You have likely heard the term many times over, especially if you follow the likes of Russell Brunson and the many self proclaimed guru’s who mix his stuff with other high profile names to create their ‘own’ way you make it in the marketing space.
I’m taking you back on a journey to 2005, when quite by accident I had my Aha moment for something that I would later learn was a remarkable breakthrough to have found by either instinct or luck.
At the time I was working in the Sultanate of Oman, based in the capital, with a near beach front home on the Gulf of Oman. For those that don’t know – crystal clear waters and empty beaches at the weekend make it a super place to be based.
My boss at the time, pulled me in for a chat. The first part of the request involved hearing that the current Manager of the businesses operations in place called Abu Dhabi in the Emirates, was struggling with a large project and with a looming expectation of a representative having to fly to London to attend a high profile key meeting with various stakeholders was open as the Manager had personal conflicts and could not attend.
Ok so I get a free trip to London all good so far.
I first had to fly into Abu Dhabi to be introduced to a Client team – for them to vet me. Two nights trip, ok why not.
Passed that ordeal came back to Oman and a few days later outward bound to the UK.
The first team meeting was in Central London on the 07 July 2005.
I cant remember the exact time but we were only a little way in to the session, it was a smaller Hotel and we were in the basement.
I was supposed to be staying in that Hotel, but as I had only arrived direct from the airport that morning I had not checked in.
I went straight to the session. Anyway, I was not expecting what happened next. A knock on the door, and everyone going into silence as a Police Officer and clearly more behind in a very quit tone, asked us to not worry about our things, but basically get out of the rear of the Hotel quickly and quietly.
My brain went into another mode automatically as I sniffed for the small of smoke, but none so this was not a fire, but what?
One outside, after about an hour, I got to learn that as part of the coordinated terror attacks on London on 07 July 2005, a London bus had been blown up likely right outside the Front of this Hotel. I was surprised because I heard absolutely nothing.
So the whole meeting got canned, I managed to find another hotel once I had been allowed back in the original Hotel to retrieve possessions, supply and demand kicked in, a stupid price was paid.
I slept very uneasily and made my way first thing back to Heathrow the next morning and organised an earlier flight back into Oman.
Was I glad to be back.
Once I had shared the experience with every interested head in the office when I went back to work, I got called back into the Boss’s office.
Did he want a briefing? No straight into it, this stuff with the Manager, was larger than it first appeared, I was aware that the business had not been happy with the performance of the Abu Dhabi office, but what came next shocked me more.
So the Manager was out, and I was being asked to pack up and move off to Abu Dhabi to head the operation there.
I didn’t know what to say. So something similar to let me get back to you once I’ve discussed wit with my Wife.
Which we did. At first it didn’t seem to be a goer, but on reflection we both agreed it was an opportunity for me to ascend and take on a management role rather than just being a senior technical person.
Looking back it was a good call.
Now comes the meaningful part.
I made the move (you may have seen an older post a while back about my endeavours with attempting to drive my car up from Oman to the Emirates and its series of breakdowns on the way).
I got into, did what I thought was the right stuff to turn this ship around, but upto this point I was just a guy that was good at his job into a role that largely had noting to do with what I did.
If I was to make a success of this and be good at this as well, I needed to figure of stuff out quick.
It was then that I decided, right off the bat, to do something I now know to be micro-niching. I had no idea at that time, just an instinct that the future success of our unit depended on us establishing ourselves as something different from every other provided on the street who did what we did (planned and controlled construction costs).
I put all our troublesome Clients into a spreadsheet called minor works and clearly told them their projects were such, that we were establishing a sperate minor works team to deal with them.
Most got so infuriated by having multi million projects being called minor they took their business elsewhere. Great, these were all clients that demanded everything for less than cheapest price and had zero loyalty and further never paid their bills on time – if at all.
My first lesson of repelling people you don’t want to work with.
The opposite of minor works was careful called “Complex and Mega Projects” to which every notable Client wanted to be part of.
Work came to us.
Were we going anything different – no.
But we were perceived to be doing something different and that was my Aha moment that I still carry as a powerful tool in my current work with my own Client and those businesses that I coach.
You still must serve at the highest levels so don’t think there are any short cuts in that regard.
This one thing made a huge difference to me and the ultimate success of the company unit (there were many more – this wasn’t the only one and there were also many screws up on the way as well).
So if you want to fly a little higher than those around you, find your series of sweet spots to put your business on a better path.