Is Your Business Under-Capitalized?

If you operate a small business in a competitive arena, your business is under-capitalized.  Somehow this statement is so difficult to understand.  Your business is under-capitalized.

I repeat that statement, again...your business is under-capitalized.

A statement made like this one is worth a lot of debate, but it still does not eliminate how your business is under-capitalized.  It is under-capitalized.

Now that we know what problem your business is facing what do we do about it?

We treat your business like it is under-capitalized.  That is what we do.  We do not get crazy or loose about how we "materialize" expenses.  We see deeply how governments make this silly mistake.  They see a problem, "materialize" the money that is needed to solve the problem and then they begin working to manufacture how the problem needs to receive its repair.  Your business will fail if it practices these steps to try and succeed.  Period.

Working your business from this type of approach will only run your costs up beyond what the revenues can support.  You can operate in this fashion for a very long time, but the pain you must endure to survive your debt management methods will eventually wear you and your supporters down.  Your business model will never feel like a good business, because it is not.  Manage your small business as if it is under-capitalized, because it is.

Your great ideas are likely larger than your wallet can afford.  there is nothing wrong with thinking big.  Big thoughts help you to generate good dreams that are wonderful benchmarks for the aim you place in front of your business work.  You need to think big.  You need to practice dreaming big.  You need to build a business model that plans to solve big problems.  Good businesses do those kinds of things.  Big businesses do those kinds of things.  It is necessary to think big if you want a big business.  By all means, think big...try to solve big problems with your business model.

However, thinking big and spending big are two completely different responsibilities.  Do not spend big because your thinking operates big.  Spending is governed by what you can or cannot afford to do.  You must spend little as you think big.  Get used to this idea.  It will always be one of the most important aspects you inject into your business model.  "Tight-wads" build good businesses.  Become a very tough 'tight-wad.'  Watch your pennies, not your millions.  If you do not steward a dollar bill well, you will not accidentally steward a million well.  The stewardship process of one is exactly the same as it is for the other.  The amount has nothing to do with the beauty of practicing the process correctly.  Managing money well is a process.

Your business model will need you to pay closer attention to the money than anything else you do successfully.  You need to respect your business model well enough to accept that it will operate its problem solving efforts as a small business that is under-capitalized.  You will need to become very creative in how you spend money to develop the machinery your business manages.  Learn how to accept this truth and learn how to love the frustrations this process will deliver.  Learn the art of how to make your under-capitalized business a fun challenge to manage day in and day out.  Then one day you will look back upon the trail your business made and discover how large it really is.  You need to understand how this concept will be the main concept you practice and manage.  It will be one of the key components to your business success.

Steward your spending with tightly closed gates while opening up the mental gates all the way to your big dreaming.  How you manage these two processes will likely determine how successful your business becomes.

Is Your Business Model Careful?

Your Business Atmosphere

The atmosphere of your business leadership will govern how the attitude of your employees is constructed.  Your employees are the front line of defense to your customer relations.  Any weaknesses your business model carries will need to be protected from the potential damage those weaknesses generate in the experience your customer feels.  Your employees can go a long way into making those weaknesses become invisible.  If your business model is not a fun place to work, trust me, your employees are making that very clear to your customer base.  Quit expecting your employees to be perfect human beings with the wish that they would somehow save your butt.  You may not like the relationship you have with the sensitive responsibilities your business model requires and it may seem as if those requirements are like a steady balance of walking fast in a narrow canoe.  Whatever the case, the goodness in your business model atmosphere depends heavily upon your careful respect.  You need to learn how to walk more carefully.

Your business model sings well when it knows how to sing.  It also gets burned on the edges when it has material worth igniting.  When the leadership of your business model decides to be fun, respectful, consistent, exciting, challenging, rewarding, dynamic, unique, interesting, tender, honest, reliable and truthful; the minds of its employees will be fun, respectful, consistent, exciting, challenging, rewarding, dynamic, unique, interesting, tender, honest, reliable and truthful.  Your employees will reflect to your customers how their leader behaves.  Employees are like children, they mimic their leader like a mirror.  If the leader shows up late three times per week to scheduled meetings, the employees will follow suit.  They will show up late, also.  Employees do not care who is in charge.  They only care how equal they are being treated.  Employees want one standard of treatment.  They want to know what is safe for them to get away with when they perform their work.  It gives them the sense of freedom they feel they need to express.  By all means, provide it.

