Assessment Comes First, Then Decide How To Fix It.

Every Business Has Its Own Nature To Respect

This message is offered as an example of how not to jump in and go fix a broken business model without first getting all of the useful information you need.  I will use a firefighting example.  I want to make it clear that in no way do I disrespect those who put their lives at risk every time they go to work.  Military services, public safety and several other professions involve great risks for losing a life.  We owe these men and women a serious debt of gratitude for the dangers they face in the work they do.  It is well above the call of duty.  I, in no way, would ever disrespect the kind of work they do.

That being said, I watched a small lighting fire get out of hand in a small community recently.  At first what seemed to be a small manageable fire quickly grew out of control and turned itself into something very dangerous.  It has not yet taken a human life but has destroyed homes, property and natures friendly ways where the fire damage has occurred.  It is still burning out of control.

One the third day of fire fighting, the local crews recognized the need to solicit more help.  The State dedicated the funds and the phone calls were made.  In short order hundreds of fire fighting crews from nearby regions headed to help fight this terrible fire.  The State sent in its State Fire Marshall's to oversee the early arrangements of the organizational post.  Several other leaders in the fire fighting community convened on the base to develop a game plan.  The next morning we witnessed hundreds of fire trucks, loggers, tractors, large bulldozers, fire trucks, tankers, helicopters and spotter planes moving about to go do their job to arrest this fire.  The winds were huge.  Fueling the flames was a 30 knot set of gusty winds moving the fire deeper into the upper hills and dry lands.  Some structures would be at risk with these fast moving flames.

The fire crews had their orders.  The game plan was put in place.  The maps, the satellite images, the radios, the computers and the technology was all fired up.  These leaders headed to that ragging fire with a very organized bunch of well-trained firefighters.  The day of attack was now in place.  The plan was full steam ahead.

By the end of the day, some progress had been made.  The winds won the day but the firefighters were able to get all of their heavy equipment placed well ahead of the fires path and begin breaking a large swath in the rugged hills for the fire lines they were making.  The plan looked good.  Their solutions were working.

Then came the next morning.  Miles above this hilly region is a great snow-capped mountain.  This mountain produces some very cool breezes that each morning draw down into the valleys until it reaches the large river at the bottom of all of the draws.  This nasty fire happens to be placed somewhere in the middle portion of one of those draws.  The heavy 30 knot winds of yesterday were being forced by nature to travel up to the mountain in those draws.  That caused the fire to move uphill, quickly.  This is exactly how the 'newcomers' in the area expected those winds to move.  They were correct with those assumptions yesterday.  That is why they had placed and arranged to move all of their heavy equipment up the rugged hills ahead of the fire.  They wanted to get well ahead of the fast moving flames and make a huge fire line to remove the material the fire could consume.  This way they could lower the intensity of the fire and put it out.  It would burn itself out.

However, first thing in the morning the winds shifted.  The cool air moved down the hill in completely the opposite direction where all of the fire fighting equipment was located.  The leaders of the fire crews got caught off guard.  They did not know about these unique pressures the sea, river, mountain and gorge designed regions produce.  Each morning the winds go the other direction until about 9 A.M. when they finally shift around as the land mass heats up for the day.  The cooler mornings produce moderate winds going downhill and northward.  This is exactly the opposite direction they were planned to protect.

Let's evaluate this scenario.  Page two.

How To Manage Disappointment In Business

Disappointment Can Become Very Ugly

Certainly the business world has grown up into this larger than expected set of complicated systems to manage daily.  The business world has also become increasingly demanding for processing added requirements in order to compete well.  We live in complicated times.  No business owner would disagree with these developments.  Our time has become very demanding and very slippery to navigate well.  Costly mistakes appear out of nowhere, sometimes more often than we care to admit.  Doing business in today's world can be some trying stuff.

Now add to this set of truths the wreckage of a poor economy and we have a tough recipe to place on our plate of responsibilities.  Every business owner who reads this kind of stuff can easily relate.  They have felt the negative pinch of all of these things in their recent years of business management.  Many of them still carry the current scars.

Disappointment has become a steady part of the business owners routine diet.  Downtown regions have suffered collectively in many local areas.  Mall consumer traffic in other regions has dropped off significantly.  Consumer activities have dwindled in many other areas of business design.  Online retailers are not producing the increases necessary to support the design, maintenance and marketing costs of what they are trying to achieve.  Disappointment is hovering above a lot of retail environments.

Add to this struggling consumer growth effect the idea that not all business systems are working healthy.  For those who have been able to produce a manageable level of increased sales revenues, other complications have taken them down the disappointment trail.  Human resources are strained, under-performing and increasingly expensive to manage well.  Increased health care costs are becoming a troubling line item to manage.  Property and location costs have become a new long term issue.  Marketing has become so much more competitive.  Communication demands and the issues related to improving communications have become part of the new massive demand on an already stretched level of time chip use.  Business leaders just are not able to efficiently and properly keep up with the silent requirements of their processing work demands.  Some important stuff just simply gets put off.  Disappointment grows.  It has become such a normal part of every business leaders day.  We are starting to get used to it.

How do we properly manage disappointment in our business world?  How do we help our self accept those things that occur outside of our normal levels of reasonable control?  How do we cope with the stuff that goes wrong because we were too busy doing other important stuff trying to survive?  How do we manage disappointment in this new complicated world?

Page two.

Own Up To Ownership, It's Just Good Business

Perspectives are fun when we get to see them change.  They are not fun when we recognize how deeply they can dig in.  I once had a business mentor who loved to suggest a lot of reading material for me to consider.  He loved the third party teaching method.  If I was short on my temper and patience he might suggest I read tolerance materials.  If I was long on egotistical attitudes he might suggest reading some humble pie segments.  His teaching was directive but left open for me to go pursue.  It was my choice to own up to the effort.  His teaching moved parallel with my acceptance to learn.  He watched my perspectives.

Perspectives cover a lot of ground, do they not?  I remember my first managerial job in Sacramento, California.  As I traveled up that corporate trail I met a few really good people.  Many of them were on that career trail trying to help me grow up and become a better business leader.  They offered me a useful hand to help me develop my business leadership skills.  I remember one particular lady who wore these interesting glasses lined with those designer croakies that attach to the side temples of the specs.  Hers were likely diamond designed.  She was very fashion oriented.  She also came from a family of some wealthy stock.  I do not think her exhibits of trinkets were costume jewelry materials.  They were usually items of the real McCoy.

When she would talk she would either have those glasses placed near the tip of her nose, or hanging down over her neck or better yet, on her face like glasses were meant to be worn.  Her croakies were there to help her wear those glasses at any location on her torso without taking them off.  She needed those glasses to be near her at all times.  Her glasses were both part of her sight requirements as well as part of her fashionable attire.  One thing I remember well was how I used to think elderly people used croakies to help them remember where their glasses were last placed.  I wore glasses but never owned any croakies of my own.  My perspective back then was camped on recognizing that these older people had memory issues.  They used croakies to help them keep that memory in check.  This way they did not need to remember where they set their glasses down when they took them off.  They could hang them around their neck with style, instead.

That was my original perspective.

Today, being quite a bit older myself, I think croakies are a very cool fashion feature on professional women.  Some look very good with them.  In fact, I am amazed at the incredibly cool fashion designs they are able to find.  Some croakies catch my attention.  Some croakies look as if a lot of thought was given to make those fashion statements work well.  Some look very expensive, too.  They become interesting accessory items to the attire of professionals.  In fact, I have noticed a lot of men wearing some very fashionable croakies as well.  Perspective.  It all centers around perspectives, does it not?  My perspective on this issue has changed since I was younger.

