Nothing is neutral. If you've spent any time in the water. You'll realise pretty quickly that you're either going one direction or another. I'll always remember a day in a kayak with a mate paddling against a seven knot current because we had to get to a particular island and straight against the current. And it felt like we were on a treadmill.
It literally felt like we were paddling as hard as we could and we weren't going anywhere. And if we stopped, the current would take us backwards. And that, I think, is something really important to remember in business. Every now and then, we'll discuss marketing with a business leader and they're not quite ready to commit to taking any action, they just want to wait before committing.
And sometimes there are other conversations that need to be had and the strategy needs to be formed. But the reality is, if you're not going forward in business, you are going backward. Nothing is ever neutral. Consider the Google search platform where activity leads to success. If you're not actively investing in performing well on Google Search, you will be going backwards because one of your competitors will be taking small steps forward with their marketing, and while they are doing something and you are doing nothing they will outperform you.
And that's just the cold, hard reality.
This is the same for right across your business. If you're not innovating in your products and creating new products and new solutions to customer problems, someone else will. If you're not following up on sales and investing time and effort in new prospects, then you're not going to win that business.
This is the reality for all businesses. Nothing is neutral. We all have to invest our time, our focus and our money somewhere. And the main question then becomes, “is it a good investment?”. So as you think about a new staff member, or partnering with an agency or a new product line, the question again is, is this a good investment?
Does it align with your values? Is it a good thing? Is it the kind of decision that you would be proud to talk about with other people? I think that's just ground level consideration for everything in your business. Secondly, is it wise and this is really about the reality that a lot of decisions are influenced by contextual factors.
It might be time pressure, there might be conflict or, you know, a relational pressure. How can you look at that decision outside of those pressures for a moment and just consider how you would actually address it without those? So if you weren't in such a hurry, if there wasn't such a time pressure, what would be the wise thing to do?
And then, jump back into the situation and consider what you could do? And lastly, what measures are you using to track tangible and intangible return on investment? So if you're hiring a new team member and you're going to pay them X, what capacity do they have to work at or carry in order to drive a return for that investment?
Or, similarly, if you're partnering with an external agency, what measures are you using to track performance? What are those KPIs that help you to actually measure that in a proactive way? Is it good? Is it wise? And do the metrics add up? I think those are key considerations that you can have in mind as you look at the investments you're making in your business.
Because the reality is you're either investing in your business and growing your team, building a culture and moving forward or you're not and you're going backwards.
