’t. There is no middle ground here. If both sides really wanted health care, both sides would have put out a health care plan a long time ago; that didn’t happen. One side put it out there, the other side said they didn’t like it. Where do negotiations start?

Remember the topic of gun control? One side really wanted it, the other side didn’t want it at all. Remember the topic of abortion? One side really wanted it, the other side didn’t want it at all. Remember the topic of civil rights? One side really wanted it, the other side didn’t want it at all.

This is a big problem with the concept of management sometimes. In this case, management wants one thing while the employees want another. Bad managers can’t even communicate what the common goal is, so how can there be negotiating when no one ever has an idea of what they’re negotiating for? Management has a lot of perceived power, but in the end, management can’t get what it wants if it can’t implore employees to work for them.

The agendas are different, though, and managers need to learn that, then figure out what to do about it. The same goes for presidents of businesses and countries. When it comes to politics, I think most presidents learn early that they might have to go it on their own, especially when the other side doesn’t have a horse in the race. Companies can’t afford to work that way. Sure, those leaders can force change, or force loyalties, but things will crumble without a true direction, a goal that everyone wants to aim for.

Until that happens, there is no negotiating; only dictating.

I had lunch today with another health care consulting friend of mine, George Chapman. I also do work on his website, and he participated in my interview series.

We started talking about health care coverage for the uninsured, and I was mentioning my idea of a health care plan to him. He said it wouldn’t work because people would still flood the system with a lot of acute care stuff because they wouldn’t go for preventative medicine, which I’d said, but he came back with a different idea that makes a lot of sense on the surface.

He took the number of 40 million people without health insurance. He said if the government wanted to, they could contract with Blue Cross, tell them they’ll pay $500 per person for all those people who don’t have health insurance, the cost would be $200 billion and everyone would have health care.

Well, I just stopped and looked at him. I pulled out the calculator and did the numbers; absolutely correct. I said it sounded like a valid plan, and asked why he didn’t think anyone else had thought of it. He said because it’s too simple, and that people who aren’t in health care always have to complicate everything for whatever their reasons are.

I really couldn’t dispute that one, because I’ve always believed the same thing. For instance, one of the problems with getting good leadership in hospitals is that most of the top positions require someone with specialized licenses, and most of those people never thought about being any sort of leader or manager when they were going for those licenses. Even the people at the top, it turns out, don’t all have to have a master’s degree in health care administration; at least not everywhere. A master’s degree is good enough. And, as I’ve often said but I’m not sure I’ve written it here, many folks who end up in top level positions in health care never had to work their way up. They get to bypass a lot of stuff, and then get these upper positions without realizing what impacts what in a hospital. Sure, for those who went to get the HCA degree, they learned a lot of theory, but theory doesn’t always equate to practical application.

Anyway, what sounds wrong about health care coverage for every American that doesn’t have it at a price tag of $200 billion, when compared to the $800 billion to $1 trillion that the administration is talking now? Someone help me out; does anything sound bad about George’s plan by comparison with the government’s plan, which, of course, we still know nothing about yet?