When I was a little girl it really confused me how my Uncle would spend hours on paint-by-number paintings. The thought of painting a picture by numbers was entirely too tame for me. I would rather run around like a wild woman stirring up trouble, and that I did.
When I was a teenager I noticed these ads, “Can you draw Binky?” or something like that. Supposedly if you could recreate this deer like creature it predicted your artistic abilities.
Then one day in art class the teacher showed us how to see things I’d never seen before. How beneath the image you wanted to create there were basic shapes that helped you create that image. Let me show you how this concept works. Look at the image below.
photo credit: SoulRider_222
Look closely at the white space between the “E” and the “X”. Notice how that white space creates an arrow. The funny thing is once you see these things you couldn’t see before… you can’t stop yourself from seeing them in the future. Plus you’re able to create things you didn’t think you could because before now you had no clue how to even approach creating those things.
Thinking back to my Uncle’s paint-by-number paintings I realized it isn’t just a matter of gathering the right paint brushes and paint colors, the tools. It isn’t even just a matter of starting with a predetermined outcome. Gathering the tools and deciding on the outcome… those are the easy things anyone can do.
The hard part is figuring out how to use those tools to create the outcome you want.
Business is a lot like painting by the numbers. After all when it comes to a business there are really just three things involved:
- inputs
- processes
- outputs
Getting the required inputs is easy. Rarely is that ever what holds anyone back. Anyone serious about starting a business will always find a way to get the inputs.
Stating the desired outcome is also easy. No one starts a business thinking I wonder what will happen if I take these inputs and do this with them. Nope every business owner expects specific outcomes from the inputs and processes.
The hard part is creating the process that consistently, predictably, and profitably produces the outputs you want. The most important output is money so you can do it over and over again and take care of yourself and the people you care about.
You know my Uncle’s paint-by-number set came with a set of instructions that told him the color he needed to use for each number and the order to apply those colors to the canvas… it came with a step-by-step process. He specifically bought a paint-by-number picture because he knew it was a whole lot easier to create the image he wanted following a process someone else created for him. A process to connect the dots.
The same is true in sales, wouldn’t you agree? It’s a whole lot easier to follow a process than it is to invent one through trial and error on your own. That’s exactly why a franchise is more likely to succeed than a new start-up. The franchisee simply follows the step-by-step process the franchisor already created to the letter and presto… business success.
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