Don’t Be a Mosquito in a Nudist Colony

/in /by

Why Lifetime Goals are so important to what I do tomorrow, and why tomorrow is so important to my Lifetime Goals.

The mosquito in the nudist colony is thinking, “I know what to do, I just don’t know where to begin.” As business owners, we might have a similar experience, either not knowing where to begin, or not knowing what to do next to take our business to maturity. We have so little time – prioritizing what to do next is critical to our success.

How do we know what to do next? Frankly, there is no way to know unless we have the end game clearly in mind. Without it, we’re shooting a gun in the woods and calling it bear hunting. Or my favorite – “he who aims at nothing hits it every time.”

How do we understand the importance of tying each day to our future? If we focus on just today, we claim victories that are only imposters. If we focus too much on the future, we get fogged or discouraged by the lack of measurable progress today.

The key – always keep today’s action plans and our future Ideal Situation in clear view at the same time, and continuously make the connection between the two.

Here’s the progession that clearly gives us that connection:

  1. Lifetime Goals – what are the things I want to do the rest of my life that I can never check off? This is why I’m alive and why I do business. I’m using my business to get me to my lifetime goals. If I don’t know my Lifetime Goals, I’ve got no clue why I’m in business. Get clarity on your Lifetime Goals – it is foundational to understanding how today matters.
  2. Ideal Situation – FYI – Retirement is a bankrupt idea. Don’t retire, just get into an Ideal Situation for living out your Lifetime Goals – it’s a lot more fun, meaningful, and purposeful. And you don’t have to wait until your 63. You can arrive at your Ideal Situation at 40 or much earlier if you’re intentional about it.

    Critical to escaping the Mosquito/Nudist Colony problem – WHEN do I want to be at that Ideal Situation? Pick an exact date and work toward it (he who aims at nothing…)

  3. Business Maturity Date – usually the same as your Ideal Situation. Pick it – work toward it.
  4. At maturity, what revenue does my business need to generate so I can buy my Ideal Situation in which I can best live out my Lifetime Goals?
  5. How much time and money do I need in my Ideal Situation? What kind of house, car, boat, plane will I need? Do I have a non-profit or am I working in one? Is travel important? What revenue does my business need to generate over the next 5 years to get me to my Ideal Situation? Over the next 3 years? Over the next year? Knowing this is a huge step toward knowing how today fits into the rest of my life.
  6. One-Page Business Strategy – what do I need to do the next 12 months to get closer to a mature business?
    1. Vision, Mission – the big picture for why I’m in business and what my mission is as a business person.
    2. Strategies – the ways in which I make money (building websites, developing ISP software, etc.) THREE YEARS
    3. Objectives – The measurable waypoints for the next 12 months, next 3 months, next month – 12 MONTHS
    4. Action Plans – The actual actions I need to take each week/month/quarter to get to the one year waypoint, on my way to developing a mature business, that can support my Ideal Situation, so I can focus on my Lifetime Goals. It all comes together here.

If we know our Lifetime Goals, those goals we can never check off, and most importantly, WHEN we want to be in our Ideal Situation for living out those lifetime goals, we can then back into what we need to be doing tomorrow to get there. If you don’t know what the end game looks like, what in the world are you doing in business in the first place?

Continuously connecting your daily activity and your Lifetime Goals is the key to clarity and to knowing if each day is counting. Don’t be a mosquito in a nudist colony. Know what to do, where to begin, and what to do next. Connect your daily activity to your Lifetime Goals and watch the fireworks begin.

Don’t Be a Mosquito in a Nudist Colony

/in /by

Why Lifetime Goals are so important to what I do tomorrow, and why tomorrowis so important to my Lifetime Goals.

The mosquito in the nudist colony is thinking, “I know what to do, I just don’t know where to begin.” As business owners, we might have a similar experience, either not knowing where to begin, or not knowing what to do next to take our business to maturity. We have so little time – prioritizing what to do next is critical to our success.

How do we know what to do next? Frankly, there is no way to know unless we have the end game clearly in mind. Without it, we’re shooting a gun in the woods and calling it bear hunting. Or my favorite – “he who aims at nothing hits it every time.”

How do we understand the importance of tying each day to our future? If we focus on just today, we claim victories that are only imposters. If we focus too much on the future, we get fogged or discouraged by the lack of measurable progress today.

The key – always keep today’s action plans and our future Ideal Situation in clear view at the same time, and continuously make the connection between the two.

