EP441 Do The Obvious

For most people, growing a business requires a hundred consultants or attending hours of masterminds. When in reality, the answers are just in front of you, they are so obvious you can’t see them. In this episode, Ken Courtright opens our eyes to see the obvious and pushes us to have the guts to do it. He gives some examples to shift ours mind to explore other ideas for growth.

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Do The Obvious

This is where we live life, we service thousands of clients and we’re a growth consulting company, an Inc. 5000 company six times. We know how to grow. With that, one of the obvious ones, it’s so obvious it’s a blind spot for me, for many others. We trip on this one a lot and it’s called do the obvious. If you were to take out a piece of paper and I told you that you have 60 seconds to come up with three different ways to grow your company that you have never done before. You haven’t tried them, but you have to write three ideas down or I’m taking $100,000 out of your bank account or $10,000 or $5,000, or I’m taking the pigtails off your daughter’s hair, whatever. The point is this, you have 60 seconds to come up with three ways to grow your company that you have never tried before, but you think in your gut they will work. Write them down right now. Let’s take ten seconds of pure silence and let’s think. If you had three ways to grow your company you’ve never tried before, but you know they’ll probably work, write them down right now.

Sometimes we forget that we were the pioneers of this company because there are so many employees now and it’s been handed off to so many different people in this and that. Sometimes we forget why the company we work for hired us. Everybody has a seed of vision in them. Everybody has a gift of seeing around the corner a little bit. Sometimes I’m talking to someone, they’re a ten to twelve-person company and they’re complaining they can’t grow. I said, “Why don’t you buy a competitor?” They look at me like it’s called the “who farted” look. They scrunch their face like, “What? I don’t have the money for that.” How do you know? What if there’s a two-person firm sitting on an intellectual property that knows how to do this one little piece of your industry really well? Maybe they’re just exhausted and maybe you can buy their company, their intellectual property, their apps, their tools, their website, their brand, and maybe one of the two people working there go away? You keep the other employee who knows everything. “I never thought of that.” I’ll bet you could buy them for $0 down, take over their receivables and it would be a win-win. “I didn’t know you could do that.” You can do that. Sometimes the most obvious is completely blind.

Number one, when it comes to growth, when is the last time you considered buying a competitor? Could be a one-person shop. Could be a company twice as big as you. We were approached in March by a private equity group. “Any interest in us putting up $20 million to buy this company over here that could help you here?” I’m like, “Why would you do that?” He’s like, “You own 70%. You’ll have to manage it, but we’ll get 30% of the equity of that company and the revenue in perpetuity.” That’d be a good idea for you. It would be a great deal for you too. Here’s another obvious one. Sometimes the fastest way to grow is to fire your best friend. What does that mean? I remember a story of a guy, a client of ours, him and his best friend started this company and his best friend I think was on his third divorce.

Every time that they would climb and climb, either the guy would get a divorce or get a drug habit or this or that. It was a nonstop roller coaster. They would almost breakthrough and this guy was a bozo. I said, “Fire that guy. Get rid of that guy. He’s not your friend. He’s dragging you down.” He fired him in a couple of years later, I think he sold his company for ridiculous money. It was so obvious, but it was a blind spot. Do you need to fire your friend? Sometimes you start businesses and you give your friends or cousins a job and here’s the bottom line. Sometimes your gut is pointing true north, but you don’t have the guts to take a chance on what you know is right. I’m going to keep this short. I would challenge everybody reading this in the next 30 days to do something so obvious. It’s right in front of you and you know you should do it. It might be one day of pain, temporary pain or taking a risk, getting a loan. I’m a believer in staying debt-free, but sometimes you can literally borrow $100 to make $500 in 60 days. Not always, but sometimes. Do the obvious, this is episode 441.

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