Business Beyond Business Read online

  Copyright © 2019 Paul Edwards

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without prior written consent of the authors, except as provided by the United States of America copyright law.

  Published by Best Seller Publishing®, Pasadena, CA

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  ISBN 978-1-949535-57-0

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  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  1.My Beginnings: An Awkward, Pushy Salesman

  2.Monastic Heart: Be a Magnet, Not a Pusher

  3.Golden: Pro Bono Publicity

  4.The Inroads: Not-for-Profit is For-Profit

  5.Owning It: How to Network with Dream Connections

  6.Frequency: Persuasion in Print

  7.The Curator: Focusing on the Outcome

  Conclusion

  INTRODUCTION

  Business Beyond Business

  Who Am I?

  Think of the most exciting, interesting project or rewarding privilege you’ve recently experienced. Maybe you could even say it out loud – you won a big account, your online business is booming, you’ve met powerful people who want to help you, or you just booked the family trip of a lifetime. This is the kind of moment you just can’t wait to share with others.

  Perhaps, the first time you announce it, your friends and family celebrate with you. Maybe you even throw a party or invite everyone around for drinks. After a while, however, the excitement fades and you’re back in your day-to-day humdrum. This is where we spend probably 95% or more of our lives, just living out the routine – each small decision we make compounding over time, like interest.

  One day, however, someone can be bothered to ask you a question that sends you skyrocketing back to your initial high: “What’s going well for you lately?” Before you know it, you’re back on Cloud Nine, gushing about all the progress you’ve made since that day. All the hard groundwork you’ve done to kick off the project, or all the exciting new people you’ve met on the staff of the new account you’re managing.

  It might even get beyond the excitement. Perhaps, in the interim, you’ve been blindsided by a hundred new difficult realities. You could be going through the affliction of assuming a chief executive role, or senior leadership where you feel like an embodiment of the Peter Principle. You feel like you must “fake it till you make it.” It’s killing you inside. If anyone knew how you felt, there could be hell to pay. But someone asks you, without judgment or even the slightest impression of critical intent – “What’s not going so well for you lately?”

  Or, you’re just tickled pink; you have short-timer’s syndrome as you pack bags for a wild trip to the South Pacific, a backpacking sabbatical in Europe or a safari in the plains of Africa. You’re bursting at the seams, you can feel the anticipation … and someone asks you, “What are you looking forward to?”

  Now you’ve found your feet at the 3- to 5-minute mark of meeting me. I could have just written, “Hello, my name is Paul Edwards,” but that name didn’t mean anything to you before you opened this book. It might not mean much to you after reading it. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not that important.

  People like you don’t read books like this to find people like me. It’s likelier that something in the title or the way I present myself made it intriguing. If that’s the case for you, welcome to the world of Business Beyond Business.

  Okay, fine. But what do I do?

  This is another question that used to be so much easier to answer. Truly, we’ve entered a new era. I suppose I could list it under the different ways I express myself – author, copywriter, blogger, podcaster and interviewer, but … a close friend of mine told me he purposefully started a business under the most generic name possible, so no one would conflate the substance of what he did with the man himself.

  That’s an interesting angle. Was it entirely correct? In his case, yes. Is it always entirely correct? Of course not. You can’t separate the Oprah brand from Oprah Winfrey, and it’d be tough to think of McDonald’s without Ray Kroc or Microsoft without Bill Gates. The point is, I dislike categorizing myself under the occupational duties of my business. Frankly, there’s a ton of diverse history, culture and experience that forged it all together … so I don’t stand among the crowd that believes one’s character is represented solely by one’s actions.

  What I do has a strong parallel with my background, that’s for sure. I’ve lived in five different countries and hold three passports. I’m a Caucasian, Spanish-speaking immigrant to the United States with ancestral ties to members of the Gamlingay Baptist Church founded by John Bunyan in Cambridgeshire, England. I’m the first generation of my family born and raised in North America. I’m an evangelical Christian of 17 years, at time of writing, married with two sons.

  I’m an extroverted introvert who’s fantasized my entire life about being on stage, performing in front of huge crowds and speaking words that inspire them. I’ve had stars in my eyes for as long as I can recall. I’m an Iraq veteran and a college graduate … and I wouldn’t trade either experience, but neither legacy has proved useful for me in terms of procuring a good income. I didn’t find traction when I tried to be systematic and go the socially approved routes bequeathed by preceding, postwar generations. (This is a roundabout way of saying I’m “unemployable.”)

