The What, Why, When & How of Your Business

The success of your business is always determined by the what, why, when & how. What are you doing? Why are you doing it? When are you doing it? And How? If you don't have the desire to help your clients, if it's all about you making money, or if it's all about you accomplishing a personal result for yourself, and you don't have enough care or consideration for the person you're selling to, I think it's going to be hard to be successful long term. David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist and I discuss the what, why, when, and how of your business. Welcome back, Kevin. Kevin: Good to see you, David. How you doing? David: Doing great, and you? Kevin: Good. Good. All right — so, what, why, when, how. Let’s start with the first one. Why is it critical to define your what before anything else in business? David: Well, the way I look at it is, if you don’t know what you’re doing, then why you’re doing it, when you’re doing it, and how you’re doing it are kind of irrelevant. Kevin: Doesn’t really matter. David: Right. You sort of— Kevin: Yup. David: Yeah, you kind of have to know what it is that you’re setting out to do. Whether you’re operating solo or with a team of people, identifying what you want to accomplish — in your business or in any specific area of your business — is always the first step. So, if the what is “getting clients,” then the question becomes: What is my procedure? What is my process going to be for getting clients? That’s the what. You identify that first. Once you’ve even thought about what you want to accomplish — or what you think you might want to accomplish, if you’re still in the ideation stage — the what is important. But the reason I go to the why next is because if you don’t have a strong why, you might not be committed enough to what has to be done. Over the years, I’ve noticed that people who have ideas but don’t have a really strong, compelling reason for doing them tend to struggle to get those things done. Kevin: So it can become a motivation issue to some degree? David: It certainly can, because if you’ve got strong reasons for wanting to do something — whether it’s to support your family, to create a growing enterprise, or to eventually sell the business and make a profit — that strong why will definitely impact your motivation. So I think that’s a big component. Without it, why does anyone really do anything? Kevin: I suppose you could technically start with the why, right? Because if you have a reason for doing something, you can then build the what around it. Or is that a bad way to go in your mind? David: Well, if you’re thinking in terms of starting a business, that would actually be the what. But I guess it’s possible to start with the why. For example, if my why is “I want to support my family and I’m not happy with what I’m doing now,” then I might arrive at a what like, “I want to start my own business,” or “I want to do A, B, or C to make that happen.” That hasn’t worked that way for me personally — but it could for someone else. If you’ve got a strong enough why, you can then start thinking about what needs to happen in order to achieve the things you have in mind. Kevin: When it comes to the when, why is it so important to define a timeline? David: Wow. Anyone who’s in sales probably has some strong thoughts about when. If you’ve ever spoken to a prospect who seems really excited and seems like a perfect fit for what you offer — and then they just keep dodging you or stop taking your calls — that’s a perfect example of someone who doesn’t have their when dialed in. In any conversation — with prospects, clients, or coworkers — we need to identify the when so everyone’s on the same page about the importance of the action and the likelihood of it happening. Because without a when, things just don’t happen. A lot of our work is with people in the promotional products and print industries. In those cases,