The simplest approach often leads to the best outcome and when it comes to success, there are three simple “golden” rules.
Jean Paul Getty knew these well. He was an industrialist who made his fortune by doing precisely these three things. It’s true that Business Masters simplify everything, and Getty’s timeless advice is no exception.
Keeping it simple is not always easy in this digital age. Many people tell me that the harder they try to make it in their own business, the more frustrating things can seem. The reality is, we must first understand what’s complicated (the things that are hard about running your own business) before we can evolve, expand, master and then simplify, in order for your businesses to scale up.
For over twenty-five years I have been studying the most complex of formulas and success systems and compressing them into simple recipes. Over and over again I rediscover how important it is to always follow these three golden rules.
- Get Up Early
The Simple: Go to bed earlier, get some sleep and get up early. Once up; exercise, meditate, eat well, and make to-do lists. Ask yourself what are the one or two things each day that, if actioned, will propel you forward and help you to make tangible progress towards your goal, dream or vision.
The Complex: Do more with your time tomorrow than you did today. Find leverage and scalability in your progress, your actions and your decisions. Treat time as your most valuable asset and expand your mind AND body through health, fitness, mindset and insight. Use the quiet time that getting up early affords you, in order to gain further clarity and focus before the noise of the day begins. Late at night and early in the morning are the most important times of your day. This is when you learn, grow, study, invest in yourself, plan and create.
The Complex Simplified: When you get up early, challenge yourself to further your inspiration, your drive, your determination, your inner peace, your insight and your awareness of what’s possible for you, and all that you are – as well as what you’re becoming. To appreciate the now will see you becoming a better version of yourself more and more.
- Work Hard
The Simple: Stick to your knitting, and drive the day-to-day harder than you have ever done before. Each day is reserved for getting it done. Work hard on yourself and your craft. Whatever you’re really good at, get better at it every day. Don’t aim to hand over anything which you’re the master of.
The Complex: 96% of what you do can be done, and managed, by others. The first step is to start by handing over the 80% that can be done by someone else. Once that’s achieved, you can then look at handing over the 16% that can be managed by someone else. This is when you look at hiring great people who can work at taking care of the day to day tasks. The other 4% are the parts of your craft that you’re amazing at. What you must do with these parts, while you’re still in the organisation, is to train people how to do them – but don’t assume you’re going to be immediately replaceable. It’s your business, and so you’re going to be its most passionate member. Never assume that someone will be able to do that final 4% with the same heart and passion as you. In order to consider one day handing that 4% over, you must develop a loyal following of diehards who are aligned with you, and who are eager to help take your business where you want it to go. If 1990 Apple was once lost without Steve Jobs, it can happen to your organisation as well.
The Complex Simplified: Your plan needs to include an organisation that validates your dream. You can own the organisation or licence yourself to it like a Prize Fighter signing with an Agency. The organisation must be led by you until it can lead itself, or until you can joint venture with a great organisation that makes it better. Your philosophy is the key to success, and if you can’t clarify this in simple and powerful terms, then no one will understand your vision. That can make it difficult to grow your herd.
- Find Oil
The Simple: There is gold (or oil) in your own back yard. Your expectations must not stray away from what you’re best at. Find how to scale your most primary expertise (or the thing you love to do that seems to resonate most with customers). If you love what you do, then you’ll do it so well that people will pay you for it.
~Business Game Changer Special Promotion~
The Complex: Keep honing and evolving your core product or service in line with what you love to do, and be willing to totally transform what it is that you actually offer the marketplace. Remember that GE (General Electric) no longer has anything to do with its origins, and it is a global powerhouse. Your entrepreneurial spirit must keep probing like an outdoor adventure explorer, continuing to identify and discover market needs, as well as problems that still need to be solved. The complexity is staying focused on your knitting (knowing what business you’re in and what you’re not), whilst at the same time realising when you need to totally change course to seize an opportunity (and seize the day).
The Complex Simplified: Keep watching the marketplace and listening to your customers. When something seems like an opportunity, survey your customers. If everything is telling you that something new or different to how you do business is going to work, then always go with your gut (and don’t let your head talk you out of it). Sometimes what you do is not ever going to make it big, and yet an opportunity to start doing something that will “make it” big could be right in front of you, waiting to be seized.
Above all else, never ever give up. Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen were rejected by more than 120 publishers before finally winning a publishing deal – and yet their book series “Chicken Soup for the Soul” became one of the most successful publishing stories of all time.
Never, ever, quit on yourself, or your dream.
