What is the 3 – 2 x 3 growth formula? Let’s just say much growth comes from the pre-acceptance that something will fail. Listen as Ken re-counts how and why this is a killer growth formula.
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Explode From 3 – 2 x 3
I’m pretty excited because my wife and kids come back from Canada. My wife decided to surprise my daughters with the trip to Quebec because they speak French there and my daughters both got National Honor Society in high school for French. Kerri said, “I booked everybody tickets to Quebec City for the week.” I said, “You can cancel my ticket. I’ve got to get some work done,” so I stayed home and got a ton done. I’m going to do a podcast and as I’m sitting in my basement office all by myself, I was looking at the board across and I’ve got our Inc. 500 and Inc. 5000 goals from ten years ago, four different plaques with one on the way for our Inc. 5,000 growth. I was asking myself the question, “Is there a pattern? How exactly did we get here?” I’ve done a series before. If you want to know the exact psychological steps that we did to get here that can be repeated, I have a podcast in the classic section which is in iTunes. You put in the search bar, Today’s Growth Classics and we have a podcast in there called the Success Wheel. It is one of the top ten most downloaded podcasts out of 300 plus. It’s popular because it is the psychological steps, meaning things that were taught, things that were seen and studied and replicated from what other people taught us. We put them into our own minestrone soup mix and created a path that each of our children are going to follow. We know probably a thousand plus people that because they’ve heard us teach it, they’re actively in pursuit of it and we get a lot of emails thanking us for it. Inside that circle, there still needs to be some activity models.
I want to cover an activity model that is totally duplicatable and can be done anywhere by anybody. It takes some ingenuity, a couple dollars, nothing tremendous but it goes like this. The title of this podcast would be the Growth Formula of Three Minus Two Times Three. This is a growth formula that is titled Three Minus Two Times Three. It goes like this: three risks all taken simultaneously, watching two fail miserably and then tripling down on the risk that worked. Take three risks all at the exact same time, watch two of them fail miserably, and then triple down on the one that works. Much growth comes from the pre-acceptance of failure. Much growth that I’ve experienced came because we had an idea, a product, we wanted to move something. You may have figured out I’m a very impatient person. I want results immediately and I’ve never settled for trying one thing at a time. If I passed out flyers, you better believe I talked somebody into swapping me some radio for some signage or something, because I certainly wasn’t going to get paid for.
Here’s the key. Much growth that I’ve experienced came because I pre-accepted. I didn’t even know I was doing this, but I pre-accepted that either the radio was going to bomb, or the flyers were going to bomb, but I thought one of them might catch. This failure of one or the other or two of the three things you’re going to try failing leaves a glorious trail of two things. One, clearly what not to do again, but it also leaves a trail of what worked, and then you triple down on the one that works. Most folks don’t understand or haven’t been taught the law of attempting three channels, or three products, or three ad campaigns, or hiring three new sales reps at the same time, commission only, or three of anything at the same time. They tried one because that’s all they know. Nobody taught them that doing one of anything creates misery.
If you’re not driving right down the word misery in all capital letters and then write, “Misery stems from me trying one growth method at a time,” it is almost a recipe for insanity, drinking, depression. Trying one thing at a time, it’s excruciating. It fails most of the time. Let’s say you try something, one thing. You know you have a great body track and then it fails. Then you try another. That is a two-thirds chance of failing too. Then what? Either you quit the product, you quit marketing in general, and out of word of mouth, “I’ll just work harder,” or you quit salespeople altogether or you quit yourself.
Let’s say you have a killer product. You know it and you try direct mail and it bombs. You have four months gone and a ton of money. “I’m going to try Facebook ads now.” It bombs. 30 days gone and definite money out the drain. How motivated are you? You probably have some partners or spouse or people leaning on you. How motivated are you after two failures to try radio or billboards or something? Not very.
How motivated do you think companies are that try three marketing channels at the exact same time? They’re pumped for two different reasons. Number one, if it’s a good product, they will clearly know, and the best part is they’re going to know what channel works early and they can stop the other two campaigns midstream that aren’t working as well. They could be working a little but the average entrepreneur that tries something that’s working a little, they press harder. If you’re doing three campaigns at the same exact time, you can clearly see dollar for dollar which one is the best. It’s clear as day. Here’s the key. You’ve got no opportunity costs wasted, meaning you’ve got two that are not doing well. You’ve got one and it’s doing amazing. Stop the other two, recoup the money you almost lost, and then triple it down into the one that’s working. The best part of this is there is no emotional capital lost. There’s no stress, worry and fear. If all three channels fail, those entrepreneurs quickly realize, “Either this product isn’t as good as I thought or maybe the market’s not ready.” Either way, it’s an immediate decision to go after a new product or a new S-curve.
Here’s the question. How many times have you tried to grow something doing one growth strategy at a time? My guess is probably 95% of the time. Stop your life right now. Think for a minute. Strategize three new paths or channels you have never tried before. I’ve got a pay streak going on a marketing channel that I hadn’t tried in over ten years. I’m adding, “It’s not going to work, too expensive. Who’s going to do this?” We’re killing it on one of our websites. I never thought it would work. I tried a channel that I never thought would work. Here’s the deal. Stop your life, try three different channels that you might even not think are going to work up front, and do it now. Go get what is rightfully yours.
Important Links:
- Today’s Growth Classics
- Success Wheel – episode 28
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