by Brian Alexander, Two-Brain Business Mentor
BIG. PICTURE. THINKING
Growing up, the minutia of details bored me. In school, I couldn’t understand why they would make us learn and study things I would never use in real life. (This isn’t a knock on school–it’s great for some, but not for everyone.)
Don’t confuse knowledge with wisdom.
“Knowledge comes from learning, Wisdom comes from living.”
In life and business I have seen nearly everything in the book. Being an entrepreneur is hard. Most of us wear many hats, we have enormous to-do lists and wish lists that need to be tended to. The whole thing can drive us mad if we let it.
What if we just focused on 5 major things that would impact our business positively, and outsourced the rest?
All too often, I see people placing emphasis and energy in the places that yield little to no real tangible results.
We see it all of the time on Facebook forums: Kill Cliff or Fitaid? Wodify or Zen Planner? Contracts or no contracts? etc….
As human beings we have a finite amount of energy and focus. If we exhaust our energy on the small stuff, we will no longer have any energy or focus for the important stuff. The things that really matter. The things that move our businesses forward.
I am not talking about physical energy here, folks. I am talking about the mental energy and capacity to stay focused long enough on a big picture strategy — to actually move the ball forward and keep the ball moving forward.
How many of you have a day that looks like this:
100 things on a to-do list, it’s 6:30am and maybe you just got done coaching the 5:30am class. You have the entire day ahead of you and are ready to conquer the world. You start your day off by opening your laptop. You open a few browsers, and get started on your list, then…. Knock knock! A member needs to ask a question about their membership, and you have a quick 10 minute conversation. Then you get back to work… maybe answering some emails… maybe on Facebook checking out the TBB groups or AOG groups and then, Knock, knock!
Now it’s Noon. You have accomplished one or two things, yet you feel so unaccomplished. It is exhausting and draining.
Control the things you can control and don’t worry about the rest.
Now we can’t control the fact that our members want to talk with us, that is part of the gig and frankly a good thing.
What we can control is the amount of little things on the to-do list that we allow ourselves to work on. As affiliate owners we take pride in our work. Most of us don’t think anyone else can do a better job at anything than we can do. You may be right.
I would make an argument that you should be spending more time talking to members. You should be spending more time kissing babies and shaking hands. However, if you aren’t present while doing so and your mind is on the 100 little tasks you have to accomplish it could do more harm than good.
What if we didn’t have those 100 little tasks on the to-do list? What would your day look like? What if you knew one of your best team members was taking care of it all?
Do you own a business or do you own a job?
What I challenge you to do is ask yourself this question: Am the best person with the most adequate bandwidth to do this job?
If I give 25% of my available energy and focus to any task I will most likely do a poor to mediocre job. Sure, I may pull it off … but most likely the outcome won’t be great.
Now imagine if you gave a less capable person who can dedicate 100% attention and focus to that job. Do you think they would do a better job than you? Do you think that with a little training they can knock it out of the park? I would be willing to bet they can.