Perspectives become the steering wheel of our thoughts.  Our thoughts are guided by the perspectives we carry.  I am not sure what you think when you meet someone who wears some fashionable croakies on the temples of their eye wear.  If you think they look like older people, your perspective is controlling those thoughts.  If you think their croakies look cool and fashionable, your perspectives are still in charge of your thoughts.  Perspectives become the steering wheel of our thoughts.  They guide how we see the world around us.  This truth can become a challenge in the business world.  It can bring on some interesting views.

Perspective drives how we see our world as well as how we are being seen in this world.

Leadership is as much about managing perspectives as it is about doing successful things.  Our leadership habits are no different than how we are perceived when we wear croakies on our temples.  The perspectives of our influences, contacts and associates carry us through the maize of business complications.  Those perspectives govern how we are perceived, understood and respected.  The leaders who are most successful in the business world carry with them the best results of how others perceive what they are there trying to do.  It comes down to perspective.  That perspective helps others to grab onto that wheel of direction.  This is usually how business grows or suffers.  It comes down to perspective.

Page two.

How Much Praise And Approbation Floats Around Your Business Atmosphere?

I read the Wall Street Journal.  Mostly I read it daily.  I also read several other business related and economically focused publications.  Maybe I do not read all of them every day but I routinely pick them up to scour for some interesting information here and there.  Overall, not many of these forms for processing business information work extra hard on projecting an heir of positive print.  For the most part, they are very negative vehicles to read.  That is the nature of news, however.  It carries a slant towards negativism.  Just click the above link and go see what I mean.  Count the negative articles on the front page.  In fact, flip page to page and keep counting.  You will find a lot of negative news.

In fact, just pick up any local newspaper and read the front page headlines.  Each article on the front page will likely emphasize some form of wrong doing.  Bad news sells.  This knowledge is not a big secret.  We all know the truth about this human fact.  Humans love to find the junk in someone else's trunk.  We love to point out how rotten and terrible some other people have come to face.  We love to flash additional shocking news across a banner on the bottom of the television screen during a ballgame, a reality series or even during our regular news reports!  Seeing news banners flash across the bottom of a news program is almost as funny to witness as seeing a postal mail disposal box placed outside a local post office.  My goodness, why locate one at the post office?  You're there!  Why run the news flash banners on the evening news?  You're there!

The truth runs deeper than wanting bad news to happen.  We want it to happen quickly.  We seem to need more of it coming at a faster pace.  It fills up our bad news buckets a lot faster.  This is normal stuff to a human being.  We circle it like hungry wolves looking for our next kill.  We hunger to arrive with the next best secret of bad stuff news so we can remain on top of the negative pile.  We feel kind of out of touch when we do not know about how bad stuff is really doing.  When a bad news story is brought up by our co-workers and we look as if we have no knowledge of these events, our 'deer-in-the-headlights' appearance invites a swath of descriptions about that bad news from everyone else who is informed of the event.  They waste no time in bringing us up to date of the bad news.  It becomes much like a badge of honor.

Our need to fulfil this pattern is a stronger need than most would admit.  However, it drives the lions share of the information age tools that nearly every human being seems to carry along their trail of walking through life.  PDA's and mobile devices process millions of bad news stuff every single minute.  They even take the liberty to send you unsolicited Amber Alerts, on your dime, and nobody becomes offended for paying that cost.  It fits nicely into our realm of understanding.  We feel compelled to do our duty with this terrible bad news and help out.  Bad news sells.  It is one of those very best kept marketing secrets that a few business models have learned how to use to their best advantage.  Bad news sells.

Page two.

Is Your Business Path A One Way Road?

Success Is More About Learning How To Travel On More Than One Road

It takes a lot of courage to invest your life savings on a small business.  Tons of people do.  Building a small business is very risky stuff.  Building a small business not only consumes your money, it can devour your heart, your time and your family relationships.  Tons of people know that truth, too.  A small business can also consume your 'free spirit' and 'appreciation' for others.  Oh, it certainly does very well at that.  It slowly eats up these extensions of the soul.  The longer you work in your small business the more bitter you can grow to become.  Building a small business can become some of the most thankless work you will ever do.  Try one out and discover it for yourself.  You do not need to take my word for it.  Just go see for yourself.  It can be a tall mountain to climb.

For those who have never thrown their own wallet on the table by trying to build a small business, skip trying to understand these perspectives.  The perspectives in that first paragraph describe some realities that come home to many small business owners.  It would be an empty try for any employee to pretend to understand what a small business owner endures.  Only those who have felt these realities can understand and agree to what those words really mean in that first paragraph.  It is only information that small business owners may completely understand.  They 'get it' without much fanfare.

Building a small business can become some of the most trying stuff anyone could undertake.  It is not the work designed for a faint heart.  It most likely will take someone with a hardened soul to weather the challenges that come from the common bumps and bruises a small business produces.  Not many of those souls can remain positive about facing the mountain of challenges they manage each and every day.  Building a small business is very trying stuff.

What's more, when the going gets rough very few business owners will openly admit it.  They become masters at deception about how well they are not doing.  This is one of those silent protective coatings a small business owner develops to help them mentally survive the ugly stuff that comes with owning your own.  It is very common but extremely hard to detect.  Most small business owners become masters of deception when it comes to admitting they are not doing well.  They know all of the best tricks for sweeping ugly stuff under the rug.  It is what becomes a self-taught business owners most genius practices.  They get good at projecting a pretty picture.  They work silently on the art of giving off a good business odor.

This kind of activity grows with time.  It usually begins small and grows up as the business builds a larger head of steam over time.  A growing business brings with it some new requirements that offer challenges that a self-taught owner has never seen before.  More things sell, more stuff is purchased and more people are hired when the business spends time growing up and doing more.  This is very normal stuff.  The demand for practicing better business skills also grows.  With business growth comes an increased demand for learning the art of managing increased human resources that are required to assist the growth of the business.  These new efforts bring on their own set of challenging ways.  They come commensurate with the size of the business growth.  Larger business growth brings with it larger staffs, larger sourcing relationships and larger circles of needed influence.  All of these new relationships place increased pressure onto the miniature world of small business.  They command a good deal of the owners time.  They force that new business owner into learning more about doing stuff they have never done before.  The need to learn how to use this time efficiently becomes very slippery.  Most self taught business owners fall flat on their face with this terrible requirement.  They do not always know what they should or should not be doing.  It becomes a slippery slope of new beginnings that bring with it some long and disguised requirements that offer some efforts that risk delivering a long list of slippery losses.  This becomes what is known as the school of hard knocks.

The skills that are required to assist a growing business become complicated and shifty to understand.  Many self-taught owners find themselves struggling with performing the proper requirements these new and growing challenges bring to the daily grind.  They need help but avoid admitting it.  As a result, they try to tackle much of these new responsibilities with their lessons learned from the school of hard knocks.  As we all know, this is one of the most expensive schools any business owner can enroll to participate.  It brings with it some great lessons but most of them come with a huge cost.  Every small business owner gets to face this reality sooner or later.  It also becomes the great test that many do not pass.  Their results fall short of where they thought their business should be.

