One of the big benefits of running your own business is that you get to choose who you work with. Staff and customers.
There are behaviours in clients or others that I find utterly unacceptable. Therefore, I don’t accept them. Staff or customers.
There’s something very liberating about telling a customer that you’re not going to work with them anymore.
There’s something very liberating about applying the litmus test that Dan Kennedy taught me: if I awake with my sleep disturbed by thinking about you three nights in a row and we aren’t having sex, I do something to get rid of you.
Utterly unacceptable means absolutely unacceptable. This is an absolute. There is no flexibility. Absolute.
As a result, I’ve dispatched two EC members and an employee from my life in the last three weeks. Liberating.
Frees up my mental space. Moves me more quickly towards my goals.
Few people have extreme clarity.
Few people enforce rigid rules.
People shrug things off. They excuse it. They hope it will improve. They give one more chance. Fifty times.
They settle.
They compromise.
They draw a line in the sand then back up and draw another and another.
In my experience I’ve found that the more successful, powerful and rich people don’t behave like that. They live by absolutes – and I try to too.
If/when you become aware of something harmful to your businesses – something that’s getting in the way of your maximum success or your goals – then unless you treat such things (or behaviour)
as utterly, absolutely, unacceptable, then you won’t muster enough urgency and force of will to get it fixed.
When things get difficult and other people or circumstances conspire to slow you down or dissuade you, most people are slowed and dissuaded. I see it every week, even round the Mastermind table. Such tolerance is a cancer to success.
You have to be enraged, not just annoyed.
Terrified, not just worried.
Demanding, not just wishful.
Alex Ferguson and Brian Clough are probably the least accepting football managers ever. They hated losing. They refused to accept behaviours or attitudes from their players that were incompatible with their goals.
They were also two of the most successful managers ever.
Coincidence? No.
You have to see it all in absolutes.
This isn’t about being ‘hard-nosed’ or nasty. It’s about being clear and honest – with yourself.
I think it was Ross Perot who said: “If there’s a snake loose in the building, don’t form a snake committee. Don’t commission research. Don’t wait and see if it leaves of its own accord. Don’t try hiding from it. Get a big stick and kill the damn thing.”
Unless you are extraordinarily fortunate there’s at least one snake in your life right now.
Metaphorically at least, I’ve just given you the stick.
Up to you now…
That’s the final word…
