Winning requires leadership.
To win, you need to think differently. What most people do is hang out with people in their industry, read their industry magazine and chase the industry leaders. They ask, “what are the successful people in my industry doing” and do that. Hello, that is following. That is the very definition of following. I get it, on the surface, this seems like a smart idea. If it worked for them, it should work for me.
Followers do not build empires.
Empires require leaders. It requires a different approach. Here is what you need to do. You need to look out into the big wide world and find things that work in other businesses, other cultures, other industries and bring them to your business. You need to be like Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, who discovered inspiration in the coffee business in Italy. He brought that idea to American 30 years ago and changed the world. Learn more about that story in this 12 min podcast. You can also read this book.
Learn from Mark Foxx (a rocket scientist)
There is an amazing book written by a friend of mine, Mark Fox. It is called Divinci and the 40 Answers. Mark is a former NASA engineer (yes, he is a rocket scientist) and he wrote this book based on a concept of discovered by a Soviet scientist. And the concept is this. There are only 40 ways to solve any problem. This book will give you a foundation for finding new ideas and learning how you can bring them to your business. You can also take a class with Mark. He teaches at The Wizard Academy in Austin Texas once a year. Want to speed up the process and get a fresh perspective.
You can hire us.
This is what we do in the Bold Idea Day. Learn more here. At the end of this day you will have a bold idea that you can use as the foundation for your future business empire. And you do not need to hire us to implement it. In fact. The hard part of implementation has nothing to do with us. And everything to do with you and the people around you.
Getting others to buy into your idea is the hard part.
Picture this. You see something being done in another industry. It is amazing. You share this with your colleagues and, and, and, here is what you are going to hear. That won’t work for us, we don’t sell chocolate. That won’t work here, this is not Italy. We can’t do that because no one in our industry is doing that.
You need to change the frame of mind.
When you come across a great idea that is not being done in your industry or town. You need to ask yourself this question. Given I do not sell chocolates OR that I am not in Italy – how can I make that work in my business? This now lets you think about implementing the idea. This is how do you take that idea, put a spin on it, and make it work for you. Worked for Henry Ford.
Henry Ford got the idea for the moving assembly line by studying a pig slaughter house. He took that idea and did it in reverse. FYI – this is an idea in Davinci and the 40 Answers. We will also be covering this fascinating story in an upcoming podcast.
So the question you need to ask is “Given I do not sell x, how can I make this idea work in my business?” If you can’t make it work. Then you need to seek a new idea. The reality is. That rarely happens. Usually everyone is just too scared to try something new.
