We live in an information age. There isn’t really any excuse today for acting without having all the information… or is there. In this wonderful information age where you can research anything at virtually anytime, we exist in an environment ripe for information overload. Information overload can lead to a fatal situation for businesses, Analysis Paralysis.
For the last year, a friend of mine has been endeavoring to grow her business, part of this was trying to work better with her partner. The partnership broke up earlier this year, and we set about planning her marketing, again. See, we had been working on this same marketing plan for almost the whole year. Determining her niche client, finding out why her current clients had chosen her, etc. With the dissolution of the partnership, she was left with very few clients.
Just Do It (not related to Nike)
It’s amazing, she had just lost over half her clients, but the change clarified her niche client overnight. She knew exactly who she wanted as a client, now all she had to do was get them. It has only been a month, and she has doubled her business. How did she do it? Pretty easily, she now knows exactly who she wants as a client, no more deliberation, she could start doing. Doing made all of the difference.
Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy are the noise before defeat. ~ Sun Tzu
I am definitely not advocating acting without forethought, I simply wanted to show that all the thought in the world doesn’t get much done without action being involved. I saw this picture on Facebook recently and thought it was a great illustration of this concept. And remember, no one is saying that you can’t think while you are acting. In fact, I recommend just that. While in the Army, I was trained in the art of Indirect Fire, Indirect Fire is shooting at targets very far away, by calculating the trajectory of the round, in simple terms, you shoot up in the air, lobbing the round at the target. My instructor, a very wise man, with many years of experience to back him up, used to say that there is no substitute for rounds on the ground, and then you can adjust fire.
What Sully was saying is that you do as best you can to quickly calculate and aim, then you can adjust fire once you see where the round hits. Until that first round is out, you really aren’t sure exactly where it is going to hit. (Don’t get me wrong, you aim first, you just don’t get stuck aiming for perfection. You are never going to achieve perfection, and you won’t even get close without doing something first.) So, don’t overthink it, whether it is a marketing piece or your elevator pitch, get out there, use it, and adjust fire until you get it right.
Good Luck and Good Networking,
Rich