BY STEVEN GORDON, LEMONADE DAY NATIONAL PRESIDENT

For those who know me well, you know I’ve always had a “bug” for work. My family immigrated to Dallas, Texas when I was young, and I routinely witnessed my parents’ entrepreneurship and work ethic yield successful businesses. I opened my first business mowing lawns at the age of 12. I was so reliable and hardworking that customers asked if I cleaned pools. I said “yes” and set the course for my life-long journey of learning, working, entrepreneurship, and philanthropy.

Of course, I’ve not been alone in my journey. I’ve had fantastic mentors, support, gained confidence, and most of all – I’m driven. I may not have always had the skills to undertake a new project, but I knew deep in my heart, I had what it took to be successful – the psychological side of competing and innovating.

Business Mastery with Tony Robbins

Last week, I was afforded the opportunity to attend a Tony Robbins Business Mastery event. The information I had heard about this five-day program intrigued me enough to learn more about myself personally and understand how I could maximize not only what I’ve learned throughout my career, but also through the inspirational messages I would hear from Tony and a cadre of very successful entrepreneurs from all walks of life who continue to be motivated to succeed.

My initial goals were this:

• Approach the week with an open mind;
• Absorb the information and apply it to learning more about myself; and
• Take this knowledge and apply it to Lemonade Day.

And honestly, I may have been a little bit excited about unplugging from my phone for the week.

Day 1 of Business Mastery

If you have ever attended a Tony Robbins event – either a day or a week, you already know what the Day 1 experience looks like. If you haven’t, let me just say that the day starts with a burst of energy, loud music, flashing lights, and a voice from above that booms with authority and excitement as Tony Robbins is introduced. If I didn’t know better, I could have easily been at a Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fight.

You quickly find you are either out of your comfort zone or sitting back and wondering what is going on. What you don’t know on Day 1 is that this energy, positivity, inspiration, and passion becomes your comfort zone by the end of the week.

And then, Tony shares some sobering facts on U.S. businesses:

• 50% fail the first year
• 80% fail within 5 years
• 96% fail within 10 years

Let that sink in. Only 4% of U.S. business survive beyond 10 years. It’s a strong reminder about how tough it is to start, manage, and grow a successful business. You can’t succeed if you aren’t in business.

Achieving a Remarkable Level of Personal and Professional Fulfillment

As you can imagine, five days of facts, figures, psychology, inspiration, group tasks, learning and more is like drinking from a fire hose. I’ll share a few highlights today, but I promise to continue to share this experience in future blogs.

Personally, I came away from Business Mastery realizing the following about me:

• I recognize that I’m a leader and manager and I need to maximize my time and stay focused on the “why” versus the “how”. I have creative artists who work for me who can create the “how”;
• I understand that if things are too complex, you cannot excel. Tony reinforces the message that “complexity is the enemy of execution”;
• I need to reinforce goals by constantly internalizing them, declaring them out loud to others, will it, see it, and do it; and
• I need to enjoy the things that are most important to me and you will be a successful leader and find happiness.

For Lemonade Day, I truly was excited about the multiple levels of similarities in Robbins’ Business Mastery and our very own Lemonade Day program. In fact, I invite you to visit our special landing page www.joinlemonadeday.com, which was created to add value for the Business Mastery participants in just a few short hours on January 28^th with the amazing support of Cathy Landtroop and her team at Landtroop Strategies.   Here are just a few of the parallels:

• Provide an experiential program where kids physically get to:

  • Set a goal and create a plan

  • Understand the competition and research market trends

  • Pitch their business

  • Develop their value proposition and differentiators

  • Sell their product, love your customers and create “raving fans”

  • Learn how to manage financials, cash flow and profits

  • Love your people – create a culture where your team is empowered to make a difference and utilize their skills to contribute to the company’s success

  • Share your success within your community

  • Surround yourself with strong mentors

  • Gain confidence

• Equip mentors and sponsors with assets to promote Lemonade Day

  • Add value to their Lemonade Day experience

  • Help them help kids make the right choices

  • Show confidence and kids will learn confidence

And the number one item that impacted me the most was when Tony stated, “If we solve for a really big problem, we can solve for many small problems.” Wow. That’s exactly what Lemonade Day has been achieving for more than a decade. If collectively we can help our kids learn how to compete and innovate in whatever field they choose, the future of our country will be much brighter. Lemonade Day builds self-esteem and new mindsets. We reach so many kids and make a profound difference in their lives. We just might flip those sobering statistics mentioned earlier in this blog to where 96% of businesses can achieve success and longevity and ultimately change the trajectory of our economy. 

Am I fired up? You bet I am!

If you can’t wait to hear more, I invite you to call or email me. I am happy to talk.