Foundation First Before Getting Fancy

This week’s topic is one that most owners say they understand, but they don’t always implement it fully.

And I think the best way to illustrate the point is to tell you a quick personal story.

One Christmas when I was about 10, I wanted a new guitar.  It was a beautiful wood inlay, acoustic guitar. I had been playing for several years and I had grown tired of my old one.  My parents thought by giving me a new one, I would take it more seriously and get better.

You see, here’s the part I forgot to mention.  Despite playing the guitar for years…I wasn’t very good. (Something my mother loves to tell my children about now.  But I’ll save that story for a therapist someday.)

All I could think about was that new shiny guitar.

And when Christmas arrived and my guitar was under the tree, I was so excited.  But the excitement didn’t last, and I never got better.

The problem is I never did the simple foundation work even after receiving my dream gift.

When I went to practice with my instructor, I just kind of sat back and didn’t participate as I should have.  I didn’t practice at home and I lacked the desire to invest the time on things I considered “boring.”  And I never got better without mastering those core components, so my guitar hero dreams died.

Tools and Toys Do Not Override Systems

The same is true for your business.  What foundation work are you not doing right now?

I will have clients who are stuck at a certain phase in their business and think they need to spend a lot of money on external marketing to solve their business problems. They start looking at things like pay per click, a new website, or search engine optimization… all very expensive.

But on review, their simple core systems inside the office are not optimized which is costing them time, money, and future growth.

 If they did launch this external marketing successfully and it brought them a 1000 new people, they would still not grow because they didn’t take the time or make the effort to get their foundation principles down so they could convert these new people into customers who stay and pay.

Without foundation work, the business becomes an expensive leaky bucket.

BIG TAKEAWAY

While it’s fun to think about fancy equipment or software as a business investment, it has to be part of an overall system that works.

As the owner or the service provider for your service-based business, you’ve got to master your company’s delivery of your essential systems first before you worry about all those fancy bells and whistles.

Would You Like to Dive Deeper on Specifics of Your Business with an Exploratory Call with Me?   Click here.

If you want to talk more about how to do this or strategies for your office, you want to start with the simple or you want to go with a big and you’re ready to do that and you want to get things cloned again, reach out to us and we’ll do an exploratory get acquainted call and see if it’s a good relationship for us to do it.