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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sour Grapes Does Not Make Good Business Wine

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take Your Business Work More Seriously

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

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

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

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

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

Take your business work more seriously.

Oh, By The Way...I Have A Question For You!

I met a young lady a few years ago who had quit working for a dentist she had been trained to assist.  She was making her routine income, routine life and routine challenges work just about the same as everyone else.  She was married, had a couple of children and they owned a boat for recreation.  She was a normal acquaintance with a normal pattern of life.  We all have met people like this.

Then one day she said she was retiring from being a dental assistant.  She and her husband were going to invest in a business and she was going to work it full time.  He was an electrician.  He was employed with an electrical firm keeping his schedule busy back then when the housing industry was running along smoothly.  She seemed very excited about making the move.

I remember that conversation with her.  Back then, I did not give it much thought.  I did encourage her to be attentive to detail, be patient, be creative and do not worry about the big stuff.  I remember she asked me a whole bunch of questions.  In fact, when I left the dentist office that day I can remember thinking she sure has a lot to learn.  I also remember thinking, I am sure glad her husband has a decent stream of income.  I did not actually place very much confidence with her on her attempt to build her future venture.  I did encourage her, however.

A couple of years later I bumped into that same lady.  She was still full of energy and had a really positive bounce embedded in her personality.  We talked a little bit about business.  She had just opened her second shop and was just about ready to help her husband go out on his own in the electrical trade.  They had just returned from Hawaii after a vacation with the family.  She said they decided to go take some time off before they became too busy with all of the new changes they were just about ready to take on.  She was equally excited this time as she was when I first met her a few years prior.  All I could think about was how much energy she had.

She was only passing by me when we had this conversation.  During that brief moment, she asked me a few more questions about her new effort to expand.  In fact, she had a lot of questions for me.  When I left that brief conversation I felt like she did not know anymore about running a successful business than when I first met her.  I was puzzled a little bit.  She seemed like her business was doing well.  I was a bit surprised about her description of its success.  The questions she was asking are questions that should have answers already in place with regards to her operations.  It puzzled me a little bit.  I also remember how intensely she listened to the answers and how the answers I gave prompted new questions from her.  She was genuinely searching for some workable answers.  That much of our conversation impressed me.

A few years have gone by since I have had those two brief encounters with that lady.  I have forgotten about her, totally.  It is funny how some encounters in life just simply skip through time and become erased from the chalkboard of our memories, until of course, we bump into a reminder.  Yesterday, I bumped into one of those reminders.

I was reading a small article in a trade publication and a feature article was written about this lady and her five successful businesses.  There she was.  Third time is a charm.  She was being interviewed about how well her business models were performing in a sour economy.  The article also described how her husband had modified his electrical business into an electronics development company building small circuit boards for a fast growing local technology company which builds military unmanned flying machines.  The two owners and their three children had just returned from a three week trip to South Africa.

I walked right past this lady a few years ago, giving her little chance in my mind about making it in the private business sector.

Business Ownership Is The Only Place Where The Egg Comes First!

Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?  It is a terrible visual.  However, when you know the truth, all things clear up nicely.  Have you ever seen two eggs rub themselves together, exchanging some fertile solution over each other and a couple of months later squirt out a chicken?  It doesn't happen that way.  That is why you have never witnessed two eggs making a chicken.  The chicken comes first, then the eggs.  That is what you witness.  That is how it works.  When you know the truth, everything else no longer remains fuzzy.

Life is exactly the same way.  When you know the truth, everything else gets a little bit less fuzzy.  There is a slight exception.  If you are a business owner, the egg comes first.  For centuries this cliche' has been a staple question, which comes first...the chicken or the egg?  Over the years many people have become confused about how to correctly answer this question.  The truth is, the chicken comes first.  Chickens do some rubbing together process to make some eggs begin to grow, then lay them.  Eventually the eggs hatch and a new chicken is born.  That is exactly how it works.  The chicken comes first, then the egg.  It is simple.

This simple concept, the truth, can be applied to everything in the world.  Once the truth is discovered everything else about that truth becomes very clear.  If a person becomes confused about how a process has become so messed up, search out the truth and the method for failure will reveal itself.  Solutions are much easier to provide when the truth has been revealed.  The truth helps the solutions find their way more efficiently to the surface.  The truth helps the solutions become more effective.  Once we discover how the chickens do it, the egg is the easy part.  We quit trying to place two eggs together in the dark waiting for a new chicken to appear.  The truth helps us to solve business problems efficiently and effectively.

To every business owner who is finding their business ownership a very large challenge to produce some healthy incomes, the truth is, the egg comes first.  To all of you owners of a business model, the egg comes first...not the chicken.  Business ownership has a set of completely different rules.  The main reason why you are not able to produce nice incomes from your business model is due to the fact that you are approaching the model like everyone else would approach it.  You are treating your business model like the chicken came first.  It does not.  The egg is the one who comes first.  You need to approach your business with a completely separate set of truths.  The egg comes first, not the chicken.

