This article, in a way, will be the continuation of yesterday’s article.
Instead of how to play the wrong game, I suggest that you spend some time deciding what game to play.
But you can’t, if you are fixated on some imaginary result that is, in essence, a pie in the sky.
What is ‘pie in the sky’ really? And why isn’t it a realistic, attainable, good ‘goal’?
It could be an attainable goal for some… but not for you.
The most crucial step in the Structure FOR Fulfillment is Step 3 (Conversation FOR Opportunity). In that step you are asked to look at the ‘project’ and see how realistic it is.
And this is where the question: should you start a project or should you start a business issue comes in.
So let’s look at a business first. The goal of a business, according to Drucker, is to get a customer. Not a buyer, mind you. A customer. A person or a business who customarily buys from you.
And once you have one customer, get more customers.
Give them what they paid for… and make it a profit generating enterprise.
Have billing, have ways to generate more customers, have guarantees, have a way to be paid…. and this is just a fraction of what you need for a business.
If you attend to everything at the same time, it will never succeed.
There are tens of tiny skills, arrangements, that need to be learned INDIVIDUALLY, or you are toast.
Let’s consider cooking, one of my favorite go-to examples.
What are the tiny skills that unless you master them you are no chef?
So setting out to cook a 3-course meal is more of a project than a project that will lead to a business can handle.
So setting up the kitchen so you can be effective and efficient… every single element, including the utensils, the storage, the cleaning, the trash can be a separate project.
A project that is a stepping stone to a business, optimally, has one outcome, and not more.
In cooking: learning to manage the angle between the counter and your body when you cut vegetables, like onion.
Then learning to manage the width of the slices with your knuckles. And on and on and on.
Tens of projects that today’s humanity never considers undertaking.
It is as if today’s surgeons considered a surgery a project: really? You never operated on a person and now it is your first project?
I have a bunch of talented underachievers in my circle.
They never asked, so they can’t hear it when I tell them that the only thing that is missing is them learning the tens of tiny skills through setting them up as a project.
So for the guy who wants to be a salesperson… can you learn selling if your goal is to sell the person on the call? No. It is equal on operating on a person.
Instead you want the call to be successful if you use it to learn one of these skills: to entertain… or educate… or elevate.
Before I became a ‘star’ salesperson
Before I became a ‘star’ salesperson for Landmark Education, unconsciously I created projects. Stepping stones. My first project was to overcome my fear, my terror… and contain it. My second project was to successfully listen while I read the script. Then my third project was to be interested in what the other person is saying. My fourth project was to have empathy. etc. etc. etc. And six more skills…
All needed to be reliable and on the level to actually sell the other person on the idea…
One of my students, probably ex-student, had an ambition to become a musician. A singer-songwriter.
For that he would have to sing, he would have to create demo tapes, and… ahem… sell them.
- He has an advantage: his mother is a singer and a singing teacher. Did he take advantage of it? Nope.
- He also has a musician father… Did he learn that only when unconsciously competent with the instrument, the guitar, the piano, that is the only time you can actually sing in tune?
Nope.
He, like all the eight billion, consider the invisible skills unimportant…
EVERY job, every business, everything is made of tiny but important skills that you need to learn individually, or you’ll never get good.
Let’s look at driving. Driving a car.
Would you agree that 99% of the people on the road are lousy drivers? Why? Because they think that they can drive.
But just create a little challenging environment, slippery road, or a car ahead of them making a mistake and they are lost. They don’t know what to do.
I live in the lake-effect snow area, one hour drive south of Lake Ontario. We get 100-200 inches of snow on a normal winter. Who knows how this coming winter will be…
And people who have lived here all their lives, can’t drive in snow… Or black ice… or slush.
Exactly the same way the way they can’t cook. Some can fry an egg, make a pot of chili, a pot roast. But that doesn’t mean they can cook…
But instead of getting good at ANYTHING, they dream of moving out of the snow-belt… and be lousy somewhere else.
But that is YOU…
In the Drink your Food challenge you, seemingly, are best the first week.
And most people stop there. I can do this! they say, and they are gleeful.
But like anything that challenge can fundamentally change your life, Drinking your Food has several tiny skills, that unless you get good at them, you are still an amateur happy you found your ass…
Yeah, that is your claim to smartness: you can find your ass.
And feel real smart, definitely smarter than others.
You have two modes: on or resigned. You are on a little bit, and you are resigned, depressed, miserable for long bits…
It is time to break up this mode… and start taking on projects that you can succeed with. Really.
One thing no one seems to realize about winners: they are mindful at setting up their challenges. Mindful and purposeful. They set them up so they can win. The more wins you experience the more winner gets established as a beingness. The more confidence you gain. And the more you’ll continue developing your skills, one little one by one little one.
And that is the real meaning of ‘don’t start a business, start a project!’ guidance I have given.
The Drink your Food challenge can and will teach principles faster and better than any other method.
The Drink your Food ChallengePS: Here is another little piece of this puzzle.
If it takes 10 skills to do a project, the end result will be as good as the weakest skill in the chain.
So the singer-songwriter’s weakest is his instrument… he must pay attention to it, he is not unconsciously competent in it. So his results are meh at best.
For the wannabe salesman… oops… he doesn’t have ANY skills.
And me? My weakest, I think, is working through others… so my results are limited to the degree I have that skill developed.
I have known that for 25 years now… and haven’t done anything about it… So you are not alone. But you have more time than I do.
PPS: I probably should name the skill building method The Stepping Stone method… Because if you miss a stone, you need to jump. Another skill… And you can slip into the water…
