Are Your Business Strategies Random Or Connected?

When you market your business make sure you plug into the right circuit.  You want to design your business like a network of connections that all tie together.  If you are a B2B technology firm that helps develop complicated platforms and integrated architecture for international business distributors, know who you are and what you do.  Design your business to stick to the model you prefer to perform.  Do not jump around looking to make money in areas of service you do not prefer to perform.  Stick to knitting, is the traditional term.

As you define what business you are in make sure you keep working on your strategies to support what your business does.  It sounds elementary, but many good business models make this simple mistake.  They tend to drift around a little bit to 'test' some areas of revenues they think they may want to add to the model of their business efforts.  Sometimes they feel as if they are missing something.  When this type of thinking occurs, usually the marketing plan gets a little bit damaged.

In fact, many good businesses have a really good grip on doing what they do best.  Many of the good business models hire the right people to fill in with the right skills needed to service the right stuff they do.  Often times these models need to reach out and market their wares to increase sales and shares.  Some of these good models do not handle the marketing of their wares very well.  Sometimes they try to build a clever advertising program and send out a series of messages that do not accurately depict who they are and what they do.  Good business models make this mistake more often than they are willing to admit.

It is not uncommon to see this type of marketing mistake occur in a dysfunctional designed business model.  A business model designed 'at random' has the strong probability to produce a disjointed marketing plan.  Strategy sessions flash all over the place to try and capture too many 'popular' business trends and ideas that distract the model away from becoming tightly designed with a driven purpose.  Too many on and off again procedures inhibit growth and maturity.  A business that is not well connected with all of its moving parts is a business operating on random strategies.  Marketing successfully to the marketplace with a model designed in this format is a very dangerous and expensive affair.  Chances to plug into the business with a message that helps the customer find and use the offers made is a risky step for a randomly designed business to approach.  This statement is so prophetic many business owners miss the value in its depth.  If your business is well connected with all of its parts, your marketing plan is much easier to design for success.  What you need to do to reach who you want is so much easier to target when your model is strategically connected.

If your B2B technology firm is working internationally bound with distribution companies who are struggling with delivery and production issues on synchronization, you know what to do, where to get it done and who to help you to do what you do best.  If a friend calls and asks you to help one of his own friends with the redesign of one of his shopping malls in New York City, you will gladly give him a referral to someone you know who does that kind of work.  When the time comes to reach out and market your model to increase customer shares, you will not present an advertising plan that suggests your business works well on the redesign efforts of shopping malls in America.  You will present the things you are doing well and stick to those things as you send the message to new customers about what you do and where you do it.  It seems so simple.  Yet, I watch great business models make this simple mistake all of the time.

I do not even know the key players of the models as I wonder what the heck they are trying to do.  Sprint uses its CEO as its face of change in its efforts to try to tell the consumer who they are and what they do.  Do you get it?  Does the customer get it?  Do you actually see what Sprint does and completely understand who they are and what they do?  I am not convinced.  Are you?  Look at your phone, is it a Sprint phone?  How well is that marketing plan working?  They spend a great deal of money trying to increase their market share.  Is what they are spending matching what they are gaining?  I am not convinced and I do not know their numbers.  I might be wrong...but I do not see the connectivity of their model with the cost of the messages they are spending to send.  They do not appear well connected; professional yes, well connected, no.

If Your Life Was A 24-Hour Clock, What Time Is It?

At Midnight, It All Ends!

The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.  Period.  End of debate.

We want to avoid absolutes.  We want some debate.  We feel as if we have gained control when we are able to debate a subject.  We do not feel we have any control when we discover that "no" really means "no" or when "yes" really means "yes".  Furthermore, we like "yes" better than "no".  "Yes" gives us permission.  "No" restricts our movements.  He dislike restrictions.  "Yes" is usually our best answer when we are searching for permission.  Usually "yes" does not force us to accept something we do not like.  We prefer the answer "yes" more than we care to hear "no".  In the world of absolutes, we prefer to hear "yes".

Given this truth, if we ask permission to do something, "yes" is our preferred answer.  We want permission.  We want allowances.  We want options.  We want choices.  To ask someone for permission the best answer we are searching for is the answer, "yes."  Taken a step forward, if we ask someone whether or not we are annoying them and their answer is "Yes", we want to find out why.  In this case, "yes" does not become the best answer we want to hear, unless of course, we are given room for some debate.  Under this circumstance, we prefer that the answer "yes" opens up the gates for debate.  We want to find out why they feel we annoy them.  We do not want to treat this rejection as an absolute.  We need room to move.  We need debate.

