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“How are you doing Jeff, long time no see; we haven’t talked since around late 2007.” “Yes its been awhile Barry, great seeing you,” I replied. “Let’s grab a quick coffee Jeff and we can catch up.” So that’s what we did. After getting each other caught up on the family updates, our conversation turned to Barry’s business. “Last we talked Barry, you were excited about the business plan you created, I think it was around November 2007, how did that work out for you?” “Great”, Barry replied. As is my nature I always like to go one question deeper, “So how many people do you have now,” I innocently asked. “17,” Barry replied. “17? Isn’t that what you had in 2007? How about profits and margins?” “About the same as back then as well.” “Doesn’t sound so great to me Barry. You had big dreams of significantly increasing the value of your business, wasn’t that the point of creating the plan in the first place, what happened?” Barry being the true professional didn’t blame external forces, as marginal sales people and owners often do, Barry instead blamed himself. “As with executing other previous plans, I got caught up with all this other crap and then it’s three years later and am grabbing a coffee with you. You know how it goes, I had three sales people in 2007 with an expectation of having ten by now and I still have three today. I was going to upgrade my Marketing team and in particular invest in improving our lead generation, I interviewed a few people but then I got distracted and never made a move. I had planned to bring in a person to streamline operations but….”
“Barry,” I politely interrupted, “if you have a few minutes let me tell you the story of my reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, perhaps it will be helpful, worst case, we get to hang out a few more minutes with each other.”
As we got our coffee refills, decaffeinated this time, I told Barry my story of reading Kavalier & Clay.
“Earlier this year I came across a couple of blogs recommending their favorite business books for entrepreneurs. As you might expect, there were only a handful of novels including the big ones: Atlas Shrugged and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. There was one additional novel called The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay that I had not heard of. So, I went to Amazon and quickly purchased it. When it came, I was surprised to find that although it was no Atlas Shrugged in length, it was a 639 page small font novel set mostly in New York City in 1939 about the launch of the comic superhero business. I put the novel aside until I could dedicate the time to read it. That occurred in late August. During a week of vacation with my family, I read about 200 pages. About 10 days later, on September 10th, I noticed that I was now on page 247 and at the rate I was going I would not finish the novel until the December holidays at best and worst case, I would let too much time elapse and would have to start over. Even though I was thoroughly enjoying the novel, too many things kept getting in the way.”
Barry finally butted in. “Jeff, point please.”
“Yes, thanks Barry. On that day, September 10th, I decided that finishing the novel was important to me and that only by making it urgent would I be able to finish it. So, how to make reading a novel urgent? I gave myself the daily goal of reading 20 pages per day. If, on average I could complete this simple daily “urgent” goal for twenty days straight, I would reach the “important” goal of completing the novel by the end of September.”
“So how did it work out?” Barry asked.
“Some days I only read a few pages, other days I read thirty or forty pages. I ended up missing my self imposed deadline, finishing it this past Monday, October 4th. If I thought of reading the whole novel it might have been too daunting for me and perhaps I wouldn’t have finished it. Similar to….”
[Barry cut me off]
“… the way I did not work daily/weekly/monthly on scaling my sales team, nor focusing on making the important hires and training in the areas of Operations and Marketing.”
I chuckled as I noticed Barry head for the door, “Where are you going Barry?”
Barry turned his head back to me and replied, “Off to make a couple of important items in my business urgent.”
“While you are at it Barry, pick up a copy of Kavalier & Clay and put it on your desk, it will serve as reminder of this conversation.”
Barry smiled as he was almost out the door and replied, “See you in three years.”
