I read the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People when I was in high school. One of the habits that I return to again and again is, “Begin with the end in mind.”

Every quarter, every 6 weeks, every week, and everyday I develop and work off a plan. In addition, I’ll often develop a plan for internal or customer projects.

I do a lot of thinking and planning and I always begin with the end in mind.

This intentional approach is always helpful, but I’ve noticed that it’s easy to degrade the effectiveness of it through generalization.

To give you an example, when I plan weeks, I start with the question of, “What would make this week great?”

It’s easy to respond, “If we made progress on our six week objectives.”

That’s not a terrible answer. It orients in the right direction. But the general nature of it doesn’t provide any traction. It presents no obstacles. The lack of specificity inhibits innovation. Only when you’re clear on exactly what the end is, true issues and opportunities begin to reveal themselves.

As it pertains to small business growth, there are all sorts of environmental restraints that will prevent a small business from growing. But the axle around which they revolve is your effectiveness, your ability to make reality match your vision.

Featured image is Rye harvest on Gotland, Sweden, 1900–1910. Used under public domain.

I received an email from a friend yesterday that read:

I’m doing the hardest work of my life, it’s drowning me.
Scaling up, trying to figure out production, etc etc.
I’ll either be where I want to be in a few months, or bankrupt.
No way to know quite yet 🙂

He recently acquired a sailing supply business on the opposite side of the country from his first here in Portland. In the process, he landed a contract with one of the largest sailboat providers in the world to build their boats.

In one fell swoop, he took on two huge challenges. Which is typical of him.

Several years ago, we were having drinks and talking shop and he told me he was trying to buy a competitor’s business. I asked him how it was going and he said, “I told the owner that if he wanted to sell I’d get on a plane today and fly down with a check in hand.”

A trait that I’ve noticed in many veteran entrepreneurs is aggressiveness. It’s not a hustle work ethic or reckless gambling, rather it’s a drive to realize change ASAP. Once they come to a decision, they commit to it posthaste.

A visited a psychic for fun last year at the end of a personal retreat. She told me my fortune and said, “When the opportunity arises, you need to move…” She chopped her hand through the air and then said, “Decisively. No hemming or hawing. Just action. You know what I mean?”

I just smiled and nodded. I’ve often thought that the epitaph I aspire to be inscribed on my tombstone would read, “He didn’t fuck around.”

Featured image is Masamune forges a katana with an assistant (ukiyo-e). Used under public domain.

In poker, there’s a concept called “resulting” that describes a fallacy common to new players. Resulting is where you equate the value of a choice with the outcome. If you make a choice and things work out, resulting is where you say, “That was a good choice.”

At first blush this may seem rational, but we often make good choices that aren’t successful and bad choices that are.

As a concrete example, if you happened to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then saw an influx of new customers, resulting would be where you think, “Ah ha! PB & J is my new lead engine!”

It seems absurd, but we often link choices to outcomes when the environment is murky like in business.

One of the challenges of being an entrepreneur is that you operate in an uncertain environment. Chance factors significantly into how things turn out. You may be rewarded or penalized, regardless of what you do.

This can lead to a sort of fatalism, where you mentally unlink cause from effect. People who win are “lucky” and those who don’t just got a bad roll of the dice.

Even though markets are unpredictable, it doesn’t mean that your choices don’t matter. They actually matter more, because you have to navigate probability.

A healthier response to the mercurial nature of the environment is to focus instead on your game:

• How can you maximize the things you can control?
• How can you elevate your business’s capabilities?
• How can you make choices that bend fortune to your will?

Featured image is The Card Players, an 1895 painting by Paul Cézanne depicting a card game, in Courtauld Institute of Art (London). Used under public domain.

A friend told me a story about a marketing course he enrolled in. The guy running the course offered an expensive additional offer to everyone taking it. My friend said, “I knew that it was an up-sell to profit even more on the students. I thought I was savvy by passing on it. But someone else in my cohort bought it and when I asked them about it, they told me that they always buy the up-sell. Over the next couple of years I watched their business take off. Now I always buy the up-sell. Anytime you get a chance to get more value say, ‘Yes.'”

Over the course of my career, I’ve invested a lot in developing my skills. A year hasn’t passed where I haven’t taken a course, worked with a coach or consultant, or taken on some growth oriented challenge.

I never learned something that transformed my business.