Your Business Has Annual Benchmark Celebrations

This weekend marks the annual celebration of the birthday for The United States of America.  It is Independence Day on July 4th.  Everyone knows this day as the 4th of July.  Employees in almost every business sector 'get-the-day-off' and usually they get paid!  It is a big day for celebration.  Fireworks, camping, vacationing, barbeque's, backyard parties, television specials, flags, billboards, road signs, display windows, veterans events, Harley Davidson rides, t-shirts, clothing, special restaurant dishes and just about anything else you can think of has been arranged to 'mark' this day as a big celebration.  Every year it is a big thing.  As it should be.  It is a very big birthday.

Do you celebrate the birthday of your business?  If you do not, why not?  Look at the amount of 'extra' revenue that can be generated as a part of your annual birthday celebration.  Do you not think your customers care about you anymore than that?  Get serious.  You should and do have customers who care about your business birthday.  Where is the cake?  Where are the streamers?  Where are the special offers?  Where is the community program you select each year to benefit from the proceeds you generate during your annual birthday celebration event?  Why do you not promote this type of big deal?  Look how the market has responded to such a celebration.  Look at the huge energy consumers put forth to celebrate the 4th of July.  They like to celebrate big birthdays.  By all means, give them an excuse to celebrate yours.  It is good business if it is done correctly.  Learn how to manifest your annual celebration into something the consumer can enjoy and expect to honor.  Learn how to make it a very big thing.  Consumers like that kind of event.  Consumers want that kind of excuse to celebrate for fun.

When I was managing my furniture store our annual birthday for the store fell on the same month that a competitor used to celebrate their birthday.  To avoid market confusion, I made sure our birthday celebration fell three weeks before the competition celebrated their own birthday.  This means we had to run our annual promotion and celebration almost one month ahead of the competition, one month prior to its actual date of recognition.  Only we knew the truth.  When we established that pattern it almost always looked like the competition was trying to copy our annual birthday celebration.  It was as if we got to enjoy another day of recognition without the event occuring.  We never called it an Anniversary Sale, either.  They did, but we did not elect that terminology in our promotions.  We called it our Birthday!  We always used the terminology, "It's Our Birthday, Let's Celebrate!"  Our celebration looked like a fun event.  Their celebration looked like a sale.  This is a big difference in marketing.

This kind of approach had more market appeal and made a less commercial approach.  Using the birthday terms might sound less like the excuse to run a sale as opposed to being a celebration the consumer could participate in and enjoy.  Some business models sound too much like trying to do business.  It may be beneficial to do a celebration that does not sound like an excuse to generate more business.  Consumer do not need a new excuse to spend more money.  They need an excuse to have more fun.  They spend more money when they are having more fun.  That is one of the reasons why the 4th of July works so well for business.  The consumer is trying to have more fun.  They tend to spend more money when they are having fun.  That is what we call a clue.  Give them more fun to enjoy.

Birthday celebrations are completely understood by the consumer.  They like them and comprehend what they mean.  They recognize how much fun a birthday celebration can carry.  Make sure you do your business birthday with this understanding in mind.  Too many business models celebrate their annual anniversaries as if they need to tell the customer who they are and how long they have been in business.  The customer does not really care about that stuff.  Stop trying to feed them what they do not want to eat.  This very mistake could be the reason why a recent business associate told me they do not do very well with their annual anniversary sale.  They may be presenting the annual event in the wrong consumer format.  Customers do not care about what you feel about your own birthday, unless of course, they can benefit from the celebration stuff.  They want the birthday celebration to be their own.  Make sure you do a good job projecting that desire.

The 4th of July is adopted by the consumer as being their own personal holiday.  They have taken full possession of the annual event.  This is a major marketing tip.  Pay close attention to how this kind of effect happens.  Consumers want control.  Consumers love to have fun.  Consumers want to believe what they want to believe.  Consumers will spend when you give them a beautiful excuse to spend.  Consumers also like to know that when they spend, someone who needs help benefits from their spending.  Consumers like to help out those who need help.  Learn how to dovetail this process into your annual birthday celebrations.

Too Much Pressure Hurts The Business Leader

I recall a time when my sportsmanship was lacking.  I was filled with unwanted pressure.  It was the kind of pressure that can sneak up on a leader and destroy the ability to attract winning ways.  It was the kind of pressure that can interfere with the smooth flow of harmony.  It was the kind of pressure that can irritate the results that a business leader prefers to produce.  Too much pressure hurts the business leader.

