Are there really only three ways?

I’ve been wracking my brain to find a new one, but there’s no way around it.  Although there are hundreds of specific approaches, when you distill them all down, there are only three ways to expand a business.  Three main ways, and only three.  What are they?

1. Sell more to your existing customers
2. Find more new customers
3. Merge or acquire your competitors

You might ask, “What’s the point of talking about three when there are ‘hundreds of specific approaches’?”  That’s a reasonable question - it’s easy to think consolidating them obscures the opportunity.  But in fact, it’s just the opposite.

You see, most people don’t think much — about anything — and when they do they don’t never pay attention to how they’re thinking. So they never develop tools for how to do it.  Generalization is one of those tools. Generalization allows you to crunch (maybe it’s the opposite of crunching) a whole bunch of information into a few manageable pieces you can more easily manipulate in your mind.

That’s what we’ve just done here. Now that you realize there are only three ways to grow a business - whether you are measuring growth by sales, or cash flow, or profits, or market share, or number of customers… whatever, you can examine each of these three more carefully and see how they apply to your business.

And that’s what you should do next.  At least, that’s what I tell all my high-paying clients!

I just had a fast lunch at Panda Express (you know, you can substitute steamed vegetables for rice or lo mien, making this almost healthful). At the end, I cracked open my fortune cookie which said:

Counting Time Is Not So Important As Making Time Count.

I had to re-read it a few times to be sure, but I find it profound. Perhaps not the first part, but Making Time Count. That’s my new time management mantra.  Make sure that the time I have available, whether it’s 4 hours a week or 60,  is well used and never squandered.

There are people who argue that “time is not money” but I actually think it is at the very least, freely exchangeable. Time can definitely be converted into money (if your marketing systems are any good) and money can - within limits - be converted into time.

Make it count.

Yesterday I wrote that “perfection prevents progress,” and that was a mis-statement.  Just as “money” is not the root of all evil, but “love of money” may be, it is “perfectionism” that prevents progress.  Perfectionism is the love, desire and single-minded pursuit of perfection, and that is what truly slows things down. Perfection is great if you can have it.  Just don’t spend too much time going after it.

How many times have you said, “This (fill in the blank) still isn’t perfect…?”

I’m not guiltless – I find myself saying such things and try to stop myself in mid-sentence before the P-word gets out. I find that perfectionitis — as it’s called in the medical profession — is the number one impediment to my writing. I don’t mind speaking “imperfectly” but I struggle with publishing words that aren’t perf…. Argggghhhh, I can’t say it. P-P-P…

It doesn’t just slow writing, but marketing, product development, seminars, new ideas — it slows down everything.  Dedicated perfectionists would say that’s a good thing.  I say it slows down progress.

Perfection prevents progress.

How? The two number one skills (talk about being unreasonable) of an entrepreneur or leader of any kind are 1) coming up with great ideas, and 2) getting someone to carry them out.

And perfection delays execution. You wait and wait and wait and wait while first the idea, and then the execution, are perfected, and only finally do you bring your wares to market much later than otherwise.

There’s a reason why software has bugs when it first comes to market. It’s because it’s just too darn expensive to make it perfect and has much more value in the hands of users — even though it has problems. This is true of all sorts of other products and services as well. Even flawed, they are better in users and consumers hands, than if they were sitting back at the lab made perfect.

Progress comes from trial-and-error.

Get it out there in the world and see how well it works. Find the flaws and fix them in real time. That’s the unreasonable route to progress.

Your number one job as an extraordinary entrepreneur is to have an extraordinary vision.  Your number two task is to execute until that vision comes to life. 

If your vision is important enough you most likely can’t do it all yourself.  That’s why you build an organization in the first place. If you’re more of a lone ranger you have contractors, or outsource relationships, or joint venture partners.  Problem is, once you have these relationships, these people must be in action or you get nothing.

Key question: Does anyone do anything meaningful without someone asking him or her to, and without them promising to it in return?

I call this a request, and making requests is the thing that causes people to get things done.  Want something done? Just ask.  Little requests are easy.  People say yes.

But big requests carry their own little problem.

Most of us, even leaders, hate rejection. So we only ask for small things, easy-to-do things, wimpy things.  It’s rare that we ask for what we really want.

We cut back our expectations. Our scaled-down requests make it easy for others to say yes, but those requests get us results far below what we really want. After a while, we just accept the fact that we can’t ask too much from people, and our expectations drop without our realizing it.

Here’s a little secret that can make things easier for you:

A request is not a demand or an order. When you are “asking” (that’s what makes it a request) people can say “No.” Or they can counter-propose something different.  They can renegotiate.  

In each case, you’ll get something, and that something is always better than nothing. Often it’s a whole lot better.

So go ahead, and be unreasonable. 

Ask for the moon. 

Ask for whatever it is you need and want — no matter what.  

“Ask, and it shall be given you; . . . knock, and it shall be opened unto you,” says the Bible.  If you are going to knock, don’t be meek about it.  

Knock on the big doors. Knock loudly.

Someone might just answer.

Speaking of unreasonable requests, I have an unreasonable offer for you.

By now, you’ve probably read your copy of Being Unreasonable.  (If you haven’t, go get a copy at www.be-unreasonable .com, or wherever you buy books.) and you may be thinking about who you know who hasn’t read it yet. 

Go ahead, buy some copies and give them away.  Use Amazon’s free shipping and send them directly, or get a few copies and give them to colleagues, employees, friends.

I want to reward you for your generosity and give you a few gifts for buying multiple copies.

Buy 3 copies, send me a receipt, and I’ll send you an autographed copy of  Faster Than The Speed of Change.

Buy 13 copies and you can be my guest at the Unreasonable Profits teleseminar series.  (You can find out more about his at www.unreasonableprofits.com.)  That’s a great deal; it’s about the same price as the teleseminar, and you get to give the books as gifts besides.

Buy 54 copies, and I’ll spend two hours on the phone with you – all at one time or in several shorter meetings; whatever is worth more to you.  People typically pay $2,000 for a couple of hours for my world-class business advice – the kind that could change the future of your company and as you can imagine, I don’t have a lot of these “blocks” to give away, so act quickly if you’re interested.

Lastly - buy 144 copies of Be Unreasonable, you will be my guest at a closed-door round table that I’m holding for a few special guests.  There is no price tag on this rare event, but my conference room only holds 10, which leaves room for nine people.  This unique meeting will take place in November, and I guarantee you, being there will rocket your business.  And I mean rocket in every dimension.  We will change the way you think about your company, and if you’re like my clients – the ones who pay $15,000 for this kind of meeting – you could solve your most pressing problems and even figure out how to quickly double, triple, or grow your business ten-fold. 

That’s my unreasonable request.  Go out and buy some books.  Lots of them.  And send me the receipts.