Nothing becomes clearer than when you are sitting in the emergency room with undiagnosed pain. Your emotions run high, you try to self diagnose, go to Google Doctor and beg for a quick and easy solution.
3 weeks ago it was me at the emergency room. Doing all of these things.
Motivated by fear of the unknown. Anxiety that things could be more serious than what they were. Wishing I had gone to the emergency room sooner. Thinking of what should I have done today, that I had been putting off.
When we self diagnose we often get it wrong.
Like the time I thought I’d damaged my knee and when the Doctor’s checked it out fully, I’d broken my ankle.
And then the time I Googled ‘food poisoning symptoms’ and I was actually pregnant.
When I presented at the emergency room 3 weeks ago I was ready for them to tell me I had a virus and send me home with pain killers and/or antibiotics. I was expecting a quick fix.
It turned out after 8 hours of tests and scans, my symptoms not matching the usual ones, it was actually appendicitis.
When they finally operated they told me my appendix was on the verge of erupting. If that had happened I would have spent several weeks in hospital.
Thankfully my hospital stay ended up only being 5 nights.
In the midst of all this pain, I was thinking of all things, a blog post written by Dennis Yu. When I read Surgeons don’t leave the emergency room to go out to knock on doors almost a year ago, it became a catalyst for me to review how I was doing business.
In the last 12 months I have significantly transformed the way I do business. Largely to value my time and that of the people I meet with.
Every new client or potential client is required to complete a set of questions. The questions help the both of us establish what is the current state of their business. Put simply, what are their goals, content they are currently producing (or have access to) and who are they targeting as their ideal customers.
This information is no different to the many fact finding questions I was asked when I presented at the emergency room. I realised how lucky the Doctors were (and I) that I was conscious and able to answer the questions quickly and easily about my medical history and routine of the last 24 hours. With the answers to essential questions about my health, the course of action to help me was so much easier.
This brings me to the point of why I’m so passionate that everyone who could be a client completes questions regarding their Goals, Content and Targeting. Because it saves both of us time and money when we both know what the health of their business is before we meet.
When I know what’s working we don’t waste time talking about how it could be better, when I know what isn’t working we spend more time on that area.
It also gives time to talk about what is going okay and opportunities to optimise. Having the Goals, Content and Targeting completed before we meet, gives us the opportunity to not have a meeting for the sake of it, but rather set us both up for success.
I realise a POWER Hour is not how everyone does business, especially in the marketing field. Having to put together proposals and pitch is commonplace. But I realise that when we want what’s best for our own health, it’s not about the discounts, it’s about getting the best help that we can get. Why should our business health be any different?
