Sometimes Success Is Subjective.

Trophies Do Not Always Go To The Best One, Just The Winner.

Sometimes winners do not seem to deserve it.  I have played on sports teams that have proven that fact more than I can count.  The hero of a particular game was the one who was out all night drinking beer and carousing around.  He was hung over and a mental mess during an important game in which nobody else on the team had brought their "A" game.  Yet, out of nowhere, he did the right things at the end to save a win.  Objectively, it should not have ended this way.  Amazing enough, it did.  The hero was the one who least deserved it.  Sometimes success is subjective.

I have known people who got busy with doing other things in their life, sidetracked enough that they did not have time to prepare their soil for planting a spring garden.    They procrastinated too long to get their seeds in the ground and failed to complete the irrigation plans to make sure enough water helped the seeds grow well.  Yet in the end, I have seen their garden look the best of anyone else who followed all of the right rules.  Sometimes success is subjective.

I am sure you can think of other situations similar to those two.  When someone you know does not follow the right steps to secure success and wins despite doing all of the wrong things.  The ball just seemed to bounce their way.  Sometimes success is subject, it seems biased and unfair.  Some winners win despite the obvious fact that they do not deserve to win.  It happens.  How many times has someone said they were very lucky to get out of this one with a win?  How many times has a bunch of bad sportsmanship players on a particular team come back to win a game they should have lost and because they did not deserve the win, you felt awful when they won?  Their victory left a big hole in the pit of your stomach.  You know down deep that they did not deserve to win, but they did.  Sometimes success is subjective.

Business can be exactly like that.  A competitor who has a nasty way of competing can constantly draw the most success and it can begin to irritate you.  Somehow that nasty competitor steals your business in an unfair way.  It begins to get your goat.  I have had it happen.  I caught a competitor one time placing live mice around the perimeter of one of my business buildings.  We had just purchased a vacant building across the street from our place of business and were inside one night walking around making some plans.  We were done and shut off the lights.  The moon and street lights were all we had left to illuminate our way as we finished talking about a few more things we planned to do with this old building we just purchased.  We were standing inside the old building in the dark, chatting about more plans.  Then suddenly we both spotted someone walking around the side of our business in the parking lot across the street.  We waited to see what that person was planning to do.  It looked suspicious.

We had a furniture store operation in that building.  The person outside our building had a couple of boxes in their hands.  They seemed to be bending over every once in awhile, tipping one of the boxes to the ground as if to be releasing or dumping something out.  I told my girlfriend, who later became my wife, that I would be right back.  I told her to stay in the vacant building.  I was going over to see what that person was doing.  As I approached the person, I could see they were dumping something along the side of the parking lot wall next to our furniture store building.  The person did not see me.  The closer I got the more I recognized the person.  I was shocked.  It was the owner of a furniture store competitor who had a business a couple of blocks away.  He was releasing a bunch of mice next to our building.  I could not believe my eyes.

Boy was he shocked when I called his name and asked him what he was doing.  I waved to my girlfriend across the street to come and see what this fool was up to.  It was an amazing experience.  The look on my girlfriends face, her body language told the whole story.  We were shocked and amazed.  It was an experience that gets marked down in the book of memories.

We have been through a lot of competitors in this marketplace.  Many have come and gone.  This one particular owner still stands strong as a serious competitor and still holds a fair share in the marketplace.  Sometimes success is subjective.  Sometimes owners can do many of the wrong things that do not meet the correct list of right things to do and win anyway.  Placing live mice in a competitors building is not one of those right things to do on the list of winning fundamentals to practice.  Victory still appeared.  It does not seem right.  That event happened almost thirty years ago.  Both of us still compete against each other to this day.

Try Not To Neglect The Little Things

Do The Little Things Well

Stories about missing people, tragic accidents, close calls and broken relationships have often times come to the table of discussion with one common thread, a lot of them had something very little turn out to become very big.  Something so small eventually led the situation into some kind of unwanted major event.

A simple flat tire being repaired by an innocent bystander who stopped to help out a couple on a coastal highway has many times led to a tragic end.  We read how a car drifted to the shoulder of the road and hit the person performing the repair.  Five flares were laying in the trunk of the parked car that had the flat tire, unused.  Try not to neglect the little things in life.  We are so much in a hurry these days that we often times skip the little things.  We do not want to waste our precious little time.  We are jammed with too much to do and not enough time to do it in.  We also count the cost.  If we use the flares today, we need to stop and buy some more.  Who wants to waste our limited incomes on buying new flares when we might not need to use them?  Try not to neglect the little things in life.  They matter more than we think.

I saw flares on a shelf in a hardware store the other day.  They were marked $1.19 each.  I wonder how much it would have cost to replace the 5 flares found in the trunk of the stopped car, the one that already had the trunk wide open during the tire repair?  With four people standing on the opposite side of the automobile all chatting while they were waiting to get back on the road as the bystander stopped to help fix the flat tire.  You would think someone would consider putting out some flares to warn other drivers to slow down and pay closer attention.  Isn't that why we buy flares and place them in our trunks?  I do not think flares are a status symbol.  I do not think we buy them because we are supposed to have them because it is really popular to have them resting in your trunk.  Try not to neglect the little things.