It is easy to see how we prefer to avoid absolutes.  We want to examine deeper why someone felt we were annoying them.  We need to examine the options, the excuses and the justifiable reasons why we are being rejected.  We want to develop some room for protective debate.  We need to debate their view.  We want to avoid their absolutes.  Absolutes do not permit us to exercise our desire for control.  Absolutes give us no options.  Having no options leave us with no control.  We want options.  We want control.  Options give us the idea that we have some control.

When someone offers us unsolicited advice, we can become offended.  Who do they think we are?  What gives them the right to tell us an absolute that might be totally wrong?  The debate begins because we want more options to help them to understand us better.  Furthermore, why do we need to do what they want us to do?  Who made them God?  We consider their advice as being something similar to an absolute.  Remember, we are not hot on absolutes.  Absolutes remove our sense of choice.  They limit our desire for options.  Keep in mind that it is our desire for options that allows us to control our lives and gives us this wonderful feeling of self control.  This is where most of us find meaning in our life.  Therefore, when someone offers unsolicited advice for us to do something other than what we are already doing, we consider it to be an unwanted order...an unwelcoming mandate...an absolute.  We do not take absolutes kindly.  We will likely do just the opposite to show them how much control we really have.  Even if doing the opposite actually hurts our station in life.  We do it anyway.  We want control.

Conclusion?  We do not like absolutes.  They tend to kill off our sense for having options.  We want more control in our lives than having no options.  Absolutes are too narrow for us to accept.  So when someone says the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, we want that statement to become open for debate.  It sounds more like an absolute instead of an option.  We prefer to skip over the absolutes.  We would much rather circle our options.

Except for one thing...life and death.  These are the areas where we accept absolutes.  We accept having been given life.  We allow many debates about how we were given life, but life itself is an absolute.  We accept that.  We are alive and that is an absolute we can accept.  We know we came from somewhere, that is an absolute.

We also die.  That, too, is an absolute.  We accept death as an absolute.  Death will happen.  These are not subjects we will debate openly.  We accept them.  We may have modified what they represent, life and death, but we know they exist and we know and accept that they will occur.  The physical events of life and death will occur to us and we accept these absolutes.

Let's examine the absolute of death.  We know it will happen to us someday.  This truth is an absolute.  However, we will comfortably open up the debate by examining the when, where, how and why subjects of the arrival of death.  What and who are already accepted.  What happens is that we will die.  Who it happens to is us.  What and who are not debatable.  "Who" is us and "what" is death.  We only have when, where, how and why remaining to debate...and we freely debate those.

What if we treated when, where, how and why...like a regular clock?  What if the clock we used only had 24 hours to run?  When we were born that 24-hour clock began to run.  When we die, the clock stops running.  What if we are only given 24 hours on our clock of life?  These are the rules.  Each life gets 24 hours to do everything they do in a lifetime.  Under these rules, what time is it in your life?  Is it 10 A.M., noon, 5 P.M. or is it nearly midnight?  Let's open up the world of debate for the remaining hours we have left to live.

Let's examine our personal 24-hour clock and see what time it is in our life.

In A Business Heart, Everything Is Competitive.

Driving on a boulevard that has street lights running on a timer, the business owner will try to 'hit' every one of them without stopping.  The business owner will either slow down the pace or speed it up a little bit to make sure each stop light can be 'hit' without having to come to a complete stop at the red light.  The owner will even roll very slowly at the end in order to win!  It is not considered cheating.  As long as a complete stop did not occur, he wins.  It is a competitive thing.

When reading the mail the owner will find some of the material useless, wad up the paper into a small ball then turn and try to make a basket into the garbage with the waste.  It is a competitive thing.  The owner might even go through the plant and round up a couple of the other business associates to head downstairs for a cup of coffee during break time.  They will use a carpet line on the floor in the hallway as a marker to pitch coins from 20 feet away to see who comes the closest.  The associate whose coin lands the furthest away from the make-shift line buys this round of coffee.  Some comments, maybe some yells and growls will highlight the last pitched coin as it almost wins!  It is a competitive thing.

Owners are competitive by nature.  Everything they seem to touch is a bit competitive.  Business owners are sometimes very bad movie partners.  They are always trying to figure out what will happen next in the movie.  They get excited when they are right with their predictions.  They will even describe who's celebrity voice is being used in animated movies and commercials.  Everything to them is a game.  Business owners usually dominate conversations.  They always sound like salesmen.  They are trying to convince, convince and convince.  It is a competitive thing.  In a business heart, everything is competitive.

