Business Made Simple: 60 Days to Master Leadership, Sales, Marketing, Execution, Management, Personal Productivity and More (Made Simple Series)

by Donald Miller

If you take a call or start responding to random emails before starting on your most pressing project, you’re giving valuable mental energy to low-return opportunities and likely wasting the most valuable hours of your day.

While the idea of prioritizing your important tasks for the morning may sound trivial, many value-driven professionals have discovered this single strategy to be a secret superpower.

Prioritize your highest-return opportunities for the morning, when your mind is fresh.

A value-driven professional knows how to say no to distractions so they can say yes to priorities.

I’m all for a great work community (without it, your team will suffer morale issues), but a business must succeed financially or the community will no longer exist.

The body of the airplane represents your overhead. Overhead includes salaries, medical benefits, rent, office supplies, and so on. These are necessary expenses because it takes people and supplies to solve customers’ problems in exchange for revenue.

Your products and services are what give a business lift. The wings of the airplane represent everything you sell.

The Right Engine: Marketing The engines thrust the plane forward. In a single-engine airplane, you’d likely only have a marketing budget, but in a dual-engine aircraft, you have a marketing budget and a sales team. Regardless, without some kind of engine selling the products and propelling the plane forward, the wings cannot create lift.

Your second engine is your sales effort. Your sales team brings in even more money so the business can afford to grow and scale.

Fuel: Capital and Cash Flow Lastly, the airplane will need fuel. No matter how efficient the airplane is or how light it is, without fuel it will crash. Fuel represents cash flow. A business may glide a little when it runs out of cash, but eventually it will crash and everybody onboard the body of the business will lose their livelihoods.

Increase sales by creating a step-by-step path your customers can take. Then monitor the progress of every lead.

When clarifying your message, position yourself, your products, and your brand as the guide, not the hero.

In order to pique somebody’s curiosity, then, we have to associate our products or services with their survival.

Your one-liner has three components: 1.A problem 2.Your product as a solution 3.The result If you look at the structure of the one-liner, it’s actually a short story. A character has a problem and finds a fix to solve it.

Nevertheless, when we apply the elements of a good story to a presentation, we get the same result the writers of blockbuster movies get: an engaged and inspired audience. The five questions are: 1.What problem are you going to help the audience solve? 2.What is your solution to the problem? 3.What will my life look like if I take you up on your solution? 4.What do you want the audience to do next? 5.What do you want the audience to remember?

A good manager knows how to define a specific output that is measurable, profitable, and scalable.

Possibly print off and laminate. Share with each department so they can have their own.

Hold weekly speed checks with every member of your team to maintain momentum and accountability.

Celebrate wins by noticing them, memorializing them, and acknowledging those responsible and you will increase morale and drive performance.