I spent my youth playing baseball.  Baseball was my life.  I slept with my bat and glove.  I played baseball every waking moment of almost every single day.  I skipped summer family outings and small camping trips to play baseball in my youth.  My family had a boathouse and a boat on the river.  I never visited it much because I was busy playing baseball.  They had 'boat house neighbors' I did not know that spent a lot of time at the river with my family.  I remember going to the boathouse a few times here and there to go visit my family.  They had this ongoing conversation in the relationship with their 'boat house neighbors' that I did not understand.  It was not like any other relationship my family had with their other friends.  I would see a completely different side of personalities my family had with these people.  It was strange.  They all seemed to have fun with it.  It was like walking into a different world with my family.  I would always go back to my baseball world after a short visit once in a while at the boathouse.

My baseball life was the center of my world.  After three years of Division I College Baseball, I decided to hang up the cleats.  I put an end to my baseball career.  Once I decided to end my baseball interests, I moved onto some other segments that captured my attention.  I needed to focus on school and my business career.  Even so, baseball always remained as a small part of my heart and passion.  I still follow the college team where I once played.  They have won the College World Series two times.  They are an excellent program still to this day.  The kids they attract now play a whole lot better than we did many years ago.  Baseball dominated my younger years.

When my work life took over my time and interests I drifted away from playing baseball in those recreational city leagues with old college and high school friends.  Eventually I quit playing any baseball at all.  I even stopped watching local high school teams play.  At one time, I enjoyed watching the young kids play.  I became too involved with my business career to spend any time following baseball activities.  I had enough trouble finding time to spend with my young family and the business model I was trying to build.  Those responsibilities had a way of dominating my waking hours.

I recall one local high school baseball club that was made up of some average kids with a great coach.  Their coach was once one of my baseball local idols.  He was a few years older than I was and he played baseball with a furious attitude.  When I was young and growing up he was one of my favorite local baseball idols.  Years later, he became a great local baseball coach.  His teams were always competitive.  Some of them have won state titles.  He coaches with the same kind of intensity he used to play with.  One year he had a bunch of average kids.  He helped to teach those kids how to make the most of their average talent.  This group of kids became a short term group of local favorites.  They had bumped their way through a rough season enough to qualify for the state playoffs.  I had learned how they had made every lucky bounce go their way.  They were the talk of the town.

They reached the semi-final round of play and were scheduled to meet the best team in the State.  It was a scheduled game that would have the local kids travel to the city where the best team would host the next game.  It was rained out.  They moved the game to the small town where we lived in order to keep the playoff schedules moving on time.  I had heard about this change in location for the game.  It was big news around town.

Business Travels, Here Is What I See, Final Chapter.

It was a great trip.  We had a lot of fun.  As small as we are, we are still a part of the economy that is struggling to find its way back to a reasonable sense of business activity.  The trends I witnessed running and weaving their ways through this fragile economy we are trying to manage are trends that have a serious sense of tenderness.  You can feel it.  You can see it.  Even though I was able to see some business models operating in a flourishing pattern, some were not even part of the activity game.  There are still a lot of business models headed for the drain.  You can see them spinning out of control.  They lack the decent foot traffic necessary to provide enough economic movement to generate the appropriate levels of revenue to pay their basic operational bills.  You can see many business models suffering deeply.  It is not good news to witness a lot of business models still trying to cut out large segments of their operating budgets to survive.  It is very evident.

Debt is a big monster.  Debt kills foot traffic.  Debt creates a more sensitive buyer.  The people who have the ability to purchase at a pace of consumption this economy requires are people gathered together in a very small segment of our economy.  If you plan on serving those few who have that purchasing ability, the people who belong in that small market segment, you better get serious about how you approach their interests.  If you do not like BMW's, Range Rovers, Lexus, Prius, Suburu's, Mazda's, big SUV's like Tahoe's, Mercedes, Audi's, Corvettes, Camaro's, Infiniti's, Altima's, F150's, Camry's, Honda CR-V's, RAM's, Civic's, Sonata's and anything newer than 2008, you are likely marketing to the wrong segment right now.  Those were the vehicles in the parking lots that were full.  Get to know who these customers are.  They are not only buying, they are able to buy.

What are these people doing to be able to generate enough revenue to spend it?  Where do you think they work?  What do you think they do to earn what they earn?  If your business model is struggling financially, get out your yardstick.  Go figure it out.  You no longer have the luxury of having a diversified and varied market place full of everyone who has the ability to spend discretionary money.  That kind of marketplace has nearly vanished.  Quit assuming it will come back any day now.  It is gone and will be gone for a very long time...if it ever returns.  Accept this current truth.  You no longer have the luxury of earning your market share with a random business approach.  You now need to target where the market is moving and get your business model designed to attract that small group.  If you do not understand this responsibility, your business model will continue to struggle to find its way to survival.  You do not need to believe me on this one.  However, you will get to prove it to yourself.  Your reality is likely sitting on your front door step of the business model you are currently trying to turn around.  I hate saying these types of tough things, but the truth is the truth.  Your activity growth, your volume growth and your budget is telling you which way you are headed.  If you are spinning out in the wrong direction, it is not temporary.  Wake up and change before it is too late to be able to change.

