As a small business owner, I have a number in mind for what my business must make each month. It’s an actual number based on the amount of money the business needs to make so we can pay all of our bills and ourselves.
Here is something that I’ve been wrestling with lately:
The number, however exact or arbitrarily picked, becomes the number.
It’s a goal but also a limiter.
So, right now, I can open a spreadsheet and point to every month in 2013 and tell you exactly how the business got to, is getting to, or will get to that number.
Could I make more? Yes. Could I make less? Yes. But chances are good that the business will generate just about that amount of money we need because that’s what we’re aiming to do.
Why is that? Because I’ve picked a number. When I set the price of goods, whether my team’s time, the price of a project, or a product I’m dividing the amount of resources I have for sale by the amount of money I need to make to hit that number. For example, if the team spends 5 days on a project it should make us about 1/4th of what we need for the month to hit that number.
That number determines a price in my mind for what we charge to build a website or design a book or speak at an event, or whatever.
The Kicker
Now, here’s the kicker. This all happens on the subconscious level. In other words… It’s not a cognitive decision. I’m not looking at a project or product and actually doing that math. Instead, I’m projecting a price onto a commodity (time, project, product) which in turn determines the net business outcome. (What we charge for that commodity.)
The number is. And the reason we make that number month-in-and-month-out and not a number that is 10x’s bigger or 3x’s smaller than that is because we’re aiming at a number which is.
Of course, now that I recognized this as a limitation to growth on a cognitive level about 6 months ago, I’ve started thinking differently about the commoditization of what we offer. (See below)
What does this have to do with you? Everything. The number is problem is the reason my business is growing at the pace it is growing at. It’s the reason your business has 5 employees and not 25. (Or has 25 employees when you really need 5.) It’s the reason your church reaches 180 and not 600. (Or visa versa) It’s the reason your youth group is the same size it was 5 years ago. It’s the reason your school will score ____ on the state test this year.
So much of the impact of your business/ministry is determined by the number that’s in your head no matter how frustrating that number becomes to you, no matter how much you know you need to grow or risk losing everything, the reason you reach that number is because the number is.
How to Grow Beyond the Number Is
Here’s the thing that released me to a new way of thinking about this problem about 6 months ago. And I’m sharing this because I think it’ll help you.
Most of those who will read this work in the non-profit sector. In your case the number isn’t usually money, it’s impact. It’s people’s lives. And with an ever-increasing population you deal with the reality that to do as well as you did 5 years ago you need to reach more people next week than you reached this week. To have a number is problem means you reach less and less of the population every year. And that’s devastating.
So here’s how to break the cycle. Change your focus from the number to the value.
Growth = Focusing your outcomes on expressing the value in your work. (The value is why you do what you do.)
Stagnation or decline = Focusing your outcomes on a number merely codifies misplaced value, which leads to a decreasing ability to express your value. (The number isn’t why you do what you do. Desperation mode leads to death of the values you ultimately do the work for.)
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