We Chase Our Business Because It Chases Us.

Be Effective With The Energy Therms We Expel!

It is a vicious circle.  The things we do over and over without much charge.  We expend a great deal of energy and planning to make sure we do the routine stuff we think we need to do in order to manage the things we must maintain.  My neighbor moved in about eleven years ago.  He is a perfect example of how we chase our business as it chases us.  It is a vicious circle.  All of us get to play this game hard without much fanfare.  Let me explain what I mean.

My neighbor and I live on the edge of the city, almost out in the country.  We are the last two homes within our city limits that reside out in our direction.  His house sits about 70 yards away from my side yard and my front yard shares the property line with the city limits.  There is a city watershed easement all across the backside of our property and a major country road that travels all the way through the front side of the property.  There is virtually no chance for any 'next door' developments to occur.  Our two homes are it.  I like that kind of property arrangement.  It suits me fine to be set in this kind of perfect arrangement to have our property this protected and still remain somewhat secluded.  It is a nice piece of property that has city benefits with development privacy.  I do not need to buy all of the property around me to protect my land from too much development encroachment.  I like where we live.

However, my neighbor has to put up with me.  I not only like where I live, I make sure I express that part in my landscaping designs.  My wife and I have a wonderful woodland designed yard.  It is almost one acre of well-appointed landscaped designs.  We include a lot of art and some wonderful hardscapes added to that design.  Our lighting is contemporary and the whole yard is appointed with interesting underground lighting features.  We have five water features, two outdoor fire burning pits and an 89 foot stream that flows from one water feature to the next one.  The stream works in a circle.  The water runs up and down the stream with pumps that feed the two features at both ends.  It is spring time unfolding right now and all of the new colors are happening to glow.  My wife and I spent the past two days solid, cleaning up the spring time stuff.  We chased our yard hard.

Furthermore, we have two mountain views sporting our properties.  In the front yard we have one of our two fire-pit sitting areas and small contemporary designed deck.  My wife and I can be caught sitting by the fire chatting about life and plans, often.  We enjoy the full mountain view to the south and the partial tip of the other mountain to the north from that sitting area.  People drive by and see us up on the hill sipping our coffee by the fire.  Some wave at us.  In a distance, our neighbor can see us enjoying our yard when we crank up another fire.  His front picture window sets in the perfect direction about 90 yards from the place where we commonly sit to enjoy the front yard view.  We can see him at a distance, watching T.V. in the night as the flashes of his television screen change the colors in his front room.  We notice how quickly the television flashes occur.  Flash...flash, flash, flash......flash, flash....flash, flash,flash, flash.............flash........flash,flash.....flash, flash...........flash, flash, fl,fl,fl,flash, flash.......fl,fl,fl,fl,flash.  This occurs in his view, all night long.  It looks like cameras flashing in his front room.  I am sure it does not bother his senses very much.  It puts us to sleep.  It is a good thing he is almost one hundred yards away.

When we shut down for the evening and put the fire out, turn the lights off as we head inside for the rest of the evening we notice him sound asleep in his recliner chair.  The flashing is still going on.  Apparently it puts him to sleep also.  I am not surprised.  He was tired, he chased his yard all day.

My neighbor is a simple guy.  I like him for a neighbor.  He is responsible, quiet and a great family guy.  He works hard to keep up with his life.  His wife works hard as well.  They spend almost all of their extra time working their yard with life maintenance.  It is slightly larger than our acre.  They are much more simple than we are.  They planted a perfectly straight row of 100 shrubs to block out the view of the road below.  Then they placed three trees in a perfect line sitting right in the middle of the full grass yard.  That is it for the landscaping.  No flowers, no shrubs and no other plants to grow.  We noticed how they also planted a small row a new trees along the inside our shared property lines, about four years ago.  When those trees mature, they will be able to block most of their view off from our 'busy' landscape designs and activities.  They will be able to remain simple and private.

Here is my point.  I have three very small areas to mow my lawn.  They are very small.  It takes me about five or ten minutes to complete that duty each week.  It is a fast maintenance chore with little energy needed.  The rest of our yard is woodland bound and requires very little year around maintenance work.  We just spend the rest of our time enjoying it.  The irrigation water, the operational water features, the sound (speakers), the electrical boxes and the lighting is all underground.  The rest of our landscape designs just grow and change all on their own.  We prune and trim once in awhile to control the over growth.  We pick the flowers, the roses and make cool arrangements to enjoy.  We place them in the outdoor flower vases that are incorporated in our landscape designs, hidden among the woodland shrubs and plants.  It adds a nice touch to the nature of the woodland beauty.  My neighbor will spend almost two hours mowing and trimming his yard every single week.  He does not own a riding lawn mower so he pushes it back and forth every single day that he does that kind of routine work.  He also does not have an underground irrigation system in place.  So every spring and summer he can be seen moving his sprinklers all evening long, every evening, until his wide area of lawn gets completely watered properly.  He chases the business of his yard maintenance because it chases him.  Do you get it?  That is my point.  We chase our business because it chases us.

However, here is the message.

Do We Spend The Right Kind Of Energy To Attract The Most Consumer Flows?

