“Identify areas where you’re seeking home runs when singles would suffice, such as in relationships.”
I’m your host, Ryan Niddel, and this is Rethinking Business.
In this episode, I will share with you why swinging for the fences is the worst thing you can do and why it simply swings singles when it comes down to its success. This is a challenge for me because I am the guy that likes to have the last say. I probably have a bit of that hero complex where you want to come in, rush in at the end and save the day. I’m sure that’s rooted somewhere deep in some childhood trauma that I’ve experienced or that I wasn’t held enough by one of my parents. Who knows where it came from? What I do is acknowledge that it exists for me. I like to be the knight in shining armor occasionally. I’m probably not the only one, but by the nature of that, it has had me consistently looking for these big home run deals over my career.
I’ll share an incredibly simple story. This past year (2022), I had a brilliant sales professional who worked for us. A local gentleman with great connections came to me and said, “Hey, I’ve got us into the World Cup.” We will get MIT45 as the exclusive premiere Kratom brand for the entire World Cup. I started thinking, “Wow! This is a whole different level of complexity.” When the deal started, conversations were floating around 5 million bottles of our product. Now, I am in full-fledged problem-solving mode. I’m having our team reach out to suppliers to look at it. “Can we get 5 million bottles?” I’m meeting co-packers to understand if other people can help us fill our product because we already sell hundreds and hundreds of thousands of bottles a month.
“Consistent singles, not home runs, win games.”
To be able to ramp up production, meeting an additional 5 million bottles would be beyond challenging. As this conversation keeps playing over and over again about the possibilities of the World Cup, I’m swinging bigger and bigger. I don’t want to come down to the sales guy because deals of this magnitude take time. They take energy, and they take consistency. A certain panache would have to go into any multicultural deal, have multiple languages, and be international commerce. This isn’t one of those I call, “Wham bam! Thank you, ma’am. Here’s the invoice, signup, and we’ll get your product shipped out.” Well, I wish it were. Five million bottles require a little more finesse than that.
When the sales professional was sharing these status updates on the possibilities that are happening in the area of the World Cup over and over again, it caused me and the team that surrounds us to keep thinking bigger and bigger. We start wanting to take these heroic home run swings. Every ball coming across the plate is like, “If they’re going to do 5 million bottles, we should get them to do 5 million bottles a year over the next three years. Let’s lock them in at 15 million bottles.” The contract conversation evolves. We go back and forth on price, and we go back and forth on the way the unit should be structured. We go back and forth and round and round.
I’m gassing everybody up all the time behind the scenes, right? I’m swinging for the fences. Because we sell 5 million bottles this year at $8 per piece, you can do the math. That’s a sizable uptick in our revenue and our operating income. I’m pushy, like, “We’re absolutely going to do this. It’s going to get across the finish line.” I’m mentally preparing to hop on a plane to head over to Qatar to meet with the proper dignitaries. I’m looking at visas, flight patterns and everything that can go in. I’m just convinced we’re going to make this happen. There was a drop-dead date that we came up with, and I don’t remember exactly what the drop-dead date was. But I’ll say past June 11.
Every business has four core components: marketing, operations, sales, and service or fulfillment.
I knew that if we didn’t have a signed order, every day that passed would become exponentially more challenging for us to fulfill the total order requested. We passed the June 11 deadline. I got all these pieces in motion. How do I back out of this? Sometimes you can’t back out. I’ve had to commit to a certain number of bottles to make certain that we can meet the demand. You can’t wait when the supply chain is six or eight weeks out. You can’t wait until the last minute to order. You have to be proactive.
We’ve ordered a lot of the pieces and parts. To the sales professional, I said, “Look, we’re gonna have to go in and renegotiate this.” I need them to take less product. He looked at me. As a sales professional, he was like, “Son of a gun. I’m getting my commission cut.” On the other side, I know he knew that if we didn’t slow down or if we didn’t pull back, we wouldn’t have been able to meet our objectives, our obligations, and our commitments. We renegotiated. We were down to 3 million bottles this year and then 5 million. These negotiations keep going back and forth.
Now we’re into August. We’re almost at the point that we can’t fulfill even if an order was put in. I’m sure you’re thinking, why couldn’t we fulfill? Well, with 5 million bottles or 3 million bottles of product, the logistics that have to go into it to get them all there safely becomes fascinating. You have to take the product from the point of origin to a dock on a seaboard. That seaboard must then be communicated with a specific sort of cargo ship. That cargo ship will spend six to eight weeks on the ocean, getting to the point where the product can be unloaded at another port and then distributed out through a country.
“If you don’t alter daily micro-behaviors around diet and lifestyle, desired long-term outcomes won’t materialize, as home runs can’t compensate.”
