For all of his gruff exterior, Reilly is an out-and-out softie when it comes to dogs. When his Labrador, Potter, emerged from the frozen lake like a drowned rat, Reilly noticed there was something wrong with the dog’s tail.

As the day wore on, it seemed the pain intensified as the dog’s moans escalated from whimpering to barking to shrieking.

Reilly called his old buddy, Séamus McManus, an iconic Galway vet, and explained the situation.

Having listened attentively to the facts, Seamus diagnosed that it was most likely a case of ‘limber tail syndrome’, a condition that Labradors are prone to, but one that would heal up quickly.

In the short term, however, it might help to give him a buffered aspirin – not paracetamol – to ease the pain and reduce the inflammation.

Reilly procured the tablets and proceeded to give the dog the pill. But try as he might, that dog refused to swallow the pill.

Reilly pushed it down his mouth, shoved it back his throat, and held his mouth closed but every time Potter would squirm out of his clutch and spit the pill out.

In desperation, Reilly called Séamus back and explained his quandary.

Séamus is a man of few words and calmly replied, “Hide the pill in peanut butter”.

“What?”, said Reilly.
“Hide the pill in peanut butter.”
You’d want to have seen that dog’s first experience of peanut butter. First he sniffed it. Then he licked it. And as large globules of drool fell

from his jaws, he proceeded to scoff the entire lot, pill and all.
It took about 20 minutes for the moaning to subside. Then the dog

turned on his back and commenced to snore loudly and sonorously.

INSIGHTS

• That’s the thing about pills. They can reduce pain, solve problems and virtually save your life. But in their raw state, they can be hard to swallow.

• Your ideas and communications are exactly like the pill in the story above. Your messages can solve great problems for your audience

but, first, you’ve got to get them to swallow the pill. In order to do that, it will help greatly to ‘hide the pill in peanut butter’.

• The single most powerful, effective and impactful way to make your ideas and messages stick is to present them in story format.

• Think of the last presentation you attended. The chances are it was a PowerPoint presentation, loaded with facts; 90% of all business presentations are fact-based.

• The problem with facts are that they’re hard to swallow and digest.

•  

   

  In 8 February 2011, bang smack in the middle of the worst economic recession business-owners had ever experienced, Reilly was facilitating a tense meeting in the hallowed Board Room of the Golf Club in Adare Manor, County Limerick. Gathered around were 12 business owners who were absolutely terrified at their prospects of surviving in business.
  For all his idiosyncrasies, Reilly was a skilled facilitator. He dived straight into the first of three questions he had built his consulting career upon: “What are you worried about?”
  The answers didn’t make for pretty listening. Successful and proactive business people had seen their fortunes destroyed by falling sales, bad debts and negative equity.
  “What can you do about it?”
  The response was almost unanimous. Extreme discipline would be needed to survive: the discipline to make extra sales calls each day; to wage a relentless war on costs; and to have uncomfortable conversations with customers, employees and suppliers alike.

“Paulie, the Irish word for discipline is smacht and there’s an ancient Irish proverb that proclaims: Ní bhíonn an rath, ach mara mbíonn an smacht (There’s no success without discipline).”

The group loved the word ‘smacht’ (pronounced smokt, where the ‘k’ is a soft throaty sound like the ‘ch’ in loch) and, out of sheer desperation, a mindset was agreed.

SUCCESS IS A FEW SIMPLE DISCIPLINES PRACTICED DAILY.

Over the following years, hundreds of business owners would participate in SMACHT Mastermind Groups throughout Ireland.

Almost all of them survived the recession. Many of them would go on to become super-successful and legends in their communities and industries.

What began first as a word and a mindset went on to become an operating system and a body of stories designed to make the understanding and application of those disciplines more palatable.

This book shares 52 ‘pills’ or simple disciplines, all presented as stories, that will help drive your business and personal success.

• • • • •