Whomever Takes Credit, Takes Nothing.

I like a good cup of coffee.  I am a coffee junkie.  I am not particular about my coffee until I have a really good cup.  Then all of the sudden, it catches my attention.  If someone makes a good cup of coffee, I usually ask them what brand and variety they used.  I am interested in knowing the type of bean that made that good cup.  It is a funny thing, however, sometimes it is the technique of the brewer that makes the good cup happen.  Yet I really never ask what specific techniques in the process they used to brew the cup.  I have my favorite coffee shops and in each of them I have my favorite brewers.  I know there is a difference.  I can taste it.

Sometimes I will arrive to my favorite coffee shop expecting to get a great cup of coffee and I do not see my favorite brewer on schedule.  Subconsciously I say to myself, "Not today."  So I usually cover for the rest of the brewers and ask for my cup to be extra 'hot' so I can experience a fairly good cup of coffee, just in case.  It is as if I want to win even if the cards are stacked against me.

We all have habits and some brewers just do not change how they make their coffee.  They make their coffee pretty much the same way every time.  Who gets the credit when the cup is really good?  The coffee shop?  The type of coffee bean?  The brew master?  I have met people for a cup of coffee when I am doing business with them.  I will ask them where they want to go for a cup of coffee.  A lot of them will describe their favorite coffee shop.  So we meet where they want to go.  Some will pick a shop that carries a certain brand of coffee bean.  They will tell me why they like that coffee shop, it has the 'right' bean...StumpTown, or some other particular brand.  Never once has someone said they wanted to go to a particular coffee shop because 'Kevin' is there and he makes the best cup.  Never once has anyone ever mentioned the brewers name as their favorite.  It is usually the shop or the bean that gets the credit.  The brewer takes nothing.

We are funny creatures when it comes to being customers.  We develop interesting patterns that we use to support how we buy what we purchase and where we go to buy the items we buy.  We have interesting patterns we develop that support our buying habits.  We buy toilet paper just as methodically as we buy good cups of coffee.  The habit of buying stuff is very important to us.  We take the credit when our choices turn out very good.  We blame the shops when our choices are not so good.  We are very protective of the patterns we use to choose where we go to do our business.  We refuse to be recognized as crappy shoppers.  Blame is usually laid on something other than ourselves.  We take the credit when it is a good choice.  We are the ones who found the good deal.  We will actually call someone else to tell them about a great deal "WE" discovered.  We take credit for finding it and want them to know all about what "WE" found.  It is like receiving the great shopping badge!

If you own a business pay close attention to this process.  Shopping successfully is very important stuff to the consumer.  They want to be recognized for the great shopping discoveries they find.  They want to be pleasantly surprised and will immediately share their discoveries with others.  Do the things that will encourage them to feel like they can receive credit for discovering the good things you do.  The 'tell a friend' campaigns you have seen with many large organizations in history have worked very well for those organizations.  State Farm Insurance, Safeway, AT & T and many more have run successful campaigns describing how you can be recognized for telling a friend about what you have found.  State Farm Insurance, Safeway and AT & T did not take the credit in those campaigns, they gave the credit to the consumer.  They 'told' the consumer this is where you can take the credit, tell your friends and family where you made this discovery.    

Your business model should remain humble in its successes.  You want your customers to feel at ease for what they discover, not because you show off to them how well you are doing.  Customers do not like arrogant kinds of marketing.  They feel 'pushed' when you keep taking the credit.  Campaigns that describe how you are number one will eventually ensure that you will slip below the number one spot.  Whomever takes credit, takes nothing.  The consumer will eventually quit trading with an arrogant operation.  That arrogant operation will eventually take nothing.  Once they recognize your organizations arrogance, there will not be much to take anymore.  Be careful.  Remember, customers are very fickle.  They will flash and disappear very quickly.  Learn how to help them 'discover' your good things and make it easy for them to take the credit.  Your check book will love you for it.

How do we do this stuff?  How do we encourage our customers to take credit for what they discover?

