Making Your First Million.pdf - Association of Net Entrepreneurs and ...

Making Your First Million
Clearly, most of the time, we're obliged to work on the things which are urgent, putting
out fires in the urgent/important (U/I) quadrant and feeding the squawkers in the U/NI
quadrant. Once we've handled the pressing matters what do most of us then do? We play.
We shoot down to the NU/NI quadrant taking clients out to dinner, going sailing or
pottering in the garden. Rarely do we spend enough time in the NU/I quadrant, strategic
planning. This is the purpose of this book, to assist you to think. Covey's model, from
'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People' lays it out simply so you and I can understand.
To break through the glass ceiling we need to move past the mindless activity stage, go
into the contemplative quadrant and think about what we're doing.
Last month I was asked to take over the roster for a volunteer social welfare office. After
years of lobbying we'd finally scored a small room in the hospital for our regional head
office. We had a desk, a phone and a computer for producing handbills and we were
staffing it on a rotating roster. Trouble was, nobody wanted to do it. We'd reduced the
hours to 10 till 2 and still it was hard to get volunteers. My colleagues rallied round
saying they'd help by asking at meetings. But I said "No. Let me think about it before I
change anything." I looked at the operation and asked questions. What are we here for?
Who calls in? How often?
It turned out that we receive 5 phone calls for help a week plus 3 drop in visits from
existing members looking to buy literature or have a cup of coffee. Almost all phone calls
came in at night. When the office volunteer left for the afternoon he or she would flip on
the answering machine. The message read: "Our office is presently unattended. Please
ring xxxxxx or yyyyyy or zzzzzz." No wonder nobody wanted to man the office. They
were bored to death. We wanted them there because we had an 'office' and if you have an
office then logically you've got to have an office person. The medium dictated the
message. We were thinking from the point of view of the proprietor, not the customer.
My response was to look for a better way. What we needed was an office that was
manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The solution was to purchase a bright yellow
mobile phone. Ten dollars a month, incoming calls only with keypad locked. Whenever
the office is unmanned (unpersonned?) which is 90%+ of the time the phone is switched
to the yellow batphone. We have a queue of people waiting to take turns carrying the
batphone around. 'It's my turn this week. You had it last week.' The phone has a list of
instructions (sorry, suggestions. We're dealing with volunteers here.) laminated to the
case so it doesn't matter who has it or where it physically is. It is always answered by a
live, though not necessarily wide-awake, person. We achieved what we set out to
achieve.
So often we say: "If only I try harder I'm bound to succeed. Some's good. More's gotta be
better." And yes, there is some truth in this. The harder we try, generally speaking, the
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