Curve Benders need multiple on-ramps to enter our lives. These on-ramps could be leaders in other industries exploring similar growth opportunities, scientists analyzing the impact of our lives on a sustainable climate, and like minded parents across the globe struggling to help their kids understand racial inequalities. You could undoubtedly explore your future of work, with a plethora of resources. The opportunity is to expand your purview to other aspects of your life as well. When you intentionally invest in how you live, you create opportunities to meet and grow through Curve Benders. It is essential to surround yourself with those who don't think like you do. Cognitive diversity in your network keeps you fresh. From generational to geographical differences, cognitively diverse relationships help us understand that the rest of the world doesn't believe or behave as we do.
The holistic nature of Curve Benders makes them fascinating people. Although a strong work ethic often creates their professional success, their broader lifestyle provides a glimpse into their significance. As you design your Curve Benders Roadmap, you must create space for serendipitous and intentional relationships to influence your reflections, planning, and priorities. Diverse perspectives around you will create a dramatically more vibrant and fulfilling future. These intersections forge new branches in your life to explore not just what you can accomplish, but also who you can become as a leader, a partner, a parent, and a global citizen.
Alan Weiss, PhD, is one of my Curve Benders. I met Alan in 2007 when I was asked to pick him up at the airport. He was there to speak to the National Speakers' Association (NSA), Georgia chapter. I never imagined that this chance encounter would dramatically change my business direction and my life over the next two decades. During dinner and his speech, I became increasingly impressed by Alan's intellectual horsepower. He is well-read, well-traveled, and has great depth as an advisor. Like most Curve Benders, Alan has strong opinions on a broad spectrum of topics and can quickly frame challenges and opportunities. He is jovial with a zest for the finer things in life. But he also has an edge. If you're wasting his time, he quickly becomes impatient. He has no problem asking, âWhat's your question of me?â if you call him for help and give him background info he doesn't need. You don't have to like Alan, but you'll be hard-pressed not to respect his insights. Invest time and effort in his content and he will transform a solo practitioner's business and life. Although he's a solo practitioner, he has amassed wealth from corporate advisory, training, and speaking engagements since the 1980s. More recently, he has developed a thriving community made up of thousands. Speakers, consultants, and trainers all want to learn from him, if not become him.
Alan showed me the transformative power of a Curve Bender. With his advice, I recalibrated my focus. He helped me think differently about the value that I bring to my clients and taught me his unique approach to value-based fees. I enhanced my command of the English language and committed to reading broader-based books. I often share Alan's insights, modified to fit our specific conditions, with my community. Following Alan's teachings, I doubled my revenues in less than one year.
But Alan does more than just make me want to become a better advisor. He does more than push me to think, to consider multiple sources of intelligent perspectives, and to make better decisions. He sees the best version of me. Once, in passing, he said, âyou are one of the best-kept secrets in America.â Talk about a personal slogan! I felt a deep extrinsic motivation that fueled me to never disappoint him.
Alan has also given me a front-row seat into his notion of ONE life. He says that none of us separate personal and professional lives. We all have one life. Although many professionals struggle with workâlife balance, Alan lives by what I call workâlife blending. For the past 30 years, he has run his practice from his home office in Rhode Island. Around 2 p.m. every warm day, you can find him by the pool. He combines professional programs with cities and activities he wants to experience. From weekends in London and Sydney, Alan integrates his work into that which brings him enormous joy. Mastering that balance is priceless. He has traveled globally to conduct educational programs and woven family time into the trips. He has served on the boards of nonprofits, academic advisory committees, and even coached a Ms. America contestant. I met Alan after a decade of consulting by the hour â a fundamentally flawed model, due to its capacity constraints. Non-linear growth through Alan's content, experiences, community, and workâlife blending has dramatically improved my professional skills, as well as quality of life. He is the epitome of accelerating one's relevance.
Many Americans derive their last names from ancestors in England. As the country's populations grew after the Norman conquest in 1066, people found the specificity particularly relevant.1 Most of the estimated 45,000 different English last names have origins in one of seven types: occupation, personal characteristic, English location, estate name, geographical feature, ancestry, or patronage.2 For almost a thousand years, our jobs have defined us to the extent that they are embedded into how we are identified. So, your friend Thomas Baker's great-great-great-grandfather probably made a mean sourdough.
As someone with strict parents, I learned a strong work ethic early in life. It was normal to be up early each morning, active on weekends, striving to do my best. Late hours were the norm. I remember how hard my parents worked multiple jobs to make ends meet when my sister and I were young in Iran. When I moved to the States, my Uncle Ken, with whom I lived as a teenager, held a full-time job and was a part-time entrepreneur, so Saturdays and Sundays were just two more days in the workweek. Working multiple jobs, I paid cash for both my undergraduate and graduate degrees. I was doing side hustles that I found in newspaper ads before the gig economy got to be a thing. In the early days of my career, 6 a.m.â8 p.m., Monday through Friday, was the mandatory workweek. As a fledgling entrepreneur, I'd work every weekend, missing out on family time. I would stay at the office late to get more done. What an awful example of workâlife imbalance, as I saw my kids grow up way too fast. You could say that work has always defined me, as it does most men with whom I associate.
Through a thoughtful observation of how other leaders lived, I saw that one could be successful by societal measures. Pursuing a more fulfilling and well-rounded life opens fascinating new paths to Curve Benders you would never encounter otherwise. Here is one example: I used to have a strong interest in Scouting. For a decade, I was involved in my son's Scouting experiences, where I proudly supported him to earn his Eagle Scout rank. Through Scouting I met Clint Hunter, who led me to discover a new passion for riding motorcycles. I now regularly take weeks off for long-dis...