Here’s the progession that clearly gives us that connection:

  1. Lifetime Goals – what are the things I want to do the rest of my life that I can never check off? This is why I’m alive and why I do business. I’m using my business to get me to my lifetime goals. If I don’t know my Lifetime Goals, I’ve got no clue why I’m in business. Get clarity on your Lifetime Goals – it is foundational to understanding how today matters.
  2. Ideal Situation – FYI – Retirement is a bankrupt idea. Don’t retire, just get into an Ideal Situation for living out your Lifetime Goals – it’s a lot more fun, meaningful, and purposeful. And you don’t have to wait until your 63. You can arrive at your Ideal Situation at 40 or much earlier if you’re intentional about it.

    Critical to escaping the Mosquito/Nudist Colony problem – WHEN do I want to be at that Ideal Situation? Pick an exact date and work toward it (he who aims at nothing…)

  3. Business Maturity Date – usually the same as your Ideal Situation. Pick it – work toward it.
  4. At maturity, what revenue does my business need to generate so I can buy my Ideal Situation in which I can best live out my Lifetime Goals?
  5. How much time and money do I need in my Ideal Situation? What kind of house, car, boat, plane will I need? Do I have a non-profit or am I working in one? Is travel important? What revenue does my business need to generate over the next 5 years to get me to my Ideal Situation? Over the next 3 years? Over the next year? Knowing this is a huge step toward knowing how today fits into the rest of my life.
  6. One-Page Business Strategy – what do I need to do the next 12 months to get closer to a mature business?
    1. Vision, Mission – the big picture for why I’m in business and what my mission is as a business person.
    2. Strategies – the ways in which I make money (building websites, developingISP software, etc.) THREE YEARS
    3. Objectives – The measurable waypoints for the next 12 months, next 3 months, next month – 12 MONTHS
    4. Action Plans – The actual actions I need to take each week/month/quarter to get to the one year waypoint, on my way to developing a mature business, that can support my Ideal Situation, so I can focus on my Lifetime Goals. It all comes together here.

If we know our Lifetime Goals, those goals we can never check off, and most importantly, WHEN we want to be in our Ideal Situation for living out those lifetime goals, we can then back into what we need to be doing tomorrow to get there. If you don’t know what the end game looks like, what in the world are you doing in business in the first place?

Continuously connecting your daily activity and your Lifetime Goals is the key to clarity and to knowing if each day is counting. Don’t be a mosquito in a nudist colony. Know what to do, where to begin, and what to do next. Connect your daily activity to your Lifetime Goals and watch the fireworks begin.

Why Social Networking (locally and digitally) Can Be a Bad Idea.

/in /by

148.7 – The maximum number of social relationships any average human being can handle, according to research by anthropologist Robin Dunbar (1998) and others.

73,395 – The maximum number of people following one person on Twitter.com (right now.)

Houston, we have a problem. Are we wasting our time with social networking?

As Craig Harrell of Rainmaker Marketing says, “A rubber-banded stack of business cards is not a sales strategy.” We have transferred the impulse to gather stacks of business cards from local networking events, to gathering stacks of “followers” on the internet. Without an intentional strategy, neither one will make us more money in less time. We can use our digital relationships to build business, but not the way we think.

We’ve been taught that the best way to grow our business is to go WIDE, when actually the best way is to go DEEP. The fact is that hundreds to thousands of tepid contacts (these aren’t relationships) online or at a networking event don’t hold a candle to one strategic alliance partner who will feed us business on an ongoing basis. Go deep, not wide.

Can you go deep and still have a wide digital set of “followers”. You bet.

It’s the difference between networking and building a network, the difference between collecting contacts and developing connections.

While 148.7 is the maximum number of social relationships we can have, almost none of us are taking advantage of this relational capacity to grow our business. If you have more than one or two alliance partners truly feeding you customers, you are in an elite group. And yet I’m convinced that the majority of businesses under $50 million a year can be built on one to two dozen truly committed strategic alliance partnerships.

It’s not easy to find a friend. You sift through hundreds if not thousands of people in your life over many years to come up with those few people you feel comfortable letting your hair down around. It’s no easier to find a strategic alliance partner, and we don’t have years in business to do it. That’s where a WIDE reach can lead to a few DEEP relationships that will increase the revenue in your business.

Having 73,395 followers on Twitter is, by itself, largely meaningless, but with a very powerful potential. As with the analog (physical) world, it is our own intentionality that determines whether anything will come out of this stack of contacts to make us more money in less time.