Nobody Noticed, So Who Cares Anyway?

Clues Are Everywhere

A couple of days ago a film production crew from a large metro area came to one of the little neighboring communities 25 miles from my hometown.  The little community is a small town of 326 people.  They are like many small town America's trying to make their public services be able to provide basic stuff like schooling and water.  The plight in these small towns across America is real and has been in this type of poor financial condition for so long the 'locals' have come to accept it as being normal.  They have learned the art of how to live on the edge of poverty.  They do a pretty good job of disguising it.

This film production crew was in town setting up a schedule to shoot a series of Audi and Porsche commercials.  (I am not hear to bash these companies, my wife owns an Audi A6.)  These film production companies like the appearance of the old country roads with their narrow 'switch-backs' and 'turns' that roll back and forth through the wheat fields in the area.  The film production crew sent their representative into the community ahead of schedule to make the necessary arrangements to come in and 'use' the facilities they needed to make this set of commercials.  Their representative came into our business and was interested in using a large portion of our 'open space' to park their equipment, crews and automobiles for temporary staging.  Our location was one of the largest spaces available in the area for them to use.  She came into our retail store to discuss the possibilities.

My boss heard about their searching efforts and asked me to work with them and try to see if we could charge them $500 for the rental of our commercial properties.  The lady they sent to do the negotiations was very good at what she does.  She said all of the right things in all of the right ways.  She was not a rookie at securing properties to perform their work.

Before we move on with this story, I must confess some things.  First of all, when I lived in Sacramento, California the company I worked for did a lot of 'staging' work for some commercial media production companies.  I have worked a lot with their production teams and their management staff.  I am fully aware of how much they budget for properties and ancillary costs for each production project they contract to perform.  I have also seen how they produce line item billing sheets for properties they never paid for but charged off as a cost to the customers they produce commercials for by contract.  Property rental costs are a common line item charge.  It is included on all of the line item bills those companies forwarded to their clients.  I have worked with them enough to be able to see the billing process.  Property rental costs are a common line item charge sent to the customer.  Every bill I witnessed had included a charge for property rental costs.  It is common in the production industry.  The customer accepts this portion in their commercial production expenses.  This is the first confession I must share before we move on with this story.

The second confession I must share is that I have worked enough with media production companies to know that they are not performing 'charity' work.  They are a 'for-profit' organization and do very well at it.  I enjoyed working with them because they did very well, financially.  They are able to produce their work with some very strong charges to pass on to their clients.  Their work does not come cheaply.  If you work for one of these companies you are likely a member of a strong teamster organization and 'prevailing wages' are a very common standard in the industry.  The lady who came to make the commercial arrangements had her teamster local number printed on her business card.  This is a common process.  They are a profitable industry.  They are not a 'non-profit' affair.

The third confession I must share is that the industry is littered with dishonesty.  The representatives they send out into these small communities are not honest in what they promise to deliver.  They are good at what they do because they accomplish their work in a quick and effective fashion.  They lead the scheduling and facility uses with precision.  They are great organizers.  They are not great promise keepers.  They are great salespeople and facilitators, not necessarily honest in what they promised to deliver to the people they meet and need to 'use' in their work process.  I have worked with many crews in the past who have this nature deeply embedded into their habit systems.  Monkeys eat bananas, giraffes have long necks to eat tall trees.  The media commercial business has its habit patterns deeply rooted.

Now that I have come clean with my previous experiences with these type of production companies and their customary habits, I can finish the story.  This is a post about keeping your word.  It is also a post on how we forget to respect someones word because it has become so rare.  Nobody notices when we violate our word anymore because it has become so prevalent that it looks normal.  Someone bumps into us on the street and invites us to a neighborhood barbecue and we agree to come.  We do not show up nor do we call to let them know we changed our mind.  It means absolutely nothing to anyone.  We expect it.  Keeping our word is no longer an important element in life to perform.  Nobody cares anyway.

Same Market, Same Conditions, Different Results.

