Business 300

In order for a Business to create wins all around, the Strategy function has to understand the difference between the horse and the cart, between the white ball and the triangle rack of balls in the middle of the pool table, between the lead actions and lag measures.

I'm not talking about Customer instead of profit. I'm saying you can focus on profit in a way that puts your focus on serving the customer. Or, you can focus on profit in a way that makes you forget about the customer.

Everybody loses when Strategy doesn't serve the customer.

If you want to own and operate a business, don’t start with finding your passion. Figure out what others are struggling with and how you can help them. Solve other people’s problems. Start by focusing on potential customers, then continue your focus on existing customers, and then focus on future customers. Customers, not passions, are what make a business.If you want to be in business, focus on others first. Start by giving, not taking. And many a time, when you focus on serving others, your find your passions.

These are larger projects that have a lot of steps and milestones before the result can be actualized. But the return on them is big. These are your annual or quarterly goals that you have to work on for weeks or month to make progress on. In order to get where you want to get to, you need to devote most of your time on these items, and make sure you're keeping yourself on task. The payoff is big. But it won't happen right away.

Systems bring residual return.

Business owners are visionaries. They're dreamers. They're goal setters. They focus on the future, with aspirations then and there. 

Vague notions of ambition and aspiration that sound like, "It'd be great if..." aren't strong enough to get you anywhere, and definitely not strong enough to lead others with. Any leader must have clarity in his vision for the future and must be able to communicate it clearly.

Get clear on your actions. Thats where the results come from. You need to prioritize action over vision.

The typical amount of things that the average person gets done on a week by week basis isn't very much. There usually isn't too much actual progress made by most people.

But in business, you have a natural motivator to keep you going; a personal incentive to whip you into action. Profit.

Business requires that we move fast. But won't going too fast hurt you? If you can't keep up with the pace, won't that in itself be your downfall?

It could be. So, how then should we approach the speed of execution?

This is Part 3 in our little series on Working With Suppliers. The goal is to focus on providing them with value, before asking them for value. 

If you want your suppliers to come through for you, you need to first come through for them. Before expecting value, give value. You want them to trust you, so be trustworthy.

It's good to consider what sort of value you're providing when working with suppliers.

Your goal is to gain your supplier's trust and become a valuable customer for them. You want them to care about their relationship with you.

The question is, what makes a valuable customer in a business-to-business relationship?

It's good to consider what sort of value you're providing when working with suppliers.

You need your vendors and suppliers in order to serve your customers. If your care about your customers, you must care about your suppliers. They are there to help you deliver the value you've promised. And you need to approach them with that mindset.

They're not your employees. They are other business owners. Which means you are their customer.

You can help them understand what is valuable for you as their customer. You can help lay out the expectation to make their job of discovery easier.

There are 2 ways you do this.

In anything we do, we're tempted to get distracted and derailed off the tracks we're on. I keep talking about serving customers as being the main idea - the entire point - in business. Serving the customer is the point of everything else you're trying to do. Everything else depends on it. You want your employees, vendors, and yourself to win. But that happens in connection with your customers winning. You need to keep that focus on the customer. You need the keep the main thing, the main thing.

Owning and managing a business has it's moments of euphoria. But a big part of business development is the gruesome, daily grind of simply doing the same thing every day. Results are what's exciting. Actions are boring.   A business owner does not spend his time in the realm of results. Results are the outcome of work. The work itself is what the business owner does. 

Results are an outcome of consistent action in the same direction. Are you bored because you have to do the same thing every day? Good. Lean in, and get ready for some exciting results. It's when we own the boredom, that things get exciting.

That's because business is boring.