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This past Friday, the NIIC Senior Leadership Team attended the 1-Day EntreLeadership event in Chicago featuring Chris Hogan, Christy Wright and Dave Ramsey. This was both a terrific team building opportunity for our NIIC team to dive into the applicability to our business model as well as an inspirational day of leaning into the character quality concepts and essentials to be an effective EntreLeader. There are six essentials. Here are a few of my quick comments and takeaways.

1. Leadership is essential: EntreLeadership is the process of leading to cause a venture to grow and prosper. As one of the speakers opined, “As long as there are garages in the United States, there will be small businesses.” Leaders need to: (1) care; (2) communicate and (3) connect. Great leaders help people get better at life.
2. People are essential: Great organizations create unity intentionally. To be unclear with your people is to be unkind. Enablers and sanctioned incompetence slows your team down and causes them not to trust each other and the organization. Remember, emotionally wounded people can’t work hard for your organization.
3. Time ownership is essential: The advice is quite clear: stop doing what doesn’t matter and protect what matters. Setting boundaries is about self-respect. Life balance is not about having a 50/50 split. It’s about being 100% available. “No is a complete sentence.”
4. Financial principles are essential: Debt is not your friend. Debt drastically increases risk and potentially magnifies your mistakes. Dreams motivate us more than fear. As Chris Hogan said, “Retirement isn’t an age, it’s a financial number.” To calculate your R:!Q (click on this link)!
5. Team quality is essential: Take 4x the time to hire. Dave Ramsey’s organization has a 95% turnover rate before hiring. As he observed, ” Every donkey dresses up as a thoroughbred.” Team members fail because of leadership failure, personal problems or incompetence. Conduct a spousal interview before final hiring. It pays dividends over and over again.
6. Higher calling is essential: What is your WHY? Needs to be big enough for extra inspiration. A higher calling lifts us up, inspires and motivates us. By better understanding the why, your team can more capably fight for the cause!

I strongly recommend reading the book – EntreLeadership. It isn’t a bunch of theories and concepts. It is a compendium of business insights and proven principles. While you are at it, text coachingtips to 44222 and receive 2 minute video tips to help you achieve your goals.