I have had flares I did not burn when the time came to use them.  I am sure I am not alone.  That story was on the evening news last night.  The people they interviewed were shocked.  The bystander who stopped to help repair the flat tire for the 4 girls in the first car is no longer with us.  He left a wife and two children sitting in the car parked ahead on the side of the road.  Try not to neglect the little things.  The lady doing the news story on the scene mentioned the flares in her story.  She closed the story with a reminder to other drivers to try and remember to use the flares when they get into trouble on the side of the road.  She sent the reporting back to the studio after her live report with that friendly reminder.  I noticed that reporter at the scene on the side of the road was wearing a dark sweater pull over with the network news logo on the front, with a dark baseball cap also sporting the network logo.  I did not see reflector vests being worn or any flares being used for her to report from that same spot.  All of us are guilty at neglecting to do the little things.

I have seen television commercials forget to tell people when, where, who, what and why.  I have seen retail stores close on a holiday without any sign of warning placed for their customers to see.  I have seen new products brought into the mix without a featured display, a sign of mention nor a notice given to the selling staff.  I have cruised websites that leave you hanging in a place they offered for you to click, without any direction as to how to navigate what to do next.  Try not to neglect the little things.  They matter more than you could ever know.

Tragedy gets our attention.  We recognize error when a tragedy occurs.  We wonder, what about using the flares?

Sometimes We Hide The Truth From Ourselves.

We hate the truth.  The truth hurts too much for us to enjoy it.  We may even say we can take it, but we can't.  Our character is made softly so we need bad news delivered more softly.  We feel uncomfortable when we stand next to someone who is blunt and to the truth with their conversation.  We try to get away from someone who has those characteristics.  We develop interesting little mind games to help us accept what we do not want to see or hear.  We push the depth of our acceptance for the truth off to the sides around the work we do each day.  We do not always jump right into the middle of the truth when it comes knocking at our emotional door.  If the truth knocking at the door is there to reveal something we did wrong, we work harder on avoiding to open that door.  I am guilty of all of these things.  So are you.  That is the truth.

Sometimes we hide the truth from ourselves.  We do not want to actually deal with the depth of a truth so we skirt around the nibbled edges just enough to allow us to subconsciously deal with what the truth truly means.  We play with knowing how the truth works but do not want to blend all of it into our daily work and tasks.  There is a certain level of acceptance each of us has developed as a way we have learned how to accept and deal with the truth.  We have a hidden gauge for how much truth we want to play with each day.  Once that gauge hits the maximum level, we are done accepting truths for a little while.  We will get busy doing something else.  We will work hard on staying too busy to deal with the truth for a little while.

Did you know your business success does not care whether you accept the truth or not?  It could not give a rip.  Your business will respond exactly how the laws it lives by respond.  It does not measure if you are telling the truth or not.  It does not care if you accept the truth or not.  Your business lives by its laws of cause and effect.  It does not consider how you play Easter egg hunt with the truth.  If your business model is not producing what it needs to produce in order to survive, it does not care if you accept this truth or not.  Your business will respond exactly how it should respond.  It will follow the laws of cause and effect it knows it must follow.  Lie all you want, your business will do exactly that which it is designed to do.  Sowing and reaping is a pure game of cause and effect.  If you forget to unlock the front door of your business in the morning, you will not have any customers come in during the day.  Your business will respond as pure as that example.  If by noon some employee discovers the front door is still locked, your business does not care if you tell everyone you are sure you opened and unlocked it when you first arrived.  You can lie all you want, your business still did not have customers coming in during the first part of the day.  Your business does not care about lies or the truth.  It does not matter.  The traffic still did not come in.

In fact, tell the truth...I forgot to unlock that door.  Your business does not care.  It only moves with the pure laws of cause and effect.  Your business success does not care if you tell the truth or not.  It is irrelevant.  I sometimes wonder why so many business owners spend so much time hiding the truth from so many people about how they do or do not do the right things in their business models.  Somehow they do not see that their business model could not give a rip.  They become so worried about what others will think they forget about how their business is doing.  Your business model does not care about what others think about how you lead, how you tell the truth, how you accept the truth and how you deal with the truth; it only responds to its pure laws of cause and effect.  Your business model does not care about the truth.  Quit trying to hide the truth from your business model.  It does not care.  It is paying no attention to the level of lies you tell, the level of truths you ignore and the level of truths you accept.  It does not care.

Sometimes we hide the truth from ourselves, yet our business model does not play along with us.  It has no ability to respond to our false conceptions.  Our business model will perform exactly how we lead it to perform.  It has no sympathy to our troubled self and how we deal with accepting the truth.  Our business model is responding well with the things that make it work well.  I have watched liars build a big successful business model.  I have watched honest people fail deeply in business.  Your business model does not care.  It has no feelings about this subject.

Do not get me wrong.  Do not hear what I am not saying.  I did not say, nor do I believe that a lie can be good and the truth can be bad.  Quite the opposite.

Change Your Perspective, Not Your Circumstances.

Kid Johnson was one of my little neighbor boys next door.  I lived in California when his dad was my neighbor.  Kid Johnson had a lot of energy.  I think he was seven years old when I met him.  He loved to go outside and ride his bike.  His bike and the time he spent awake were almost linked together one hundred percent of the time.  His dad would call him in to come and eat.  He would be riding his bike.

