EP114 What Would Happen

Many business owners don’t have the right commitment and concept to develop their company because they don’t have the proper view when doing things. In this episode, host, Ken Courtright, talks about why thinking about what would and won’t happen is important when making and reinventing your company’s mindset. He shares three sample decisions that might not be a bad question to ask yourself and why it can help you in your business. He further explains these decisions and why it can be a productivity principle for you and your team.

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Listen to the podcast here:

What Would Happen

This episode as are all episodes leading up to our annual event is sponsored by Digital Footprint. You can find info at DigitalFootprint.net. For those of you that have checked episode 28, it’s called the Success Wheel. You have heard my backstory when I was asked one time on a stage. What do I think were the 3 to 5 critical events or major decisions that my wife and I made that led us to a three-time Inc. 5,000 company, having some ups and downs along the way as of course, most business owners have in many years. I cut an episode called The Success Wheel in which I physically drew out the major decisions, what went well, what didn’t, and how can people apply that into their business to turbocharge their business. In there, I talked about one of the things that I did well early on is I became a conference junkie. If Brian Tracy came to town, I went. If any major author on sales management, executive balance, human resources, anybody came, I was eager to gobble up their information.

I’m one of the faculty members on these larger stages of teaching. I make it a habit to sit in the audience of any speaker I’ve never heard before, or if it’s the same speaker I’ve heard before, are they talking on a different topic? There happened to be a speaker at CEO Space, and it was Penny Zenker. She was speaking on her book, The Productivity Zone. We have an authoritative website with Penny. I’ve always been looking to hear her talk. I sat in the back row and tried to remain invisible, but of course, she called me out and made fun of me, which is always exciting. Something happened right in the middle of Penny’s talk, and I could not get out a notebook fast enough because she drew something out that was incredibly simple. I had never seen it before. I had never seen anything like it. It was rudimentary simple that I was glad I said to myself, “This is why I came.” I would like you to get out a piece of paper and draw a square, and then put a line down the middle going up and down and a line down the middle side to side, so it makes four boxes.

Right above the top middle, I want you to write, do. Right at the top of the horizontal line that separates that right below that top, I want you to write, don’t do. The top two boxes are going to represent things that you might do, and the bottom two boxes represent things you don’t do, you’re not going to do. In the top left box write, what wouldn’t happen? In the top right box I would like you to write, what would happen? In the bottom left box, I would like you to write, what wouldn’t happen. Same as above, what wouldn’t happen. In the bottom right box you would write, what would happen. This is a decision-making box, and in Penny’s world, she’s a productivity expert. She ended up building a large tech company, sold it off for ridiculous money, and now she runs around and teaches all over the world on how her productivity ten principles allowed her to build that company and now building another company, she’s amazing.

This is fantastic because what you do is you take a major decision and you place it in these boxes. I have three sample decisions, that the majority of people following this podcast could ask themselves in time, have asked themselves in the past, or might not be a bad idea to ask yourself. Let’s go to the first one. Hiring an outside marketing team, and I want to preface this, do not call us, we’re not SEOs, and we’re not an internet marketing team. I’m not referencing ourselves here, but everybody following this podcast has asked themselves at some point, you might even have a marketing team in house. It doesn’t mean you can’t grow further by bringing on an external marketing team. Let’s go through this, no matter the size of your company, let’s say we’re going to hire an external marketing team, or we’re considering it. The top of these two boxes says, “If you do, do it.”

The top two boxes are if you do, what would happen? If you hire an external marketing team, an outside marketing team, what would happen? List five things that would happen. What would happen? Probable growth, time savings on your part, your internal marketing team, or you would learn things from that other marketing team. List out what would happen. What wouldn’t happen? That’s the left. List 5 to 10 things that wouldn’t happen if you do it. If you do it, what wouldn’t happen? The number one is the same. You would not have the same, you had an external marketing team that brought in new ideas, new vision, what wouldn’t happen is staying the same. Does that make sense? What wouldn’t happen? List those out. Ask yourselves, “What if we don’t do it?” I understand this is called a decision matrix. You’re going to ask questions you’re currently considering, but I’m making things up here. Hiring a marketing team, if you don’t do it, what would happen? You’re going to stay the same. You can expect the same results you didn’t add an external marketing team.

You want to list 5 to 10 bullets. For me, doing this on a couple of major decisions, you’re going to find that the deeper you go, the more bullets you come up with, the more likely you are to find the reason to do it or not do it right. It’s not going to come out right away, always. What if you don’t do it? What wouldn’t happen? In hiring a market team, what wouldn’t happen is you’re 100% guaranteed to not stumble on what might be the most as explosive marketing for you. You don’t know what external marketing teams know that you don’t know. You don’t know what external marketing teams know that your internal market team doesn’t know. This is powerful. I can’t wait to use it once a week, once a month on major decisions. Let’s talk about one, and I like this one because I did this in January.

Not exactly what we’re talking about here, but a version of it. Write down, hiring a virtual CFO. I hired a full-time CFO, and that led us to a full-time in-house accountant. Hiring a virtual CFO, they could work for you two hours a week, two hours a month, a full day a month, it’s anything you want. If you do it, what would happen? You might put some bullets down, eyes opened of what you didn’t know. That happened to us. Our eyes were open to how much we didn’t know in the finance space. If you do it, what wouldn’t happen? List 5 to 10 bullets. What if you don’t do it? List 5 to 10 bullets. What wouldn’t happen if you don’t do it? Let’s go to the third one. I’m extremely biased here, but I don’t care. Write this down, committing to 1 to 3 business conferences a year. Maybe like Digital Footprint, but I don’t mean that per se. I’m talking a Tony Robbins, a Brian Tracy, a CEO Space, new peaks. It doesn’t matter necessarily what they are.

My phrase is, and you guys know the book I got this out of, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” It doesn’t necessarily matter what business conferences you’re going to, because the people speaking from the stage are going to share their wisdom. They’re also going to recommend the books they’ve been reading that are all in Barnes & Noble and Amazon. Let’s talk about Digital Footprint for a minute. What would happen if you went? List 5 to 10 bullets of what would happen if you go, what wouldn’t happen if you went? What would not happen if you went to Digital Footprint? What if you don’t do it? What would happen? List 5 to 10 bullets. What wouldn’t happen if you don’t do it? List 5 to 10 bullets. I’m not necessarily talking about Digital Footprint. I’m saying that because it’s coming up, but how about the mindset or the concept of committing you and your staff to annual events.

Every industry has annual events that are niche-specific. We made a commitment. Our top five marketers go to Moscone and a couple of others. We sent one individual to a five-day camp, its five figures to go to for five days, for one person. You’ve got to commit to the ongoing education and the more niche-specific, the better it is for your company. How about the fourth bullet of making the commitment for you and your team, to live in the most unvisited room in your home, the room for improvement. What major Fortune 500 company doesn’t have a committed budget to research and development for product and ongoing education for management? Not one, there is not one of the Fortune 500 that doesn’t earmark a budget of time and money to re-inventing research and development, reinventing product lines and then reinventing the minds of the people that drive that company, not one. Why is your small business any different? Don’t make it different. Follow what works. We have 200 years of evidence. Continually tweak your products, continually tweak your minds and your business management and away you will go. I hope this helps. Take care.

Important Links:

• DigitalFootprint.net
• Success Wheel – previous episode
• CEO Space
• The Productivity Zone

• Here’s How »

• kencourtright.com
• Today’s Growth Twitter
• Ken Courtright LinkedIn