Be careful with your business model.  Allow your employees the right to exercise the need they have to express their freedoms.  Your business atmosphere relies upon the energy your employees bring to the model each day.  If your model is a boring place to go to work each day the atmosphere of your model is drab, unexciting and will not produce great volumes.  Your employees will see to it.  They will express exactly what the atmosphere is doing.  You cannot stop them.  The human senses are too sneaky to harness and control.  Quit pretending your employees are saying, doing and behaving good when you are not around.  They are not.  Unless of course, they like where they work, they like how they are treated at work and they do not want to lose how they feel at work.  Under those conditions, your employees are saying, doing and behaving good when you are not around.

You cannot disguise the atmosphere of your business model.  The atmosphere of your business model will generate the wind of its smell in its own honest way.  It will not need any push from your position.  If you generate a rotten atmosphere that no employee enjoys going to each day, the smell of that truth will drift right in front of everyone of your customers.  You can make behavioral rules for the employees to follow to try and eliminate that potential, but the smell will be recognized by the customers as a rotten stench blended with the mist of a manufactured air spray.  It will not smell real.  The human senses are too good to fool.  Your business atmosphere is truly a by-product of how you perform your leadership duties.  Your employees are an open report card on how well your leadership is doing.  Your customers are the administration who grades how well the students are being taught.  You are the one responsible for how all of this turns out.  Everyone else will easily escape responsibility.

Welcome to leadership.  Is your business model careful about how well it is perceived?  Does it care?

How Is The Business Plan Coming Along?

The last couple of days have consumed a lot of time very quickly.  The clock had the attitude that it wanted to run along faster than normal.  Once in awhile, with each glance to see what time it was, the clock traveled so fast it produced a surprise at how fast time had passed.  When the clock runs faster than the work we planned to complete our desire to speed up tends to make us feel more anxious.  We tend to think that if we speed up our work steps we can get more work done to catch up where we are running behind.

Be anxious for nothing.

Lost time is a reasonable expectation.  One of the most ignored steps any planning process includes is the fact that time travels very quickly.  Losing time is a staple process that should always be included in the business world of development schemes.  Time travels very quickly.  There will never be enough time.  Learn to accept this fact and be more patient with your plans, with your work, and with your expectations.

Be anxious for nothing.  Teach yourself how to stay on task but at the same time, be patient to allow the clock to out run your expectations.  It will happen more than you prefer.  Do not allow it to dominate your energy with frustration.  When you hammer nails, not all of them remain straight.  Some nails bend without warning.  Time works in the same fashion.  The clock bends too fast some times.  It runs along too quickly and without warning.  Accept it.  Make sure you plan for unwanted delays, time consuming changes and interruptions that disturb the pattern of your path to get more done.  With that in mind, how is your business plan coming along?  Have you started on it yet?  Why not?

Performance Appraisals, Need I Say More?

The IRS calling.  Employment pink slips with your final payroll check.  Report cards.  Police car lights in the rear view mirror.  Yellow warning shut-off notices.  Pink colored paper in the envelope window of a warning late-payment notice.  After hour phone calls from collectors.  Performance appraisals at work.

These are all of the great expectations everyone looks forward to enjoying.  Wrong.

We hate them.  How do we learn anything from getting a speeding ticket?  We already knew it was wrong.  We just can't believe our timing.  How could a cop be where we were when we were driving 10 miles per hour above the posted speed?  What luck!

How do we learn anything from a performance appraisal?

We hate them.  We hate receiving them.  We hate giving them.  Nobody likes them so nobody actually does them.  Performance appraisals are not completed on a timely basis, are they?  Rarely does a business leader stay on a clear schedule to do the performance appraisals on time and routinely.  Rarely.

They are hated as much as any other life fear.  When a business leader tells an employee that their performance appraisal is due, everyone goes into a panic mode of thought.  The business leader hates to plan them, the employee hates to receive them.  This is exactly how relationships breakdown.

Here is my business take on all of this.  Get the law out of my business.  Do not force me to protect my business relationships by demanding that I perform this unwanted service with my employees.  Here is my true evaluation of this process...quit doing them.

Performance appraisals have never worked to help build a great business model.  In my 38 year history of business relationships I have never seen a performance appraisal pattern work well enough to contribute healthy progress to the relationships a business needs to build.  Never.  My history of watching performance appraisals at work is littered with fear, tragedy, damaged relationships, mis-understandings, frustrations, broken expectations and destructive results in the leadership models.  A good business leader should always be participating in healthy employee development during the course of daily operations, already.  There should be no need to pull aside a designated time chip once every six months and tell an employee what is or is not happening well.  If that kind of business and employee relationship is occurring, I will pray for that leader to improve their management style.  If a performance appraisal is necessary to inform the employee what is not working well, you are either employing the wrong person or becoming the wrong leader.  Get someone else or improve your leadership.  Do not wait six months to figure that out.  It is silly what we believe we need to be doing.  Absolutely silly.  I see it every day.  Amazing stuff.

