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Grow your Business by Growing Yourself First
Posted By Matthew Ferrara On Tuesday, March 6, 2012 @ 10:54 PM In Blog,Featured,rssfeed,Sales,Strategic Thinking
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If you’re trying to grow your business, don’t just focus on more marketing and new tech tools. It’s important to grow yourself before your productivity can improve.
An irony of a technology dominated business landscape is that even an endless array of new tools doesn’t guarantee we’ll grow. Sometimes, it’s just the opposite: more tools decrease productivity. Now, don’t panic: I’m not becoming a luddite yet. But after twenty years of working with organizations around the world, I’ve seen too many people expect growth to come from more tools and more spending, that never pans out.
I’ve seen the reasons, too.
Consider two people at the same company, with the same tools, same training and same manager, yet only one increases their performance. It’s almost a tautology: tools and training are necessary – but not enough – to improve performance.
How about accountability, that buzzword that won’t die. Is one of them more accountable, and if so, to whom? Most of us consider accountability to mean punishment or, to be more accurate, pre-punishment before termination. In most cases, if you need accountability you’re probably in the wrong job. If you don’t need it, you’re probably growing just fine. I’m just not convinced that we’ll unleash our growth by someone wagging a finger at us every week.
Which leads us to what does release growth in business: Growing ourselves – first.
Isn’t that redundant? Not at all. Growing yourself isn’t the same as learning to use a new business tool. We don’t automatically grow because we perform a new activity. We grow when we initiate new motion. It’s a fine point; but an important one.
When people are in motion, they are headed somewhere: usually towards a goal they consider important. Whether we’re improving our health, relationships or sales, we only move towards important goals that exceed the sum of the things we need to do to get there. If we don’t believe in the destination – that where we’re headed matters – we simply won’t go.
Or grow.
But when we do – well, you’ve seen it: Somebody around you starts gaining momentum, and they pull everything else into place. If they lose a few pounds, they spend that extra physical and mental energy closing more sales. If they spend the weekend pursing a hobby instead of cleaning their inbox, you’ll find them making big strides in the office on Monday.
It’s not only more work that creates better performance at work.
It’s a mistake for managers and executives to believe that only growing our business skills will improve our business performance. Simply stuffing more things into our heads won’t create momentum. Growth isn’t a knowledge problem. It’s a passion problem.
Momentum – growth – comes from releasing our achievement drive. Nobody has trouble doing something they’re passionate about. And passion begets passion. Help someone achieve an important goal in one part of their life and they’ll carry that energy over into other aspects. Like work
And it’s not only organizations that can help us reach our goals. We must do it for ourselves. We have to grow ourselves – a little bit each day - so we can apply that momentum to growing our business at the same time.
It’s actually easier than you think. Consider a marketing person who finds time to engage their love of poetry; it helps them improve their advertising copy at work. Or a salesperson who schedules time to play their favorite sport or instrument, suddenly making more sales as easily as playing a tune. The best approach would be to incorporate our personal goals into our work efforts: Imagine writing ad copy that was like writing poetry, or prospecting as if you were playing an inning of baseball!
Think of it like the vacation phenomenon. Remember how productive you are the week after you returned from vacation? What matters wasn’t how relaxed, rested or active you were that week, but that you spent the time pursuing something important. Your performance boost at work came from the lasting after-effect of doing something important outside of it. You grew yourself one week, so you could grow your business the next week.
Now imagine building that effect into your daily routine.
Nothing says that growth has to come from another phone call, another report, another email. It just as easily comes from working on ourselves. Restructure your day to incorporate personal growth – pursing your passions – to improve your professional ones. We can’t expect to grow our performance in one area without paying attention to the other.
If you want to take your performance at work to the next level, start by taking yourself there, first.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article printed from Matthew Ferrara & Company: http://www.matthewferrara.com/
URL to article: http://www.matthewferrara.com/rssfeed/growing_together/
No Comments
An irony of a technology dominated business landscape is that even an endless array of new tools doesn’t guarantee we’ll grow. Sometimes, it’s just the opposite: more tools decrease productivity. Now, don’t panic: I’m not becoming a luddite yet. But after twenty years of working with organizations around the world, I’ve seen too many people expect growth to come from more tools and more spending, that never pans out.
I’ve seen the reasons, too.
Consider two people at the same company, with the same tools, same training and same manager, yet only one increases their performance. It’s almost a tautology: tools and training are necessary – but not enough – to improve performance.
How about accountability, that buzzword that won’t die. Is one of them more accountable, and if so, to whom? Most of us consider accountability to mean punishment or, to be more accurate, pre-punishment before termination. In most cases, if you need accountability you’re probably in the wrong job. If you don’t need it, you’re probably growing just fine. I’m just not convinced that we’ll unleash our growth by someone wagging a finger at us every week.