It did not rain a whole lot where I lived in California.  Kid Johnson had a lot of good weather days to ride his bike.  I never saw Kid Johnson outside riding his bike when it rained, however.  His bike was in the front yard laying on its side when the rain was coming down.  Kid Johnson was not to be found anywhere.  The circumstances for riding the bike in the rain were not very good.  Rain was a bad event for Kid Johnson.  He did not go outside to ride his bike in the rain.  The circumstances were not good.

One summer day it was raining outside and I thought I heard Kid Johnson riding his bike outside.  It was a new noise during the rain so I got up out of my chair to go see if it was him.  It was.  He had a bright yellow full body rain coat on trying to navigate his bike in the outfit.  He was riding the bike with new enthusiasm, too.  You could see it in his body language.  It made me smile.  Kid Johnson found a way to overcome the bad circumstance of falling rain.  He also did not care enough about how it hit him in the face to go get his joy served.  He rode his bike even though his face was getting pelted with rain.  Kid Johnson changed his perspective about stopping his joy during the rain.  Change your perspective, not your circumstances.

It sounds so simple.  It sounds so plastic.  It sounds so fake.  Yet, all of us allow circumstances to stop us from riding our bikes.  We know we can wear a rain coat but we think it is not the same.  We think if we need to wear a rain coat to ride our bikes of life, we would just as soon skip it.  We can ride our bikes some other time.  We own a rain coat, we just never wear it.  Rain is a circumstance we rarely overcome.

There may be someone reading this post that is the kind of person who loves to go outside in the rain.  When that person read that last paragraph, they immediately replied in their mind that they don't miss a chance to wear their rain coat.  They likely said something in their mind like, "Not me!"  "I love to go outside in the rain!"

Kid Johnson was no different than anyone else who leads a business.  We operate our businesses because we love to operate our businesses.  Kid Johnson loves to ride his bike because he loves to ride his bike.  We do what we want to do and we do what we think we can do.  In the end, what we want to do bad enough will become the thing we do the most.  Kid Johnson rode his bike.  He did not love to go swimming, even though his parents had a pool in the back yard.  I know he did not like to swim.  They had a pool in the back yard they eventually emptied and turned into a bike park for Kid Johnson to practice jumps and aerials on his bike.  In the end, he did what he wanted to do bad enough.  His backyard was once off limits to his bike riding permissions.  Someone had to change their perspective to make the backyard become a place for Kid Johnson to ride his bike.  What was once a halting circumstance for Kid Johnson and his bike, the swimming pool, found a new perspective to open up a new door of permissions for him to enjoy.  Some perspectives had to change.  Bad circumstances were overcome every time Kid Johnson wanted to do more of what he loved to do.

You guessed it.  Kid Johnson eventually became a professional bike rider on a competition circuit.  He added an engine to his bikes and spent his career riding jumps and tracks on a motorcycle.  He made a living doing what he loved to do.  Every time a bad circumstance got in his way, he changed his perspective and found a way to overcome the obstacles that stop most people from the pursuit.  Kid Johnson did not allow circumstances to get in his way of performing what he wanted to perform.  He learned the simple art of changing his perspective.

Every business owner, large or small, faces these same set of choices.  Our perspectives leave us all where they remain.  We either permit bad circumstances to limit what we want to do or we change our perspectives and go around the obstacles they deliver.  Kid Johnson made it look simple.  I would love to have become a mouse in their house to hear the pleas for the many times Kid Johnson kept trying to convince his parents how the swimming pool would make a great bike ramp!  His parents used that swimming pool many times for entertaining business friends when Kid Johnson was growing up.  They had groups of people out in the backyard on weekends and some evenings when they entertained.  Turning the pool into a bike ramp was not likely an easy sell for Kid Johnson.  Somehow, he changed their perspective.

How are you doing with your obstacles and circumstances?  Got perspective?

What Actions Stab Your Business?

I was listening to a speaker one time during a seminar.  I was very tired.  I knew I needed to listen to the material he was sharing.  It was a subject I needed to hear, but I was really tired.  I was doing the combination body and face dance.  It is the dance you see other tired people do when they are trying so hard to stay awake.  Their eyes look like they have had too much alcohol to drink, trying so hard to remain open.  You can see their mouth, eyes and eye brows do some kind of saving-my-face type of dance.  The expressions are priceless.  Their neck becomes very loose on its hinge and no apparent muscle control can hold up the weight of the head anymore.  The upper body begins to slide to one side or the other, trying to slump its way into someone else's lap.  I was tired.  We have all been there.  Sometimes this has happened to us when we were driving an automobile!  Imagine that.

I paid good money to go to this seminar and I was not about to waste a nickel of it.  I know I missed a lot of good material he was sharing.  I am one of those who writes notes when I hear a good nugget of information.  I do not care if those around me do not take notes, I do.  A couple of days later I took a look at some of the notes I took.  I could not make out what they said.  My notes looked like these long scribbled curly lines that were connected once in awhile to a recognizable letter from the alphabet.  It was very funny.  I am sure I thought I took great notes.  What a waste of time.

It is funny how we live through moments in our life that we are certain we would remember forever.  Moments that had so much immediate impact on our lives at the time they occurred we were convinced we would never forget them.  It is not until many years later when we have a similar experience to recall that one we thought we would never forget, only to discover years later, we have had no previous recollection of those experiences.  What we thought we would remember back then had almost completely disappeared from our minds until now.  We forget what we are certain we would never forget.