Is Your Dream Big Enough?

His Business Was Growing Well

A few years ago I met a man who wanted to build up his small business model.  I was introduced to this owner through another business associate.  The owner who wanted to build his model up was serious about building his business up enough to provide a better lifestyle for his family than they were experiencing at the moment I met him.  We worked on getting to know each other in the beginning.  His business was actually growing well when I met him.  He was also very careful in how much he was spending in order to produce the growth he was managing.  I was quietly impressed with how well he was doing.

It was clear that he wanted a bigger business to manage.  The more we worked together on building his business stronger the more I could see what really would begin to happen.  Due to his style of management I could see the future of his work load getting so strong it would eventually become the tail that wags the dog.  His skills to build it big were somewhat good.  His skills to delegate the increased work load was on the low side of the management ledger.  His ability to organize his energy and functions was also on the low side of the management ledger.  I could see this combination of weaknesses taking its toll on his limited time chips and his positive spirit for managing a larger business successfully.

I had no right to interfere with his drive.  I was not about to become his dream stealer.  Even though I could see an eventual emotional crash coming in the months ahead, I was not going to be responsible for killing his dream.  I decided I was going to find out what kind of dream he was running on in order to help him overcome the obstacles that were headed his way later.  A combination of his current business building actions were able to help him produce a growing business.  Even so, the limitations for getting beyond what he could produce in a 24-hour period were fast approaching.  He would eventually need to develop some new management skills in order to change how he was approaching his business growth.

Everyone comes to the table with certain skills that are magical to possess.  This associate had some very good skills for attracting new growth.  He also had good skills for keeping new growth longer than what a usual business provides.  His repeat business was fairly good.  He lacked the needed talent for providing the best organizational skills to secure the activities that were driving his business growth.  Some of his follow-up duties were leaving his business model vulnerable to loss.  He was like many other well-driven business owners.  He had a very strong ego that was heavy on protecting how he was building his business model.  His protection efforts were strong and also dangerous.  They were dangerous in that they were primarily sub-conscious in nature.  He was very quick to react to any suggestions or changes that indicated some efforts needed to be given to sort out the organizational weaknesses of the business model he was building.  He could not see how those weaknesses could hurt his growth.  As a result, he turned up his strengths and produced more growth by increasing the use of his better skills.  He was mentally strong like so many business owners are.

I decided to find out what his dream really was.  Everyone runs on a dream to achieve something from what they are doing.  Some dreams are subtle and fuzzy while others are loud and clear.  I knew that this business owner would eventually be tested to save his business from choking itself.  I knew he was not about to believe his business could experience that kind of challenge.  I knew he was not working to develop a team of associates that could help him manage the organizational responsibilities this growing business was beginning to face.  I knew he would soon be facing some very crucial needs to change the approach he was using for developing his business model.  I was convinced he was not aware of this pending development.

I wanted to see how big his dream was.  I wanted to know if his dream was big enough to help him through what he was about to be facing in his business model of unorganized growth.  Is his dream big enough?

Does Your Business Plan Answer These Questions?

While we are developing a business plan for a start-up business model the art of producing a good plan is in progress.  We have determined the type of business model we will be developing. (Check the previous post titled, "The Business Idea Has Been Found.")  We have also defined how we plan to approach the market in a rough sketch set of descriptions. (Check another post titled, "Develop A Plan That Has Good Timing.")  We are using the SBA and Score websites to help us guide our development of the business plan for this start-up model.  We are working our way through the process these websites suggest.

As the plan begins to come together we must face some of the tough questions that need to be addressed.  These two websites do a great job in preparing our minds for handling the kinds of questions we need to be answering.  Some of these questions will not be easy to answer.  As you develop your business plan some of the questions you will face will be difficult to answer.  They will become uncomfortable if your answers are honest.  It is very normal to become uncomfortable with some of the answers you pen down.  Writing a good business plan is sometimes a very uncomfortable thing.

Each of the business leaders who sit down to produce a business plan will find a different area of expertise more uncomfortable than someone else who may find the same questions easy to deal with and solve.  Every business leader has a separate set of viewpoints and approaches to the questions they must face and answer.  Some will struggle with the personal questions, others will struggle with the facility and location questions.  Whatever the case, prepare the plan with the hard questions included.