Become Noticed!

I was having a cup of coffee with a friend from out of town.  He was one of those people who gets real excited very easily.  I have a lot of energy, he has a lot of reaction.  He loves conspiracy stories.  Everything is a by-product of some kind of a conspiracy.    One conspiracy viewpoint leads to another one.  He also uses some fast and rough language while he visits with anyone.  In addition to using colorful vocabulary, he is also kind of loud when he speaks.  People in the coffee shop knew he was there.  In fact, everyone in the coffee shop knew what his philosophies were.  I noticed they all noticed him.  He did not notice any of them.

He is a big man in body frame, too.  He stands about six foot seven.  His shoulders are wide and his build looks a lot like a well organized professional basketball player.  He looks to be in fairly good shape.  He smiles a lot so his words and ideas have some friendly parts to his delivery of thought.  He has the ability to 'work' the stage, so to speak.  He tells a fair joke here and there.  I like having a cup of coffee with him once in awhile.  It is usually quite an experience.

We will call his name, Ken.  Ken is one of those guys who gets easily excited about how sour our politics in this country have become.  It is his favorite subject.  He seems to know everything about politics, past and present.  He uses facts and figures as if he has read a library on them.  He makes it very clear that nobody should dispute his theories.  He will not be easily convinced against his will.  He said it, that's a fact and you better accept it.  If you throw a challenge on the table about one of his theories, batten yourself down...the debate begins.  Ken is one of those who is loaded for bear.  He is very ready to take anyone on that does not agree or confirm with him on his thoughts and beliefs.  His response gun is fully loaded and ready to fire off in a loud blaze of glory.  Ken makes that very clear when he chats with you.  It is always kind of fun watching the facial reactions of the others sitting around the coffee shop.  It is very clear most of the people coming into the coffee shop to place an order for their drinks make an effort to work their walk to avoid the area Ken occupies.  They do not want to become part of his shrapnel.

Ken is a perfect example of how someone can work their life into a tizzy and never notice how it became such a tizzy.  It will always be the fault of someone else in his mind.  I use situations like chatting with Ken as an example of how some business owners will operate a similar business in a similar market area with similar marketing conditions and receive completely different results.  Everyone that headed to that coffee shop had a clear idea why they were headed to that coffee shop.  That particular coffee shop is a popular place to hang out.  It seems to be very busy at that shop almost every time I go there.  They do make very good coffee.  They have very good seating spaces and their selection of choices is very good.  Their business model design is very trendy in a good way.  They are not a chain operation but operate much like a good chain might behave.  It is a popular spot.  Ken was obviously attracting a lot of attention.  He did not seem to care about it very much.  It was clear to Ken that any challenges those people had about his views was their own problem.

Wicks Eventually Burn Out

Step Away From Your Model Once in Awhile

What if your business was a standard on-line business?  Would you go to work everyday?  Would you skip a few days in a row and allow the technology to drive the business response activity?  If you designed the on-line business model well enough, you might be able to step away from the model more often.  Did you know that is the same thing that holds true for a brick and mortar business model?  If you designed it well enough, you would be able to step away from it for short periods of time without loosing step in volume production.  It is possible.

The business owners who design their model to require their full time, over-time presence are the business models most susceptible to causing job burn-out.  Your body, your presence is much like a wick.  You can eventually burn out.  You ain't that tough.  Your mind and body will reach some of its natural limits and begin to irritate how you think creatively, constructively and beneficially.  You may not notice this change in your leadership style because we have this wonderful ability to adapt.  However, the destructive activities will begin to erode the wonderful work we do without us first noticing the patterns of destructive work that is being cleverly done.  Our mind and soul will naturally protect us from seeing job burn-out in ourselves but the activities we perform will slightly suffer.  Wicks eventually burn out.  The flame on the candle, quits.  It usually stops suddenly.

