Don't Get Good At What You Don't Want To Be Doing

I was leaving the Gladstone Hotel recently when the title on a flyer caught my eye ~ Don’t Get Good At What You Don’t Want To Be Doing. The flyer was for a workshop put on by Morena Media to help artists get more clients. The title perfectly encapsulated what we are constantly telling our clients. Let me explain. The activities you do during the day fall into one of three categories.

Category 1 is for those activities you absolutely love doing. They are the ones you are extremely good at and are therefore fun and stimulating to do. They get your creative juices flowing and give you energy. You could work on these 24 hours a day and still not get bored. They are what you were born to do. Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach calls them your Unique Ability.

The activities that fall into category 2 are not as stimulating as those in category 1. But you don’t mind doing them and you do them pretty well. While your ideal world would be a world filled with only category 1 activities you recognize that this expectation is totally unreasonable. You find the time to do category 2 activities so they never pile up and cause you stress.

And then there are category 3 activities. You hate them and you are hopeless at doing them and so all of your procrastination talents fire up. They are left to be done “when I have nothing else to do”. They pile up on your desk constantly reminding you that you can avoid them today but sooner or later you will have to do them. They drag you down; they suck every ounce of creativity out of you; they cause huge stress; they make your life a misery.

It is the category 3 activities that you “Don’t Get Good At”. These are the activities that you must delegate. You must get other people to do them; other people who love doing them. Because there are people out there who love doing the things you hate doing. People whose Unique Ability is doing just these things. They love it; they are stimulated by doing them; and so they are really really good at doing them. I think the title on the flyer I picked up that day at the Gladstone Hotel says it so perfectly. Don’t get good at what you don’t want to be doing ….. find someone else to do it!

What was I doing at the Gladstone Hotel? Well, other than having a beer I was also checking out a “must see” photo exhibit called Building Stories 2010. Check it out at www.gladstonehotel.com/events.

Growth in sales can be harmful!

"Everyone knows that too few sales are fatal. But very few owner-managers understand that too many sales, made too fast, can kill a small business. Managing the growth in sales is another make-or-break condition of small business success." Written by Paul Resnik in his book the Small Business Bible.

Too many sales can be fatal? What is he talking about? Why does he think that? He thinks that because as we have seen in our years of helping hundreds of business owners he is right. Most business owners, especially in the early years of business, are challenged by too few sales and so it is impossible for them to imagine that too many sales would be a worse condition.

It is all about capacity. Every organization has the capacity to deliver their products or services in a timely manner. While in the small business world the same person is very often developing new business AND delivering to their clients they usually have the capacity.

Then the sales begin to grow. Slowly at first but as time passes the speed of growth picks up until the unfortunate day arrives. The company no longer has the capacity to deliver on all the sales. And this is what happens:

• You can no longer deliver in a timely manner
• Quality plummets
• The customers are disgruntled and start going to the competition
• Referrals stop
• In the rush you forget to invoice customers
• The panic causes stress and lack of sleep and is harmful to your health
• There is no time to collect Accounts Receivables

And on it goes until the sales have declined and the business is in serious trouble. This is why growing a business is more, much more, than just increasing your sales. You have to also build the capacity and the infrastructure. You have to hire and train people. Develop and document processes. Identify and manage the Key Business Indicators. In short you have to manage the whole business. That is a far bigger job than just increasing the sales.