Some of the more difficult questions will be more personal in nature.  The questions regarding the business techniques and methods will likely be solved almost immediately.  The questions regarding family and personal connections will be more difficult to attend.  This is always the nature of preparing a good business career.  We usually do not plan how we expect to deal with the personal side of the business models we manage.  We typically handle personal challenges on an as needed basis, through systems that look and sound like emergency management.  A good business model does not find this process very rewarding.  In fact in most cases, this process is the very one that will limit the business from participating in huge growth.  It becomes the very set of questions that are not easily dealt with in the beginning of the business development process.

What kind of questions are found in this set of personally 'difficult-to-answer' questions?

Develop A Plan That Has Good Timing.

In the last post on this blog I spoke of describing how this new business model we will develop has a lot of components in it that meet some good timing characteristics.  Good timing is not critical to include in a new business for success.  However, it sure helps a lot if your product or service produces a 'fix' for the consumer to use that comes in the nick of time.  When your business model holds a solution that is very timely to the market, your chances for good success are improved tremendously.  Good timing is a great asset to a business model.  As you develop your business model, make sure you search for ways to find how your business can become part of a 'good timing' effort. 

Good timing moves are hard to find.  Business success depends a lot upon good timing.  It is a success component that often keeps its secret in a 'hard-to-define' capacity.  Sometimes we see what would have been good to offer the consumer well after the demand was met or secured by other suppliers.  The real trick is to be first to the market.  Being first to the market does not always secure your model with the lions share of the business, however.  Being first to the market means you had some good indications that helped your model to line up its business activities with what was happening in consumer demand.  You will also notice you were not the only one who noticed what the consumer would accept or need.  You will have competition.

The business model we will be developing has the potential to provide some good timing.  By the time we get the model designed, the business model initialized, the key relationships secured, the funding sources arranged, the approvals secured to do the projects as they need to be done, the construction work completed and the marketing process engaged the real estate demand for what we will have to offer will be back on a growth pattern strong enough to help fill our consumer needs.  The real estate industry has taken one of the largest 'hits' in our downward spiraling economy.  By the time we put this business model together and get it market ready, our real estate market demand will have repaired itself and be back on track for growth.  Our timing is looking very good.

What's more, we will be working to design our business model to address a specific niche in the market place that will increase in demand as time moves along.  Certain elements in the marketing world have become challenges to the residential consumer who have above average means yet want to live nicely beyond the standard bar of what they can afford in location.  They are and will continue to discover huge challenges in meeting the demands they place on living nicely.  The trick to meet that standard of living demand has become a costly challenge to the young professionals.  The professional consumer is struggling while it looks for where and how it prefers to meet the desire it has developed to live nicely, affordable, with great character.  Those consumers have discovered they cannot meet those demands without the common urban travel requirements that typically become part of their living problem instead of their solutions.  The young professionals find their options to achieve this type of living very limited in supply.  Furthermore, they want to become better users of less fossil fuels in their effort to choose where they want to meet their living demands.  They are finding these efforts very difficult to do in this real estate market.  The inventories are low.  The risk to develop the type of housing they prefer to choose is not finding its way through this recession very well.  When it is discovered they find the locations placed in the heart of extremely crammed larger cities with a lot of personal risks to enjoy.  They are finding their choices very narrow.

We will develop some living spaces that meet these needs while providing some better safety components to the way they prefer to lower their personal risks in the locations they can afford.  The timing will be very good.

Control Freaks Build It, Then They Kill It.

I remember the first time I made money when I was a little boy.  I would water the lawn and go outside at dark with a flashlight and pull night crawlers from the grass.  I cannot remember how much I would get for a dozen of them.  Of course my parents paid for the materials I used.  So I really was not running a true business.  I would put the worms in the used milk cartons my Mom would give me.  I would cut the top half of the carton off so it was not so big.  We cut up newspaper and mixed it with dirt to fill the carton and placed the worms in the dirt mixture.  I walked dozens of worms to the neighborhood grocery store just a few blocks away from our house.  The store owner paid me and asked for more worms.  I had my first customer.  The work was actually fun, plus I got paid to do it.

When the worms became depleted from picking so many each night, I would water the neighbors yard and get worms from their house.  They gave me permission.  I now learned how to find new supplies.  I learned that I could not keep up with the demand.  My brother began doing it too.  We would compete to see who could get the most worms each night.  I was the tight wad between the two of us.  When the grocery store owner gave us our money I put it in my pocket.  My brother went straight to the candy section and spent it all.  Both of us grew up as entrepreneurs.  He has owned his own business for over 30 years.  Just think, it all began with night crawlers and finding our first customer.

