Congrats to the Dutch in the semi’s! The power of a fabulous team really wanting to achieve an “impossible” dream.

The Belgian Hercules Trophy season was huge. It’s great so see a dream come through. We had an awesome celebration with the crew on Saturday night. Time to move on and focus on the next Trophies in The Netherlands, France and Dubai.

No holidays for me. Who needs holidays when your job is not “work”, when you do your job with friends and family all around the world? I don’t need expensive holidays to forget about all the negative stress. I have none.

Did buy a lot of inspirational books though. First one: “Tribes” from Seth Godin. Seth is one of my all time favorites. His “Permission marketing” was a big inspiration to me and again he can’t stop to amaze me.

You should read it! Why?

• When you are a leader: read the book to understand why you should go on in a world where the majority is scared to change.
• When you are a manager: read the book and discover there could be a leader inside you. We need more leaders in this world!

I couldn’t agree more with:

• Leaders BELIEVE in something. Believe is a briliant strategy.
• Leaders have followers, managers have employees
• Leaders love to change through believe, managers love status quo
• Leaders make change, managers make stuff
• Organisations hire managers to perform tasks as good as possible. Organisations need leaders to change.
• Change is very scary to a lot of people, however stability is just an illusion.
• Everybody feels the world is changing. Change requires leaders. We need more leaders.
• Managers try to keep things as they are. The best strategy for them: sell average products to average people. Make predictable products at low cost and high profit. Broadcast you average product to the large average crowd.
• Leaders don’t settle, they know that’s not acceptable. Managers settle (= go for consensus) all the time.
• Leaders lead tribes of special people
• Religions have been invented to enforce believes. However, religions aim for status quo. People should change religion all the time. Move from Tribe to Tribe without losing their believes!!!
• The secret of “being wrong” is not to avoid “being wrong”. Leaders admit mistakes, managers avoid them. You can’t make no mistakes!!!
• “Not yet” is the best excuse for status quo. “Perfection” is an illusion that has been created to protect status quo.
• Leaders follow their heart, managers follow their brains.
• Charisma doesn’t make you a leader. Through leadership you get charisma.
• It’s not about having ideas. It’s about the believe that your idea will work. It’s about having enough believe to get rid of your fears. Fear is one of the most powerful emotions you know. It’s ok to be scared, just don’t use it as your guide.

I love the term: Sheepwalking. It’s about scaring people as much as possible to make them follow you. A typical management trick.

Are you a manager of leaders? Woops, start developing your leadership skills rapidly or feel miserable every day of your professional life.

Being a manager is easy. If being a leader was easy, everyone would be one. It’s tough to believe in your new idea, it’s tough to speak for an unknown crowd about your believes, it’s tough to attack the status quo. If you don’t find that tough: you are a leader.