Your Next Five Moves: Master the Art of Business Strategy

by Patrick Bet-David

DREAMS People want to know how their dreams are going to become a reality. They need to see how doing the work today will allow them to accomplish their dreams. If you want to inspire people, you must speak the dream language constantly to those who need to hear it.

speed absolutely can be improved. And you must be relentless about improving it. Every part of business—from identifying trends to reaching your customer to delivering your product—relies on speed.

The point of creating trust is to increase speed. Analytical people often miss this point. They also miss the fact that the key to building trust is to tap into people’s humanity. Once they know that you see them as human beings and not simply as employees, trust grows and speed builds. Understanding their love languages and what makes them tick are the keys to showing you care.

Growth is important, but entrepreneurs often treat it as the only function, and that’s a mistake. Two types of business growth exist: linear and exponential. The former represents steady but not spectacular gains: you meet deadlines, sell and maintain customers, and expand your network of contacts. The latter represents quantum leaps. It’s what happens when entrepreneurs step out of the day-to-day running of the business to do something exceptional. They have a vision and are able to make tough but smart decisions to implement that vision. They don’t just want to grow incrementally; they want to conquer the world.

OPERATING SYSTEMS This is about tightening up your systems, technology, and processes, making them more efficient and effective.

Next are business development (biz dev) and sales. This has to do with creating relationships with new vendors and new partnerships and making your sales process better. It’s about networking and attending events from your industry. Relationship, relationship, relationship. Biz dev is linear. You have to close deals and continue to grow your accounts.

When Hyundai, the Korean car manufacturer, was struggling to gain market share in the United States, it offered the most extensive warranty in the industry: ten years or 100,000 miles. Those were not day-to-day operational decisions that made a small impact; they were choices that led to exponential growth. In February 2005, Amazon launched Amazon Prime. For $79 a year, members would get free two-day shipping on all purchases. The company later added music, free movies, and free delivery of perishable goods. As of September 2019, there were more than 100 million Prime members. At the present cost of $119 per year, that’s $11.9 billion in revenue. Now, that’s an innovative campaign.

Making the right move can create a massive surge in your business. You have to synthesize everything you know about your customers’ wants and needs, your competition’s limitations, and your own strengths to create a campaign that will drive rapid revenue growth.

start assessing them. Look at their strengths and weaknesses, and how they respond in different situations. Then look at their level of competitiveness, their ability to come up with ideas, and how solid they are. Also ask them if they believe in the company and want to step into a leadership role. Next, sit down and identify what they need to do in the next six months, twelve months, and two years. Challenge them to grow. Figuratively speaking, pour water onto them as though they were plants.

You need to look at the strategy quadrant and ask yourself where you are and are not doing a good job. Where do you need to pivot? Do you need to create an innovative campaign? Maybe you need to look at the next ninety days and prepare for your next innovative campaign.

He wanted you to be as close to perfect as possible for everything. He would pick on you for the smallest thing. But you also knew you were going to win because you knew he wanted to win more than anybody else in that room, so you didn’t have a problem following him.”

If they can handle me, they can handle anyone. They don’t get rattled. They become better leaders when they’ve been through my pressure cooker, and they can handle conflict better.

The way I apply pressure is by asking questions—and waiting for the answers. I challenge my people the same way I’m challenging you. I ask them to become clear on who they want to be and describe their next moves in detail. Once they express what they want, I use their answers to keep them accountable.

What I do is repeat what they said they want to accomplish. If they are falling short of their g...

Most people don’t want this accountability. Being held to the standard of being your best self is not for the faint of heart. That’s why, by design, I’m not easy to work for. It takes a few years for people on my team to become desensitized to the pressure, but when that happens, they’re golden.

Many options exist for applying pressure: providing constructive criticism, increasing results targets, asking tough questions. Keep the pressure constant by asking questions that create accountability, and you’ll see how people will raise their game.

Being around strong CEOs who are always raising their standards can be uncomfortable. They project a feeling that no matter how hard you are working, it’s not enough. People may say, “Every time I get somewhere, you move the marker. When are you going to be fully happy?” That’s what makes a strong CEO so effective. That’s why Jobs may have been loathed when he was imposing deadlines but is now revered.

the market determines our value. We can think we’re worth more, but if the market isn’t willing to pay for it, then maybe you’re overvaluing yourself. That number you wrote, you have to go out and get it. It doesn’t happen just by luck. Do you want to be a supervisor? Do you want to run a department? Then you have to ask yourself what you need to do to increase your value in the marketplace. The people who stay with us long-term are constantly improving themselves. We encourage improvement. And if you don’t improve, others are going to outimprove you and become your boss.”

Make Momentum Your Friend—and Be Prepared for Chaos The feeling that everything is about to fall apart. That panic is precisely what growth feels like. You’ll want to escape that terrifying feeling as fast as possible. Your brain thinks that your body is in danger, and the most important thing is to get rid of that danger, to end the tension. You’ll want to run away… that’s the critical moment when most people lose. The key is to recognize when you feel this way, and to lean even deeper into those moments. —Seth Godin, blogger, entrepreneur, and best-selling author

it’s the product of who you are and the speed at which you’re moving forward. When you’ve gathered momentum, you become a force rather than just a business. You may not be unstoppable, but no sane person wants to get in your way. You’re barreling forward with increasing confidence, talent, and money. Get serious about creating momentum.

If you implement the right innovative campaign and develop leaders, you’ll gain momentum. The challenge will be maintaining it. Many entrepreneurs have been successful; not so many have stayed that way. The difference is discipline. Just as momentum increases your power, it can blind you to your weaknesses. First we’re going to talk about how to create momentum. Then we’re going to talk about how to manage it.

If there’s one expectation I have of the people with whom I work, it’s this: I will not compromise on speed, execution, or efficiency. I don’t care how much bigger we get; I want speed, I want execution, I want efficiency. I am greedy in these three areas. I want them all. Here’s a huge question for leaders: How can you reduce the time it takes to get things done?

I would never suggest compromising quality for speed, but I’m going to give you a better way to create speed so that your quality doesn’t suffer (and, in fact, should improve).