Yet there are other times we walk through time in our lives and have experiences that do not apparently mean a thing, that we remember over and over and over.  It is so funny how that happens.  An apparent insignificant experience gets recalled over and over in different times and different settings.  Go figure.

Something that speaker said on that stage when I was trying not to take a nap, stuck with me.  It was a stupid little joke.  He told a stupid little joke and it stuck with me.  I did not even follow the joke very well when he told it.  Remember, I was trying to take a nap at the same time.

It was a joke about a pair of dimes.  I thought he was talking about some message we needed to learn about money.  I guess that got my attention.  It was a story about a young, single professional lady who decided to take a European vacation at some remote little mountain village.  She rented a bed and breakfast at the top of a hill over-looking a picturesque small town in the valley.  She arrived late the first evening, checked in with the owner and unpacked for some rest.  The next morning she wandered outside to meet the owner of the bed and breakfast.  He was an old retried postman who had spent every nickel he earned on this wonderful chalet atop this beautiful setting on the mountainside.  He said, "Good morning. I see you found the coffee."  She said, "Yes, I did.  Thanks.  It was a long day."  After some small talk he suggested that she take the small sports car parked in the shed out back and drive it down the winding road to the little town to check out the local scene and do some shopping.  She opened the shed door and found a restored triumph convertible parked inside.  She turned to him and said, "Seriously?"  He said, "Well of course, it is there for all of my guests."

Remember now, I was almost sound asleep when this story was being told.  It is the only thing I got that was worthwhile to keep from the seminar I attended.  I paid a lot of bucks to get this lesson, so you are going to hear the rest of the joke!  You are going to learn how to manage a pair of dimes like I learned in that seminar.

Try A Bright Idea For Marketing!

Once in awhile some social conditions come along and become big winners for the marketing department.  The world is very busy right now becoming conscious of 'green stuff' living efforts.  The trend to become 'green' is a hot trend.  In fact, I see a few marketing efforts coming from some companies that stress how 'green' their efforts are yet the only thing 'green' in the promotion is the word 'green.'  A lot of marketing departments have learned how to capitalize on the 'green' movement of the consumer.

Sometimes I like the idea to go the other way.  I have a bit of a maverick streak inside the make-up of my mental characteristics.  At times, that kind of maverick personality gets me into trouble.  However, I like promoting it once in awhile.  Occasionally, being a little bit of a maverick helps provide a good idea to use in bringing out some good marketing attention.  Sometimes the general public has the same strain of maverick in their own souls.  If the timing and subject is 'right' a business can capitalize nicely by being a little bit of a maverick.

I think every business is standing at one of those junctions right now.  A maverick opportunity is waiting for someone to jump aboard and move in the opposite direction.  If your business needs to promote some attention and create some traffic increases, as well as new sales, your maverick opportunity is waiting for you to stir it up a little bit.

I also like marketing opportunities that become available for any type of business to participate.  Sometimes an opportunity arrives that lends well for any type of business model to participate.  Those are usually the type of rare opportunities that can provide a lot of attention or revenues.  The 'green' movement for example is a movement that allows everyone an opportunity to step in line.  Even a real estate company can participate by listing properties in different classes of energy saving categories.  A hair dresser can participate by recycling hair for wig companies that donate to cancer victims.  An auto body repair shop can participate by recycling oils and introduce earth-friendly techniques and materials.  A website for leather boots can participate by using recycled boxes.  The opportunities are endless.  I suggest every business get in line with what they can use to make this type of marketing work well for their business model.

I also think the time is 'right' for going the other way.  I think every American business model right now has the opportunity to market in the opposite direction of the 'green' movement and become very successful immediately.  I think this is a bright idea.

Let's Try To Nail Down Your Future

Get a pen and a note pad out.

We need to write some stuff down.

Are you ready?  On page one of your pad, at the top, write these three letters in capital letter form; P.O.C.

Skip a couple of imaginary lines and on the left hand column begin the writing with the word; PLAN.

Flip the page to page two and also on the left hand column write the word; ORGANIZE.

Flip the page one more time and go to page three and on the left hand column write the word; CONTROL.

Now go back to page one and begin writing to define what you think your five year plan to financially succeed will be.  Go ahead, write it down.  It ain't easy is it?  Too much uncertainty, right?  Too much commitment effort to adhere to, right?  Too many unknowns, right?  Too much control and not enough freedom to do what you want to do, right?  Too hard to think about, right?  Not enough time to delve into this kind of subject, right?  Too much to think about, right?

Which excuse or excuses are in your way?  Which ones are you allowing to stop you from planning to win?  Do you think winning in business 'just happens?'  Do you think because you own a business you should automatically win?  Do you think you can win with the 'power' of your own mind and thoughts?  Do you think you do not need to develop some kind of plan that helps guide you to the goals you have in mind with your life?  Do you think the next five years will unfold as they may regardless of the efforts you sit down to guide them to become?  What are you thinking about right now?  Is this stuff too hard to do?  Is planning too hard to do?  Does it feel like you are heading towards some kind of emotional prison to sit down and plan your next five years for success?  Do you already have a solid plan?  Is your current plan something that you manage 'as it pops up' and makes its way through your life being managed on a daily basis?  Do you manage your five year plan with some kind of idea of how you plan to do your work three years from now, four years from now and five years from now?  Do you have the steps defined and the process to do those steps written down on paper?  Are your plans for success coming from constant and new thoughts in your head instead of plans you have written down?  How much thought have you given to making the steps to follow in how your future business will be producing what it does?  What the heck is your written plan?

