“My business stresses me out.” “I don’t have enough time to get everything finished.” “I hate certain parts of my work.” “I keep missing important family events.”
As a business owner, I have said these things too often to be healthy.
For many years, my business was a major source of stress that affected my health and my relationship with my wife and kids. I worried about HOW I was going to provide the best service to my existing clients. HOW I was going to market to new clients. HOW I was going to run the back office.
Notice that I began planning all tasks and projects with the word HOW. It was always some form of, “HOW I’m going to…?” Does this sound familiar to you?
Last week, I provided 9 secrets to simplify your personal financial life. Today, I will discuss how I simplified my business life and offer suggestions for you to do the same.
I will share two ideas from my mentor, author Dan Sullivan:
- Everyone has a unique ability (or unique abilities).
- Asking “How I can complete a task?” is the wrong question. It should be, “Who can complete this task?”
Let’s discuss!
The unique ability concept
Do you remember your favourite subject in school? For me, it was math.
(Surprise, surprise!)
I could study it for hours without checking the clock or stressing out. Math tests were easy and math marks raised my overall average. I don’t know why math came easy for me, but it just did.
Dan would say that math is one of my unique abilities.
Unfortunately, I cannot say that I had a unique ability in many other subjects. I tried the sciences (chemistry, biology, physics), but despite my best effort, my marks were average at best. I tried languages with extremely poor outcomes. I also tried sports, but being uncoordinated made playing competitive hockey or baseball difficult.
So I leaned on my math gift as much as possible.
In university, I chose courses with a math emphasis and eventually earned a bachelor of commerce. After graduating, I landed a job in accounting (more math) and eventually found my way to financial planning (more math). I realized I could use my unique ability to support myself and, eventually, my family.
Then, at the age of 29, I started my own financial planning practice, believing that I would spend my career dealing with money, math and people.
But I was wrong…
I was doing everything:
Meeting clients, marketing, preparing financial plans, compliance work, technology purchases, washing dishes, ordering office supplies and many other tasks that had nothing to do with math, money or people.
The more successful I become, the less time I spent working with my unique ability and the more time I spent on tasks that I didn’t do well and lacked the passion to complete.
Of course, I read Michael Gerber’s The E Myth, which explained how an entrepreneur must work ON their business rather than IN their business. It didn’t help.
It wasn’t until Dan Sullivan explained the concept of unique ability that I realized that when I was in university, that’s where I poured my heart and soul.
However, when I started my business, I began doing tasks outside of my unique ability.
That’s when I started hating my business and doubting my career choice.
In “Who Not How”, Dan Sullivan and co-author Dr. Benjamin Hardy say, “Having a capability is not an obligation to use it.”
Instead of doing everything needed in the office, I should only assume jobs that give me an unfair advantage over others. Jobs within my unique ability.
If I could go back to the early days of my business, I would only prepare financial plans and conduct client meetings. For everything else, I would find others whose unique ability suited them to the tasks.
The Lesson
For all you entrepreneurs, focus your time on your unique ability and fill every position within your organization with people performing work within their unique ability. Imagine how productive and self-managing your company would become with this approach. It would be like me spending all my time working on math problems.
The who not how concept
The unique ability concept stresses that we all possess our own superpowers. If we identify and act deliberately within them, we will develop an unfair advantage over our competitors. The second concept assumes we are already doing that and asks business owners to reframe a fundamental question.
Here’s an example I created to help illustrate this concept. How often do you come up with a new idea, product or plan and ask yourself,
“How can I get this done?”
Of course, since you are already busy working within your unique ability, you write down the idea and promise yourself that you will return to it soon.
If you’re like me, that “soon” becomes “later” and then “never.” My great idea dies a slow and painful death…
Dan and Ben recommend that instead of asking “HOW can I get this done?” switch to “WHO can do this job for me?”
Allow me to give you a real life example.
While reading this blog or any others on my website, you may get the impression that I write, edit, pick the title for search engine optimization, choose the images, play with font sizes and, finally, post it and send it to your inbox, right?
In my early blog writing days, I did everything from top to toe.
Today, I simply write a point-form blog of approximately 1500 words and my team of experts does everything else.
It’s a serious team effort!
My editor cleans it up and produces nice sentences and paragraphs. My marketing agency provides imagery, SEO-appropriate titles, fonts and also pulls snippets for social media posting. My compliance department reviews the material for accuracy and brand appropriateness. Finally, Ashley Land reads the article one last time and then connects it to an app that releases it at the appropriate time and date.
Researching and writing a 1500-word blog takes me approximately six hours, but that’s all I have to do or worry about. I have delegated everything else to other people who are good at doing what I am not. I don’t know exactly how much time the rest of the work takes, but I guess around six hours or so. Most important, its not done by me but by people working within their own unique abilities.
Notice that I stay in my lane of expertise and search for people WHO can do the task that I cannot do well.
I have trained myself to ask, “WHO can do this new task?” rather than, “HOW can I get this done?”. By asking the right question, I leverage the time and skill of others and produce a more valuable service myself. I don’t feel overworked or stressed, but rather more creative and more useful.
Dan and Ben write, “WHO expands your vision for what is possible, because you no longer see yourself as the sole means of achieving the result.” They also say, “There are countless brilliant and capable WHOs out there waiting and wanting to help you. They need only to hear and understand your vision.”
“By freeing yourself from the Hows,” they add, “you’ll have a reborn sense of purpose and clarity. You’ll feel like you’ve been given another life to live.”
As a business owner, if you commit to finding the right WHOs, your life will improve greatly. I have applied these two concepts in my business, and I can honestly say they have made a major difference in my life.
If you are overwhelmed at work or your to-do list grows longer each week, it’s time to set up an appointment to discuss your unique ability and your appropriate WHOs.
Please give me a call, and let’s begin improving your professional life and increasing your production.
Never Retire Profile
With over 6,000 shows hosted between 1982 and 2015, David Letterman is the longest-serving late night talk show host on American television. Current late night hosts such as Conan O’Brien, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel cite Letterman as their greatest influence, and The Late Show has been ranked by TV Guide as seventh in its 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time list. Now hosting his new Netflix series My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, Letterman has sat down with Barack Obama, George Clooney, Malala Yousafzai, Melinda Gates, Robert Downey Jr., and many others. A producer (Worldwide Pants) and car enthusiast (with 10 Ferraris part of his extensive collection), Letterman is also a huge financial donor to his alma mater, Ball State University in Indiana. Of his many honours and awards, he is perhaps most proud of receiving the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. At 73 years old, Letterman keeps serving up his wit and insights for millions of viewers.
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