Tuesday night I was watching the Kennedy Center Honors on CBS.  Sitting next to the Obamas was one of the honorees: Bruce Springsteen.

It was super cool watching him get honored by all the amazing people, having grown up listening to Springsteen and now working with his PR agent.  President Obama paid tribute earlier to Springsteen’s winning the laureate by saying, “I am the president, but he’s ‘The Boss’”.

How Springsteen or anyone achieves unreasonable success is through consistency.  Consistency in most of their actions.

I learned this lesson in the early 90s when I met a man named Tom Schutte.  Tom is president of Pratt Institute here in New York.  Each morning we would see each other at the gym.  He would be there at 7AM sharp swimming his laps for one hour.

Every day.  No matter where he was or if it was snowing.  When he travels he makes sure he stays at a hotel with a swimming pool.  No matter what he gets his laps in.

Tom is now in his 70s and we’ve become good friends over the years.  He has sat on the board of one of my companies and having gotten to know him has helped me really see the inner workings of a truly successful person.

He once told me that he doesn’t know where he would be without his swimming routine in the morning.  He found that the days he did not swim (only a few a year) he feels completely out of balance.

But that is how he does everything.  He has his weekly meetings with his senior staff, monthly meetings with his board of trustees, and is constantly in meetings looking to raise capital for the school.  His energy and enthusiasm is greater than most people half his age.

Tom has been acknowledged for really turning around Pratt into the major success it is today.

And Tom knows that swimming is the cornerstone of all this.  He knows what most high achievers know, and that is it is the consistency that produces powerful results over time.

The more consistent, the greater the results.

When you apply this to your marketing, follow ups, project management, networking events, public speaking, team building, relationship management, financial management, product research and development, environmental and social consciousness, and most importantly: your word, you will absolutely see the results.  Quickly.

I suspect you know this already, but are you doing it?

Here’s the deal:  we will always be lacking consistency in something.  Always.  The point is not to become consistent in everything, but to find those crucial points where it is paramount in who you are as a person and for your business.

For me it is consistency in planning and organizing my projects.

Since we are now wrapping up ’09, you may plan on putting together your annual New Year’s Resolutions.  But if you fail to develop a routine for consistency, all your planning and intending will create consistency… in the lack of results!

So to wrap up ’09, you may want to join both Bruce and Tom by making consistency a key part of your New Year.

Action Steps for the Week:

Make a list of the top five areas you want to be more consistent in.  Make sure they are basic and easy to deal with.  Not things like, “make more sales.”  Instead try, “Approach three new prospects each week.”

BTW:  If you are not consistent in exercising and/or eating well, this should be #1. No exceptions!

Next, take these top five and select two of them, three max.

Then make a routine to ensure they get handled on a regular basis, like no kidding.

To do this effectively, schedule these routines into your calendar now.  Put the day(s) and time(s) you will do them going forward.  Then protect them from getting moved around.

Done consistently, within three weeks these new routines should become habit.

WARNING:  you will do this easily in the beginning.  Eventually you will become tempted to give yourself permission to skip a day.  Do NOT do this!

Once you skip a day, you’ll give yourself permission again.  And again.  Very soon it will be off your agenda completely and you’ll be back to your old way of doing things.

Instead, when you get the urge to skip, remind yourself the importance of consistency and why you are doing what you are committed to doing.

Yesterday morning I was listening to Al Gore on CNN being grilled on all the hoopla around climate change:

• Is it really man-made? (Today less Americans think so than a few years ago.)
• Are environmentalists hypocritical for changing their position on nuclear power?
• What about ClimateGate?  (The recent stolen e-mails from scientists in regards to climate change.)

And as you probably well know, the reason these questions are so hot right now is this week started the UN’s Climate Change summit in Copenhagan, Denmark.  Over 90 heads of state will be attending and putting in their special interests, including Obama’s next week.

In the interview today Gore did well keeping the conversation focused on the core issue:  excessive carbon in the atmosphere has already started cooking us.  Little credible scientific evidence disputes this.

How does this relate to small business?

Simple:  when we can demonstrate how to make money removing carbon from the atmosphere, there will be a stampede of entrepreneurs heading for ‘dem hills!

To do this will take carbon negative companies.

Examples of carbon negative companies here in NYC:

• www.AliveStructures.com – green roofs and walls as well as ecological and container gardens.
• www.gothamgreens.com – Urban rooftop farming using hydroponics (just water, no soil.)
• www.re-char.org – bio fuel and fertilizers using biochar and pyrolysis technologies.
• http://rooftopfarms.org/ — Urban rooftop vegetable farms.

These green technology companies are really state-of-the-art.

I have personally met with and/or worked with these guys and some have been successful raising substantial dollars from outside sources to get their businesses to the next level.

Yet the early adopters that jump on board and mold these technologies to today’s market are the ones that are most likely to do extremely well.

A sustainable carbon negative company takes:

a)  Profitability (or for non-profits, financial stability.)

b)  Carbon sequestration—the conversion of carbon into oxygen, via photosynthesis, or its long-term storage in biomass or underground or underwater.

c)  A program for taking care of your stakeholders (employees, customers, suppliers, community, etc.)

d)  A plan for reducing your business’ carbon footprint.

While this can be technical stuff and is just now starting to be done, already some are showing very promising results.

Meanwhile, back in Copenhagen, I, along with many others, have a beef.  The agenda is reviewing some fairly complicated and somewhat convoluted suggestions for dealing with companies that are belching out carbon into the atmosphere.

Cap and trade, which includes carbon credits, trading and offsets is the key model being considered right now.  But it has some serious flaws and most likely will not be successful.

To learn the basics on Cap & Trade from an excellent brand new video, check out The Story of Cap & Trade by Annie Leonard.

A model I (as well as many others) feel would be much more successful is a simple one: to tax carbon emitters.  All of them/us!

So the leaders are in Copenhagen along with their financial experts trying and figure out how to manage the carbon crisis.  And I prefer to stay here in NYC helping small businesses build a solution from the ground up.

My two companies, BEST Coaches and The Shift Group are launching a pilot program The Green Business Mastery Program for early next year.  We will be working with green companies, helping increase their revenue by $100,000 and get fully funded while going carbon negative.

We intend to produce UnReasonable results much faster than what is expected to come out of Copenhagen.

Action Steps for the Week

Review your business model.  Calculate your carbon footprint (the amount of carbon you are producing)?  Even if you have a service based company.  And then how to reduce your carbon.

Next, look to see how you can actually convert carbon into oxygen.  As mentioned above, you can best do this using photosynthesis (live, green, leafy plants and trees).  How can you build this up in your home, office and community?

Perhaps you can make it a mission for your business to do this on the side?  If so, how can you then leverage it to gain attention to your commitment to carbon reduction on the planet?

Perhaps you can partner with a company to help you do this program.  Who can you contact for this…

today?