The lazy business owner

How smart working trumps hard work any day of the week.

Some high flying business man once wrote:

I will always employ a lazy person as they find the quickest way to do something that most of us do the hard and long way.

They say youth is wasted on the young and people often lament about the decisions they made when they were younger and what they would tell their younger selves, however you are who you are today because of all those decisions.

When in school children are asked what they want to be when they grow up is always echos of what they see around them, working class kids want to be builders and Firemen, Elite children want to be Barristers and lecturers. Not one child ever pipes up and says

“Screw all that hard work…I just want to be rich”.

If I could go back in time I would tell myself to forget about how, just concentrate on wealth and the how will present itself.

The Entrepreneur Test

Did you ever play one of those follow the lines to get to the result puzzles they have in the Sunday papers and quiz books? where there are multiple lines, so you follow each line systematically to get the result.

This was given as a test on an interview once and out of all the candidates we showed this to, only one got it right, as in they started from the prize first and moved outwards to see what the letter of the winning line was.

“Nobody said we had to do it the long way” The winning candidate said..

He was correct, all we said was:

“Find the quickest way to get to the prize.”

Lazy has changed meanings over the years, and now leans more towards quick problem solving and solution sales.

‘If hard work made you rich all the woman in Africa would be driving a Bentley’

In the marketing arena; ‘smart working’ over hard working is ever so much more prevalent. If you can target your message to the right people, at the right time, with the correct and most meaningful message that is relevant and solves their issue, BINGO you have just saved yourselves months of work, and probably brought in some much needed revenue quicker than traditional methods.

For most we are still being taught the traditional build relationships through content marketing, video marketing and search engine optimisation, along with email marketing, and that takes months to develop a brand.

New to business people struggle to understand brand image and brand loyalty. Along with lack of metrics and KPI’s to demonstrate your brand loyalty, they can’t seem to wrap their head around this pivotal business requirement and to why they should spend hard earned cash on something that can take months for a return of Investment sometimes years.

Your Brand is how the general public knows and feels about your business and do they trust you, if they do your job is a lot easier!

The size of your social networks is a key factor in success, if you have the average 200 people on Facebook, no Twitter account and you are not on LinkedIn yet, then posting a message on social media is hardly going to make people start banging on your door demanding to buy your product. It takes many years to build up a decent following on Social Media, more so if you are not a popular Music star or are on the Television every day.

We are also taught not to expect instant business from networking events, those people who go with the idea of selling are usually shunned and it never works for them, you have to go with an altruistic attitude and help find solutions for you network first, then by reciprocation you get business in return, this can take months as well.

Cold calling does not work in any real sense anymore, it is a practice doomed to the 1980’s and to the people who got insanely rich with a spiel and a tenacious hard nosed attitude.If you have a client list already then maybe you can make that work for you.

Meeting people face to face is still effective but only if you have found the potential client through the internet or was a referral.

The lazy and smart business person will leverage someone else’s network and advertise to their people, will spend some cash on Facebook ads and Google advertising to get to the first page quickly, they will also educate themselves on how to get to the right people quickly and get much needed turnover for their business.

The smart business owner would contact us here and get us to do their marketing whilst they go out selling or Golf, or the beach … we don’t judge!