The worst place I can be is where I am only thinking my own thoughts. Let that sink in for a minute. This does not mean that I am not smart. I humbly submit that I am a damn smart individual. I was created well and I was made and trained to do great things. What I mean by this is that I am biased. Eventually, any well meaning, intelligent person can fall into the trap of thinking their junk don't stink.
I try to keep myself from falling victim to my own bias by doing two things: surrounding myself with smart people and surrounding myself with an upper class of smart people with exceptional experience (otherwise known as "mentors"). These folks help me to maintain realistic expectations of my environment, corporate funding and management and...dare I say it...sales - the lifeblood of any enterprise. One of my mentors tuned me up recently and pointed out that if I was frustrated by only hitting half of my sales goals for PromoPipeline then I simply needed to double or triple my prospecting efforts. It's not rocket science. I was over thinking it and not being steady, consistent and focused on the sales process. Needless to say, he was RIGHT and over the past month I have made great progress.
With any truely innovative product (like PromoPipeline.com) it takes convincing and - more importantly - it takes focused and concerted effort to find early adopters. It's hard, menial work. It's entrepreneurial work and I embrace it. Sure as I embrace being shaken out of my own skull from time to time.
Playlist: Embrace your inner nerd
6 hours ago
It's good to see this blog, I hope to see it updated often as I will be checking, so that I can gain more wisdom and insight from one of my own mentors (did you feel old enough to be a mentor?). My question is how do you know to go back to the basics and double/ triple your output and when do you cut your losses?
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment and question Michael...
ReplyDeleteIf you can, you should mentally go back to the basics once a quarter and bare in mind that the line of where the "basics" are is a moving target. I like Richard Branson's definition of success best "Success for me is whether you have created something you can really be proud of." So I ask - Have you done that? If not, what will it take to get there? I promise you it is not complex. Break it down to simple actions and assert yourself in a disciplined way. Which brings me to another of my favorite quotes from Sir Richard "There is a very, very thin dividing line between survival and failure. You've just got to fight and fight and fight and fight to survive." Whew. Did a multi-billionaire really say that?
Now, when do you throw in the towel? Well that's a personal question and it is a question of how much pain are you prepared to take. This is where http://viewsonbusinessandlife.blogspot.com/2009/01/who-are-you.html comes into play. How bad do you want it? Is your support system in place? How much can your wife take? Where is the point where your family's suffering outweighs the fight for survival? Is there another opportunity that dramatically outweighs where you are? Is a certain business climate change so against you that you have zero chance for survival? Only you can answer this brother? Only you can truely know you.