In time, after a long series of these kinds of tests and events the small self-taught business owner often times develops a bit of a hardened soul.  They become more cynical.  They feel less successful.  Their checkbooks are always stressed out.  Their human resources are usually more challenging to manage than they ever expected.  The public respect for what kinds of things they are going through seem almost crass.  They feel they are being treated wrongly, maybe even slighted a little bit.  Their zip, desire and creative energy is all used up.  It seems as though they struggle to find the spirit to go to work each and every day.  Bitterness has set in but they remain steadfast in their efforts to sweep all of this ugly junk right under the rug.  They have grown to believe that this is what it takes to operate a small business.  It slowly becomes a one way road.  The small, experienced business owner becomes their own worst enemy.  They walk down this one way road, all alone.

Page two.

When It Is Your Turn To Assist The Customer?

The Extra Mile Works Well When Customers Need Attention

When you start your business you are the only one who makes things happen.  You do the planning, the organizing and the selling.  You make the goods that you deliver.  You write the sales tickets, run the register and post the accounting.  You are the one who does it all.  That is how most small businesses begin their career.  Ground floor, wear every hat and see to it that everything right gets done on time.  You are off and running, doing it all.

As your small business grows you find you need help.  You get a bookkeeper, a sales clerk and a delivery person.  They help perform some of the tasks you cannot find time to do anymore.  That is how a small business grows up.  You learn some new things about leading employees.  You learn some new things about trust, training and differences of opinions about how things should actually run in your business model.  Not every employee you hire sees the landscape of operations the same way you do.  As a result, some new employment challenges arrive.  Those new challenges rub up against the way you believe things should run.  Now you need to find more time to manage those challenges.  To do that, you must learn how to delegate away some other things you were doing that consumed that time.  This process becomes an interesting test of your leadership character.  Your time chips become a monster management game.  Contrasting issues begin tugging at your sleeves.

Welcome to small business growth.  It brings with it some growing pains.  As time permits and lessons are learned, delegation becomes more important to understand and do.  As the years go by and your small business grows larger a completely different working world commands your time and responsibilities.  You no longer do the same functions that once dominated your daily routine.  What you did at work in the beginning phase of your business development is wholly different than what you do when it grows up larger.  The duties, tasks and functions you now supply are not the same roles you played in the beginning phases.  They are different roles.  They command different respects.

Your customers do not see this picture.  They do not witness the changes you needed to make to address your business growth with different levels of new attention.  Your customers still expect you to handle the cash, write up the ticket and run the register.  They still expect you to walk them to their car and chit chat with them about world matters.  It makes them feel important that they know you, the owner, personally.  That is what they once saw, attached to and loved about doing business with you.  It became a personal thing to them.  They do not see how your business world has changed.

As you grow you business larger and larger try not to forget how this process works.  It can become a real sticky issue with the customers who helped your business become what it grew up to be.  Never forget this quiet responsibility.  They still remember your personal attachment to their friendship roles as a loyal supporter and they only support what they think it is.  They do not see your business world of growth.  They only see their world.

Page two.

From Stairs To Stares, Marketing

Work The Tools You Understand

Every business desires to experience good growth.  They especially want growth they can handle.  Too much quick growth can and does kill profitability.  Those small businesses who have experienced this kind of fast growth know all too well how it can hurt more than help.  Many with these pieces of quick growth in their past successes do not desire to have it happen again.  It was too painful to manage the last time.  That is why we like our growth to occur under control.  We want growth to come from the stairway, not the elevator.  The elevator is sometimes too fast.  The stairway gives us time to process growth properly.

This information may be something a bit knew to those who have never experienced fast, strong growth.  However, to those who have stumbled with this kind of development it might have left a scar on the back of their business efforts.  Those are the ones carrying the reminder.  Fast growth in a short period of time can hurt your business processing.  It can outrun your ability and knowledge level to manage it.  Pay closer attention to the fast growth action of your business if it has stepped off the stairway and decided to shoot to the top of the building on the elevator.  It can become a dangerous ride.  Get very serious about budgeting when this occurs.

For those businesses who have suffered through this recent recession I suspect any kind of growth would be welcomed.  I know.  No growth is worse than fast growth.  That is true.  However, growth that eats up the profits faster than it can be outrun will do more damage to your long term future than most stagnation could ever do.  It seems impossible, but it is true.  Either way, business is not fun to manage when these challenges appear.  Both hurt the checkbook just as badly.  In the end, I am not sure which one comes out better when the hard lessons are won.  Both can leave some ugly scars.

As the economy repairs and comes back together, growth will happen.  Growth will show up as time improves the wounds this past recession produced.  When growth appears, so does added competition.  I love how a business owner often forgets to consider this little detail.  Competition always comes alive when recovery shows up.  In most cases, the growth we experience is often immeasurable or slight.  This is due to the fact that increasing business activities become shared by the new competitors that enter the recovery business scene.  The new growth that occurs becomes spread out to everyone who survived and to the new players coming in.  Business owners often fail to recognize this component of the recovery scene.

Furthermore, most of the new and early competition will be of the healthy kind.  The new competition will be seasoned business approaches from some very savvy operators.  They will come to your field of business play with good ideas, excellent motivation and stronger financial positions than those who suffered through the recession and survived.  These new players saw the need, they witnessed a market suffering and decided to take their fresh ideas to your market and give it a try.  Do not become frustrated with this development.  It is welcomed competition.  As the economy strengthens, so does the competition.  Just get used to this pattern.  It is par for the course and one of the most ignored pieces of how the economy recovers.  New and exciting competition arrives with each step of improvement a recovering economy suggests is occurring.  It is one of the most predictable patterns that is heavily suppressed.  Only the stressed out, over-extended business operators who survived the recession see this picture well.  They witness the new kids on the block with a better shovel and stronger diggers with less rotten debt to manage.  They capture our stares.

Page two.

Marketing The Buyers Intent

In this world of technology we have become accustomed to enjoy the world of vast volumes of useful data.  Data we did not have access to in the 70's or 80's, now becomes second nature in this millennium.  I know, sometimes too much data can be overwhelming.  In fact, we have become prone to waste too much time chasing useless data just because it exists.  I am guilty.  This effort can become a terrible waste that easily drains the profits business efficiency offers.  It may not sound like sucking down profits but it sure ends up shorting up the checkbook.  Wasted time is very expensive.  If you are a business owner you know exactly what I mean.  Employees get paid the same, regardless of their time wasted.  Owners pick up that tab.

We need to be very careful how we pursue the assembly of important data.  We also need to make the best use of what we find useful.  In the world of marketing, this is where the most waste can occur.  Marketing is not a very exact science.  Some would argue against that point.  They are either blind to the real cost of wasted time or they do not live in the world of ownership.  

Wasting valuable time in the pursuit of useless data can become very easy to do.  Marketing is not like accounting.  It does not have a finite set of rules to follow.  Marketing does not remain steady in a closed circuit world like accounting prefers.  Marketing ideas and methods love to wander about the map where consumers get lost.  This reality has a tendency to suck in the sellers of goods and services.  They, too, become lost with the customers they are trying to attract.  It is a funny game to watch unless it happens to you and your own business investments.  A chewed up wallet is not a very funny matter.

Our technological world has delivered data mining efforts that scour anything from rubber band use to rocket fuel efficiencies.  We have discovered within our ability and virtual files reams of consumer research and information that describes how consumers indicate what they prefer to buy.  Consumers say stuff about what they want as well as tell us how they want to shop for it.  They reveal how they suggest they want to shop.  Consumers tend to share their buying intent.  It becomes an important part of the virtual world of technological discoveries.  Sellers love to work these files.  Sellers love to mine this data.

