There’s a great book out by Brent Gleeson named “Embrace the Suck” and if you haven’t read it, I’m not going to ruin it for you, but it’s very good, especially if you’re struggling to get your business off the ground or simply move the needle in an established company.
I’m not going to steal Gleeson’s thunder, but I WILL add to some of the most valuable pieces he lays out in the book, most importantly, one thing that all the “business experts” seem to never mention: it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
The good news, though?
If you’ll accept that singular fact, and become passionate about it every single day, you’ll round the corner on it by taking action that guarantees business success and growth … and an end to the suck*. Of course, no business exists in a vacuum, so the systems and processes you create to sort out today’s problems may not help you with the new challenges growth and success brings, but on the other hand, if that growth and success is bringing in hundreds of thousands of “extra” dollars to your company, how big of a problem is it, really?
One of the things I find myself talking about nearly every day with clients is this “problem” with growth. They want success and the bank account that goes with it, but many times, forget that whether their company is growing or not, they’ll be spending the same amount of time on it.
So why not accept that massive growth will only come with massive action?
Why not “embrace the suck?”
What does that mean for most businesses?
Well, for starters, it means understanding where the challenges are AND what to do about them. For many, it means accepting that marketing and automation must be driving forces in your actions and your tasks as an owner, and it also means you really HAVE to look beyond dated tactics. Sure, you might get a few leads from the Chamber of Commerce, but how good will they really be?
In my experience? When I quit selling in my own backyard and opened up to national and international clients, my closing ratios stayed the same but the timeframes to close – and profits from those sales – went up 4 times.
Yes, there were plenty of challenges with selling internationally, there were plenty of issues selling across multiple time zones, and it made for a lot of late nights while I built out the systems we needed to actually keep growing … and you know what? I kept addressing those challenges, kept focused on growth and marketing, and kept taking action and the hard work I’d been doing for years began to pay off.
The reality was that I actually worked less to make $500,000 than I did to make $75,000.
So have the vision, embrace the suck, and do the work, and your results will begin to support all your actions and activities.