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A while ago, I was hired by the owner of an office supplies company. He told me that for years, he had been trying to figure out why his main competitor was so successful. He wanted to know what he referred to as their secret sauce: the secret ‘something’ that led to their ongoing success.
He found it. And I’m going to share it with you. Why? Because it applies to all small businesses, including yours and mine.
After years of wondering what his main competitor’s secret was, he discovered it by accident! One of his small team retired, and was replaced by a guy who used to work with his super-successful competitor. He then discovered the root of their success. It wasn’t any one thing or secret sauce, which made that competing business so successful.
No.
It was the combination of lots of little things, which prospects were attracted to and customers remained loyal to. Small adjustments in important areas. Minor differences that compounded to create a major impact.
As he said at the time, ‘Jim, I wasted years looking for a mountain, and totally missed the molehills that made them successful’.
What can we learn from this?
We live in an era, where success is marketed to be just one hack or AI prompt away.
We have influencers selling the dream of a tactic that they claim earned them (for example) $100k in 30-days. Often more. And let’s be honest, who doesn’t want to know what that magic is? In the current economy, these $100k in 30-days type videos are watched by millions of small business owners looking for hope. After all, even if it was possible for the hack or AI prompt to make $20k or $10k fast, that would be very useful for many of our fellow small business owners right now.
The core lesson here is that real, genuine success isn’t the result of a trick or secret tactic. It comes from doing lots of small things, correctly. Doing lots of small things correctly IS THE SECRET SOURCE.
What next, Jim?
Bear with me. Every edition of this newsletter is read by thousands of people in almost every industry, and its readership is worldwide. This means as always, I am forced to answer using broad brushstrokes.
This is a basic, almost universal framework you can use.
- List every element of your sales, marketing, customer service and other key areas of your business.
- Select the first one that you believe can be improved. Even if it’s only a small improvement. This is really important. Minor improvements of only a few percent, applied to multiple elements of your business will have a compounding effect. Think of it like compound interest. The returns on that compounding is what causes the kind of top competitor effect, which I mentioned earlier.
- Then, look for the next, and the next, and the next, applying an improvement to each one. Repeat the process.
Don’t let the simplicity of this idea cause you discard it. It isn’t buzzy. It doesn’t promise you a fast fortune. But it is logical. And it is proven.
As always, I hope you find this useful.
IMPORTANT: If you want to make more sales, boost your profits and grow an amazing business, this will help you!