Strategic Discipline Blog

My journey through Acute Myeloid Leukemia continues with Chapter VI from CANCER CURED – Support

(Previous segments of CANCER CURED are available here:  CANCER CURED BOOK -to read from the beginning you’ll need to scroll through to the bottom to find CANCER CURED – What do You Feed?, which is the first in the series.)

This is Chapter VI, the second segment from this chapter, Support from My Customers

As mentioned in my last segment, Cancer Cured CHAPTER VI – Support – I Didn’t Do This Alone, three things made a significant difference in my ability to cope, maintain control, and keep a positive outlook in the hospital.

First, my ability to work while in the hospital.

Kevin Hackman, my Physician Assistant, allowed me to work from my hospital room. The significance of this meant I was able to provide for my family. Without my income our family would have been without any means of financial support for the seven months I was in the hospital. Furthermore, after I got out it would have taken more time and energy to rebuild the business.

Kevin is unequivocal evidence I didn’t and couldn’t have done this alone. His decision opened an entire segment of people who supported me, perhaps unknowingly to them. My customers helped me beat cancer. Helping them solve their business issues made me feel valuable, and helped me focus on something beyond my illness. Certainly, their concern and support also helped as well.

It was a great relief when all my customers agreed to continue working with me while I was confined to the University of Iowa Hospital.

The psychological benefit from working while in the hospital I feel was far greater. It not only made me feel valuable, but it also helped the time in the hospital go faster. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be in the hospital and not be working. You have more time to think about your predicament, the doubts, the fears, imagining the worst that could happen.

Because of work, I didn’t have time to consider what would or could happen to me. I had to prepare for my customers, help them solve issues, and help them focus on their priorities and objectives.

One of my customers voiced his concern about meeting. He couldn’t understand why I would want to continue meeting, nor how it would be possible. He was concerned I was working and needed my rest. He eventually canceled our working relationship. I sense it was more from his concern about damaging my health because we were meeting than it was mine.

The best advice I received from one of my customers who decided to continue working with me was Fred Schiff, All County Music.

When I asked him if he was okay to continue to work with me while I was in the hospital, he said sure, under one condition, “As long as the time we spend on the phone together is about me. I’m paying for the time you’re coaching me, and if it becomes more about you, then I shouldn’t be paying for it.”

He added, “That’s not to say I don’t care, nor that I won’t ask and be concerned. You’re being sick should not change the dynamics of our meeting.”

Fred was one of the first to accept working with me while I was in the hospital. His words helped me to ask and receive approval from all my current customers to work with me. I even gained a customer while I was in the hospital!

Just as I’d decided to get up each day I was in the hospital, acting as if I was working from my home office, I wanted to make sure my customers would be unaware or distracted by anything in my room.

Roger Vorhies, a friend, and a former customer visited me one day. I was so involved in a meeting I was having I was unaware of his presence. He had walked into the room with the sign “In a Meeting” on my door. He’d bypassed it. “I didn’t think that was for me! After all who’s in a meeting in a hospital.” He quickly got my hand up like a STOP SIGN when he entered. My eyes and attention stayed glued to my computer screen so as not to distract me from my meeting. Roger left never having said hello. I didn’t know he’d even visited me; I thought the interruption was a nurse or doctor.

It was only a year later I discovered he’d stopped in when I was speaking to a Lions group, he’d invited me to.

Working with my customers made me feel I was contributing to their welfare and my family’s. There wasn’t any idle time to stew or allow my mind to dwell on where I was and what my possible fate could be.

As I indicated in the previous chapter: The bottom line is: When our behaviors match our intentions, when our actions are equal to our thoughts, when our minds and our bodies are working together, when our words and our deeds are aligned … there is an immense power behind any individual. ~ Dr. Joe Dispensa, from Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself.

Working while in the hospital was another way, I was living my meditative dream of what my outcome would be.

I refused to be limited by AML.

I’m eternally grateful the chemotherapy didn’t debilitate me.

I could do everything I had been doing at home while in the hospital. Yes, I got sick, I had a few days I was miserable. However, I was able to navigate my time in the hospital as well as I had when in my home office.

Contrary to my one customer’s opinion, working with my customers while in the hospital, was my therapy, and I feel it was one of the most powerful reasons I was able to defeat my AML.

Being able to live your purpose, no matter what the circumstances, is empowering. A realization, or perhaps a condemnation I had while in the hospital was, that I’d not been living my Primary Aim, my purpose. I’d written it down, even repeated it almost every day; however, I wasn’t truly living it.  

I decided I needed to reinvest in making my core purpose more meaningful, easier to remember, and more empowering. After much reflection, soul searching, and thoughtfulness I changed my core purpose to, “I challenge, inspire, and ignite purpose and passion!”

Each day I intend to live my life around this purpose.

Call to Action

Challenge your team, your business, yourself. Contact Positioning Systems to schedule a free exploratory meeting to challenge, inspire, and ignite purpose and passion in your business!  

Create an environment where everyone is inspired to give their best.

Growth demands Strategic Discipline.

At the beginning of this blog, I shared three things that made a significant difference in my ability to cope, maintain control, and keep a positive outlook while in the hospital. In the next blog, I share the dedication I received from my spouse in – Support II – Michelle

Building an enduring great organization requires disciplined people, disciplined thought, disciplined action, superior results, producing a distinctive impact on the world.

Discipline sustains momentum, over a long period, laying the foundations for lasting endurance.

A winning habit starts with 3 Strategic Disciplines: Priority, Metrics, and Meeting Rhythms.   Forecasting, accountability, individual, and team performance improve dramatically.

Meeting Rhythms achieve a disciplined focus on performance metrics to drive growth.

Let Positioning Systems help your business achieve these outcomes on the Four most Important Decisions your business faces:

Positioning Systems helps mid-sized ($5M - $500M+) businesses Scale-UP. We align your business to focus on Your One Thing! Contact dwick@positioningsystems.com to Scale Up your business! Take our Four Decisions Needs Assessment to discover how your business measures against other Scaled Up companies. We’ll contact you.

NEXT BLOG – CANCER CURED CHAPTER VI – Support II - Michelle