Focus on the best work
When you have so many different things on your plate, sometimes it can be hard to simplify and just focus on what you really have to in order to move the business forward.
“It comes down to what’s the value of your time,” he says. “All work’s not created equal.”
Muzzillo teaches a class about how to grow a business in his industry, and in it, he poses a question.
“If there are three desks in your office that you could go to, and one pays $400 an hour, one pays $40 an hour, and the other pays $20 an hour, what desk are you going to go to?” he says. “They all say, ‘Oh, I’m going to go to the $400-an-hour desk.’ You’re all liars. I tell them right to their face — you’re liars because the $400-an-hour desk is the hard stuff.”
He says that the $400-an-hour work can be filled with failure, such as making a big proposal for a big company and losing, being rejected for sales, and other painful things.
And this is true, no matter what industry you are a part of.
“There are some things that are $400-an-hour work, and there are some things that are $40-an-hour work,” he says. “A lot of people don’t think that way. A lot of people just think there’s work, and a lot of people just think there’s their to-do list. It all mushes together in their head. … Some of it is really going to get you a return on your invested time, and some of it’s just really going to be a waste of time, and yet, it’s hard to discern which those are.”
Sometimes you may think that the $20-an-hour or the $40-an-hour work is what’s most important.
“Sitting behind your desk and being CEO of Me Incorporated, with your name out there, oh man, that feels really important, and sometimes it’s easy to fall into doing the $20-an-hour work, the $40-an-hour work, avoiding the $400-an-hour work all day, and going home exhausted but never doing anything that is the right stuff all day,” he says. “The key really is for every businessperson to figure out what’s the $400-an-hour work, and what’s the $40-an-hour work, and figure out how to get rid of the $40-an-hour work and to do more of the $400-an-hour work.”
One of the biggest $400-an-hour tasks is getting business that you don’t have yet. He says you can do this by getting business that your current customers aren’t already giving you, getting new customers altogether, hiring salespeople to get it or acquiring your competition.
“It’s not going and calling on your favorite customers and bringing them another box of doughnuts,” he says.
Muzzillo has a rule he lives by that is also pretty simple.
“You will eventually get paid for the work you do,” he says. “If you love doing accounting … then you’re eventually going to make $20 an hour. Good for you, right? Because you’ve chosen the wrong thing. You can. You own the business. Nobody can fire you. It’s a choice. Doing the right thing is a choice. Nobody can fire you over the wrong choice, but if you make the right choice, it will show up.”
While it may be harder to focus on the right work because it’s scarier and often attacks your pride, Muzzillo says you can’t let your pride get in the way when you have those feelings.
“If you let your pride run you when you’re running your business, you’ll never be proud in line at the bank,” he says. “But if you throw pride out the window, you’ll be very proud in line at the bank.”
For example, when Muzzillo quit his job as an auditor at what eventually became Deloitte LLP to start Proforma, he had a lot of rough days.
“It was kind of embarrassing,” he says. “Here’s Greg. He used to be this big important auditor, and now he’s running around, schlepping around a briefcase, begging people to buy printing from him. It wasn’t prideful, but I said to myself, ‘Greg, you’re going to be proud someday in line at the bank, and the only way to get there is to not worry about being proud from 9 to 5.’”
Today, Muzzillo accredits his success to that rule.
“If I didn’t have this rule, I’d be nowhere today or my head would be falling off my shoulders because I have pride,” he says.
He says that instead of focusing on the today, you should focus on what your dream is. For example, he tells his franchisors to make their goal visible to them by writing down on a business card how much they want to make and in what year they’re going to do it. Then put that card in an easy to see place in their wallet, so every time they open the wallet, they see that card and are reminded of what the big goal is. He had one franchisor do this for 12 years and that franchisor reached $100,000, then $250,000, then $500,000, and that franchisor is now working on $1 million.
“Focus on whatever the big dream is, that big goal, and then try to think of all those things that are going to get you there, and try not to do all those things that are going to get in the way, and it’ll happen,” he says.
Lastly, sometimes when no other motivation is forcing you to focus on the right stuff, it just comes down to a good old, suck-it-up mentality.
“When I was building my business, it was sort of like going to the gym, which I hate to do,” Muzzillo says. “But once you get started, it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, now we’re going.’ Once you get into the groove of selling, you’re in the groove. Once you go to the gym, it’s kind of like half the battle — the rest is easy.”
How to reach: Proforma, (800) 825-1525 or www.proforma.com
