Thirty years ago, I was sitting around a pool in Encinitas with Eben Pagan and Joe Stumpf, trying to work out an idea.
Looking back at my journal today reminded me of that scene in the Beatles documentary where Paul McCartney is strumming his guitar, slowly discovering the song Get Back.
It wasn’t fully formed yet.
But you could see it emerging.
At the time, I had been thinking about storyboards as a way to map the sequential steps of a customer’s journey.
I was also reading The Loyalty Effect, which described how people move from prospect to shopper to customer to client to advocate.
I added another category at the beginning:
Suspect.
Someone who fits your target market, but hasn’t yet raised their hand.
Then I started mapping what we needed to do to advance someone through the entire relationship:
Select your target market.
Compel prospects to call.
Educate and motivate them to meet.
Present your unique service offer.
Deliver world-class service.
Provide after-sale service.
Nurture lifetime relationships.
Those seven steps eventually became the foundation of what I now call the 8 Profit Activators.
The eighth—Orchestrate Referrals—came later, when I realized that nurturing a relationship and intentionally creating referrals are two different things.
What struck me today is that I didn’t create this framework out of thin air.
It came from combining several ideas I had been exposed to, processing them in my journal, applying them to the businesses I was working with, and documenting what I discovered.
That’s how intellectual property is often created.
You take in new ideas.
You connect them to things you already know.
You apply them to a real situation.
And you document what works.
Thirty years later, that afternoon by the pool is still responsible for almost everything I do.
You may already be sitting on the early version of an idea that could shape the next thirty years of your work.
The question is:
Are you documenting it?