week 83: how to burn less "brain" calories

make things simple

thank you to over 11,000 of you who read this weekly and share with your friends and family for behind the scenes on building a million dollar business from scratch and beyond.

i also include a personal note in the end so i am grateful that you let me do that without judgement.

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coming into holiday season, it sure seems like we are pounding on a lot of calories.

but you know, the worse calories we load on are actually “brain” calories in business.

some background…

our cover values at GTM Partners are simply ABCD.

A - always be learning and testing

B - burn less calories (more on this today)

C - C.A.T obsessed (obsessed with clarity, alignment and team - internal lingo)

D - Deliver value

now instead of ABCD, this could be better worded, more clearer and smarter but no one would remember it.

let’s do a test - how many of you remember your companies core values or mission or vision statement and more importantly live it and use it in decision making process?

some companies have 100 page deck on this and who in the world operates like that?

keeping it simple is another way to burn less calories.

if you customers, teams, partners are burning “brain” calories figuring out what you do or if your sales process makes a future customer jump thru hoops or using the product is cumbersome or partnering with seems hard, those are red flags.

that’s burning calories for no good reason.

companies will do well if they focus on making things simpler a.k.a burn less calories.

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on a personal note, my son had a conversation with a kid who plays tennis with him.

as they became good friends, Krish had shared his faith with him.

as they got deeper into discussions, Krish asked him if his friend wants to come to our church.

we were glad to see the boldness of Krish at an early age.

the kid said yes but lives an hour away from us and his parents couldn’t drop him to the Church.

so Krish said, why don’t we will pick him up?

so today, if you are reading this on Sunday, we are going to drive up and pick him up and once he attends, drop him back to his home.

that’s a few hours of our time but here’s the fun part.

when Krish said, we will pick you up, his friend asked him this:

“will you really do that for me?”

Krish said of course!

now i don’t know how this story will end but i do know that the kid will remember for ever that someone took the time to pick him to share his faith and drop him back.

that meant a ton to him and i think that was the best part of their whole conversation.

i shared with Krish that… everyone has to own their own faith but the other person will never care what you have say until they know that you care about them.

you just showed that you care and he burned zero calories before saying that we will pick him up.

that’s how great stories begin.

doing something for other, unconditionally, is following what Jesus commanded us to do: “love your neighbor as i have loved you.”

leader point: burning less calories requires extreme empathy for others and putting others first. the more you care, the less you burn calories for yourself and for others.