The Unintended Consequences of Success

Several months ago, I met an entrepreneur with a high-growth SaaS business. Being in the business of selling tools to measure subscription business metrics, I jumped right in, my mind set on a quick close.

I’ve been in sales for over 25 years, so I proceeded to knock down objections. The first, second, third objections came, and then more. Eventually, I realized there was no pain and backed off. Out of his mouth then poured, “we’ll start to look at metrics when we slow down, when we hit a month that wasn’t bigger than the previous month.”

Work Smart; Not Hard

‘Work smart; not hard, son’.  Bemused words from my grandfather to my cousin and me.  By dint of his cleverness, a few swings of his axe, and his tractor, he had just done in a couple of minutes what we had been struggling for more than an hour to do under a brutal South Georgia sun.  For the curious among you, we were digging up a stump…it is a long story.  That was a long (SO long) time ago, but I was reminded of it recently.  And as I reminisced, it changed from a mostly-forgotten, funny episode to a lesson applicable to us all.  In our service-oriented, information-based economy, what can we possibly learn from a relatively uneducated farmer and his tractor? Plenty.