This Magic Moment

This Magic Moment is a song by The Drifters.  I'm not a drifter and I don't ever want to be a drifter – how about you?

Let me be clear – I am a fan of "The Drifters" – with hits like On Broadway, There Goes My Baby, Save the Last Dance For Me, and dozens more, they rock.  What I'm talking about is professionals, Lawyers, Doctors, even companies that achieve some great things (let's say in their marketing) and move their business to the next level. These people get noticed for their growth and the great ideas they contribute to their groups. They maybe even get asked to speak on stage at events like our Top Practices Summits to share those great ideas. It's exciting. It's fun because they have really done what it takes to improve their business and then they have The Magic Moment – at the precise moment of this triumph they have already, unbeknownst to them, moved into drifter mode.  

I see it happen to ALMOST EVERYONE.

Drifter mode is defined by the following:

• A feeling that you have "arrived." People are seeking your counsel and advice and you are obviously a leader of the pack. You feel good.
• A reality that you've built a good machine that is producing results.
• You are seeing more clients with better cases, or the kind of patients you want to see are coming in because you have rolled up your sleeves and done what your mentors have told you works.
• Life is really good.

Then, you just start drifting.  You stop paying close attention to what your mastermind alliance is saying because you "know so much already." You have forgotten how far you've come in the last few years.  How frustrated and concerned you were and you start to think you've always been like this.  You miss the next meeting because you are so busy.  You don't listen to CDs when they arrive. You stop reading other excellent books and you turn on that TV and radio again because you've now got super powers and those negative messages can't get into your super positive head anymore.

You are already crashed and burning on the tarmac and haven't yet realized that your plane is even in trouble.  You’re a drifter.
This year we sold out the Top Practices Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada and next year we will too.  My Top Performers were there sharing their ideas with the crowd.  They are inspiring, motivational, and are achieving, in some cases, TRIPLE-DIGIT GROWTH in their practices.

It makes me really, really nervous for them. That group has achieved its Magic Moment.   Luckily for them, their coach (me) is terrified of magic moments (having seen far too much of this in my career) and has already instituted a curriculum for that group to inoculate us from this terminal disease.

We are going back to work.  Every single member of this elite team is going to be focused for the next 15 months and working on the following:
We will be reviewing our marketing plans together at a very granular level. 

We will be conducting a top to bottom review of our marketing in the four key areas:  Web-based; Referral-Based; Internal, and External.  We will use a scale from 0 to 10.  Zero means they are doing nothing and 10 means they are the best possible.  We will also be doing this for their practice management because we have a great amount of expertise as a group in this area too.  So by the end of the First Quarter of 2013, every single practice will be a 10/10/10/10 in marketing and a 10 in practice management.  They will be 10's based on where they are now.  As soon as we achieve this we will recalibrate back to 8's and keep striving to get better.

You use it or you lose it.  

Masterminding is a process – not an event.  The Journey IS the Destination.  If you aren't growing and learning and striving, you are drifting.

I'm listening to the Drifters as I write this article.  They're great.  I'm working every day to never slow down, never think I'm better than anyone else around me, even those who are not executing nearly as well as I am, if I pay attention to them, if I help them, then I ALWAYS learn something new that enables me to keep sharp, keep focused, and keep growing.  I don't have to wake up one morning wondering what happened to my Mojo.  I guard it every moment of every day – even those Magic Moments.