I do not practice what I preach.  I flirt with job burn-out in my career.  I give more than necessary to what I am dedicating myself to do in my business world.  It has become my strongest habit to perform.  I work hard on controlling that habit.  I will 'press' my 'go' buttons constantly and keep doing a lot of what I think I need to be doing to make my business life happen well.  It is a deepened part of my business life conditioning.  I can do business 24/7.

Restraint and balance are as important to business success as completing your current idea you are working to introduce.  You do not need to feel guilty for taking a break from the action.  Taking a break from the action is a time to allow your mind and body to rest and restore itself.  Rest and restoration are vital to success.  Make sure you have learned how to employ those success elements in your business developments. They are as important to your business success as your keys are to the locks on the front door.  You will need them on a regular basis.  You will need to re-freshen your daily business work with some restful activities.  If you do not perform adequate rest, your wick will burn out.  All wicks eventually burn out.  Yours is no exception.

Burn-out can be ugly.  I have watched couples get divorced over job burn-out.  I have watched children become forgotten over job burn-out.  I have watched excellent business leaders destroy their wonderful leadership over job burn-out.  I have watched customer service spiral into some of the poorest levels of human respect caused by job burn-out.  I have watched business leaders completely ignore their required sensitivities due to too much energy devoted to preventing job burn-out from surfacing.  Job burn-out is real.  It is debilitating as well.  It can destroy a great business model, and does.

Wicks eventually burn out.

When You Go Fishing, Tighten Up Your Marketing Line.

How many big ideas do you have right now?  Are you thinking of one right now?  Do you have a couple that intrigue you?  Do you have so many cooking in your mind that you do not know which one to start first?

Big ideas are the ones that produce the best results.  They become the flashes of increased activity that fill the trough up for awhile.  Some big ideas make you go build more troughs to hold all of the new activity.  Big ideas are the part of your business model that make you stand out in the crowd.  If your business model does not successfully stand out in the crowd, you do not have a big business.  What becomes your claim to fame?  What do your customers see you are?  Big ideas help make that kind of thing happen.  Your customers recognize who you are by the ideas you were able to pull off.  If you do not have any big ideas, your business model is running very quiet.

Marketing your business model for success requires that you learn how to go fishing better.  You need to go fishing for more customers.  You need to learn how to attract the fish to your line of activity.  Customers swim in bait infested waters.  The amount of bait they must see every day is overwhelming.  Customers are 'hit' with marketing messages constantly.  Sometimes the customer finds you by accident.  Finding your business model should not be one of their accidents.

Customers like to go where the ideas are the best.  Customers hate bad ideas.  Customers hate bad ideas that do not help them do what they want to do.  Customers will actually disappear when the bad ideas become something that produces results they hate to see.  When you go fishing, remember these things.  These things should be in your tackle box.

I have done quite a bit of fishing in my life.  I am not an avid fisherman but I have fished in seven states and three countries.  I have fished deep sea, large rivers, small streams and various lakes and ponds.  I think fishing is fun.  I sometimes fish for the company I am with.  Other times I fish because I like the 'break' I get from the outing event.  Sometimes I fish for the challenge it provides.  Sometimes I enjoy wandering about the streams checking everything out that is some place beautiful where nobody else walks.  The sounds, the wildlife, the wonderful sweet smells, the sunlight sipping through the trees once in awhile and the pureness of mother nature all come together to produce a heavenly place to be.  I enjoy fishing.  It becomes so much more rewarding when you 'get one on.'  I love the surprise of a sudden 'hit' and the 'wiggling' begins.  In a fast moving beautiful stream, it does not get much better than that.  That 'feeling' is a total rush.

I feel the same way when I see this kind of similar thing happen to a business.  When I see a business make the proper arrangements to tighten up their marketing lines I get excited when their results begin to improve.  A business model who finds the right bait in the right water with the right fish at the right time produces a wonderful rush nobody can describe.  The checkbook swells with the activity of the excitement.  When a business finds this kind of success, it usually means they are successfully fishing for more customers.  It means they have learned how to turn their big ideas into a better tightened plan of attack.  When they go fishing, they have learned how to tighten their marketing line.