See, it’s just reverse engineering the timetables, but I just knew we were at our wit’s end in August, and there’s nothing here. So, we finally get to the point of acknowledging that the World Cup deal isn’t happening. For all the reasons, the brilliant effort, and the long nights. All the painful days, working on all the variables, I just had to look and say, “This isn’t going to happen.” That’s a painful acknowledgment. Because I wanted to believe it; it was so real, so tangible, it was in my hand.
How often have you experienced that inside of your business, inside of your personal life where something is so real, it’s right there, you just feel like you just reach out and touch it? As soon as you reach out, it just slightly escapes your grasp. That was this. So I’m sitting there, “Man, what are we going to do?” As I do that, I’m looking back over the past quarter and a half of revenue. I’m suddenly seeing, “We just haven’t been growing like I thought we would.” It’s not that I hadn’t been acknowledging it as it was happening. Please don’t mistake the fact that swinging for the fences with a deal like the World Cup would have me not paying attention to the day-to-day operations of our business.
But to me, when I zoom out and look at the larger picture, I suddenly see, “We’re just not pacing where we should be.” Then, I must acknowledge that we had the wrong sales manager in the seat for a long time. Of course, this isn’t going to work. I’m sitting there saying, “What could we have done differently?” The company and I, as a whole, got so fixated on swinging for the fences, hitting that home run ball, and being the hero. Two out, bottom of the ninth, base is loaded down by four, and I guess down by three specifically. Baseball is not my favorite.
For a business, which is a living, evolving entity striving to find its place, growth is not linear but a multi-variant equation changing daily on multiple fronts.
It didn’t come to fruition. The entire time, we should have been looking at singles. Once we acknowledged that the World Cup wouldn’t happen, the business pivoted into looking for singles again. Bill Markham, my brilliant Chief Revenue Officer, keeps pushing an initiative to get single-point stores to buy our products. These stores get this sample box, which we call MIT Kit, for about a thousand bucks. It has all our products and a great point-of-sale display that fits neatly on our counter. He sold hundreds and hundreds of these with the help of the sales team that supported them.
While it might not be as sexy to think about 3, 4, or 5 hundred $1,000 deals, that’s still an additional $300,000 or $400,000. Not to mention the consistent reorders once a store is familiar with our product and brand. While everything in me wanted to go, Bill said, “You got to go for bigger deals.” I had to pause and acknowledge that I should have been forcing smaller deals to be an initiative for the past year. If we had consistently been hitting those singles and consistently getting on base, we still would have won the game. It might not have been as sexy as a grand slam home run on the bottom of the knife with two outs left. But a win is a win at the end of the day.
That has caused me to pivot and look through the different aspects of our business. Every business has four components to it. It has its marketing arm, operational arm, sales arm, and service or fulfillment arm. You could throw finance in there, but I can look at finance as an operational component. I’m looking through those four variables in what I refer to as a “MOSS (Marketing, Operations, Sales, Services) Method” of analyzing a business. I’m sitting there saying, “How can we simplify this? How can we just keep going for singles in every department? Why are we overcomplicating things? Why are we going for this home run every time we’re a bat?” The simplest answer is that the team supporting us has seen me going for home runs.
“Empowering people to consistently hit singles daily would yield far greater progress.”
Why wouldn’t they consistently go for home runs? It’s ingrained in them; of course, they’re going to. Once I can acknowledge that, I can stop and recalibrate personally. I can be more conscientious of what I share inside of our organization, what I share for everyone to focus on versus what I share in the confines of the four walls of my office and who I share with. Because so much of this is simply acknowledging that if a business is a living, breathing “organism,” it has a life unto itself and is trying to find its place in the world. It’s not a linear progression for any business. It’s a multi-variant equation that is changing in multiple facets every day.
As a business owner, you sit there and say, “The path should be very straight. It should just go this way.” Well, that would work if you were the only person in the game. But there are competitors, vendors, suppliers, salespeople, and personalities. The customers have to pay you. All these things make business not so cut and dry. Don’t get me wrong, if you’re like me, you want it to be cut and dry, and you like it to be very simple. You like to see the best and most people, and you believe it’s going to show up and do what they say they’re going to do. But the facts of life, as you know at this point, are not always true.
People do a version of what they believe they’re supposed to. Suppose we don’t consistently focus on simplifying things and reducing them to the ridiculous, making it so simple, documented, and effortless for someone to achieve success in their role. In that case, I find that people over and over again want to swing for the home runs. It’s Parkinson’s law that things will occupy the space and time we allot for them. A fancy way of saying it. I don’t know about you, but in college, when I had a term paper, I wasn’t writing it consistently in equal tranches over 12 weeks. I was cramming the last 12 hours because I had a finite date and time in which things had to be done. That forced me to begin to swing for the fences. It felt like this dopamine rush when I would complete it, turn it in, and get at least a satisfactory grade. It’s ingrained in my subconscious that I get rewarded by pushing for these home runs, and I’m not alone in this. This is not a one-off situation, and this is something that happens frequently.
