Being Strange Is Not Always Wrong

Too Weird Is Not Marketable Enough

There is nothing wrong with being strange.  There is nothing wrong with being unique.  There is nothing wrong with being weird.  Unique and weird sells well in most marketplaces.  Unique is good.  Weird is good but too weird is too much, however.  There is a line that is drawn by the consumer.  They will love to participate in unique methods of operations.  They will also participate in weird marketing up to a point.  Once that level of weirdness has been reached, no more.  The consumer will exit and they will exit fast.

The mass market is where you want to be.  You want your business model to service the critical mass.  That is where the lions share of the market lives.  Be courageous enough to attract that market but do it in your unique way.  Find out how to paint your model into a pattern of operations that will attract the masses but in your unique way.

One more thing, you also need to separate yourself away from all of your competition.  You will need to learn how to stand out among the crowd of competitors.  That is why uniqueness is so important.  That is also why being a bit weird is not always a bad thing to be when you are trying to stand out in the sea of competition.  I like to advise that a business model become creative enough to almost reach the edge of weirdness.  I like to operate my models next to that edge.  It attracts some nice attention.  Moving a bit closer to a simple level of consistent weirdness is an easy way to become more unique.  It will help your business model become more recognizable.  When you are recognizable, your business model has a better chance to attract more people.

I try to mentally manage my effort to this type of marketing in a numbered fashion.  I like to keep my models a bit strange, a little bit different than all of the others.  I always spend time to check out the other competitors but I will try to remain slightly away from the main stuff that they do.  I might develop a little weirdness that can be added to my marketing ways.  I like to suggest that other business models do the same kind of thing.  Learn how to become a little bit of an artist.  Learn how to paint your marketing ways like a singer would develop their own sound.  When you hear Elton John sing, you know it is Elton John.  When you hear Michael Jackson's music you know it is Michael singing.  When you hear a Johnny Cash song you know it is Johnny Cash.  When you hear Elvis Presley sing, you know who is singing.  They made their trademark ways recognizable.  They market themselves well in this fashion.

Many new singers do not do this kind of marketing quite as well.  That is why many of the new performers get lost in the sea of singing competitors.  We do not immediately recognize them.  We cannot take possession of knowing them.  We cannot easily become their best supporters.  We cannot easily become included in their efforts to develop a wave of popularity.  It makes it difficult for us to belong.  All we want to do is belong.  As consumers, we need to be able to recognize who we want to support.  We need to recognize where we want to belong.

This is simple stuff to discuss but much harder to achieve.  I like to work closer to the side of weirdness to make this kind of marketing process happen more easily.  Maybe we should open up the doors of strangeness just a little bit more than we might usually do.  Maybe we should experiment with trying out some weirdness ways.  Let's keep that weirdness marketing effort somewhere around 20% of what we do.  Let's market this level of weirdness in a numbered fashion.  Let's suggest that we become 20% weird.  Let's make that numbered effort to include the level of weirdness and the volume of weirdness.  These are two completely different registers to monitor.  The level of weirdness refers to the depth of the actions.  The volume of weirdness refers to how often you repeat those actions.  These are two completely different things.

If weird words are used, let's make sure they are only 20% weird.  For example...sycloeoptomy is a weird word.  But so is sycophantic.  Sycophantic is not quite as weird.  It is only 20% weird.  Go with the 20% weird versions of what you plan to market.  Do not go all of the way weird.  It is too much for any market to absorb.  You will scare them all away.  You want to attract the masses, not scare away the multiples.  become unique to a point.  Stay closer to the 20% edge.  Do some weird stuff, but not too much.  Keep your feet on the ground and stay mostly normal.  Edgy is not wrong marketing, to a point.  Remain level on this effort.  Elton John had those interesting sun shade glasses and strange outfits.  Elvis did his hip movements, hair flip and smirk-like smile.  Michael had his glove and Johnny Cash was always seen in black!  They had their strange quirkiness embedded into their marketing ways.  Become comfortable with doing about 20% of this kind of work in your marketing ways.  Develop some set of strange trademarks that can become recognized by your customers.  It is not wrong to perform marketing in this fashion.

Let's look at the depth of the level of weirdness you plan to employ.

Tolerance Is A Virtue

Only You Need To Lead The Way!

