INTERIOR CRAFTSMANSHIP
Everything That Needs To Be Done Nothing That Doesn’t Need To Be Done
If you spend many years working in a particular business such as being a builder, someone who has built homes from the bottom up with his own hands, and you love being a builder, you really know what you’re doing and you love what you do, you will walk through a house that’s for sale and see things on a different plane than any “normal” person could even dream of visiting. I know this happens because I’ve had the privilege of touring homes with many such builders who have taught me much about general construction, how systems work, and all manner of things that I hold dear, because they make me better at what I do.
If you were fortunate enough to watch the Larry Bird era Celtics, you’d have seen passes made, shots taken and hit (one was made from BEHIND the backboard WHILE he was falling out of bounds), passes intercepted, and plays broken up, that were so far beyond amazing as to defy description. I went to many basketball games at the time, having grown up playing the game.
I learned that the best way to watch basketball, especially at the pro level, is to watch away from the ball. Focus on what everybody without the ball is doing and you’ll see the heart of a team. Larry Bird was one of the few basketball players ever to have played the game who could see 2, 3, or 4 plays ahead, and play the game at that level anticipating things that other people could never have seen.
When I owned an Award-Winning Marketing and Advertising Agency (that I started from scratch), I decided we were going to be a Fully Integrated Marketing Firm, which meant that we could do anything for any company. We focused on Medium Sized Companies, however, if we could do it for medium sized companies, we could do it for large companies, small companies, and startups, no matter what business the company was in or product they produced. In many instances, we BECAME their marketing department, thereby saving them that cost and immediately adding a positive to the bottom line.
Whenever we met with a client for the first time, as well as most of the subsequent meetings, I received permission to make a made a voice recording of the proceedings. This gave me the opportunity to watch away from the ball. I didn’t have to take notes because the recording picked up every word said by everyone in the room. I also saved myself the time, energy, and tremendous levels of stress that were the constant companions of every effort I made to decipher whatever it was that was scribbled in my notebook during the meeting.
I was able to keep myself focused entirely on my clients so I picked up all the significant nonverbal cues that I would otherwise have totally missed. By looking at everything from their point of view, I came away with a much richer appreciation of what my clients were trying to achieve and a more informed vision of how I could help them reach well past their stated goals.
We then went back to the office and transposed everything that was said in the meeting word for word. Try doing that sometime and you’ll learn much about yourself. Because whenever we played the tape and or read the transcript, we always found major things that we had completely forgotten about once this process was completed I had their entire fully integrated marketing plan all of the platforms we were going to be using what the messaging was what the website was going to look like and the site map of the website as well as other things we could show them that they weren’t even aware of. I was thinking in multiple levels at the same time and it all came together in the snap of a finger that’s a skill I have never lost.