6

3 Not So Obvious Secrets To Getting Ahead In Business

This is a continuation of a story how I turned my ho-hum solo practice into a 7-figure business. If you missed the previous lesson start here.

How a $0.50 “Ground Lift Plug” Made Me a Six Figure Income

Story #1

In the early 2000’s I started hosting marketing training seminars. As most startups, I was bootstrapping – saving cash everywhere I could.

One place I saw an opportunity to clip a few bucks off the expense line was to handle the AV and the audio recording of the event myself. I was smart enough to get some training and I was off to a great start.

Until I reviewed the recordings afterwards. The entire three days of audio was ruined by a very laud electrical buzz. We tried “cleaning” the audio, but it just wasn’t good.

This happened two more times. It was so frustrating. I had the entire recoding system set up right. But that annoying electrical hummm was still there. I could not figure out how to get rid of it.

Eventually the seminars got bigger and I decided it was time to bring in a professional to handle the audio. The first time we worked together I expressed my concern about the buzzing noise. He listened as I described it, reached into his toolbox, pulled out a little plug and used it to connect our recording computer to the electrical outlet. He handed me the headphones and nodded with a big smile – “Check it out…”

Total silence. No buzz! I was elated. And stunned!

 

I call this the Ground Lift Principle: A small tweak that costs little or nothing and is fast and easy to implement and makes a huge difference!

 

I could finally use the audio recordings to sell as a product! I did. And it made me hundreds of thousands of dollars. I still get mad thinking that I lost about a year of time, and probably at least six figures in sales, because I didn’t now about a $0.50 gizmo that made all the difference.

 

 

Story #2

So what I call “Ground Lift”, the “smart-corporate-business-type-folk” call a Slight Edge.

I have two daughters who were competitive swimmers when they were younger. They were blessed to swim on a team that produced six medal-winning Olympians at the 2004 Games.

At such high level they win by fractions of the second – just a slight edge can mean the difference between winning and loosing.

For example, you might remember when Michael Phelps won his 7th gold medal in the 2008 Olympiad – it was with a 0.01 advantage! We’re talking in the hundredths of a second!

 

 

So I learned something important by watching my kids train with such high-level athletes. I discovered that having a coach is NOT enough.

 

High-performers need other high-performers to get to the next level.

 

Let me explain.

If you’re not familiar with competitive swimming – it’s really an individual sport. Each swimmer competes mostly with his or her previous best time.

But it’s swimming next to other – equal or higher level – athletes that gives them a chance to test their limits and create big breakthroughs in their performance.

Business is like swimming. Without having to “test yourself” against other successful entrepreneurs you don’t know how fast you can really grow!

It’s this “friendly competition” that allows you to develop a slight edge you need to win big in your own business.

 

Story #3

So the question is how do you develop this “Slight Edge”?

I run a couple of coaching program for successful business owners who want to grow their businesses to multiples of six- and seven figures. I often challenge my students to engage in “friendly contests” with each other.

Here is something of my graduate students, Donna Kozik, shared with me after one of such contests. It really sums up the idea of Ground Lift in action:

“I’ve been reflecting the last day or so about how much this contest helped me on so many levels… there was the benefit of the extra income to start with… But the real pay off comes in the extra effort I put towards marketing, communication and customer service so that it had that extra ‘umph.’

“And the more I did so, the more I realized my own ‘power’ and came into my own with my business. I feel like I’ve turned the corner and the momentum is in my favor and keeps growing. ‘Down’ moments are a lot shorter and fewer and far between as the great stuff just keeps happening. And when the great stuff keeps happening it just makes me more creative and coming up with more and bigger ideas to implement. It’s expanded my thinking to take me places I never even dreamed would be here at this point.”

 

This is how the champions get better – they compete against the best!

 

Check out the graphic below. These results from the 2008 Beijing Olympics show the difference 1% makes across a range of sports. It’s the principle of Slight Edge in action. The difference between getting a medal and being forgotten is often just 1% difference in performance. Stunning!

 

 

Are you hanging out with the best of the best? When working with clients I often share with them one of my core beliefs…

 

“You can only grow your business as fast as you grow as an entrepreneur and a leader.”

 

I’m not talking about the how-to technical skills you’d expect to pick up from an ebook or a free webinar or teleseminar. These are the big-thinker habits you develop only by hanging out with other big thinkers.

That’s why I always seek mentors and invest to get advice from successful people. I attend high-end events because they attract business champions – people who invest in their own growth. I participate in several masterminds; I pay an annual fee to belong to some of them, others are more informal and I organize them myself.

This access to high caliber entrepreneurs helps me focus on GROWING MY BUSINESS, not just working in my business. I helps me recognize and explore bigger opportunities, develop passive profit centers, and leverage other people’s brilliance to make better decisions.

I’ve done this for so long that I almost take it for granted – don’t all entrepreneurs have their own mastermind groups? Apparently not. When speaking to a group of over 100 business owners I asked how many of them were using the power of masterminds to accelerate their impact, sales and profits. Only five or six hands went up! I was shocked.

This brings me to my next last lesson. It has to do with a 4th grade school project my daughter did and one of the biggest and hardest business lessons we all must learn. It’s literally keeping your business small and you – broke. But I’ll write about it my next post…

 

How about YOU?

 

Where in your business are you experiencing the principle of Slight Edge? Have you ever experienced the “Ground Lift” in action? How are you sharpening your ability to harness these ideas better and more often?

 

Take a moment and post your comments below now.

 

I’d love to hear from you…