Look behind you.  Look at what you have produced.  Look at your business life and take a look at where you truly are.  Is that where you want to be?  Are you going where you want to go with your business life?  Are the things you wanted to do in life getting to become a part of what you thought you wanted?  Are you doing what you wanted to do?  Are you getting what you wanted to get out of life?  Are you living in the fashion you want to live.  Are you seeing the world the way you wanted to see it?  Are you finding the time to enjoy the loves of your life the way you wanted to enjoy them?  Look behind you and ask these questions.  Are you spending the time with your loved ones they way you always wanted it to be?  Look behind you and determine if this is how it has become.  Are you satisfying all of these types of questions with your business success?  Is your current effort in business management providing these kinds of dreams and successes?  If it is, great job!  You need to share with millions of people how you did it.  Millions of business owners would love to here how you managed to build a business that provides those dreams.

Look behind you.  Look at what you have accomplished.  Is it where you thought you ought to be?

We Cheat, Everyone Of Us Cheats!

When we sold the business I was managing to another outfit, we designed the sale to included a guarantee for employing all of our staff as a condition to the sale.  The new buyer promised to employ the staff for at least the first 90 days, which is the policy for employee probation for the new company.  The probation period has now ended and all of the staff transferred to the new company are able to remain working with the new owner.  I have enjoyed the time I have spent watching how the new outfit operates.  It has been very interesting.  I can see the human dynamics from the bottom up.  It is a hugely different view than from the top down.  Did you know that?  It is kind of amazing.

Human dynamics are an interesting scenario in all company configurations.  Systems are beautiful when they do not have people milling about to mess them up.  We design systems to try and control the messy methods people use to do the things they want to do.  We have set times we are supposed to report to work for a reason, if it was a voluntary process, most would not come early to open the business up each day.  Some employees might wander in at 9 A.M., some at 10 A.M. and even others might never make it to work before noon.  That is exactly why we develop systems.  People need to be governed.

We place stop signs on streets we want more safety to exist.  We want to make sure people do not use the voluntary method for making their decisions about stopping or not.  We would prefer they stop at busy intersections and make sure it is safe to cross the intersecting roads.  We use written rules of conduct also to help our stop signs do their work.  We make sure every driver learns how to 'take turns' with other drivers so we can share the intersection with other drivers in a civil way.  We need these systems to get us all in line with cooperation.  Think deeper about this human need.

When you drive on a street with no stop signs in sight, what speed do you travel?  You likely travel at the speed the posted allowance permits.  If the road allows you to drive 25 miles per hour, you drive 28 miles per hour, right?  I do.  If the road allows you to drive 35 miles per hour, you hold it at 38 miles per hour...right?  It is just enough out side of the rules to satisfy you for being 'uncontrolled' but just close enough to avoid getting a ticket and a fine.  We hate rules.  We hate being told how to do what we want to do.  I set my speed control on my automobile at about 3 to 4 miles per hour over the freeway speed limit.  Everybody passes me on that freeway.  I never get a chance to pass anybody, they all drive faster than I do.  That is the truth.  Yet when a highway patrolman is sitting along side the road with a radar gun looking for speeders, everyone of those drivers slow down so much that I am able to pass a few of them during that stretch of road.  I never touch my controls.  I am not going to get a ticket for traveling three miles per hour over the speed limit.  Every other driver on the road slows down below the actual speed limit to 'give the impression' that they are compliant drivers when an officer is present.  It is a 100% experience.

When each of us drives on a road with no stop signs, we set our speed just above the speed limit.  Not once do we slow down at all of the intersections to see if someone else going the other direction is planning to run right out in front of our path.  When we have no stop signs we assume they do.  We travel 38 miles per hour in a 35 mile per hour roadway.  We do not slowdown at every single intersection along that road.  Could you imagine what it would be like if there were no stop signs?  The drivers going the other directions are doing the same as you, going 38 miles per hour in a 35 mile per hour zone...not slowing down at the intersections like you are doing?  We do not permit humans to use the voluntary method for crossing through road intersections.  Nobody would slow down or stop for someone else.  Could you imagine what a mess our roadways would be if all intersections in the world were permitted to be traveled through on the honor system?  What a nightmare!  I know for me, if I have no stop signs in front of me, I am going.  I don't know about you, but no stop signs mean I can go and keep my speed.

How Much Time Does Your Manager Spend Managing?

What Piece Of The Puzzle Do Your Managers Become?

In this day and age the effort to manage limited budgets has caused every business model to develop work patterns for its employees that lean more in the direction of multi-tasking.  It is no longer affordable to operate a small business by employing specialists that perform a single role.  Delivery employees do more than drive the truck, load and unload the products.  Delivery people become part of the product receiving crew.  They participate in the inventory control system and handle the maintenance and repair of the facility.  They also become the mechanics for the vehicles and the equipment, provide the security for the plant, become the safety managers and are given the duty to manage the company energy use.  The limited budgets of a small business have forced the owners to graduated to these types employee demands.  Multi-tasking is a minimum requirement for landing a healthy job position.  Bookkeepers are also the marketing managers, the inventory control facilitators and the health care administrators, or visa versa.  Everybody employed wears a long list of job responsibilities.  Small business models believe this is the only way to function profitably.  Truthfully, it may be.

