Nightmares Can Build Your Wealth

Nightmares can serve as important financial wake-up calls.

I alluded to the time I was in Houston, Texas on a consulting assignment. More than anything, I wanted to succeed. The CEO was a genial but hard driving executive that brought me to Texas after he saw me deliver a seminar to his six-figure earning investment salespeople at his former company in Seattle.

One night in my Houston hotel I had a fitful sleep and awoke about 2 AM, drenched with “flop-sweat.” Performers know what this is. It’s the body telling you that you run the risk of falling on your face in the middle of your act, the body’s way of expressing fear of failure. And it’s anything but pleasant.

If you awaken with flop sweat, you can’t go back to sleep. You’re too agitated. The best thing to do is to address the thing that’s causing you such acute anxiety.

I was concerned I wasn’t going to have the impact on my trainees that I needed and specifically, I was afraid they would not perform the new customer service behaviors I was teaching.

My seminar would have been for naught. This failure would disappoint my sponsor, the CEO and would be a setback to my professional reputation. It would also ding my self-esteem.

After worrying for more than an hour, I set about devising a solution.

I asked myself: “How can I make them do it?”

Recalling my successful stint at Time-Life Books in sales management, I determined the only way to assure they’d implement the new techniques was to be joined at the hip with them.

That was it! I had to work one-on-one with each and every customer service rep.

There were a hundred of them! Even if I spent just half a day with each, coaching them one-on-one would take 10 solid weeks to accomplish.

This would require more funding and could seem to my sponsor and his management team that I was merely trying to line my pockets.

But I had to take the risk and tell them what I thought was required to get results.

Most training brought in by large companies suffers from the same flaw—implementation isn’t built into it.

Many ideas transmitted in training programs sound peachy. Some can be brand new and very exciting, but they are not self-implementing. Without the right program design, the great majority of trainees will treat their training as if it is a buffet line, at most putting the sweets they like on their plates, while leaving the nutritious, good-for-them stuff behind.

If I’m walking through the line with them, or serving a fixed menu, I’m far more likely to leave them in a healthier, more productive state. They’ll thank me later—maybe!

I explained this to the management team and they agreed to fund the one-on-one augmentation. It made all the difference!

We got amazing results and the program easily paid for itself many times over, as our performance measures attested.

I emerged from that project with a new and far more lucrative template for training and development, one where I could accurately predict and measure, and thus monetize improved results.

In short, that nightmare made me millions of dollars. I slept, in this case, not so well, and grew rich!

The stuff that keeps us up at night can be crucial to our success. Being well rested and restored from sleep is a desired and ideal outcome. But not achieving this result can be a critical indicator. Restlessness needs to be monitored and read correctly. It could be a needed wake-up call that you need to take action, to change something, or to not let something critical go unexamined.