Quick notes to help you grow your business in less time with less effort. . . starting next week.
In this issue:
- Thoughts on Changes
- Being Human
- Random Stuff
Thoughts on Changes
- An easy yet effective way to change your team's culture is to ban a word. For instance, a private equity company bans the word "deals" because it reduces their work to a transaction. They want to be seen as owners, not transactors.
- Sometimes our internal battery doesn't have enough juice to deal with change. Monitor your team's energy. If it's low, and they seem fragile, start slow. Build up the energy for change.
- Ask yourself if change is worth it. When we move from a 1 to a 4 in effectiveness, it's huge. Going from an 8 to 10 might require a massive shift without a big change in results.
- Two ways for us to think about change. Push/pull to get there, or remove restraints. The latter, removing restraints, requires asking, what's holding us back from doing this already? Powerful question, and part of my book "The Sales Momentum Mindset," at fine retailers near you.
Being Human - What now?
"One must change one's tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one's superiority." – Napoleon Bonaparte
This week's note to you fine readers is number 491. Perilously close to 500. 9.6 years. A big number that could lead someone to change just for the sake of it. (although it can be argued the real, real big number is 520.)
I have no idea if change is needed. At this point, I am experiencing something I wrote about in "The Sales Momentum Mindset": continuation motivation. Each week I simply make time here and there to work through each section of the newsletter and it fills in. I do it more because I'm afraid of missing a week than I am motivated to get it done. Continuation motivation. It's a thing.
As of today, I have thousands of notes to myself. 1834+ pithy thoughts on business, thousands of thoughts on being human in the age of machines, and many more thousands of little stories, most of which kind of crack me up. I was just telling such a story to my lovely bride, and she said, "C'mon. I mean, how long were you in high school? I've heard all these stories, but you keep coming up with new ones. It's like you're a hundred years old."
It's true. You'd think I'd be better at telling them by now. Just part of being human, I guess.
Cada cabeza es un mundo.
Random Stuff
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself…” – Marcus Aurelius
When was the last time you were asked to leave an event or an establishment? I saw it happen last weekend and during the 10-hour trip back home, my lovely bride and I combed our memory banks for other examples.
As one might expect, it's happened to me a few more times than it's happened to my lovely bride. (To be fair, if you've been asked to leave somewhere even once in your life, she wins)
As the week went on, I came up with a few more examples that escaped me on the drive. Not my proudest moments. It's nice that they don't make us wear t-shirts listing such transgressions on the back, like a concert tee. While each one is an entertaining story, in aggregate it looks like I'm a problem. I'm not, I say. (Of course, you'd say that, you think.) It's true, though. I've just been around for a while, and get invited to a lot of events/establishments.
A bigger list for my tee would be the places I left before the nonsense escalated. This has been a recurring theme in my life, more than being given the hook. I think. I might need to tally it up.
Anyway, I hope you have fun this weekend. And if you're not having fun, grin and bear it. Fewer stories about you on Monday.
