Here’s a few things to consider when increasing your influence.
1. Don’t be busy.
Growing your business by working much harder and much longer is not really growth. It’s just working longer and harder.
Pivot:
Focus on where you can have the most impact on your business and spend 80% of your time there. Then your business will grow not by working longer, but by spending more time where you make the biggest impact.
2. Great Ideas don’t have to cost the earth.
Small ideas can actually be really expensive because they can keep you busy for very little return. This is because they never achieve the result you really want. So, you have to keep coming up with even more ideas that just make you even busier. And as you are so busy, they are mostly more small ideas. And so it goes on.
That is the treadmill small ideas keeps you on.
Conversely, big ideas can create real attention. They get talked about. They get written about. They build your influence in this busy world. Then, you get to pick and choose which things you say yes to. Because Big Ideas allow you to charge more money, for doing less.
So, you then have more time to think of more big ideas.
Pivot:
Spend more time working on what the ‘Big Idea’ is because that is the main thing. If you focus more time on the main thing, then you will increase your success.
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” — Abraham Lincoln.
The top 3 Musts of a Big Idea.
1. Does it capture my imagination?
2. Does it make me intellectually curious?
3. Does it offer me the opportunity for transformation?
Remember, big ideas are often counter-intuitive, awkward and go against the popular way of doing things.
3. Different is better than better.
Trying to do the same as everyone else but a little better than your competition will consume all the energy, money and hours that you have. Remember, there is only you. And, to most people, the difference will be subtle. You will have exerted all that effort for a relatively marginal gain for your customer.
Pivot:
Put all your effort into being different or first or, best of all, combine the two.
4. Be a skyscraper. Even if it’s just for a day.
Have a small footprint, but stand tall.
Most people try and do too much. Instead of being average across many things, it’s much better to focus.
Be amazing in just one or two places. Make sure you remember that you can pop your head up for a short period of time, but you can’t stay there forever. That’s ok.
Do a few great things rather than many things ok.
Work in sprints, stick your head up. Even if it’s just for a short while.
5. Say ‘No’ more than you Say ‘Yes’.
If you watch an experienced surfer, they will wait for the right wave. An inexperienced surfer will take the next wave, regardless.
The pro won’t use up their energy on mediocre waves. When the big wave comes, they can’t give it everything. They held back to have more energy when it was most needed.
There is no lack of opportunities out there and if you are not careful, you can spread yourself too thin.
Shallow work rarely produces your best work.
You must stay true to your path.
Wait for the right wave.
6. Invest in the preparation.
Imagine for a moment that you only had four weeks to complete a project off. Most people would spend one week working it out and then three weeks on making it look good.
Pivot.
Spend three weeks working it out; then your thinking will be at a higher level. Making it then look good will subsequently not take so long.
7. Selling instead of borrowing.
As an alternative to raising finances, consider how to sell more instead. Learn how to write. Learn how to tell your story. Learn how to build a community. Take your destiny back into your own hands. The time you will spend trying to raise money could potentially be better spent learning how to sell.
Remember, your independence is important to you. Learn the skills you need to enable you to keep it.
8. Be early, and be right.
A key focus is to separate yourself from others. You are not here to do the same as others. Think of it like getting a seat on the train. If you get there early, you get to choose where you want to sit.
Being early is also important for another reason. It allows you to do more learning, more testing, build more influence before the mainstream arrives.
You get ahead of everyone and that can prove to be really important.
How do you get big on Twitter? How do you get big on Instagram? The answer is to be there before others get there. Just like a train, get there early.
9. Don’t automatically go for the cheapest option.
When it’s time to build a virtual team you want to build a long-term relationships with them because they are going to help you build your business.
Working with great people saves time. They know what they are doing which will make growing the business more fun.
With every completed project you will learn to trust each other a little more. Over a period of time, you will increasingly seek their opinion on much bigger decisions.
10. Don’t always outsource.
If you have not yet defined your process then that should be your first step. Very often we will find that we are the main bottleneck in our company. Even in a company of one.
Unless we define and articulate our process, we will continue to be that bottleneck because each time we do something, we will have to remember what we did last time. That is a remembering business, and that doesn’t scale.
The aim of a defined process is to be less busy but more effective.
When you buy a box of Lego, it comes with an instruction manual. That is called defining the process. Unless you define it, you will have to remember it.
You will need to be using your brain much more effectively than simply repeating.