Sometimes business explodes, sometimes it flattens out.  These are things that happen to all business leaders.  In baseball, we call a slow down a slump.  Sometimes hitters get into a slump.  For whatever reason they cannot seem to buy a hit during their slump.  They begin trying all kinds of extra things, twists, adjustments and modifications to their batting swing to try and get out of their hitting slump.  Sometimes it does not matter how hard they try.  The slump remains.  That is just how it goes once in awhile.  Then, as if by magic the slump disappears.  They beginning hitting the ball well again.  The slump is over.  Business leaders witness this very same thing.  They get into a business slump once in awhile.

Who knows where these slumps come from but they are real.  They do appear once in awhile.  They come into the play of every business model.  Sooner or later a slump comes to life.  Sales volume slows, problems seem to increase, needs spread out and challenges mount up.  Slumps in business often show up when we least expect them to appear.  They come when they seem to be the least needed.  I cannot think of any good time to have a business slump, but most of the business slumps I have witnessed have appeared during times when my business model could least afford them.  Business slumps seem to appear when the cash flow was the lowest.  This is a very trying thing to manage.

How do the leaders of business deal with this kind of challenge?  How do we bring our business model out of a business slump?  Can the leaders do anything to help relieve the slump of its control?  I have watched great baseball players try almost everything to get out of a hitting slump, and fail.  I have witnessed great business leaders do the very same thing.  They try everything to get out of the business slump their business model is experiencing.  Nothing seems to work well.  I have witnessed this effect and have lived through it several times in my business career.  Sometimes the slump wins.  Sometimes it finds a way to stick around for awhile.  No business magic seems to help get rid of it.  Try everything under the kitchen sink and the slump seems to still persist.  I have seen this effect happen.  Some of you business leaders might be right in the middle of a terrible slump right now.  It happens.

First of all, recognize that business slumps happen.  They do appear once in awhile and sometimes they appear without warning.  All of the sudden, the sales and customers disappear.  The sales activities become slow and slower.  The volume dries up and the revenues slow down.  The bills seem to increase during these periods of time.  The costs seem to mount up larger than normal during a business slump.  The relationships among the staff seem to tighten up during a business slump.  Personnel turf battles seem to come out of the closets during a business slump.  Common challenges seem much taller during a business slump.  Anxiety and stress seem to increase during a business slump.  Simple stuff becomes hard to do.  Business slumps do not play fair.

There are three things that every business owner should do when they notice a business slump has arrived.  First of all, do not worry about them.  Do not become too wrapped up with the components of unknowns at the first sight of their appearance.  Stay cool and calm as the business slump raises it head.  Second of all, get busy with determining what may have caused the slump.  Begin searching for logical and truthful business patterns that could be contributing to the growing slump.  Try not to avoid investigating some of the things you may have changed.  Be strong enough to ask your customers, your staff and your associates the effective questions you need to ask to determine where the best repairs can take place.  Do not try to pretend you know the solutions.  You are in a slump because you did not see it coming.  That is easy to see that you did not know what to do to prevent it.  You cannot pretend you way out of a slump.  And finally, begin working on some things that will help your business model improve the down turn of this slump.  Start making some real adjustments.  Become smart, respectful and effective with the business choices you make.

These three things will help you find your way back out of a business slump...do not worry, investigate why and begin treatment.  This is what a good business leader will do.  They will remain calm, find out what needs to be effectively done and start making the right kinds of necessary changes.  They will begin their work to eliminate the size and length of a business slump.  Oh, by the way, one more thing I might add...all of these efforts may not actually work!

Get R' Done, Maybe...Maybe Not.

While You Complete Your Other Routine Tasks, Introduce A New  Project

We decided to paint our house.  It is a large house so the decision to paint it was not one of those easy to decide moments.  It has been years since we last painted it.  Last year we re-painted the trim color.  The trim color was looking a bit faded, so we re-painted it.  It took a few days to complete.  We did it in small stages.  That kind of approach worked well for us.  My wife and I are somewhat disciplined enough to stick to a project and see it to its end.  So doing an on again, off again type of start and go technique would not be something the both of us could not handle effectively.  We pulled it off last year just fine.

