Yesterday I was thinking about a conversation I’d had with someone in Formula 5. Her business had everything going for it, except there was never going to be enough to sell of it, to make the business really profitable.  This got me thinking about how many people fall in love with an idea and decide to turn it in to a business.  Sometimes that idea works and builds wealth and provides a lifetime of fulfillment.  Just as often, it leads to endless frustration and failure.  Wouldn’t it be great to be able to figure out which, ahead of time?

Part II

So this critical idea got everyone’s attention, and a bit later in the presentation another participant wanted to know something very important. “Since,” he said, “we’re all hard working and pretty lazy at the same time, what does it take to make this kind of change and to make it last?”

My answer is simple. You’ve got to have a big goals and an inspiring vision if you want any kind of meaningful change. Otherwise, why bother?

Part I

Yesterday I was speaking at one of our 37 Fatal Business Mistakes workshops.  I was talking about the kinds of changes a business owner needs to make if he or she wants to quickly speed up their business’ growth.   One of the most powerful recommendations I make is that you to figure out where you are continually spending your time, and lump those activities into things that make a big difference, and things that don’t.

If you shift your time and focus from one group to the other, the results will be huge.  For instance,  one CEO (we’ll call her Dana) told me that she spent about 8 hours a week out of 55 on accounting and payables issues.  Of course there is no excuse for this, but since recognition is the first step on the road to recovery,  knowing where the time goes can be very good thing.  I asked what she would do with the 8 hours if she freed herself from “payables.” 

I just discovered this note left over from writing Be Unreasonable:

“All unreasonable ideas violate some accepted wisdom.”

That’s a pretty good acid test. If you want to know if your ideas are “unreasonable” then make sure your are contravening something that you were heretofore certain was true.

I just read this following passage in Gary Kasparov’s new book, “How Life Imitates Chess.” He has been writing about the phase of a chess game called “nothing to do,” and how greats such as Petrosian and Karpov used this time to eke out small positional advantages.

“In life, there is no such obligation to move. If you can’t find a useful plan, you can watch television, stick with business as usual, and believe that no news is good news. Human beings are brilliantly creative at finding ways to pass time in unconstructive ways. At these times, the true strategist shines by finding the means to make progress, to strengthen his position and prepare for the inevitable conflict. And conflict, we cannot forget, is inevitable.”

Start here: Answer the question, “What am I trying to accomplish?”

Then, “What are some of the ways that can happen?” This will give you the high order possible strategies.

Next, validate that this is, in some way, possible. Use internal and external market research.

Your research opens up the Gap Analysis, and starts to answer the question, What is needed to get THERE?

Consider, “How different is that from WHERE YOU ARE NOW?” and “What are the ways to close the gaps?”

Prioritize which gaps are most important AND most closable AND Have the biggest payoff.

It’s been a very distracting few weeks, and I keep telling myself that I have to post, otherwise the blog might get stale. Perhaps it’s a time management problem, but of course, that can be fixed. Perhaps business is just too good, and I certainly don’t want a fix for that!

In any case, I was reading Jerry West writing about… what else, blogs…

He referenced something that I feel should be pasted backwards on my forehead so that I can see it every time I look in a mirror. It’s an old Chinese proverb:

I watch a lot of movies – all sorts, but in my movie tastes I’m not that evolved. I especially like eighties and nineties action pictures.  I really like movies like the Die Hard series and Lethal Weapon, even the new version of the Bourne Ultimatum.  And what I’ve learned from watching of these kinds of movies is that the hero – the one who kills all the bad guys – does not win by hunkering down, staying in hiding and waiting for them to come to him.  He wins by running right out in front of the villains – charging towards them with everything he’s got and screaming at the top of his lungs.  He lunges towards the competition firing – as they say – with both barrels.   He puts himself at tremendous risk and doesn’t quit until it’s over.  That’s the unreasonable approach.

Since the publication of Be Unreasonable, my consulting and speaking activities have multiplied dramatically.  While I didn’t have a ton of “free time” before the book came out, I seem to have less and less at an increasing rate.  This is not a complaint, just an observation.  I’m finding that my time is at a premium, and my goal is to use it as effectively as possible. I wrote a while ago that “time management” was a myth, and that you couldn’t really manage time per se.  I still agree with this.  But without a doubt you can have a great effect by choosing what you do with the limited time available. 

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.