  Have you ever met someone with all the qualities and abilities of a coach, but not the title? Ditto for other roles where they’ve not passed the bar, taken the exams or done the internship – yet they converse and sound as though they have! I often thought President Barack Obama sounded very pastoral and reassuring in his speeches, though he never attended Bible college. I suppose it’s worth pointing out that the Pharisees made the same observation about Jesus Christ himself – “How does this man know so much, when he has never been to school?” (John 7:15). (This book needed at least one offensive passage – I’ll have a good laugh at the hate mail accusing me of comparing President Obama to Jesus).

  In other words, I have too many distinct and irregular influences and traits to simply say, “I’m a connector.” My experience came in grinding through six years of networking, trade shows, community events, nonprofit boards and one tireless appearance after another as an insurance salesman in Olympia, Washington. It goes back even further than that, to my days living as an apprentice to a retired quadriplegic multimillionaire, Andrew Magliolo, in Santa Monica – a master at persuasion, sales, and relationship-building.

  That began a journey of new habits, including self-reflection and a love of philosophy, self-improvement and discipline. As a Christian,
it sparked a love of Biblical devotion in 2005, a habit now in its fourteenth consecutive year with little to no interruption. My faith survived a harrowing trial earlier in this decade, but in 2017 it finally began ripening, with a special emphasis on the power of monastic Christian living – silence, solitude and copious amounts of time in the presence of God.

  It is from the well of my daily devotions, prayers and meditations that I write, speak and teach with authority, just like my Role Model, Jesus. It isn’t a worldly authority: “I’m an expert in this.” It’s authority that comes from passion for understanding and responding in love to what is deepest and most true about human beings. My close friend Terry Toth and I are both fascinated with the subject – just what is it that makes people tick? That’s what I “nerd out” on – motives, context, background and psychology. Unconscious habits. Deep-seated agreements, counterproductive and inhibiting to the person in search of success. Business Beyond Business.

  Right, but I still haven’t told you what you do …

  True, because I myself am at a loss for exactly the right word. The word “connector” is vague … true, but vague. I wrote this book because I became adept at connecting people, to the extent that the people I connected often stood to gain more influence, income and powerful relationships by knowing me than I did from knowing myself. (Try wrapping your head around that one).

  “Pathfinder” sounds cool if you’re in the Army, like I was, but it’s inaccurate in more ways than one. Maybe if you’re into something with a little mysticism, Far Eastern medicinal or ancient healing techniques, or you’re just plain old “on drugs” – that might work. As you can see … I don’t run with those crowds.

  I will shoot you straight – I avoid titles because it’s disingenuous to imply the expertise of a “business coach” when I don’t have a track record of success in an industry. You won’t find my name in the annals of the greatest soldiers or salesmen. I never set records for enemy troops killed or life insurance sales, because achievement isn’t my gifting.

  It’s the other way around – gifts are my achievements. I’ve lived a life of such unmerited favor, such unsolicited blessing and such impossible redemption that the only area where I could proclaim myself an expert is in walking away from human achievement. I could trot out a laundry list, even write it in the poetic style of the epistle to the Hebrews … but it’s happened too many times to be a coincidence. My greatest victories never involve me being the absolute best at what I do. But I get compensated as though it were the case. Business Beyond Business.

  Into this otherworldly life, I bring fellow entrepreneurs and leaders with enough vision to see the same or similar themes in their lives. We gather quarterly – to exchange and learn valuable information and content … but also to preach and practice a monastic approach to commerce. We sit through an hour or two of teaching … but then we retreat into silence, surrender and rest following each lesson. We go to be enriched with knowledge and opportunities to increase our top lines through our relationships – but we also spend a (mandatory) day shoveling snow, digging ditches, serving food, cleaning up trash or rebuilding dilapidated houses – with no photo ops, laptops or smartphones.

  We gather to fuel our businesses – but we empty ourselves in the process. Mentoring and being mentored is a precondition of our group – if you are new, you will be assigned a volunteer mentor from among our veterans. If you’re a veteran, you agree to offer that leadership to younger, newer members. Introductions to every single member of the group are required; we respect affinity among certain members but refuse to descend into cliques. We believe that the true way forward in life as a human being is to know people … their stories, their backgrounds, their history. We engineer conversation pieces to make it as likely as possible that those details do not go unknown. Business Beyond Business.

  Our guest speakers are caring mentors, powerful influencers and expert builders – priests, prophets, and kings and queens. They’re people I spend time getting to know, both through interactions and with what they disclose about themselves digitally. They are also the target demographic; if they aren’t interested in rolling up their sleeves and contributing alongside our members, we wait until we find speakers who are. There are things about this mastermind that offend people who see its power and want to muscle in on the gravy train – but the world’s persuaded them that certain things are “beneath them.” Requiring them to be physically present for the duration of each gathering and participate in every facet of the retreat means passing up a lot of people with valuable knowledge and insight. But we never have to pass up on character.