Knowing we can do this start and go process well helped us to make the bigger decision to paint the rest of the house.  It will be a large undertaking.  During the process of shopping for new paint, we also decided to alter the main color just a little bit.  We decided to try out a little warmer main paint.  It still goes well with the trim color and the new color looks a lot nicer than our original selection.  There are some interesting notes to observe with this kind of project.  Number one; large projects are very easy to start but more difficult to finish.  Number two; working together on a single-focused, large project can test the relationship strength between partners.  Number three; what is the best method for dovetailing a new and large project into our already busy life schedules?  How will we blend this new project into our current patterns of life movements?  What will we both be willing to give up?

I like to observe these kinds of projects.  They represent a lot of interesting fundamentals about how people work together to get the job done.  The phrase, "Get R' Done" comes to play on projects like this.  I like to examine the effects a large project has on the organizational skills of a leader.  I also like to examine the effects a large project has on the skills of two leaders learning how to work together.  My wife and I are leaders in our own patterns of life.  I have a business I manage and she has a business she manages.  We have been business leaders in our own ways for nearly thirty years.  She is strong in hers and I am strong in mine.  We share desks at home.  We sometimes share computers.  We have learned how to make our tandem work well.  Our house is nearly 3,000 square feet and three stories high.  Painting it together will require cooperation, respect, team work, schedule management, a lot of work and respect for task application.  Even though my wife and I have learned how to work together well, we are completely wired differently.

My wife is a serious "Get R' Done" type of personality.  She will race to the end just to get a project completed.  She will not necessarily get hung up on the quality of play.  She will however, get hung up on how long the project is taking.  My wife is one of those task masters that prefers wrapping a project up well ahead of any due date.  Set a time limit on any project and she will always beat that schedule.  Always.

I, on the other hand, am a slower paced operator.  I prefer to pay closer attention to the details of a project.  I do not like to paint out of the lines, for example.  I do not like to skip something that does not necessarily need painting right now, but could improve the whole project if it was added to the work.  I like to work slower and with more quality of result.  She and I are wired differently.  We truly recognize these differences in approach.

Since we are wired in two different worlds, we decided to arrange our work patterns to respect how each of us is wired.  She gets to do the roller work on the main body of the structure.  Her rules of work are to move fast, no trim work and remain away from doing any detail painting.  Her job is to just 'roll and go.'  We laugh at the few times she caught herself trying to tuck the roller up close to the trim and do some of the detail stuff with the roller.  I repeated this phrase, "Hey, what are you doing?  Your job is to just roll and go.  Stop doing the detail trimming.  Just roll and go.  Stay away from the edge work."  I, on the other hand, am the trim detail-er.  I do the tedious trim touch work.  I make sure the lines are done correctly so we do not need to re-paint the trim that we did last year.  I am the assigned finisher.  At present time, we are one third done with the project.  So far, we are having fun and the house is looking great.  Plus we both love the new color.  It was a great color choice.  Everything around our house looks great with the warmer tones in the new color selection.  That becomes an extra plus to the project.

What does all of this have to do with operating a business model successfully?  It has everything to do with functioning correctly.  Large business projects should be part of every business model.  If you are not working on one right now in your business model, find and develop one to introduce.  My wife and I are always introducing new projects for our business models.  Always.  Not only are new projects important, finishing them is critical.  Closing projects up with a completion sign hanging on their activities is a must if you plan on winning big in business.  New projects are crucial elements in the profile of most successful business models.  The good ones always have a good project going on.  They remain busy adding value to their running business model.  Do not introduce projects, however, if you have no intention or ability to finish them.  A line-up of unfinished projects is a very cumbersome thing to place upon the shoulders of a struggling business.  Do not make that simple mistake.  Introduce projects and learn how to finish them within a reasonable period of time.  Get serious about this responsibility.  It matters a whole bunch!

Non-Existent Accountability.

Building a successful business model is no big thing, until you try to do one.  Then the stuff becomes harder to do than others might think.  Listing to others describe what needs to be done is the easy part.  Doing what needs to be done is the hard part.  Doing the right stuff on a consistent basis is even harder to do.  That is why building a successful business model is tougher to do than what first might be expected.  It takes some enormous discipline to find out what needs to be done, how it needs to be done correctly and how to find a way to continue doing those effective things on a consistent basis.  Doing all of that kind of stuff at the same time is what becomes so hard to perform.  Business leaders recognize this process.  They get it.

