I want to share with you five lessons that I’ve learned from a mentor, friend, and business partner of mine, Michael Hyatt.

For several years, I was business partners with Michael. He’s an amazing man, from whom I learned a tremendous amount.

Although I learned far more from Michael than I could ever fit into a blog post, I’d like to share with you the top five lessons that I learned from working with him.

 

Lesson number one: be consistent.

One of the things I remember asking Michael in the beginning was how he built his (substantial) following.

What he shared with me was that the moment he became really consistent in the way he creates content, things completely took off.

Because consistency creates trust and it created trust with his audience when he committed to blogging every day and podcasting every week.

That consistency transferred into all areas of his life. It transferred into the actions he would take. It transferred into his character.

That was a huge lesson for me.

Be consistent.

It creates trust for your audience, it creates trust for the people that are around you, it creates trust for your team, it creates trust for your loved ones.

Lesson number two: be authentic.

Now, we hear that all the time. What does it really mean?

For Michael, it meant being authentic with his personality. It meant being authentic with his values, beliefs, and philosophies.

It meant being authentic in what he stands for.

So authenticity is like consistency. It’s getting clear on who you are and what you stand for, and then staying consistent to that in all of your actions, and not compromising who you are just to suit a situation.

I saw Michael doing that over, and over, and over again. And not just in public, but in private.

He didn’t put on one face in front of the camera and another behind the scenes. He was totally consistent in his character, regardless of the situation.

Lesson number three: be intentional.

Michael uses this word a lot. In fact, for many years, it was in his actual company name.

What I came to learn about Michael’s version of intentionality, was that it was very similar to what others would call being ‘strategic’.

As in, instead of just leaving things to chance, be intentional about them.

If you want to develop a better relationship with your spouse, don’t just say you want a better relationship with your
spouse, do something about it. Be intentional. Set date nights on the calendar, map out times when you will be together.

Be intentional about your business.

Your goals won’t accomplish themselves. You have to be intentional about taking active steps toward those goals.

You have to be intentional about your decision making.

Here’s a perfect example:

Going into this new year, there are tons of opportunities for my team and I. It’s amazing. I’m super grateful for it.

However, even though there’s a ton of great opportunities coming our way, they don’t all line up with our vision.

Frankly, we don’t have time to say yes to EVERYTHING.

It’s forcing us to be intentional about the way that we decide whether to say yes or no to these opportunities.

You can’t just drift to your final destination. You can’t just drift to your ideal business or life.

You’ve got to be intentional about it.

Lesson number four: be open.

This is where I believe a lot of successful leaders get into trouble.

They’re not open to new ideas, and they get stuck in thinking that the way they do things is the only way to do things. But you and I know that times change.

One of the traits I loved about Michael was that he was always open. He was always open to new ideas and learning.

He would go to conferences so that he could learn new ideas and bring them back into his business and his life. He would intentionally hire people that he wanted to learn from.

He was open to ideas from the team, to different approaches and different experiments. It was amazing to watch.

I’ve seen a lot of people who achieve a certain level of success and they stop being open to new ideas. And I don’t know whether it’s ego, or fear of change, or fear that they could lose something, but it’s like they put an iron gate around themselves.

They stop being open to the fact that the marketplace is changing, and what worked 10 years ago might not work now.

By staying open, Michael always stays on the cutting edge of what’s happening in his marketplace.

Lesson number five: be approachable.

One of the reasons we all love Michael is that he’s very approachable.

He is actively engaged with his audience, whether it be in blog comments, on Facebook or different platforms, he’s engaged with his audience.

He genuinely wants to interact, he genuinely wants to learn, he genuinely wants to share, and respond, and answer questions.

Very few people have that same approach. People – the more successful they become – they almost become standoffish.

Michael’s the opposite. He leans in.

And sure, as your audience grows, you can’t always respond to everybody. But when you make a serious effort to engage and be approachable, your audience recognizes that.

Additionally, as a business partner, Michael was very easy to approach with new ideas, new strategies, new concepts, new projects.

His team is never afraid to bring ideas to him and it creates a free flow of communication, and that free flow of communication is what creates the magic.

It’s amazing to me,I see a lot of people gain some success and put themselves up on a pedestal.

And their team doesn’t want to approach them with new ideas because they’re afraid that they’re just going to be shut down.

With Michael, you could come to him with an idea and even if he didn’t like it, you still felt safe and like your input was valued.

I think about this in how I work with my team, and even with my family. I think about how this relates to my kids, so as they grow older, if they have challenges they will always feel comfortable talking to me about them.

These character traits and lessons that I learned from Michael are so valuable to me in my professional and my personal life. They can be applied to everything.

I’m extremely grateful for the chance to work with Michael and for our relationship. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without him.

To summarize, the five things I learned from Michael Hyatt:

 

1. Be consistent.

2. Be authentic.

3. Be intentional.

4. Be open.

5. Be approachable.

    

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