What’s the fastest way to get where you want to go? Save time? Save money? Make more money, more sales, get more leads for your business?
This is something I deal with on a daily basis. The shortcut. Marketers ask me, customers ask me, my wife asks me, my students ask me: Isn’t there a faster, ie shorter, way to get what I want?
Just what is a shortcut anyway? My quick definition: the fastest way I know to get to the destination I have in mind.
Now, the key here, is the ‘way I know.’
The way that is known is always the ‘shortcut.’ Period. There’s no arguing this point. It’s a fact. Yes, I know that if I turn off two streets earlier there’s a street somewhere there that if I find it, if I turn the right way, it will get me home, or to work, or to my meeting a little faster.
But what if I’m wrong?
I don’t see the road, have to backtrack and end up doing what? Taking more time, spending more money to get to the destination.
So, Allen, are you saying, “Don’t look for or try shortcuts?”
No. I’m saying, that when you have time, or your current path to success isn’t getting you there as fast as you would like, then experiment.
Make time to try a different route, a different way to convert your prospects, to set up your linking campaigns or whatever it is that you are trying to do.
Then if it works. Congratulations! You just found a shortcut.
If it doesn’t, you still have your old path, the one that was working for you, that you can go back to until you’ve had time, asked a few more questions, learned a little more, and can try again.
I was just listening to Gary Halbert who was doing an interview with Michel Fortin. He was talking about something along this line. He defined it as the difference between being effective and being efficient.
My way works. It’s effective. Is it always the most efficient? Probably not.
But for me the way I know, the one that works, that is always the shortest, fastest, most effecient way to go to get where I want to go.
I used to play golf more regularly than now, not any better, but more often 🙂
One of my friends was always ‘cutting the dog-legs’ because he could hit a fairly high ball on his drive. He saved a stroke, sometimes 2, on every dog-leg on that golf course.
He knew the course, he knew his swing, and his ability.
It was his golf ‘shortcut.’ It worked for him.
My drives tend to be a little flatter. I ‘knew’ the path, the way to get there was shorter over the trees and across the dog-leg, but I would more often than not just end up with a 2 stroke penalty for landing out of bounds.
My score was the same as before, the same as the times I took my safe drive toward the corner of the dog-leg and then on up the fairway.
Sure, I’d get lucky, yes, only lucky since I never worked on that part of my golf game, and save a stroke now and then.
But for me, the shortcut, the most efficient and effective way to get to the green, was to follow the path I knew, and that my skills allowed.
Now, stop looking for the easy way, the shortcut, and work on making the game you play more efficient, and effective.
Be well,
Allen