Category: Mindset

I run a digital agency, but I don’t particularly like it as a business model. I don’t take joy in our writing code, analyzing analytics, or any of the many tasks that we perform.

I don’t dislike it either though. There are downsides to agencies, but also some wonderful qualities too.

For me, it’s just a medium for practicing the deeper skills of business.

It’s the dojo where I train.

There are inherent challenges in every business model. It’s easy to think that the obstacles you face are uniquely difficult. Doing so, you give yourself an excuse for not overcoming them.

Agencies have their own version of hard problems, but these problems are also the portals to greater skill. To a more capable version of the agency operator.

The same opportunity exists in every business, including yours.

“A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

Featured image is the “Sword Saint” of Japan, Miyamoto Musashi, dueling on the shores of Ganryū Island. By Yoshifusa Utagawa (840-1860) used under public domain

Ignorance is its own hurdle.

It’s easy to make progress when you understand what needs to be done.

Growth in a business is similar.  Often, the capacity our business has achieved is a reflection of our understanding.

Our understanding of the market, of our business model, and of the obstacles and opportunities those present.

A trick to gauge your ignorance is to conceptualize your business at the next stage of its capacity. 

If you were to reverse engineer that possible business, what are the differences between it and the one you operate today?  How confident are you in your conclusions?

Featured image is of the Fool card from the Rider–Waite tarot deck (1909). Used under public domain.

Last week, my PM told me that we were behind on an urgent Laravel project and that our team was at capacity for the developers who could work on it.

In that moment, I realized that I could step into the code and help out or stay out of it and look for alternate solutions.

I decided to help out and carved off a few pieces of the project to spend just a day and a half on.

Then I spent the last three days writing code. It was the first time in eight years that I’ve programmed anything. Most of the time was spent getting my environment set up and learning Laravel’s API.

Just when I was wrapping up my section of the project, our lead developer hopped on a call and said not to worry about it- he had completed the same work earlier that morning in a little 30 minutes sprint.

I had to laugh.

In the moment when I made my decision, I knew that getting into the operational work was a huge red flag.

I hadn’t slept well and was tired and frustrated and not in a good place to think. I was also feeling pressured because this summer has been crazy.

With the benefit of hindsight, it was obviously a mistake. But the next time something like this happens, I won’t have hindsight until it’s too late.

For me, the lesson to remember is that as the business operator, your primary implements are your systems and people. And the skill you should be applying is thinking, not doing.

If I had slowed down, calmed down, and thought it through I could have worked with my team to navigate a path through this little crisis with higher impact rather than dusting off my development environment.

Experience is a painful teacher, but you remember her lessons.

Featured image is of Shakespeare’s’ Henvry V- print of Act III, Scene i: “Once more unto the breach, dear friends!” By Thomas Robinson (printmaker) – Folger Shakespeare Library Digital Image Collection used under CC BY-SA 4.0

Blair Enns is a sales educator whose course I participated in a couple of years ago. In one of the lessons, Blair recommended taking the time to identify your underlying drives. Then before a sale’s situation, you tell yourself, “I don’t need it,” whatever “it” is.

For example, if what you want deep down is for people to like you, you might make concessions in a sales situation that you shouldn’t. So before you hop on a call with a lead you tell yourself, “I have enough friends. I couldn’t possibly fit another friend into my network.”

Those deep drives govern much of our behavior. One way this manifests is that you might be pursuing growth as a form of validation. For example, it’s common for small businesses to have $1,000,000 annual revenue as a goal. Under a million and you haven’t “made it.”

I have a senior employee that gets frustrated at work. He’s a developer who has to solve the more technical problems, provide advice and guidance, and help plan projects. The consequence of this is that he bounces back and forth between projects.

Yesterday, we met with our project manager for the second time to talk about his schedule and how to make the best use of his time while minimizing frustration.

We didn’t come to any perfect solutions.

I told him, “It’s not important that we come up with a fix right now. The important thing is that we better understand the problem.”

We’re used to a dramatic arc with a resolution. Novels and television episodes lead characters through conflict, growth, and denouement. Sporting events pit two teams against each other and within a couple of hours a winner is declared.

In many RPG video games, there’s a concept of being “well rested.” That means that your character slept in a bed for more than 8 hours. The result of this is that they gain experience points at an increased rate, causing them to level up quicker.

Journaling offers you a similar bonus to experience. Reflection accelerates learning.

Because of this, whenever I’m working on a large objective, I start with what I call a “project book.”

Project books are free-form journals that are tied to that specific domain. They capture all the ideas, questions, experiments, and lessons we learn while we work on that project.

I have project books for hiring a new role, building products, and marketing campaigns.

When we think of acquisition as a growth strategy, we tend to think of buying an entire business.

That can be a powerful point of leverage to leap ahead, but it’s also expensive in terms of cash, attention, and energy.

However, there are other forms of acquisition where the cost isn’t as high.

As an example, a friend of mine acquired a business partner. There wasn’t any cash exchanged hands. The value that the partner brought was sales. They had created a large pipeline of leads. My friend was able to use his business to serve those leads.

Most things grow slowly. Humans, plants, trees, and most businesses.

In a business, it takes time to develop a reputation, market intelligence, a culture, efficient operations, and your skill as an entrepreneur.

There are tricks and shortcuts to compress the time needed to grow. But it’s important to understand that for many business activities there’s an incubation period.

You have an intense initial investment. Then the task transforms to tending. Tending is slow and can seem fruitless, but it’s a critical step before cultivation arrives.

Yesterday was a crazy busy Monday. In looking ahead over the week, my plate will remain overflowing.

You probably have bouts of incredible busyness too. How do you keep working on growing your business when you’re in a storm of day-to-day issues?

While I was telling my wife about my crazy busy day, she said, “I told you this would happen.” What she was referring to was me adding responsibilities this year with service work through a couple of organizations who met yesterday and contributed to the storm.

She’s not wrong. But also: growth concerns building capacity. One route to do this is to create constraints that you embrace and learn how to work with.

How well do you understand your challenges?

I just spent three days surfing coffee shops in small towns in the Columbia gorge. I turned off Slack and email. I was alone with my thoughts as I went from location to location. View to view. One cup of coffee to another.

It was somewhere around the 8th or 9th personal retreat that I’ve done in the past ten years.

This time, I wanted to focus solely on business strategy.

It was an odd experience. I kept circling in a loop around my values, the business vision, pulling out my calculator app, running numbers, checking our analytics, checking search stats.