Are Your Business Methods Held In A “Day-Tight” Compartment?

I have sat in the passenger seat of many automobiles in my life.  Whatever the reason for being the passenger on these automobile trips, someone else did the driving.  I usually do the driving.  One thing I notice when I am the passenger, not every driver uses the same techniques.  In fact, some are kind of scary.  Some do not pay attention as much as I think they should.  I recall thinking about trying to convince a few of the drivers to allow me to finish doing the driving.  My goal was to make sure we arrived in one piece.

Automobile driving is a lot like building a business.  We do not get into the automobile without really knowing where we are going.  However, we do waste some trips.  Some of our trips were not as worthwhile as we first thought they might be.  Other trips were so quick we do not even remember taking them.  Occasionally, a trip is so good we wonder why we have not taken this one before.  Some trips are not very much fun at all.  Some we take because we have to, not because we want to.  Some of our trips included passengers we do not really like.  Also, some of the destinations we drove to were not the ones we really enjoyed.  Once in awhile, we got lost.  I remember driving many times when an accident nearly happened.  I remember being surprised and having to quickly react to avoid a terrible crash.  I remember falling asleep when I was at the steering wheel.  I remember getting mad at the other drivers and doing some stupid road rage stuff to get even with their stupidity.  I remember turning around because we realized we forgot something.  I remember turning around because we did not like where we were going.  I remember fighting and arguing with my wife while I was trying to drive.

I remember thinking how mad I was when the government said I needed to wear a seat belt.  At the time, that rule just seemed like too much.  I have driven too fast, too slow and too reckless to be proud of managing my automobile very well.  I have used my cell phone while driving my car.  I shave, brush my teeth, talk on the phone, eat food and drink coffee while I am driving.  I have driven vehicles that were dangerous to drive.  I have driven vehicles that were difficult to drive.  I have driven on roads that were not very safe to navigate.  I have driven in weather that should have caused a tragic wreck.  Guess what?  Operating a business includes a lot of these same characteristics.  Driving an automobile is a lot like building a business.  They are very much the same in a lot of ways.

One of the things drivers do not do when they get behind the wheel of their vehicle, they cannot function safely by treating the trip as if they are the only ones on the road.  Drivers must share the rules, the road and the spaces they use with other people and other things.  The trip always has a ton of obstacles in the road.  Drivers must learn how to navigate those obstacles.  Sometimes a driver needs to go west for a bit in order to end up somewhere in the east.  They cannot just drive straight east through some farmers field that has not been made into a road.  They must stay on the pavement even though it may wind around the wrong direction for a few miles before it leads back into the correct direction.  Drivers cannot navigate their vehicles well in a 'day-tight' compartment.  Sometimes it will take 162 miles to actually travel 91 miles to a destination.  Sometimes it will take 6 hours to arrive at a place that should have taken about 3 hours to do.  Obstacles simply got in the way.  To drive successfully requires the person behind the wheel to operate outside of a 'day-tight' compartment.  Drivers need to become more flexible.  A driver cannot safely hold the freeway speed at 65 miles per hour while going through a construction zone.  They cannot go 65 miles per hour next to standing workers who are flagging along side a bumpy 'make-shift' detour.  Staying in a 'day-tight' compartment would be foolish and dangerous driving.

Business owners need to understand this rule.  Drivers usually get it.  Business owners often miss it.  The roads to success in business have many hidden obstacles that business owners often ignore.  Warning signs are everywhere but owners sometimes refuse to read them.  Many owners have the foot down on the gas and believe the fast speed they are driving in their business is the best way to operate.  They become enclosed into a 'day-tight' compartment.  I have watched many owners drive their businesses at full speed right through some of the bumpiest roads anyone could endure.  They also experience a tragic business wreck.  It may be a wreck that easily could have been avoided.  Business methods do not need to be held in a 'day-tight' compartment.  They need to be flexible.

Why Do We Reject Good Advice?

Habits can be a very good thing to have.  Fishing for compliments can become a very good habit.  If our habits protect the work we are proud of doing, we will continue to do more of what we like to do.  We like to do what feels good to do.  We also like to do for others what others seem appreciative for us to do.  These kinds of patterns rule our lives.  We tend to rub up next to the things in our lives that feel good.  Life can be otherwise nasty at times so we prefer to remove anything from our lives that represent patterns that are contrary to helping us feel good.  We want to feel good.

