#spirituality #selfdevelopment #personalitytransformation
What Does the "Next Step" Mean and How to Understand What to Do for It
I've been in business, entrepreneurship, management, mentoring, and advising for 20 years, and I've helped thousands of businesses. And always the most important question I've asked myself, which has always worried me (probably the hardest thing to do):
How can I right now see the next step as accurately as possible to achieve the desired goal or result? How to see, how to form this next step? How to understand what I need to do in marketing, in sales?
Of course, 15 years ago, when I opened my software development company, I thought differently. And the next step was often taken intuitively or spontaneously, or from some conflict situation, or from some euphoria. It got better every year. And, of course, over the last 5 years, I've honed this quality incredibly, how to take the right next step.
About Partnership with Andrey Rogachev, Creator of Pyaterochka
Today I'll tell you what the most important thing is that everyone needs to do in their business right now, and generally those who want to start it. In 2016, I launched a partnership with Andrey Rogachev. We started creating a technological trading platform in the field of professional food trading. Andrey had crazy experience; he is the creator of "Pyaterochka". And it is considered that he is the first person in Russia who earned a billion dollars in cash not through privatization, but through serious, real business.
He always said that the majority of entrepreneurs, business owners make one fundamental mistake. They want to achieve something, they know they are doing business for profit, then they have a strategy on how they will achieve this business. For example, they want to open a company that will be engaged in software development and want to earn a lot of money – that's how they voiced it for themselves. They have defined for themselves a strategy: they will find clients who are, for example, in the States. And then they, as business owners, managers, other management team, do tasks daily. And Andrey said that the most important problem is that people do a task that does not match the strategy, and the strategy does not match the goal. That is, tasks go in one direction, people do something of their own, the strategy is completely different.
The main thing is that all this does not lead to achieving the goal. For many years I developed this quality in myself, and in our business with Andrey, we honed the skill of constantly checking if the task we do daily matches the strategy we defined and if the strategy matches our goal. And this was one of the fundamental problems I saw in many businesses, being an owner, minority or active shareholder, or managing companies, or in case of advising, mentoring, consulting.
Fundamental Problem of Businessmen
In recent months, I noticed that the fundamental problem is not that a person takes the wrong actions or some tasks that do not match the strategy, and the strategy does not match the goal. Let's look at an example. We decided with a partner to open a software development company. "We want to earn a lot of money" – that's how we formulated our goal. And we decided that the strategy is to attract clients in the States. And the first thing we will do is start developing websites for companies that are located near us. As an owner, I say: "Wait, why are we making websites? This doesn't lead to our main goal, whose strategy is to earn a lot of money and attract clients from the States." The partner, for example, in business or employees say that this will allow us to ensure quick cash. Or recently my acquaintances formed an investment venture fund in the USA, and they were not only lacking investors. They say: "We will create a course that will teach people investment or venture literacy, and these people will then convert into investors who will come to us." I ask them if they are sure that creating this course is indeed the strategy of their business and leads to achieving the main goal.
Helping a huge number of people with tasks, strategy, goal, I saw that people actually can't formulate and define very clearly their main goal.
A person works as a programmer at Google and says in front of a group of certain people: "Please advise what should I do, what will be the right set of very specific actions for me to start a business selling T-shirts with prints. I would like to earn 2, maybe 5, maybe 10 thousand dollars." And people start giving him a lot of advice. At some point, I say: "Wait a second, before giving you any advice on how to start this business, let's find out what your goal is." He asks: "Well, a goal is a goal, isn't it clear?"
I say: "The goal can be different: you need money, and it will be the main thing in your life; you need additional income; you want to do this business so that your friends believe in you; you have never done business in your life, you are not an entrepreneur and want to go through the path of entrepreneurship; your wife at home should believe that you can do business, and she doesn't like that you are a programmer; you need to prove to your mother-in-law that you can do better what you are doing. What is your main goal? Because depending on this, there will be a different set of actions and another strategy to achieve it.
If you just need an additional source of money, then use what you have: you are a Google programmer and can sell an hour of your work for 500 dollars. So sell it separately, you have an exclusive on this. One in 100 thousand people, not what 100 thousand people can do – selling T-shirts with prints. If you want to earn a lot of money – determine this figure, calculate it and say that you really need to engage in this business. If you want to gain experience in entrepreneurship, then tips for fun, some test or non-real, abstract won't work: you won't live this business, you won't go through it for real. If your goal is for your friends to believe in you, then let's see what else can be a strategy to achieve this goal: maybe there's no business of your own or there's no business where you create and print T-shirts with your prints."
