There is an awesome quote by no one else but Mahatma Gandhi: 

“Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits become your values, your values become your destiny.”

(BTW, I feel like only Gandhi can pull off such a run-off sentence without half the audience nodding off).

As a sales professional, a leader, or a marketer; we are in the business of changing behavior. We want people to stop doing that, to do this. We want “them” to try something new, or just think differently about something. I try not to forget this, especially when we have a self imposed goal, or we are asked to hit one (a “destiny”?).

In our increasingly results-driven society, we may be tempted to give-in and accept that we must promise to produce an outcome, to hit the metric, when in reality, to effect lasting change, we just have to follow some version of Gandhi’s advice. Brainstorm, innovate, spell it out, and communicate it; put products, services, and marketing campaigns behind it, and then, incentivize the behavior. Create new habits. Sustain that cycle enough, and those habits will become ingrained deep enough to turn into values, which will generate lasting results and will become destiny. 

The shortcut’s life is short. Start with the daily habit.

Making the right decision is always desirable, but it is even more important to make a decision at all. Any decision.

Decision-making is the most important aspect of the CEO’s job and one of my favorite sayings goes “as long as you are making decisions, you are moving forward”.

Making decisions can be hard. There is even a term coined for the emotional drain the effort takes, experts talk about “decision fatigue”; and to conserve some of that “decision-making equity”, there is a little useful trick I first heard from Tim Ferriss. He defines the concept as “make the decision that removes 100 decisions”.

Here’s how it works:

You make a blanket decision on one aspect that is affecting your life or that is standing in the way to achieve some goal. And you apply it over and over again. It is sort of a “policy”. The next time the issue comes up, you don’t have to decide, the decision has been made way back. You can even outsource the decision!

Familiar examples of this are the decision to quit smoking or skipping dessert, and just saying “no” every time. But it can be applied to other areas, for example, when you decided that you will wake up at 5 AM and go for a run, regardless of how you feel, then you don’t anguish about it anymore. Or when you establish that you won’t take meetings that are not planned at least an hour in advance, they just don’t happen.

Set your policies.

Responsibly, I would say. Nothing crazy.

I poured myself a Negroni and slowly sipped on it. (If you like an Old Fashioned, or a Manhattan, and don’t know what a Negroni is, you have to remedy that. Sweet, bitter, opens your appetite and gets to your head quickly. Anthony Bourdain recommended it: “Have a Negroni. Have two Negronis.”)

I walked away from what could become some day a great business deal.

Why?

Four reasons:

• My “partner” changed the terms of the deal unilaterally. Twice.
• I wasn’t crazily in love with the vision.
• Regardless of that, I was not confident that my business partner would be the best leader to execute on that vision.
• I wasn’t willing to invest two years of my life to realize that vision, especially knowing that I may be double-crossed trice.

Cheers all! The point is, it’s better when these things happen early. Besides that, Negronis never let you down.

I lost count on how many times did I trip over on the skateboard when I was young.

When your wheel hits a big enough rock, it will stop. You could apply more power to the axle or pull on the cart with increased force, but there are times when just giving it a slight lift can be much more effective. 

Rocks are frequent, but not everywhere, and if the wheel is big enough, most likely you will not need to give it a jolt again. Your wheel will keep on turning, “normally” and while doing so, lifting a little won’t do you any good, in fact, it can even harm you, making you lose traction and destabilizing your load unnecessarily.

Until you hit the next rock. 

This is how incentives work. Apply them when and where there is a particular obstacle that has to be overcome, otherwise, they are superfluous, an unnecessary expense, and even a distraction.

 Save the thug for when you hit a rock.

We may want to think that we follow those who align with the way we think, but the opposite may also be true. Who we follow, defines us. Either for someone observing us looking from the outside, or by slowly changing the way we think.

Who we select as our leaders, says something about us. If we don’t align with their vision. If we would not like to be called their followers, and if their leadership does not serve us in some way; perhaps we should stop following them, especially if doing so causes us pain and suffering.

Otherwise, we should not complain if we get called one and the same.

Should you partner? Go direct? This is an article that I wrote many years ago, and a lot of things changed since then. These hold true however.

1.- Failing to choose the right model from the start
It seems simple, but it can really make a difference. The right decision will depend enormously on the client base you are trying to reach and second, your product. There are certain products that are just not made to be sold through a distributor, or maybe the Internet. Conversely, there are customers (and demographics) that you will never reach effectively unless you utilize the same reseller/retailer that they are used to make business with. Same applies for wholesalers, your product has to be carried by those who sell to your retailer of choice.

2.- Not making it clear
We like to go around making our own decisions and we don’t really bother on letting people know what we do. But informing the market know what type of Channel we engage with and under which policies is crucial to have the community properly align itself. Those who feel that your model resonates with them, will look after you.