In the virtual world; manufacturers, distributors, investors and retailers alike compile these consumer notions into patterns they feel they can use to improve the capitalization of their production efforts.  It all makes good sense.  It fits very nicely into the mode of thinking we feel we can quantify.  There is one problem with this whole idea.  We all can boast how well we know what the consumer says they prefer to do, but in reality, they don’t.  Buyer intent is a moving target.  What one consumer group says they will support and buy from the screening tests and questionnaires they complete is often quite a bit different than what they really support and buy.  A good deal of the suspected data does not always pan out to be accurately projected.  Consumers often go left when they indicate right. 

This happens because consumers do not always tell the producer the truth.  Consumers sometimes do not exactly know what they are truly wanting to do.  As a result, they say what they do not know will be how they really move.  They also are prone to move in ways they do not actually support.  This kind of misleading data can easily confuse the supplier, and it does.

What's more, there are reams of proof that can be found that contradict what these consumer supported patterns promise.  Much of what we learn about how consumers say they will support something they plan to buy can be as fickle as not knowing anything at all.  Often times the descriptions they suggest they will support rarely pan out as becoming part of the real truth in sales we expected to see.  The buyer’s intent turns out to be quite a bit different than the actions they promised to deliver.  Wow, bummer if you bought a ton of the wrong stuff to sell.

There is no shortage of surveys that suggest what the buyer says they will support.  There is, however, a real shortage in matching these suggestions with the performance of what we expected them to buy.  The two worlds do not collide as often as we might think they should.  There is a real shortage to the matching of these promises to the reality of what sells.  This is what provides every marketplace with an element of guesswork that still remains to be conquered.

We just do not always know exactly what to develop, what specifics to produce nor which types of items to supply.  Golly, gee whiz...some of the greatest companies, like Apple and Dell, miss the mark.  We do not always know what price lines will work, what colors will sell or what functions may dominate how the consumer ultimately moves.  There is still a good deal of mystery added to the methods of marketing.  Consumers have and will continue to prove how fickle they can become.  It is the nature of enterprise.  It is a staple of enterprise that will likely never go away.  Get used to this kind of business diet.  It will likely dominate your plate.

Page two.

Tough Times Do Not Last

We live in a complicated world.  We have spent the past six decades trying to mold systems of protection, systems of efficiency, systems of respect, systems of increased knowledge, systems of improved spirituality, systems of improved health, systems of increased financial growth, systems of added pleasure, systems of increased family understanding, systems of social equality and systems of improvement for anything you can virtually think can happen.  Each one of these vast efforts requires learning knew things.  It also requires the adoption of practicing different ways for living.  As each individual learns how to carve their way down the paths that prove important to their own ideals and dreams they discover how many new complicated lines of discipline are added to the motions in their lives.  The world then grows much more demanding with too much to do and very little time to do what we feel we need to be doing.  It begins to look very complicated.

In the business world, this is especially true.  As each competitor adds a new wrinkle for attracting more consumers and revenue growth so goes the comfortable world of staying the same in our own endeavors.  When the competitor adds new services, we must follow suit if we plan to attract the consumers who moved to those new services.  Each time this kind of addition occurs our business model must get in line also.  If we fail to recognize the value in this kind of management we fail to address how to keep revenue growth moving towards the plus side of the ledger.  To ignore these rules of business engagement is to ignore one of our most important responsibilities of trade.  Our volume might suffer without practicing this duty.  Business life can become very complicated at times.

As life spins out all of its increasing demands for rules, regulations, adherence to social pressures and our natural desires to improve what we do the simple things that once were required to maintain a successful business life now become extremely complicated to find their way to success.  The level of things that are now required to make profitable business moves occur are found on a list more than a mile long!  The list is longer than we had ever imagined.  The world of managing business affairs has become a seriously complicated matter.  This is true for those who want to, at minimum, stay the same.  Let alone, grow!

This kind of demand placed upon the things we must learn to do adds pressure to the life of a business leader.  More demanding tasks come to the daily table than ever before.  What was once a casual load of required duties and a small respect for elective ideas have grown up to become demanding activities for providing the minimums that a simple business requires in its pursuit of success.  The risk factors that parallel business life have grown off the charts.  The work loads have consumed the owners time.  Business responsibilities have become an all consuming piece of that persons life.  Survival seems always to flirt with failure.  Tough times lurk around every new corner.  No business model can easily escape this complicated mess.  We all face these requirements.

Even so, some will fail.  Even so, some will win.  Those who win will gloat comfortably about making it well.  Those who lose will hide that fact as best as they can.  Welcome to the complexities of human nature.

So what happens to those who get swallowed up by the complicated winds that this world has brought about us?  What happens to those who lose big?  What happens to the ones in business that find their debt too large to manage?  Where do these failing business models go?  Better yet, what happens to their leaders?  How do these leaders deal with the reality of losing big?

Page two.

Business Advice, Smorgesborg And Consensus...All Come With The Same Mask.

Do Not Be Afraid To Change Your Selections

I love to eat.  Food is usually something I can do without much hesitation.  I love to eat.

Potlucks can be a bit scary to attend, but a smorgasbord...now that is another story.  I love to eat at a good smorgasbord restaurant.  I love to have all of those wonderful choices.  I can eat foods that are good but ones that we rarely prepare at home.  It offers us a chance to go eat some good stuff that we do not usually serve in our home menus.

We have gone to smorgasbords with other couples.  We have watched them eat the same stuff they usually prepare at home.  It quietly surprises us at how they select the foods they choose to eat because they know them the best.  If a meat and potatoes guy eats a lot of meat and potatoes, that is what he selects at the smorgasbord.  He passes up on the quiche, the vegetable wraps and the baked salmon.  On his plate is two large slices of prime rib and a huge pile of mashed potatoes and dark gravy.  He had almost the very same thing last night at his home.  The only difference between the two was his steak at home was ground round and the mashed potatoes were baked and smashed with a fork just before he buttered them up to eat them.  All else was essentially the same level of choices, maybe a bit of some upgrades added.

I have also eaten at smorgasbords with large groups of people.  I occasionally ride with large groups of guys on Harley bike trips.  With a group of people like that out on a day ride it is best to keep the meal stop short of a couple of hours.  The best way to do that with large groups is to hit a smorgasbord facility.  That way the order taking process goes much quicker.  Everyone just gets up and goes to retrieve what they want to eat.  It saves a lot of time.  It provides for less confusion.

With a large group the smorgasbord experience has an additional benefit.  Someone describes something they just ate as being an excellent choice.  Then someone else confirms that view with their take on how good that same item was.  Once a third person shares this same view, everyone else begins to go get some of that wonderful stuff.  Consensus takes over.  A low choice item just became the days hit.  Soon it becomes the favorite item on everyone's plate.  Large groups provide this interesting dynamic.  Consensus draws power.

Business development operates much the same.  Business leaders practice exactly what they know.  They continue to do the things they know how to do.  If they know nothing about book keeping and accounting, they usually have crappy data and poor financials.  They stick closely to what they know.  If they routinely eat meat and potatoes, they stick closely to meat and potatoes.  The only time they hire a good book keeper is when they are sitting around a group of their business buddies and hear how some of them have found a great temp agency that has helped them clean up their accounting ways.  Now with consensus working overtime, they get in line to do the same.  Consensus and smorgasbord activities wear the same masks.  They both perform exactly predictable.  They slip on the same look over the face of all types of business affairs.

Page two.

When Losing In Business Becomes Real, What Next?

Is It Time To Graduate From The School Of Hard Knocks?

