You’re not paid well for the easy part

I often hear people complaining about the difficult aspects of their jobs or businesses, and that amuses me. What do you think you are being paid for?

A business isn’t paid to solve the problems that customers can solve for themselves.

An employee isn’t paid well to do the things a monkey could do.

Your reward is proportionate to both the degree of the challenge and the need for it to be solved; the harder the problem is to solve and the more people want it solved, the less people who are prepared to solve it, and the more valuable a solution is.

So stop complaining that it’s hard and be grateful that everyone can’t do it.

Even better than online

Recently I was speaking with a group of bookstore owners who were lamenting their inability to compete with Amazon because Amazon was cheaper and more convenient than they were. And they were right.

When you compare yourself to a website in your ability to tick boxes, to be accessible 24 hours a day, to transfer data, you’ll lose every time.

Because you aren’t a webpage.

But that’s exactly it; you aren’t a webpage!

Focus on what you do have that’s different, that’s unique, that people desperately want.

What humanness can you bring to your interactions with people that can create an incredible experience?

How can you make the experience you provide eclipse the convenience a website provides?

Burning your boats

Whenever you have a backup plan that becomes your plan. Burn your boats.

Giving and getting

One of the most successful business people I know says that his goal in life is to die with everyone owing him something. He is one of the most generous people I know.

He is generous with his time, his knowledge, and his money.

He is also incredibly rich, and healthy, and happy.

And whenever he asks me for anything I always say ‘yes’, happily.

Most people go through life living by the maxim ‘I’ll give once I know I’ll get’.

And most people aren’t that successful.

Measure and do

In my career as a doctor there was a rule in medicine; only order tests if you were going to act on what you found. This is the same in business.

Only measure what you are then going to do something about.

If you’re not going to do anything, don’t waste your time measuring it.