Which of these people are we truly connecting with? Which ones can I truly serve by connecting them to others or to resources to build their business? Zero in on those few relationships at a time and see where they take you. Then go back and dive into the pile of contacts and zero in on a few more. Keep doing this until you find those few people who you can rain on and who can rain on your business for years to come.

The other advantage of having 73,395 people following you is that this “tribal identity” of being on Twitter together gives you a built in WIDE audience that will likely always be a better channel for future clients than a shotgun advertising campaign. If you want to introduce a new product or service, there is no question this is the best place to start – with people who already have a passing familiarity with you.

Continue to develop a following. Get it as big as you can – it’s much better than stone cold advertising. But always be mining this growing group of followers to find the few that you can really serve, the ones you can send clients or customers to regularly. They will be able to do the same for you (hint – the best way to train them to help you is to help them first.)

The short story – Go deep, not just wide. Whether locally or digitally, stop networking and build a network instead. Stop making contacts, and develop connections. You’ll make more money in less time.

Why Social Networking (locally and digitally) Can Be a Bad Idea.

/in /by

148.7 – The maximum number of social relationships any average human being can handle, according to research by anthropologist Robin Dunbar (1998) and others.

73,395 – The maximum number of people following one person on Twitter.com (right now.)

Houston, we have a problem. Are we wasting our time with social networking?

As Craig Harrell of Rainmaker Marketing says, “A rubber-banded stack of business cards is not a sales strategy.” We have transferred the impulse to gather stacks of business cards from local networking events, to gathering stacks of “followers” on the internet. Without an intentional strategy, neither one will make us more money in less time. We can use our digital relationships to build business, but not the way we think.

We’ve been taught that the best way to grow our business is to go WIDE, when actually the best way is to go DEEP. The fact is that hundreds to thousands of tepid contacts (these aren’t relationships) online or at a networking event don’t hold a candle to one strategic alliance partner who will feed us business on an ongoing basis. Go deep, not wide.

Can you go deep and still have a wide digital set of “followers”. You bet.

It’s the difference between networking and building a network, the difference between collecting contacts and developing connections.

While 148.7 is the maximum number of social relationships we can have, almost none of us are taking advantage of this relational capacity to grow our business. If you have more than one or two alliance partners truly feeding you customers, you are in an elite group. And yet I’m convinced that the majority of businesses under $50 million a year can be built on one to two dozen truly committed strategic alliance partnerships.

It’s not easy to find a friend. You sift through hundreds if not thousands of people in your life over many years to come up with those few people you feel comfortable letting your hair down around. It’s no easier to find a strategic alliance partner, and we don’t have years in business to do it. That’s where aWIDE reach can lead to a few DEEP relationships that will increase the revenue in your business.

Having 73,395 followers on Twitter is, by itself, largely meaningless, but with a very powerful potential. As with the analog (physical) world, it is our own intentionality that determines whether anything will come out of this stack of contacts to make us more money in less time.

Which of these people are we truly connecting with? Which ones can I truly serve by connecting them to others or to resources to build their business? Zero in on those few relationships at a time and see where they take you. Then go back and dive into the pile of contacts and zero in on a few more. Keep doing this until you find those few people who you can rain on and who can rain on your business for years to come.

The other advantage of having 73,395 people following you is that this “tribal identity” of being on Twitter together gives you a built in WIDE audience that will likely always be a better channel for future clients than a shotgun advertising campaign. If you want to introduce a new product or service, there is no question this is the best place to start – with people who already have a passing familiarity with you.

Continue to develop a following. Get it as big as you can – it’s much better than stone cold advertising. But always be mining this growing group of followers to find the few that you can really serve, the ones you can send clients or customers to regularly. They will be able to do the same for you (hint – the best way to train them to help you is to help them first.)

The short story – Go deep, not just wide. Whether locally or digitally, stop networking and build a network instead. Stop making contacts, and develop connections. You’ll make more money in less time.

What a fighter pilot can teach us about increasing sales.

/in /by

In the gulf war, before an F15 pilot friend of mine went into a dogfight, he would turn off all but a couple of his heads up warning and information systems . Why? Because the “feature-rich” environment created so much information overload that it kept him from being focused on the two things he needed to focus on – shooting the other guy down and staying alive. What does that have to do with increasing sales?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, as with most software, suffers from the same “feature-rich” problem. And it actually has the opposite effect than intended – it actually keeps us from making more money.

The key to making more money in less time is not feature rich CRM software, but simplicity, intentionality, and speed of execution.

