Instead of doing them all at once, Marc Gutman stresses the importance of “completing bridges” to help take on the next project and ultimately, move your business forward.
This is part 2 of a 3 part series that improves your notetaking skills to pinpoint key ideas and establishes important projects to prevent “half-built” bridges.
Video Transcript
Keith Roberts 0:04
So Marc, the other morning at our coffee, you mentioned something that really resonated with me and it was the idea of half built bridges.
Marc Gutman 0:14
Yeah. And I think it resonated with you because it's, it's something a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with. And, and I'll kind of, you know, lay it out that, like, there's so much information out there. And I think as entrepreneurs that are successful, and by successful, I don't mean that we're not, you know, we have so much money, we don't do anything or anything like that. We have highs, we have lows, but we're just in the game, or at least we're surviving. So I consider that success as an entrepreneur, we have so much information and you know, one day I'm, you know, seeing something like, Hey, I should do Facebook ads.
And another day, I'm seeing, hey, you should be on LinkedIn, or you should do Instagram carousels, or you need to have a digital product, a digital chorus, or, you know, find your Iki guy and follow your Muse like all these different things, right. And so I'm gonna go to the iPad here. And let's let me I'll just go ahead and share my screen. And what ends up happening here is that we end up having a lot of what I would call half built bridges. So let me just go ahead and get to my screen here. Let's think about this for a second.
You know, so this is today. I'll write today. And this is me. Right? And this is where I am. Happy, things are good. And here is where I want to be. Right? And this is like probably where I think there's a big pot of gold. Right? Sorry, a big pot of gold. We'll make that gold. So everyone remembers that. It's gold. Give it some gold. We'll give it some cold doo doo doo. Right? So my pot of gold, right? And so all of a sudden one day, Keith says to me, Hey, Mark, you know how to get that pot of gold. You start Facebook ads, and I say Facebook ads are pretty cool. I'm gonna start doing some Facebook ads. But the next time we have coffee line correct. Next time I have coffee, maybe I've copied my other friend bacon and bacon says you know what Gutman, you need digital product. And so all of a sudden, I you know, I hear that like, well, that's where the gold is. And I come back and I start doing some digital products. I never finish.
Because lo and behold, my next friend, Kevin, he says you need to be on Instagram. And I started doing this, right. And then I take a course and someone says, Hey, you need to work on your blog. And now these are content ideas. But this could be anything in your business, it could be like, Hey, your ops is messed up, you know? And you got to do that. So what do we end up with? Well, first of all, we're not where we want to be, we're in the chasm. And secondarily, we got a bunch of half-built bridges. And so if you've ever felt like this, like, hey, I've started all these things. I have courses, I'm like doing learning, I'm starting new, major shifts in my business.
And but all I end up with is half-built bridges, I think you can relate to this. And so what Keith and I were talking about was, you know, instead of stopping and starting something new and thinking you have to do all these things at once, because I think we all agree all these things are valuable, right? Like, these all have a place in our business. I mean, there's, there's, there's no nothing wrong about that. I think it's just more about priority and timing. So instead of so instead of trying to do them all at once, complete one. And what you'll find is like for example, if you work on your operational structure, and you actually complete it, and you get to here, the really cool thing about completed bridges is they come back, and they help to fuel whatever it is you want to do next. And so you can then take on the blog, because you have an operational structure that helps you and that gets you over here and back. And that'll feed Facebook ads, because you have an operational structure and come back. They'll feed that and it'll come back and you can do your Instagram Carol carousels and what do you have?
You have a bunch of built bridges. But more importantly, you're where you want to be right, you're over here in the land of happy and you're able to fulfill your goals, make your goals happen, and move your business forward.
Keith Roberts 4:40
Yeah, that's, that's amazing. And it's basically think of Agile Software training, the trainer said we need to stop starting and start finishing. And I think that's just a really great analogy as to how it applies to real life that if you do complete something, how much quicker you're going to be able to accomplish all these other ideas that you have.
Marc Gutman 5:00
Yeah, and I think that's an amazing advice from agile. And you know, this is just a visual visual representation of start, start, stop starting and start finishing. But I think for me, the real takeaway is not only did you finish, but that thing that you finished will add fuel to the next step. You know, and I think that's really important to remember that, you know, it comes back and it helps it, it's springboards the next initiative to actually make it last overall, probably work and resources than it would have been with all these half built bridges.
Keith Roberts 5:31
What would you say to somebody who has half a dozen or 50, half built bridges? Is there any hacker technique, just sort of analyzing what's out there and determining what you should focus on first, that's going to help you help you cross that chasm and make the return trip and then fuel the other ideas?
Marc Gutman 5:52
Absolutely. I don't think we keep going to the iPad, but I think I need to show you this. This is a decision making matrix that we use. I'm going to go back to the iPad and we'll go ahead and do that.