People often swing for home runs instead of focusing on simplifying and documenting processes for effortless role execution.
As this is frequently happening, and these variables are coming into play inside people’s history before working with you, there has to be an acknowledgment as a leader that people view the game of business through their lens. So many people don’t even know their home run baseball swingers. They don’t even know that a single exists. Yet, the repetitive, somewhat mundane tasks create the level of success that you and I are both searching for. It’s not the sales guy who lucks into the one big deal that everybody celebrates, and it ends up moving the needle inside the business. It’s the guy who comes in every day, does a little bit more than he’s supposed to, and can remain consistent for far longer than he ever thought possible. I’m very fortunate to have some individuals like that inside our company right now.
That is where we’re drawing our conversation to a conclusion today. It has to be asked of you: where in life are you hoping for the home run where you should be swinging for a single? It’s inside the relationship. Your home run shot is stopping at the store on the way home, buying a bouquet, and taking it home to your wife. That’s your home run shot. Probably all she wants is for you to acknowledge her. Tell her she’s beautiful. Tell her that you love her once a day, unprompted. That home run isn’t going to save the game. All the singles will. Maybe inside your body, sitting there, life has taken its toll, and you’re saying, “I’m gonna go in for gastric bypass surgery.” That’s the home run. That’s the secret. But if you don’t alter these micro behaviors of how you eat and live your life on a day-over-day basis, of course, things aren’t exactly as you want them to be in the long term, and the home run won’t win the game. Then, it gets down to your business. Where inside your business are you hoping this big deal will come across the finish line? Are you waiting for this employee to really show up and finally own their brilliance? You’d be so much better off, and you’d be so much further ahead if you could simply have people swing singles on a daily basis.
I’m Ryan Niddel, and this has been Rethinking Business.
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Key Takeaways
- Swinging for the fences or going for a big “home run” deal can distract from consistently hitting “singles” or smaller wins that lead to sustainable growth.
- Every business has four core components: marketing, operations, sales, and service/fulfillment. Focus should be on simplifying and executing well in each area.
- Businesses are living, evolving entities, not linear progressions. Variables like competitors, vendors, people’s personalities make business rarely cut-and-dry.
- People tend to swing for home runs rather than focus on mundane but crucial repetitive tasks that drive long-term success. This is often ingrained from past experiences.
- As a leader, acknowledge that people view business through their own lens. Many are unaware that consistently hitting “singles” is key.
- Reflect on areas of life where you are seeking a “home run” when consistent small steps would be more effective – relationships, health, business goals, etc.
- Empowering your team to consistently achieve small wins each day yields greater progress than holding out for a huge deal or moonshot.
Pull Quotes:
- If we kept hitting singles and getting on base, we’d still win the game.
- Every business has four components. It has its marketing arm, its operational arm, its sales arm, and its service or fulfillment arm.
- A business is like a living thing finding its way in the world. It’s not a straight path; it’s always changing in many ways.
- If the path were straight, it’d be easy. But you deal with competitors, suppliers, personalities, and customers in business. It’s not that simple.
- People do what they think they should. We need to keep things simple and clear for success. Too often, people aim for home runs.
- As a leader, we must realize people see business through their experiences. Many don’t notice the small wins, yet those everyday tasks build success.
- Where in life are you hoping for the home run where you should be swinging for a single? It’s inside the relationship.
- Singles win games, not home runs.
- If you don’t change how you eat and live daily, long-term success won’t come, and home runs won’t win the game.
- You’d be so much better off, and you’d be so much further ahead if you could simply have people swing singles on a daily basis.
About Ryan Niddel
Ryan Niddel is a dynamic entrepreneur and CEO of MIT45 Inc. and is renowned as Ohio’s foremost business growth specialist. With a lifelong entrepreneurial spirit, Ryan began his journey at 10 with a lawn-mowing business and later gained mentorship that shaped his career. As CEO of two 8-figure companies and a board member of several others, he specializes in rapidly increasing revenue and profitability, culminating in lucrative acquisitions. Passionate about philanthropy, Ryan supports various charities and is launching a foundation focused on youth education in business and capitalism. With over 700 success stories, Ryan is hailed for his innovative thinking, strategic partnerships, and ability to optimize business operations. He freely shares his insights through podcasts, videos, and blog posts, advocating ethical business practices and empowering entrepreneurs worldwide.