3.- Not being honest
If your decision is to sell direct, say so. You can suddenly become someone’s competitor but you will still be known to be a trustworthy individual (and Company!) in the industry. Always stick to the rules that you put out (if you don’t, who will). If you need to change them, do so but honor whatever happened under them when they were valid.

4.- Not having a “Channel Specific” plan
Channel Partners  are in the business of sustaining their own companies and they will only behave in a way that supports these objectives. Vendors and Manufacturers COMPETE for their mindshare. Being one of the many that they carry, making it easy and profitable to do business with, is on our own interest. Failing to have a Channel-Specific team and tools such as Channel support, Channel Marketing, Channel Portal, etc. will make partner adoption much slower.

From time to time I revisit some seminal business books. This is the case of the E-Myth, which every small business owner and entrepreneur should at least know what is about. Through a number of anecdotes, the author makes his case for building businesses with a system in-place from the very beginning.

In one of the chapters, the concepts of the Technician, the Manager, and the Entrepreneur are introduced. These three characters are not different people, but they are rather all living in the business owner’s head. They rarely talk all at the same time, but they take turns, depending on the context, or just the mood of the business owner.

Let’s take a look at each of them and understand why are they important, and why is it also important not to let them take over completely:

THE TECHNICIAN

This is the part in you that knows the craft. You have probably done this (whatever “this”means!) for years, you understand the market, the industry, and know very much what has to be done to produce a quality output.

Why is it important? It is the basis of the commodity you produce. It is necessary for having domain expertise and know how to create the state of the art.

Why must be kept in check? The business is never the commodity you produce, but the value that you create for your customers. Technicians seek refuge in their craft and generally want to produce what THEY believe the customer SHOULD love. The Technician is at odds with the Entrepreneur who tends to fly high and doesn’t know what can and cannot be done, and is also at odds with the Manager who wants consistency and to follow process, when the Technician just wants to express themselves through their craft.

THE ENTREPRENEUR

This is the creative, hard-charging, visionary part in you. The Entrepreneur comes up with new ideas, products to try. Gets excited about the possibilities and drops everything to pursue the next thing.

Why is it important? The only way to move a business forward and face adversity, is with this spirit. The Entrepreneur is what keeps the business evolving and makes sure that there is “business creation”, instead of just putting out products. Without an Entrepreneur, the output that the business generates can lose its appeal.

Why must be kept in check? The Entrepreneur does not like sticking to a predetermined process, they would like to try something new (again!). The Entrepreneur also gives little regard to the craft, to getting product out the door. The Entrepreneur is at odds with the Manager who wants to control things, make them repeatable, and with the Technician, who is the one tasked to execute on some of the crazy ideas the Entrepreneur comes up with.

THE MANAGER

The Manager is the one who builds a repeatable business. Creates processes, documents them. Trains people to do things the same way. Control costs.

Why is it important? Without a real Manager, there is rarely a sustainable business. The Manager creates value by creating repeatable processes that produce repeatable products and services that customers can buy.

Why must be kept in check? The Manager, left to its own, will create procedures that are so rigid that don’t allow space for creativity, for producing things that are of value for the customer. The Manager is at odds with the Entrepreneur who wants to change things around constantly, and with the Technician who thinks they know the craft enough that there is no need for them to follow process.

Do you recognize these inside you? Do you lean more towards one, or the other?

Here is a thought:

In every pond today, it is no longer the big fish that eats the small fish. Size doesn’t matter that much anymore, the field has shifted. In fact, it is more likely that the fast fish will eat the slow one, regardless of size.

Does that make sense?

If it does, What are you doing about it? “We’ll wait and see” won’t work anymore. Given how fast things are moving, a few months, a year, could be the difference between making it big, or fade into oblivion.

Make a plan.

If you are involved with the Tech industry in any way, you are probably familiar with the “Technology Hypecycle”. It’s first cousin is the “adoption curve”, and it looks somewhat like this, with its very creative phase names:

SOURCE: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hype-Cycle-General.png

The hypecycle attempts to explain some of the dynamics of introducing a new technology. In the beginning, few people have heard about it, understand its benefits. Some people may not even trust it. Slowly, people start to warm to it.

Eventually, marketers and pundits oversell the benefits, reaching the “peak of inflated expectations”.

Then, when reality sets in, comes the “trough of disillusionment”, until things become more practical and we settle on the “plateau of productivity”.

For me, this model had resulted extremely useful, not only for its originally intended purpose, but to understand other dynamics.

In particular, partner relationships, excitement created by a new project, and a long list of etceteras.

When starting something, I keep this in the back of my mind, recognizing also that most phases sustain themselves, with the exception of the “through of disillusionment”. This is the most tricky phase, and if you can make it through it when it comes (and it will come!), you’ll succeed.