The power of positive thinking is a real thing.  It can help generate some of the most amazing results.  I have seen athletes, business leaders and troubled family members rise out of the depths of despair through some very powerful positive thinking.  Those people simply willed their poor conditions into something worthwhile.  We have all seen these examples in our lives.

We have also witnessed troubled people turn their lives around by doing completely different things producing completely different results.  These patterns of life change have examples laying all over the trail of life.  One does not need to look very far to find excellent examples of recovery.  The world is chock full of them.

When a business owner spins out of control and begins to make losing a reality, what happens next?  What happens to those who are completely over-taken by the negative effects of a poorly guided business model?  What becomes of those business leaders?  Where do they turn now?  What do those who realize they are losing big do when that reality truly hits home?  What is next for them?

I work with business leaders who constantly flirt with this reality.  It is not a place for the faint of heart.  Junk happens and it happens deeply.  Working around and through this kind of stuff will wreak havoc on the strongest egos.  The toughest guys will whimper like a new born baby when the reality of losing comes home to settle.  When the notices arrive that take the business away the truth usually sets in.  That is the time when that strong ego gets its last final crush.  The debris of losing begins to fly everywhere.  Nobody is left out when this kind of unraveling begins its course.  Hearts get torn.  Emotions burn out of control.  Depression sets up tent.  Denial and fault shoot off like sparklers flying out of every corner of the business design.  Crap happens everywhere.

What happens when this kind of business experience flips out its ugly fire?  What hose, which flame and what little fire needs to be extinguished first?  What happens next?

How do we repair a broken business model?  How do we repair a broken personal life?  How do we repair the damaged relationships that come with the connections that linked up those lives in that business life and business doings?  Where do we begin?  What is next?

Page two.

Subtle Stuff Can Kill Your Business Success, Without Your Knowledge.

Jumping At The Chance To Start Your Business Needs More Thought

Last week I bumped into a complete stranger.  We had a monster discussion about some of his business ideas.  He shared his plans about his mission, some of his creative ideas to service that mission and how he planned to make it happen.  He also shared what his limitations were.  He described the 'pitfalls' he was facing.  He got passionate about the potential he could effect.  He has internalized this heartfelt position of where he wanted his business idea to be.  It was refreshing.  It was sincere.  It was real.  I liked what I saw and heard.  I liked it a lot.

I took the time to stall where I needed to be and decided to listen closer to what he had to share.  I had another commitment that could wait a bit longer so I could take in as much information from him as he felt comfortable in sharing.  He did not recognize the burden his sales pitch presented to my committed schedule, however.  He was too involved with sharing what he felt passionate about sharing.  His posture fell off the end of the table.  He did not notice it falling.  He expressed desperation in the process of his early developments, not joy.  He could not hear those cries.  They must have been meant for my ears only.  I played cards with my eyes, expressions and ears.  I listened closely.

He made a couple of quiet promises I know he did not hear.  Sometimes when we are selling our wares we get caught up promising what we have no intention of delivering.  We are humans and we equivocate more than we expect to truly serve.  We have so much desire to get our picture sold that we easily slip away from the realities of what we truly plan to do.  We learn the art of tickling our buyers ears.  We want that pitch sold so badly that we forget to hear how we try to make that part happen.  In the end, we over promise and under deliver.  It is one of the most damaging things a small business owner can practices in their business affairs.  We seem only able to recognize it when someone else does it to us.  It is one of those funny things about human beings.    

I liked his ideas.  They have huge merit.  They are very timely and carry a great potential for consumer support.  His ideas are standing on the edge of incredible.  He seems to know some of this but does not have the capacity to recognize the magnitude of what his ideas can become.  He may agree with this perspective but lacks the fortitude to do what it takes to sacrifice what he feels he needs to hang onto.  This kind of business wisdom comes with a lot of years of bloody noses.  His business background lacks those bleeds.  His experience in business carries a lot of those illusions I carried when I first began my business career.  Reality came in so many unfriendly ways.

Learn how to take tough lessons a bit more seriously.  Listen closely to what others have to say.  Do not try to step over their suggestions as if they were already part of what you already know.  Most business beginners do not recognize what a seasoned veteran really sees.  We sometimes get so consumed by our new enthusiasm that we flop over some helpful tips without even noticing they flew by.  I am a master at this narrow path.  I have missed many great suggestions that I discovered through rough and tumbled rotten experiences.  Those suggestions came from helpful others long before I was able to feel how they could truly hurt.  Unfortunately, I was not in the listening mode when those suggestions first arrived.  I, like many, had to carve them out myself through damage and pain.

If you are building a small business look around you and witness all of the business owners you know who get this first step of listening all wrong.  They carelessly get confused and mix their ideas, dreams and plans into a bag of energy and doings that dominate their business life as well as their family time to produce what they think they will achieve.  Take stock of this pattern and look around you.  Once you quietly witness how other business owners have commonly missed the mark on this valuable tip, look at their outcomes!  Most are not good.  That has been my experience, also.

Page two.

Where Do We Find The Glue That Holds Our Business Together?

What Kind Of Relationships Have You Built?

A first time business owner has a lot of ideas and dreams on their mind.  When they get started they have more to do than they have time to use.  Each moment is filled like a race to squeeze in more stuff.  Excitement dominates the energy levels.  Enthusiasm blankets all of the other undone edges.  Hope is filled with blind faith.  The new business is up and running.  It has activity.  It has enthusiasm.  It has energy.

These unbridled dimensions help to produce some interesting growth.  The business stirs up some selling interests.  Consumers get a bit caught up in the excitement that is produced.  The newness blooms some enjoyable results.  This new business owner is off and running.  Now the seriousness has been set in place.  Sustainability becomes the main effort for the next few years.  Making sales growth happen with enough good controls in place will be the new business owners next test of ownership.  This kind of pattern will lead that new owner down the path of 'on-board' business school, the one which includes a lot of hard knocks.  This becomes the middle of that new business owner's life.  The invisible but tough lessons of owning a small business begin to arrive and make life interesting.  This process looks like a bell curve.

Small business owners find this bell curve a strong reality when they look back at their ownership career.  They see the up-tick beginning that produced so many hopes and dreams.  They can graph out the climb to volume that supported the excitement they once developed when they opened up the gig they started.  They can see how the bell curve was running uphill on the charted graph.  Those were exciting times.  The level of blind faith was much like the first proposal that landed in the hearts between a future husband and his wife.  Both could see only the wonderful things that were about to occur.  Neither spouse could see how the first real spat would turn into a dividing line between them.  Certainly none could see the fighting that occurs between their three little children when one physically hurt one of the other two and the third child lied about it.  Those were not the visions these two love birds once envisioned when they proposed to each other.  This is exactly how a small business owner begins their trek through the business ownership forest.  It all starts on blind faith then as it grows with excitement as it morphs into this huge bag of challenges to manage.  The bell curve begins to turn downward.

So how do these self taught business owners keep it together?  How do they learn how to manage the first serious business obstacles that have been planted in front of the road they are travelling?  What provides the glue that holds them together when important and cherished stuff begins to fall away?  How do they keep it all together when they wreck their ship along the bumpy shores of trial and error?  These kinds of challenges are not silly things when they park their existence inside the doors of a troubling business model.  How do those owners apply the glue that holds it together when this kind of pattern comes home to stay?  Let's face it, big challenges are coming.  They are part of a growing business.  I have yet to meet a single successful business owner who could not tell a deeply tough story about how they had to learn how to make it through some of the most challenging stuff ever imagined.  In business, this kind of work is a reality.  It may not show up during the first six months when all of that newness and excitement is overflowing, but it will arrive.  Crap will happen.  It will seem much like living through a car wreck and losing some of your most important friends.  It can get real ugly.

