The Lumberjack Story

The Lumberjack Story

It was the annual lumberjack competition and the final was between an older experienced lumberjack and a younger, stronger lumberjack. The rule of the competition was quite simply who could fell the most trees in a day was the winner.

The younger lumberjack was full of enthusiasm and went off into the wood and set to work straight away, he worked all through the day and all through the night. As he worked he could hear the older lumber jack working to in another part of the forest, he felt more and more confident with every tree he felled that he would win.

At regular intervals throughout the day the noise of frees being felled coming from the other part of the forest would stop, the younger lumberjack took heart from this knowing that this meant the older lumberjack was taking a rest, whereas he could use his superior youth and strength and stamina to keep going.

At the end of the competition the younger lumberjack felt confident he had won, he looked in front of him at the piles of felled trees that were the result of his superhuman effort.

At the medal ceremony he stood on the podium confident and expecting to be awarded the prize of champion lumberjack, next to him stood the older lumberjack who looked surprisingly less exhausted than he felt.

When the results were read out he was devastated to hear that the older lumberjack had chopped down significantly more trees than he had, he turned to the older lumber jack and said,

“How can this be? I heard you take a rest every hour and I worked continuously through the night, once more I am stronger and fitter than you old man”.

The older lumberjack turned to him and said, “Every hour I took a break to rest and sharpen my axe”

The Message

The key message from this story is that you have to take time out to look at your business and see where you can improve things. There are always areas to improve and taking time out to change things may slow you down initially but once up and running these changes will take your business to the next level. However if you don’t take the time to stop and take a helicopter view of your business you will never move forward as quickly

Make the Time

As I write this blog I am sat in Brentford London having spent the last two days at an Expert Success Summit for coaches, trainers and speakers. My primary purpose for attending this Summit is to take time out to find better ways to develop my business. Tomorrow is the final day to complete this three day Summit and I don’t think I have ever listened to better content delivered consistently over two days. This has also given me thinking time to take that helicopter view of my business.

The key thing now is that I use what I have learned over these three days and take action to make sure I implement changes quickly. If I don’t, the likelihood is that day to day business will take over and nothing will change. I have one meeting already lined up with a social marketing expert who has been recommended to me and another recommendation to set up a meeting with. This will help me focus on what I have heard this weekend and should help me make the changes I need to make.

It is however up to me to make these changes/improvements if I want to go to the next level. It involves work and may mean I have to take my eye off a couple of areas of my business as I implement the changes but I do believe that like the wise lumberjack, I will win in the end.

It’s been a fun week coaching in Sheffield, Buxton and Nottingham to some great clients, as well as completing a proposal for a new corporate client which is quite exciting. I am waiting for my video from the TV interview I did last week to arrive, which I will split up and put on YouTube.

My wife Julie is joining me tonight and she will be attending the full day summit meeting tomorrow with me to get a feel of what my world looks like and I think she will enjoy it and find it fascinating.

Something to think about

Consider your life or your business. Have you taken time out to really look to see if there are ways you can improve what you currently do? I guess it’s like a car running without a regular service. You will get away with it for quite a while but then you will start to hear something which doesn’t sound right like the engine being noisier than it should be or strange sounds coming from it.

If you continue to ignore the warning signs you are guaranteed that the car’s performance will deteriorate and will eventually break down. We and our businesses are the same, if we don’t take time out to look after ourselves and our businesses we will eventually break down.

Until next week have a great weekend and stay positive.

Warm regards
John