Go Faster in Your Business by Going Slower

Welcome back to Navigating abundance. I’m Chris Tanke. Today I’m gonna talk with you about the Achilles heel of all of us type a Industrial types the people that try to overachieve the people that keep working and striving to make something happen And what is that? Well, we do a lot better if we worked smarter not harder

Smarter not harder. That’s a difficult thing for me to grasp on a personal level. I’m blessed to have 130 acres up near Hart, north of Grand Rapids, if you know your geography. And it’s paradise for me. I like to hunt and fish and run my grandchildren around through the woods. ⁓ It’s just a lovely thing to see the deer, to see the bear, to see the trout in the stream.

And it is a respite for me. It is a retreat, but it’s not all ease because it takes a lot of work to keep that going, especially if you’re heating it with a wood burning stove. So one thing that I have found out quickly is that to survive on that property, I need to be proficient with a chainsaw. That means that I need to know not only how to use it, but how to sharpen the blade.

It’s very easy to dull the blade. You’re always making sure that I’m not too close to the dirt on the ground or even that the bark on the tree itself as it’s standing doesn’t have a lot of dirt on it because you can dull a blade just like that. So inevitably you’re going to have to sharpen that chainsaw. It’s hard to stop sawing in the middle of the woods and realize, I got to take a half an hour and put a better edge on this.

It’s against my nature because I want to get it done. I’m enjoying the process, but boy, it’s going slower and slower and slower because I’ve got a dull blade. It’s so much better once I convince myself to do it to stop, even if I have to go back to the cabin and sharpen that saw and go back out again. I’ll make so much more progress if I do that. Sometimes, oftentimes we go faster.

by going slower. And that is a difficult thing to wrestle with, but it’s true. So I want to encourage you that working smarter, not harder, oftentimes is the message that we need to hear. And we all need to hear it. And we’re all pretty lousy at this. But I want to bring us back to, again, what is perhaps so obvious that it needs to be stated directly.

We got to sharpen the saw. Take time to sharpen the saw.

In our resource section on our website, you’ll find a series of books that we encourage you to read, one of which is Stephen Covey’s classic, The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. And wouldn’t you know that habit number seven just happens to be sharpen the saw, principles of balance and self-renewal. I’m looking at this here and ⁓ Stephen encourages us to sharpen the saw in four basic

Dimensions of our lives our physical dimension exercise nutrition stress management our social or emotional dimension Which is our service to others our empathy? our synergy with other people the spiritual dimension of our lives, which is value clarifications and commitments and meditation and the mental areas of our lives our reading our visualization our planning and our reading These are the sorts of things that we should spend time with

which sometimes would cause us to leave the world in which we’re in and huddle away and consider sharpness laws in the areas. Now for our purpose, let’s talk about navigating abundance. We’re all about advancing the pursuit of total family wealth. And as you know, we would say you have your ledger wealth, which is your financial capital. You have your logistic wealth, which is your functional capital. And then you have your legacy wealth, which is your family capital.

It is a very difficult task to feel good about your progress and all those areas at the same time It’s just too big for anyone human being to tackle and that’s the first admission we have When we say we want to advance the pursuit of total family wealth. It is a big thing to accomplish And that’s okay. Your family’s worth it. Your time is worth it. You should see progress Don’t be discouraged. We’re all out of our league. That’s that’s the first thing we want to say so

When it comes to sharpening your saw then to go slower so that you can go faster, you might want to consider these three areas in your life and pick something in which it might make sense for me just to focus in on a little bit, maybe not even trying to solve it directly, but start to think about how I might solve it, to sharpen the saw in that area.

So for instance, in your in your ledger wealth, let’s say you have a buy sell agreement in the business and you know it’s not up to date. You know, it’s not as good as it should be. There are some glaring issues with it and ⁓ you are absolutely convinced it needs to be done and you have no problem doing it. The problem is you don’t have time to do it. Well, that buy sell agreement, the dust has been settling on it for a couple of years. And ⁓ essentially you need to get after it.