If you do not believe this to be true, pick up an employment section in the classified ads and read the descriptions of the duties described for the job openings.  Then call the number listed or go online where they have more information posted about the job descriptions and discover the original listing only included a few of the required duties.  It is amazing what we have come to expect.  I am guilty.  I hired people knowing full well how many different tasks they would be expected to perform all without giving it a second thought.  I had to get a lot of work done with very few people.  That is how most small business models are designed.  That is how most small business models will succeed.

Managing the work requirements in the small business world of today has led each employee to become so diversified and so filled with multi-tasked responsibilities that very few employees can tell a friend what their job description really is anymore.  A sales clerk may describe how they manage inventory, place orders, run reports of old stock, produce special customer mailing lists, develop the advertising program and handle all of the company customer service challenges.  The sales clerk is no longer the register clerk.  The list of duties and responsibilities they are expected to perform grow with each day.  When another employee leaves to take time off, the sales clerk now must add and perform the warehouse and cleaning duties once completed by the person taking time off.  Getting the work done in a small business model is a huge challenge.  In most models, it is obvious that the work load is much larger than the time a staff can devote to completing that work load.  A good manager sees this challenge and leads the staff as best as is possible.  Good managers 'fill in' where the need demands their time the most.  Good managers want to help their staff become more productive and lend a hand wherever they see fit to help make productivity happen.

How much time does your manager spend managing the duties they must do?  Is the time they devote to each day 'hi-jacked' by 'filling in' for the normal daily duties?  I think most owners do not see this trend.  Managers do not manage anymore.  They are too busy helping to become the clerks.  Owners expect the manager to do their management job after hours since they cannot find time during the day to accomplish this task.  It has become a widespread nightmare for nearly every small business model.  The world of tight budgeting has become plagued by the need to hire a manager who can do all of the other daily functions.  Owners have learned how to become frustrated with poor performing managers and do not understand why these managers are producing the short results they produce.  Every minute a manager spends on running the sales register is a minute of time not dedicated to working the necessary behind the scenes machinery of that business model which is so crucial to helping that business model to perform like a well run model.  Owners have come to accept how to 'hi-jack' the success of their managers.  How much time does your manager spend managing?

We Gladly Take Credit For All Of Our Success.

We have no problem boasting our efforts when good things occur in our business models.  We know those good things happened because we did a lot of the right things to do.  We know we are the reason why our business produces the yields we enjoy.  We decide the things that need to be done and we guide the model to the production it delivers.  It is our efforts that drive our successes.  That is how we think.  When things go well for our business models, we take all of the credit.  We have no problem recognizing who is in charge of the decisions we make.  I am.  We know who needs the credit for making the decisions we make and we have no problem believing how well our business model works.  We have no problem dressing ourselves with all of the good reasons we decided to do what we decided to do.  Our decisions helped to produce the good results our business model enjoys.  It is simple.

Did you know we do not carry on the same way when our business model is failing?  It is true.

When our business model is failing we have the ability to string out a list of reasons beyond our control that hinder our results and eventually cause us to lose at the business game.  We have no problem dressing ourselves with all of the good reasons why we cannot overcome the challenges our business must face.  The reasons why our model fails is beyond our control.  We will gladly explain away the unfortunate results with a long list of logical explanations that have nothing to do with our ability to produce the failures.  It is never our fault.

We carry both of these sticks of knowledge.  We take all of the credit when the model performs well and refuse to accept the fault when the model fails to produce success.  It is true.

I am the most guilty operator that practices this process.  I gladly know it.  I know I am wired to take all of the credit.  When I hit a home run it is because I produced the swing that hit the ball.  My name was in the batters box.  The newspaper wrote about how I hit the home run.  It did not make a mistake in the article and put Danny's name where mine was supposed to go.  I hit the home run, my name is in the paper.

Michael Jordan quit basketball at an early age.  He decided he no longer wanted to play the game.  He quit.

One man did not believe Michael should quit the game of basketball.  That man was a basketball coach.  He stepped to the plate and convinced Michael and his father that Michael should continue playing basketball.  The process was a successful effort.  Michael Jordan returned to basketball long before he became famous for being so good at what his specialty became...professional basketball player.

When Michael did his business so well I never saw the name of that basketball coach placed as a footnote next to Micheal's news clippings about how well he performed.  All of the credit went to Michael.  When Michael failed in his marriage game, it was not Michael's fault.  His lifestyle, the pressures he faced with the loss of his dad, the money, the fame and whatever else we can list became the reasons for his failed marriage business.  It was not Michael's fault.  That is how we think.

That coach who saved Michael's career in basketball was not standing next to Michael when the decision was made to quit his marriage.  Think about it.  A great leader does not miss on these points.  A great leader does not sweep these truths under the rug.  A great leader does not fail to recognize who is truly in charge of what you successfully produce.  A great leader stands up to be counted when things are not going well.  We know all of this stuff is true.  It is true and we know that.  The hard part is doing it.  The hard part is doing leadership correctly.