You do not need a boat.  You do not even need to own a fishing pole.  I have never owned a boat and currently, I have a broken fishing pole.  I do not consider those obstacles any reason for keeping me away from fishing.  Big ideas do not need a boat to survive.  Big ideas do not even need you to own them.  Big ideas only need you to decide to make them happen.  Big ideas are waiting for you to tighten up the 'do it' line so they can become part of your business model.  Learn how to go fishing.

When you go fishing, tighten up your marketing line.

We Care More About The Stuff That Goes Wrong!

The Year We Completed The Stream Bed And Deck

I built an 89 foot stream in my backyard.  We live on the edge of our little town so we look like we live in the country.  We have three homes next door and the nearest one is located 50 yards to the north of our house.  The rest of our property behind our home is sloped gradually up to a 60 degree hill.  It was perfect terrain for building a cool looking stream bed with a couple of nice waterfalls.

We landscaped the area with a couple of starting points to the water flow.  The beginning of the two water sources are separate areas that spill water into a large pond area that overflows its lower edge into the stream bed.  At the bottom of the stream bed is another small water feature that collects the water from the stream and pumps it back up to the two sources at the top of the loop.  Over the large pond at the top of the loop is a small deck which appears to be floating over the pond.  It over-looks the flow of the whole stream down the hill.

On the deck is a cast iron wood burning outdoor stove with a very cool chimney.  We sit out there some nights watching the evening pass by.  It is a great place to chat about stuff.  The water and the fire have some very cool evening lighting installed that makes this place kind of special.  It is almost a perfect campground area in our backyard.  Our backyard is half of an acre.  The landscaping is a woodland-styled arrangement.  We love hanging out in our yard.  Many folks who visit and spend time with us in the yard by the fire have made comments about how peaceful it is outside.  Peaceful environments are a joy to experience.  The world is very loud.  Most of you all know what I mean.

The rocks in the stream bed took eight full trucks to haul in.  Some are very large.  I carried each rock by hand and wheelbarrow.  I shaped the terrain, carried all of the rock and even rolled the real heavy ones down the hill from the top of the place where the water begins.  Two very large rocks were brought in by a paid landscaping crew.  They were just too heavy for me to budge.

It took another three truck loads of river rock to wheelbarrow into the river bed and spread about.  That was a heavy job as well.  Once the larger rocks were in place and the river rock was completely spread about we brought in a full truck load of pea gravel.   The pea gravel was used to make a small path near the lower edge of the stream and some 'landing' areas to design a few woodland landscaped garden features where birds and critters might like to collect.  In total, I suspect the rocks might weigh 15 to 16 tons.  I ruined two wheelbarrows doing the job.

Nine years later it has all grown in nicely.  It is a wonderful place to hang out.  The neighbors house located 50 yards next door is almost invisible now.  The trees and plants we planted have grown up enough to become the nice barrier we originally planned.  Just the very top of the other house down the hill is visible to us now.  We almost feel secluded inside our park.  It would serve as a great entertainment home for someone.  Electrical, plumbing, lighting feature boxes, outlets and music are all located underground.  It is kind of nice.

Our yard has intimidated some guests that are weekend landscapers.  You can tell when they visit it for the first time.  It is an ambitious project.  My neighbor quit three years ago trying to keep up with the Jones'.  He always apologizes for how he keeps up the area that borders our two properties.  We like to keep our woodland area pristine.  It is a big job.  We have never been offended by how he maintains his property.  He worries about it far too much.  He is always apologizing to us about it.

There are several really good stories in this project to talk about.  This kind of project is a perfect example to help point out how a small business should be run.  When you decide to build your business, decide to make it special.  Make sure you focus on how well it attracts others, while at the same time provides you with a peaceful place to maintain.  Your personal rewards need to come from the same place you devote all of your energy to building.  It can be done.  You need to learn how to do that kind of business work if you want your business to be growing hot and attractive.  Make the two elements become one...work and pleasure.