Two weeks ago, I went to Virginia for a couple of days to work with some clients, and to attend a virtual conference together – which was excellent by the way.
Everything was fine. I drove down to visit my son for a day, and we played 18 holes of golf. We had a nice lunch, but as I was driving back to my house, which is about three hours away, I got hit with vertigo, extreme dizziness.
I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced it, but it’s awful. In my case, nausea ensued, and I had to pull off to the side of the road.
Luckily I was fairly close to home, my wife was able to come to get me and take me back.
This had happened one time before, so I thought, “ no big deal.” It’ll go away in about a day and a half. Well, it didn’t. So for this whole last week, I’ve been fighting this dizziness.
There are a few lessons that I think are useful for business.
• The first lesson is, I need to be more sympathetic to folks who are feeling badly. That could be employees. It could be clients. It could be just anyone in general.
As a human being, I probably ought to have a little more sympathy. It doesn’t mean I shouldn’t push them, but it does mean that I should care more.
Now that I’ve experienced something like that, I’m generally pretty healthy, I think I’m in a position to be more empathetic and put myself in their shoes.
So maybe it’s empathy that’s the lesson here.
• Number two, – symptoms and causality. Vertigo is actually a symptom of something deeper. I didn’t look into it before because I thought it was a one-off deal caused by an infection.
There’s a deeper cause for it now – it turns out that my right ear doesn’t work as well as my left ear. We’re working on that with some physical therapy.
In your business, there are symptoms and causes too. Are you dealing with the symptoms, or are you dealing with the causes? Sales are down?
Well, that’s just a symptom. The cause might be something like you’re not making enough dials, or you’re not getting enough leads, or maybe your closing rate is down.
In any event, look for the root causes of the symptoms.
• “Responsibility” is number three. That’s the “ability to respond”. When an event happens ( in this case, severe dizziness) How do I respond? I went to the doctor. I got some medication. Now I’m looking for the root cause.
It’s the same with your business. Things happen outside of your control, but you do have the ability to respond. How are you going to respond to adversity?
• Number four is “patience.” Patience has never been a strong suit of mine, but I am getting better at it. This week, I couldn’t actually do much. So I’ve had to learn more patience.
Things are just taking me longer to complete. The podcast is taking me longer to do because my brain just does not work as well as it did two weeks ago.
We’re retraining my brain, – we’ll get it back up to speed, but right now it’s going to take me a little longer. Patience, please.
• Number five. Think. I haven’t been able to focus on anything for a week. I haven’t been able to watch television. I haven’t been able to read. I haven’t been able to do much.
I have felt good enough, from time to time to just lay back and think. I need to add more think time into my regular calendar.
And I bet you do too. I’ve come up with five great ideas this week. Put some think time into your calendar.
• Number six – you can’t do this stuff by yourself. I have a great team. I’m fortunate, thanks to the fabulous Beth, she’s doing a great job.
My clients are doing a great job. But you can’t do this stuff by yourself. So make sure that you recognize and you take care of your great team.
• Number seven – this business is still too dependent on me and I bet yours is too. I need to continue to build out the team. I need to continue to outsource. I need to continue to add and grow.
I need to continue to move things off of my plate and focus on the things that only I can do. And you do too.
To sum up, a pretty tough week – I’ve learned that I need to take a few steps now to bulletproof my business from myself.
What are you going to do to bulletproof your business from yourself?
Until next time…
All the best!
Bill
Thomas Wolfe of Lobo Builders is this week’s Podcast Guest!
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