Tell Me How To Create More Traffic.

Nature does some of the best teaching in life.  All we need to do is study how nature does what she does.  Nature provides a lot of really neat clues on how to perform more effectively.  Every day we walk right past many great ideas that Mother Nature sings in her normal songs.  We become so familiar with what she does we no longer notice how much she teaches when she performs her daily routines.  We walk right past them.  We do not take notes and respect what is going on around us.  We are too busy doing what we think we should be doing to take the time and try to learn something new.  We skip looking around for new lessons even though they have been right there beside us all along.  New and wonderful lessons are all around us.  They circle our daily walk constantly.  Have you heard the phrase, "The teacher appears when the student is ready?"  I live on that simple notion.  I look every moment in the face for a new lesson to be learned.  I am looking for one right now.  It is a 24/7 proposition to me.  How about you?

Nature has some very strict and steadfast rules.  She will never break them.  Never.  You can wait until you die and some of her rules will never be broken.  We are not like that.  We break fundamental rules more often than we can count.  We also wonder why we do not always get what we think we deserve.  We expect better results even when we break the rules that produce those better results.  We feel we are entitled to receive what we are not willing to produce.  We will also lay blame on anything other than ourselves for the poor outcomes we produce.  There are so many other great reasons why we failed.

We are fascinating to watch.  That is why many people go to malls.  They like watching how we fascinate them.  Our personal foibles are some of the best entertainment you can find.  Be careful, however, our foibles are not the things you need to learn how to copy.  Remember, our foibles grab your attention because they are usually stupid.  Stupid is not a very good trait to use when you are trying to create more business traffic.  Nature is not stupid.  She is very smart.  She is very efficient.  She is truly a 24/7 proposition.  She also does not care if you do not care.  If you decide to destroy one of her patterns of success, she will allow you to do that.  Destroy away.  She does not care.  Your business is the same way.  It does not care if you do not create more traffic.  It will sit right next to you waiting for more traffic to appear.  In fact, your business is a lot like mother nature, it will 'out wait' you.  They both are prepared to wait forever.  Is your "traffic-producing-clock" ticking away time right now?  If it is, your business is faithful enough to be right next to you waiting patiently.  You can wait forever for increased traffic to occur.  It is not coming until you make it come.  You can create the best sale signs ever and more traffic will not occur!


It ain't coming.

Mother nature teaches us when she reaches us.  She can only reach us when we slow down enough to allow her lessons to come in.  We need to become teachable.  We need to shut off all the things we already know.  We need to prepare our mental stance properly in order to gain what we do not already know.  It is not a very simple process.  It sounds easier than it really is.  We have some hidden protections built into our minds that keep us from wanting to learn more about how we do what we do.  Those hidden things are so powerful we will fail many times before we learn how to quit using them.  It is amazing.  I am guilty.  I do this stuff every single day.  I protect what I know and refuse to adjust my thinking when a new lesson falls at my feet.  I work harder on finding reasons to confirm what I know instead of working on new unknowns to ratify the thoughts I have and turn them into ones I discovered I did not know.  I fail to learn new and wonderful things when this occurs.  I become bored with myself and proud to be who I am.  It is a terrible concept to possess if you own a business model.  It is likely the key reason why most business models do not become really successful.  We are the true villains to our potential for better success.  Yea, yea, yea...so, tell me how to create more traffic.  Right?



Down deep, you do not really want me to tell you how to create more traffic, unless of course it matches what you want it to match.  All you really want to do is discover something you already believe needs to be done and maybe I can confirm it for you by writing it down as a suggestion.  When that kind of connection is made, you might act it out.

So, tell me how to create more traffic.

How Do I Generate More Traffic?

Does Your Business Say Something Like This When It Is Open?

People just want to belong.  For some strange reason we all tend to go where others go.  We can travel a couple of hundred miles to a new town and get a motel room early in the afternoon.  After we get settled into the room with our stuff, we might want to go get a 'latte' somewhere.  We decide to venture out into this little town and see what we can find.  The motel we selected is located downtown with all of the 'old history' in this little town.  We hop into the 'car' and begin our search for a 'cute' little place that 'catches' our eye.  The downtown area 'is like' most old towns.  It has a route going one way on one street and another route going the other way on another street.  Checking out the downtown area for a 'good' place to stop and 'enjoy' ourselves will be 'easy' to do.

As we 'cruise the gut' looking for something that 'snags' our interest, we notice some 'familiar names'.  We see a 'Starbucks' and a few fast food name brand joints on one side of this downtown strip.  The town is small so we decide to continue to do the complete loop on both one way streets to see 'what else' is 'alive' and 'interesting' for us to consider.  We also notice on the one way street going the other direction a small section of downtown that has some 'people gathered' around a few little 'local' businesses.  We decide to find somewhere to 'park' and check it out.  There seems to be 'a lot going' on in this section of town.  We find a 'nice' parking lot that looks 'easy to do' and 'safe' to use.  We park the car and 'get out to walk' over to this 'section' we are headed to check out.

