A child’s favorite word is story. In fact, the same could be true for everyone. We all love to hear a story or tell a story. In the book The Slight Edge, author Jeff Olson often uses stories as analogies for deeper meanings.
The Slight Edge, as its name suggests, suggests that in order to be successful, you just need to have a slight edge in several different aspects of your life.
In this article, I’ll try to mirror the analogy created by Jeff Olson to starting a business for yourself, or even running your existing business. We run businesses online and offline. We have experienced failures and successes and as a result we can relate very well to the author.
In this particular story, the author talks about a water hyacinth and how it can grow exponentially in a relatively short period of time, but not by all of its own efforts.
It would be a brilliant way to demonstrate how a typical MLM business owner might explain potential growth in an area.
The lesson I learned from the book, in relation to starting a business, was that you have to be prepared to persevere and you simply won’t experience the joy and rewards that success brings.
Every person who starts a business wants to be successful. But are they prepared to turn the pump on and put a lot of effort into the business until it starts to grow exponentially?
In the case of the water hyacinth, the plant uses the art of leverage to grow each day. Instead of planting its own seeds and waiting, it sends out its own secondary tentacles that allow it to use leverage. More and more with less and less. It is the key to business success.
Look at McDonalds restaurants – by using a system to run a restaurant that covers all aspects of the business, they could take advantage of it and grow it rapidly without ever losing consistency or quality. It is often said that a 17 year old could have a McDonalds for you, the same one that will not tidy up his room.
If you’re thinking of starting a business, whether it’s offline or online, think about leverage before you think “I’m the only person who can do this.”
By thinking this way, you will give yourself room to grow and develop beyond your own capabilities and reap the rewards.
