I’m kind of shocked that I haven’t written and published more about my connection to Steve Farber and Extreme Leadership more than I have.  Steve Farber is author of The Radical Leap, The Radical Edge, Greater Than Yourself and the compliation of the first two books, The Radical Leap Re-Energized.

I think it was June 2004 the first time I heard about Steve Farber and Extreme Leadership.  I was recovering from one of the toughest parts of my life.  I had crashed my business and moved to south Florida.  I was leaving my hometown of Birmingham, AL to start over in the currency and commodities options and futures business.  It was after my first two attempts at the brokerage business that had been fruitless.  It had actually landed me living on a picnic table in a park in Coral Springs, FL and waiting tables at Chili’s onUniversity Boulevard.  I moved to North Palm Beach, FL with the help of a few “friends” and starting my life over…again.

I was also Fast Company magazine’s now defunct Volunteer Coordinator for the Entrepreneurship and Small Business Special Interest Group.  It was through Fast Company magazine that I first came in contact with Steve Farber.  Steve had been a vice president and “official mouthpiece” for The Tom Peters Company; that immediately got my attention.  I had been in touch with The Tom Peters Company briefly in the late 90’s.  Steve’s having worked with THE business guru (in my eyes) made perfect sense.

At the time, I was working out of the Palm Beach Community College library that was open to the public and waiting tables at night.  I had lost my computer about a year earlier when I had lost everything.  I was desperate to figure out why things had turned out so badly and desperate to validate myself as an entrepreneur.

My introduction to Extreme Leadership came as a free book called The Radical Leap that came to me through the magazine.  I was honored that I would get a copy and that my opinion would be so valued.  Almost immediately the book resonated with me.  Here I was, in one of the toughest times of my life because I was doing what I loved to do. There were no instruction manuals and there still aren’t for entrepreneurship.  The best way to learn is to get out there and do it, no matter how many times you fail or how painful those failures are.  Success is still the goal.  If your goal is to discover failure, I can guarantee that you will find it and even find people who will help you find it.  That’s exactly what The Radical Leap said to me.

Here is one of the most important excerpts from The Radical Leap Re-Energized:

“Skateboarders developed that style [baggy shorts] so they could wear kneepads under their clothes.  But most people who wear baggy clothes have never even touched a skateboard.  They’re called posers; they want you to think they’re risk takers, and real skaters can’t stand them. Posers try to grab the skaters’ glory without putting themselves at risk.  But wearing the pants doesn’t make you a skater, wearing spandex doesn’t make you a cyclist, looking at the world through Oakley shades doesn’t make you a snowboarder, saying dude doesn’t make you a surfer and, in business, printing ‘leader’ on your calling card doesn’t mean squat.  People who wear ‘leader’ as a label without putting themselves wholeheartedly into the act of leading are just like the fashion hounds; they’re the posers of the business world.”

I think I cried when I read this.  I had lost everything in business, but I was doing everything right.  I was learning by putting “my skin in the game” and getting torn up doing it.  I was an Extreme Leader; I just hadn’t figured things out yet (and I still haven’t).

That was eight years ago and Extreme Leadership is needed more than ever from all of us. Steve Farber’s The Radical Leap and the sequel, The Radical Edge, have been republished in one volume called The Radical Leap Re-Energized.  The copy Steve sent me was much better than the one I was going to buy from Amazon because of the personal note Steve wrote in it (I have to disclose that by law now).

Steve’s book is not a “cure all, fix all” solution of any kind and neither is Extreme Leadership.  It’s the exact opposite.  It’s about taking more risks, putting more skin in the game and getting better results.  It doesn’t give you any step by step methods.  Those are your responsibility.

If you value leadership at all in your business and your life, then I highly recommend that you purchase The Radical Leap Re-Energized and make it part of your business and your life.  There is no other way to become an Extreme Leader than to pursue it, no matter how many times it hurts.  For more and immediate information on Steve Farber and Extreme Leadership visit http://www.stevefarber.com