What they do not always get, is how easily they allow themselves to slip out of the right kind of doing.  Sometimes it does not take very much to permit the mind to slip out of the right gears and begin doing the wrong kinds of things.  Sometimes this is where the business model begins to break down its winning ways.  This is where the separation starts its troubling effects.  It is at this point that the good ones begin to out run the not so good ones.  Each business model is driven by a different set of leadership methods.  Each model begins to follow separate sets of permissions and respect for the levels of discipline allowed.  The business results follow closely near the permissions allowed.  One business leader may permit more careless ways of respect than another.  The performance results follow.

I visited with a business leader just yesterday and he described how he had not yet finished his effort to get 'totally organized,' as he put it.  He described how he was working on some marketing and inventory methods to help him get better organized.  He showed me one of those areas he was working on.  He took me back to his office and found a small clip board sitting in the deepest corner of his office with a few notes written on it.  It was sitting on the top of a two drawer filing cabinet under some other materials.  He had to dig it out to show it to me.  He described how this clip board and a few notes written on the page it contained was the current effort he was using to 'get better organized' about his product ordering procedures.  He was dead serious, too. It was not something he was joking about.  He actually felt good showing it to me.  It was like a small victory to him.  He has been a business owner and leader for over twenty years.  In all of those twenty plus years, his business models have struggled with producing long term sustained success.  He is again, right now, struggling with business success.  In fact, one of those business models has gone out of business for good.  It takes enormous effort, enormous discipline and enormous respect for doing the right kinds of things in the right ways on a consistent basis.  Otherwise, a little clip board may be the only evidence that something good is going on.

Become a good business operator.  Quit flirting with trying to avoid what needs to be done.  Quit believing that your own understanding is all that you need to operate well.  Quit teasing your own perspective.  Quit fooling around with untruths.  Quit lying about how well you are doing.  Quit toying with success as if it is not supposed to be coming your way.  Quit blaming everything else for your set of unwanted circumstances.  The winners in business all face the same circumstances that you face.  They all see the same landscape, the same challenges, the same employees, the same marketing opportunities, the same pitfalls, the same family problems, the same lack of capital issues, the same cost reduction demands, the same levels of competition and the same kinds of interfering consumer activities.  The winners in business face exactly the same set of circumstances that the losers face.  They just handle them differently.

Most of the winning business leaders do more than work their organized efforts onto a small clip board of a few scribbled notes.  Many of the business winners in today's world of commerce still attend seminars and topical learning sessions about how to continue improving what they do, how they do it and where they need to change.  This is crucial stuff to recognize.  I see the winners do this kind of continual stuff.  I see most of the losers do just the opposite.  The losers can often be caught trying to justify how they pretend to be knowledgeable about how they explain away the things they choose to do with their valuable time.  They are lost and do not recognize it.  Many of them are excellent sellers at protecting the environments they create and direct.  They can sell away every single obstacle and excuse.  Only an experienced mind will notice where the small scribbled notes were hidden, on the clip board they were resting in the furthest corner away from where the true action was occurring.  Reality is often times a completely different story.  The evidence is usually revealed by the numbers in the end, waiting to be explained away.

I am one of those business leaders who has learned how to protect what I do.  I am just as fallibly created as the next leader on this subject.  I can cover my rotten tracks with the best of them.  However, in the end, I am also totally responsible for the lack of growth I produce in my business life.  It is, in the end, my own fault.  I am the leader that produces these outcomes.  They rest on my watch.  They rest on my porch.  They rest in my home.  My level of success comes from me.  My level of performance comes from me.  My lack of discipline comes from me.  I am the one who drives who I am.  I am the one who should pick up the ball of that responsibility.  It is not the economy's fault.  It is not my competition's fault.  It is not my employee's fault.  It is not my family's fault.  I am the one who is totally responsible for the outcomes I have received.  It is amazing to me how we have created a world that does not see themselves in this kind of light.  Accountability is almost non-existent.  We live in a world of non-existent accountability.  We will even use a small clip board and some short notes on a single page to justify why we do not need to become better organized.  It is not our fault!  Non-existent accountability.

Business Marketing #101: T.L.C...Final Part Three

Create Something New!

T.  Take what they give you.

L.  Lend a helping hand to the added products and services you will initiate.

C.  Create.

This post is part three, the final step of this three part series on business marketing.  In review, as you develop these new business routines, make sure you spend time each day working on all three of these areas of marketing concerns.

