If You Always Do What You’ve Always Done
You’ll Always Get What You’ve Always Gotten
If you are less than satisfied with your results that you have been achieving lately – say last year or even the last few years, then it’s time to review what it is that you are actually doing.
This goes for your personal results as well as for the results obtained in your business if that be the case.
Even if what we are doing used to be a good avenue for building our businesses, then invariably we find some day that it no longer seems to provide us with the growth we used to see – and ultimately we may find that our results are less than stellar if in fact not downright dissatisfying.
The world keeps evolving, but sometimes we individually or our businesses do not really keep up and evolve too and some day we realize that our personal results or our businesses are going nowhere or perhaps even have been dwindling over a period of time.
When finding yourself in such a position, it’s high time to look at what it is you are doing. If you find that you are doing what you have always been doing, then that may very well be the reason for your troubles. You simply have not evolved while those around you have or if nothing else your customers may have.
In my capacity of professional Board of Directors Member and in the role of High Performance Coach as well as in my role as a Business Consultant I often see this problem scenario in people’s personal results or in their businesses and I see it with myself and sometimes in own businesses.
Yet, it’s remarkable when I point this out, just how resistant people are to adopt any changes and it’s remarkable the length they will often go to with the excuses they will make up for avoiding implementing any changes whatsoever. Yes, human beings are not often very thrilled about making changes of any sort. We may say we wish for changes in our lives and our results and yet, we are so very resistant to actually commence doing something new or to go in a different direction – personally as well as professionally.
But as the quote goes
If You Always Do What You’ve Always Done
You’ll Always Get What You’ve Always Gotten
How do you expect to achieve better results if you just keep doing the same thing?
We all heard the quote attributed to Albert Einstein that says:
The definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result
-Albert Einstein
Usually, I find that people and business owners will say to me something along the lines that “we’ll just do more of we have done” and then they hope that they will see more results.
It’s akin the people who, when constantly finding themselves with more month at the end of the money, finally come to the conclusion that they need to find a solution and then come up with something “hey, I’ll take a second job” or “I’ll work some extra hours”.
What is wrong with this picture is, that they do not stop up and review their value proposition. What value do they as an individual bring to the table? What value do they as a business bring to the market space?
Now, in contrast, I have had numerous experiences of successful outcomes and changing of trajectories of results when one has stopped up and reviewed how one could do things differently. Sometimes all it takes is small changes and other times you may find that you need to make some radical changes.
For changes in results for your personal achievements, it very often comes down to making some sincere adjustments in your daily routines and habits. It might also be changing things up completely, perhaps even opting for a complete change of direction.
If you have ever done any physical training of sorts, you may well have experienced reaching some plateau at which point it seems your results are stagnant despite how much more training you add on top of what you have been doing. Changing your routines by dropping some of the training you have been doing for some sort of exercise of completely other character and you may soon see renewed improvements come about.
When you have seen lack luster results in your personal income, you may find new opportunities and improved income by completely changing your chosen career.
For a business, sometimes the changes can come about just by restructuring your offerings, pricing, terms and conditions or a combination of same. Other times you may need to go forth with even more drastic resolve.
Is it scary? Yes!
Usually it is scary and often it is extremely scary.
Is it worth it?
Yes!
If you just continue what you have been doing and you haven’t been happy about the results, then you probably aren’t going to be happy with the results going forth. But change it up and you should soon see different results.
Will you see improved results always?
No!
There are no guarantees. You could choose a route that turns out to have catastrophic effects on your results – personally or in your business.
Is it easy?
No! Often it isn’t.
Look, if there were guarantees and if it was easy, you wouldn’t need to be scared and you would just do it – and everybody would be a millionaire.
Personally, I have found myself in this situation more than once – both personally and in business.
In my very first business that I bought, I was looking at our offering to the market. It was my limousine service business, but it could have been a business of any other industry. I wanted to implement some rather drastic changes in our rates along with several other things.
Coming (almost) from outside, I inquired with the highly experienced staff members what they thought of my ideas and was met with huge resistance: “Oh, no, if I did that, I was sure to see all clients flee and lose everything on the floor”.
There were other changes I wanted to see happen, and invariably I found myself met with shot down ideas and negative reception almost no matter what the idea was about.
Ultimately, I got rather tired of the scenario and went ahead with all my ideas and revamped the entire offering. If memory serves me right my smallest price adjustment was about 30% or so in upward direction.
The result?
After my first 14 months, my profit line had improved to the tune of a 32 fold of the result of year leading up to my take over of the business. I don’t really think I lost any clients that I can remember at said point and I believe we even managed to strengthen a lot of our relationships and our positioning in the market.
Most of the staff members incidentally were changed out during that period too.
It was very scary, but it was so worth it.
At another point, our results had stagnated and we seemed to go nowhere and met challenges left and right with our own deliverables and service levels. When it got to a point that seemed it had gotten far enough, I took a very drastic course of action and changed out the entire operational organization with new people.
This was excessively scary, but within the same year our results shot up again.
I wouldn’t normally recommend anything this drastic, but I actually had to do this once more in the time I owned the company. It was frightfully scary both times, but it was so worth it both times and I have always been happy that I did this.
Today, I might take a less dramatic avenue. I’m a little older now and would possibly proceed with more caution and mechanisms of push and pull and so on. But there’s no denying the remarkable changes in results and value of what we delivered when I did this.
But the point is that you might actually get very far in the direction you want to go, if you are willing to take the risk, get out of the comfort zone and try something new. For you as a person, it may be to uproot your path entirely and take a different road. For a business, you may realize, that you may be able make relatively massive adjustments without losing your business on the floor, perhaps even find you ended up strengthening your relations with your clients and come out with hugely improved results
So in conclusion, if you are in a place where you are not too satisfied with your results – personally or businesswise, then consider changing things up – perhaps even a lot.
What daily routines do you need to change? What routines do you need to throw out? What new action steps do you need to incorporate on a consistent and continuous basis?
What new way do you need to take?
Is it scary?
Yes.
But it may very well be worth it!
Would love to hear about your similar experiences or about your current challenges. Comment or shoot me a private message. Let’s keep the conversation going. Thanks for participating, I very much appreciate it.
Mikkel Pitzner is a serial entrepreneur with vast experience of running a multitude of businesses spanning a wide variety unrelated of industries, States, Countries and even Continents. He is a professional Board of Directors Member and serves on several board in privately held companies as well as in publicly traded companies. As a High Performance Coach and as a Business Consultant, he helps respectively people and professionals and businesses vastly improve their results.
