This is critical. There is, in fact, a primal energy that makes an individual stand out from the crowd, magnetically attract favorable attention and cooperation and opportunity, facilitate necessary influence and stoke confidence and creativity. There is, in fact, a primal energy that makes a business rise, shine, thrive; powerful against competitive and opposition forces, attractive to customers and patrons. This energy emanates outward from its center and, in a closed loop or “boomerang effect” brings power to the person and business. This is the secret that explains why two seemingly identical people or businesses doing seemingly identical things get vastly different results. It is the answer to a frustrated Universal Studios theme park V.P.’s querulous conversation with a client of mine, in which he said they were doing everything that Disney was doing, yet still getting woefully poorer results. They might be doing the same things the same way, but their energy is different. This primal energy can be diluted, damaged, drained away without you quite realizing what is happening, leaving you a Superman who has been sleeping near concealed Kryptonite ever so slowly weakening you until one day you can’t seem to even get out of bed. I have painstakingly identified and documented SEVENTEEN ways this destruction occurs for person or company …

These can be alertly and militantly fought off, prevented. They can provide competitive advantage, if you find them in your competitors and exploit them. They can even be ripped out, and reversed. Each is the ultimate double-edged sword; double-­sided coin; danger and opportunity. These 17 malignancies affect you, the individual, and the team or organization alike.

The deep dive into these 17 is certain to also reveal opportunities you haven’t seen. I am constantly opening even very smart and successful clients’ eyes to ‘opportunities they never knew existed, waiting to be triggered, inside their existing businesses or launched from them. At a recent Titanium meeting*, I put a very smart entrepreneur INTO STUNNED SILENCE with facts about an income opportunity inherent (but latent) in his business, worth at least 3X to 5X what the net of the entire business is, as-is. At the next meeting, I am going to propose a collaborative effort by the entire group to capitalize on this. I have a client I took a single, relatively simple strategy to, moved from one field of business to their different one, “plus-ing” what they were already doing successfully, and it has paid them over $100-million, so far. (I’ll tell you the details of this one at RM2.0. It has the potential to convert many different kinds of businesses from vulnerable or fragile to invulnerable.)

What Will You Let Happen To Whatever You Have Left?

You may have seen me do a version of the life span/ years left illustration before. If you’re male, the average is 72. If you’re in good health and optimistic, make it 79. Deduct your current age. Nothing is guaranteed, but that’s a reasonable number to think about. For me, that number is a paltry, alarming 17 years left. Whatever your Number is, it is the reason to invest. To do what you just won’t do at home by yourself, for yourself: Stop. Think. Assess. Determine if things are moving along as you really want them to, and if not, what to do about it, now -so you don’t wake up one morning like my client and say, “How the hell did this happen?”

Of course, nobody thinks their house will catch fire or be burgled or their kid will get hooked on drugs or join ISIS via Facebook; these things happen only to other families. Nobody thinks their business could go from prosperity to crisis at sudden, lightning speed. It happens only to other (“mis-managed”) companies. Well, I personally, intimately sat in the back seat along for the ride, watching my father’s ultra-successful business and our family’s prosperity be destroyed and collapse at seemingly sudden, dramatic speed. Like having a hole shockingly open beneath our feet. Unfortunately, that business had none of the four sustainability factors baked into it. One day I had Rich Dad; a few months later I had Poor Dad.

If you stand with most in your field … if you do things the way most in your field do them – trying only to be incrementally better … if you are slow to radically, dynamically, creatively change, move, reinvent – it’s the fiery pit for you.

This, I think, makes a re-examination of what true Renegade-ism is, how it works, how to create and trigger it, and how to keep re-triggering it – The most important thing I can do with you this year. This can’t just be about “mechanics” – things to do and the 1-2-3, A-B-C instructions for doing them. This has to be about your PERSONAL READINESS to act, creatively, boldly, aggressively to protect what you’ve built so far and to leap up, over the crowd, and forward. To STAND ABOVE AND APART.

“If you are going to bother to think, you might as well think big,” so says Donald Trump. When Gene Simmons spoke at the GKIC SuperConference, he objected to the term “small business” – wondering aloud why anybody would agree to wear the “small” label. Actually, there are a lot of often convergent influences, individuals, entities and forces that work hard at keeping you thinking, creating, and earning small. It is all part of the New War Against Exceptionalism, to which you must be a conscientious objector.