Jeffrey Hayzlett has been a friend also an advisor to our startup WittyParrot. His new book “Think Big, Act Bigger” is big and bold.
Here is Jeffrey sharing some ideas from the book:
It’s time for business leaders to empower themselves and tie their visions to actions,advance themselves past competitors and closer to their business dreams. It’s time to own your story, think big and act bigger- because you can.
1. What does it mean to Think Big and Act Bigger?
It’s a mantra for everything, in business and in life. We are so limited by the things we don’t do in life. Let’s start doing the things we want to do in the ways we want to do them. No more excuses. Steamroll obstacles, don’t take no for an answer, don’t listen to naysayers. It’s time for us to act.
2. How do you determine your conditions of satisfaction?
I call them mutual conditions of satisfaction and that’s something you have to do with the person acting as the performer or the customer. In everything we do there is a performer and a customer. It’s about deciding what the customer wants and what the performer wants to give.
3. People have called you pigheaded and irrational before but you say it doesn’t bother you. In fact, you think it’s a good thing for business leaders to be a little pigheaded. Why?
Someone has to lead and sometimes you have to stand out there alone in order to get everyone to come with you. I once listened to a leader of a large organization talk about how he needed to be irrational. At first, I thought he was crazy. Then I realized his point. He was saying the company needs to go from point A to point B, but I have to go to point Z in order to drag everyone else to
point B. Sometimes we look at the boss and say he or she is crazy. Well sometimes they are, but that is to push us harder and strive for better.
4. You say it’s imperative for leaders to focus and cut out the noise. What are some tips for focusing on what matters?
I use an inverted triangle, divided into thirds, to classify things by their importance to my business. In the top, or the biggest third, are the things I need to spend the most time on, in the middle are things I spend some of my time on and in the bottom are the things I spend the least time on.
You must relentlessly focus on what drives your business, or you will never see the true rewards of thinking big and acting bigger.
5. What did you learn when you visited the executive team at Domino’s while filming The C-Suite with Jeffrey Hayzlett?
In 2010, Domino’s launched an advertising campaign announcing their pizza sucked.
What makes a company do this?
To learn what they didn’t know about their product.
Domino’s story demonstrates that business owners need to understand that there will always be an unknown. However, there are steps you can take to be as educated as possible in order to help your business grow.
- Listen to your customers; you might learn something that leads to radical change
- Respond to your customers. Once you have decided to listen, you need to make sure you are responding to what they really want
- Listen and respond to your people. Ask your employees, without consequence, how they feel about your company or product
- Take a risk and get the whole team on board
- Be transparent, open, and honest with consumers
As human beings, sometimes we fail to see things that hold us back. We need to rethink how we see obstacles, not as obstacles but as opportunities that allow us to own who we are—because we can and because we have to!
Last, but not the least: Here is your opportunity to win a Big Thinking Celebrity Experience in New York City by visiting:
http://launch.thinkbigtour.com/