Episode 347: Getting On Top vs. Staying On Top

Hey everyone, well, it's towards the end of the NCAA tournament now, and I heard something in one of the press conferences. Yes, I am bitter about my Auburn Tigers getting knocked out in the first round against Yale. David Peterson, big Alabama fan, I know, can't believe he hasn't sent me messages yet. I think that's his way of kind of rubbing it in to me with that, but I heard that, I heard something at a press conference, but also I had a member the other day say something that really spoke to me personally, resonated with me. And I'm going to begin to kind of pull this, these two things together in analogy. And I guess, you know, if you listen to the podcast for any amount of time, I use analogies and sometimes bring sports into it. I think I do that really just to try to help myself to be able to make sense of different things. And I think this plays out in business, but also I definitely know it plays out in sports. And this is idea of getting on top versus staying on top. Now let's go to sports first. I've heard Coach Bruce Pearl, but I've heard other coaches as well talk about that it is a lot easier to take a team who is struggling and get them competitive, get them on top, get them to win championships or win a championship. Versus staying there. Coach Pearl at Auburn in basketball— Auburn basketball was one of the worst in the SEC, one of the worst in the country, and he was able in short order to be able to turn that program around. Well, that is a feat, and that's not easy to do. But as he has said, it has been much harder to stay on top. If you think about— I did a podcast, which obviously was painful for me to do, about Coach Saban. It was one thing for him to turn Alabama around, but it was another one— for another thing for Alabama to stay on top as long as they have. You look at Georgia in the SEC. Kirby Smart went over there, has turned Georgia around. That's one thing, but it's been another for them to stay on top. So what's the application in business? So a friend and a member, he shared with me, you know, for years, we worked really hard and we got on top. But ultimately, you know, the last few years I've been in a rut and the business has been in a rut and I'm excited and motivated again. And he said, you know, it's just really one thing about getting there versus staying there. And that really pondered— I really pondered that for a long time. As a matter of fact, I ended up doing actually a thinking time session about this myself, about, you know, what is it to be successful in business, have success for a period of time, and then what causes it to begin to slip? And the first thought that I had, and when I look back on it myself, I said, gosh, I, I think I can, uh, relate to that for sure. Periods of whenever the business was doing well, and let's just use as a metric, year over year growth. Okay. I'm actually going to do a podcast called the Rule of 40. Uh, I'll do that another time. Might even do it next week, actually, but let's just use year over year growth as a metric. And specifically when I'm talking about growth, I'm talking about revenue growth. Okay. I know there's a lot of different ways of looking at growth, but at the end of the day, what is the top line revenue number that was reported to on your income statement? Okay. I was going to say reported to the IRS, but they only care about the profit. But what was the number at the very top of your revenue on your income statement? And what was that compared to the year before, year before, so on and so forth. And so this friend was sharing with me, man, we were just growing, you know, 40, 50% year over year. There was even some of those years that we were doubling. And then The last couple years we've had single-digit growth, if that.

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And I think that at the end of the day, where that comes from is that we as the owner get tired or maybe even burn out. That's what he said. And so the question then becomes, how do we keep that from happening? Well, Sure, we could talk about, you know, maxims and mantras and sound-good pithy statements about, you know, eating right and drinking water and taking care of ourselves and all of those kind of things and managing our time. And I agree with all of that. I think that that is certainly the case and would be helpful, but I think it actually comes down to how it's actually designed, and that is Can we design something that exists outside of us? I think I've said this before, especially on a Friday episode, the difference between the business being personality-driven versus process-driven. And I know if you've been in business any amount of time, you've heard that quite a bit. But the reality is, is at some point we get really tired. Of hand crank. Let's be real, we really want the self-managing or self-sustaining, self-growing business that doesn't require us to crank it. If it's a hand crank— and the first time I ever heard that word, I think, was in the book, uh, The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham, which many of you No, that is my all-time number one best business book. If I only had to read one business book for the rest of my life, it, that would be it for sure. We are trying hard to get Keith to come on the podcast. Obviously he is difficult to come on, but I think that's the first time I ever heard hand crank. And I thought, man, for so many years. Yeah, that's exactly how I felt is that I could get motivated. I was sometimes motivated and I could go in and crank that business really, really hard. And guess what would happen? The business would grow. But after a period of time, I get tired, I get exhausted. And I think that's the difference between one that is able to stay on top consistently for years is it's not just reliant upon the business owner, the entrepreneurs. Personality, their grit and determination, willpower, desire, ambition. Look, I love basketball, and one of my favorite players of all time was Kobe. We actually have a Baseline Out of Bounds, uh, play. Maybe one day I should actually do— pull in some youth and travel basketball analogies into, into this. But we have a baseline out-of-bounds play called Kobe, and it's designed to get a, uh, shot in the corner. And so anyway, that's irrelevant, but Kobe was one of my favorite players of all time. And you know, you see these highlight reels on social media, you see these interviews that he's, he's done, and you know, his drive and determination, getting up at 3 o'clock in the morning and all those things, and it's motivating and it's inspiring. But I think him too. I mean, if you saw his, you know, whenever he tore his Achilles, he was frustrated and he was down and he was sad as well. And he was, you know, lonely at times. And but he was able to pick himself back up. And I think business can be that way. But at the end of the day, business— this is where the difference of business and sports is a little bit different. You actually have the ability to transition the business from being ran only through your personality to actually being process-driven. And we talk about that a lot, and I give different tools and techniques and mindset things that have just simply helped me. Um, not telling you to do anything, they're just the things that have been able to be helpful to me along my journey. And so I thought I'd share that analogy that I heard Bruce Pearl talking about in some different press conferences. But then when my friend Brandon shared that with me this week, and he said, you know, there was a time that we were successful, and then I just got burned out. I just got tired, and I was satisfied with low single-digit growth. But now I'm motivated again. And so I simply asked him the question that I would leave with you is, what's going to be different this time? What's going to be different this time so that You're motivated, you're fired up. Maybe you're fired up for the next 3 years. Maybe you're fired up for the next 90 days. What if that is fleeting today because we're on this call? What's the thing that's going to be different this time around for him? And maybe what's going to be different for you? What are the specific steps and things that you can do and you can implement? You can design it in a way that it's not determined, or it's not based on your own motivation, your own willpower. It actually has sustaining power. It's going from hand crank to being a well-oiled machine. Just something to consider. I hope this served you. I hope it was helpful. If it was, would you consider sharing it with one other person? Till next episode. Les doigts.