For example, when you hire an employee you need to design why you want to hire someone.  In most cases, you will believe that you know who you want, who you can help by employing them and why you want them to be a part of your business model.  You know in your heart why you want to hire the one you hired.  The truth is, did you hire the one who will produce the best?  Likely, you did not.  We have so many more reasons we need to satisfy that we get confused about how we hire who we hire.  I watched a retail manager hire a part time worker recently and as he introduced her to the rest of the staff, he bumped into one of his best patrons who was wandering about in the business he was managing.  As the new hire left the premises to go home after that series of introductions, the patron asked the manager if she was going to be working full time.  The manager answered by saying, "No.  Just part time.  Two days a week, but she is really cute."  The patron responded, "No kidding."  The manager said, "That is one of the reasons why I like this job.  I get to pick the best looking ones."  Which do you think came first, here?  The chicken or the egg?  The chicken did.  Apparently, the factors that contribute to improved profitability were not as high on the priority list.  The egg was second.  The egg is the one that represents the profitability of the business model.  The egg is the key.  In business, the egg must and always come first.  It should never be about good looks.  Good looks do not always ensure and create better profits.  Choosing good looks over 'profitability factors' will likely guarantee a set of outcomes that may produce less than what the business model will require.  The problem with this kind of thinking is that the chicken is believed to come first.  In this case, it is the egg that needs to come first.  If you want your model to produce a better level of personal income, do not miss this point.  The egg must always come first.

If You Are Disorganized, Add 14% To Your Bottom Line Costs

If you are unorganized, you operate an expensive business.  Disorganization is expensive.  I have been able to trim off as much as 14% from the expense budget of an unhealthy and poorly run business model.  Sloppy operations can eat up everything you work to produce.  I have seen some of the most expensive bad habits literally destroy an otherwise good business model.  The only people who do not believe this stuff are the leaders who run these kinds of organizations.

Inefficiencies eat up profit dollars as if they are hourly snacks.  They chew on the profits like they are munchies.  They nibble at the profits here, they nibble at the profits there.  Sometimes the leader does not notice the munching going on until a small bag of little profits from a short term project is found on the shelf, empty.  The little bag has been opened and someone ate the profits.  This happens in inventory, labor, equipment, energy, insurance, tools, support tools, motivational programs, safety and marketing.  Every one of these centers of duty run more expensive when the organization is inefficient.  Each one can become more than a 2% increase in cost if the organizational habits really suck.  I only mentioned ten areas that can go haywire and run 2% more than what they should typically cost.  That kind of inefficiency can cost your organization 20% more in expenses than it should be typically running.  Ten times two!  I have seen it happen to a lot of nicely designed business models.  You may own one.

Profitability comes from a tightly designed, tightly managed and carefully organized business model.  If you hire people who are cheap, people who are friends, people who are not themselves very organized, you run the high risk of seeing your business model fall down on the job of organization.  This would be your fault, not theirs.  You picked unorganized people to help you organize your business.  They are being who they are.  They are not doing anything wrong.  You just selected the wrong type of people to organize your business model.  This is not rocket science.

If you do not understand how expensive disorganization can be, you can skip reading the rest of this post.  You can wait for another day and read a post more friendly.  If you cannot find the scissors on the desk you manage, you might be disorganized.  If you cannot find the remote telephone that used to be sitting in the charger on your desk, you might be disorganized.  If you continually go searching for a product to retrieve to sell to a customer who has requested to buy it and one shows in your computer as being in stock...but not located in its proper location...you have organization issues.  Once in awhile, this type of stuff happens.  All the time, you have a problem.  What's more, this problem is costing you every cent of profit you generate to be able to manage the extra trails you walk to cover the ground of double work it generates.  Your profits are feeding the monster.

I have been asked to offer my suggestions on what I would do if I was offered the manager of a business model.  I have been asked that question a few times in my career with different outfits.  Most of the time it is safe to answer that question with something related to working on improving the different levels of becoming better organized.  Most organizations could use a little house cleaning.  It is usually a safe bet to answer that question with an answer that addresses how I would improve the organizational aspects of the business models.  For the most part, many owners would enjoy hearing how their business model will finally get some of its costly inefficiencies cleaned up a little bit.

