Welcome back, welcome back. Hope you did well on the test. Hope you got those key concepts. Let's keep moving forward. Number two, prioritization. We've talked about prioritization through the various cases and there's two types of prioritization, strategic prioritization and then personal prioritization. What you, as the entrepreneur do each day? Which fire do you put out first? Put on your fire person's hat, you grab your extinguisher, and where do you go first each day as the stuff happens in the chaos of growth? Strategic prioritization, we've talked about 2 inches wide, 2 miles deep. But I'm going to frame it in a different way for you here. The key question about strategic prioritization is your answer to the 3 W's. What am I going to sell? Okay? And Dave, remember, kept defining that. He's going to sell stuff that he can install in the home, because he's the worlds best installer in the house. To whom? Homeowners was Dave's answer. Julie's answer was people over 40 who are losing, if you will, their ability to read without having reading glasses. And then the most important W, why is someone going to buy from me? Why are they going to buy from me? Is it because of price? Is it because of quality? Is it because they are my brother or sister and they love me? Well, you gotta have a big family to earn a livin'. Price, quality or maybe it's the customer experience. I'm easy to do business with. I do what I say I'm going to do. I treat the customers very, very nice. I love my customers more than I love my product. So why are people going to buy from you? Too many entrepreneurs think it's because I've got the best product or it's the greatest product. Ladies and gentleman, it works for a little while, but the trash cans are full of good products or good software that people didn't want to buy, that they didn't need compellingly enough, because the entire purpose of your product of service is to solve somebody's problem, to make life easier for them, to meet a specific need, to reduce what the marketing people say, a customer pain point. You are a solution and answer to my problem, daily prioritization. Yeah, you're saying to yourself, Ed sure likes these firehouse stories. Well, I do, because they make the point, because that's really what what's going on in a business all the time, brush fires, and you gotta choose which fire to put out, and you gotta leave the fire extinguisher behind, and you gotta have fire house time to think. And another reason, when I was a little boy growing up, okay, my parents were entrepreneurs. They owned a dry goods store and it was across the street from the fire house in my little, small town in rural Georgia. And to get me outta the store where I wouldn't make a mess, my parents said go see the firemen. That time there were only firemen. Go see the firemen. And so Carl and Grady took me and my brother in and we stayed in the firehouse all day watching TV, playing checkers, shining the fire. And then, when the alarms went off, we watched them go down the pole, the fire engines to go out, and we set out in our rockers waiting for our friends to come back. True story. So yes, I do like firehouses. What fire do you put out first? Critical decision. How do you prioritize? Depends on your business, isn't it? What can do the most damage to your business, to your brand, to your reputation, to your customers, and again, we're not talking about health, life, safety. I mean if your business actually is on fire, you're going to grab all the employees and run out, okay, to save lives. I'm not talking about that. Assess the situation and go where you have the most impact. The military teaches its leaders. Go into a situation, assess the landscape. Where's the biggest issue where you can have the most impact? Go there. Help. Get out, and then assess again. That's really what you as an entrepreneur need to do. Where's the bottleneck? That's the circle of life, defender direct. A great entrepreneur that was in my study, she said it this way, and I'm going to read this slowly, because this is good. You don't eat if you don't sell. You don't sell if you don't have a customer. You don't have a customer unless you offer a good service or product. Now, that was her circle of life and that's pretty good. Let's go through that again. You don't eat if you don't sell. You don't sell if you don't have a customer, the big C. You don't have a customer unless you offer a good service or product. So, where do you think she focused on every day? Where did she start? Now is the time that you're answering me in your own mind. Yeah, it comes out to the quality. service and product for her, because if I don't have that, I don't have the customer. If I don't have the customer, I don't eat. Another entrepreneur said it this way. Set up three or four priorities that take precedence over everything else. Ladies and gentlemen, manage cash flow, focus on customers and quality service, accelerate revenue growth, and all the rest, unless something is on fire, can wait. So that entrepreneur said, I gotta make sure I can keep the doors open and pay my bills and pay my employees, focus every day on cash flow, know where my cash is. If I don't have happy customers and quality service, I don't have money, right? Revenue growth is more happy customer. Okay? Unless something's on fire, it can wait. Good rules. Huddles, daily prioritization. I learned this from Horst Schulze, the founder of Ritz-Carlton Corporation. Okay? Every day in every Ritz-Carlton Hotel in every city in the world, every shift, there is a huddle. And a huddle is when all the team members come together, all the employees, and every day, there's a discussion, a short discussion of a key principle, or value, or cultural point and they have 30 key points. So every day, they read a different one, and then, December, November 1st, they start over. March 1st, they start over, June 1st, and they do that 12 times a year, making the key points. Many entrepreneurs have a morning huddle and set priorities. Some entrepreneurs have a morning huddle and an afternoon huddle. Here are the priorities for the day and the afternoon huddle is what worked, what didn't work, what got done, we need to do first thing tomorrow. So they're keeping their people engaged in helping prioritize what's important in the business every day and critical to prioritization is information. Many entrepreneurs, as they grow their business, post daily key performance metrics, so everyone knows what their company or business is doing, what their function is doing, if it's different teams, different production teams, what each team's doing. They know if team one is making 10% mistakes and team two is making 2%. Then what happens in that case? Team two helps, team one learn to do better, and also, there's peer pressure to be better. Okay. 3 minute, short quiz on prioritization, key points. All right? Go attack it. I'll be here waiting for you.
