Your skill may be your handicap

I was talking to two guys at the bar of a restaurant.  One was an excavator with three pieces of heavy equipment (all paid for) and two other employees.  He was proud of his business and he wanted to do better.

Another was a welder – self-employed, alone.  

As we talked, I told them that the key skill to growing was team building.  Other people doing the work you are doing now allows you to do higher-value work.  The fact that they are both skilled at something makes them do that thing each day.

Since the world pays you for bringing value, they will find it very difficult to make more than an excavator or welder makes.

Of course, when your skill becomes your identity, it’s very hard to change – to not weld or dig, and to spend more time finding people to work for you, and on marketing or sales or innovation.

You can’t make more than $30 an hour if you keep doing $30 an hour work.  If you want to make $200 an hour, you have to learn how to do $200 an hour work and be good at it.

(I want to say that there is nothing wrong with being a welder or excavator – we need good people doing these things.  If a person is happy as a one or three-man shop, wonderful.  This is advice for someone who wants to grow a business beyond a couple of employees, such as an excavation business, a welding business, or your business.)

Is your business serving your life?

You started this business so it can make your life better.  

In the beginning, maybe you wanted freedom, or adventure, challenge, or money.

Did it work out how you wanted it so far?

Do you still want the same thing?

Often it’s not so much taking on starting a business that gets you what you want, but HOW you do it.

Make your business work for you.

What do you need to change?

Remove the constraint

When it comes to growing, we usually think about what we can add.

But removing a constraint can be a much faster way to make progress.

Perhaps it’s a bottleneck somewhere…not enough of a resource or not enough space.

Maybe it’s a person who is making more problems than they are solving – especially a “key” person or manager.

Taking something away to get better can be quite swift if you identify it and make the decision.

What are your key constraints?

Say "Thank you" and "I'm sorry"

Leaders who are protecting and inflating their egos brag and blame.

Saying “Thank you” and “I’m sorry” they think, makes them look weak.

They are wrong.

Don't let your business kill you

If you are not good at being a leader, or not good at running a business, you MUST figure it out or quit.  You can’t go into major debt, kicking the can down the road until it blows up.

Get help.  Lives are literally at stake. 

Mostly yours.

Telescopes and Microscopes

Zoom out – what are you doing this decade?  What do you want at the end? What do you have to do this year?

Zoom in – what do you have to do today to make progress toward that goal?  What do you have to do right now – in the next five minutes to get there?

Handling Objections

What is most important right now?

This question never gets old, because it changes often.

What’s the number one thing you have to do NOW to unlock good things in the future?

Get after it.  Today.

Income Inequality Revisited

There’s talk of the income gap out there (and that it is a crisis), but let’s take a quick look at this again.

A 2019 study by Ryan Bourne and Chris Edwards found that most of these claims don’t withstand scrutiny.

The US Census Bureau publishes household income and inequality statistics by dividing households into quintiles – or fifths.  Its numbers show the top quintile having more than 16 times the income of the bottom quintile.

But that is on a gross income basis.  They exclude the fact that the top quintile pays most of the taxes.  (I pay over 40% of my income to the state and federal government in taxes.) 

The bottom quintile doesn’t pay any taxes but instead RECEIVES payments and non-cash benefits.  Some years ago the income of a family who does not work at all in my state was the same as the average household income.

When you consider the NET, after taxes are paid by the top and income and benefits received at the bottom, the top quintile’s income was only 4x the bottom quintile.

Inequality has actually fallen slightly in the post-war period.

The big problem is that because of benefits received by the bottom quintile from all the various programs to boost them, they have a slightly higher income that the second and third quantiles above them.  That is to say that there is no benefit to working for 40% of the people compared to not working at all and collecting benefits. 

This kills incentives to go to work.  And when you don’t work, you don’t learn new skills and get experience and are not likely to get more than an entry-level job if you decide to go into the workforce. 

Convention wisdom says that the poverty rate is in the low teens, but when you consider non-cash benefits received by the bottom quintile, the poverty rate drops to 3 percent or less.

Just thought I’d publish the facts today.

What do you think?  Is income inequality a crisis that has not been addressed already? 

You can comment with the orange button!

All activity is not worth the same

Yesterday I talked about a real example of prioritization.

Unsuccessful people may work hard and can be quite busy.  But successful people work hard and are busy doing the right things that will move the needle and get them closer to their big long-term goals.

Here’s the thing though.  The most important things you could be doing don’t always scream the loudest. Often they are easy to put off, and you have had practice putting them off – haven’t you?  You’ve learned that if you put off the most important things, it’s ok.  The sun comes up tomorrow and you’ll have another chance to put them off again. – Right?

In fact, often the least important things speak the loudest.  “Open the email”, “Respond to everyone who wants a sliver of your time”, “It’s time for the Zoom call or the meeting or the thing you committed to weeks ago.”

Making white space by guarding your time from distraction and “busy” for a few hours a day or more, and being unwavering in that, is key if you are to have anything to show for your months and years over the long term.

Lifetime

Life – time

Life = time

And that time is now.

Do long-term important things everyday.