A business leader has three primary functions to serve in the leadership job they perform.  First of all, they must lead the business in its social sets of activities, the marketing department.  In other words, the business leader must be the public relations leader, the top seller, the primary motivator of customer, community and interactive activities.  They must become the key leader to the marketing efforts of the business model.  That responsibility should command a good deal of that business leaders time and energy.  The second primary function a business leader should perform is to manage and control the inventory movement.  On an income statement, generally 68% of the gross sales include the cost of inventory and payroll combined.  That means the business model has a high demand for inventory management and personnel, human resource management.  If the second primary function is inventory management, the third one is human relationships with the staff and support personnel.  These three functions should dominate the time chips a business leader expels; marketing (selling), inventory control and human relations.

Energy devoted to marketing creates the income flow.  It is how the revenues are supplied to the business model.  It creates the food that the business consumes.  Managing both the inventory controls and the human relations takes care of almost 70% of the business consumption.  These three areas dominate the business activities; sales, inventory costs and payroll.  The rest of the multiple business duties become the 'paper clips' to these three areas of responsibilities.  Try to 'see' your business in this kind of perspective.  It will help you focus on the more important duties you need to perform.  A lot of business leaders fail to devote enough time with their staff, training them, nurturing them and encouraging them to become better at what they do.  While other business leaders fail to devote enough time to the effective study of their inventory sales rates, product mix, product presentation, proper buying, efficient storing, moving and supplier improvements of the inventories  they buy and sell.  The focus of this three part series has been devoted to the marketing part of the business leaders job responsibilities.  To cover this series, we introduced the T.L.C. concept.    

T.  Take what they give you.

L.  Lend a helping hand to the added products and services you will initiate.

C.  Create.

In the first two parts we covered 'take what they give you' and 'lend a helping hand to the added products and services you already move and provide.'  Now it is time to move on to the 'create' segment.  This is the segment many business owners fail to address.  Very few business leaders perform this hidden duty.  Most fail to take the chances this duty offers.  The level of high risk often times runs the business leader away from performing this activity.  To "create" usually means to risk something that might not work.  Most business leaders have a tough time managing the stuff that works well, let alone try out a bunch of new stuff that has no particular track history of success at all.  To create is to try something out that has very little application history established.  Usually, none.  It is pure risk taking.  That kind of work in this busy and complicated world is usually left alone.

This last part is the area that describes how business leaders work in areas of the unknowns.  Creation.  In the marketing world, creation is not exactly the same thing as creativity.  Although similar, they can become very different.  When you introduce a new display of towels and bathroom accessories next to the soap isle of a grocery store, that is marketing creativity.  When you introduce a social program designed to help the homeless by setting up a small marketing display near the soap isle donating one dollar to the cause when each customer purchases a soap product, that is 'creation.'  They are completely different marketing concepts.  To create is completely different than being creative.  There is a tinge more risk involved when you create something brand new.

In this part three, we are going to focus on the idea of creating something brand new.  We are going into the area of business management that very few business leaders travel.  It is a lightly populated territory.  I am one of those business leaders who loves to spend some time in this area of my business career.  I love to delve into the stuff nobody else thought about.  It is an area of business marketing that often times gets left out.  However, sometimes it is easier than most business leaders might expect.  I think the obvious risks have a tendency to scare most business leaders away from performing this kind of duty on a regular basis.  I am suggesting that every business leader begin to develop the courage to add a time slot somewhere into their busy schedules to work on this kind of activity as a routine part of their daily schedule.  Most of this kind of work will require a good deal of thinking.  That kind of work can be the kind of work that shares driving time, for example.  I use my driving time to 'create.'  It also takes my mind off the other silly driving behaviors I witness on the road.  I can sneak in another great benefit.  I am so busy thinking about creation that I do not notice the foolish driving around my vehicle.  I become less frustrated with other drivers this way.  It provides a nice 'plus' in my commute.

Let's get started, part three.

Business Marketing #101: T.L.C...Part Two

T.L.C., Three Marketing Steps!

