I once woke up to a flooded house. The kitchen cupboards had soaked up water overnight, and our rugs were ruined. Disaster. I immediately thought it was the geyser, but the ceiling was fine. I called a plumber, who arrived within an hour. He walked around the house, fiddled with his tools, told me something, and I paid. A week later, the house was flooded again.
This time, I called a different plumber. The second one came with a long pipe with a camera on its tip. He used it to check the pipes once again. About an hour later, he called to show me a live photo of roots growing in one of the pipes underground. As it turns out, the other plumber without the necessary tools did not spot this problem.
Every plumber, every carpenter, and every mechanic spends years collecting, making and refining their tools. However, this is not the case for most entrepreneurs. Most of them run their businesses on a whim. When under pressure, they bark out orders or make haphazard decisions to relieve the pressure, with predictably disastrous results.
The mark of an experienced entrepreneur, on the other hand, is often seen when you walk into his office. They have a library of books, from which they learn, borrow and steal tools for thinking. Over the years, they test and refine these tools, eventually settling on a collection they would swear upon to the grave.
If you could indulge me, these are my tools, developed over 20+ years of experience in business. Of course, they may or may not work for you, but it might be worth your while to have a look.
1. Opportunity: To identify and evaluate the strength of opportunities, I use Thales Teixeira‘s process as detailed in his book, Decoupling the Customer Value Chain.
2. Strategy: After identifying an opportunity, I develop a strategy using the five pillars in the first chapter of Sun Tzu’s Art of War. While the book remains a helpful classic, it can be abstract. So, I developed my own framework based on studying its teachings for the past 15 years.
3. Business Model: To turn the strategy into a business model, I use Alexander Osterwalder‘s Business Model Canvas. It’s a one-page, highly effective tool for visualising all aspects of a business and identifying internal weaknesses.
4. Productivity: The business model canvas easily translates into critical activities for success. I organise my activities into three buckets: (a) initiatives & projects, (b) Internal Systems, (c) business development.
5. Time Management: Ideally, I use the 4:3:3 model to organise my day. 4 hours are for high-intensity work (usually at night for initiatives and projects). 3 hours for collaborative work (to improve systems and unlock internal bottlenecks with my team). Another 3 hours are for customers, writing proposals and acquiring new business. Of course, I do not follow the model religiously. I am human after all, but it provides a good framework that I tighten or loosen up depending on circumstances.
The secret of a successful plumber, as is the case for the entrepreneur, is the quality of their tools and the dexterity with which they use them.
Make things happen
P.S. For more tools, head over to my business fundamentals page, where 10 videos await.
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