I Did My Best #Whatever

In my 27 years with Chick-fil-A, one of the things that I used to hear the most was, “I tried my best,” followed by the words we dread as leaders, “and I did not get it done.”  I did My Best  #Whatever

In our latest book Breaking Conformity, we tackle the myth, “I did my best.”  Think about it, no one ever comes to you and says I tried my best, here you go, and it’s completed. No, they come and say, “I tried my best, but I could not get it done.“

In the movie Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, he says “Everyone has big butts” and I agree.  We all have big buts, I tried my best BUT…….stop with the but!

If you don’t know how to get it done, do what 99% of people will not do:

ASK for help  

“Get off your ASK and get something done” ~ Arthur Greeno

Ask your co-worker, your pastor, ask your dog, your mentor, ask our boss, ask the owner.

Get over the Fear of Rejection

Often, our biggest fear is rejection and more often all we need is acceptance.  The problem is we are so scared to look inadequate; we wont seek out assistance. Asking for help does not make us weak, it does not make us inadequate and it does not make us incompetent. It makes us resourceful, it makes us think differently and it makes us dependable.

There are times when I walk into my restaurant and clearly things are not happening the way they should due to being short-staffed.   Questions I need to ask to process the situation are:

1. Are we short staffed, or did we make an error in scheduling?  Occasionally, it’s neither one of those and we just had a big group of people come in.  Our managers review the schedule daily, if it was indeed an error in scheduling, they should have caught it and covered it.

2. If we’re short staffed, why?  Many times, I would hear excuses; “We could not find anyone to work,”  so in turn we work short handed. However, I personally would not have been contacted. I could have called others in (getting a call from the owner of the company sometimes holds more weight than getting a call from your friend/co-worker)  I could have called my other location to see if they had anyone or I could have come in to help.  Now this would be a little pathetic since I rarely work register anymore, and you NEVER want me in the Drive Thru.)

I did My Best  #Whatever  ……My point is this; don’t tell me that you did your best unless you actually did your best.

When we launched “Breaking Conformity” we wanted to make sure the public knew about our book launch.  Our job was to make sure everyone knew we had a book coming out, f they chose not to buy it I understand. (I disagree, but understand)  So we did the following:

1. We sent messages to every single contact we had on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.  We made sure we posted to social media before our event.
2. We shared a cross promotion with my restaurant. A book purchase in the store would get a free Chick-fil-A Chicken  Sandwich.  We advertised this in my restaurant and on a local Radio station.
3. We did a PR push and made it on a local news channel.
4. We had a statewide paper post what were doing the Saturday before the event.
5. We were invited to a live radio morning show blast telling people about the event.
6. We sent out emails to everyone in our phone book, I even sent another 2500 emails to other business contacts I had.

The end result was by mid-afternoon of the launch we hit #1 on the Amazon Best Seller list. However, WE STILL DID NOT TRY OUR BEST.  We tried a lot of things, but how many things did we leave on the table? I could have text everyone that day, I could have called everyone I knew that day, I could have walked up and down the streets shouting and waving my book until cars stopped and I told them about my book.

Lesson Learned: I Did My Best  #Whatever…….We actually rarely do our best.  Very little can we stand there and say we did our best. Most of the time hitting our goals and reaching that milestone wont take our best, but it will take us working very hard.  If you really tried your best, you will hit the goals you are looking for.