Where Do We Find The Glue That Holds Our Business Together?

What Kind Of Relationships Have You Built?

A first time business owner has a lot of ideas and dreams on their mind.  When they get started they have more to do than they have time to use.  Each moment is filled like a race to squeeze in more stuff.  Excitement dominates the energy levels.  Enthusiasm blankets all of the other undone edges.  Hope is filled with blind faith.  The new business is up and running.  It has activity.  It has enthusiasm.  It has energy.

These unbridled dimensions help to produce some interesting growth.  The business stirs up some selling interests.  Consumers get a bit caught up in the excitement that is produced.  The newness blooms some enjoyable results.  This new business owner is off and running.  Now the seriousness has been set in place.  Sustainability becomes the main effort for the next few years.  Making sales growth happen with enough good controls in place will be the new business owners next test of ownership.  This kind of pattern will lead that new owner down the path of 'on-board' business school, the one which includes a lot of hard knocks.  This becomes the middle of that new business owner's life.  The invisible but tough lessons of owning a small business begin to arrive and make life interesting.  This process looks like a bell curve.

Small business owners find this bell curve a strong reality when they look back at their ownership career.  They see the up-tick beginning that produced so many hopes and dreams.  They can graph out the climb to volume that supported the excitement they once developed when they opened up the gig they started.  They can see how the bell curve was running uphill on the charted graph.  Those were exciting times.  The level of blind faith was much like the first proposal that landed in the hearts between a future husband and his wife.  Both could see only the wonderful things that were about to occur.  Neither spouse could see how the first real spat would turn into a dividing line between them.  Certainly none could see the fighting that occurs between their three little children when one physically hurt one of the other two and the third child lied about it.  Those were not the visions these two love birds once envisioned when they proposed to each other.  This is exactly how a small business owner begins their trek through the business ownership forest.  It all starts on blind faith then as it grows with excitement as it morphs into this huge bag of challenges to manage.  The bell curve begins to turn downward.

So how do these self taught business owners keep it together?  How do they learn how to manage the first serious business obstacles that have been planted in front of the road they are travelling?  What provides the glue that holds them together when important and cherished stuff begins to fall away?  How do they keep it all together when they wreck their ship along the bumpy shores of trial and error?  These kinds of challenges are not silly things when they park their existence inside the doors of a troubling business model.  How do those owners apply the glue that holds it together when this kind of pattern comes home to stay?  Let's face it, big challenges are coming.  They are part of a growing business.  I have yet to meet a single successful business owner who could not tell a deeply tough story about how they had to learn how to make it through some of the most challenging stuff ever imagined.  In business, this kind of work is a reality.  It may not show up during the first six months when all of that newness and excitement is overflowing, but it will arrive.  Crap will happen.  It will seem much like living through a car wreck and losing some of your most important friends.  It can get real ugly.

Some business owners find challenges in lawsuits, employment issues, theft, fire, accidents, insurance claims, bad publicity, mismanaged funds, out-of-balance checking accounts, terrible losses, disrespect from staff, marriage separations, children resentments, time issues, location changes, popular product discontinuations, increased and fiercely added competition plus countless more that come inside the halls that do their damage.  Small business need to find some glue to hold it altogether when these things happen.  Where do they find this glue?

Page two.

What Kind Of Relationships Have You Built?

I love to meet other business owners and begin to talk about the challenges we share.  In short order, they usually share a story that sounds very similar to the ones we have endured.  It is amazing how predictable each challenge can become.  What is also interesting is how they dealt with the things that arrived.  Every owner worked it out.  They describe their own way of managing the stuff that fell apart.  Each owner described how they found how to apply the glue that helped them sink the problem they endured.  It is amazing to hear how they produced that glue.

I come from an entrepreneurial family.  All we ever heard as children was discussions about advertising, customer service, late shipments, money challenges and a variety of other obstacles that find their subject way home where we ate dinner as a family.  We learned how to endure the unpopular and unwanted stuff small business owners had to learn how to manage.  We grew up with entrepreneurial spirits, with entrepreneurial energy.  Obstacles became part of our growing up lives.  How we deal with them also become second nature to our system of cognitive thinking.  Small business owners develop interesting ways to produce the glue that holds their business activities together when the worst challenges arrive.  It is an amazing process to witness.

When these methods of glue production appear not all of them work well.  In fact, many of them fail.  Most self taught business owners find the school of hard knocks very expensive.  It is one of the most effective schools to attend but is also the most expensive one to support.  The school of hard knocks can be a brutal teacher.  It will strip down some of the most egotistical business leaders that ever walked this earth.  It can humble even the hardest hearts, and it does.  When that part of the bell curve has arrived, a nose dive is occurring to the business model.  The flight is no longer climbing up.  It is spiralling downward.  What's worse, good people begin to jump ship.  The talent that once helped to build up this small business model begins to get too expensive to keep as they get released or they find a way to comfortably quit as they find better places to work that can offer stronger glue.  This is the time when a small business shifts its gears from growing big to shrinking small.  It is an awful time.

Where is the glue?  What will be used to hold this business together?  How do the owners produce the right kind of glue?  Where do they find what works well in this kind of troubling environment?  These are real issues that come alive when the business is on fire and begins its fall to find its bottom.  The memories of that wonderful start with all of that early enthusiasm has whithered away.  No excitement remains.  Only the factors for the fear of loss comes to play with each waking moment which seems like always when sleeplessness arrives.  The business owner becomes overwhelmed and distraught.  No glue is in sight.  It is an awful place to be.  Welcome to business leadership 101.  Go find the glue.  That is your new job.  That effort becomes your new responsibility.  Learn how to wear it well.

The best place to start is in the relationships you have built.  Go listen to how they feel about what should be done.  Listen closely and adhere to their ideas.  They are not unaware of what has happened, what should happen and how it can all be fixed.  They are also keenly interested in better outcomes.  They come fully prepared to help all of it out.  They stand between your choice between failure and success.  Get closer to the side of the ideas that they will begin to offer when given the chance.  It will shock even the best business owners how much these trusted believers will produce great options for better success.  The glue will be found in this kind of work.  The best and most successful business owners in this world will describe how much their key people mean to them.  They will praise them, offer honest approbation and lift them up even when the worst has happened.  This is where you will find the strongest glue.  Unfortunately, most self-taught business owners have no idea how this stuff works.  They do not have a clue about this kind of leadership.

That may be the key reason why so many small business models fail.  The leader always feels as if they need to do it their way.  How silly can that be?  Reality says, it is not silly nor is it funny.  However, it happens far more than it should ever surface.  It is likely one of the most damaging methods for leading a troubled business out of the dark chambers where loss and failure find their way.  Self repair stinks.  It usually adds gasoline to an already burning fire.  It is a bad method to use when the search for stronger glue is alive.

Get serious about building better business relationships.  They will be needed some day.  It will be very cool to be able to tap them when the time of challenge arrives.  Give praise.  Offer abundant approbation where it is deserved.  Teach your key people how to function in your world of business desires.  Give them the best tools and the best opportunities to do the best they can do.  Give them rope and responsibilities.  Be careful with your methods as you hold them accountable for the work they do.  See them grow.  Help them grow.  Give them the credit they deserve.  You will find this process very useful for producing the strongest glue your business requires.  This is truly where the best glue resides.

Until next time...