Ever feel stuck in your business? Like you are on the brink of failure and you have to do something to make this work?
So you double down, work even harder, and go searching for what the magic piece is to catapult you to success.
In this situation, you should do the opposite... slow down!
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In today's episode, we're going to be talking about one of the strategies that are going to take you to your swag as fast as possible. Remember, SWAG is sanity, wealth and gratitude. That's what we talk about here. On the Infinite Franchisee Show, when we're discussing what success looks like to you, where do you want to go? What is the destination you are working towards in your business, and we want to help you get there as fast as possible. But this strategy may not be the one you're expecting. It is “slow down to speed up”. Now, if you haven't heard this phrase before, it probably sounds strange. It is in fact an oxymoron, right? Slow down to speed up, that doesn't even make sense. Well, maybe not on its surface, but once we get into it here, it will make sense for you and it can definitely help you in your business. So think of this, like running. We always have a choice if we're going to run the sprint, or if we're going to run long distance. Running a business is not a sprint, it's a marathon. We're in it for the long haul, and most people are looking at forecasting way into the future. If you're a franchisee you likely have a franchise term of around 10 years, maybe yours is five years, but some are 20. So on average, we're looking at about a 10 year franchise term. And so it's not a sprint, it's a marathon, right? It's a cross country track. So just like in running, if you set out in a marathon at your fastest pace, and you sprint, the beginning, you are going to burn out, your muscles are going to cramp and you're going to fatigue and have to drop out of the race way before you make it to the finish line. Marathon runners have to pace themselves. They have to have a strategy whereby they run at a particular pace that is personalized to them, but also make changes along the path. What pace are they going to run uphill versus downhill? Right? Where are they going to grab their water? There has to be some strategy because it is such a long race. And also not just strategy about how to get to the finish line, but strategy as to how to move up in the ranks as they approach the finish line, right? Well, this is where slow down to speed up comes into play in your business.
Many times business owners hit the ground running, and they begin to sprint. They're doing all the things, all those dodo tasks. And if you haven't been to one of our free master classes, you may not know what I mean by dodo tasks. That stands for “Daily Operations that just keep your Doors Open”. So we dive in, as business owners start doing all the dodo tasks. And we really go at a very strong pace, in doing so, because we're trying to shorten the time to success. But often what happens is, after several months of grinding and hustling, and working, working, working, we start to fatigue, we start to burn out. And we start to lose motivation to keep up that pace for the rest of the race. And so, we need to slow down to speed up, we need to take three steps back and look at the business as a whole again, strategically and say, “Where do I need to be spending my time to make this business truly get to the destination that I'm aiming for?”. This may mean that we have to take things off our plate, or we have to take initiatives and put them on the back burner for a while. But by doing so, we can take what we're focusing on and we can make it the star of the show, bringing in more revenue and helping us get to our destination faster. Now here's the real danger - it’s that when people are burned out, and when they are in a scarcity mode, because they've been doing, doing, doing and it hasn't been creating the revenue that they had hoped, so they're feeling the pinch, they're feeling like they need more revenue desperately? - that's the last time in the world that anybody wants to slow down. Because it feels like if you slow down, you'll fail. It feels like if we slow down, we're actually going to get further from the finish line. But that's not the case. That's when you have to slow down. And most business owners I talked to that's where they're at in their business, where they've been hustling. They've been grinding and they haven't inched closer to the finish line. So now they're asking for help, but they're scared to slow down. And as we have to do, what we do is we take three steps back, and we go back to the foundation and we say, “Okay, we have to stop grinding at the forefront of your business and instead go backwards. Let's redesign that foundation, get that solid”. And now that it's solid, you can zoom ahead. Now that you have a team that you can trust to take over several of those dodo tasks for you, now, you can start concentrating on those other big ideas you had that will be bringing in all the revenue, the ideas that you haven't ever had time to implement.
So that is one way you can slow down to speed up. But there are lots of ways in your business. And that's the challenge today is go ahead, take three steps back, take a deep breath, really sit with it for a few minutes. In fact, take several deep breaths, and sit with it for a few minutes to examine what do you need to do to really get ahead? Is it to keep doing what you're doing? Is it to stay on the hamster wheel and hustle, hustle, hustle? Or might it be that you need to slow down, you need to slow down for a period of time to readjust, reassess, get some foundational things in place, so that then you can speed forward with confidence. If you have questions about this or anything else, of course, you know, you can always ask April Porter.
April Porter
April Porter : Jan 31, 2023 11:41:12 AM