T.  Take what they give you.

L.  Lend a helping hand to the added products and services you will initiate.

C.  Create.


We are back.  Part two.  As promised, we are going to define a new marketing method.  We will define a new pattern, a new format for you, the business leader, to begin practicing.  This new format of marketing patterns will help you develop better winning ways in how you build your business volume.  It will be a change away from how you move each day.  You will begin to move your mind and marketing efforts in a new format of working patterns.  You will change how you approach each working day.  From now on you will be trying to remember these three marketing hints, T.L.C.

It is time you begin working on a new and exciting success path.  We need to change your mind of thinking.  You need to believe that it is alright to win.  You will like how this turns out.  You will like learning the art of how to enjoy marketing your business in a more satisfying way.  It will have some challenges, but what the heck.  That is business.  Challenges are part of the nature of leading a business model.  What's new?  Challenges are a part of the structure of leading a business model.  We are going to change some marketing mind sets.  In the end your business model will become more satisfying to manage and more productive to guide.  Your personal and business growth will improve.

T.L.C.  That is where we need to start.  Most people know that T.L.C. represents Tender Loving Care.  Keep that concept over the head of this new change.  Treat it like an umbrella over your business head.  As we work this new philosophy into your daily thinking patterns, keep a sharp eye on all of your 'tender loving care' responsibilities.  That will be another subject of responsibilities for a later post.  In the meantime, just recognize that the demand for your 'tender loving care' attention during these daily changes will increase.  Open up the umbrella and lay that 'T.L.C.' over all of the elements that govern your business model.  As I mentioned briefly in part one on this subject, do not become a bull during this change effort.  Your business model will suffer from that kind of move.  If your personality is too weak to refrain from becoming a bull, shame on you.  Grow up.  You are not five years old anymore.


T.  Take what they give you.

L.  Lend a helping hand to the added products and services you will initiate.

C.  Create.



First of all, let's get the 'take' part of your business marketing plan down pat.  Every single day you should make sure you have every part of the 'take what they give you' working perfectly.  Check your solid selling items and make sure you have adequate stock able for your customers to purchase immediately.  If you are a feed store, never ever be out of the daily feed products they come in to purchase.  Never!  If you are a vacuum cleaner shop, never ever be out of the replacement bags and belts they come to purchase.  Never!  You need to make absolutely sure that you are never out of the regular stuff they come to purchase.  It is a marketing crime to miss this point.  There is no excuse for not having what they routinely come to purchase from your business.  If you are a coffee shop, and your favorite drink they purchase from your shop is a mocha, never be out of the mocha mix.  Never.  Learn how to at least 'take what they give you.'

This part of marketing is often an easy part to forget.  I have witnessed many business models fail at making sure they have in stock the most routine items to sell.  I see this kind of foolishness often.  Never get too busy with your multiple duties to forget to order the stuff you routinely need.  Never be out of stock of those solid items.  Never.  Become an accountable business model.  Show great respect for those regular routines your customers come to expect.  The word underlined above is ABLE.  Become able and ready.  No excuses on this one.  Do whatever it takes to get your mind working on double checking this most important part of your business marketing plan.  Learn how to fully 'take what they give you.'  This is basic stuff.  Do not forget to manage it perfectly.  You are the one who sees to it that this part of your business model does not fail your customer.  Get very good at 'taking what they give you.'

If they like blue sofas, make sure you are never out of blue sofas.  If they like cream on their coffee, make sure you have the best and most choices of cream always on hand...never out.  Never.  Do not miss this most important marketing rule.  Become the business model they can trust.  Never ever be out of fuel when they come into to fill up.  I do not care what the world runs into on the distribution side of the business equation.  Always make sure your regular stuff gets delivered on time and never out of stock.  No excuses.  Have a "B" plan in place in case you have a distribution challenge pop up somewhere.  Sometimes one of your sources may go on strike and fail to deliver on time.  That is no excuse for your business model to fail.  Do not get lazy on this very serious part of your marketing efforts.

If some supplier fails to carry out what helps you provide what you need on hand, go to plan "B" immediately.  Do not wait and miss your opportunity to come through.  Be accountable to what your routine customers expect.  Deliver what they want when they come in.  Learn the art of 'taking what they give you.'  Become solid every single day on this effort.  This might mean that some of you business leaders need to change how you walk during your daily routines.  Some of you business leaders may need to change a few little things in your daily routines.  Some of you might need to add some additional preparation and follow-up steps that help you make sure you protect your business model from failing to 'take what they give you.'