We hire friends, acquaintances, children of strategic board members, nephews of important customers and cousins of previous managers.  We do not necessarily hire talent nor integrity minded qualifiers.  In fact, I have witnessed a business manager ask a particular strategic relative to hurry up and bring in a resume' so we can do an interview.  How will this employee work out?  Not.  When a manager has to resort to begging for a resume to be produced by someone who is not yet hired, how will that employee work out on the other requests coming in the future?  How will that new hire perform future requests of tasks when they have already landed the job by not producing what was originally requested as an interview requirement?  Sometimes we do not see this stuff.  Trust me, it matters.  Your organization lives or dies by how well it is run.  A sloppy organization can be 14% more expensive to operate than a crisp organized one.  What's more, the sloppy one requires more work to complete.  The sloppy one is more frustrating to live with.  Some of you know exactly what I am talking about.

I have not even begun the discussion on the subject of lost sales.  Lost revenues is an altogether different expense that cannot be measured by the poorly organized business model.  Here is a prime example.  When a retail model designs its check out clerks to answer the incoming business phone calls, while checking out 'in-line' customers...that model is slowly losing the patience game with the customers standing 'in line.'  Period.  No exceptions.  Everyone of us can explain this atrocity out with the low budgets we must respect in these tough economic times...but the truth is, we have developed a system of low customer respect and low customer service.  Period.  End of seminar.  You either 'get it' or 'you don't.'

The business you slowly lose will not come to your desk in big notes from the customers, telling you they have decided to go somewhere else.  The first time a customer stops to wait for their clerk to handle a phone call while they are being checked out is something they will tolerate.  The next time it happens, they will begin to wonder where your help is?  I hear them say that exact same thing.  The third time they have this happen, they may be 'in-line' and watch it happen to the customers ahead of them.  This makes them more anxious to wait their turn to be put on hold when they get to the register.  Now this pattern becomes an issue.  This issue has a limit.  Every customer carries with them a fuse of tolerance.  When that tolerance fuse runs out, you are done.  Serving them in the future will cease.  They will choose to go somewhere else.  They will not write a nice note to you describing where they have gone and why.  You will be left standing there trying to figure out why your volume has slowly been dipping downward.  You will blame the economy.  Figure it out.  Solve this problem.  That is what leaders do.  That is why you are in charge of your business model.  You get to solve these types of challenges.

Business Relief Does Not Come From Doing Nothing.

I lived in Sacramento, California many years ago.  I was a single man with a young professional career.  I was not tied down socially, recently out of college and full of energy and career ideals.  I moved quickly through three jobs as I was searching for a valid place to build my career.  Jobs were plentiful.  The economy was vibrant.  Growth was easily pursued and business victories were common.

The working world was a fun place to go each day because so much was going on to create success and interest.  I, like many young professionals, spent a lot of hours during the week going to gyms and clubs to work out.  My main interest activity was racket ball.  I played a lot of racket ball after work to occupy my time.  The traffic on the freeways to my home was horrific after work.  To avoid that mess I walked across the street from my work location to hit the courts while I waited for the freeways to get cleared out of all the hustle and bustle.  On the weekends I ran long distant jogs around the city.

Sometimes I ran as much as 26 miles.  I would run from one town to another along some of the frontage roads.  I had some friends spotted in locations around those areas that would drive me back home after a long run.  We would go do something after I cleaned up.  This was a common pattern for my life.  When I would go running I noticed the first mile or so was the most difficult part of the run.  I would feel the most pain and have the most stiffness in the beginning of the run.  My mind would try to tell me today was not a good day to run.  The urge to quit was the highest at the beginning of the run.  As I ran longer into each individual distance run, I noticed a more peaceful feeling coming from my exercise.  There were times I actually felt very good during a good portion of the run.  It was almost like being suspended in a feeling of pleasure.  The rhythm and body seemed to be in tune with one another.  I remember I had the ability to generate a lot of physical relief from most of my runs.  This was a great example of how relief does not come from doing nothing.  Relief can come from doing a lot.

I no longer practice long distance running.  However, that experience taught me to understand how relief can come from working well, working hard.  Business relief is much the same.  Business relief does not come from doing nothing.  Business relief comes from performing well.  When our business models work well and produce well, we feel better.  Relief comes from doing something well.  When we exert energy and activities into our business models with good ideas that work well we feel relieved.  Business relief does not come from doing nothing.  It comes from productive success.

I know there are times when a break in action is very welcomed.  A business owner has a full plate to deal with every single day.  Sometimes the plate is too full to comprehend so the mind just looks for opportunities to shut down.  This is when an owner begins to search for relief.  The truth is, relief comes better when it is spurred on by doing a lot of things very well.  Doing nothing only offers a spell from the action for a little while.  It does not bring on relief.  It only provides a little break from the intense action.  Business relief comes from performing efficiently and producing great results.  One of the best suggestions I heard about owning a business was to keep busy working your ideas into a froth.  The commotion you build with the efforts you expel help you to turn your ideas into a reality.  This effort will actually boost your energy and help you supply higher levels of life to your business model.  When this kind of effort surfaces, you become a part of the business model and your relief arrives when efficiency meets great outcomes.  I had a great business mentor share this concept with me.  Many times I have witnessed this type of relief.  I can assure you that it does not come from doing nothing.

