Jenius Factory

Everything that you want to accomplish in life and in business, rests between vision and reality.

You set out to create something greater than yourself in order to make people’s lives better and to create a good life for yourself.

In order to start on this journey you have to have a simple, clear and direct vision. Without it, you’ll never get where you need to because you haven’t defined what it is.

But what happens after you know what you want? How do you make your vision a reality?

Here inlies the “gap”, the unknown journey and space that lies between where we are and where we want to be. This is the gap that stands between our current situation and our preferred one.

This gap can be conquered through design. The good news is, in order to overcome this gap you’ll only need to do three things. Know. Make. Do.

Knowing means understanding from the beginning, the people you’re trying to serve, the value you will provide for them, and the difference you’ll need to cultivate to be unique and articulate your value.

Make is where true innovators and trailblazers operate. You see, in the past you could simply know something and build a factory to do it. You could learn from others and copy, manipulate, and produce something for money. The difference now is being different, and to be different you now have to make.

We have to have a process for creating something that can’t be copied or we have to innovate so often, that our competition can’t keep up. This isn’t easy, but this process of design thinking is an absolute must for any company wanting to operate in this new business era.

Once you have set your company apart by creating or making something new, you’ll have to do it. Many ground-breaking ideas never have seen the light of day because they remain locked away on a post-it note or whiteboard somewhere.

Until you have shipped, until you do what you have created, it’s simply a theory. The art of shipping and seeing your idea through to completion is the biggest sticky point facing people today. Doing something new means sticking your neck out there. It means subjecting yourself to ridicule and criticism.

I say ship your ideas and see the criticism as fuel for doing more. The road of knowing and doing is easy. It’s how 30% of people have made a good living.

Knowing, making, and doing however, is how the top 3% have made a great living.

In light of my soon-to-be-released book, I wanted to touch briefly on why I think the future of business is uncommon common sense.

I believe that one of the strongest faults in entrepreneurs today is the fact that they can get so caught up in their businesses that they forget to ask, “would I buy this?”.

Sometimes when we create products and services, we forget that the people buying them are human. Also, let’s not forget the marketing messages that are created to sell them. We use big professional words, we use gimmicks like buy one get one free, we put time limits on the purchase to force people into early decisions.

Common sense tells us to do our research and create products that people will want when they see them, instead of things that have to be “sold”. Common sense tells us that having too much overhead without the revenue to support it is a bad idea. Common sense would tell us that taking venture capital to start a business that leaves you owing someone money, which means you’ve lost all control, would be a bad idea.

Common sense would teach us a lot of things about business, if only we would listen to it. We could take our ideas right out into the street and ask everday people what they thought about them… but we don’t.

Common sense is uncommon.

But remember this, the future belongs to you the master of uncommon common sense.

The thing we all want more than anything is to be happy.

Without happiness there is no point in having a business, no point in doing the same things over and over.

I don’t know many people that I would consider happy and that’s sad. It seems that we’re all caught up in this game of life, and playing by these “rules” just isn’t making us happy.

The people that I know that are happy usually have the same traits. They’re totally in love with their family, they don’t harbor any grudges, they do something that they’re proud of for a living, and they have children.

It almost seems that the way to be happy is common sense. Surround yourself with friends and family that you love, do something worth doing and on your own terms, laugh a lot, and take care of your needs.

If it’s so easy, why aren’t we happy?

Dare to make a change in your life and stick to it.

To many, discipline is a dirty word. It paints a picture of pain and makes people think about drill sergeants. It’s always presented to us from a father figure or someone trying to act bigger than us.

But I’d like to paint a different, more optimistic look at discipline. Let’s just say that the definition of discipline is “remembering what you want”.

The challenge with discipline is that we don’t think about it until we’ve reached the decision point. We think about discipline as will power to say no to chocolate cake, but in the heat of the moment, the cake ultimately wins.

The same goes for business. We want to have the great business, but when it comes down to the work, there is always tomorrow. Facebook, errands, and socializing always take precedent.

Discipline comes from constantly thinking about what we really want. The more defined and clear it is, the more likely we are not to crumble under temptation.

Decide what you want your business and life to be. Paint the picture as much as you need to see it crystal clear. Post up the evidence of what you want everywhere and make sure that everyone around you knows what you want.

Discipline is a good thing when it’s understood and controlled in the right context. Don’t be scared of discipline. After a few months of knowing what you want, it will seemingly disappear.

In business and in life, chance favors the connected mind.

We all have great ideas, but without people to bounce them off of and hold us accountable, many of our great ideas never see the light of day. And if they do, they’re typically not as developed as they could have been.

If you look behind the curtain of the success of most brillant entrepreneurs, you’ll see that their network was just as important as their products.

The saying “two minds are better than one” is there for a reason, but imagine having a group of 10 entrepreneurs as hungry and as savvy as you are. Imagine the exponential contacts, innovative ideas, and resources you could share.

How strong is your network? Are the people in that network pushing you to greatness or are they just showing up for a meet and greet? Two strong members will always be better than twenty average ones.

Ask yourself what you’re really getting from your network. You may be better off joining a focused and poised mastermind group rather than a chest-beating social club.

Look around. Are the people you surround yourself with better than you? Or are they hindering your growth? With your network being such an important aspect of your business growth, you might as well spend time with the people you most want to be like.

Want to know where to look when thinking about innovation inside of your company? Target the things where uncomfortable meets important.

The reason for this is two fold.

On the one hand, the best place to innovate is where it’s most painful, but there is a trick to knowing which pain is important. If you’re running a tight bootstrapped company, the points of pain are always evident and innovation is much more intuitive. If you’re running a bloated organization, your points of pain are everywhere and the wrong things get cut because you didn’t really know where to look.

