At one point in time, I read a lot of business books.
I started to notice, however, that most of them said the same things. They just framed their advice differently.
And it made me think about when I was learning to Telemark ski back in the day.
I was fortunate to be able to spend a lot of time on the slopes and in the backcountry with Luke Miller, a pro Telemark skier with K2. Luke was (and still is) a fantastic skier, and he was patient enough to give me a LOT of pointers over the years.
There were many lessons to be learned on my journey to becoming a better skier, and one of them is that you may have to hear the same piece of advice 9 different ways before it clicks. There are a lot of different ways to tell a skier to keep their shoulders square to the fall line and not ski past their hands as they make turns:
Visualize a string attached to your belly button pulling you downhill.
Or that you are holding a beachball in your arms.
Or that you are shifting into 3rd gear after you pole plant.
Or even that you are carrying a cafeteria tray full of food and you don’t want to drop any of it.
What’s interesting is that so many of the same “tricks” are needed to find the one that resonates with you.
And once you have found it, my experience is that you have to work that tip until it’s fairly ingrained before you add another item to work on.
Then you work that new tip geared toward a different part of your performance until the first trick falls apart. When that happens, you work tip A until it’s back in action (which typically takes a lot less effort this time around), then go back to B. Rinse. Repeat.
It works quite a lot the same with business. If you try to do all the things at once, it takes a lot longer to master them than if you focus on one item at a time.
So get comfortable with one aspect of your business or marketing for your business. Add a second item. Go back to nurturing the first. Rinse. Repeat.
Business growth doesn’t come from doing everything at once—it comes from building, layer by layer. If you’re ready to focus and make real progress, start by dropping us a line. Let’s find the cue that clicks.