Slam Dunk Your Illusions

We hosted a small celebration party for one of our daughters and some of her friends.  She graduated from college this past term.  Before finishing school she landed a career-building job with a technology firm a couple of hundred miles from home.  She finished her finals last week and will be able to enjoy a week-in-a-half off before beginning her new job.  She has already secured her apartment where she plans to live so she is going to spend the next week moving in and setting up her home and arranging her new office at work.  She will take some time off and go to the beach for a couple of days, also.

This is a great time for a person to allow the mind to begin dreaming about how they want their career to travel.  I know my daughter well.  She has been dreaming about her career all along.  However, this is the best time to begin scraping off the fat of a dream and begin working on the meat of the dream.  Now is the time to start developing the creative self as well as the due diligent self with regards to career duties and career plans.  Solid foundations are now taking on a shape that is recognizable.

She is excited about beginning work on her new job.  She has been receiving some very good council from her new boss, even thought she has not started her first day yet.  Her duties will include some work on creating a new process for internal record keeping for the few hundred employees on the company staff.  She will be given some guidelines to make this transition of record keeping work smoothly but they expect her to develop several new architectural software components that will help the HR department reduce the paper trail currently used to manage all employee records.  She will need to build a portion of this process.

She is our last graduate.  All of our children have finished college with their desired degrees, one with her Masters Degree.  All are employed in the professional world.  Each of our children have performed this transition from college activities to become professionals in the working world.  Each of the two children prior to our last graduate, who is just beginning her employment trek, have used each job placement as a stepping stone to move up the career ladder.  The two previous graduates have moved up the employment scale with each promotion or job change they initiated during their career building efforts.  I am certain the last graduate will do much the same.

The internal drive that motivates the soul to move up the skill ladder is a nurtured system that comes from a developed want that is built into a person and is designed to be able to manage some dreams about performing at higher stations in life.  This type of thinking is not always natural.  It needs to be trained.  It needs to be nurtured and it needs to be rewarded in order to grow.  These three graduates have that desire.  They practice their set of dreams and establish them very well in their heart of life management.  They know they are responsible for the outcomes they will produce.  They know where they want to be and they know what they need to do to get where they want to be.  Even though only one of them owns a small business, while managing her employment career, each of them practice the skill sets that a small business owner must possess.  They know how to dream and they know how to manage those dreams into a reality.  All of them are efficient in that effort.


A business owner must perform their success in the same fashion.  Learning how to dream properly is a key component to helping someone to develop a successful business plan.  The effort to perform well is centered around the idea of improving performance.  In order to improve performance, new knowledge must grow well along side the creative use of good ideas.  Good ideas must circle the truth around the field of useful and probable potentials.  This is exactly how a business owner succeeds in building a healthy and growing business model.  The use of knowledge, the use of probable dreaming and the successful management of doing what needs to be done is how a business owner performs growth in an efficient manner.  It is a period of time an owner discovers how to be perpetual with their efforts.   

Most business owners find this period of time almost an illusion.  Business owners rarely get to see concrete evidence of major hurdles being cleared in the path of what they are trying to do with their business model.  Everything they do seems interwoven together with so many separate processes that a clear shift from one level of accomplishment that lifts them to another plateau of accomplishments does not actually reveal itself with this kind of clarity my daughter is experiencing.  A business owner must find separate ways to recognize benchmark accomplishments.  They must learn how to identify when they have developed a healthy employee training program.  They must learn how to identify when their profit margins have grown a point or two and have actually held that mark for more than a year.  Business owners rarely get to experience major shifts of accomplishments similar to the ones my daughters have experienced.  Business owners do not always get to witness that kind of clarity in their business building successes.

It is for this very reason some business owners slip away from reality and begin to formulate concepts of false impressions.  Business owners are usually driven by a set of dreams that help them to overcome the customary obstacles that interfere with the business success they are trying to achieve.  They use those dreams to help them push through those obstacles.  This is a very good thing.  I recommend it to any new business owner.  Dreams are usually the root of every business building effort.  Dreams help drive the machinery, especially when the terrain does not look very manageable.  Dreams are centered around some great desire and help the owner of that dream to begin developing a great vision for how to get there.  These are necessary steps for success.

As each person begins to learn how to dream properly, they must also learn how to deal with fantasy and illusions.  It is such a difficult process to discern which is what.  When does a dream go too far?  When do the illusions pass up the possibility of a dream coming true?  How does a person know the difference?  Why should that be of concern?

Which Way Is Your Growth Arrow Pointing?