Case Studies: Equium, Atlantes, Club 500
Let's look at the example of other businesses – clubs, communities of entrepreneurs. Let's take the "Atlantes" club, "Equium" and "Club 500". What was their initial goal inside? "Club 500" says: "I created a club to make a profit in this business. We made a club to generate profit. Of course, there is a secondary goal – to create a community, but primarily it's important for us to have profit." There is "Equium", which says: "We created a club as a non-profit organization to have a community." There is "Atlant", which says: "We created a club to have a community, but it would be nice to make some business." What is the result? "Club 500" generates profit, "Equium" has no profit, "Atlant" wants to get profit, but it doesn't. When the owner comes and talks about generating profit, then it is necessary to ask initially if this is the goal. There is another situation. Let's take a business in education, for example, Skillbox or Netology, or Yandex Praktikum, or Skyeng. What goal have these businesses set in recent years? To create a business that will be worth a lot of money and that can be sold. And profit is interesting secondarily, it rather affects the parameter "a lot of money". To occupy some place, to gain fame – is also interesting, but it's secondary. Perhaps, Yandex Praktikum had one of the fundamental goals to become a leader in this field. Accordingly, these companies do not have a profit, but they have an organizational structure that can be sold. For example, "Equium" says: "We have a weak management team, a weak management system, we don't have a super cool management system set up, we don't have such an incredible core in finance, management, sales, marketing." And Skillbox says: "We have a very strong management system, a strong structure of finance, sales, marketing." What is the difference? One company is driven by the goal of being worth a lot of money, and for this, it's important to have a strong internal structure, and the other never thought that the goal could be to sell it. To sell it, you need to have a huge structure formed inside. If you look at almost any club (like "Club 500", "Atlantes" or "Equium") – they will not have a serious structure inside the team. There may be good teams, great guys, a wonderful owner, but there won't be a comparable structure to what big teams and tech companies have.
Let's analyze the case of Like company.
Let's look at the case of Like company. Initially, it was created to generate profit. At the same time, the company was built to grow big and eventually be sold. So, unlike many companies on the market that would like to sell themselves, this company is profitable. It has the potential to sell itself, but profit came first. Therefore, selling is a whole different question and problem. We won't go into the circumstances and discussions of other factors, but what is important to see in these examples? We need to see what goal is set inside, what is fundamental and important? Netology was made to be a large asset, so it didn't focus on profit. That wasn't its foundational story. Later on, there was a wealthy investor and owner who was interested in the asset's value, not in extracting profit from it. When the founders initially created GeekBrains, it was just their business, they needed to make money. And they did make money. When the question arose that this company could be worth a lot of money, then you change the structure. And what is your primary focus?
If your primary focus is selling and you say that you can sacrifice making money, then it turns out that the actions we often take in life, in business, not only don't correspond to the strategy, the strategy doesn't match the goal, but the person doesn't fully see or know the goal.
Having and knowing the goal allows an entrepreneur, a business owner, or someone who wants to start a business to focus very clearly.
Focusing means seeing the next step; when you know the goal, state it clearly, it immediately eliminates thousands of incorrect hypotheses, thoughts, stories, conflicts, details, anything, and allows you to focus very clearly on the ultimate goal. And your ability to quickly find this goal even in another business increases your chance of seeing the next step.
I quickly focus and understand the main goal in other businesses or see a whole range of goals that a person might have. And I ask what their goal is. I quickly focus on the goal: "The goal is this, the strategy, the principles are roughly these, so you need to take the following action." The most precise next step to reach that goal. I've made hundreds of partnerships and been involved with hundreds of businesses in my life; I didn't always know the goal. And very often, I took actions that didn't lead to achieving the goals. Why did I do this? Because I was afraid it wouldn't work out, afraid to reach the point of truth, to get very close and quickly realize that things weren't as clear, that many things wouldn't work out. When you have a goal and a clear vector of strategy and principles, there are situations where you realize the goal is no longer achievable. When you understand that this business won't exist, that everything else was an illusion, and you no longer need to stay in that illusion.
If you have several partners, especially two or three, understanding the goals, strategies, and principles allows you to immediately determine the next step if the partners are ready for it.
On Defining Goals and Situations Where Agreement is Impossible
When you sit down with your partners and focus on the goal, strategies, principles, and you are all interested in moving towards this goal, open to it, and understand its importance, you will quickly find the next step. Or you will quickly find that each of you has a different understanding of the goal. Katya needs money, Masha needs fame, and Olya needs a simple daily job and labor.
The best next step you can take is to sit down and agree on the goal in your business.
Are there situations where it's impossible to agree? Yes, there are. In some situations, it will be impossible to agree, and that's why people are afraid to discuss it. But the thing is, if there's a possibility that you won't agree in your business, if you don't do it now, you'll go through a year, two, three, five, ten years and end up incredibly disappointed.
Sit down and discuss it now, look at it honestly. This is a fundamental decision within the business, for the company, for yourselves, for your employees, for your team, for the top management, for anyone within the organization.
The more a person understands the company's main goal, the more they understand the strategies and principles for achieving this goal, the more accurately they will take the correct next step. The step that brings them closer to this goal, not further away.
And if you get stuck – it means you might need to reconsider the goal, change the strategy and principles, or perhaps the situation is unattainable. There are often situations where the goal needs to be reviewed: a business goal is not eternal. The only thing eternal might be your internal state and sense of freedom – that's what you need to rely on with all possible forces. But a business goal can be changed. The daily task of controlling your actions, strategy, principles, and goal is not easy. You can start doing it and observing. But the task of clearly formulating a goal for yourself is available to every person.
An important interest you will find is that there is a goal in business or a project, and there is your own goal in life or the principles and ideas that are the foundation of your life.