What Actions Stab Your Business?

I was listening to a speaker one time during a seminar.  I was very tired.  I knew I needed to listen to the material he was sharing.  It was a subject I needed to hear, but I was really tired.  I was doing the combination body and face dance.  It is the dance you see other tired people do when they are trying so hard to stay awake.  Their eyes look like they have had too much alcohol to drink, trying so hard to remain open.  You can see their mouth, eyes and eye brows do some kind of saving-my-face type of dance.  The expressions are priceless.  Their neck becomes very loose on its hinge and no apparent muscle control can hold up the weight of the head anymore.  The upper body begins to slide to one side or the other, trying to slump its way into someone else's lap.  I was tired.  We have all been there.  Sometimes this has happened to us when we were driving an automobile!  Imagine that.

I paid good money to go to this seminar and I was not about to waste a nickel of it.  I know I missed a lot of good material he was sharing.  I am one of those who writes notes when I hear a good nugget of information.  I do not care if those around me do not take notes, I do.  A couple of days later I took a look at some of the notes I took.  I could not make out what they said.  My notes looked like these long scribbled curly lines that were connected once in awhile to a recognizable letter from the alphabet.  It was very funny.  I am sure I thought I took great notes.  What a waste of time.

It is funny how we live through moments in our life that we are certain we would remember forever.  Moments that had so much immediate impact on our lives at the time they occurred we were convinced we would never forget them.  It is not until many years later when we have a similar experience to recall that one we thought we would never forget, only to discover years later, we have had no previous recollection of those experiences.  What we thought we would remember back then had almost completely disappeared from our minds until now.  We forget what we are certain we would never forget.

Yet there are other times we walk through time in our lives and have experiences that do not apparently mean a thing, that we remember over and over and over.  It is so funny how that happens.  An apparent insignificant experience gets recalled over and over in different times and different settings.  Go figure.

Something that speaker said on that stage when I was trying not to take a nap, stuck with me.  It was a stupid little joke.  He told a stupid little joke and it stuck with me.  I did not even follow the joke very well when he told it.  Remember, I was trying to take a nap at the same time.

It was a joke about a pair of dimes.  I thought he was talking about some message we needed to learn about money.  I guess that got my attention.  It was a story about a young, single professional lady who decided to take a European vacation at some remote little mountain village.  She rented a bed and breakfast at the top of a hill over-looking a picturesque small town in the valley.  She arrived late the first evening, checked in with the owner and unpacked for some rest.  The next morning she wandered outside to meet the owner of the bed and breakfast.  He was an old retried postman who had spent every nickel he earned on this wonderful chalet atop this beautiful setting on the mountainside.  He said, "Good morning. I see you found the coffee."  She said, "Yes, I did.  Thanks.  It was a long day."  After some small talk he suggested that she take the small sports car parked in the shed out back and drive it down the winding road to the little town to check out the local scene and do some shopping.  She opened the shed door and found a restored triumph convertible parked inside.  She turned to him and said, "Seriously?"  He said, "Well of course, it is there for all of my guests."

Remember now, I was almost sound asleep when this story was being told.  It is the only thing I got that was worthwhile to keep from the seminar I attended.  I paid a lot of bucks to get this lesson, so you are going to hear the rest of the joke!  You are going to learn how to manage a pair of dimes like I learned in that seminar.

She got wrapped up with her coat and scarf.  She fired the triumph up and it sounded great.  She got her things and headed down the winding road that led to the little village in the valley.  She thought, "This is a dream come true.  Just like the movies!"

On this day, at the same time, a young man was firing up his little sports car at the bottom of that same winding road.  Every Saturday he starts his weekend by driving his sports car up that winding road as fast as he can go without wrecking on a curve.  It is his weekend ritual.  He owns a small pub in town and uses this ritual to give him a needed mental break from the pressures of owning a small business.  (I added that part.)  The two sports cars are traveling on the same winding road at the same time.  One going up while the other is coming down.  Neither driver knows the other one is on the road at the same time.

