Strategy 4 Saturday (<4 minute read)
- Whitefish, Montana – Investment Conference
- Small Catch
- Applying Strategy to 10x Your Catch
- Finding the Right Guide
- Call to Action | ChatGPT
- Measure Success Podcast | Ben Gioia
- Coming up this week | Author and CEO | Scott White
Whitefish, Montana
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I am currently in Montana overlooking Whitefish Lake and this is why it is the Sunday edition. Beautiful location near Glacier National Park. Twenty-four years ago, twelve friends formed an Investment Club, we made small monthly contributions ($50) for several years, and we made a few prudent long-term choices, including one company that sells books online. This long-term focus has allowed us to meet annually to make strategic decisions and keep connected with long-time friends. One of the best decisions in our lives.
Small Catch
Before the conference begins, we often do a team-building event, and this year was fly-fishing. For me, this has been a bucket list item, therefore I was very excited to try this for the first time.
I felt a bit like a fish out of water. For example, I did not know all the different fly-fishing terms, such as a Back Cast, Overhead Cast, River Load Cast, Roll Cast, or Water Tension Cast. When I was told to make a ‘sight cast’, I learned this was to throw the fly where you see a fish; but not scare it away. My first few casts were a bundle of mess with the fly rod, fly, and fishing line. The guide spent a fair amount of time fixing my flies and fishing line, while I embarrassingly waited. My adult kids would have had a good laugh from this, especially after a Deschutes River fishing attempt in Bend, Oregon, nearly ten years ago.
Fortunately, we had the most skilled guide on our boat. With the guide’s patience and a calm demeanor, I started to learn the basics. Very basic. As a matter of fact, with great shock, I caught the first fish. There was a bit of shock or, perhaps, beginner’s luck. You can see the ‘monster fish’ below. As you can see, it was tiny, and the fish almost slipped through the net.
Then, my more experienced partner on the boat, Will, caught four more fish. Our boat caught five fish. The other two boats, caught a total of zero. What was the difference? We had the guide with the most experience on this river.
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Applying Strategy to 10x Your Catch
If an organization wants to grow, there will be a point where you have to find and ‘catch’ new clients. This may require you to expand into a new location, which may require you to understand the local culture. Or you may sell to a new vertical market, for example, from energy to advanced manufacturing, which may require you to understand their needs and different terminology to properly gain market share. Other times, you may need to create new products or services to sell to your existing customers.
All strategies to grow, require an organization to make changes. In fact, we have found planning for these changes, documenting the plan, and tracking the efforts, accelerates the likelihood of success by 3x. ClearPoint Strategy says that 77% of successful companies have an established mechanism to translate their strategy into operational terms and evaluate it on a day-to-day basis. Similarly, tracking a strategy is like using a fishing net to increase the chances that you will catch your fish; and land it after you have placed your bait in the right location.
Finding the Right Guide
To assure you are going to the right location in the first place, it is often valuable to find the right guide to get there. In our fishing example, all three boats went down the same river, and it was our expert guide that helped us to get the only fish caught in the river during our float compared to our competition. When market conditions are tough, it is wise to get expert advice.
Going back to fishing, a more valuable strategy would have been determining whether we should have been fishing in that river during that time of year. That would have required a more thoughtful approach and deeper insights. We should have asked where are the best fishing holes in Montana during this time of year. If fishing was the most important goal, we may have gone to a different location or went earlier in the year, to assure we had more success.
Using an expert is a wise way to accelerate your success. At 40 Strategy, we regularly hire consultants to accelerate our results. We use consultants and research insights to support the big picture, as well as the tactical expertise on specific projects.
In our fishing example, there were several levels of strategic results:
– Two other boats, caught zero fish, with less experienced guides
– Our boat, with the expert guide, caught five fish (tactical expert)
– We fish in July, in the same river, with the same guide, we catch up to 50 fish per float (10x return) – (timing)
– We go to another river, we potentially have more success (geography)
The key to success is to find the winning strategies and tactics to yield a 10x (catch) return on your investment.
Call to Action | ChatGPT
Therefore, this is why we are moving to ChatGPT. We have identified opportunities where we can accelerate ideation for strategic decision-making for our clients using our Captain Strategy process. It’s amazing. If you have 15 minutes to increase your catch, please reach out to Tonya at admin@40strategy.com. |
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What happens if someone writes the best book on the planet… but no one ever finds out about it? There are lots of mistakes to be made, and it’s easy to lose a whole lot of money.
The Ben Gioia podcast released on Tuesday, September 26th on the Measure Success Podcast. He is a four-time best-selling author, podcast, and international radio show host whose teachings are used by more than 80,000 leaders & game-changers around the world. Ben helps folks write great books in as little as 5 weeks, enjoy 5-figure speaking fees, and attract 6-figure consulting. (That’s even BEFORE publishing!) Using his organization, Influence with a Heart, he’s trained hundreds of millionaires and helped a Fortune 100 create a mindfulness video game for 20,000 employees.
Listen to the full episode for more on the tools Ben teaches authors for writing and marketing their book, what to know about self-publishing vs traditional publishing, why a book can be the best tool for a business, and a whole lot more.
You can also join Ben Gioia on November 4th & 5th – The Podcast & Book Roadmap: The Simple Way to Create a Global thought Leadership Masterpiece.
As our podcast and blog are free for you, here is the link to share with someone else to sign up.
How often do you operate at the intersection of urgency and happiness to pursue what you want most out of life? And how much are you missing out on when you push yet another goal to “tomorrow”?
(This goes for both business AND your personal life, by the way…)
Figuring out how to take advantage of now, live life to the fullest, and use your time wisely: these are all strategies that my latest Measure Success guest, Scott White, has written and spoken about. And now he’s bringing them to this audience on Tuesday, October 3rd.
Scott White, The Life is Too Short Guy, is the happiest guy you will ever meet. After spending over a decade in investment banking on Wall Street, he took a chance and became an entrepreneur and business builder. Today, he is Chairman and CEO of a public real estate company. Now he’s on a mission to make the world happier, one smile at a time.
Tune into the full conversation for more on some of the core principles of Scott’s book, why what you think in the morning is so important, how to avoid the most common regret that people on their deathbed have, and a lot more.
As our podcast and blog are free for you, here is the link to share with someone else to sign up. |
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