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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Aaron Ross
Read between
November 24 - December 12, 2022
You read these exciting press stories and feel a mixture of excitement first, and then depression: Everyone's crushing it except for you (“compare and despair”).
COMFORT IS THE ENEMY OF GROWTH
If it's a revenue plateau, it's often because: You've tapped out your networks and relationships. You or your business doesn't stand out; you sound like everyone else. You're overly dependent on a single person for a key function, such as bringing in leads, closing deals, or engineering. The market or customer needs have changed, and changing the business feels impossible or impractical. You've hit a business model or market wall but aren't sure what to do about it.
The irony is, what's already worked best for you so far (what you're familiar and comfortable with) can be the enemy of faster growth, because you become dependent, complacent, or just too busy to keep
A drastic change might be required to Nail a Niche or get on the path to scalable growth.
When your bicycle tire's leaking air but not flat yet, it feels easier just to keep pushing.
Those who succeed in making the big leaps find the motivation—whether through drive or passion—to sustain them through the ups and downs of Doing the Time, or a Year of Hell.
You have to want something as badly as a drowning person wants air.
Remember three things when overwhelmed: Embrace your struggle, because it's real and not going away. Everyone else has it, too—even when it doesn't look like it. Use your struggle as a fire under your butt to change things, rather than resisting it. Turn it to your advantage! Don't let “keeping up with the Joneses,” whether friends or competitors, distract you from doing the important things you, your team, and customers need. Don't raise money, hire a ton of people, write a book, or spend money on a conference just because someone else did. Cut the “blah blah” crap from your communication, to
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If you really want to earn, you need to be among the top three or four leaders in the company. It's best to be a founder. Very few people can do this. It's a rare skill. Be realistic about your skills, background, and ideas.
Match your talents, age, skills, ambition, and economic situation to your current reality.
Having a good heart isn't enough. You need to learn how to make money to grow your organization, whether it's for- or nonprofit.
Now, he says he's learned the hard way that regardless of how meaningful an organization's vision and values are, it's not going to exist unless its founders embrace money. Including how to market, sell, and predictably grow.
Don't obsess about getting to success so fast that you ignore your inherent interests, those “whispers” in the back of your head that you usually ignore as being impractical—you know, pretty much anything that isn't about your to-do list or your immediate career and home concerns. Anytime you say, “I'd like to do X, but I can't because of Y” imagine what it would be like if Y were not in the way. How can you pursue dreams you had when you were younger, such as moving to another country, making art, writing music or poetry, having kids, or adopting?
Make Your World better by appreciating all the tangible ways you already help the people you work with, serve, or inspire.
Importante
You can make a great journey. Startups, companies, or teams don't last forever. They grow, one way or another, or they die. But you can make a great journey. You get only so many trips in life. Having a great one is something everyone takes with them, forever.
The Painful Truth: Your employees are renting, not owning, their jobs.
You’re passionate and committed to what you do, which leads you to forget that many others aren’t, or that they haven’t learned yet how to execute as you do. And they won’t, unless you embrace Functional Ownership.
I am only motivated to do the minimum here to get by, rather than going above and beyond—because, what’s the point?
If you wait for people to recognize or “discover” you, here or anywhere, chances are you’ll be waiting a lo-o-ong time.
I know we have set ways of doing things, but don’t let them trap you into inertia or excuses: You can’t wait for more people and budgets to happen before you can evolve and adapt. There is always a way to move forward with the time and resources that you already have. Embrace faster decisions: Nothing happens until a decision is made. Are you avoiding making an important decision (or keeping it in committee indefinitely, or hiring a McKinsey…) because you’re afraid of making the wrong one or looking bad? Don’t punish new ideas. When a salesperson intentionally tries a creative new technique
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If you punish your employees for trying new ideas (or just ignore them), they’ll stop trying.
Get your hands dirty—say “I,” not “we.” Do you think “we” should start a blog, start prospecting, or come up with a new vision statement? Kick off the grunt work yourself first. You’ll set the example and learn more about what “it” will take to work. How can you and your team increase revenue? Maybe no one else cared before how HR, procurement, IT, manufacturing, or accounting affected revenue. But I need you to understand what growth requires, so you can help. At a minimum you can teach our sales teams to be smarter about how your function works at customers. And the closer you can tie your
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Owners don’t need to be managed. They don’t sit around waiting to be told what to do—they do it. Because when they own something, emotionally, when they care about something, they take care of it.