We actually think more is better, but our usage doesn’t gel with our thinking. Some say that 90% of MS Word buyers use only 10% of the features. I would guess the gap is even bigger. In CRM software, we over-pay for a feature rich environment that should be turned off so we can concentrate on the two things we should focus on – 1) moving people through the sales pipeline while 2) growing raving fans of our existing clients.

Why do we buy CRM software? Largely because our addiction to information, reports, and dizzying statistics makes us feel like we’re actually growing our business when we’re just being really organized. “I have a great database, I must be doing well in sales.” This is EFFICIENCY without EFFECTIVENESS.

What we really need to build our sales:

  1. Simplicity – a) who are we talking to, b) where are they in the buying process, and c) what is the next thing and date I need to do to move them forward? With exceptions, the rest of the features are just distractions to make us feel like we’re working when we’re really just playing office. Go talk to people.
  2. Intentionality – the key isn’t more info – it’s having a specific date for every action that moves the relationships forward – just get out and get it done on that date.
  3. Speed of Execution – stop looking at your spreadsheets/CRM and go talk to people. A robust CRM with tortured reports is not the basis for making more money. Speed of execution is the #1 indicator of success among successful sales people. Time kills deals.

I need something simple that will get me out of my office, off my computer, away from my database and in front of my clients and potential clients, developing referrals, and making more money in less time. A CRM that could do that would be worth buying. I haven’t found one yet.

I use a spreadsheet that tells me who I’m talking to, where they are in the process, and the next thing/date for moving them forward. Then I go do it. It isn’t very impressive, and I can’t print out graphs, charts, and complex reports. All it does is help me make more money in less time.

Do you have a simple pipeline management system that serves you and keeps you moving forward? (FYI – having no tracking system is even worse than having something that is too complex.) Turn off all the distracting features that aren’t focused directly on making more money, and get focused on speed of execution in doing the two-three things that will bring you more clients. Happy hunting!

What a fighter pilot can teach us about increasing sales

/in /by

In the gulf war, before an F15 pilot friend of mine went into a dogfight, he would turn off all but a couple of his heads up warning and information systems . Why? Because the “feature-rich” environment created so much information overload that it kept him from being focused on the two things he needed to focus on – shooting the other guy down and staying alive. What does that have to do with increasing sales?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, as with most software, suffers from the same “feature-rich” problem. And it actually has the opposite effect than intended – it actually keeps us from making more money.

The key to making more money in less time is not feature rich CRM software, butsimplicity, intentionality, and speed of execution.

We actually think more is better, but our usage doesn’t gel with our thinking. Some say that 90% of MS Word buyers use only 10% of the features. I would guess the gap is even bigger. In CRM software, we over-pay for a feature rich environment that should be turned off so we can concentrate on the two things we should focus on – 1) moving people through the sales pipeline while 2)growing raving fans of our existing clients.

Why do we buy CRM software? Largely because our addiction to information, reports, and dizzying statistics makes us feel like we’re actually growing our business when we’re just being really organized. “I have a great database, I must be doing well in sales.” This is EFFICIENCY without EFFECTIVENESS.

What we really need to build our sales:

  1. Simplicity – a) who are we talking to, b) where are they in the buying process, and c) what is the next thing and date I need to do to move them forward? With exceptions, the rest of the features are just distractions to make us feel like we’re working when we’re really just playing office. Go talk to people.
  2. Intentionality – the key isn’t more info – it’s having a specific date for every action that moves the relationships forward – just get out and get it done on that date.
  3. Speed of Execution – stop looking at your spreadsheets/CRM and go talk to people. A robust CRM with tortured reports is not the basis for making more money. Speed of execution is the #1 indicator of success among successful sales people. Time kills deals.

I need something simple that will get me out of my office, off my computer, away from my database and in front of my clients and potential clients, developing referrals, and making more money in less time. A CRM that could do that would be worth buying. I haven’t found one yet.

I use a spreadsheet that tells me who I’m talking to, where they are in the process, and the next thing/date for moving them forward. Then I go do it. It isn’t very impressive, and I can’t print out graphs, charts, and complex reports. All it does is help me make more money in less time.

Do you have a simple pipeline management system that serves you and keeps you moving forward? (FYI – having no tracking system is even worse than having something that is too complex.) Turn off all the distracting features that aren’t focused directly on making more money, and get focused on speed of execution in doing the two-three things that will bring you more clients. Happy hunting!