These are tough words to a business owner who loves what they are doing.  These are tough messages to an owner who had a dream and is watching that dream fizzle to a complete stop.  I know a lot about this particular feeling.  It has happened to me more than I care to admit.  I have had it happen to me in good economic times.  I had no economic excuse!  It was all my fault in that particular case.  My point is simple.  Change, if you are not winning right now.  What's more, you may have to make some radical changes while you are at it.  It ain't gonna' be fun.

Solve Your Business Problems, Don't Just Shift Them Around.

Fear is a nasty challenge.  We do not always catch how we are dominated by fears.  We are afraid to fail on a project so we never try to do it.  Therefore, we fail to do it.  We fail because we are afraid to fail.

We do this kind of stuff all of the time.  We stop performing gutsy stuff because we worry too much about what someone might think of us when we get recognized for not making it happen correctly.  We worry way too much about many of the things that truly do not matter.  We are afraid of what someone might think about us.  Oh, we will tell someone who catches us being afraid about something that we are not afraid.  We do not even know how to admit we are afraid.  We are afraid of what someone might think of us if we admit we are afraid.  I remember a business mentor once asked me a serious question.  He asked, "What are you the most afraid of, failing or succeeding?"

I could not answer that question.  I obviously gave him the traditional answer.  I told him I was more afraid of failing.  He shook his head back and forth quietly with a soft 'roll-of-the-eyes' gester that said no way.  He might as well have responded by saying, "Yea, right."  He did not buy my answer.  I remember having this same conversation with another businessman several years later.  I asked him what he was the most afraid of, failing or succeeding?  His answer was as swift as mine was years earlier.  He said, "Failing, I suppose."

We are so afraid of failing.  We fail to recognize how much failing dominates our fears.  We do not even want to be wrong when we answer that simple question.  We are dominated by our fears.  Our fears have wrestled our courage into a weak ball of procrastination procedures.  Every time we plan to do something really big, we discover some great reasons why we cannot do that really big thing.  It becomes a little rubber band we wrap around the other rubber bands we use to make this funky big ball.  Eventually we hold onto this useless ball of rubber bands.  We set it on our desks as if it is something to be proud of, something others will admire.  It is silly.  I do it, you do it.  We allow our silly fears to get in the way of doing some very big and wonderful things in our lives.  Go read the previous post about the dental hygienist and her electrician husband who had two good incomes providing a fair safety net series of reasonable jobs as they stepped out of that comfort zone and decided to build two unique business models on their own.  They decided to risk it all by stepping out into the risky world of small business ownership just to find a better lifestyle to manage.  They were not afraid to fail.  What is even more important, they were not afraid to succeed.  Go read it.  It is titled, "Oh, By The Way...I Have A Question For You."  Go check it out.  It has some deeper lessons buried inside it about managing fears successfully.

Study what was not said.  Think about what was not shared.  Do not assume that these people were just 'lucky.'  They were not lucky.  They did have many things come up in their lives that presented them with some big challenges to learn how to overcome.  They faced the same curve balls you and I face.  They had the same type of mental stress you and I feel.  They made the same mistakes you and I experience.  The difference between their succees and ours is that they did not just shift their problems around, from note list to note list, they solved them.  They were not afraid to succeed.

Sour Grapes Does Not Make Good Business Wine

I have been hired to work in business models located in small communities.  A lot of my leadership roles have been placed in communities that have less than 10,000 people.  Many of those smaller communities have less than 5,000 people.  Some of the business models I have managed in these smaller market areas were models designed to provide products and services to these little communities.  I happen to like small communities.  It is a good thing.  They are peculiar to market.  They can become very sensitive to sour grapes.

In order to perform well in these smaller communities, the business model must operate in a very strategic fashion.  If the revenue of the business model is dependant upon the active trade coming from the patrons of the small community, the need for a strategic approach was more acute.  Small social mistakes can mysteriously diminish patron support in smaller communities.  A local social mistake, sour grapes, can appear as if the business model is offering the local patrons something that carries an insensitive desire to ignore the needs of those local patrons.  It can become so serious the business model will feel as if it is trying to offer the patrons some kind of plague.  Sour grapes will not help the business model perform well in that market.

