Do you believe in Work-Life Balance?

A few things from me to consider.  I break my life into the "Four F's".  

1. Family 
2. Finances 
3. Fitness
4. Philanthropy (get it... it sounds like an "F" ;-) 

These four areas could easily lay on top of Friedman's work, home, community, and self.  

The next point to consider is that I don't think life-balance is practical.  From a pragmatic standpoint, I believe in life-blend.  At certain times, parts of your life will need your more than others and you have to be able to blend then together to satisfy all of your needs.  I use the metaphor of juggling, and the four areas of your life represent balls.  Your family and finances are glass and your philanthropy and fitness are rubber.  You need to juggle all four balls.  The two most important balls can never be dropped or they will be damaged and the other two, if they are dropped, will easily rebound back because they are rubber.  I use this metaphor in my life-blend model to be highly productive in the important areas of my life.  

The one area that I always want to give more time is my family which includes my children and my four siblings.  One of the things I recently did was schedule a monthly conference call with all of my siblings so we can update each other on what is new in our lives. It was been great and I highly recommend this.  

Good luck juggling all of the important aspects of your life.  

Onward and upward!

Steven the Speaker!  

Zeus is One of the Best Places to Work!

Here is the Company Gossip!    

If I have said it once, then I have said it a million times, "Zeus Mortgage Bank is one of the best places to work".  AND it all comes down to the amazing people!!!

We have a quarterly planning meeting where we review the past, present, and future of the enterprise.   This year we delayed the first one and just had our mid year report.

Here is some of the anonymous feedback from our team on their experience in the meeting:

Amazing! thanks for everything!

Great info to help me to better understand the direction of the company’s growth

Inspiring – I’m excited about learning more and growing more and being BETTER!

Away from the office -  having the meeting offsite is a very good idea. Pulls people out of their natural work environment which makes it more special and opens people up to think about things other than their current tasks.

Thank you for always being a leader and pushing me forward/out of my comfort zone.

As always – I feel empowered afterwards

Love the comfy atmosphere

Great job conveying the message that you wanted to today.

This was a great meeting where we as a group got to see what Zeus has in store for the future and for us.

I loved that there was no way to not learn anything from this meeting.

Thank you for the best meeting.

NEVER skip this meeting again, EVER. It’s a great part of what makes us great.

I have a better understanding of making space for the work you have planned!

Grateful for the openness and for the respectful challenges.

I liked that there were many opportunities to interact with each other.

The meeting was much better that expected and although I am anxious to have to commit to something. But I welcome the challenge to do something that I have never done before.

The venue and the meeting style was great and I look forward to our next one.

Lunch              A         (Great atmosphere to socialize + converse w/ colleagues)

Venue              A+       (You know my position on thins 😉)

Content           A         (very motivating + inspiring meeting)

I appreciate how you give us the tools to better ourselves + grow in both our professional and personal lives.

Great rundown on quarter number, seeing where we need to improve.  How you are willing to work w/ each of us to make us better. Looking forward to have a one on one to pick you brain.

Dear Steven

This was my first Quarterly meeting at Zeus. The venue and the presentation were well planned and presented.

I enjoyed the fact that despite of many issues and failures by the departments your presentation was structured in a way to assist all of us.

I appreciate the time and effort put into planning this event.

Please include more reports and statistics from other departments so that there will be more feedback on the graphs.

This was great!

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Did you know that we are consistently ranked as one of the best places to work? If you know someone who wants to experience what its like to work for an amazing company then please email us at hr@askzeus.com.

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Zeus Mortgage Bank - "Great results in 2017"

2017 Corporate Value Performance 

The Comedian's View of Entrepreneurship!

The Department of Labor claimed a farmer was not paying proper wages to his help and sent an agent out to investigate him.

Department of Labor employee: I need a list of your employees and how much you pay them.

Farmer:  Well, there's my farm hand who's been with me for 3 years. I pay him $200 a week plus free room and board. Then there's the mentally challenged worker. He works about 18 hours every day and does about 90% of all the work around here. He makes about $10 per week, pays his own room and board, and I buy him a bottle of bourbon every Saturday night so he can cope with life. He also sleeps with my wife occasionally."

