Playing Your Game

Jackie Zach
January 25, 2024

In this podcast episode, Mike McKay and Jackie Zach discuss the importance of playing your own game in business, rather than copying others. Jackie emphasizes the value of running your business in a way that aligns with your vision and goals, rather than adjusting to someone else’s methods. Mike shares his personal experience of stepping away from certain aspects of corporate structures and creating a business that values trust and autonomy, explaining how they aim to build a company that invests in its team and allows for smarter decision-making. Both hosts stress the importance of having a clear strategy and not feeling pressured to follow trends just because they seem successful.

Jackie recounts her experience of facing competition from a nearby store, which tried to copy her business model. Instead of imitating them, she focused on improving her own approach, making her cooking classes more engaging and interactive, which ultimately attracted more customers. Mike highlights the energy and passion required to stand out in business, using the analogy of a 100,000-watt searchlight to explain how enthusiasm and love for what you do can attract customers. They conclude by encouraging listeners to embrace their unique strengths and play their own game, focusing on what makes their business special rather than following the crowd.

Interested in learning the recipe that can help you learn to play your game? Take advantage of a complimentary business strategy session to discover the opportunities in your business! http://makemoreworkless.actioncoach.com/mmwl-diag-and-questions/

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Podcast Transcript:

Mike McKay: Welcome to the Make More Work Less podcast. My name is Mike McKay, and I’m here with the amazing Jackie Zach. Today, we’re talking about playing your own game.

Jackie Zach: Yes!

Mike: Good morning, Jackie!

Jackie: Good morning! I feel like I want to say, “Good morning, Vietnam!” but no, right?

Mike: So, playing your own game… What’s that all about?

Jackie: It’s about making sure you’re playing your game, not someone else’s. You need to run your business your way—not adjusting based on what someone else is doing. Learning from others is great, but trying to be someone else is a whole different thing.

Mike: Exactly. Imagine a world where you have so many choices, but you don’t make any of them. You let others make the decisions for you. That’s a bit like what happened to us recently as we’ve been building our businesses. Susan and I both ran away from corporate structures when we started. But, it’s true—the corporate structure has been around for a long time and has proven successful. To reach our big goal—the $100 million goal—we’ll end up having a corporate structure too. So, we took a step back, evaluated what we didn’t like about the cultures we came from, and identified two key things that we could improve on.

We realized we could build our business the way we wanted, without being restricted by beliefs that no longer serve us. For me, one of the biggest frustrations was having a budget but still having to justify every expense. We’d have, say, a $300,000 travel budget, but when I needed to book a flight, I’d still have to get approval from my boss. Here I was, entrusted with a budget, but not trusted to use it properly. Even when we were exceeding our profit goals, we had to justify every penny spent. That made no sense. In our business, we’ll still have budgets, but if you don’t use your budget intelligently, you’ll get fired. That’s part of the game. But we won’t treat you like a child or question every decision, like whether you’re smart enough to pick the right toilet paper.

Another issue I had was that, in big businesses, the more successful they became, the less they invested in people. At our company, we’re committed to investing in our team. For example, when you first start with us, we pay for your initial training. Then, as you grow, we’ll invest in more development. We don’t treat people like replaceable cogs in a machine. We’re building a business with a great team, and we’re committed to investing in that team.

So, we’re playing the corporate game, but we’re changing the rules to fit how we want to play. And remember, not every customer is a good customer. You don’t have to sell to everyone.

Jackie: I have a personal story about this—about playing your own game. When I had my store, I had no real competition nearby for the first few years. But then, an olive oil store opened directly across the street from me. I walked out, looked across, and saw them right there. At first, I thought, “Oh no, what do I do now?” But then I thought, “Okay, let’s look at what we can control: our own business, and how we can improve.” So, we made small tweaks to improve. They eventually copied us with some of the things we were doing—like cooking classes.

At first, it was frustrating. But instead of copying them back, we made our classes more interactive and fun. They stuck to a more formal, school-like format, focused on facts and figures. I’m not sure they really add any fun to it. By sticking to what we do best, we kept our customers and attracted new ones just by playing our game.

Mike: It’s interesting because you’ve mentioned before that you can try to act like other people or copy their strategies, which is what they did. But unless you put love and energy into it—remember the energy stack?—it just becomes a boring checklist. People won’t like it, and they’ll naturally gravitate toward the higher energy. This keeps coming up, and I’m finding it to be one of the most fundamental aspects of business. I remember something Kirk Ashley said, and I’ve shared this before: “Turn on your front porch light. Nobody cares. It’s just 100 watts, right? Everyone has that. But light up a 100,000-watt searchlight in your front yard, and your whole neighborhood is going to come out to see what’s going on.” People are attracted to energy. It takes a lot of energy to power that 100,000-watt light. If you climb up that energy stack, and you’re really happy, joyfully providing cooking classes, having fun, and loving what you do, someone doing the same thing just because they were told they have to do it to compete with you is going to have negative, low energy. People won’t be attracted to that at all. So, do what you do best.

One challenge business owners face is the paradox of choice. There are no hard rules about how you run your business. Sure, there are accounting and tax rules, but there’s no law that says you must have a certain type of org chart or structure. Because there are no limits, you tend to copy what others do. But copying without thought, without energy, and without making decisions that set you apart will likely lead to a hollowed-out, poor version of what someone else is doing that may have been really successful. Take GE, for example. During the time of Jack Welch, everyone thought, “Let’s develop our people.” But Jack Welch actually developed people. Whether you liked him or not, he created a whole generation of highly skilled senior leaders. When other companies tried to copy this, they just checked off boxes—“Oh, they have a building? We’ll build one too. They have a curriculum? We’ll have one too.” But it lacked his passion, his energy. And most of those copycats failed. So, play your own game. Do what you love about it, and create the rules that will attract the right clients.

The paradox of choice is real. Imagine if you were crystal clear on your competitive advantage. You’d know exactly how to get customers to come to you instead of your competitors. How much easier would that make your life? You could just follow the recipe day after day, putting your passion and energy into it. If you want a quick strategy session to see how this applies to your business, email Jackie at jackiezach@actioncoach.com, or click on the show notes to schedule a session. Jackie will set you up with a strategy pivot session—a short phone call to discuss your next steps.

Jackie: Exactly. The key idea here is that everyone has superpowers. Your team and your culture have superpowers. Play your game.

Mike: That’s right. And until you talk to Jackie about your strategy, go kick some ass.

Jackie: Love it.