An executive is busy working in his home office when his 6-year-old son comes in and starts asking him to play. After much persistence followed by much frustration, the exec pulls out a magazine and opens it to a large fold-out map of the world. Pulling out the map, he cuts it into hundreds of tiny pieces and gives them to his son. “here, son, after you put together this map of the world, then I’ll play with you.” Knowing that a 6-year-old has no idea what a map of the world looks like, he assumed that this task should keep his son busy for at least a couple hours. But ten minutes later his son came back into the office and said “All done, daddy.” The executive thought his son was exaggerating, but upon going into the living room, the entire map was perfectly assembled. “Son, how on Earth did you figure out how to do this so quickly?” “It was easy, Daddy.” the boy began turning over the pieces one at a time, and as he did, his father saw that on the other side of the world map was a photograph of a man. “You see, Daddy. When you put the man together the whole world falls into place.” (that’s profound, you should totally tweet that).
Just like that young boy, sometimes we have to focus on the BASICS to get the complex issues ironed out in our lives and in our businesses! The credit card processing industry is a mess of fees, regulations, issues and the list goes on and on so I wanted to spend a few minutes today talking about what we see as The Basics of Our Business.
#1- PEOPLE Perhaps more than anything else, our business is about people and helping them find the right solutions for their businesses. Anyone can sell a product good or service, but when we keep the #1 thing, the #1 thing: then and only then can we truly find success!
#2- PROBLEM-SOLVING All businesses exist to solve a problem! When the little boy 'solved' the puzzle (problem), he got his Dad back! All businesses exist to solve a problem so part of the basics is remembering why you got into the business and what problem you are tasked with solving!
#3- PASSION In order to serve people and find solutions to their problems, you have to have passion. This is one of the missing ingredients in our society today. Too many people settling for professions they do not like, serving people they do not care for, and who could care less if they were solving anyone's problems: that set of circumstances will NEVER produce passion!
Kids can teach us so much about life. When you have the three basics covered...
- PEOPLE
- PROBLEM-SOLVING
- PASSION
...you can do the impossible just like our little friend who managed to put the whole world together- just by focusing on the basics!
