Sometimes we have to start over because the way we are doing things doesn’t work as well as it should. Or could.
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you may recall that the genesis of it was a conversation I had with a partner who said his agency was “stuck” at $3 million dollars and wanted to grow to $5 million dollars. My answer to him was do twice as much of whatever it is that got you to $3 million.
While that works, I was reminded recently of my experience with bowling in college. As a teenager I bowled with friends quite a bit. I was pretty good by the time I got to college, scoring around 200 most of the time. So, when the bowling instructor taught everyone how to bowl with a hook I wasn’t interested. After all I was better than everyone else, so why change?
You already know what happened. Everyone else caught up and then passed me by. That was frustrating! You already know what the coach said too: “Learn something different. Something better. Start over and learn to throw a hook.”
Well, starting over was very frustrating! I got a lot worse pretty quickly.
But as frustrating as learning an entirely different way to play the game was, it wasn’t as bad as losing.
Guess what? I got a lot better and eventually began to win again! This time with scores substantially higher than the average I had before.
Why does this matter to an agency owner? Hopefully, the answer is obvious. We all need to adapt and change at different points in our careers and the development of our businesses in order to continue our progress. Have you gotten to a plateau?
Learn to throw a hook!