Here at Geek we aren’t just geeky about sales. Movies, music, sport, gin? – just about everything permeates our geeky little bones.
As we watched The Hangover, yet again, we were struck with how much we can learn from the film about sales and our business. We didn’t even have to shoehorn in any spurious analogies – they all make sense – to us.
Hopefully you can take something from it too?
Find Your Own Wolf Pack
If you are building a business you need good people around you. But more than that, you need people in your corner that are rooting for you to succeed and that are on the same journey as you, for the long haul. It cannot be overstated the impact that finding your own wolf-pack has on your business. Search for them or stumble upon them, it doesn’t matter, just build that wolf-pack, minus the ‘roofies’ of course.
Always Check The Roof
The Hangover is really a film about getting bogged down in process. From the moment Phil empties his pockets, the Wolf Pack are determined to map out their steps from the previous night in order to find Doug. Those processes ultimately help them reach their goal; but like the Wolf Pack, if you don’t understand what your goal is, then your whole journey is going to be a whole lot of hit and miss. It will probably take you to some places you don’t want to go – marrying a stripper and stealing from a gangster, maybe extreme examples!
The roof is where it’s at. It is the destination. Don’t be afraid of a high roof with a lovely view, embrace the scariness of it, shoot for the sky and do everything you can to get to your end goal! Ultimately, the wolf pack forgot to check the roof and went on a magical mystery tour because of that. If you keep checking back in on your end goals then it’s less likely you’ll lose sight of why you are doing, what you are doing. Always check the roof!
Watch Out For Tigers
Every bathroom (closet) has them. Something lurking, something that you know needs addressing but it’s often been easier, (not to mention safer), to close the door on it. The trouble with lurking tigers is they sap you of energy. Every moment, no matter how joyful, is tainted. Your stomach grips you and reminds you not to get too carried away as you’ve got a tiger prowling around back there, just waiting for an opportunity to pounce!
What is a tiger? It can be anything really, it’s that one thing that we file in the “too hard to deal with now” pile. It could be a relationship that’s holding you back, often it’s a money worry of some sort, it could even be guilt for something you did that you aren’t proud of (trust us, we all have them). Get rid of it!
If you want to move forward in business, as in life, then tackle the tiger in the bathroom first. It might not be something you can make vanish immediately, but just by making a plan to get the bugger out, you can start to concentrate on the stuff that matters.
Break Up With Melissa… Now!
Remember Melissa? Stu’s poisonous girlfriend? We’ve all met people like her, hopefully briefly. But some of us can get stuck with poisonous people in our life and in our business. They are the moaners, the jobsworths and the untrustworthy. But most of all, when you analyse their behaviour they are the ones that seem to be working against you, no matter what their position. They could be partners, parents, siblings or a director in your company. Ultimately these are the relationships that grow like a cancer. If we don’t cut it out we can never be who we truly are or reach our full potential. If your life or your business has a cancer growing in it, zap it, now! You won’t ever regret it, however painful it feels to consider right now.
Keep Leslie Chow in Check
Leslie Chow is the maverick in your business. He’s creative and manic and terribly resourceful, willing to take on any task, large or small. He can be loyal too. But if there’s trouble to be found, he’ll find it, if there’s a boundary to cross, he’ll cross it and if there’s a way of self-destructing he’ll do it. If you have a Leslie Chow in your business you’ll know (it may even be you). He’ll cause 90% of the problems and will be 50% of the solution. Can you afford a Leslie Chow in your business? That’s a question only you can answer, but you will need to answer it and embrace your decision either way.
No Problem Is Insurmountable
If you had to boil down the Hangover into one essential ‘take-away’ it would be: you can work through any problems, IF you tackle them head-on. The Wolf-Pack get the job done against the odds. Extremely hungover, they circumnavigate having a tiger in the bathroom and inheriting a baby. They manage irate gangsters, marriage to strippers, teeth extractions and being tasered by the police. All the problems, all dealt with, one at a time and overcome. The only time any problem seemed too tough is when Stu is trying to conceal from Melissa the nature of his trip. Ultimately when they embraced their issues they were able to solve them. It doesn’t take a protracted metaphor to work out the lesson in this!
Enjoy the ride!
Our journey’s may all seem pretty crazy at the time, but when we look back we’ll have some great stories to tell. Let’s enjoy it!
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Stay Geeky
