Guiding Principles

Someone just sent me a “life credo” by the great marketing guru Joe Polish this morning - it contained 100 principles that he believes are essential to living one’s best life. I think he forgot the principle that if you show people a list of 100 things, they’ll remember about 5 of them.

It was fitting that someone sent that list to me this morning because I’ve spent the past 3-4 weeks refining a new personal set of principles that I try to live by. I didn’t force them, I just let them come to me.

For me, it had to be a very simple set of broad principles that I could easily remember - through these 8 basic principles, I can make almost any decision. To help me, I had some bracelets made with the acronym SOLIFAGY written on them. SOLIFAGY is the best “word” that I could come up with based on what the principles were. They’re not in order of the acronym in the list below, but SOLIFAGY at least helps me remember them. Feel free to use these yourself - they are not copyrighted =). But I think it’s best if everyone take ownership of their own principles.

The underlying principle beneath all of these is that I’m striving to live each moment more rather than living in the past or the present. This is especially hard for entrepreneuers since we are inherently yearning to “build something greater”. Whether it is an exit, a sales milestone, or earnings targets, none of these things are good or can bring us happiness if we don’t actually enjoy doing what we do on a day to day basis. For me, that used to be plunging our office toilets myself, eating expired protein bars out of our warehouse and answering customer service phone calls from angry customers who were upset that we didn’t ship their order within 4 hours of placing it. If I was thinking about “someday things will be better” the entire time, I wouldn’t have enjoyed that experience for what it was - a tremendous growth period, a time spent with my best friend and loyal employees building something that we were passionate about. The fact is - I was thinking about “someday things will get better” the majority of the time, and I let a large section of that part of my life pass me by while I was waiting for something to happen, something that didn’t really exist.

It’s in the process of building that I learned to really find great pleasure, and it wasn’t until then that I feel I was a true entrepreneur. I’ve been thinking about that experience a lot lately, which prompted me to do some introspection and come up with these.

Here are my principles - I ended up finalizing them on the back of a golf scorecard while I played by myself one day last month. When I was done with my round, I was in such deep thought that I left the scorecard on the steering wheel of my cart. When I went back to the golf course with a friend a few days later, the guy in charge of golf cart maintenance handed it back to me and said he couldn’t throw something like that away, as he happened to notice my chicken scratch while he was cleaning the cart and could actually read all of my notes. That is one of the most flattering compliments I’ve received to date (the fact that he could read my writing, not the fact that he took something away from the principles).

1. Open up to all possibilities. Rid myself of rigid mental models and accept that things can unfold in unexpected ways, and those ways were the way things were meant to happen. Open up my heart and my mind and let everything in.

2. Accept outcomes and things I can’t change. When waiting for a decision, don’t let it consume my life. Don’t place my happiness in anyone else’s hands. Become comfortable with not being in control.

3. Focus on the love and the good in everyone. Recognize that everyone is good at the core, and my job is to bring it out. Shower people with light even when they seem mean or angry. Don’t focus on negative qualities in people.

4. Give something positive. Do not part with any person, thing or place without having left them better than they were before I came in contact with them. Leave everyone and everything a little better off.

5. Interest of the greater good. Team first. Be a servant, be humble. Think only of how the team, or community, can be better off, not what makes me better off. Remove ego from all decision making and make all decisions based on what benefits the whole. Life is not a zero sum game.

6. Yearn to build nourishing relationships. Strive to make every relationship nourishing, nothing superficial. Go out of my way to ask people about their passions, desires and needs. Get beneath the surface and build human connections with as many people as possible.

7. Live in my heart. Live an authentic life, be true to myself and rid myself of social norms. Listen to what my heart is telling me, and trust it fully.

8. Simplify. Live simply, and do not let overly complicated things cloud my mind. Make decisions based on key points, those that are most important to me and consistent with these principles, and don’t look back once I make it.

Whether you need to take a fly fishing trip to Montana or spend a weekend doing something you love, or maybe nothing at all (silence is extremely valuable!), I’d encourage everyone to spend some time thinking about what is really important to you in your life.

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