From the moment I saw her...

I knew I had to have her...

I also knew I was one way or the other going to be spending the rest of my life with her...

The problem was...

Before I could get this 30 year epic love affair rolling...

I had to get rid of the guy she was dating at the time...

Nice guy...

But he was in my way...

He had to go...

So I went to work...

First I had to get into the friend zone...

People think the friend zone is death...

But for me...it was my way in...

The rascal she was dating had his claws in deep...

Next...

I had to do two things...

One...I had to win her trust...

Two...I had to win the confidence and respect of her friends and everyone else who influenced her in one way or the other...

To achieve the first...

I simply asked her what she need to see in order to consider someone her very best friend...

Someone she could literally trust with her life...

Once she told me...

I simply went to work to become that person..

It wasn't very hard..

I was motivated.

For the second...

I had to make myself desirable...

My ticket to achieving that was the choir...

It didn't take long...

Long story short...

Within 6 months the boyfriend was gone and I had replaced him...

[ Insert evil laugh here]

My point?

First..

Launching a mind virus involves quite a bit of thought..

And so far I've laid out a framework for the level of thought needed.

Second...

You can't effectively do it alone.

To really spread your mind virus you're going to need a team...

Attracting that team means making yourself the kind of person people would want to follow, support and talk about... 

So..how do you know who to let in and who to keep out?

Unlike me chasing Vivian my wife...

There is no simple answer...

But a powerful way is to share what you want to do and then ask, “how does this hit you?”

Listen to the answer...but also watch for the answer.

In other words...listen to what they say but also watch how they react to your words.

Your team must not only have skills...

They need to buy into the bigger why and the long-term where.

This was a step I regret not paying attention to early enough when I started HPEN.

If I was to do it all over...

I'd start recruiting a team from day one.

Now please note...I said a team...

Not staff.

Now..concerning your team...

Things will fall apart along the way...

Huge challenges will arise...

Doubts and fears and questions will be a natural part of the journey.

If you don’t have agreement on the values and beliefs that should govern decisions, you won’t know how to handle these critical moments.

This is also why you need to do all that foundation work that we've talked about so far.

It’s important for solution development and messaging.

But it’s also a critical tool to help determine who’s in and who’s out and how you’ll make decisions.

Till Tomorrow.

Get out of your own way.

CTM