Business Growth Creates A Wind Of Direction Your Arrow Points

Weather vanes on top of rural barns are a collectors item.  Some of the old weather vanes have become sought after ornaments.  Those weather vanes were designed to 'mark' someones ownership, the speed of the wind as well as the direction the wind was blowing.  A lot of those old weather vanes had an arrow designed in the subject, which could also include a chicken or a cow.  The arrow was designed to point out which direction the wind was blowing.

Your business model has numbers it produces.  Those numbers are considered your wind.  As your numbers move, so does your business move.  The charts you make that reflect your business numbers become the arrow of your business weather vane.  You have an arrow that is pointing out the direction your business is traveling.  I look at my business arrow way too much.  I am addicted to seeing it move upwards.  I am a business arrow junkie.

I like numbers.  I like growing numbers more.  I like comparatives.  I like record breaking comparatives.  I am a junkie for numbers.  I was asked how one of my business models was doing and before I could answer that question, I could envision the direction of the growth arrow in my mind.  It was the first image I thought of when the question was asked.  I could see the image of the arrow in my mind.  My answer was, "It's doing O.K."  The image of the arrow was pointed upward.

Can you see your direction arrow?  Which way is it pointing?  Is your business vane arrow traveling in the direction it needs to be traveling?  Is the business wind blowing your charts upward?

These indicators are vital tools that will help you to decide what you should be doing.  You already have a full schedule of daily activities you are locked into if you own a small business.  However, always set some time aside to review progress and determine if you should wait patiently for better results or move quickly to make some changes.  You should develop the habit of keeping your arrow moving upwards on the business wind of your growth charts.  If you notice some things that disturb the arrow enough to turn it downward, quit doing those things.  If you notice some things that help the arrow move upward, learn how to do more of those things.  It is not rocket science.

Sometimes we get way to smart for our own britches.  We try to 'out-wit' our knowledge, our associates, our admirers, our family, our friends, our customers and our business duties.  We want to make sure everyone thinks of us and admires how smart we are.  I couldn't give a rip.  I just want my arrows going upward.  I give a rip about which direction my business models are headed.

Sometimes I will notice something that will help them grow.  Sometimes that thing is something I do not particularly want to do.  Yet if it helps my arrow point in the direction I want the arrow to point, I will do more of it...even if I do not want to.  I just want the arrow to point upwards.  That is it.

I spend most of my time looking for additions I can include in my business efforts that will help my arrows continue to travel uphill.  I see other techniques in use that capture my attention and I wonder if they could be modified to become part of what I am doing in my business models.  I roll those discoveries around in my head and try to visualize what they would look like in my models.  I try to 'see' what it would take to make them happen.  I include trying to anticipate how they will interfere with other parts of my models that are doing well.  I do not necessarily want to change what is working well by adding some new technique in an effort to get more.  I have made that mistake more than I care to admit.

Do Not Hide Behind "Busy Work"

How Do You Spend Your Time?

How are you doing?  Fine, how about you?  Oh, I've been real busy.  It has been so busy at work the time is flying by too quickly.  Oh man, have I been busy, too.  It has been so busy at work!  We've been really busy at work.  I have been so busy, lately, wow.  Man, it has been busy at work for me, too!  I'm too busy.  Can you help me with something?  No, I'm too busy.  Busy, busy, busy.  All we seem to be is busy.  There is so much work to do that all I seem to be able to do is keep busy.  I am too busy to add anything else to my schedule.  Man have I been busy, lately!

Being busy does not necessarily mean you are being productive.

Being busy does not necessarily mean you are profitable.

Being productive and profitable are completely different than being busy.  If you are sleeping, you are busy getting some rest.  Sleeping does not mean you are being productive and profitable.

When you go to work at your business, make sure you spend more time being productive as opposed to being busy.  If you count the progress of money every day, make sure you are not doing it once per hour.  The only time you should do that activity every hour is if you are moving large sums of money around to gain profits on changing interest rates that move greater than the cost of your transfer fees.  Do not waste your time watching the water while it tries to boil.  Be productive, not busy.

Did you know that an owner of a business speaks differently when they have made a great profit today compared to an owner who did a lot of busy work?  It is true.  When you ask each one how their day was today you will get two completely different answers from these owners.  It is true.  One will tell you how busy they were at work today.  The other will carefully describe how something good happened to them today.  Which one are you usually describing each day?  Stop and think about it.  Are you too busy to become more productive?  Amazing enough, most business owners are.

Being busy can sabotage your efforts from being more productive and more profitable.  It can hijack your time and prevent you from becoming more successful.  It can monopolize your time chips leaving you with very little time to become more profitable.  A lot of business owners are plagued by this scenario.  Be very careful with how you spend you time.  Be very careful how you do what you decide to do.  You are in charge of the duties you need to be doing.  Choose your duties well.  Choose the duties that are more productive and profitable as opposed to the ones that keep you busy.  Busy does not always mean profitable.  Know the difference in your business model.

