🌄 How to Stand Out And Accelerate Growth

Good morning.

Happy trails from Sedona, Arizona. I’m on spring break this week, hiking and enjoying gorgeous views of Bell Rock and the Grand Canyon.

Today’s issue features a pair of essays I wrote last week.

The first is a set of beliefs that have served me well, and the second is a friendly reminder of the importance and power of slowing down.

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the quick poll below!

Let’s get into it.

— Gordon

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5 Small But Powerful Beliefs That Have Stood The Test of Time and Helped Me Stand Out and Create Influence

1. People always remember how you make them feel

People will forget what you say, but they'll always remember how you make them feel.

Be kind and thoughtful in your interactions always.

You never know the impact you may have on someone at any moment in their life or the opportunities that may be created out of how we communicate and show up for people.

2. To be early is to be on time, and to be on time is to be late

Being on time for things seems to be a relic of the past, yet showing up early is a simple yet powerful way to set yourself apart.

I aim to arrive at my destination ten to fifteen minutes early to ensure I'm not late and use any extra time to review notes or refresh myself on my objectives. I walk into my appointments either five minutes early or exactly on time, depending on whether it's a B2B meeting or a B2C appointment.

I also begin each meeting by confirming how much time the other party has allocated for our meeting so that I can respect their time.

3. Good or bad, everything in my life is my fault

While we can't control everything, a lot more in life is in our control than we think.

By being accountable for our decisions and open to how those decisions led to an outcome, we can learn from our mistakes faster and make more informed choices in the future rather than putting our failures on others and continuing to put ourselves in the same position over and over.

4. It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice

A title is meaningless. How you treat people is everything. Be kind.

5. Change is inevitable. Participation is optional

The only constant in business and life is change.

You can jump on the ride (and figure out how to adapt) or get run over by it (and go out of business). It's your choice.

Remember, though, change is growth, and you're either growing or you're dying.

3 Reasons You Should Slow Down to Accelerate Growth

It seems counterintuitive to slow down to speed up.

Yet, in a world where everyone is constantly moving, a temporary downshift in pace creates space for improving your product or workflow.

When we’re constantly on the go and focused on working in the business, it’s easy to forget to step out and invest time working on the business.

Unfortunately, this hinders the growth of our business. We don’t take the time to implement a new learning or system that could fundamentally improve our productivity and/or customer experience.

Here are 3 reasons to pump your breaks to go faster:

1. Ideation

Our brains need space to think and process what we’ve done, experienced and learned.

When we don’t slow down enough to create that space, we’re rarely able to generate new ideas or think through ideas we had and haven’t implemented.

Ideation requires creativity, which is part of our human magic.

Creativity requires us to temporarily stop, unplug, and lose ourselves to create that spark.

2. Innovation

Consistent action and working in our business gives us the experiences we need to adapt to market changes and be more in tune with our businesses and what our customers want.

However, to leverage those experiences to improve our processes and deliverables, we need to slow down enough to put them on paper and map out how to make the right improvements.

3. Implementation

Ideas are shit. Execution is everything.

The fastest way to become overwhelmed and on track to burnout is to never slow down and implement our ideas.

We need to be able to look at things one piece or one step at a time to see how to create the systems that will unlock growth and efficiencies in our businesses.

We won’t reach the next peak rolling across level ground.

We need to slow down and push uphill to leverage the downhill momentum and achieve new heights.

ONWARD TOGETHER.