They eventually met on a tight corner.  The guy was driving way too fast and was 'fish-tailing' on each corner with his normal driving style.  She is leisurely driving with more caution as she goes downhill.  When they pass by each other she yells at him, "Pig!"  He is surprised that someone else is on this road so early in the morning.  As they pass by each other, he hears her call him a pig.  He thinks she is criticizing his wild driving style.  So he yells back at her, "Witch!"  As she passes by him he tries to look in the rear view mirror to see who she was.  She looked kind of cute, also.  As he goes around the corner looking in his rear view mirror, he runs right into a pig standing in the road.  He did not even see it.  It wrecked his car.

It was not a joke about two dimes.  It was a joke about paradigms.  The speaker used the joke to define how people can get caught in simple mind shifts of thought that disguise a good message from what they know, away from what they should know.  We all do it.  We all get caught in paradigms.  We actually believe every business owner suffers during a recession.  Not true.  When someone yells pig, do we take offense and consider they are criticizing us for what we look like?  Or are they warning us to slow down and beware.

What actions stab your business?

What kinds of thoughts and actions do you do that hinder the profitability of your business work?  How many paradigms are you holding in your battery of thoughts that need to be removed?  What kinds of stubbornness are you protecting so you can continue to run into pigs in the road?  What kinds of habits are killing the front end of your sports car?  What kinds of warnings are you ignoring?  How many rear view mirror events do you need to use to avoid slamming into any more pigs?

What actions stab your business?

Let's make a list and see if any of these actions need to be placed next to a 'ceramic pig' award.

Budgeting.
Spending at least one day per month, planning.
Delegating with proper instructions, respectful allowances, and meaningful permissions.
Integrity.
Honesty.
Truthfulness.
Sincerity.
Excellent time management.
Persistence.
Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you.
Excellent follow-up on important details that drive you crazy.
Calling special customers to make sure they know how much you appreciate them.
Determination.
Creativity.
On the spot, accurate and up-to-date business accounting.
Strong, effective yet sensitive improvements to employee relationships.
Making sure the tools of your trade are the best you can afford.
Your maintenance responsibilities are on target, current and securely managed.
Your family time is getting its due justice.
Your website, facility and business appearance is superbly maintained.  Always looking sharp!
Your body is getting the proper rest, nutrition and exercise you need to help you think clearly.
You are open to good advice.
You have a great channel of communication that is open with your customers.
You are current in your product knowledge, product offerings.
The service you provide is well above grade.
Your profitability is healthy.
You control your costs with wonderful attention to hidden expenses.
You have a friendly demeanor.
You are a great teacher of the business trade you manage.
You tackle tough issues immediately.
You do not procrastinate.
You are a person of your word.  You do what you say you will do.
You do not live on excuse after excuse.
You do not blame others, you take all of the blame for the holes in your business model.
You are in charge, remember?
You recognize marketing shifts and take advantage of them immediately.
You are happy doing what you are doing.
You find your business model a pleasure to manage.
You listen well when someone has an idea.
You lead your business instead of allowing it to lead you.
You know how to admit when you are lost.
You seek help often.
You attend seminars and stay awake during the speaker presentations.

We all have holes in our business style.  Try to escape the normal pattern of getting your mind trapped into hundreds of terrible paradigms.  They are killers of the front end of your sports car.

Be strong enough about knowing who you are and accepting what you are not.  Make sure you manage your mental self better than the male driver of the story in Europe.  Try working on removing as many of the 'ceramic pig' awards you have lined up in your mind.  Your business is waiting for you to lead it to success.

Ask a close friend, your spouse or significant other if you are getting hung up on some things you need to quit doing.  Be ready to accept their answers or suggestions.  You will not likey enjoy what you hear.  Make sure you prepare this step well enough to make it comfortable for them to answer honestly.  We have a tendency to 'load' a question in a way that sends a message to the other person that we are not truly looking to ratify our thoughts.  We tend to load our questions as if we are searching to confirm, rather than ratify our thinking patterns.  Ask for these helpful suggestions with all sincerity. 

Next time I fall asleep in a seminar, I hope I get another good nugget like this one.

Until next time...