Happy Sunday Everyone:
This is primarily meant to be business but came to light through some personal reflections. We celebrated my dad’s 80th birthday on Friday. Obviously, a sad day for our family. The last sentence I wrote in my journal Friday morning was “He left us a blueprint on how to live life, how to represent, as a husband, father, and friend.”
I looked up blueprint this morning, it said this: “A blueprint is a guide for making something-it’s a design or pattern that can be followed”. So, you can have a blueprint as small as a morning routine, and as large as living your life until your last day. I’m sitting here questioning what designs I am creating on my own, and which ones am I following of others. Causes a bit of reflection to make sure I’m on the right track.
Switching gears, I have the pleasure of being on a once-a-month coaching call with 4 other great friends from my coaching days, people I have a ton of respect for and trust with. It’s a round robin of Q/A on things we need help with, advice on, or something we’re learning that could impact the others. One of my buddies kept saying “run the play”. We were talking about how we communicate w/ different personalities. If some of his team members were more equipped to handle certain clients based on a variety of factors they run different plays. If they’re getting shopped with different lenders, they run different plays. If they’re referred poorly, they run a different play. The point is I love the intentionality of knowing what play you’re running at all times. This might sound glaringly obvious to all of you but if you’re not questioning what play your running, and why, you end up going through motions and forgetting your purpose of the activity and the plan.
Having a blueprint of a successful business model is based on knowing what plays your running, when you’re running them, why you’re running them, and then reviewing their success. I was on a call with our CRO Thursday talking about a recruit. Without saying “run the play” he was saying there are X strategies we can discuss to get this person on board, he was talking about different plays we can run. Thinking through it, when I’m talking to a recruit on a going forward basis, I’m thinking “what play am I running” i.e. what does this person need, what is important to them, and what “play” creates the greatest chance of success.
I get these thoughts today are simple. What I like about them for me personally is it gets me on to the purpose train. If you’re thinking of blueprints, if you’re thinking about what play you’re running, and why, in every aspect of your business, the likelihood of you being better at your craft goes way up. How can it not?