The Karate Discipline

I’m sure we all remember the movie The Karate Kid, an all-time classic. I watched a rerun a few months ago, and realised that each wisdom from Mr Miyagi is worth exploring – in a blog post or video. Karate means “empty hand” – and is a defense strategy. I did a bit of karate at school (many moons ago), and I got to yellow belt. Karate and martial arts teach us discipline. In business we also require discipline, and I think that as entrepreneurs we can learn a lot from these art forms.

Mr Miyagi says in the movie: “First learn stand, then learn fly. Nature rule, Daniel-san, not mine.” This is very important. In business (and in life, even) we sometimes put the horse before the cart. We don’t adhere to due process principles. We’re too impatient. Mr Miyagi’s anecdote is similar to Covey‘s “Law of the harvest.” You reap what you sow.

Chet Holmes has worked with over 60 of the Fortune 500 companies as America’s top marketing executive, trainer, strategic consultant and motivation expert. He’s done work for Charlie Munger (one of Warren Buffet‘s partners), and has recently also started to do projects with Anthony Robbins. He has also studied and taught karate for 23 years.

Chet says:

The lessons we’ve learned about consistency have taught us that it is the only way to really improve anything. The secret to great accomplishment in karate is not in learning 4, 000 different moves. There’s aren’t 4, 000 different moves in karate. There are 12 moves. Becoming a master is not about doing 4, 000 different moves; it’s about doing 12 moves, 4, 000 times each. The same is true for all areas of accomplishment. Golf, tennis, sales, customer services, ALL areas of competency require repetition of fundamentals.

We need to apply this discipline to our businesses when it comes to Social Media. There are just too many tools and applications out there. And we cannot use all of them. Everyday we see people on Facebook and Twitter saying “try this new tool, this that new tool” – and for the average entrepreneur this is just as a liability on time. For most businesses, Social Media is a tool, it’s not their business. Social Media is our business – and more than just a tool – but I’m talking about those outside of this industry.

One Social Media tool is not enough though. Facebook alone is not enough. Twitter alone is not enough. LinkedIn alone is not enough. There must be a decent mix of online tools – a mix that’s right for your business. Not every business is the same. Once you’re identified the mix that suits your business, you have to be consistent in using those tools. Using a tool once every two weeks won’t result in any true value. Once per week is also too minimal. A few times per week is required, and with tools like Twitter, daily activity is required. This all might sound very time consuming, but it does not have to be. There are tools that can help you manage your online activity.

For example, here is how I use TweetDeck and HootSuite.

TweedDeck is essentially a Twitter tool, but I use it for more than that. I use it…

1. To track the people I’m following on Twitter and respond to them
2. To conduct multiple concurrent Twitter searches (for research and tracking purposes)
3. To track and respond to Facebook status updates
4. To track and respond to LinkedIn status updates

HootSuite can be used for a number of purposes, but I simply use it to schedule updates. I can spend around 10 minutes and schedule updates that will be broadcasted over one or two days. This is quite fun because even if I’m sleeping or in a meeting, my messages are going out to the world.

So I don’t even need to be on the actual websites of Facebook and Twitter, and I can still be managing my activity there.

It’s not about working hard so much. Sure we have to work hard, but we can be smart as well. And all of this can be fun, while still getting to business results that we want. But we have to remain disciplined.

Photo credit: andrew_mc_d

Do less, outsource everything else

Ownership is so last century. It’s time to liberate ourselves and enjoy what technology affords us. In my opinion, we have two advantages which we should really be making use of.

Firstly, we have the opportunity to be specialists. The time is over for generalists. We no longer want to deal with one company that does everything – because we know that each avenue of expertise is so deep and advanced, that a generalist company can only scratch the surface of each of these avenues. Specialists can go to the depths. We want people who eat, sleep, and talk their expertise. Industries and businesses are evolving at such a rapid rate, that a generalist is no longer a valuable asset. And being specialists, we should be doing less. Being an effective specialist means doing less. It means being focused. It means choosing when and how we want to work. It means choosing the type of clients we want to work for. It means redefining success.

Seth Godin says in Small is the new big that, “Maybe you need to be a lot pickier about what you do and for whom you do it.” He continues by sharing the following…

Dan, a real-estate developer I met recently, told me that he does one new investment a year. It’s not unusual for his competition to do ten or a hundred deals in the same period of time. What Dan told me, though, really resonated: “In any given year, we look at a thousand deals. One hundred of them are pretty good. One is great.” By only doing the great deals, Dan is able to make far more money than he would if he did them all. He can cherry-pick because his goal isn’t volume.

Secondly, we should outsource everything that is not core to our business. It is common place today for companies to have employees stationed around the globe, working remotely. It’s even more common place to use individuals and companies to do secondary tasks. Once we set ourselves free and relinquish control, we have the opportunity to engross ourselves in what our mission is. Tim Ferris is a master at this. You should pick up his book The 4-Hour Work Week wherein he expounds on ideas to liberate ourselves from limited and ancient thinking patterns.

Even the City of Los Angeles, California has outsourced it’s email and communication infrastructure to Google. In October 2009, the city replaced its Novell GroupWise system with Google Apps. The city estimated the move at around $7.25 million, but Los Angeles officials believe the move will save millions in software licensing, maintenance, and storage costs while improving security. Email (as well as other communication items) are now outsourced to Google. This is phenomenal.

Randi Levin, Chief Technology Officer, City of Los Angeles:

City employees fulfill a range of important functions – from policing our streets to supplying water and power to city residents and businesses, and from operating our libraries to designing and building wastewater treatment plants and other public facilities. We want to provide all these employees with modern tools that help them do their jobs.

Outsourcing is something that we as entrepreneurs really need to get our heads around. And quickly. Inside of our businesses, we also need to learn to delegate more. Outsourcing is a type of delegation, but it technically refers to delegating to external resources. Warren Buffet: “We delegate almost to the point of abdication.”

Tim Ferris goes a step further though. He says, “Eliminate before you delegate.”

He explains…

Never automate something that can be eliminated, and never delegate something that can be automated or streamlined. Otherwise, you waste someone else’s time instead of your own, which now wastes your hard-earned cash.

This is a subject that I’m passionate about, so I plan to write much more on it over the coming weeks…

Photo credit: cliche