Excerpted from the book on conscious business management, Business Black Belt
Should you quit while you’re ahead?
What if you did everything you need do to turn your life around—when it’s at the bottom—and then continued these efforts when everything is good? You would continue on an upward trend.
The Roller Coaster
Whoever said “You should quit while you’re ahead” probably never made it very far in business. Thinking like this might be useful in gambling, but hopefully you aren’t gambling with your business. Maybe you are taking risks, but consciously building your business involves a different set of behaviors. Still, unconsciously quitting while ahead is the reason why so many people reach the brink of success only to blow it.
Life can be like a roller coaster—it’s great, then it sucks, then it’s great again. The speed may vary, but it seems to cycle like this. Here’s how to get your life into a steady climb. Remember the last time things really sucked. Look at your situation when you’re at the bottom of the roller coaster. You reach a certain low point beyond which you won’t go any lower. You think, “The house is a mess, there are one too many socks on the floor,” and you suddenly develop a cleaning craze. If you’ve gained 10 pounds, after 11 pounds, forget it. You’re going to lose weight! Whatever your set point is, whether too many socks are on the floor, or the house has gone too many days without being cleaned, or you’ve gotten fat, look at what you do at that point. You pick up your socks, straighten the house, or stop eating. Things start going back to where you want them.
Now, at the top of the roller coaster, what happens? The house is spotless, the plants look good. You feel good. Next, you come home, take your socks off, throw them on the floor, and start eating. You think you can relax. You stop doing all the things that improved your life. You slack off and revert to bad habits, the cycle starts to go down again—the roller coaster.
Let’s look at your business
If your business is at a low point, in sales, maybe in Chapter 11, or in the middle of a lawsuit—you start selling, cutting costs, and negotiating. When money is coming in and profits improve, you’re back on top—watch out for the roller coaster.
You see this pattern also with consultants and salespeople. They’ll have lots of business going, so they don’t promote themselves. Why should they? They’re busy and they’ve got lots of clients. But slowly, the projects and deals start winding down. They reach the bottom, and all of a sudden, they don’t have any clients or sales. They start selling again and they find clients. When they’re at the top again, they stop selling—the roller coaster.
The trick now is to take the things you do at your low set point
and do them at your high set point.
So, at the high set-point, you’ve got lots of clients—and you keep selling. For consultants, the idea is to promote your services constantly. You can always tell prospective clients that you won’t be available to help them for a couple of months. “Wow, you must be busy… you must be really good…. we definitely want to work with you,” they’ll think. When you are ready for a new assignment, the client is likely to jump at the chance to hire you.
Let’s look at how you operate:
When things are great, I… To get things going again, I…
Sleep in get up early; work out
take lots of time off start calling customers
eat whatever I want start eating healthy
spend money on silly things am conscious of my spending
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On the left, make a list of the things you know to do when you hit rock bottom. What do you have to do in order to get yourself back on top? When you decide to make some changes, what do you know (in the back of your mind) that you must do? Do you go to an aerobics class three times a week or practice karate again three times a week? Pick some simple thing you can complete in one immediate action: Balance your check book or take out the trash.
Now, imagine yourself at the top. What would you do? Take a break? Slack off? Eat something really fattening? Think for a moment about what got you to the top. What kinds of things are going on in your life right now? Everything is going great, but what things have to happen before you start slacking off again? Knowing that you will probably be tempted to slack off, take all the things you listed that would get you going again and keep these things going. Life will continue to go up rather than roll back down on the roller coaster ride. When you’ve lost weight, keep working out. When you have a market leadership position, keep marketing. Keep going. When you’re ahead in a game, keep playing to win it. In a fight, keep fighting until the bad guy won’t get up. (This reminds me of the horror films where the monster seems to be dead and our hero triumphantly turns his or her back….)
You might have a set-point for growth. You must apply these principles if you want to get past, “Oh, my God! I’ve never made more than $50,000/year in my life. How do I get to $500,000/year? How do I sell 50 houses a year, when the most I’ve ever sold was 10?”
Gravity does not apply to business.
What goes up must not necessarily come down
If you take the things you do at your low set-point and keep focusing on those activities, you’ll go past your high set point (which, by the way, is imaginary) and not even know it.
Let’s say you haven’t sold a house in a month. You’d better make some phone calls. When you’ve got houses selling every week, you still say, “OK, I’ve got to make some phone calls.” You develop the habit of doing these things all the time.
When you’ve got momentum going, keep making as many phone calls as you do when you’re at the bottom. When you’re down and you haven’t sold a house in three months, you make 100 calls. Once you’re at the top again, make 100 calls. As you do, your success will accumulate and grow exponentially. You’ll pass your high set-point and keep going.
If you always do what you’ve always done,
you’ll always get what you’ve always got.
~ Unknown
Be prepared for success to feel weird
You might get to the point where I did and say, “This is weird. I’m making a lot of money.” You’ll have to get used to making a lot of money. Especially when you’re used to having things go wrong all the time and cycling up and down. I remember having money and being able to buy a relatively expensive car or take $50,000 from my business and put it down on my house was really weird. Just having the money to do that was a new and unusual experience for me because I had spent so many years working hard but earning little. Now, everyday things are working. Every day I continue to be productive and more money comes in. I even had to get past my thought that one day, all this is going to turn to crap. My own rhythm of success and failure, up and down, changed as things kept growing. I kept going because I kept doing the things I would do when I was down. And it continues to work.
Success is the quality of the journey—have fun along the way.
~ Unknown
Some days you won’t feel like doing anything. Sometimes I feel like I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to make calls or go to meetings. I don’t feel like it. But I find stuff to do anyway. “Do I want to nose over now and go down the roller coaster now?” That possibility is more uncomfortable for me than anything else I could imagine and it’s very motivating. I know exactly what I do to make me start to go down again.
You know exactly what to do to start going down too. Write down what these things are and you’ll know when you give in to this pull. It will be easier to replace those activities with healthier ones. Once you get used to success, those things become natural.
Business Black Belt Notes
- Make a list of the actions you take after you’ve hit rock bottom.
- When you’re at the top, notice the things you do when you start slacking off.
- Take everything you do at the bottom and keep applying them when you’re at the top
- Even the thought of slacking off should make you more uncomfortable than the things you know you must do to build your success.
- Get used to the possibly weird feeling of not going back down the roller coaster again—of being successful.
