What Makes You Think You Can?

It was a question that caught me off guard… Much as I wanted to respond with a “rapid fire” answer, it caught me by surprise. However, when I thought more about it later that same day, I concluded that it was a great question.

At the risk of catching you off guard or raising your blood pressure, what makes you think you can succeed? Henry Ford stated, “If you think you can or think you can’t, you are correct!” I have found that to be so true during the past 25 years of consulting.

I have been reading an excellent book co-authored by Dan Sullivan of The Strategic Coach and Dr. Benjamin Hardy entitled 10X Is Easier Than 2X. It discusses the process and benefits of growing your business 10X and why it is easier than growing 2X. The primary reason for this is that there are probably 10-12 different ways to grow it 2X. However, there are very few ways to grow it 10X, so you need to maintain total focus. One of the primary forces for achieving this is that you MUST eliminate any tasks that take you away from your primary goal of growing 10X.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that the task(s) do not get completed. It just means that it may need to be done by someone else. In other words, you may need to delegate the task to someone else on your Team. The example they used to explain this was Michelangelo’s creation of a 17-foot Hercules statue early in his career from a large piece of marble. The way he completed this task was by extensively studying the human body and then “chipping away” at all the unnecessary marble.

In your case, it might mean that you need to seek another “Who” to complete the task. I often hear business owners state, “I hate doing this task, so who else would ever want to do it? How could I ask them to do it?” The reality is that someone else on your Team might enjoy it and take great pride in making this happen. This might even align with their “Unique Ability.” Delegating this task will allow you to focus on more important items to help you grow your operation.

As I mentioned in my last blog, I am introducing a system to allow you to measure your dairy operation’s cash flow results. I call it the Success Strategies Advantage^TM.  It is designed to create a budget for your dairy operation, using numbers for your region of the country. After you input some “Actual” numbers from your QuickBooks or other accounting system, it will provide you with the following items:

• A Year-to-Date (YTD) Cash Flow Comparison of your operation compared to a budget that is based upon typical numbers for your region of the country.

• It will show you where you may be over or under budget.

• It will provide you with Break-Even Levels for Milk Price/cwt, Feed Expense & Production per cow per day, all useful information for reaching higher levels of profitability, as well as setting your price level coverage through the Dairy Revenue Protection (DRP) and Dairy Margin Coverage (DMC) programs.

• It will also equip you to better understand where you might be over budget and help you to talk with your Team (e.g., Nutritionist, Veterinarian, Financial Consultant & Others) about how to refine your numbers

Finally, it will give you solid information to share with your banker, showing how you are currently doing and guiding you about future changes or investments that will help you streamline operations. You can check it out on our home page at www.success-strategies.com.

I believe you will find it beneficial, because as Robert Noyce, co-founder of Intel stated, “Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.”

Let’s take your business to the Next Level!