Both of us have become business owners in our careers.  Both of us have lead thousands of people in employment in our careers.  Both of us have gone through the period of time when we wanted all of the control.  We became control freaks.  We knew what we wanted, we knew how we wanted to get it done and we did not enjoy having anyone else tell us how to do it.  Control freaks.

Control freaks have something inside their make-up that help them develop the right kind of stuff to build a successful business model.  Control freaks develop key characteristics that represent the kind of stuff needed to help them over come the obstacles that get in the way of failures.  Control freaks possess determination, persistence, stick-to-it type characteristics, stubbornness and as a result have the ability to push through many of the obstacles that kill most business attempts.  I have witnessed many business owners use their control freak attitudes to help them survive the business development process.  Without that attitude many would not have made it.

Then something happens.  Growth shows up.  Growth brings on some new components to the business model.  Control freaks and growth do not mix very well.  Control freaks can get away with doing what they want to do when the business is small enough for them to control.  When the time to do the work of the business can be squeezed into the day a control freak can manage, control can be governed by one.  The business is small enough to be managed by one person.  Then something happens.  Growth occurs and changes the ability for the control freak to be able to do it all.  Too much important work becomes too much duty to do in a regular day of time devotion.  The control freaks build it and as it grows away from their control, they now are faced with deciding whether or not to kill it or mature it with others gaining control.  Control freaks do not like to share control.  They know how they want it done.  They do not want to do it like someone else suggests.

Growth becomes a very serious crossroad for control freaks to manage.  I have witnessed most of the control freaks I meet and their business models will never be able to grow large.  Never.  Giving up control is harder to do than building a business model that succeeds well.  I have actually watched many control freak owners kill their business growth.  The very same characteristics that build the model to become successful are the very same ones that kill the model from growth.  The 'bell' curve shows up.  They blame their employees, their family, their banker, the economy, the market, the suppliers, the customers and anything else that moves the wrong way from being what they want to control.  Their control needs kill their growth and offers them a wonderful set of excuses to manage.  Their business model will exist forever but it will always struggle.  They are determined to prove that.  It is a funny thing to watch thousands of business owners do this very thing.  It is personal to them.  They have not yet learned how to make the business model the boss.  They are control freaks, they want to remain being the boss.  There is a big difference.

Trust Your System, Not Your Talent.

You can operate a business for a very long time without getting organized, but if you want your business to smoke you better build a better system.  A smoking business does not happen by chance.  You need to make a business smoke in order for it to smoke.  They do not smoke all by themselves.  A smoking business is a business that has a great system in place.  Systems are king.

An unorganized business will struggle like a wounded warrior to a competitor who operates next door with a well-organized system.  Between the two, well-organized or unorganized, guess which business model will smoke!  The answer is very simple.  Knowing what works best is not as hard to do as doing what needs to be done.  Trust your system, not your talent.  Build a system you can trust and allow it to become the boss.

Five very average basketball players can whip a group of talented, disorganized egos if the average players have a well run system of play.  The well-organized average group of players will destroy the unorganized talent day in and day out.  In fact, the disorganized talented ones will eventually become frustrated and may even break apart because they cannot stand losing what their egos suggest they should be doing to win.  They may run away from losing.  Trust your system, not your talent.  Talent is a good thing to possess, unless it decides to remain disorganized.  Disorganized talent is vulnerable to a competitor who has less talent but more organized in effort.  It happens to the best of them all of the time.

McDonald's does not stand behind the counter and wait for a customer to walk in and order a Big Mac, then start the grill to fire one up to show the customer how well they cook hamburgers.  No way.  When a customer comes in and asks for a Big Mac, the McDonald's clerk does not say, "Oh wow, our boss forgot to order some in...we are all out!  Want some fries?  We cook some really mean fries."

Kill the trust we have for our talents.  It does not produce a smoking business.  Learn to trust the art of a well-designed system.  Learn to manage that system with all of your trust.  Make sure the holes in that system are always fixed and keep that system honest.

Turn your talents loose on developing a very systematic, successful way to do your business.  Use your extraordinary talents to develop a great system.  Trust your system.  Submit your well-protected talents and allow them room to grow the art of producing a well-organized system to become the king of your operations.  System is king, not your talents.  Your talents have limitations.  Those limitations will be the death to your business if you learn to trust them too much.