Maybe you need to withdraw from your life for a while. Think about what it needs to say. Work with an attorney on it. However, you are arranged to what it needs to say and get it done. Because if you don’t go slower, so you ultimately go faster, if you don’t ⁓ work smarter, not harder, it’s possible that you’re going to have a lot more angst and a lot more lost time.

in your life when the buy sell agreement is enacted and it’s not as good as it should be. It’s counterintuitive to stop and to focus on these things but but you really need to if you’re going to succeed you got to sharpen the saw. Let’s talk about your logistical wealth. Perhaps there is a team member ⁓ that you’ve kind of outgrown to be honest. ⁓

You know you need a new CPA firm or you know you need a new insurance specialist. The person you have has been great. They have your auto and property and other things. But now you need some specialized insurance and it’s just not that area that they’re good at. And that’s normal. There’s nothing wrong with that. But that does take some work. It does take some thought. And that’s going to take you unplugging from your business, from your family, from your social interactions, from your commitments.

so you can spend some time doing that. Thinking about it, hoping that the adage works smarter, not harder, hoping that the idea of sharpening the saw is going to make a more effectual life in the area of your logistical team, you’re willing to put in the time, but to do it, you have to unplug. You have to move away from everything that’s pulling at you. Difficult to do, but the outcome is so much better.

Stop sawing the wood, go back to the shed, sharpen the saw, and then go back again. For your legacy well, say you have a child that you’re having some issues with. mean, your ⁓ experience and communication with them, there’s something wrong. The three out of the four, it’s fine, but there’s something wrong with this one. And you’ve tried a lot of different ways to mend that or to…

to encourage a better relationship but it’s just not working. Maybe you should stop doing that for a while and spend a month or so sharpening the saw, talking to somebody who might have a better view of how you could handle this if they’re very good with ⁓ psychological aspects, emotions, they’re very good with ⁓ family healing, they have lot of experience, they might bring some ideas to you that you really haven’t thought of.

that you might want to try to strengthen that relationship with that child. That’s another example of going faster by ultimately going slower by pulling back a little bit and sharpening the saw.

Of course, there’s a lifetime of application of what I’ve been talking about. You’re never done trying to pull away, trying to get away from everything so you can think a little bit so you can go faster by going slower. But one of the ways I think that I’d like to leave you with that could supercharge this is to find a time, find a place where you can plug away from the world and put some thought to what you’d be needing to do. You’ve got to get away. You have to run away.

often. You have to make yourself scarce. ⁓ Don’t leave a forwarding number and get away and think through some of these things. Sharpen your saw in solitude. Martin Luther was famously to have said when someone asked him, wow, you’re a busy man, what are you going to be doing today? And he looked at him and said, you know, the very first thing I’m going to do is spend the first three hours of this day in prayer because I have way too much to do with my day. Wow.

That would be difficult for me to do. I’ve got all these things I have to do. The first thing I’m gonna do is burn three hours ⁓ in prayer. He’s sharpening the saw. He went to his center. He went to the most important element of his life, his relationship with God, and sought his help, sought his wisdom, poured out his heart, no doubt, of concerns that he had, ⁓ etc. But what he was doing was preparing himself to be so much more effectual with the rest of his day.

because his blade was sharp. You need to find a place to do that. You need to find a place to steal away with your thoughts or with your God, if that’s ⁓ your theology. I have a place such as that. It’s up north. We talked about this. And it’s not all work, but it’s a lot of fun too. But one of the most precious things that I can do is to get up into my humble cabin

Start an oak fire in the wood burning stove, percolate my coffee on top of that stove, and think.

Just think, I’m doing that tonight. I’m running away and I’m going up to the cabin and I’m going to start that stove and make my coffee. And I have a project that I’ve been trying to get to for about a month that I just can’t seem to find the time because if I’m available, people and problems will find me. But if I get away, it’s easier to sharpen the saw. Where is your place? Do you have one?

You should find one if you don’t have one. It might just be your basement. And you tell your husband, the kids, don’t bother me. I’m just going to steal away, put on some music and think. I don’t know. I guess the point is, the point I’m trying to make is we are all running around like crazy. And especially in this ⁓

this electronic world we find ourselves in and this social media world we find ourselves in and all the regulation now that we face in businesses, cetera, and the multiple problems that we might have with our relationships. It’s just an overwhelming thing. You’ve got to chill. You’ve got to get away. You’ve got to sharpen the saw because when you do that, you’ll be so much more effective when you come back to the world.

So to speak. So I think that’s a great way to ⁓ leave is to say, find a place where you can get away, where you can think, where you can work on projects uninterrupted, ⁓ or just find a way, a place that you can get away and take a nap for most of the day. Some of you, what you need more than anything is a nap. That’s okay. That’s sharpening the saw.

The honest truth is that for some of us, the most important thing, the most effectual thing we could possibly do to make us a more effective business owner, dad, attorney, friend, whatever we’re facing, is to get away, buy our wood-burning stove or whatever it is, and even just take a nap. You can’t…

go 100 miles an hour forever. You’ve got to pull back and sharpen the saw.

Strategic Financial Group (14:47)
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