Which leads us to what does release growth in business: Growing ourselves – first.
Isn’t that redundant? Not at all. Growing yourself isn’t the same as learning to use a new business tool. We don’t automatically grow because we perform a new activity. We grow when we initiate new motion. It’s a fine point; but an important one.
When people are in motion, they are headed somewhere: usually towards a goal they consider important. Whether we’re improving our health, relationships or sales, we only move towards important goals that exceed the sum of the things we need to do to get there. If we don’t believe in the destination – that where we’re headed matters – we simply won’t go.
Or grow.
But when we do – well, you’ve seen it: Somebody around you starts gaining momentum, and they pull everything else into place. If they lose a few pounds, they spend that extra physical and mental energy closing more sales. If they spend the weekend pursing a hobby instead of cleaning their inbox, you’ll find them making big strides in the office on Monday.
It’s not only more work that creates better performance at work.
It’s a mistake for managers and executives to believe that only growing our business skills will improve our business performance. Simply stuffing more things into our heads won’t create momentum. Growth isn’t a knowledge problem. It’s a passion problem.
Momentum – growth – comes from releasing our achievement drive. Nobody has trouble doing something they’re passionate about. And passion begets passion. Help someone achieve an important goal in one part of their life and they’ll carry that energy over into other aspects. Like work
And it’s not only organizations that can help us reach our goals. We must do it for ourselves. We have to grow ourselves – a little bit each day - so we can apply that momentum to growing our business at the same time.
It’s actually easier than you think. Consider a marketing person who finds time to engage their love of poetry; it helps them improve their advertising copy at work. Or a salesperson who schedules time to play their favorite sport or instrument, suddenly making more sales as easily as playing a tune. The best approach would be to incorporate our personal goals into our work efforts: Imagine writing ad copy that was like writing poetry, or prospecting as if you were playing an inning of baseball!
Think of it like the vacation phenomenon. Remember how productive you are the week after you returned from vacation? What matters wasn’t how relaxed, rested or active you were that week, but that you spent the time pursuing something important. Your performance boost at work came from the lasting after-effect of doing something important outside of it. You grew yourself one week, so you could grow your business the next week.
Now imagine building that effect into your daily routine.
Nothing says that growth has to come from another phone call, another report, another email. It just as easily comes from working on ourselves. Restructure your day to incorporate personal growth – pursing your passions – to improve your professional ones. We can’t expect to grow our performance in one area without paying attention to the other.
If you want to take your performance at work to the next level, start by taking yourself there, first.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article printed from Matthew Ferrara & Company: http://www.matthewferrara.com/
URL to article: http://www.matthewferrara.com/rssfeed/growing_together/
Monday, January 9, 2012
The Critical Difference Between Working On Your Business and In It
Here's a great article about working on your business as opposed to working in your business. I am constantly asking my agents how many hours a week they are working "on" their businesses. Need a boost: read this article that was posted on Hobbs/Herder's blog: http://www.agentsuccess.com/blog/?p=487
We have all heard the advice many times that to succeed in a big way you have to learn to work on your business and stop working in it. But what does that really mean, how do you do it and why is it so hard?
The Textbook Definition
First, you must have a clear understanding of the difference between working in and working on your real estate career. Working in your business covers all the things that you do to conduct real estate, it includes creating your marketing, handling calls, selling, showing, servicing, running, earning – you know, the seemingly endless “stuff” you have to do to get a sale closed.
Working on your business means taking a step back to look at how you do each thing and trying to figure out if there is a more effective way, order or system to do the things that have to get done in order to complete a transaction.
Don’t Slip Back Across the Line
It does not sound that hard and it really isn’t, but you do have to avoid some of the pitfalls that trap a lot of agents and prevent them from reaping the great rewards that come from mastering the art of working on their business. A lot of agents set aside some time to work on their business and they say, “Well, lets start at the beginning of the cycle – how do I attract clients through my marketing and advertising?”
They take a look at what they are doing and they say, “Wow, I can see some room for improvement,” and they instantly start working to improve their marketing materials. Suddenly, with out even being aware of it, they are back working in their business, not on it.
Think “Big Picture”
When you work on your business, you have to think strategically. Instead of thinking about how to improve your marketing, ask the following questions:
•“What am I trying to accomplish with my marketing?”
•“Is the marketing medium that I have selected the best way to communicate my message?”
•“What are the alternatives?”
Through your thinking you come up with a written outline of the marketing strategy and reasoning behind that strategy. You will then follow this strategy when you go back to work in your business to actually create and improve your marketing materials.
Resist the natural urge to go directly from strategic planning to implementation. If you give into that urge, you will find that most of your time will get spent working in and not on your business. This sounds easy but forcing yourself to think through, evaluate, and then create a strategic guideline is hard work. When you are done you may feel like all you have accomplished is creating more work because now you have to implement this in your business.