If you go to McDonald's in New York because you want a Big Mac and they run out of Big Mac's before you arrive, you may not go to McDonald's in New Jersey on your next trip because you know there is a chance they might be out of them.  You do not like to be wrong.  Guessing if McDonald's has Big Mac's in stock is not how McDonald's wins.  McDonald's success comes from the art of practicing a well-organized system.  They have plenty of Big Mac's in stock and you know that.  You will not be wrong when you choose that place.  McDonald's success does not come from great hamburgers.  In fact, McDonald's system is run by a bunch of under-talented individuals.  McDonald's system kicks fanny next to a good cook with a little burger stand next door.  Get serious with your business plan.  Use your great talents to organize how you want your business to run and teach it how to become well-organized.  Build a beautiful system.  Trust your system.  Watch your business smoke.  Let's ask a few questions about our own systems.  Let's see how well they are designed.

Creativity; Some Really Cool And Useful Links.

Creativity is an art.  Business leaders manage so many creative processes we often forget how many useful thoughts help to produce the working things that drive our business models.  For the business leaders who struggle with producing well-to-do creative energies, some tips on how to perform that task follow.

Creativity is a stumbling block for some business leaders.  Many leaders have strong abilities to organize their business model well.  Some other leaders have great people skills to add value to their business model.  Some business leaders are excellent with the necessary skills regarding the accounting needs of a business model.  All of these traits are necessary and vital to perform in order to produce a successful business model.  However, not all business leaders have a good strain of ability built within their personal chemistry to perform the creative needs their business models require.  Those leaders do not create the right kind of interest their business model demands.

In an earlier post we covered this subject lightly.  However, I believe it needs more attention.  For the business leaders who perform high levels of creativity, some of these tips may look like routine suggestions.  For those who struggle with creativity, these ideas are simple to do and provide a useful path to help develop a way to add creativity to your business model.

In the past I listed 10 of the top blog business sites as links for the readers to use to get more advice on how to help your business grow.  Those blog sites were listed under the heading "Some Really Cool And Useful Links" located on the right side column of this blog.  For this particular subject, improving creativity, I changed those top ten blog sites under that heading.  I searched the web to find the top 10 business blogs recognized on the web.  Instead of posting the top 10 advice sites to read, I changed the top 10 to be the ones who have grabbed the highest business blog attention.  This way we are able to review the ones who are really doing it, instead of the ones who suggest to us how to do it.

One of the best techniques for developing a creative thought process is to check out the ones who are leading the way.  Always be open to make your self available to witness who is doing it well.  Be aware of the winning business models all around you.  Do not limit your examinations to remain only to those who directly do what your business does.  Learn how to cross over to other sectors of business.  We will take these new top ten business blogs and check each one out to review what kinds of creativity each is using to attract our readership and activity participation.  Let's go check them out and see what we find.

We Are Given The Right To Speak

What kind of noise is your business making?  Your business is given the right to speak.  Does the speaking you do with your business make the right kind of noise with the customers it can reach?  Does the speaking you do with your business model speak loud enough to be heard by the customers who have the ability to hear your model?  Some business models make a lot of noise, others are somewhat quiet.  Are you managing one that makes a lot of noise?  Are you managing a business that says the wrong things?  Your business has been given the right to speak.  How well is it doing?

Is it time to shake down how your business model speaks to its customers?  When you opened your business model did you picture how your business would speak to its market?  If so, is it saying what you want it to say?  Is your business doing what you dreamed it would be doing when you began building how you wanted it to be?  Is it making the noise you dreamed it would be making?

The business model you are managing has a life.  Its life is how it lives.  The things your business model does produces how its market responds.  Markets move towards the business models that #1...make the most noise, #2...make the loudest noise or #3...make the coolest noise.  Make sure your business model is finding one of these three areas to become an excellent producer of consumer listening.  The way a business speaks to its market will determine largely how the consumer will continue to communicate with that model.  If the consumer is communicating a lot with your business model, you will enjoy a lot of trade.  If the consumer is not listening to what your business model is saying, you will need to work on finding more trade to come in.  You will be facing some extra efforts to make better or louder noises to attract more consumers.  The business you manage has a right to speak.  What you help it to say and how you train it to speak will help your model earn the kind of crowds that will come to listen.  You want to earn the right to speak to large crowds.  Larger crowds produce larger volumes.  Given the right to speak, how well is your business model speaking?  Is your business model mumbling its way through the competition fields?

What are some of the best things your business can learn to say?  How can your business model say the right things the most, and make sure they are loud enough to hear?

Filter Your Business Thoughts.

