Ideas are nothing but neurological flatulence.
~ MJ DeMarco
The Strategy for Speed: Chess, Not Checkers
••The King: Your execution
••The Queen: Your marketing
••The Bishop: Your customer service
••The Knight: Your product
••The Rook: Your people
••The Pawn: Your ideas.
Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• Speed is the transformation of ideas to execution.
••Most people let powerful information expire and become worthless.
•• Successful Fastlane businesses are run multi-dimensionally, like a game of chess. One-dimensional businesses focus on price only.
•• Execution divides winners and losers from their ideas.
•• In business, execution is process. Ideas are events.
•• Ideas are potential speed. Execution is actual speed.
•• Others share your blockbuster idea. He who thinks the idea owns nothing. He who executes the idea owns everything.
•• Real money and momentum is created when an idea (potential speed) is matched with execution (accelerator pressure).
••An idea is neurological flatulence. Execution makes it smell like a rose.
Burn the Business Plan,
Ignite Execution
Having the world’s best idea will do you no good unless you act on it.
People who want milk shouldn’t sit on a stool in the middle of the field
in hopes that a cow will back up to them.
~ Curtis Grant
🔥The world tells you which direction you should be going at all times.
🔥Business plans are useless because they’re ideas jacked-up on steroids.
🔥Business plans are useless until they are married to execution. The best business plan in the world will always be a track record of execution.
Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••The world gives clues to the direction you should be moving.
•• Business plans are useless because they are ideas on steroids.
••As soon as the world interacts with your ideas, your business plan is invalidated.
••The marketplace will steer you into directions that were previously unplanned for.
••The best business plan in the world is a track record of execution—it legitimizes the business plan.
•• If you have a track record of execution, suddenly people will want to see your business plan.
•• If you want your business to get funded, take action and create something that reflects tangible execution.
•• Investors are more likely to invest in something tangible and real; not ideas dissected ad nauseam on paper.
Pedestrians Will
Make You Rich!
If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that.
Word of mouth is very powerful.
~ Jeff Bezos
Complaints are the world’s whispers hinting the direction you should be moving.
Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• Complaints are valuable insights into your customers’ minds.
•• Complaints of change are difficult to decipher and often require additional data to validate or invalidate.
•• Complaints of expectation expose operational problems in either your business, or in your marketing strategy.
•• Complaints of void expose unmet needs, raise the value of your product or service, and expose new revenue opportunities.
•• Great customer service is as simple as violating your customer’s low expectation in the positive.•• Poor service gaps are Fastlane opportunities.
•• Satisfied customers can be human resource systems who promote your business for free.
•• Satisfied customers have a dual residual effect: Repeat business and new business via discipleship.
••Your customer and their satisfaction hold the key to everything you selfishly want.
•• Looking big but acting small sets up customer service expectation violations in the positive.
•• Looking big can scare away potential competitors.
Throw Hijackers
to the Curb!
People are definitely a company’s greatest asset.
It doesn’t make any difference whether the product is cars or cosmetics.
A company is only as good as the people it keeps.
~ Mary Kay Ash
🔥Verify first, trust later
🔥All the intangibles in the world can’t change a poor customer service experience.
🔥Your employees drive the public’s perception of your company.
Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••A business partnership is as important as a marriage.
••A good accountant and attorney will save you thousands, perhaps millions.
••Accountants and attorneys have the keys to your castle; make sure you trust them fully because they have the power to right or wrong you.
•• Unmitigated trust exposes you to unmitigated risk.
•• Unverified trust can lead to uncontrollable consequences.
••Your employees communicate the public’s perception of your company.
•• Fanatical customer service can overcome shortcomings, but fanatical features can’t overcome poor customer service.
•• Customer service philosophy is delivered from human interactions—not ambitious mission statements on a wall plaque in the CEO’s office.