Want to get ahead? Remember this!
photo by Simon Peckham
I had a great discussion the other day at one of my Peer Group Advisory Boards – we were talking about rolling out a new marketing initiative and that it would be a real challenge.
At that point, one of the members used a phrase that summarizes one of the primary secrets of business success:
“If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.”
On the surface that sounds like a pretty obvious thought…almost a ‘duh’ moment. But if you think about it a bit longer, it uncovers a lot of the issues that business owners face all the time.
Think about all the things that most business owners don’t like to do because they’re hard:
- Thoroughly interview a lot of people to make sure you end up with the best fit.
- Follow-up with everyone you met at that last networking event.
- Measure detailed metrics of your marketing initiatives so you can tweak the results over time.
- Meet with your employees at least once a quarter and make sure they have everything they need to be successful in the long run.
- Network, prospect, actively market your business…every single week regardless of how busy you are.
- Make sure every client has a great outcome and gets more than they expect.
- Create and update a detailed ‘profit plan’ that projects your revenue and expenses over the next 12 months.
That’s just a partial list, but everyone of those things is often considered to be ‘hard’ to do…and therefore most business owners don’t do them. But the ones that do are raking in premium revenue and growing their market share. They’ve learned the secret:
“If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.”
If you want to stand out from the crowd, if you want results that are above average, then the only way to do that is by doing the stuff that that everyone else thinks is too hard.
What’s something you should be doing, but you’re holding back because it seems too hard? Share your thoughts in the comments below, I’d love to hear them.
Shawn Kinkade Kansas City Business Coach