There are wonderful things that happen when a business leader controls the thinking they do about their business.  It is such a delicate process to control the business mind without restricting the flow of good creativity.  It is vitally important to recognize the difference between these two elements to success.

Most business leaders perform their leadership the way they do because they are driven inside to do what they do.  A business leader has an internal engine running the show.  Most business leaders are constantly thinking about how to do their business better and better.  A good deal of that extra thinking comes from deep inside.  A business leader usually knows what they want to do with their business model.  In fact, a business leader usually knows how they want to do what they think they would like to do with the techniques, methods, procedures, functions and all the decisions their business performs.  Most, if not all, business thoughts are controlled by the business leader.  As it should be.  It is their gig.  The owner has ponied up the money to make a go of it so the thoughts of how it should go should be driven by the one who put the wallet on the table.  Simple.

However, there is one catch to this concept.  Why do most business models struggle financially?  If the business leader is running the business thoughts, how can finance be so hard?

I have had many financial struggles in my business career.  Too many to count.  I have also produced some great monetary success in my business career.  After doing both, I can comfortably express the fact that there is a difference between how a business leader thinks within those two patterns of business thought.  The business thinking that produces the best financial results always requires more 'profitable' filtering of the wide range of business thoughts and ideas a leader produces.  Always.  Filtered thoughts work the best.

To promote filtering of the business thoughts can be a dangerous recommendation, however.  It can be interpreted that in order to introduce the need to filter all business thoughts is to recommend controlling how to place limits on the creative process.  Placing filters on all business thoughts is a difficult one to describe because it might interfere with the needed flow of creativity every business should promote.  Placing filters on all business thoughts can inhibit business creativity, and it does.  The truth remains, all creativity is not good.  Some is and some is not.  As is, all business thoughts are not good.  Some are and some are not.  The tons of business thinking a business leader does produces a gob of wrong thinking that might be carelessly inserted into the business model they perform.  All business thoughts are not always good business thoughts.  Every business thought does not always produce great business results.  Filtering all of those business thoughts is a vital tool which is needed to help produce better financial results.

When my business models experienced better financial results, I can look back to see the increased thinking and the improved filtering that occurred to help the business model win.  Each time it is very clear to see.  There is a distinct difference between the two sets of business filtering results.  Non-filtered business thoughts do not produce as many great financial results as filtered ones do.  Looking back is always a 20/20 view.  Looking forward is never a 20/20 view.  History will prove how well the filters performed when the best financial results occurred.  They go hand in hand.  How do we do this filtering?

Business Is All About Solving Problems

Solutions are in high demand.  Solutions come in all kinds of shapes and colors.  Each day someone wakes up and begins their trek to navigate through the world so they can solve problems.  Once the alarm clock goes off they wake up to approach the world with what they do.  The bed they sleep in, the alarm clock that buzzed at 6 A.M., the water in the shower they turned on, the soap, the shampoo, the water heater, the lights they switched on, the robe, slippers and everything else they touch each day is a little part of the huge string of solutions going on to solve problems.  For example, what if there was no hot water this morning?  What if the toilet paper completely ran out yesterday?  What if the alarm clock did not buzz?  What if the electricity quit in the middle of the night?  When problems like these happen, solutions quit working.  New solutions become a priority.  Purchasing toilet paper is not a tragic experience until it becomes missing when you need it.  We buy extra rolls to make sure it does not become a problem.  To help us with that potential problem, makers of toilet paper package a lot of them together so we get enough with each single purchase.  We need to make sure we have 'back-ups' to prevent a problem.   We also want to save time from making multiple trips to the store to buy one roll at a time.  We buy toilet paper in packages.  They solved some potential problems for us.

If you own or manage a business, what problems are you solving today?  Does your business understand its problem solving role?  If it does not, give it a good lesson.  If your business does not recognize the problems it solves, start giving it some new lessons on how to recognize its problem solving roles.

Once you help your business to understand how it is designed to solve problems make sure the people who help you run your business understand how to solve problems.  Your associates, managers, assistants, warehouse staff, drivers, technicians, clerks, accountants and employees are all part of the whole problem solving mechanisms your business provides.  Solutions are your key success component.  The more solutions your business learns to provide the more successful your model becomes.  If you do not understand this philosophy, it can be a good thing to learn it.