Some business owners find challenges in lawsuits, employment issues, theft, fire, accidents, insurance claims, bad publicity, mismanaged funds, out-of-balance checking accounts, terrible losses, disrespect from staff, marriage separations, children resentments, time issues, location changes, popular product discontinuations, increased and fiercely added competition plus countless more that come inside the halls that do their damage.  Small business need to find some glue to hold it altogether when these things happen.  Where do they find this glue?

Page two.

Individual Rights Exceed Our Business Skookum

"Nope.  I Ain't Gunna' Do That!"

I had to look up the spelling of this word, 'skookum'.  Although I have used it in many sentences when I speak I do not ever remember writing it down.  I looked it up.  Technology is great stuff.  I typed the word and they corrected the spelling for me.  They even defined the word more clearly to me.  Now I have it correctly spelled and its meaning very much in tack.  Is this donkey above exercising its business skookum or is it practicing to protect his personal rights?  We see the difference, don't we?

Skookum is a term that gives the impression that something is strong, dominate or very accurate.  It represents something that is 'right on' or 'smart' and 'understanding'.  It reflects a positive position.  It suggests that someone has the right kind of knowledge happening at the right time it needs to be employed.  They have skookum.  They are 'right on' the target.  Good perception on complicated matters.  Skookum does suggest a bit of stubbornness, but in the right way.

How well is your business skookum?  Is it producing a long list of profitable outcomes?  Your pocketbook will tell you the truth.  Your bank account reflects how well you are doing.  Your debt accumulation reveals the level of your business skookum.  If any of these three rates of business measurement are a bit lower than what they should be, your business skookum might be running a little bit low.  Everyone in the business world is facing tough times.  Nobody was passed over.  Therefore, do not use this as your excuse for having a poor cash position, too much debt or a terribly shaped checking account.  This bad economy hit everyone.  The ones with the best skookum have come out better than the ones with less skookum.  No doubt about it.

Skookum.  It all comes down to skookum.  What kinds of things interfere with our level of business skookum?  It comes down to our level of skookum.  How well do we understand complicated matters?  How well do we navigate the complexities of human relationships in the slippery waters of business management?  What levels do our skills reveal?  What are our weaknesses?  Where are we deficient?  When do our strengths run out of room to move?  What is our skookum level?  This is where the world of business success meets the road.  It has nothing to do with how well we repair automobiles, if we are a mechanic.  It has nothing to do with how well we bake cookies, if we are a bakery.  It has nothing to do with how well we build cabinets, if we are a carpenter.  It comes down to our skills of having enough skookum to deal with all of the complexities and challenges that a small business must learn how to manage.  It is within these crossroads that a business leader learns how to profit well.  It comes surrounded by our skookum levels.

Page two.

In Business, Things Always Pair Up.

Owning a small business can be become a cruel path to walk.  There are times when the path is so unfriendly that we wonder sometimes what the heck we are doing.  Nothing seems to be unfolding favorably.  The checkbook is always overdrawn, the bank is always calling for more deposits and the creditors are appearing on the caller ID more frequently.  Owning this small business becomes a pressure of sleepless worry and endless challenges.  Every day seems to start off with two steps behind.  The fun has completely disappeared.

Every small business owner recognizes this mental position.  The ones who have not witnessed this pattern of worry are either very new at business ownership or very good at what they do.  In reality, very few miss this pattern of feelings because they are very good at what they do.  Most miss it because they have not owned their small business long enough to produce this position of ownership.  The later is usually the truth in how it really works.

Unfortunately, nobody told the new business owner that this would eventually become some of the stuff they would need to learn how to manage and endure.  New business owners are not privy to these kinds of terrible patterns about how tough owning your own business can become.  Furthermore, even if someone with a lot of knowledge and credibility about this pattern was able to share how this works with new business owners, most new owners would not have listened anyway.  That is how stubbornness works.  I have found very few owners able to escape this pattern.

Things happen in patterns and fall along the lines of a series.  We seem to pair up what goes badly.  If the checkbook is out of line, so are the credit cards.  If the promises in business relationships are staging unreal stories, so are the relationships at home.  If the slippage of productivity drops its patterns into the employee ranks, it also begins to erode the accounting responsibilities.  Prevarication drives the flow of information while equivocation dominates the patterns of sales.  Bad stuff happens in pairs.

A driver delivers some products to the wrong house.  On the same trip, they forget some important tools on another installation delivery.  Stuff happens wrong in a series of events.  They seem to happen in pairs.  A bid for auto repair was offered too short to make a profit and due to some parts delays gets completed late with an unhappy customer who expected it done sooner than what was delivered.  This unhappy and lost profit repair job then discovers some of the work failed two weeks later and the repaired auto was returned for customer service adjustments, adding injury to insult.  Things happen in pairs.

Every business owner recognizes this unfortunate pattern of business control.  Unfriendly stuff comes in pairs.  The old saying goes, "When it rains, it pours."

The true leadership of the owner gets qualified when bad stuff comes in pairs.  The true colors of leadership show up when the feathers are ruffled.  We can see what color lies behind the outer coat.  It is at these times a small business owner paves the path to better success.  This is exactly the time when the true qualities of the best leaders comes to the surface.  The best business leaders show up when the pairs of events do not match up as they had hoped to be.  The business owners who manage the worst events well are the ones who profit most when the dust settles to the ground.

Here's why.

Page two.

Why Do Things Become More Valuable When They Are Suddenly Taken Away?

Some Of The Values We Lose Are The Important Ones We Need

Why do things become more valuable when they are suddenly taken away?

This is a subject worth deeper investigation.  The human condition seems to hold this pattern true to its heart more often than not.  We tend to place higher value on many things we own but only notice this value after they have suddenly disappeared.  When we still own them we do not seem to respect them near as much as when they have suddenly disappeared.  We tend to take many valuable things we own for granted.  It is a common occurrence as well as becoming a very natural thing that humans practice.  The value of many things becomes diminished with familiarity and routine.  They get quietly lost in the pile of existence.

Business leaders fall prey to this effect on a daily basis.  The practice of doing what needs to be done while these business leaders work to produce patterns of success becomes the dominant focus of each day.  Little things of value can become lost in the menagerie of this kind of daily work.  Routine, although critically important to success, can grow up to hide some tremendously valuable quiet components.  A sharp business operator will not miss the responsibility to search this effect out.  They will actually guard against losing values that mean quite a lot.  It is one of those hidden features that separate the good business leaders from the 'also rans'.

What types of values easily fall into this kind of lost category?  What becomes lessened with time?  Which values go unnoticed as daily stuff takes over the mind?  Where do good leaders look to protect the quality values they need to protect?  Which values, when protected properly, prove to become the ones that help the business model grow away from the competition and to become one of the great models in its region of play?  What are those values that when they disappear they become recognized for the magnitude of their loss?

If you are a business leader and you have trouble describing what those values may be, you are not consistently winning at what you do.  This much is true.  Regardless of what you may perceive to be the things you control, winning is one of those things that remains just far enough out of the reach of what you do.  You have a desire to produce more wins, more often.  You recognize the need to change things up a little bit so more wins will come home, more often.  Likely the most motivation you found to recognize this truth is the loss of something very valuable to you.  That is exactly how improvement patterns work.  We seem to need a loss to get us going.  We have to drop or lose a thing of value before we recognize how much we need to change up what we are regularly doing.  It is the loss that provides the source of the motivation to move up, to move better.  Welcome to leadership.

