Brian Basilico — April 25, 2019 — April 25, 2019
One of the things in business that people are always looking for is an easier way to do things. The better way to do things. They’re always looking for something new, but what they really what most is an easy button. Well guess what? I have one sitting right on my desk, and here it is…
“That was easy”.
Yeah. So all you have to do is go on Amazon, and for $ 15, you press that button, and boom! Everything is easy, right? That’s what we want, but reality is a little bit more complex than that. If all we had to do was …
“That was easy”.
… and everything would work out great, then everybody would be buying these buttons and nobody would have to work, right?
An Easy Perspective
Let’s start out by looking at what I consider to be one of the biggest challenges, and that is, how do we think differently? How do we do things differently? It starts with the definition of insanity. You’ve heard this before. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Now, this has been attributed to people like Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and Mark Twain. It’s one of the core things that people think about: if you’re doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, you’re crazy.
Well yeah, but what I see is people trying to do what everybody else is doing, and expecting better or different results. So, you can buy a course where you’re going learn from a person who says they can make you a million dollars and all of a sudden… *EASY BUTTON* I’m gonna make a million dollars. Not really, because it’s a little more complex than that.
Tell Me What You Want… What You Really, Really Want?
If you break it down into what you really want to achieve — and that’s obviously to make more money, to make more sales, to have more free time, whatever those things are — it really boils down to something pretty simple.
What you’re trying to do is you’re trying to get the right people to pay attention to what you’re doing and to take action on it. Let me say that again, what you really want, is the right people to pay attention to what you are doing to take action.
Now there are three business slogans that really kind of define that. These are…
- Apple – Think different
- Verizon – Can you hear me now?
- Nike – Just do it
Let’s go back. What I really want is the right people, think different, to pay attention, can you hear me now, to what you are doing and take action, just do it.
T.R.Y. – Time (to) Reinvent Yourself
So, you’re really trying to reinvent the way that you’re thinking about things, and I have an acronym for that: TRY. TRY stands for Time (to) Reinvent Yourself. So reinvention means you have to think differently, right? You have to be heard, and you have to do something about it. So if you sit down and take an inventory of the assets that you have in business, and I’m not talking about physical assets or financial assets, I’m talking about your assets.
Time, Treasure, Talents
There are three core ones that you need to pay attention to, and they’re often referred to in the spiritual orb or religious vein as time, treasure, and talent. So, you have time, you have treasure, you have talent.
What’s the goal of time in business? The goal of time in business is to turn time into money, right? Hours for dollars. You don’t necessarily want to do that, but ultimately you want to turn your time into money.
The next one is treasure, and that is where you want to turn money into time. You want money to grow. If you’re in the financial industry, you’re taking your treasure and you’re trying to leverage that to make more money, right? Or you’re taking money and turn it into something where you can have more free time.
The last piece of this puzzle is kind of the key, and the key is talent. Now, you have strengths and you have weaknesses. I always say, you need to work to your strengths and hire to your weaknesses. So let’s break this down a little further and talk about what I consider to be the goal, the cost of time, and the cost of money.
Traffic, Training, Transaction
I’ve got three goals I want to talk about.
Traffic
The first one is to get more traffic or engagement, or create more awareness about your business online. Now, the cost in time is you have to figure out a way to generate something that is going to attract more attention, and there are two different ways that you can do that. You can either pay for it in the form of advertising, or you can create content that is going to draw people in. So, the question becomes what are you willing to pay for? You’re either going to pay for somebody to create the content, or you’re going to pay for the time for yourself to do it, or you’re going to hire somebody to do it for you.
Training
The next goal is to try to convince people to choose you, and the way that you do that is educate them. Are you creating articles? Are you creating blog posts? Are you creating ebooks? You want to create content that people can learn from, and again. It boils down to generating content that attracts those people. So, are you willing to pay with your time to generate that stuff yourself or to manage people within your business, or do you need to hire outside of your business to get that done?
Transaction
The final piece of this is we want to get engagement, we want people to chose you, and we want to generate more sales. We’re trying to convince people that what we’re selling is the right thing for them at the right time. So, the cost in time comes in relationships. Are you ready to invest in the relationships that it takes to meet people where they’re at? Can you go out and network? Can you meet them online in places like LinkedIn or maybe Facebook?
Pay To Play
What time are you willing to invest in trying to generate those more sales? Now, you may say, “Well, I’ve got a sales team to do that.” Yes, but you as an owner, as a manager, still need to invest time in that. Either creating the content and showing people in your business how to utilize it, or utilizing it yourself.
The cost in money is whether you’re paying your staff to do this, or you can try hiring a firm to generate leads for you, but we all know how that works out. There’s no relationship in there, so there’s not the kind of solid business plan that you’re going to get out of leads, and even if you do get leads, you still have to create content and do something to get them on the phone. To have a meeting with them, you have to convince them. So those other two things don’t go away; you still have to create engagement and you still have to educate them. So even if you get the leads, there’s still a process.
Final Thoughts
So let me leave you with this final thought. We’re not trying to redefine insanity. We’re trying to redefine results. So, it’s time to reinvent yourself. Think different. Can you hear me now, and just do it. Follow that advice.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas or questions about showing the concepts presented. Have you had to overcome any of the presented concepts? What worked and what did not live up to expectations? Do you have any ideas or advice you could share?
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