What I learned in Billionaire Camp

I attended Christopher Howard's Billionaire Bootcamp last week on the big island of Hawaii. It was a phenomenal experience. Over the course of the next few weeks, I'll be sharing some of my biggest a-ha's in the blog. Of all the trainings and courses I've attended (and I attend at least 4 per year and speak at 10) this is by far one of the most powerful transformational events.

But first, let me preface with the environment. The event was at the Hilton Waikoloa. Its a beautiful venue with lakes, waterfalls and most importantly...dolphins. Every day when I was able to squeeze in a 45 minute lunch, I would sit by the dolphins and enjoy a meal with some of my fellow attendees. One day, the dolphins were playing and jumping around. Here are a couple of pictures, the first one is of the dolphin jumping out of the water "doing tricks" and the second was where they swam by my feet for lunch.




The learnings from this event go beyond what I expected. One of my biggest a-has was actually quite simple -- do what works already. There was one day of "games" where we formed teams. My first team exercise had to do with building and selling a business. The collective lessons we all learned in the first exercise was pretty powerful. Here are the top three:

1. Start with a strong, clear plan of action.
A few players on the team jumped into immediate action and started running around trying to achieve results. I stayed at home base with the CEO and tried to get him to work with me to put a plan in place.

Result: Very little results and a lot of frustration. The teams that did best in this round had a clear defined strategy with each team member knowing what to do and why.

Lesson: No matter how much time you have, always map out a strategic plan.

2. Focus on the high payoff opportunities.
One of our team members made a mistake in negotations and we had a HUGE problem that was going to cost us a fortune. At that time, the CEO and I were working on a huge contract that was worth $3million. The interesting thing was that our "CEO" got all caught up in solving the problem and neglected moving forward with the opportunity.

Result: Once we finally got our CFO (Chief Financial Officer) to tally up the damages and the team realized that they were focusing on a problem, allowing all of our energy, focus and resources to get sucked AWAY FROM putting together a deal that would make the problem insignificant.

Lesson: Always have a high-payoff filter that allows you to instantly become aware of the payoff of where your focus is.

3. Leverage your strengths by aligning with a power team.
During the third and final round, I found myself wanting to quit the game. I was standing in a long line, frustrated with how many people were cutting and crowding, when my partner called me out of line and said she had found a way around the line. Her innovativeness put us light years beyond the other teams with a power deal. We invested in the deal and skyrocketed to the top of the wealth quota. That innovative problem-solving coupled with the relationships and trust for results we had established through-out the day opened up a landslide of joint venture opportunities.

Result: We ended up one of the wealthiest teams at the end of the day because we leveraged the power of a team. I was not always in my competency but I knew enough to surround myself with people who knew what they were doing and add value in my own unique way.

Lesson: Success is built by mitigating your weakness through the leverage of teams. I was one of the wealthiest people at the end of the day. I had no idea what I was doing half the time, but I also was willing to connect the right people to build a power team. This is the basis of what I teach in my own coaching program and even built a program called Virtual Team Building Secrets around it.

Here are a few of the power players on my team (I'll admit now I was so focused on the games that I neglected to use my camera enough!)

Michael Starr, Logicall Communications,
and his partner Julie, from Kingsgrove, Australia.

Tracy Monteforte, www.WTPowers.com, one of the experts featured in the
Virtual Team Building Secrets, from Northern California.


Cecil Bernard and his wife Jackie, www.cbsecurity.co.uk
from London, England.

If you learned something from this post, feel free to share it with a colleague or friend. If you were attendee and want to add your learnings, feel free to post your comments too! I'll keep posting more from Billionaire Bootcamp over the next few weeks. If you want to hear more about my fun adventures during my 2 weeks in Hawaii, visit our travel blog at www.freedomtotravel.blogspot.com.