It might relate to your operating hours, it might relate to the products you sell, it might relate to the brands you carry or it might relate to the marketing concepts you develop.  Whatever your business does that becomes exactly where your customers expect, make sure it never fails to provide that feat.  Learn how to "see" your business nuances that become part of what your customers expect.  Once you discover these routine expectations, never fail to provide them.  Never.  Teach you and your staff how to protect this most important part of your marketing plans.  Learn how to daily 'take what they give you.'

T.L.C.  Next, 'lend a helping hand to the added products and services you will initiate.  Let's learn how to lend a helping hand.  It is the second step to our development of a new approach to business marketing.

Business Marketing #101: T.L.C.

I have traveled to work with many business models in my career.  One of the interesting things I notice is that most business owners I meet do almost the same exact stuff when they go to work.  Very few business owners develop an interesting style of operations.  By and large, most business owners do pretty much the same kind of work patterns in their business duties, every day.  I might meet an owner in the auto industry in one state, work with him for a little while on a project and I notice his patterns of work are very similar to those of another business leader in another state of an altogether different industry.  A lady who operates a small distribution outlet in the Mid-West will perform almost the same business activities that the auto business leader performs in Idaho.  The pawn shop owner in the Northeast will operate very similar business patterns when compared to the furniture store owner in North Carolina.  Owner to owner and business model to business model they all practice very similar work patterns.  The duties they perform are very predictable.

When you travel around from business model to business model it becomes evidently clear how very similar these different leaders perform their working patterns.  Place all of them in the same conference room and most would deny they work in similar patterns.  The reality remains, they do.  

I recently worked with a business owner in the tire business.  His pattern of work was almost the mirror image of the one a farm store manager performed on my last years' project.  Other than the personality differences they possess, their work patterns moved very much the same, day in and day out.  Business owners operate very similar working patterns.  They have established very predictable patterns of play.  It is very interesting listening to them describe how they believe each of them thinks they are very different, however.  Each business leader does not want to believe they are just the same as someone else.  It has been my traveling experience that they are almost all the same.  Each of them do pretty much the same stuff every day.

Business leaders have a set pattern of work responsibilities that must be performed in order to produce their model of success.  They must provide a product or service, market it well, make sure the accounting of their activities are being posted properly and handle the relationships between the customers and their employees.  Every business leader nibbles each day on parts of these things.  As time travels on they begin to develop a comfort zone of how they nibble on these routines.  They eventually work their responsibilities into a regular routine.  Each of them form a pattern of work that touches their duties in a similar way.  Very few of the business leaders I meet are uniquely different in how they perform these routine duties.  They do exactly the same kinds of working patterns the other leaders do.

Consequently, before I arrive to go help a new business model I already have a pretty good idea how the leader is practicing what they are doing.  There are no great discoveries in this kind of work.  As much as it might wick off every business owner, each of them are very much the same as the guy next door operating the bagel shop.  Even though the specifics are different, the working patterns are quite the same.  It is true.

The reality is, business leaders operate very much the same patterns of work duties.  Once in awhile, I meet someone who is surrounded by a whole different set of personalities that separates that leader from the rest of the crowd.  Occasionally, I find one leader to be quite a bit different in the style of work they perform.  That's all.  All in all, most of the differences I find between the business owners I have met can land somewhere between the differences in their personality styles or in the areas of focus each of them prefers to deliver during their working day.  The rest of their functions can be bottled up and placed into the same vase.

Business leaders use almost a rubber stamp approach to how they lead their business models.  Some are more diligent in some areas of preference.  Some are more sloppy in detail of pursuit.  Some are less disciplined in the accounting areas of work.  All in all, every one of them performs kind of the same routine of work.  Let's face it, very few business leaders perform uniquely different patterns of work duties.  Very few.

Let's talk about that truth just a little bit.  I fully recognize how this perspective described above might not be very popular with the business leaders.  I know how much we hate to be compared as being the same as someone else.  Most of us want to be recognized as individuals.  Whatever the case, the truth is the truth regardless of how unpopular it comes down.  In my business consulting travels and with my years of business experience, accuracy is a very touchy subject with business leaders.  This much I know.  The ego's of the leaders, male or female, is always a very touchy territory to travel.  In fact, some of the women leaders have some of the largest egos I have witnessed.  Many of the women egos can easily murder the egos most of the men harbor...hands down.  Even the owners with the largest egos have the very same working patterns as those who process smaller personalities.  Let's just face it, business owners operate much the same from model to model.