On the other hand, innovation comes from where uncomfortable meets important because this is exactly the hardest point of action. If it’s extremely important, that means that there is more risk involved in being the one that takes action. You could look like a star or you could fall flat on your face.

The fact of the matter is that this risk is exactly where you can set yourself apart as a person or a company. No one seems to be an expert at starting things in this uncomfortable but important space. There is too much on the line.

But if you’re going to start and innovate anything of importance you’re going to have to get comfortable with where uncomfortable meets important.

The competition is minimal here and the payoff is huge, not to mention, it’s really not as scary as it looks. Start something uncomfortable & important. The world needs it.

Some business owners and entrepreneurs have created a good living and a good business. It affords them the lifestyle they want and the platform they desire to “play the game”.

But what about that feeling in the pit of your stomach? What about that feeling of knowing your business is good, but wanting it to be great?

A good business generates more revenue than it costs to operate. A good business keeps the lights on, provides a good income for a handful of employees, and affords you a house, boat, and a car or two.

The best way to develop a great business is to build a potent business. The best way to turn your company from good to great is to curate. It’s an art to cut the fat and simplify your business from every angle.

A curator in a renowned art museum doesn’t have an art shortage problem. Their challenge is to make that museum great. They have to choose which art is the absolute best. It can be very, very hard to say no to hanging a beautiful piece of art, but it has to be done. Standards have to be met and each piece of the puzzle must be methodically picked even in the face “good business”. The museum must be potent.

I know it’s difficult to turn away any amount of business. I know that we want to offer our clients everything we can. But the fact of the matter is that it’s no longer an intelligent business strategy to be “good”. Generality & mediocrity will leave a business in the middle ground and the middle ground is exactly where businesses are closing.

If you want to take your business from good to great, then it’s time to start considering each individual element of your business and eliminating the weakest performing features and clients. Apply the 80-20 rule and create more capacity to create great things.

If you want to be great, you must curate.

We get a lot from the communities we are a part of. We get support, new ideas, new friendships, positive peer pressure, and criticism among other things.

Since we get so much from our communities, I think it’s a good idea to create gifts that give back to it. That’s right, free gifts that inspire, educate, or delight the community that gives you so much.

With the ease of the internet, never has there been a better time to create remarkable gifts. Seth Godin does it with ebooks and his blog. Jessica Hische does it by creating amazing websites such as “Mom this is how twitter works”, “should I work for free?”, and “Don’t fear the internet”.

All of these are created for sharing and are absolutely free. It’s a way of giving back and bringing new thoughts and ideas to the communities we love.

An interesting thing about those that give relentlessly is the fact that, inside of our community, we all know who they are. And when everyone knows who you are and can see the great work that you do for free, the opportunities are endless.

Please give gifts. We’d love to see them and it’ll feel good. Not to mention, sharing has become the most effective way to market.

We all would love to have some great insight into where we can find a new and powerful competitive advantage. We would love to be able to read the minds of our customers so that we could add immense value to their lives and earn their business for a lifetime.

Unless you are Yoda or Miss Cleo the mind reading thing is probably out of the question. So how do we get the most useful insight in the shortest amount of time possible so we can get back to creating value and profit?

The answer is to look to your extreme users.

If I own a business that is trying to develop ways to help people quit smoking, I need to find out who the extreme users are. In this case I would look to those smoking two packs a day for twenty years, and those that just started smoking.

By observing and interviewing the person that just started, I could gain insight as to why they started in the first place. What made them pick up the first cigarette? After you thought the first one was terrible, why did you light another one?

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I could ask the twenty-year chain smoker what affect smoking has had on their lives. What’s the burden you carry now? What would they say to the new smoker in hindsight? What would it take to change a twenty-year behavior and pattern?

If you’re looking to solve a problem or find a solution inside of your business the best place to do your research is in the field and with people that are in their natural state. Trying to innovate and speculate on your market from a board room is, quite nearly, a waste of time.

Extreme users give us clear, simple and direct insight while the middle ground could lead us to chasing our tails. If you take the time to study and ask questions of your extreme customers, I think you’ll find your greatest advantages were right under your nose.

In a fast-paced, ever-changing business world, the smallest of variables can open the door for viral problems. Sometimes changing what you do or what you offer just a little bit, can throw you into a rabbit hole that actually causes you to lose money in that relationship.

How is your approach to what you offer? Do you take any client that will pay you? Do you adjust yourself to every demand or every suggestion someone makes? Are you killing yourself to meet demand for people that don’t even appreciate it?

My suggestion is to listen to everything, but only act on the top 5%. In other words, learn to say no.

If you adhere to the Pareto Principle, otherwise known as the 80/20 rule, you’ll understand that 80% of your problems come from 20% of your clients.

Likewise, 80% of the problems inside of your business will come from 20% of the things you do. Experience has taught me that it’s even more aggressive than this for people not trained in saying “no”.

Imagine what your life & business would be like if you were able to eliminate that percentage of your problems. You could live better, have lower overhead, sleep better, work less, spend more time innovating and eliminate your psychiatric bill.

The problem many entrepreneurs face is that they can’t say no to business. They want to be all things to all people and they can’t imagine letting a paying customer go somewhere else.

But that’s exactly how you know when an entrepreneur has reached maturity. Saying no is the number one skill of the new breed of entrepreneur. Our new market demands it.

Know what is important. Understand leverage. Master your time. Educate yourself on your own highest and best use.

For your own health and the health of your business, learn to say NO. It’s the simple, sophisticated & intelligent thing to do.