I had a good friend who would take his watch off when you came to him to ask him some questions.  He was one of my best business leaders from the past.  He has since passed away.  He had a seasoned secretary that guarded his time chips.  When you wanted to see him about something, she would check to see if he had time to spend with you right now.  He would either set a time soon to see you or spend it right now.  When you walked into his office he would take off his wrist watch and set it down on his desk as he told you how long you had.  His watch had a little timer on it.  If you needed more time, he might add it to the timer.  Once the time was established for the meeting, he pressed the timer button to start.  He was not a stiff personality, just efficient with his time.  He learned the art of filling his time chips with more of the productive stuff we sometimes forget to manage.  He forced himself to make sure productive stuff was getting done.  He had a great personality.  He was a good conversationalist.  He listened very well.  He had great ideas and suggestions.  Yet when his timer went off, you were done.  He would thank you for the time and say, "Regina will lead you out."  You were done.  He needed to get back to his productivity.

His small business had a revenue stream of $18 million per year.  His income portion may have been somewhere near six percent of that total.  He did not want to talk about what kind of fertilizer you used on your backyard.  He saved that kind of conversation for a barbecue after work if you were lucky enough to be invited.  There is a time and place for everything.  Make sure you learn how to manage that use of time well.  Being busy can cover up the time you need to be using for being more productive.  Be careful.

Are We Missing Something?

My wife and I have a great marriage.  We have been through some stuff that has helped us make our marriage become a great marriage.  I remember our first date almost 30 years ago.  I had the arrogance to tell this young woman riding in my car that I had another girl friend.  The young woman riding in my car was someone I barely knew.  She eventually became my wife.

We were going to a nearby town to have pizza in a small but popular pizza joint.  In a lot of ways, this first date was very awkward.  However, there was something about that date that captured my attention that night.  To this day I do not know what it was.  All I know is that I felt something about this lady that night that compelled me to talk about our future.  Somehow I felt we would begin seeing each other more often.  We both seemed nervous on that first date.  It was kind of odd.  Even though we did not know each other it felt as if I had known her for a very long time.  I was not trying to be arrogant when I told her I had a girlfriend.  I was trying to come clean.

I liked this young woman a lot.  She had something about her that was different than the other people I had become associated with in my sphere of influence.  I knew immediately that I liked her.  I knew it would be a good idea to come clean as soon as possible.  The sooner, the better.  Get it over with, now.  So I told her I had a girlfriend.  I told her in the car as we were going to the pizza joint.  That is making up my mind rather quickly, is it not?  I did not even wait until we had ordered the food on the first date to come clean with my situation.  I felt compelled to get it on the table early.  I have a girlfriend.

My date and future wife to be was silent.  She seemed straight faced about it.  She did a good job of hiding how much she did not admire my statement.  So I decided to describe my girlfriend relationship to her.  I told her I owned a business.  I told her my business sucks the life out of my time chips like a girlfriend might do.  I told her that I eat, drink and sleep the elements that involve my business.  I described to her how much my business means to me.  I described how much time I consume trying to find better ways to make my business more successful.  I told her how I sacrifice many things in my life to make sure my business model gets the right things done long before I do anything else in my life.  I told her my business is my girlfriend.  I told her that my girlfriend and I had a very serious relationship going on and it likely would not end.  I told her that if we started dating a lot more she would need to know how much my girlfriend meant to me.  I asked her if she was O.K. with that?  She answered with a relieved, "Yes."

Guess what?  We did begin to date a lot.  Eventually we got married.  We are heading closer towards the thirty year mark of marriage.  However, that girlfriend deal did not work as well as I thought it might.  We have had many issues of a tragically serious nature about how much time I spend with my girlfriend.  I have heard many times the question, are we missing something?

Separate Yourself From The Crowd

Once in awhile I help do the grocery shopping.  I actually like going to the grocery store.  It is filled with lots of people doing so many things on their little lists, in such a rushed-up attitude.  It is kind of interesting to watch.  Some people are going through their little list in their minds while they are pushing their carts around.  They seem to be using their memory to get what they need.  They usually look a little stressed.  At least they have a frown on their foreheads the whole time they are compiling their needs.  They are the ones that get irritated when you get in their way.  They do not like to get bumped off the trail of their thoughts.  They have a mission to get in and get out with everything they need to get.  The trouble they have is that they are trying to do this quick move from memory.