We develop habits that are more likely supportive to the patterns that will help us feel good.  Sleeping in late feels good.  It can become a problem if it interferes with our working schedule, but it feels good.  Eating a chocolate candy bar feels good.  Having six of them each day feels good, but can eventually challenge our budget and health.  Drinking a good beer or a great glass of wine feels good.  Drinking a few of them in a row feels better, but every night this pattern can do some serious damage.  We like to do things that help make us feel good.  It is one of our great desires.

When we get home from a long day at work we do not like to walk in and have someone complain to us about something we forgot to do before we left for work in the morning.  That does not make us feel good.  We reject patterns of this nature.

We tend to gravitate towards the things that help us feel good.  We work our patterns in life to become more familiar and more closely associated with getting around those things that help us to feel good.  These efforts eventually become our leading habits.  We do them over and over and over until they occur without our 'official' thought process.  They become involuntary for us to do.  We no longer need to think about them for us to do them.  They 'just happen' because they help us feel good.  Our mind develops a complicated support system to honor the things we know will help us to feel good.  Our mind will creatively find all kinds of ways to make the things we like to do become common habits to how we respond to the changing things all around us.  Our complicated mind will protect us from the things that interfere with any of our 'feel good' patterns.  All we want to do is feel good about what we are doing.  We are not necessarily interested in whether or not it is good for us to do what we are doing, just as long as it feels good for us to do.

This kind of approach to life can take over our patterns of knowing what is right and what is wrong.  We can actually do some very wrong things and justify why it is alright for us to do them.  The line between right and wrong can get so faint that we will decide to do the wrong things on a continuous basis and feel good about doing it.  We smoke cigarettes and do not even give it a thought.  Everything smoking does to make us feel good produces mental results that help us to justify why its alright to feel good about doing it.  That is easy for me to say because I am not a smoker.  I have my own vices, however.  I can live life just fine without ice cream, but I indulge in it more often than I should.  A gallon of ice cream will not last in my house for more than two days.  The same would hold true if I bought two gallons at a time.  Two days, that's it!

Smart People Also Fail In Business.

Really Smart People Can Fail In Business

I have had the pleasure to work for, with and around some very smart people.  Some of those smart people have impressed me so much I cannot believe they have had trouble producing excellent results in their business affairs.  Smart people can and do fail in business.  If they do not fail, many struggle with their business models constantly.  It happens.

One of the brightest people I have had the pleasure to share in business experience has struggled to win in his business model for the best part of the past decade.  I have met a lot of really bright people in my business walk.  This particular business owner is one of the brightest.  The characteristic that sets his wisdom so far out in front of the other really smart business owners is his ability to know what to do well before a trend has turned itself into a reality.  He possesses the uncanny skill to 'see' what needs to be done well before the trend has arrived.  Very few business owners have exhibited his level of accuracy of knowing where to be on the coming trends, well before they arrive.  He also knows how to properly arrange and prepare his business model to take full advantage of his insightful skills.  His excellence on this particular set of skills is unparalleled.  It has always amazed me how he can define where a trend in his industry is headed and how well he designs his model to capitalize on that change.

So why does he struggle so much in his business affairs?

First of all, I will lay money on the fact that if we were on current speaking terms, he might deny that his business model is struggling.  Even though he has excellent skills in some areas of business savvy, other areas of great need are null and void.  The challenges his business faces in the areas he carry's the most weaknesses are costing him a wonderful chance to make it big in the business world.  This type of leadership plagues even the best operators, including the ones who have the most intelligence.  Really smart people can struggle in the business world.

If you are one of the really bright people in this world and you own a business, how do you know if your business model is struggling?  How do you know if what you are doing is the right thing to be doing?  When do you accept the recession as your fault for failure as opposed to accepting some other reasons?  Let's examine some of these 'hard-to-come-to-terms-with" scenarios.  If you are really smart, you will find this post kind of uncomfortable.  Smart people might consider this post to be kind of elementary.  They might find this subject kind of offensive.  If so, I urge those really smart people to push through it and read on.  It might be good for them to get a little more humble and begin working on the voids in their operational style which are simply killing their business opportunities for better success.  The truth remains, really smart people can and do struggle in their business models.  Unfortunately, really smart people also have some of the highest levels of denial I have ever witnessed.  Maybe that is why they struggle so much.  If you are really smart and you have been struggling in your business for a long time, you might be one of those business owners who is beginning to get irritated with this particular post.  Push through it.