  Our mission is, for lack of a better term, His mission. When Jesus declared his mission he said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He sent me to proclaim freedom for prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:19) We’re here to see lives and hearts and fortunes changed. We’re here to disentangle hearts from broken ways of thinking. We’re here to spread God’s favor – his goodness and generosity – to everyone we encounter. Business Beyond Business.

  Personally, I envisage just what you’ve read: groups of intimate, connected and fraternal leaders in business, government and nonprofit sectors, influencing each other’s lives and livelihoods for the better. When people ask me what I do, I’ll often say, “I connect Radically Generous Entrepreneurs to build meaningful relationships with mentors, peers and mentees who challenge them and help them grow.”

  If this is where you want to go, I think you’ll find the next chapter, the overview, very interesting. This is where we find out what a “Radically Generous Entrepreneur” looks and sounds like, how they respond and operate.

  Maybe you’ve applied the secrets listed here in this book time and again and seen it come back to bless you in spades. You’ve also been around long enough to know that what creates this success isn’t technical skill or craftsmanship … but instead, a deftness with people. You get paid because you know how to create a memorable impression, ask a question no one else asks, respond in a way no one else knows, or extend an invitation no one else can make.

  You know how to apply this repeatedly, so that when you observe that the person you met in Minneapolis last week would be a great introduction for the person you met in Tokyo three years ago, you come running from halfway around the world – via social media, of course. You bring them together. Or, better yet, they come running (literally) to be in the same room with you at the same time. Now you’re playing in my sandbox. Business Beyond Business.

  Well, why did I write this book?

  I need to earn a profit and make a living. Do you work for free? I have 40-some odd years left on this planet, all else being equal, and I need to pay for it somehow. Uncle Sam is broke and doesn’t pay out much, and there’s no gold watch-and-pension show anymore. Let’s get this out there in the open, so I don’t sound phony or manipulative.

  I don’t want profit at the expense of my soul, however, or anyone else’s soul. I would rather get paid a sliver of the overall cost of a multimillion-dollar deal because I connected the right person with the right person at the right time. There’s so much less confusion if I tell you up front that this book is to help you (and me) determine if you would fit in with the Business Beyond Business Mastermind.

  So … what are my intentions?

  A long time ago, in a galaxy near, nearby (this one in fact), a mentor of mine foretold that because of the character he was shaping in me, I would be highly attractive to only a select few members of the opposite sex. He meant that most women, once they learned what I was about, wouldn’t find what they were looking for in me. But the few who did would be diadems. My wife fulfilled that prophecy. My time in insurance re-taught me what I should have learned from marrying my wife; the best clients were few and far between, and the rest were a mixed bag … ranging from casually disinterested to ou
t-and-out royal pains.

  It’s also worth saying why I didn’t write this book. I’m not interested in selling millions and millions of copies, and I don’t want even a fraction of a fraction of the world’s populace banging down my door. I just want you, if you’re reading this and it resonates.

  I want you and a handful of others who possess, in increasing measure, the ability to look beyond business in the shallow, stressful, purely numerical way so many do. The way I did for many years. You who understand that paying to be in my inner circle isn’t a cost. It’s an investment in people, where profits are the by-product of a Kingdom heart in action. Doing the things Jesus taught us to do for the reasons he taught us to do them.

  I don’t want to be exclusionary to a fault. Sometimes, someone has the right heart, but not necessarily the right income to afford the premium of association. For that person, my counsel is just as valid … but for a season, perhaps, it simply needs to be formed into their lives and livelihoods; training and practice are necessary until they attain the right numbers to afford it.

  To that end, I’ve made webinars and training modules available. They’re much less of a financial hurdle, and available for life to whoever buys them. My content grows with time, so new versions, add-ons and any other beneficial information is included in the one-time price.

  Others have a Kingdom heart they refuse to label as such; you might call these people “Christians in all but name.” These people agree wholeheartedly with my strategic and tactical counsel. They are of adequate means. They have high moral and ethical standards, but they don’t consciously or publicly profess the name of Jesus Christ as their God. In no uncertain terms, we extend full invitation to membership if they fit the profile, provided there’s no agenda of disrupting or shutting down the presence and fellowship of the godly. If you can hang out with a bunch of Bible believers, we can hang out with you.

  You are being “sold to” by reading this book … on a way of life, a state of mind, and a gathering of peers unlike any you can find elsewhere. You’re being sold on habits, attitudes, and ways of looking at things that the world either doesn’t know or doesn’t care enough to learn. You’re being sold a way of doing life and business that will narrow the scope of customers or clients you attract – but will teach, encourage, and equip you to go so deep with them that they will take over a significant portion of your most critical work – sales and marketing – and never ask for a dime to do it.