Given this pattern of recognition, let's talk about how a business owner can easily begin to work with a different pattern each day.  Let's jump into the marketing segment of their business duties.  Let's get a concept defined that will help every business owner develop a new and exciting success pattern of work duties.  Let's make that concept become part of a new and exciting approach to marketing that will add value to the work duties performed.  Let's begin to discover how each owner can improve how their business model grows.  Let's start to change what the owner does each day.  Let's develop a new pattern for work duties that will enhance the outcomes and improve the profits.  Let's make some sense out of the day of work that is typically applied and allow the owner a simple shift in duties that will work better than the ones they are protecting right now.  Let's examine how to become better operators.  Let's blow the doors off of the competition.  Let's get serious about being uniquely different yet simple and effective.  Let's change the way we do our daily work patterns.

We will call this exercise, "Business Marketing #101: T.L.C."

Stop Shooting From The Hip

Refrain From Snap Decisions

Where does the beginning start?  How do we find where to start?  At some point in their life, all business leaders feel the need to make some changes.  That feeling comes on strong enough to capture the leaders attention but it does not usually come with a definitive description of where to start.  All we know is a change must be made.  So the business leader begins to search where to initiate that change.

It has been my experience that when this kind of thing begins to dominate the thoughts of the business leader it usually leads to an emotional decision.  The kind of change the business leader feels the urge to do usually comes right out of some emotional thoughts they recently experienced with a customer or an employee.  Those emotional thoughts felt strong enough to cause that business leader to think they need to move in another direction.  The business leader feels like changes need to be made.  When this kind of thing happens the business leader begins to work on that day to make some changes.  That leader jumps right in immediately and starts to tweak a few things here and there.  The strong feeling to change takes over.

Sometimes this kind of process happens to a business leader quite often.  Many business leaders have turned this kind of process into a pattern of habit.  They have stumbled up against a few things they no longer like to do in their business model and they immediately begin to change how they do what they no longer want to do.  They initiate some changes in how their business model does its thing.  They decide and go.  They do not wait for a committee meeting to tell them it is time to change what they are doing.  In most cases, they do not even tell their staff they are changing what they once did in their business model.  Instead, when the opportunity pops up to face the situation that the business leader wants to change, that is when the announcement is usually made that a change has taken place.  To the surprise of the staff, who had no idea a change had happened, the new way to process this situation becomes introduced from the business leader who decided to do it differently this time.  The change is done undefined.  The business process gets altered.  The new way has been initiated.

A lot of changes made to small business models come down in this fashion.  One day they just showed up because the boss wanted to do it differently.  That is how many business changes begin.  Did you know that this is likely the worst way to make effective changes in your business model?  Initiating change in a business model that stems from some emotional dislike is what they call, "shooting from the hip."  Shooting from the hip suggests that a quick decision is made at the expense of a quality move.  I see a lot of business owners practice this unproductive technique.  They expose their impatience often by firing away well before they concentrate on pulling the gun out of the holster before aiming it carefully at a target.  I watch many business leaders react this way.  They have the bad habit of allowing their situations drive their decision-making ways.  They permit their emotions to moderate the meetings in their minds.  It is an interesting approach to business leadership, not usually effective, but interesting.

Shooting from the hip is not the way great business leaders perform their most successful patterns.  In fact, it is usually the best way they destroy successful business patterns.  Unfortunately, there is not enough self-control within the business leaders mind to refrain from practicing this terrible technique for making business decisions.  Shooting from the hip becomes one of the more common ways serious business patterns develop.  In the end, leaders choose to do what they want to do.  They allow their emotions to control their situations and as a result, when a sudden situation surfaces they immediately shoot from the hip to solve what they do not like.  They shoot from the hip and make a decision to change what they were doing because they do not like what it is producing.  They alter how they want things to be done.  Self control is usually absent.  The emotional buttons are usually flipped on and the leader permits the mind to alter how the business model treats certain patterns of unwanted performance.  Quick decisions are made to remove what the leader does not like.  They shoot at the target directly from the hip.  It is a terrible way to target practice.  It is a more terrible way to operate a business model.