Nat Crawford - Executive Coach, Speaker, Leader

In my recent blog, What To Do When Life Throws You a Curveball , I talked about a major life event. It was and is major…and manageable.  We all experience events and experiences that are unexpected. I have recently and chances are so have you.  This reminded me one of the most powerful equations in business (and life). I first came across Jack Canfield’s famous equation E + R = O seven years ago, when my chiropractor Dr. Leif Olson gave me The Success Principles . At that time I didn’t appreciate it like I do now. As far as I’m concerned, it is one of the most powerful and correct equation in business and life. Why? Let me break down the equation for you. E = Event -- We all have events or experiences. Each day we have big events, small events, good experiences, bad experiences, normal experiences, and unpredicted experiences. Each day, each moment we are having them In 12 short years of marriage, my wife and I have had many experiences and events. We’ve had job lo...

I don’t know about you, but there have been different stages of my life where I asked myself “why am I not getting the results I want.” I then go into a process of analysis and asking question after question. It is can be almost maddening as I go round and round. I recently entered that circle. Thankfully I had a conversation with one of my biggest cheerleaders: my mom. As a former successful entrepreneur and business owner, she knows what it takes to be a standout in any career. Our conversation went like this: “How are you doing, Nat?” “Frustrated, Mom.” “Why’s that?" “Because I am stuck! I cannot figure out how to take our business from good to great.” She paused and then said these revelatory words: “You’ll be great when you stand out.” Wow. She was right. She then provided me with 4 powerful traits of standout entrepreneurs: They destroy the box. Stepping out of your box is not easy. To be a standout entrepreneur, you need to be different. You need to be yourself. You ...

Depressed. I couldn’t even get off the couch. It was the 29 th birthday and I was down and out. “What’s wrong?” my wife asked. “I’m a loser,” I said.   “What are you talking about? “She said. “I’m 29 and I’ve accomplished nothing” I replied. Of course that wasn’t true, but as far as my career I had not achieved what I had wanted. I had spent a few years in my early 20’s owning and operating a small marketing company. That was fun and a good school of hard knocks. I had pursued opening up a salon to no avail. So there I was laying on the couch hitting bottom. I knew I was made for more. I had an idea of what God wanted for me. And thankfully, He allowed me to hit “career-life” bottom to get me to pursue my passion and goals. Many people ask, “Okay, so what’s the secret formula to getting life back on track and doing what you really want to do? It’s not that complicated – just hard. Even so, I believe everyone can accomplish their career life goals ...

Being an entrepreneur is by far one of the most rewarding, fun, and challenging careers anyone can choose. One of the hardest urges you have to continually fight is the desire to target EVERYONE as a potential client. But by targeting everyone, you ultimately target NO ONE. In my early days of becoming a consultant and coach, I told myself “Nat, you need to go after this particular prospect. They have X dollars and X desire to grow and change. They are in charge of X employees and are in these X industries.” Now that was good. I was clear. And then I asked myself this question, “But what if someone who doesn’t match that description asks for my services. What would you do?” “Take the business! I need to eat,” was my response. This mindset held me back. By devaluing my target audience, my marketing efforts become shotgun. My time commitment to trial and error became weak. My business was average. But then I did some soul searching and some external digging. Through this process I...

It was 2005. I sat in my house. Alone. I remember the night quite clearly. I had just ran to a local taco shop and grabbed a six pack of tacos and a pound of mexi-fries. Sat down in my chair. Put on a movie. I popped open a beer. For about a millisecond, I thought “bachin it…too sweet.” Then I realized that was a lie. I had screwed it all up. You see just two weeks previous, I hurt my wife. Details don’t matter here. The point is I hurt her. She rightly took time to let God work on me.  She also rightly took time to work on her. Those two weeks we refocused and surrendered our lives and marriage back to God, were monumental. They were monumental for many reasons. One such reason was this reality check:  in order to achieve success, you need a band of brothers or sisters.  Success in these regards is ambiguous. It could be marital, financial, entrepreneurial, or something else.  Here are three reasons why you need to have that Accountability . A b...