Ruthless Simplicity
Welcome to the Why to Wow newsletter which is all about inspiring the hearts and minds of people worldwide with the Power of Differentiation. In the Why to Wow newsletter, I share my experiences over the last 40+ years helping leaders differentiate their brands and products. I hope it will inspire you to discover and share your own brand’s uniqueness with the world.
I interviewed Jonathan Stark on my podcast, Difference Talks. Jonathan is a unique person. He is a soloist with no assistants or employees. He surrounds himself with technology to maximize his output. Jonathan is highly successful and profitable. And he works only one to three hours a day, no more than 10 hours a week.
Jonathan’s business involves coaching others to do the same. I found much of what he said to be eye-opening and some of it alienating from a human perspective. In general, he believes that if we want to scale our business, the last thing we need to do is hire more people.
His position is that the number-one culprit is too many meetings. Specifically, Jonathan points out that the typical scheduled meetings to update or share status are a complete waste of time. We’re better off sending emails or using a work management tool like Slack to share tasks and information.
Jonathan was precisely right when he shared that interruptions are killing productivity. The spur-of-the-moment, drop-in meeting or the text asking “for a quick update” is not merely a few minutes of time. They stop our train of thought and pull us out of the “zone” where we must perform. Sadly, the person who asks for that quick meeting is often a boss (hard to say no), and it’s the result of, in his words, the boss’s laziness. If that person had taken 30 seconds to think about what they needed to know, they most likely would have sent a quick text or email. But, instead, it was easier, at the moment, to have an impromptu chit-chat.
In our conversation, Jonathan warned that his clients often have too many employees creating work for themselves to keep their jobs, producing reports or projects of no value. He also added, and I think this is very true, that today, we need to reduce the number of meetings because many are virtual and sometimes include participants in various time zones. That means “first-thing-in-the-morning” meetings are out of the question; it might be midnight in the Philippines or 5 a.m. in California.
At the heart of his campaign against wasted time and energy is lifestyle. Yes, if he wanted to double his workload, he’d make more money, but he refuses that lifestyle. Instead, he believes we must maximize the few hours we want to work—and utilize technology and a strong set of guidelines (for example, prioritizing tasks and reducing distractions) to achieve it. Many leaders may not fully embrace his insights, but his ideas are worth consideration.
Difference-maker #1: What may seem coldhearted is steeped in being human.
Jonathan desires to spend time with family and focus on his interests. He is achieving this by being more effective, using technology, and decreasing interruptions, staffing, and meetings. This strategy is ultimately good for our family and our health.
Difference-maker #2: Charging for your services by the hour is a mistake.
In this technological world, AI can do mediocre things in seconds, while a person may take hours to achieve the same. Our best hope is to leave the low-level work to technology and focus on areas where we cannot be easily replaced, and charge appropriately.
Ruthless simplicity is needed when we are challenged by ever-improving technology, a workforce with little desire to work more than 40 hours a week, and the fact that we have only so much bandwidth. That’s the Stark reality.
On the Difference Talks podcast, you can hear more about Jonathan’s unique approach to business and his belief in value-based pricing as a path to increased profitability. Download the episode here. I also enjoyed being a guest on his podcast, Ditching Hourly, which you can listen to here. They’re both thought-provoking episodes and worth a listen!