When you plan the design of how you manage your business model, make sure you have enough critical thinking included to keep you away from the high demand of routine activities that serve little good.  When Khrushchev visited America with President John Kennedy years ago, he was treated with a trip to one of the Super Bowl football games.  After the game ended he was asked, "So what do you think of Americas great pastime?"  His answer was..."Never have I seen so much money and 'interest energy" wasted on such a small cause in my whole life."  Americans became offended for his candid comments.  I prefer to check out his description of "interest energy."  We all pay some kind of energy to do the business work we all do.  However, what about the "interest energy" we spill over to accomplish the same things?  Khrushchev was not insulting the idea of recreation.  He was amazed at how much 'extras' were being expelled to get the same feeling delivered.  That is the kind of "interest energy" waste we was referring to.  We become offended at his comments back then.  We missed his point.  We become wrapped up with ourselves instead of paying attention to what he was truly sharing.  We missed his tip.

When the student is ready, the teacher appears.  Americans were not ready to learn what he was teaching.  It was not an offensive stance, just as long as the mind was not closed for learning more.  Business owners...pay attention.  Become better students.  Quit worrying about how you feel about what is said.  Instead, examine the depth of the truths inside.  This is where you will likely find the best information that will serve your work in a better way.  You want your business model to grow healthy and strong.  You do not need to waste anymore energy on building it than you already need to offer.  Your model already has you spinning on an energy chase.  Why add more uselessness to the process?

When you plan the design of how you manage your business model, make sure you have enough critical thinking included to keep you away from the high demand of routine activities that serve little good.  When we have visitors share time with us in our yard, they make some very nice comments about how beautiful and peaceful it is.  A couple of times some guests have strongly suggested that we work on making our home part of the annual home tour that is put on every year in this community.  I do not think my neighbors yard gets that kind of attention.  I mean no disrespect for this comparison.  I just know that the energy therms he places into the maintenance and development of his yard pleasure is much higher than the energy therms we expel on a weekly basis.  His energy demands run longer than our maintenance demands during the peak growing seasons.  He needs to chase his yard more than we chase ours.  That is a physical fact.  His results are far less impressive for the kind of work he expels.  This fact does not make one person more important than the other.  It has nothing to do with sizing up people.  However, it does serve to explain how some business owners spend too much time working on maintenance factors that drive and dominate their energy therms to the point of less return.  We chase our business because it chases us.  We mow the grass every single week because it needs mowing.

Further more we feed it with steroids, fertilizer, so we can get it greener, grow it taller and produce it thicker so we can mow it down more often!  Business owners do this very same thing in their business models.  They arrange to do many things, spending a lot of energy therms, more often than they should be doing for the things that do not matter.  They often forget to focus on the energy to add the creativity that attracts their consumers better.  Business owners tend to chase their business because it chases them.  They get caught up into the energy waste of this ugly 'low-cause' trap.  They do what confused Nikita Khrushchev many years ago.  They add extra energy therms to do the things they fail to arrange and plan for properly.  They forget to define what specific things they really need to do to attract more consumers.

My wife and I defined how we want to serve our yard.  We also defined how we want to enjoy our yard.  It is inside that definition that we determined how we needed to plan what we will eventually add to our yard of pleasures.  We consider and honor our ultimate plan well in advance of our typical and fleeting whims and desires.  We make our additions count more effectively before we 'just' add them.  That kind of respect for the process requires good planning.  We plan our work, our enjoyment and our pleasures so that they do not waste our valuable time.  We also do not do what everyone else does.  You will not catch us walking a lawn mower back and forth from side to side for two hours every single week, like everyone else is doing.  Instead we will be sitting by the fire watching others work their useless ways through the yards they never get time to enjoy.  Do not miss my point.  We have maintenance duties that drive our time.  We just get a lot more out of the energy therms we spend.  You should plan better to make sure this is how you work your business models.  Learn how to get a lot more return for the energy therms you expel.

When you allow your business to chase you, make sure you take the time to plan your energy expressions better.  Learn how to think and plan more efficiently, more effectively.  Get serious about admitting what you want to get out of the work you will eventually be applying to the process of being chased.  You want to be honest about how you allow the chase to unfold.  I am certain that if I were to have this same discussion with my neighbor, I would appear as if I was Khrushchev sharing a pointed and offensive position of thought.

Unfortunately, for those who worry too much about how they feel about the criticisms they hear...the teacher will never appear.  And in the end, they will continue to waste their valuable time walking their lawn mowers from side to side with little return...except for the spins they make to go the other way and continue cutting what does not need to be cut.  Make sure your business is not designed to look like you are mowing your lawn.  Make sure you think critically about what you need to do to make your business lawn more consumer appealing in less ways to burn valuable energy therms.  Plan your pleasures better.  Plan your consumer growth better.  Become a better student.  Quit worrying about what kinds of things offend you.

We chase our business because it chases us.  Make sure we arrange for the business chase to become part of what we truly need to be doing.  I like the way we enjoy our yard.  It looks a lot more complicated than it really is.  The proof becomes written by the things we watch others do that completely steals their time away from the enjoyment they so badly wanted to feel.  Our chase occurs at our pace, but thinking was required.  Do the same kind of thinking to control the kind of energy work you apply to the business model you own.  Make certain that you control the pace of what your model requires.  Arrange the work you do to become more effectively expelled.  Your business will chase your work, make sure it is effectively chased.

Until next time...