Don’t Bite More Than You Can Chew
Another pitfall that ensnares a lot of agents is failing to break things down into manageable pieces to work on. One day they have the epiphany that they desperately need to systematize every aspect of their business if they truly want to do a large volume of business and still have a life. So they set aside a day to start the process and start thinking about every step of the process from beginning to end and how it all interrelates.
What they find is that they lay a plan for step 1 and then start on step 2 but realize that step 1 should be changed to support step 2 more effectively. So they redo it, and then they do step 3. But now step 2 needs to be reengineered to support 3 more effectively, which requires that they redesign step 1 again. About the forth time they redesign step 1 they are mentally exhausted. By this time, it seems so big and overwhelming to get it all done at once most people simply give up.
Prioritize Your Work
The best way to make progress is to start with one area that desperately needs to be strategically thought through and then implement it in your business. Then go back and create the strategic plan for the next piece and then the next. Once you have completed that process, you start over and redo the first piece that you did. This should be a never-ending process of refinement and improvement. If you ever find yourself saying, “everything is now perfect and cannot be improved,” you have stopped growing as a person.
The advantage is that once you start spending more of your time working on you business rather than in it, you can finally get your business and your life under control so that you will enjoy each day of your life and the journey that you are on. There is no shortcut to the process. You have to do it for yourself, but the rewards are huge.
I strongly recommend that you start by working at least 3 hours per week on strategic planning and eventually work yourself up to one full day per week. In addition, you should block one week, twice per year, to work on your business.
The Textbook Definition
First, you must have a clear understanding of the difference between working in and working on your real estate career. Working in your business covers all the things that you do to conduct real estate, it includes creating your marketing, handling calls, selling, showing, servicing, running, earning – you know, the seemingly endless “stuff” you have to do to get a sale closed.
Working on your business means taking a step back to look at how you do each thing and trying to figure out if there is a more effective way, order or system to do the things that have to get done in order to complete a transaction.
Don’t Slip Back Across the Line
It does not sound that hard and it really isn’t, but you do have to avoid some of the pitfalls that trap a lot of agents and prevent them from reaping the great rewards that come from mastering the art of working on their business. A lot of agents set aside some time to work on their business and they say, “Well, lets start at the beginning of the cycle – how do I attract clients through my marketing and advertising?”
They take a look at what they are doing and they say, “Wow, I can see some room for improvement,” and they instantly start working to improve their marketing materials. Suddenly, with out even being aware of it, they are back working in their business, not on it.
Think “Big Picture”
When you work on your business, you have to think strategically. Instead of thinking about how to improve your marketing, ask the following questions:
•“What am I trying to accomplish with my marketing?”
•“Is the marketing medium that I have selected the best way to communicate my message?”
•“What are the alternatives?”
Through your thinking you come up with a written outline of the marketing strategy and reasoning behind that strategy. You will then follow this strategy when you go back to work in your business to actually create and improve your marketing materials.
Resist the natural urge to go directly from strategic planning to implementation. If you give into that urge, you will find that most of your time will get spent working in and not on your business. This sounds easy but forcing yourself to think through, evaluate, and then create a strategic guideline is hard work. When you are done you may feel like all you have accomplished is creating more work because now you have to implement this in your business.
Don’t Bite More Than You Can Chew
Another pitfall that ensnares a lot of agents is failing to break things down into manageable pieces to work on. One day they have the epiphany that they desperately need to systematize every aspect of their business if they truly want to do a large volume of business and still have a life. So they set aside a day to start the process and start thinking about every step of the process from beginning to end and how it all interrelates.
What they find is that they lay a plan for step 1 and then start on step 2 but realize that step 1 should be changed to support step 2 more effectively. So they redo it, and then they do step 3. But now step 2 needs to be reengineered to support 3 more effectively, which requires that they redesign step 1 again. About the forth time they redesign step 1 they are mentally exhausted. By this time, it seems so big and overwhelming to get it all done at once most people simply give up.
Prioritize Your Work
The best way to make progress is to start with one area that desperately needs to be strategically thought through and then implement it in your business. Then go back and create the strategic plan for the next piece and then the next. Once you have completed that process, you start over and redo the first piece that you did. This should be a never-ending process of refinement and improvement. If you ever find yourself saying, “everything is now perfect and cannot be improved,” you have stopped growing as a person.
The advantage is that once you start spending more of your time working on you business rather than in it, you can finally get your business and your life under control so that you will enjoy each day of your life and the journey that you are on. There is no shortcut to the process. You have to do it for yourself, but the rewards are huge.
I strongly recommend that you start by working at least 3 hours per week on strategic planning and eventually work yourself up to one full day per week. In addition, you should block one week, twice per year, to work on your business.
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