The closer we get to the place where 'everyone was wandering' about, we notice 'some music' going on.  As we begin to come up against the 'group of people' we start to 'notice more' reasons why they are 'gathered' here.  It seems to be a 'small festival' of weekend 'activities' centered around 'a farmers market' area on a back street next to downtown.  Some of the shops in this area are 'interesting' little boutiques.  'People are milling' about going in and out of these 'little businesses'.  We feel like we have found the 'happening' place in this little town.  We 'scored'.  Now all we need to do is 'find' the 'coffee shop' around here.

How do I generate more traffic?

Above is a physical description of how customers tend to move about.  It describes how people go hunting for the kinds of things they prefer to find.  This not only happens to small business models who operate in brick and mortar facilities, but the same process is how people find online stores they prefer to use.  Let's break down what helped this couple above find the place they decided to select.  Let's see how they became more traffic to the region that had traffic milling about.

How Do You Treat Your Employees?

It has been at least twenty years since I have seen one of my old friends.  He passed through the business the other day buying some stuff for his second home out in the country.  Both of us looked straight at each other and connected immediately.  It was kind of fun having a chat about old times.  Years ago he was a vendor sales representative for one of the companies who supplied products to a family business we owned.  He asked a lot of questions about my family, my business travels and everyone of our employees who worked for us way back then.  He knew each one of my employees and their names.

He is getting ready to retire from the same firm he was working as a sales representative.  He is now the sales manager of that firm for the west coast division, living in a large city working in the corporate office.  He and his wife love horses and are purchasing a small ranch out in the country where they plan to live when they retire.  We had a great chat.  He wanted to know what each of my employees were doing today.  It was a very amazing conversation that revealed about how much has changed in this world of business today.

I have mentioned in an earlier post on this blog that most of my key employees from the past have moved onto some very big employment positions with some very successful business firms.  Those previous employees were some very good employees.  At one time our family owned and operated five separate business models, located in four different cities.  In order to make that kind of business package work well we needed to have some very good employees, and we did.  Those are the employees this old friend remembered well.  His conversation about them included some very kind words.  He and I discussed some of the best traits these previous employees possessed.  We had some serious laughs about some of our best experiences.  The reminiscing about old times was a load of fun.

Yesterday, I made a product check call to another old business I previously managed.  The person who answered the phone was one of my previous top employees.  She and I had a great conversation about current times.  She was having a challenge with some computer problems at her business when I called.  I took the time away from the search I was doing for a product I was trying to find for a customer and asked her what the computer problem might be.  After a few minutes of discussion about the computer hang up she was experiencing, I offered some advice to help her repair the challenge.  It worked.  When the computer challenge was fixed she said, "Boy, I miss you.  It is just not the same around here without you."

How do you treat your employees?

Is Your Parking Lot A Profit Center?

I have never walked into a restroom that was coin operated.  I am not sure how desperate I would be to use one.  I do not ever remember paying for the use of a restroom.  In some regions of the world, it might be a common process to pay for pee.  I do not recall doing it.  The truth is, we all pay for the restrooms we use and many of them we never use.  The trick to the process is that we are not charged a user fee.  We therefore do not notice paying for them each time we use them.  It is a great concept.  When people pay for the use of some product or service and do not feel as though they are paying for their use, it becomes a concept that can get very interesting.  What about the parking lot next to your business model?  Who is paying for the use of that space?

You might not be able to convert your neighboring parking lot into a business, but you may be able to use that space as a profit center.  If you own a storefront and your business sells shoes, you may focus all of your energy on the idea of running a shoe store.  This process is normal.  High-technology providers focus all of their energy on producing revenues from the things they do, high-technology stuff.  Clothing manufacturers focus all of their energy on distributing clothing as they work on producing revenues from all of the things they do.  Auto mechanics focus on all of the auto repair stuff they do to create their own profit streams.  Every business model produces its own activities for generating revenues in order to create potential profit streams.

Most profit streams are easy to see.  When a clothing manufacturer thinks about producing more profits, they work on ideas that help them improve the manufacturing process of clothing.  The best profit streams, however, are the ones nobody sees.  We will call those streams of profit 'invisible streams.'  The question becomes, how many 'invisible streams' does your business model produce?

When you wrote your business plan and you opened your business model did you focus only on the thing you wanted to do in your business?  If you wrote a plan to make the best cupcakes in the world, did you focus all of your energy and work plans to center around making money on producing cupcakes?  Likely, you did.  Most people who lead a business have all of their thoughts directed towards making money on the things they produce.  Accountants focus on attracting clients to process bookwork they can provide for the streams of revenue they receive.  It is a simple idea and works very well.  All accountants do it.  Every business owner processes their business model to try and make their money stream profit.  They try to make profits from what they do.

This is the whole idea of owning a business.  If I retail furniture to the consumer, I try to make my money stream of profit by selling furniture.  Most business owners operate in this fashion.  They place all of their energy into the thing they do to try and create a favorable profit stream to manage.  The next step we want to visit is to see what other things business owners can do in their business model to create new streams of revenues, or new profit centers...'invisible streams.'

If you have been operating your business for enough time to see it running well, you might want to begin the search for developing new profit streams to enjoy.  There are likely many opportunities resting right under your nose.  Sometimes we get so busy doing the things we do to make our business model work well we often times cannot see other opportunities resting right next to the work we are already doing.  Sometimes we see other people figure some really cool things out and we wonder how they got so lucky.  In most cases, they did not get lucky.  They were always looking for the next opportunity and one of them 'hit' well.