A business’ growth greatly depends on the leader, on how he makes decisions and turn these into profitable actions. This episode answers the question what is the reason you are not growing as fast as you think you should be growing? As a leader, it is always essential that you are aware of where you are in your goal. From a business leader perspective, Ken Courtright offers four things you can do to avoid committing some business sins. He talks the importance of regularly inspecting the flow of your business, specifically sales and marketing, in order to monitor your company’s growth.
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It’s My Fault
What if everything was your fault? What if the reason you’re not growing as fast as you think you should be growing is your fault? It’s something that I think you should give some thought to. I did a two-year exercise on this. This is taught in many schools. It’s taught in many different countries, different religions. It’s cool. It’s pretty much just a psychology game that you play with yourself. What if on the assumption that your company is not growing as fast as you’d like, you sit back and actually say and believe, “What if this is my fault?” There are three anchors to this game. Number one, what if it was something you didn’t do? Number two, what if the reason you’re not growing is because there’s something you’re not inspecting? Number three, what if the reason you’re not growing as fast as you want is because you’re not trusting enough?
The first thing is there’s something you’re not doing. The second thing could be there’s something you’re not inspecting. The third thing could be there’s something or at some level in which you’re not trusting enough. I’m going to hit this a bit harder only because in the last two years I have aggressively worked on all three. We have tripled in employees from 33 to 100 since I started this exercise. Our sales, our residuals, and most importantly our company culture are through the roof. I found out that we are going to hit the Inc. 5000 list for the fourth time in five years. The only reason we didn’t hit it the fifth time, for those of you that are not regular readers, is because I got a little bit lazy and didn’t fill out the paperwork in 2014, which was our greatest year of growth. I missed the deadline by three days. On that note, we’re growing aggressively right now. On the premise, what if everything was your fault? We’re going to look at this from three different angles.
What if, number one, was because you didn’t do something? There’s an incredible scripture and I think it was written expressly for business leaders, and we’re going to discuss it. This isn’t bible study but check this out. It’s so apropos outside of anything spiritual. Take the spiritual aspect and just read this phrase. “Anyone then who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.” I’m not getting spiritual. I want to pretend Peter Drucker or Thomas Watson, the founder of IBM, is saying the following sentence. “Anyone then who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.” I want you to think from a business leader perspective, what one or two things do you know you ought to do that you keep putting off? I’m going to give you four things to consider. Firing someone. Cameron Herold says, “If you know there’s someone in your company you have to let go, the odds are close to 100% that they’re costing your company fifteen times their salary every year because of the cancer they’re spewing inside the company and between you and them.”
Lacking commitment leads to a lack of trust. Click To TweetIs there someone you ought to fire? Have you tried national radio or have you borrowed money even on a credit card to do a direct mail campaign? Is there something where you know the phrase, “If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much room?” Is there some form of advertising? I don’t know. Is there something you’re just afraid to do, but you know you ought to do it? You’ve been thinking of doing it for two years. It would elevate your brand. It would dump your message in a massive audience all at one time. You know you ought to do it, but yet you’re gun shy. How about a third one? What about hiring five commission-only sales reps all at the same time? What if you do a terrible job training them? What if you don’t have time to train them? Who cares? You know you ought to do things like this. Do them.
What about starting over from episode one and re-reading to everyone with a partner, with an accountability buddy, maybe with an advisor on your advisory board? What if you read this from the first one, all 171 episodes, with an intern from college who had a completely different marketing eyes than you have? You take notes together and you discuss everyone if it applies now or at the rate of your growth, will it apply in the future? I think it would blow your mind, and I’m not saying this braggadocio. I’m saying this from the concept from a previous one I did about how a mentor of mine told me how to read, how to win friends and influence people every January using a different colored marker. I would be blown away that every year I never noticed the previous stuff I highlighted and all new sections of the book are jumping out at me. It’s because I grow as a person, my business group and I didn’t need those parts of the book anymore. To start over from the first one, since you’ve been reading up to this, I can promise you there are so many things in the first 170 either you didn’t have eyes to read, you weren’t ready for it, didn’t understand. If you read them with a partner, I think are going to be shocked at what you have not done.
I believe it is absolute business sin to not follow through with what your gut tells you, as the leader of your group, your business, your association should be doing. Number two, what if the reason you’re not growing as fast as you ought to grow is because you didn’t inspect something? I think Did You Inspect? is a future title of a book I’m going to write. I have lost more money from not inspecting projects closer or sooner than any other mistakes I’ve made in my life and I have made massive million-dollar mistakes. Multiple. I have lost more money from not inspecting projects sooner or closer than any other mistakes I’ve ever made. What should you be inspecting every Friday? I don’t care the size of your company. Every Friday, you better be inspecting the number of advertising impressions, the number of sales. You can do these in flash meetings in 30 seconds. You don’t have to speak over these. You can just look at the numbers.
Sales forecast from people, from reps, from ad agencies. Scrum results. If you’re not sure where the scrum is, let me cover briefly what we do every day in our office in Pennsylvania. We get in a massive circle. One person starts, there’s a scrum leader, and the first person goes and says, “This is what I’m working on now. These are the projects, these are the tools I’m going to use and this is maybe the challenge I have now.” The next person goes, “This is the one I’m working on. These are the projects. This is my current challenge.” By the time it gets to the third, fourth, fifth, sixth person, the whole scrum circle is shouting, and this is 30, 40, 50 people sometimes. “Don’t do that. I tried that last week. There’s a better app for that. There’s a better tool. You’ve got to call this person. They can get it done in half the time.” By the time the circle finishes, and it takes an hour or hour and a half, we have collectively saved the company 100 to 200 hours that day. Scrum results, advertising attempts. How about new starts? How about every Friday looking at product launch information, new hire information, new broker information? What are some things you need to inspect every Friday to avoid the mistakes I’ve made in my life?
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy. Click To TweetHow about this? What about if there’s something you didn’t trust high enough? What if there’s something you’re not trusting enough? The main reason we didn’t grow from 2003 to 2006, we hardly grew. We grew 5% to 10% barely. I was not in a trusting mood, so I thought. I learned from mentors of mine that the reason I was hiring very few people, and we were just going about our business, is it had nothing to do with trust, but it did. I later learned I wasn’t truly lacking trust. I was lacking commitment and lacking commitment leads to a lack of trust. Here is something from William Hutchison Murray, “Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans. That the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.” That’s William Hutchison Murray.
Second quote, and this comes from a very famous person, Napoleon Hill. He starts out a very famous chapter of maybe one of the most famous books in history. “Isn’t it amazing that man with definite purpose goes through life and he watches how the world steps aside and even comes beside and helps him with his aims.” I’m going to let you pull the lessons out of that, but maybe there’s an area you’re not trusting enough. That might be because of the exposure of something that you’re not committed to enough. I hope this helps. Take care.
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