Case Study

Intro

Discipline

Alan has an expanding tactical arms training and wilderness survival school. He currently operates in the Pacific NorthWest and has high demand for his school to open in four new states.  Alan also does monthly 3 day training seminars throughout the US. 

Not to understate the needs, but Alan has a few challenges ahead of him. One of his biggest is going to be limited capital for expansion. We call these “good problems.” When faced with an abundance of customers and high demand for your services there are decisions that must be made quickly. These decisions are going to require DISCIPLINE.

Alan is no stranger to discipline. With his military background, combat deployments and extensive wilderness survival training and experience, discipline is the cornerstone of his life. This discipline however is going to be very different from his current exposure.

This situation’s definition of discipline is this: To remove that which is unnecessary. 

For Alan, there’s a few mindsets he needs to adopt. The first is abundance over lack. Even faced with limited resources Alan needs to possess an abundance of Resourcefulness. The good news for Alan is he has that trait for wilderness survival; it just needs to be transferred to his business realm. 

The next is Organization over Searching. Alan needs to have a solid game plan with the constant thought of “How little do I have to do to get started?” In these situations Alan uses the acronym W.I.N. What’s Important Now. In a tactical situation where things have turned bad or overtly dangerous and deadly, Alan uses this acronym to escape out of harm’s way. When trapped in a room on the third floor of a building that has caught on fire W.I.N. is used this way: 

W.I.N. getting to the door to exit the room, drop to ground below smoke and crawl to the door. W.I.N. check the door for heat, open the door, inspect the hallway for fire and locate the stairway. W.I.N. crawl to the stairway door, check for heat, open the door, visually inspect the first stairway for fire. W.I.N. getting down the first flight of stairs to the second floor. W.I.N. check for fire on the next flight of stairs, fire exists, can’t go down, fire above the flight of stairs blocking the doorway. W.I.N. window at landing of stairwell, break window and check drop zone, all clear. W.I.N. exit window and drop to ground level, clear area.

Translating this into business you can see how small and deliberate your decisions need to be. Your goal is to remove any unnecessary decisions to avoid decision fatigue. For Alan he knows what he needs to have a successful tactical arms training and survival school. Even better, he knows how little it will require to get the doors open and begin generating revenue. This will include renting a small building and using a local firing range and public land for additional training while searching for a permanent location to grow into his optimal location model.

The biggest temptation and threat to this way of disciplined thinking is opening four locations at once and acquiring massive debt to do so. The rush to capitalize on demand can cause poor decision making and a misunderstanding of the actual ROI with leveraged debt. 

One final aspect of this self imposed discipline is to be sure it is aligned with your calling and Strategic Vision. This is the trajectory and Alan needs to keep checking and confirming his bearings to stay on track to hit his destination. In the beginning Alan thought he was going to have difficulty expanding this business into multiple locations. His confidence was boosted when the correlation between his skills as a firearms and survival expert actually could and was applied to growing his business.