The Magic Table

A Monday Morning Memo for the Clients and Friends of Roy H. WilliamsYou walk into a room, empty but for a table carved from crystal. Girdling the table are 11 other persons whose occupations are similar to yours.You place ten thousand dollars on the table, your gift to the group. Each of the other 11 does the same. But this is a magic table. You don’t walk away with your own ten thousand. You get the entire hundred and twenty.And so does everyone else.The crystal table is a metaphor. Its benefits are real, but the stakes are much higher than a mere hundred and twenty thousand dollars. And you need not bring any cash. Bring instead the things you’ve learned over the years – your failures and successes, your experiments and discoveries, your golden nuggets of experience.And everyone else will bring theirs. Are you beginning to see the power of a Peer Group?My friend John Young says, “There’s a fundamental difference between a smart man and a wise man. A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid that mistake altogether.”When people share their experiences in an atmosphere of respect and mutual trust, a special kind of magic occurs: smart people become wise and their businesses begin to grow.The American Small Business Institute is about to launch Peer Groups of 12 persons each. Would you like to be in one of them?Guided by a moderator and an agenda, each group will teleconference weekly for exactly one hour.Extraordinary? Yes.Exclusive? Yes.Expensive? No.The new member fee will be $500 and first year dues will be just $200 per month. We anticipate there will be Peer Groups for gym owners, body shop owners, convenience store owners, restaurant owners and bookies.Just kidding about the bookies.We will, however, try to form an American Small Business Peer Group for just about any business category except jewelers. This is because jewelers already have the ultimate peer group available to them. Likewise, plumbers and HVAC contractors have extraordinary opportunity as well.You’re just one click away from complete details about the American Small Business Peer Groups.Heads Up: Next week’s Monday Morning Memo is going to be highly controversial. If I don’t talk myself out of it between now and then, I’ll probably lose a lot of subscribers.It's a subject far more personal than politics or religion.I wonder which me will win the debate.Yours,Roy H. Williams