What I’m Doing Differently This Time: Developing a Playbook

One of my favorite lessons to share when talking about the Marie Mae Business School - the give back initiative at my previous company - is when I traveled to Rwanda to work with a sewing cooperative and help them grow their business.

One of the first things we talked about was a recent school uniform project they had done. They were so proud and excited they had landed the project. They had gone to a local school and secured the opportunity on their own to make each of the kids school uniforms.

It was their largest order yet!

But things went quickly south after that.

Once I started digging into why, one of the ladies said “we kept running out of fabric because it was really difficult to match up the exact uniform to the specific child”.

Wait, wait, wait…

Did you make 2,000 custom uniforms??

Sure enough, that’s exactly what they did, and why things went so wrong.

I shared that story all the time afterwards to show new students why they needed to standardize things.

Flash forward several years, and it hits me.

That is exactly what I did with Marie Mae.

We customized everything! Every new client engagement was tailored completely to the client. You wanted something we hadn’t sourced before? We would go find it. You wanted us to ship internationally even though we traditionally didn’t? Sure thing. Whatever the customer asked for, we tried to accommodate them.

To our own detriment. And eventually, to theirs.

So what am I doing differently this time?

No more. This time around, I'm climbing in the drivers seat. I’m creating a framework for my clients that I walk each of them through. I am creating a playbook based on my 20 years of experience on what works and what doesn’t.

I am owning my authority and not trying to give each and every customer what they ask for. I’m giving them what they need - even when they don’t know what to ask for.

This allows me to get amazing processes in place to really excel in my area of expertise.

To take my clients and my business from good to great.

Hey there! This is part of a series I’m running over on LinkedIn of “What I’m Doing Differently This Time.” Would love for you to join the conversation there and share your thoughts!