Thinking Out Loud – Episode 14

This is the fourteenth episode in a series called Thinking Out Loud. In these videos, Armando Lanuti, the President of Creative Works, shares some of his thoughts on business, leadership, growth, operations, and anything else on his mind. Below is a transcript of some of the points he discusses in the video.

Hey everybody, it’s Armando. Back for another Thinking Out Loud as we enter 2019.

Like most of you, I’ve been plotting my goals, my forecast, my ideas and what I want to accomplish here in this brand new year and what I want to do is really encourage everybody to get out of their comfort zone.

Get out of the normal.

It’s really easy to set your own goals and have them be something you feel is attainable so that you make sure that you get there.

But I’d really like to take a page out of The 10X Rule, the book by Grant Cardone and say, set that goal higher set that goal further, that way even if you don’t quite make it, it’s one of those things where you will have reached a lot further than you would have otherwise and you won’t settle when you reach that goal thinking, hey I’ve just gotten there.

So, for example, even though at Creative Works we’re coming off of back-to-back years of really amazing growth we’ve set our goals to grow another 40% this year and to do that as one of Inc. 5000’s Fastest Growing Companies already it’s a pretty ambitious goal and we’re going to be all on track to make it there and then our stretch goal is actually a 50% increase and it’s nice to have that secondary stretch goal as well that way if you do hit your goal you don’t stop. You have something that you’re still trying to attain and get to and you don’t become comfortable with where you’re at so, I highly recommend you get out of that comfort zone.

And one of the other things to think about is something that we took back from another conference, is the idea of compounding.

So, when you’re setting these goals and you say, “Hey, I’ve got to get to 50% growth or 100% growth” or whatever it is in your business don’t think of it as every single step along the way has to get to 100% growth. That’s not how it works. You need to think more like compounding interest in the money market where, “Hey if I get 20% more leads or opportunities and I get if I increase my ability to close those leads by 1-2% and I increase my average per ticket price or per project price by 8%” or whatever, when you start doing the math of that you’ll find that those small incremental gains on 3-5 items that are key to your business will all of a sudden equal, if you do the math out, sometimes 30 to 50 to 100% gain in your business and it also allows you to climb that mountain, right?

Sometimes when you think of, okay I need to get to here, the problem is you start to feel overwhelmed by that goal and especially what I’m telling you, make that goal 10 times bigger, make that goal far larger than you were originally going to do.

That mountain feels even more monstrous and hard to get there, but if you realize that it only takes these smaller incremental compounding changes to get that big goal, it’s a lot easier to take those smaller steps and to start seeing those results and start seeing how that amplifies your productivity and your capabilities in your business, so look forward to talking to you soon and thanks for talking to me about our goals for 2019.

For more business and leadership tips, follow Armando Lanuti on Facebook and LinkedIn.