Ask Who Not How

As our marketing agency, as well as our product- and content operations at GrowthBay are growing, Kevin and I are increasingly faced with difficult questions of how we want to deal with new incoming opportunities and the increased workload.

The only way to escape the time-for-money trap that many agencies and freelancers face, is to look for levers that maximize the impact of every hour that we put into the business.

There are really only three leverage possibilities (hat tip to Naval):

1. People - there a million people out there who already know how to accomplish what you are trying to achieve.
2. Product - building a piece of software that has no marginal cost of replication.
3. Media - three hours of writing a newsletter results in hundreds of people reading it.

And while we are working on a product, producing content with the newsletter and the podcast and are collaborating with people on pretty much every client project, it becomes harder now to juggle it all.

Don't Try To Do It All Yourself

AuthorBenjamin Hardy, hit the nail on the head:

"Whenever you imagine a bigger and better future, there’s a problem. You don’t currently know how to achieve the goal, because it’s bigger and better than your current situation and capabilities."

And if you are anything like me (or most people for that matter), the first thing you usually do when you imagine a bigger future is to ask yourself: “How do I achieve this goal?” Although this question seems intuitive, I came to realize that it’s actually a pretty bad question in the long-term (assuming you want to be happy and successful while not living in a constant state of anxiety).

Let People Help You

While reading the book Who Not How by aforementioned Benjamin Hardy, I have come to realize that there are many, many more opportunities to involve people in my life so that together we can solve each others How's that plague our dreams.

A much better (and saner) question to ask yourself is: “Who can help me achieve this?”

Think about it:

• What would happen in your life if you asked this question about everything you wanted to accomplish?
• What would happen if you asked this question about everything you’ve been procrastinating to do?
• How would your goals change if you could find people—Whos—that could help you achieve everything you wanted in your life?
• How would your confidence change if you had several Whos producing the results with you?
• How would your time be spent if you were no longer the one doing everything?
• How would your income change if you could achieve all your goals, and not just some of them?

Or in Hardy's words:

"When you’re trying to accomplish something challenging or difficult that you’ve never done before, you probably need a Who. Let me say that another way: You absolutely need a Who if you’re trying to accomplish something new and challenging, unless you’re fine not getting the result you want in the near future."

You just can't do it all by yourself. Of course you could try to figure out all the Hows yourself, but putting in all the hours to learn something that other people have already figured out (and that you actually don't enjoy doing) is not a particularly good use of your time.

No, your time is best used on the things that only you can do, or that you are uniquely capable of (or that you enjoy the shit out of at least).

So next time you are trying to figure out HOW to do something, maybe sit down with a piece of paper and instead make a list of all the people WHO could help you with what you are trying to achieve.

It’s an exhilarating exercise.