EP 082: Business – Biggest Lessons of 2022 (Part 1)

It’s Grant.

Yep! I have hijacked the emails from Charley!

Why?

I would love to say it’s because my skill at writing these emails has super-seeded his

But… the real reason is that he is with his family.

Anyway,
It’s that time of year again…

The time when:
– our team members have checked out
– clients won’t reply to our emails for weeks
– and we are sitting here looking back over the year that was

For me, it is the time when I am always cautiously excited about

The time when I get to see and evaluate the year

And I don’t mean looking out of my window with a cup of coffee, reminiscing on all the good times.

I mean, diving deep into the exact mistakes I have made and trying to learn from them.

It’s one of the ways I have been able to refine and hone my skills over the years.

And a skill that was unlocked, thanks to a SAS Sniper
(who is actually one of my co-founders of software as a service business)

I can still remember the day,

At the end of 2016/17, I decided to present a timeline and review of our year in business to my co-founder.

I had listed out everything we did well in the year… and I was a little more than impressed with my outline.

It would have been easy to tell the excitement in my voice.

After I finished dancing around, presenting it

My co-founder took one glance at me, then back at the presentation.

Then at me and back at the presentation

And in an effort not to offend me, he just nodded.

Rightfully so, it was a great year.

He then opened his mouth to speak and asked, “So, what did we learn from the year?
And, what would we do differently if we could do it again?”

“We would focus more on sales and marketing.” I responded excitedly!

Without hesitation, he responded with what I should’ve expected:
“Great, where does it say that on your list?

And, where does it say what we tried to do?”

I stared at my presentation.

He was right

I literally wrote a “pump piece” that was designed to make me feel better about a hard year and hoped that he would just agree to it.

“Ummm… Let me add….” I stuttered.

He interrupted quickly

“How about we approach this a better way? The way I did in the SAS.”

Feel let off the hook, I was all ears.

Dangling a framework in front of my face draws the same attraction as a moth to a flame.

He continued:
“It’s also a retrospective framework that I used at the largest resources company in the world, and it really helped us extract more meaningful insights.”

Here’s what he shared:

The concept is called: GBB
– Good: what is working
– Better: what needs to improve
– Best: what was the biggest win

“Alright, what did we do ‘GOOD’ over the year?” he asked.

I pointed at my presentation.

“That was a bit easy.

Alright, what could we have done ‘BETTER’?”

This is where my mind clicked!

“So, you want lessons learned?” I asked.

“Exactly.

By doing this a lot of times, I have come to learn that if we list every item we did well at the start of the process, it actually helps us identify the items we could’ve done better.

Usually, people ignore the ‘not so good things’ when building the list to make themselves sound and feel better.”

Exactly as I did.

“Then, we continue to bounce between them, adding as many points as necessary.

The objective is to look at every ‘less than ideal outcome’ as something we could do better next time.

Once we have built the list, we then spend almost all of our time evaluating the items we could do ‘better’.

As if we do not improve on the most important ‘better’ items, we won’t be able to continue growing”.

Damn!

This framework is perfect!

“And the ‘BEST’ is just a list of items we crushed?” I asked.

“Yep, that’s where we can pump ourselves up.”

He was right!

Re-building the list into the GBB framework actually extracted more items than I anticipated

So much so that I actually still use it to this day.

Even expanding it to review my weeks personally, evaluate team projects, etc.

Everyone I have shared it with has found it to unlock real value.

This is exactly what Charley and I shared this week.

We dive into where we could have done ‘BETTER’ in the year, our ‘lessons learnt’.

Episode Highlights:

00:00 Welcome to Business and Investing
01:09 Learning from challenges and people with experience
07:55 Sometimes in business, less is more
15:02 Making drastic changes in your business
18:17 Better business model wins
24:04 The truth about reinventing your business model
28:42 Grant’s interesting take on improvement
34:30 Rituals, habits, and routines
37:00 Changing strategies and tactics for different seasons
41:43 Realising you need to change strategies

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Disclaimer: 
All information we share is NOT financial or investment advice and is purely intended for entertainment and educational purposes only. Always seek professional advice before acting on any financial decision.

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