For Goofy’s sake, take action and a note about idiots

Yesterday, I gave my presentation on Disnifying Your Business, to a packed room of really smart cleaning and restoration company owners. How do I know they are smart? Because they came to a conference to learn, network and get ideas.

At the beginning of my presentations, I always teach the audience how to take notes when they come to multi day events. (I learned this from my friend and client Dave Dee). As you go through the conference you are going to take a boatload of notes. But one thing so many people do, is that they get home, look at their 20 pages of notes and get overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of information.

And then they do nothing.

Days at a conference, time and money invested, away from the business, all flushed down the terlet due to overwhelm.

No action taken.

So here is the Mickey Mouster plan to eliminating overwhelm and taking action

1. Take your note pad and draw a line down the page about 1/3 of the way from the right side. Now you have a page with 2 columns, one big and one small.
2. Label the large column ‘notes’ and the small column ‘action’
3. During a presentation, take all the notes you want.
4. After the presentation, and I mean, right after, don’t get coffee or go pee, stay in your seat.
5. Review your notes and pick just ONE, UNO, SINGULAR item that you will take action on. One item that will move the needle forward.
6. At the end of the conference, prioritize your action list and eliminate any that won’t have an immediate positive impact on the business. You should have a list of about 3-5 things
7. On Monday morning, implement the first item

Once you get through the 3-5 mission critical action items, then you can go to the lower priority actions.

Got it?

Good.

One of my favorite entrepreneurial quotes is from Tex Thornton, cofounder of Litton Industries; “If all the facts could be known, idiots could make the decisions”.

You will never know ALL the facts in a situation. Trying to find the optimum solution to your problems is a fools errand. Factors affecting your decision change too rapidly. You don’t need an optimal solution.

Just a reasonable one.

Trying to perfect, refine and foolproof your decision will lead you to INACTION!

Make your best decision.

Then take Donald Ducking ACTION!

Remember, you won’t profit unless you implement,

Vance “It is better to be vaguely right than exactly wrong (Carveth Read) ” Morris