Posted: Aug 9, 08 8:07am

This is a must have before you start your venture in my opinion. I wish I had it in high school or minimally before I started my real estate business 8 years ago. I instinctively gravitated toward certain adventurous careers (see profile) but never really put it together before.

I use the Kolbe Index (www.kolbe.com) to assess my strengths and instinctual way of functioning. This is a complement to any affective or cognitive (Myers Briggs, Winslow, IQ, skills testing, etc) or any other "figure out what am I good at" type of assessment. Clients include NASA, Microsoft, Intel, list goes on and on.

Listen to the brief audio (2 min) I recorded for overview and how we use it.

http://www.audioacrobat.com/play/WtcmvjMQ (copy/paste into window above is link is not direct)

If I can pass anything on it's this- knowing thyself is the best chance you have of being successful at business.

Re: Kolbe- my Kolbe A Index is 3-3-8-5 (Innovator) I do well w/ spoken word, promoting, lobbying, selling, innovating, brainstorming, getting things started, high tolerance for risk, etc.

My follow through is low, my fact finding is low, I am in middle on implementor (using tools to craft things/ create tangible objects)

There is no good/bad in Kolbe. Only instinctive strengths. Your best chance at bus. success is to focus on strengths and staff, partner, outsource around your "weaknesses".

Spending time trying to make weaknesses better will only lead to incremental improvements. Focusing on strengths and cultivating them will lead to exponential success and I'm the perfect guinea pig in using this in our business. They should teach this in every school in the country and around the world.

Our operations mgr is 9-6-2-2 (Strategic Planner) and my wife who is my right hand is 7-7-3-3 (Strategic Planner). They both are insistent in Fact Finder and my wife is insistent in Follow Through.

I could go on and on w/ all our team but you get the picture. We are improving every day how we work together to become more effective.

Last example- Along with being the investor/developer I've also been the project manager on our real estate projects. This req. insistence in Fact Finding and Follow Through, both of which I'm resistant in.

When I was away for 6 wks on a transatlantic sailing trip my wife ran our projects. When I returned our contractor said "Todd, no offense, but while you were away, things ran very smoothly...". He thought I'd be offended, but knowing my Kolbe I knew I was the wrong person to run the day to day projects.

I can find the property, make the deal, figure out how to make it work, get it sold on the back end, develop relationships, promote the project, etc, but doing the day to day mgmt is not best use of my time. Our operations manager/partner was brought on for exactly that reason.

You have no idea how smoothly our projects run now that I'm not managing them and I'm free to do what I do best.

I hope this is helpful and let me know if the audio was helpful as well. We're experimenting more with audio/video and feedback would be great.

I wish you the best

Todd

you can reach me directly - todd@anchordevelopment.net / gift4lifenow@gmail.com I check both daily.