Small communities are amazing markets to develop for volume success.  They can be very peculiar.  You have to become part of them before they allow your business model to become part of you.  Otherwise, you are an outsider and your business model will never become a part of you nor will you ever be allowed to become part of them.  You and your business model will be 'left out.'  If you do not understand this marketing process, do not expand your business model into a small community.  You will suffer greatly until you practice what they preach!  When in Rome, do as the Romans do.  It is a simple concept.  It is so difficult to design your business model to honor it, however.  Sour grapes are difficult to monitor.  Sour grapes are difficult to identify.  Sour grapes are difficult to anticipate.

Sour grapes can come from anything that socially sets them off.  Once they are 'set off' they can become very difficult to attract.  Small communities work like little pockets of information centers.  If one of those little pockets becomes offended by some social mistake your business model performs, that pocket will see to it that many other local pockets get this offensive information circulated about.  You will not 'see' this activity.  Your business volume will only 'feel' it.  It is not a mysterious scenario.  It is real, however.  Be aware of how much sour grapes can produce terrible business wine.

If you are not 'family' to those in a small community learn how to become everything else to them.  Learn how to provide them the feeling that you are just like family.  Make sure you hire locally.  Help them find work for those they love and care about.  Make sure you participate in their social lunch meetings at the grange halls.  Make sure you honor their children in the high schools, sports, academics and community recognition and honor programs.  Make sure you help them with their community events.  Make sure you are center in the media process they find important.  Attend their precious funerals.  Become part of what they are.  Become family.

When you fail to respect these things, your business model is a foreigner.  Sour grapes to a small community.

Take Your Business Work More Seriously

When I was circling my wife trying to capture her attention so she would come my way I became very creative.  I brought her flowers.  One of those flowers was a four foot long stem of blooms cut from a Yucca plant growing in my yard.  She stopped by my house after she got off from work one day and I made a flower arrangement for her to take home.  The Yucca stem was the centerpiece of the arrangement.  When she drove home in her little compact car, it was sticking out of the rider side window.  She eventually married me.  I looked like a creative catch!

We do these things when we want to attract attention.  The business I was in at that time was trying to attract her attention.  One evening we both talked on the telephone so long that we eventually began to hear the birds singing and chitter chatting.  We had talked all night and into the next morning.  We certainly do not have that many words to string together for each other like that anymore.  We need more sleep, today.  We do those kind of things when we are trying to attract attention.

I once heard a comedian tell a string of jokes about what men do to attract the attention from the lady they are circling prior to marriage and what they quit doing after they get married.  One of those things was dancing.  My wife and I used to go out and dance all of the time.  I think some weekends we would go to two or three different clubs to dance for hours.  Since we got married, I bet I have not taken her out to dance more than three times.  We have been married almost thirty years!  Comedians are the most funny when they are telling the truth.  Comedians help us laugh at ourselves in a freindly way.  We tend to do funny things when we are trying to get the attention of someone.

My wife and I work on different methods today as we spend time trying to get each others attention.  We call them dates!  We go get ourselves a couple of smoothies and head to an oil change lubrication facility and chat about stuff while they work on our vehicle in the lift bay.  We call it a date.  We never have to leave the car.  It is a convenient date and the television is no where to be found.  Sometimes, she says to me..."It's time for another date."  That usually means one of our vehicles is due for an oil change and she needs my full attention because she has some things she wants to cover.  We have learned how to reward ourselves for this process, we get a smoothie.  The guys who work at the oil change shop see us coming and immediately make comments about how we are arriving for another date.  We nod and confirm their observations.

We take oil changes very seriously.  They have become one of our many board rooms for discussions.  Sometimes I learn some really important stuff about my three daughters while my vehicle gets its new change of oil.  We take this family business work more seriously.  We both own business models and are usually filling our daily time chips up with business related items.  There is never enough time in a day to complete the business work we want and need to do.  My wife and I have become opportunists.  We have learned how to squeeze in serious stuff with the routine items that must be done to maintain a smoothly operated life.  Oil changes are one of those routine maintenance duties that we have converted into a date, a board meeting and a vehicle maintenance deed...all-in-one.  Sometimes after the oil is changed, and we have had a good board session, we head to a shopping location and walk around checking stuff out.  We look like to soft executives who just made some monster decision about which way we are turning our business matters.  We walk with more confidence in the stores we find worth shopping at that time.  It might be gift ideas, garden stuff for our home or some new clothing, we are never sure.  We just feel better about getting some serious stuff resolved.

Take your business work more seriously.