Focus on the Who, not the How 

Hey!
Hope everyone is doing well. Welcome to the next round of the Sunan Weekly Roundup!

What are we working on:

Another week, another awesome blog released! To help position our community for 2020, our next blog post discusses the “Top 10 design trends that will shape 2020”. This article discusses many top trends ranging from colors to typography to data visualization. Take a look and let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Our next big thing – Over the past few weeks, our team has diligently been working on developing a strategy that will help us serve more people and make a greater difference in their business in 2020. In developing this strategy, we had to take a very hard look and evaluate the services we are offering and how we can provide more value to our clients. After spending a few weeks on this, I think we have come up with something amazing. Something that is going to completely shift our perspective and provide more value to our clients. But I’m not going to spill all the beans here! We are only sharing this breakthrough with a few of our clients right now for feedback. Stay tuned!!

My biggest takeaway this week – Focus on The Who, not the How

As entrepreneurs, we inundate ourselves with the how. We tend to get so caught up in all the details of the execution of a particular strategy/task that’s it tends to lead to massive procrastination and frustration.  Rather than focusing on the how, we need to shift our perspective and focus on the who. Who can we tap into that can execute our strategy? Who can we bring onto our team that already knows how to do this?

When trying to find the who, it’s really important we keep our egos in check. Give yourself permission to bring on talent that is better than you. At the end of the day, your job as an entrepreneur and business leader is not to know how to play every instrument, rather it’s how to be an orchestrator. Surround yourself with individuals on your team that are domain experts in what they do.

I have made this mistake countless times over the years. When we started Sunan, I wanted to be the guy who was an expert at everything. From creating brand identities to implementing digital marketing strategies. I wanted to be the guy who could come up with the creative ideas and know exactly how to implement them. In the short-term, it may feel great being awesome, but this approach is not sustainable and scalable. Regretfully, I stuck with this approach for the first year and it sucked. Looking back, I know my ego played a big role in this. I was not ready to bring someone on board who was better than me. Someone who knew more about a particular strategy or technology more than me.

The sooner I was able to suck in my ego and focus on the who rather than the how, Sunan grew. Not only did it grow, but we were able to deliver better value to our clients. We were able to create and implement strategies that helped raise millions of dollars for our nonprofit clients. We were able to build brand awareness around various private schools that grew enrollment by hundreds of students!

The reason we were able to accomplish this is because I was willing to surround myself with talented people who could brilliantly execute the how 100% better than me. By shifting my perspective, over the past year alone, we have brought on Adobe Award winning designers, top brand consultants and digital marketing experts who are just amazing! And I must say, it’s a very humbling experience. You are constantly learning something new and realizing how little you do know.

As we approach 2020, I challenge you to make this small yet impactful shift in your perspective. Allow yourself to focus on the who and not the how and watch your business grow.

– Sajjad Husain, Founder & CEO