How can you help employees go above and beyond their job description—not in hours, but in initiative?
Look, if most sales managers complain their salespeople don’t prospect enough, then it’s not the salespeople that are the problem—it’s the system of prospecting that needs to change. This is why specializing sales roles works so well. Got it? Okay then… Likewise, if most CEOs and executives wish their employees took more initiative and acted like owners, and then it’s not the people that are the problem, it’s the system of management that needs to change.
It’s not the people that are the problem, it’s the system of management that needs to change.
Because the truth is, your employees are renting their jobs: How do you treat a car you own versus a rental? How do you invest in a house you own versus a leased apartment? What’s it feel like to babysit others’ kids, versus having your own? Your employees don’t act like owners, because they aren’t owners. Not really.
Employees need Functional Ownership to inspire owner-like behavior.
But Functional Ownership can be life-changing for: Employees who want to take their contributions to the next level, but haven’t been sure how. Executives who keep looking for ways to predictably motivate and energize people. But Functional Ownership can be life-changing for: Employees wanting to get to the next level, but aren’t sure how, and Executives who keep looking for ways to predictably motivate and energize people.
People support what they help create—the size of what they own doesn’t matter as much as the reality of their ownership. Including an inability to hide from that responsibility, which is why shared responsibility creates pointed fingers.
So, Functional Ownership is a key piece of the motivation puzzle here. Then, combine it with inescapable deadlines and Forcing Functions (which we’ll get to later in this chapter) … that’s when predictable magic happens.
Are you going to react to changes in the market or get ahead of them and help create the changes yourself?
Yes, by definition you and your people should feel frustrations when getting outside your comfort zones. As long as it’s new frustration from new problems, not from the same ones that never get solved or evolved.
Don't try to fix or respond to or improve everything at once.
Customers hate surprises from salespeople. Salespeople hate surprises from customers. VP Sales hate surprises from their salespeople. CEOs hate surprises from their executive team. Boards hate surprises from the CEO. How can you create a culture of “No Surprises”? Consider what it'd take to eliminate them …
What it would take to eliminate surprises—across employees, customers, investors, and the management team?
If you have a board, turn board presentations around and use the same one for a regular company update.
Over time, regular updates will evolve to change style and pace, but in the beginning, you need to establish how serious you are about it.
Educate your employees on your finances.
Are there proven career paths in the company that people can look forward to? How are promotions or job changes decided? Are new job openings publicized within the company in addition to outside the company, and are internal people allowed to apply? If not, why not?
For example, here's a simple outline of a process that aligns both buyer and seller: Initial “Are We a Fit?” call: Determine if this is a waste of time or not, before moving forward. This may include a first simple demo to the buyer, so they can decide if a next call is appropriate, and who to invite from their team. Demo or discovery call: Include several people from the buyer's team, including a decision-maker, so again we can make a decision whether a deal is worth pursuing. Proposal: Lay out the terms so the buyer can see all the details regarding how it would work to meet their
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When someone owns something emotionally, the way they think about it, work on it, and commit to it is far deeper than when they're just a part-time player. When they can dabble. It's like the difference between being a parent and being a babysitter.
Answering the question “Who owns marketing?” is easy if you have a VP of Marketing. And usually, they own everything in marketing, with all important decisions being made or affirmed by them. But who runs the blog? That's not the VP Marketing, unless they are a one-man marketing team and run everything themselves. Whoever runs the blog on the team should own it. That means the head of marketing would defer to that person on decisions about the blog, which could include decisions about the visuals, rhythm, format, content, and style. And that person would own it and be 100% responsible for the
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Rather than having people coming to you with options all the time and asking you to decide, they are coming to you for advice when they need it and then they decide. It's made an enormous difference in the management load at PredictableRevenue.com to have decisions spread ou...
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Remember, we're concerned with two kinds of ownership (well, what we truly care about is emotional ownership, but that's a side effect of implementing these others): Functional Ownership: Who owns which responsibilities—Sales? Leads? IT? Financial Ownership: Who are the equity owners of the company? How are commissions made or profits shared? ...
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To encourage your people to take charge of their lives and be more entrepreneurial, they need to own something, anything, even if it's the kitchen refrigerator.
People only get better at decision-making when their boss lets them make decisions on their own, and then learn from the consequences.
Start with Three Questions
importante
When you have a Forcing Function deadline that someone can't hide from, it drives everything else to get built as they go: results, decisions, and learning loops.
