Bobby LeHew compares the chaotic promo landscape to a multiverse, arguing that being insanely busy signals weak strategy. He identifies four traits that separate intentional scaling from growth by busyness: a clearly defined strategy, a concrete action plan, focus on high-impact activities, and processes that carry goals to completion.
Chapters
Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, Chief Content Officer at Commonsku. Occasionally we'll read an article from our blog that was popular with the community or a timely article based on current events. Today I'm sharing the first article in a new series we've launched, and it's all about scaling a multimillion-dollar business. Our article today is a little play on a popular movie you'll be familiar with, and it's titled Why Promo Makes You Feel Everything Everywhere All at Once. And How to Fix It. The article highlights 4 traits every successful distributorship possesses that allows them to scale their business with intention and more efficiently. But before we get to the article, one quick note. If you missed SKUCon or any of our recent events, don't miss this. Mark your calendars for SKU Camp, September 10th through the 13th. SKU Camp is a deep dive into critical topics for business leaders with ample time for peer-led learning. It's somewhat like a leadership conference, but very much unlike a leadership conference because we cut out all the boring parts. We're telling you now because it sells out really fast. It's intimate, fun, and it's kept to a small crowd on purpose. We'll open registration sometime late February, early March, but I'm letting you know now because SKU Camp sells out almost immediately. So if you want to make sure you don't miss this epic event, you can preregister at skucamp.com to get notified the minute we go live with registration. Again, that's skewcamp.com. Now here's part 1 of our series on scaling a multimillion-dollar business titled Why Promo Makes You Feel Everything Everywhere All at Once and How to Fix It. 2023 careened around the corner like a Formula 1 race car on fire. Everyone we talked to in this industry is insanely, insanely busy, which is incredible and it's slightly dangerous. Being, quote, "insanely busy," unquote, is a battle cry in this business. But for Roger Martin, when business people tell him they are busy, he says it's a signal, a signal that they have a weak playing-to-win strategy. Or as he put it more succinctly, being too busy means your strategy sucks. And Roger kind of knows. Last June, Roger posted a simple video to YouTube titled "A Plan Is Not a Strategy," and it went viral. In just 7 months, over 1.7 million people watched this seemingly benign topic from a Harvard Business Review clip. No surprise that in 2017, Roger was named the number one management thinker in the world. But the sudden virality of his message is somewhat baffling. After all, Roger has been writing on this topic for years, at least since 2013. And it's not as if you and I suddenly woke up to the idea that strategy and planning can work. Which begs the question, why now? Why are you and me and millions of other businesspeople suddenly riveted by Roger's message? Here's a theory. We rocketed out of the pandemic with new ambition, fueled by fresh zeal. Renewed expectations drive us while the market simultaneously unleashed a force of radical spending and overconsumption. Hello, inflation. Of which we now find ourselves on the receiving end and very, very busy. But busy toward what? Focused toward where? That's the difference between entrepreneurs who are scaling their business with intention or on purpose versus those who are, quote, doing all they can just to keep up. Busy. Intentional entrepreneurs can answer that question about focus precisely. They know exactly what they're busy toward, decisively what they are focused on. They can tell you their priorities quarter by quarter, month by month, sometimes even week by week and day by day. We talked to a lot of entrepreneurs. We don't know about the rest of the 1.7 million business viewers of Roger's message. But given our perch in the promo business, our viewpoint a $1.4 billion segment of the market, and a unique lens having interviewed hundreds of leaders with the foremost leading brands, we've identified 4 essential traits that differentiate those who scale their business with intention versus those who grow by osmosis or by busyness. Leaders who scale with intention and more efficiently have 4 things. Number 1, a clearly defined strategy. Number 2, a concrete, defined forward action plan. Number 3, focus on the right things that exponentially moves the business forward. And number 4, a process that brings their goals across the finish line. Being busy often obscures that while we are frantically filling orders, are we actually gaining traction toward our goals? This frantic day-in, day-out, month-by-month reality of a deadline-driven business keeps us from seeing the forest for the trees or the weeds. There's a quote, "Most people are sitting on their own diamond mines." That quote's from Gino Wickman, author of Traction and founder of EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. Put it that way, you are likely sitting on your own diamond mine. And you know it. You know you have clients who love you, a solid base from which to grow. You're smart. You know how to build a strong brand and a responsive sales force. But you might be spinning out in the same grooves, either carving marginal year-over-year growth, or perhaps you're growing, but it's incredibly frustrating work. You feel lost in the weeds all the time. You know it can be smoother, more intentional, less chaotic. And given your hard work, your passion, your knowledge, your team, and your clients, you know you should be bringing forth diamonds more easily. Well, welcome to the promo multiverse. You've seen A24's Everything Everywhere All at Once, right? If not, the protagonist Evelyn Wang must save the world from destruction and does so by universe jumping or verse jumping. Connecting with her multiple selves from one universe to another, in which every choice of hers creates an alternate reality. Does that sound a little bit like your day-to-day, jumping from one universe of problems in promo to another? And that's why we empathize with you. This industry and your business have changed radically from its simplistic pre-pandemic days. Our industry's gotten messier, It's an incredible amount of variables, more options, more brands, more processes. The promo biz is now multiverse of infinite variety and alternate realities. Also, combine the average easily distracted squirrel brain who's attracted to this infinite variety, someone like me and maybe you, plus an increasingly complex and more demanding client, plus a wildly fluctuating supply chain, that equals barely manageable chaos verging on eruption almost always. The result? A high-octane level of busyness you've never witnessed before. So if your paranoia is true, often the promo multiverse conspires against you. The infinite variety and complexity keep you in a whirlwind. But that's what this series is all about—helping you lift your head above the fray and noise to discover what's missing in your business so that you can spend the same energy but positive energy moving the game forward according to plan. Today, we've identified 4 essentials missing from your plan. Join us for our next installment in the series where we'll unpack the first one: strategy. We'll bring you interviews, stories, and lessons from the trenches from those who have learned to rise above and jump light-years ahead. More to come, friends. Stay tuned. And by the way, if this article was helpful to you, you can find more articles each month in our brand new newsletter called The Backpack. The Backpack is a monthly newsletter featuring trends in merch, top articles and podcast episodes, and global news impacting merch life. It's a roundup of our best content that we email to you in a digest form on the first and third Friday of each month. You can subscribe at community.commonsq.com/thebackpack or just Google CommonsQ Backpack. Until next time, my friends.