Many leaders grow tired of handling problems.  It happens to me every day.  Some problems have a way of wearing a person down.  When some of those problems grow strong enough to cause the leader to quit working on solving them, that business model will slow down in volume sales.  Solving problems is one of the keys to producing higher revenues.  When the business model slows its ability to solve problems in an efficient manner the customers will search around to find someone else to solve their problems.  The customers will go somewhere else.  All the customer wants to do is make sure they have toilet paper conveniently placed with an adequate supply when they need it.  What's more, the customer does not want to go the extra mile to get that problem solved.  The customer does not want to pay too much, drive too far, hunt to hard, park too far away, nor wait too long in line.  The customer finds all of these additional problems a problem.  They do not want to solve their problem by managing new problems.  A good business model works hard to solve all of these problems for them.

Deeper yet, the customer does not want to think about any issues that may get into their way while they are trying to solve their problems.  Whoever causes additional problems to occur, we will call them 'consumer quirks', add strength to the problem the consumer is trying to solve.   A business model who provides more obstacles for the customer to weave through to solve their problems will be the business who the customer will blame if something goes wrong.  Being the business of blame is not the best way to build increasing volumes.

Do your employees, managers, yourself and your business model understand the proper marketing of 'consumer quirks?'  Misunderstanding 'consumer quirks' have quietly and permanently damaged many business models.  Business is all about solving problems, not adding to them.  Producing and feeding 'consumer quirks' is a contribution a great business should not provide.  It has a tendency to increase the magnitude of the problems a customer is trying to solve instead of solving them.  These resistance policies become 'consumer quirks.'  We have a tendency to blame the consumer for these little quirks.  We sometimes believe the consumer is asking too much.  Does your business model think in this way?  Did you know the consumer likes fashionable displays?  Maybe you do not like them, but they do.  Have you decided to refrain from producing fashionable displays?  Why?  Your customer loves them.  Oh, I get it, its a 'consumer quirk.'  It is their fault, right?  Wrong.  Give them fashionable displays when they like fashionable displays.  Take fashionable displays away when they quit liking them.  Get it?  It is never about what you like to do.  It is always about what they like to experience.  Feed their 'quirks.'  Solve their problems.


Let us look at an example of one of those resistance policies business models offer to add more problems to the customers experience.  If a customer has a problem with some product they purchased from you, how easy is it for them to solve that problem when they call your business for help?  Do they get an electronic phone 'tree' message that requires the irritated consumer to be additionally patient with your business model while they listen to instructions so they can properly 'select' the number to get the right department to begin the work on solving their problem?  Does your business actually market some of these types of 'consumer quirk' dislikes?  Why?  Who is this type of method convenient for, you or the consumer?  I do not know about anyone else, but I actually avoid doing business with those types of business models.  If I have legitimate choices in my marketplace to go somewhere else to do my business, I intentionally and subconsciously avoid the ones who do this type of stuff.  I have experienced some not-so-good treatment from the 'phone tree' process for solving my problems.  Let's examine deeper how our business models create more problems like this.

Business Management...Details, Details, Details.

I love dogs.  I do not own a dog.  My plate is far to full to take on the depth of responsibility a dog carries.  I would, however, be the kind of dog owner who trains and appreciates the purity of friendship a dog naturally provides.  They are very special creatures.  I have distant neighbors who do not appreciate the dogs they own.  You can tell who they are by the fact that the dogs are sent outside early in the morning and allowed back in for the night.  Some of those dogs are not given any attention during the day.  The Richter scale of companionship during the day for those dogs is zero.  You can tell by the barking they do ceaselessly while left alone all day outside.  It is annoying.  You know exactly what I mean.

My wife and I have walked and spent time with one of those lonely dogs who barks all day long.  We discovered how sweet and kind that dog really is.  It is a tragic thing to witness.  This dog just needs a little more love and a little more attention.  She was not meant to be a temporary 'fix' when she was a cute puppy for some adults to purchase because they thought it would be a neat idea for their little children to enjoy.  Once she served that role, she got sent out to find her own way around the yard in a very busy world.  She barks at every movement and noise she hears trying to find attention.  About once every quarter someone plays ball with her.  I see this same type of respect given to many important business management techniques.  I see those same business owners wonder why their revenues are coming in each month, under par.

Good business management is all about paying high attention to the details of the business.  You cannot park some of the more important details out in the yard all day and ignore them without suffering some lower performance marks.  Details need a lot of attention.  Details will eat up your profits, destroy your volume growth potential and drive your staff, customers and associates away if they are not given enough attention.  Ignoring the important details will destroy the love you have for the business you own.  Each time a customer barks, each time an employee barks and each time an associate barks is a time of destruction to the attention your business deserves.  That dog down the street deserves better.  The owners are asleep at the wheel.  Is your business model receiving similar treatment?  Are you taking care of the thousands of details in your business demands that deserve proper attention?