Other serious shoppers carry a list.  They have the list made like it matches the isles.  It is amazing.  The first thing on their list is located on one side of the grocery store.  If the grocery store has a left side entryway, it all starts on the left.  If the grocery store has a right side entryway, it all starts on the right.  Rarely does a shopper come into the grocery store, get a cart and go all the way over to the opposite side to start shopping.  They begin their trek near the place where the empty carts were parked.  Sometimes the store will have a display arrangement that funnels the shoppers around a section before they can enter into the main shopping area.  We have a retail store named "Grocery Outlet" that does that kind of marketing move.  They almost force the shoppers around a 'specials' section before they can enter the main store.  It is a section usually filled with a bunch of items most shoppers did not come looking for when they came into the store.  It is kind of fun watching groups of different shoppers trying to navigate their way through this section, all at the same time.  Some stop to look at the specials and hold traffic up while others whisk around them in an effort to hurry up and get their shopping done.  It is obvious that neither group respects the other.

The list makers are very organized.  They run the cart route with precision.  There are no wasted double trips down forgotten isles.  They arrange their lists just like the way the grocery store arranged its isles.  All they do is go up and down the isles placing what they need into their cart.  Once they finish picking off an item, they look at their list to see what is next and head that way.  They are already aimed correctly to go pick the next item off.  They only get stressed when they forget something and have to turn back to go against the grain of the moving carts behind them.  They feel like they are now swimming against the current.

Some other basket pushers seem to be the type of people that wander about aimlessly.  They may use a certain isle more than once.  Sometimes you see them going east to west, then other times, there they go west to east.  They do not usually have a frown on their face.  They look more confused than stressed.  Their eyebrows are pushed all the way up.  You can see them, they are easy to spot.  They are the ones that use the hanging directional signs at the end of each isle that tell them where they are.  The difference between them and the seriously stressed shopper is that the wanderers are always trying to find where they need to be.  The serious shopper knows where they need to be and is traveling quickly to get from spot to spot.  These two types of shoppers are the ones that have the most collisions in the store.  They bump baskets once in awhile.

I especially like the shoppers who park their basket in an isle to go find some stuff they are looking for.  They will park their basket in its spot and walk to another part of the store to get something they forgot so they do not loose their place where the basket is parked, I guess?  They do not want to loose their place.  They may even do this move more than once on every trip to the store.  It is part of their habit.  Sometimes you will drive right past an abandoned shopping cart in the isle, with stuff in it.  That is owned by a traveler who is off searching for something they forgot.  Just learn how to go around that one.  I usually pick off a shelf item and place it into their cart, just for fun.  Some actually take inventory when they return and notice it.  I really do not do that, my wife would needle me about it for almost a week.  However, it crossed my mind.

Then there are the cart pushers who have unruly kids with them.  Those are the special ones.  They give the kids food and treats to shut them up.  I like that one.  Those folks have not yet figured out how rewards create repeated behaviors!  They just cannot believe their children act this way every time they go grocery shopping!  I hear them say that to their children.  I hope these people do not decide to own a business.  They will mess up the checkbook without knowing what they did.

My favorite is the group shoppers.  I like the cart that has the family and friends running along side the shopping effort.  These groups lose track of how much they block the isles for the serious get-it-done "A" types buzzing about.  The family and friends groups are the villains of the isles.  They are arguing, having fun, discussing a shared event or making group decisions on what to buy for a coming event.  They also can be caught sharing a recipe thought or two when they 'hit' a certain product in an isle.  They are there in the store having an experience.  They do not notice how much they are holding up the process for the other serious ones next to them.  They are too busy having fun.  Once in awhile, they will apologize to a frustrated shopper.  As the serious shopper passes by, they will give each other a look of imitation that will be designed to mock how serious the eyebrows are of the serious shopper.  Of course, they do this behind the serious shoppers back.  I actually like this group.  They add fun to the shopping experience.

It takes all kinds of shoppers to fill up a grocery store.  They are all customers.  They all have a mission at hand.  All of them are in that grocery store trying to solve problems.  They are buying stuff that will help them solve those problems.  They do not like it when they cannot finish their lists.  They will compromise their choices and their plans when they cannot find what they came to pick up.  They go to the check-out lanes either happy or frustrated.  The experience will lead them to one of those emotions.  It is at the check-out lane I learn the most.

Do You Jockey Your Business Out Of Sinc?

Lots Of Employees

I have worked with a few thousand people in my lifetime of employment.  Most of the associates, peers, superiors and subordinates I have spent sharing working hours with have proven that one thing is for sure.  For sure most everybody has a strong need to control the space around them.  Very few of those thousands are submissive at work.  Most people go to work with some kind of idea about how they will do what they are expected to do.  It might be subconscious in nature, but most people do what they want to do.  Rarely does someone go to work and do what they are 'told' to do.  That ain't accepted very well.  Most leaders of good organizations have learned how to get their people to do what they want them to do in a very creative fashion.  Followers are hard to lead and leaders are hard to teach how to follow.

