Key business advice for success
by Joe · 82 things on NewTwos
- Tell Your Story Better
- Story is the source code of the human experience.
- It's how we make sense of the universe and give meaning to the things in our life.
- Without story:
- Your wife is just a stranger
- Your childhood home is just a pile of bricks
- Your wedding ring is just a hunk of metal
- And it's the same for your business.
- Story is the vehicle through which your customers connect with your company.
- Learning to tell your story in a compelling, impactful, and influential way is an easy way to double your business, fast.
- What's the True Cost?
- Opportunity Cost is hard to quantify on a spreadsheet, which is why we tend to overvalue the "hard" cost of dollars leaving our pocket.
- Missed opportunity is almost ALWAYS more expensive in the long run than the cost of capital in the short-term.
- Concrete example: Hiring.
- There are only ever two times to hire:
- Too soon
- Too late
- The cost of hiring too soon is capital.
- The cost of hiring too late is missed opportunities.
- The cost of the second is almost always greater than the cost of the first.
- Execute the Fundamentals Daily
- Forget massive action...
- Success is often simply the result of tiny daily decisions compounded over decades.
- Fundamentals executed with excellence wins championships.
- What are the fundamentals that:
- Generate and Convert Leads
- Deliver exceptional experience to my customers
- Decrease churn and increase lifetime value
- Literally all the growth you could ever want is on the backside of these three questions.
- Belief Precedes Excellence (and failure)
- Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right.
- Most business initiatives fail before they even get out of committee because the group doesn't BELIEVE it'll work.
- If there's any doubt... you will fail.
- Now, that doesn't mean you go through life with a delusional self-belief that everything is always going to work out perfectly.
- But it does mean that most any belief held with sufficient conviction can be made true.
- People show up differently when they show up with absolute certainty that what they're doing will work.
- The converse of the above is also true.
- Your job as the leader is to be a reality distortion field that infuses your team with belief at every step of their journey.
- Never Assume You Know The Answer
- There's magic in the follow-up.
- But only if you NEVER assume the answer is NO.
- As a larger rule for business:
- The person who thinks they already have the right answer stops asking the right questions.
- This has been my downfall more often than not.
- Sales is Service
- If your product/service can GENUINELY help people, then don't you have a moral obligation to tell as many people as possible?
- When viewed through that lens:
- Sales isn't sleazy... it's service.
- Now get out of your own way and go serve somebody.
- Clearly Defining the Problem is Half the Solution
- "I just don't have enough time."
- Wrong. You don't lack time...
- You lack Clarity, Focus, and Discipline.
- Most people just solve whatever problem pops up and screams at them the loudest in any given moment.
- And they do this because they don't know what is the ACTUAL priority in any given moment.
- They lack Clarity.
- This is why a problem well defined is half solved.
- Remember: Speed is the result of clarity.
- Optimize Your Resource Allocation
- Business is nothing more than the allocation of scarce resources.
- Here are your most important resources as an entrepreneur:
- Energy
- Skills
- People
- Capital
- Technology
- You can never ask yourself too often:
- "Am I allocating my resources as effectively as possible?"
- Start at the End
- Most people are mindlessly following a path laid out for them by society.
- But still... charting your own course is difficult.
- And we often find ourselves walking in the easily visible steps left by those who came before.
- "I want to build a billion dollar company."
- "I want to run a team of 100 people."
- "I want to disrupt this industry."
- But do you really?
- Maybe yes.
- Maybe no.
- Only YOU can answer that question, but it is perhaps the most important question of all...
- Otherwise you might look up one day and realize you spent your life climbing the wrong mountain.
- ---
- Source (@AnthonyVicino)