I was at lunch in a new restaurant in Dubai a couple of weeks ago with Elena. (I managed to convince her to leave baby Nele at home so I could get some attention at feeding time for once!). The restaurant is called Bungalow 34 and if you are living in, or visiting, Dubai then you absolutely must visit. But this isn’t a restaurant review so let’s get back to business!
Whenever I am eating in a fancy restaurant and people on the table next to me look fun or interesting, I always find some excuse to start a conversation – usually admiring their food or recommending a dish they should have chosen!
You won’t believe how many friendships I have made, deals I have done, or investors I have landed that started off this way.
On this particular occasion I was sat next to a couple of Canadian ladies, one of whom was a Real Estate agent who happened to have represented my apartment for sale by its old owner – such a small world! Her friend was an anxiety coach and I joked about needing to hire her for Elena who always seems to be able to find a reason to get anxious abut something!
She had me very interested in her theories, but when we started talking about how I am never anxious and have a very relaxed attitude in general she wanted to try and argue with me about it. I told her that I don’t get anxious because I usually have the knowledge to know the answers and solutions to most situations. The knowledge give me certainty. The certainty give me confidence. The confidence is the opposite of anxiety for me.
She disputed this and told me that because I want to know information that I am anxious about the future and an over thinker. At this point I totally switched off because it’s a load of bollocks. I am absolutely not an over-thinker and the whole reason I am not anxious about the future is because I have the knowledge, skill set or mentors to be able to deal with anything the future throws at me – hence why I don’t have anxiety issues. She told me I have very obvious anxiety issues, as do all people, it is never something that is cured, just something that is managed. Sorry – but I am not buying that!
Other than maybe water, I can’t think of a single product that can be sold to every member of the human race. And trying to push your product on people who absolutely don’t need it, pushes you over the line of strong, confident, salesperson, to bullshitter who loses all credibility.
You must be hungry and believe in your product. But don’t cross the line in to annoyance and BS – it will just cost you credibility and burn bridges before relationships can be built.
Following on from that though, whilst I may not have anxiety issues I am certainly more stressed out lately than I have ever been. My stress always comes from the same issues – too much work on, not enough quality people to delegate it to, and a pathological hatred of letting people down.
This situation builds up every now and again for me, and initially always makes me feel like a failure that I am unable to battle through certain things. But then I realise that sometimes you have to take a step backwards to ultimately take 2 steps forwards. I go through a period of taking nothing new on. Cutting certain activities, businesses and people out of my life – and then the fog lifts, time is created, and happiness without stress is once again restored! Not an overnight miracle, but a process that over the course of a few weeks and months results in the desired outcome.
I think the learning for business owners and employees alike is that we so often try and solve problems by ADDING something when actually the best solution is to SUBTRACT something.
I recently learnt this is actually an official condition called Addition Bias. Evidence shows when presented with a problem we tend to favour a solution that involves adding something new over a solution that involves subtracting existing elements.
It isn’t that we struggle to process solutions that involve subtraction rather than addition, it is just that we tend to find adding things more obvious in most cases.
In both business & personal lives people recruit more staff & buy more systems, assets & equipment. They add more rules, words and options.
We find ourselves swimming in responsibilities, regulations and excess that somehow only makes matters worse.
We favour complexity. It is as if simplicity is some kind of demonstration that wers! We think we need massive businesses with huge headcount to make big money. We think we need a spiderweb structure of companies instead of 1 or 2. We think we need a fleet of cars and a set of tools for every possible eventuality.
And it is only when that complexity reaches some kind of breaking point, either physically or mentally, that we MAY realise we have added our way to a problem or failure.
So spend this weekend looking at your problems and stresses and think about solutions for them that involve cutting things out. One that I am guilty of and a good place for you to start is: Do you need to hire more staff or could you remove tasks from the process instead so you need less staff?
So now I’m going to go back over this column and see what words I can remove to make it a better read! (If you’re interested it was 1 full paragraph, 75 words and a few stray letters!)
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