Why do things become more valuable when they are suddenly taken away?

Page two.

"Restaurant Impossible" And "Undercover Boss", What?

I like these programs.  They are fun to watch.  I am a pleased part of their captured audience.  "Restaurant Impossible" and "Undercover Boss" are entertaining stuff.  These kinds of reality shows offer some captivating exchanges between people and ideas. Just keep in mind the focus of these programs is to sell advertising to a larger audience.  These programs are owned by a network that is going to work, itself, each day to make a profit.  The Food Network and CBS are working their creative stuff to capture your attention so they can sell more advertising to larger clients who will need to pay more for that exposure than the advertisers want to pay.  That is the heart of their gig.  These networks are a solid business model.  The 'news' is not just reporting news.  Reporting the news is a part of a larger marketing machine that has a goal to make more money for its shareholders.  Entertainment is a business.  News is classified in that same category.  Reality shows are certainly part of that category.  They are all part of a business model.  End of seminar.

My father was a self-made business entrepreneur.  He practiced his business ownership successfully for over 40 years before he passed away.  One of his favorite comments when he was able to share it with other people was to remind them that the news was a business.  He would say, "Be careful with watching the news...it is only a business...they are telling you exactly what you want to hear just enough to keep them away from getting sued.  It sells advertising.  They have a neat knack for pushing your limits to draw you in.  The ones who draw more in can earn more advertising dollars.  Get used to it.  News is just a business."

He was correct.  They sell what you want to hear.  That is their primary goal.  They are in the business of selling their stuff to attract more readership, a larger audience.  Ratings become their primary goal.

When I operated my retail store front the television, newspaper and radio representatives would always come by to sell advertising programs for me to consider.  They would pull out of their bags some data sheets to prove how large their audience had become.  They would point out the measurable demographics to make a case for me to use their advertising potential.  They would sell time and space to increase revenues for the programing they produced.  It was clearly a serious business model.

They would make deals that centered around the Cosby Show, the NFL, the NBA or the evening news.  They tried to get your top dollars to plant your exposure near their most watched programming.  This is where they made the most money.  This is where they could convince you to speak to the largest audiences about what your business had to offer.  Business to business, this is how it works behind the scenes of "Restaurant Impossible" and the "Undercover Boss."  They sell advertising.  They make money doing this kind of thing.

Now that we have cleared the way for the message behind this post, let's see why this understanding is so important to see.  First of all, fixing up a broken eatery that is destined to fail does not and cannot happen in just one week.  Only for television will that impression come to life.  It sells well.  The programming experts behind the business model of "Restaurant Impossible" know this to be true.  However, they must capture your complete attention in that thirty minute segment to make you want to come back while telling others how much you enjoy seeing them fight through the resistance and immediately help others to win.  It sells well to a lot of hearts.  It works well to increase the audience support.  Unfortunately, it is not the truth in how it really works.  No business, headed for failure, can be repaired in just one week.  That is simply fairy tale stuff.  It is only good for TV.

The same holds true for "Undercover Boss."  No boss can go behind the scenes, see a lot of ill-fated things going on, and return two weeks later to have them all fixed up and gone for good.  This only happens cleanly on TV.  It sells well.  Oh, I know, they give little snippets in written captions that report how each problem is doing months later.  They run those captions across the bottom of the screens for the viewer to read near the end of the current series.  That sells well, too.  Did you know that?  It does.  Many times, it is not made up of completely true stuff.  Did you know that?  I am sorry if I have burst anyone's bubble on this piece of news.  Be reminded, these programs know what you want to hear, how you want it delivered and why you will come back to honor what they need you to honor.  It is their business to do this stuff very well...and they do.

Page two.

Candid, Sincere Views About Small Business.

One of the most committed people you will ever meet are the ones who own a small business.  This is especially true if you meet one who has been managing their way through a small business for more than ten years.  These are truly some of the most dedicated, seriously-sewn-into-the-fabric-of-how-they-perform-their-daily-life, people.  They are routinely buried into the business they manage.  The two things, their life and their business, are one of the same.  They have become what their business has become.  Small business owners are deeply engaged into doing what they do for a living.  Their small business model defines who they are, what they do and how they think.  Small business owners have made their life become what their business is.  Rarely an exception can be found.  End of seminar.

When these small business owners work their way into this kind of groove, they become so emotionally buried into the depths of their being that they cannot see, think, imagine or do anything outside of the way they see their business performing.  Small business owners are completely consumed by the circumstances they face in their small business activities.  Their business has grown up in their life and has taken all of it by the tail.  It is very much like watching the tail wag the dog.  The dog no longer has control of how the tail wags.  The tail becomes the boss.  The tail defines the owner.  The only thing that appears normal when this stage of life is reached by the small business owner, is that the tail is still attached to the body.  Seeing the tail attached to the body is the only normal thing remaining to be seen.  Everything else becomes a blur of wrongful reactions...tolerated for the sake of supporting the business struggles.  The small business owner is finally captured by the net of owning that small business model.  End of second seminar.

Coming this October first will be the completion of my fortieth year of being a part of managing some kind of small business.  Forty years doing stuff that a small business owner does.  That is an amazing process to describe.  It has become a long history of ups and downs.  Good times were had and awful things have occurred.  Family damages run common.  Trust has been built and trust has been broken.  Shame has been avoided on most fronts and public surfaces but lurks heavily under the top of the skin where it bubbles on fire with threatening reminders.  Every small business owner completely understands what I just described.  The public eye sees a lot of what is not really going on, inside.  Inside the soul of the ones in charge is a long list of serious challenges being managed away from everyone they can afford to avoid.  This is how the heart of a small business owner behaves.  They work diligently to avoid showing the bruises they acquire.  They spend "over-time" energy cleaning up the face after it has been damaged with loss.  The small business owner has the real view of how bad circumstances burn hard behind closed doors.  They spin this view out of the sight of anyone who could judge them wrongly.  End of third seminar.

How much pressure can one person endure?  How much secrecy can one small business owner protect?  How much strength will it take to admit lacking the skills to win more often?  These are some of the quiet questions a small business owner ponders.  They wrestle inside their minds about revealing bad stuff that reflects the truth about the weakness they own.  Remember, their small business has grown up to define who they are.  If that small business has developed some serious problems, it will not reflect well on the character and knowledge of the owners skills.  Bad things happen to every small business.  Everyone gets behind on their payment obligations.  It happens to everyone, some time or another.  Unfortunately, each small business owner does not understand this simple truth.  Hence, the spin to protect this truth begins its motions.  The small business owner starts to work more on hiding these rotten truths long before any one of them can become comfortably resolved.  They spend countless hours and too much energy on protecting the wrongs they have come to protect.  The messes they grow to protect and manage become suppressed beneath the sight of others.  It becomes some of the most serious work these owners have ever performed.  In addition to becoming consumed by this "personal protection" game, they avoid the help that others can share.  Pride takes over.  Pride expands to cover every surface it can find.  Pride wins this war.  End of seminar number four.

