GarthBox

There are few actions more tempting than checking boxes, taking notes, and doing the minimum.

The problem (for you?) is that doing so makes you more replaceable than ever.

Being indispensable requires you to find a new way to do a task; it requires you to write and talk in a way that builds confidence both in you and the listener; it requires you to not take for granted the flexibility you have, but to leverage it.

 

Stay Positive & Becoming Irreplaceable Requires Risk Today, Tomorrow And Every Day After

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It’s easy to get sucked into your business.

Projects grow in scope, more emails come in, more fires require your attention.

The solution to ensuring your business continues to grow stronger is to spend time working on your business and less time in it.

Working in your business is when you’re completing tasks, responding to (often unnecessary) fire alarms, and doing your best to make everyone happy.

Working on your business is playing around with potential new products or services; it’s brainstorming possible new partnerships or expansions; it’s designing a new event to keep awareness high.

Working in your business often ensures you’ll be here tomorrow. Working on your business ensures you’ll be here five years from now…bigger and better, too.

 

Stay Positive & Always Make Time To Work On, Not Just In

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Just a few things that constitute as hiding…

• Doing only what you’re told
• Trying to be all things across all platforms
• Analyzing your time
• Asking what others think of your idea
• Doing your job
• Sorting your to-do list so the biggest thing is last
• Asking for reassurance
• Choosing physical labor over emotional labor
• Hoping for rejection
• Letting someone else lead, take the stage, speak

 

Stay Positive & Start Seeking

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Marketing your product or service gets easier when you can complete the sentence
“You’ll love this if you’re the type of person who _____.”

However, what you finish the sentence with matters. Often, fear likes to speak up and fill the blank, usually resulting in you trying to appeal to the masses.

“You’ll love these burgers if you’re the type of person who has a mouth.”

“You’ll love this program if you’re the type of person who wants to exercise.”

The target is completely lost, buried, covered with the false belief that you can effectively appeal to the great unwashed, the mutable many, the common pack. It’s simply not so.

The risk with dialing into a target is that you may be wrong. But if you’re not willing to be wrong, you won’t be able to band a tribe that supports you. Your product or service will flop.

No one, not even Walmart or Amazon, as big as they are, attempt to appeal to the masses.

Why are you?

 

Stay Positive & Having A Target Doesn’t Guarantee A Hit, But It Sure Increases Your Chances

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When there are free donuts on the table next to your desk, you might as well take one.

When a parking spot opens up closest to the store entrance, you might as well park in it.

You are a creature of convenience regardless of whether you’re on a diet or truly don’t mind walking the longer distance from your car to the doors.

You can use this to your advantage.

Keep the dumbells in the middle of the room and the workout dvd in the TV so everything is there when you go to watch Netflix, because you might as well do a quick workout before you binge watch Rules of Engagement.

Create an Evernote shortcut on your phone to your business plan notes because the next time you pull your phone out to check Facebook, you might as well add a few notes to your plan.

There are convenient ways that you can become a better version of yourself, do better (and more) work, and, in general, get shit done. You might as well design them.

 

Stay Positive & Make Success Easier

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You could analyze your time to discover what you’re doing that’s wasting the most time.

Or you can use that time to work on a project that matters.

Very rarely is what you’re facing a time management problem. More often it’s fear.

 

Stay Positive & Don’t You Think It’s Time You Face It?

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Your boss has double the fear that you do about stepping up to the next level.

You fear it, but you’re ready to take the next step, to learn.

You’re willing to risk (maybe fail), and that’s a good thing.

On the other hand, your boss fears you failing from both a selfish and a selfless standpoint.

Selfishly, she doesn’t want to redo the books or the work. If you screw up, it’s on her dime. She’s saving her gluteus by not giving you the chance to fail.

Then, because she cares about you, she also doesn’t want you to fail, to fall discouraged, to regret stepping in shoes she knew you wouldn’t fit in. Better to play it safe, she thinks.

The problem is that double fear isn’t going anywhere, and therein lies the issue of having a boss.

Consider what you have control over now? What permission can you accept now? What responsibility can you take in your own hands?

After all, it’s your turn in line, even if your boss can’t see it.

 

Stay Positive & Support May Not Be There, But Permission Always Is

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