Department of Labor employee: That's the guy I want to talk to...the mentally challenged one.

Farmer:  That would be me.

Steven the Speaker!  

The Baldest Man in Houston! 

What Skills Make You a Successful Real Estate Investor

Hello Everyone:  

This was an interesting question.  Recently, my ten year old daughter asked me what my strongest attributes were in business and it took me by surprise for many obvious reasons.  Here is a short recap of my thoughts on this question and my interaction with my daughter.  

My number one go to attribute is work ethic.  My secret formula for success is relentless work. This alone will not get it done because we all know plenty of people who work hard but never get anywhere.  Another competency I have, which is also an attitude, is my sense of optimism.  I am not a go-lucky or pie in the sky type of optimist.  I want facts and figures so I can live in reality.  I want to see things as they actually are not dilute my current vision of the situation.  Yet, I also have extreme hope and positivity for the future.  I am what I call, a pragmatic optimist.  I don't pretend one way or another that now is better or worse than it is but I have strong feelings of optimism about how good it can get.  In other words, I am a dreamer.  The third competency, which is actually a competency, is that I am effective.  This is critical.  Many people work hard.  Many people are optimist.  Not everyone is effective.  I think you need this combination to be successful professionally, personally, and certainly in aiding in work as a change agent.  

In the past, I have mentioned my goal to own the fastest lending company in the United States.  This accomplishment took all of these attributes and more.  It required a grit and staying with it that was foreign to us at the time and requires constant reminding now.  

The biggest developmental opportunity I have right now is what I call "active listening".  It is another way of saying patience or another way of saying being present.  Ironically, I get impatient waiting to be patient with people or ideas to formulate.  I also seem to have to focus on something around me or within me to get myself present.  For example, if you asked me to get present I would start thinking about my breath or focus on the trees or clouds, if any were in sight, but all of this makes me less present to you!  So, I started doing something called active listening to make sure I am truly communicating with people, making sure they get a chance to be heard and know they are heard, and slow down my quick responses that often come without all the facts.  Like they say, we have two ears and one mouth for a reason and listing twice as much as I talk is active listening demonstrated.  

Onward and upward!

Steven

Focus on Current Problems or Create a Future - Reverse Engineering Success?

Q:  Evaluating solutions and answers can give you ideas on how to start working to make a difference and improve.  It could also, on the opposite side, help you to see where you want to end up/finish, and then work backwards to make it happen.   It is not about focusing entirely on the current situation and how to fix it, but dreaming/thinking/reflecting on what the ideal situation is.  

A:  I love concepts like Appreciative Inquiry versus Action Research.  We call this the Merlin Effect or Benjamin Button Effect which really means looking at what you want and reverse engineering your success.  WDYWFY is another one that I am familiar with.  What Do You Want For Yourself is the personal goal setting version of this.  

This is mostly all from my experience and not research so let me qualify these opinions with that. I love focusing on what is working and what you want over your problems.  However, in real practice, there are issues that arise in our personal and professional relationships that require resolving issues and problems.  If you ignore the issues of today then you are creating new ideas and initiatives on top of a poor foundation.  If you focus too much on the problems then you disempower yourself and others to see what is possible.  So I recommend driving with both hands.  In my right is dealing with challenges and issues that exist and deserve our attention.  In my left is creating an enrolling powerful inspiring future that everyone, or mostly everyone, can see themselves living into.  If you drive too much with either hand, to the right or left, you will wreck the car, or at best, drive in circles.  

Lastly, I am learning in my personal and professional life that it is really impractical to reverse engineer success.  We look at others and try to emulate them.  We do this in almost every area of our lives.  This is either motivating so we feel like we have a path or it provides a dose of self-loathing that is just enough to motivate us to try harder.  In either case, this is a fallacy because it is really not possible, reasonably, to reverse engineer someone's life or business.  There are just too many parts.  Education, work ethic, timing, genetics, family, location, courage, creativity, compassion... the list is too long.  

What do you think?  

Very respectfully, 

Steven 

Speed > Typos