Sales and Selling Ideas #277 – This week: Same page, YOLO, barbecue

GREG’S BUSINESS GROWTH NEWSLETTER #277
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Quick notes to help you grow your business in less time with less effort. . . sometime next week.

In this issue:

– Techniques for FIT
– Being Human
– Random Stuff

Techniques for FIT
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• If you invest in the right tool for your people, and it’s the wrong size, you won’t get the results you want. Regardless of what you spend. Hiking boots four sizes too big will tear up their feet. Besides finding the right tool, check for fit.
• Deciding the right way to market a new product or service is a challenge. It requires a lot of pivots and backtracking. For this reason, having the right people in this role is imperative. Look for curiosity and abundant patience. 

• Everyone on the same page. Sounds ideal, but before you chase this vision consider Tennyson,
  “Forward, the Light Brigade!”
  Was there a man dismayed?
  The 600 were on the same page charging to their death. It helps to have a little dissent here and there.
• Spending time with your team checking understanding of key terms helps expand your Common Underlying Proficiency. A key to good communication. This exercise is especially effective for new members to the group.

Being Human – Yolo and work
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“We’ve all had a year to evaluate if the life we’re living is the one we want to be living,” said Christina Wallace, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School. “Especially for younger people who have been told to work hard, pay off your loans and someday you’ll get to enjoy your life, a lot of them are questioning that equation. What if they want to be happy right now?”

This article caught my eye, “Welcome to the YOLO Economy.” I’m a sucker for “big life change” stories and this one fits the bill. At this point in my existence I’ve come to recognize it as part of a pattern, like when I went looking for an old exercise article on flattening a tummy, then noticed Men’s Health runs an article on getting back your abs/shape/body every February. Every single February. It’s a way to mark time passing.

People get fed up with their jobs all the time, but especially after a traumatic event. This even happens to exhausted type-A people. 9-11, 2008 crash, the death of a loved one, the list goes on. Is this instance different for Millennials, or part of a pattern?

I send notes to economists and organizational psychologists, and sometimes they respond. My inquiries tend to be around the subject of measuring success. Studies define success as earning big positions in big companies and big dollars. How did these people achieve such success? I wonder how they settle on those measures. One answer from a professor is useful: Greg, he said, I suppose we measure those things because they are easy to measure.

What if we measured success in other ways? I suppose some people do, but those measures don’t get included in our GDP. What would change if they were?

I remember hearing author Michael Lewis lament the bright minds wasted on Wall Street. He mentioned a college friend of his that should have gone on to become the world’s foremost cartographer but when the big money of Wall Street called, it would have been dumb not to answer.

Interesting stuff.

I don’t have much to add to the discussion, but I do have a piece of advice for the new Millennial YOLOers:

Don’t start a tropical shirt company.

Random stuff

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Many years ago I worked with a company based in Memphis, TN. When you visited HQ it was customary to get barbecue. The first place they took us was to the Rendezvous. It was delicious.

My peer in Memphis was a transplant from New Jersey. When the discussion first went to barbecue he turned to me and said, Greg, I’m not originally from Tennessee and the first thing I had to learn was when they talk about barbecue, it is an event. You think it’s just something you eat, right? Around here, it’s something you do. Like, all day, or all weekend.

Fast-forward to a month ago and I am helping Uncle Bill prep a brisket. We’re up at 6am, checking on it here and there, spraying stuff on it sometimes, flipping it other times. The sun comes up, the sun goes down, we share a few fermented beverages, and the brisket is ready for consumption at 9pm. It was delicious.

And yep, checks out. All day.

I mention this because Uncle Kirk dropped off a Big Green Egg for me this week. A giant kamado style ceramic cooking device I can use for barbecuing. I can see it from my window. It came with all the parts. I have some charcoal, some wood chips, and a temperature gauge. There is a chicken ready to sacrifice itself for my first test run and Saturday’s schedule is clear.

Let’s hope it’s delicious.

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