Small business leadership is not the work for a weakened heart.  It will weaken a heart, but it cannot be managed by a weakened heart.  This is where the collision occurs.  When the challenges grow too big for the owner to manage the suppression gets set on fire.  No fire will burn under control when the suppression is fueled by the wrong prevention techniques.  No man is an island.  No island is a part of a larger country.  And no connections to a larger country becomes the first break of some needed help.  Most small business owners wait too long before they ask for help.  They allow the gusty winds of the small business world to blow down their house and destroy their properties of protection well before the real hurricane comes to shore.  It is when that real hurricane hits and everything begins to fly away into the sea that this small business owner cries for help on this tiny island.  They send out messages that describe the winds that have taken them down.  The storm they define becomes the reasons why they admit their loss.  A really bad storm becomes an acceptable excuse for they way their business never performed.  This becomes the best time to begin the work on repairing the loss.  Hopefully, the helpers arrive and do not investigate how the home and the properties where not initially built to survive these winds.  No blame may be found and the repairs can come about without injuring or bruising the ego at hand.  This is how the small business owner will spin what has been going on wrong, all along.  End of the fifth seminar.

What seminar is left?

Page two.

What's The Next Step? I Need Help.

Find The Source Of Your Business Fire

Did you ever wonder what goes on in the mind of a business owner who is struggling with the business they own?  I do.  Sometimes I feel like a first responder at an accident scene.  I see some wreckage and I move to find where to help.  My instincts immediately move closer to find the business leadership when I see signs of business trouble.  I quietly examine their scene to see if they recognize the fires are burning out of control.  You see, every business manages small fires.  Challenges lurk around every corner in all business models.  Nobody escapes this truth.  Smoke flows from one office to the next as each leader works to find ways to put them out.  That is exactly what good businesses do for a living.  They put out fires.  I look for the smoke that looks like it is out of control.  I look for something brewing in that business that can damage its long term future.  I look to see if and where the fire is burning out of control?

When some serious smoke finds its way out of the hidden halls of the shops, showrooms and back office spaces of a business model I tend to walk closer to it.  I go looking for hidden trouble.  I search for the source of the fire.  I was always told that where's there's smoke, there's fire.  Guess what?  It is true.

Most business owners would just as soon hide their business fires.  They even hide the ones that require more help to put out.  Sometimes their water bucket is not large enough to arrest the size of the flames.  It is so hard for a business leader to admit their fire is burning out of control.  They have always managed these small fires in the past...just fine.  Then it begins.  The fire gets out of control.  It consumes and damages some of the very crucial stuff the business needs to protect.  The business begins to spiral out of control.  It happens.

When the business gets out of control, the leader usually panics and hides the fire.  They try to salvage what is not yet burned.  Unfortunately, managing the wreckage a big fire produces tends to consume the time of the best staff, suppliers and institutional support.  The energy of the business begins to sour.  The stingy fire becomes a permanent smell.  The business finds itself operating in pain, long term.  It is now pushing behind the eight ball.  It is trying to keep from losing its ground.  The process becomes exhausting.  The spirit runs tired and becomes easily consumed with the other ashes.  Everything looks like trouble.  The leader tries hard to cover it all up.  Nobody wants to wear this kind of business blame.  Nobody.

Big fires are hard to get under control.  The leaders try extra hard to push away the first responders.  It takes a while for the rescue crew to find how to get in.  In the meantime, damage is continuing on.  The source of the fire is running out of control.  Most business owners disguise the source of the fires that burn this damage into their business models.  It is a common thing to witness.

Very few serious business problems come from the bottom up.  The more serious business problems come top down. The business leadership usually causes the worst fires.  This is also the main reason why the leaders disguise the source of their most serious business fires.  They do not want to become caught holding the match that struck the flammable stuff.  What's more, they are likely the reason why fire prevention was ignored.  This keeps the first responders outside the core of the business model guessing where the source really remains.  It protects the image of the business leaders.  This image usually runs higher than the need to arrest the fire.

The first step to business repair is to weave about the halls and find where the most deception is taking place.  This is usually where the first responder, the repair specialist, will likely find the source of the fire.  The business leaders tend to give out the best clues by funneling the path of the needed repairs with deceptive finger pointing.  The leaders holding the matches usually move the repair work in the direction away from where the source began.  They tend to protect who holds the match.  In my three decades of  business experiences, this is a very normal pattern to see.  If you plan to repair the broken work of a business model, keep this truth close to your side.  The leaders will deceive you in their efforts to protect how much they were involved.  It will aid you in getting to the source of the problems much sooner.  When a business is in great need for repair, sooner is always better.  Find the source quickly, before the whole house burns down.

For those of you who are leaders of business that are experiencing some out of control fires, listen up.  Get past the hiding of the truth.  It is a very damaging game to play.  The sooner you get some corrective actions put in place the sooner your business will deliver what you have always expected it to deliver.  Sooner is always better.  This is true even if it needs to crush your ego a little bit.  A bruised ego does not feel good but it pays well.  I think good pay is one of the reasons why you elected to go into business for yourself.  Is it not?  Fess up, reveal the source problems and allow the repair guys to do what they do best.  Then begin to receive what you always believed your business should return.  This is how you find the fruits of what it can deliver.

Page two.

I Hate It When Someone Tells Me What To Do.

Good Ideas Often Find Their Beginning In The Minds Of Others!

One of the children playing next door uses her age to manipulate her two older sisters.  I can see them playing down the hill about a tenth of the mile away.  One thing cool about being uphill is that noise travels uphill very well and very clear.  The wavelengths of sound have no interferences to break them up.  They arrive to my yard in clear tones.  I hear just about everything those children say when they are outside playing in the yard.  For the most part it is a very cool discovery.  They are pretty good kids.

One of the more fascinating parts of listening in on the volley of conversations between these three sisters is to hear how they use their words to 'work' on each other.  They play with a good deal of creative manipulation.  It gets real clever, even at this young age.  The youngest one has learned the art of manipulating her young age very well.  She plays out to be very innocent in her acquisition process.  She usually wins.  She has become very good at her skills.  The two older siblings get taken for a ride more than half of the time.  What's more, the baby has figured out how to manage the parents in a dispute.  It is clever stuff.

There is another factor I find interesting about this unprotected lesson I receive from these three children.  I am also able to get a good sense for how their parents say and do the things they practice, as well.  I hear how the parents think and how they use speech to manage conflict and cooperation.  It simply comes from the children's mouths and actions.  The children only practice what they have witnessed.  If the parents are abusive, so will the children behave.  If the parents use foul language, the children will also.  If the parents use divide and conquer techniques in their leadership patterns, so will the children.  It is simple to detect.  It is simple to see.

My parents, for example, hate it when someone tells them what to do.  They have always hosted that kind of slant in what they do all through their lives.  It has become a lot of who they are.  This characteristic is certainly not a flaw of life that many others have somehow missed.  In fact, it is quite common.  Millions of people hate to be told what to do.  Millions of those people are parents like mine.  I am a parent.  I hate to be told what to do.  We pass this stuff on.  We are not any different than that small family down the hill.  All of us are prone to behave the same way our parents taught us to behave.  Those three little girls downhill of my home play and do the very exact same stuff their parents do.  We are all by-products of our social heredity.  That little sister has learned the art of doing what her parents allow her to do.  It is not bad parenting.  It is life and human beings.

When a business leader hires the next employee to do a job that needs to be done, early life patterns become part of what that leader has agreed to manage when they hire who they hire.  We all bring our past experiences forward when we go where we go, when we do what we do.  That becomes how we manage where we are.  It is not rocket science.  It is not a flaw of society.  It is exactly the very thing that makes humans become humans.  Some day a business leader will need to hire that little girl who has learned the art of clever manipulation.  When she becomes of age to work, she will be seasoned very well at what she does to win her ways.

Page two.