Teamwork is often times more of a cliche' than it is a reality.  True teamwork rarely comes to an organization.  Bumps, fears and emotions find their own set of gravity and enter into the holes of our work places and present the leaders with a set of challenges they prefer not to see.  Most of the people who go to work are very much interested in controlling their own work activities.  They usually despise having someone else tell them what to do on a constant basis.  It irritates them.

Most employees are only nice at work because they know they may have a difficult time finding a better job in the marketplace.  Very few people find job hunting a fun process.  They hate job hunting and no income more than they hate how they are treated at work.  As a result, most employees get really creative in how they make it look good that they are accomplishing the right kind of stuff in the most efficient manner.  The truth is, they are not performing as well as they truly can perform.  This statement includes myself.  I will only produce that which serves me well enough to do.  I am one of those humans.

Some of the most troubling challenges a business model will face come from the leaders of that business model.  My experience reveals more challenges of a serious nature that plague a business model and keep it from good success usually come from the leaders in charge.  Rarely do the big problems come from the staff of employees.  Employees do not hold the most accountable issues in their realm of responsibilities.  As a result, they rarely produce the most serious problems.  Owners and managers are the most common source for the largest issues that do the most damage.  Unfortunately, reviews of progress and performance corrections in most business models do not reflect this truth.  The leader of most business models is usually the owner.  The owners do not reprimand themselves.  They reprimand the employees.  This is very normal stuff.

I get amused when employees describe how this unfair practice persists.  Get over it.  Even employees do not reprimand themselves for the costly errors they produce.  The difference between the two sets of who causes the errors, is often times reflected by who is holding the wallet on the table.  Employees do not actually feel the direct monetary loss their error produced.  The owner picks up that tab.  A lot of employees miss this fact.

Good leadership comes from knowing how to reprimand, when to reprimand and why a reprimand should even occur.  This kind of good leadership is an art.  It is not a science.  If I were to offer a set of five rules to follow on this subject, one of those rules will be easily broken tomorrow in a situation that requires a whole new set of rules to come out well.  It is very subjective.  It is very slippery territory.  Good leadership is an art.  Most leaders do not know how to paint that kind of art.  As a result, their organizations continue to become plagued with failure issues involving employees and performance.

If I Had A Hammer

CLICK LINK BELOW
http://youtu.be/KGZvQoPxhNs

Sometimes I catch myself singing a jingle from an old commercial.  I can tell the age of some people by the jingles they have never heard.  I am not a good singer.  My wife has a wonderful singing voice, not me.  When she sings any song she hits the correct notes at will.  Her voice goes from note to note hitting them right on.  I cannot do that.  I find the correct note once in awhile, maybe every sixth one.  The rest of the notes are an Easter egg hunt.  When I sing it might take several minutes before the listener figures out the song I am singing.  What's worse, I usually do not remember all of the correct words.  I am not your next American Idol.

However they have done it, some songs in a string of words have found their way into the minds of the masses and can be recognized without ever singing them correctly.  "If I had a hammer" is one of those strings.  I'd hammer in the morning.  I'd hammer in the evening...all over this land.  The only people who do not sing the rest of this tune in their minds are the ones who have never heard it.  Everybody else can hear the song playing in their head.

If I had a hammer.......................................................(go ahead, sing some of it in your mind.)

You want your marketing efforts to become that effective.  You want your business model to be recognized with this kind of power.  You want your trade to become part of what the consumer thinks about when their mind walks near the products or services your business provides.  Every time your consumer thinks about doing something in their life that can include using what your business does, you want them to at least think about your business.  When a customer starts looking to buy a home and you are a real estate agent, you want that customer to be thinking of your services like they recognize 'if I had a hammer.'  Immediately, you want them to be thinking about you.  Your business needs to become like that song in their head.  The part of that song that helps make this simple marketing point is the line that reads, I'd hammer all over this land.

Marketing your business for success is not as difficult as many are making it to become.  Most business owners do not allow their marketing efforts enough time to mature.  They hit a good idea once and quit running it as often as they can.  The owners seem bent on the idea of trying to discover the next best idea.  The owners keep looking for something new, something more creative.  If I had a hammer, is consistent.  He never grabs a saw.  He never runs a drill or a screw driver.  He just uses a hammer.  He probably owns a screw driver.  I am sure he has a saw on the shelf, too.  I bet he has duct tape!

No other words, no other phrases nor any other tune can remind you about that song.  Only "if I had a hammer" can do that job.  I do not even need to sing the melody to make that song come to your mind.  Those famous words find their own way to your memory banks.  That was some good marketing.

We know good marketing when we see it.  We know when we have seen something in marketing that is very effective.  The hard part is trying to figure out how we can do that kind of marketing for our own business models.  That is usually why we go searching for a good jingle.