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Understandings Of Growth #5
This is number five of a six-part series called The Six Understandings of Growth. This has a lot to do with a book I’m finishing and it also has to do with the small speaking tour my wife and I are going in. There are a lot of things that go into growing a company with past 100 employees, $50 million, six-time Inc. 5000 company. There’s a lot of marketing, advertising, general growth and structural concepts. However, there’s a lot of psychological, social and soft skills that go into growing a company our size. This is a series dedicated to those. Quite frankly, they’re not optional. As I mentioned in episode one, I’ll bet you could bench the twenty fastest growing companies in the world now. I’ll bet you that they have four to five of these six in play, maybe even posted on their wall somewhere. This is number five of the Six Understandings of Growth, of what the leaders and management must understand to hold hypergrowth continuously. We’ve been doubling every year. We’re growing rapidly and we’re going to double again this 2019.
Number five, understand what you’re managing. Most executives, most boards, most managers think they’re managing their business. You are but you’re managing something else. You’re managing the business you’re in, but you have to simultaneously run a parallel track and manage the business you’re becoming. When I speak on this, especially when it’s in tight quarters, this strikes fear. I get responses like, “Let me be clear, Ken. You’re saying we meet quarterly, we meet monthly, we do all our weekly meetings, we manage the company we have. Now, I’m supposed to have other meetings with either the same or different people and manage a company that this company is becoming.” I say, “Yes.” I get things like, “Where am I going to find these people? I can barely keep up with what I’m doing. We can’t even grow 10% a year and you want me to manage another company? Why?” I say, “Yes.” The reality is, no main source of income lasts forever. It just simply doesn’t happen. You have to continually reinvent yourself.
No main source of income lasts forever. Click To Tweet
When I say this one strikes fear, it’s palpable. I am here to tell you the reason why we grow like a weed every year. We’ve been grown insane for a decade. We’ve done it with three different product lines completely different management teams. It won’t matter what product line you put in front of us and who’s at the helm. There are certain fundamental things that need to be in play to continue hypergrowth. I will make the prediction right now in this episode that we’re going to double this 2019. We’re going to double in 2020. We’re going to double in 2021. I can assure you of that.
The reason I can comfortably say this is it goes back to the annual meeting we had January 8th, 2019 in Pennsylvania where we had just completed a six-month massive conversion into adopting a completely new platform, bringing in 30 new employees, complete new growth model and we partnered up with a huge company in Florida. I had the gall to say, “Here’s what I’m now working on for the summer of 2020 and it’s a completely new income source. It’s a completely new revenue model.” These people are used to this out of me, but this one is out there. I’m getting looks like I’ve got a hole in my head. This happens to me every year, but I slowly wear them down and they realize, “We have to at least look at this in case this is someday our future main track.”
Number five of the Six Understandings of Growth is you must understand. You manage two businesses at the same time or you are not going to grow consistently over a very long period of time. You manage the business you’re in and you manage the business you’re becoming. You better have annual and quarterly meetings about the business you’re becoming. You better have annual and quarterly meetings about the new products and items you’ll be selling. You better be having annually and quarterly meetings about the new platforms you’ll be selling your existing and new products on. If you don’t do that, then you’re subject to the exact same thing that happened to 465 of the original Fortune 500 list in 1955. 465 of those companies no longer exist. Why is that? You can’t say, “It’s been 70 years. They should fail.” No, because every single one of those failed companies, the products they were selling are still around.
How come they are not the company managing those products? How come another company is managing those products? They didn’t understand certain fundamentals. They kept going with the lady that brought them to the dance like the Sears Catalog. People don’t buy out of a catalog anymore. Just because what you’re selling now is working, doesn’t mean in five, ten and fifteen years what you’re selling might still be bought, but it may be bought on a different platform. Maybe what you’re selling won’t even be bought. Please understand that you manage two businesses, the business you’re in and the business you’re becoming. Our company, Income Store, has mastered both. I hope that helps. Take care.
Important Links:
- episode one of the Six Understandings of Growth
- Income Store
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