Abundance and Significance – Making More Money in the Participation Age.

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For almost 200 years we were in the Industrial Age, followed by four “Ages” in less than 40 years: The Post-Industrial/Service Age. The Technology Age, the very short 5-10 year Information Age, and what some including me are now calling the Participation Age.

The hallmark of the Participation Age is “Sharing”. Shared technologies, shared information, shared resources, and shared participation in developing new products. But most of all the Participation Age is identified by the re-development of the concept of community – people living and working together toward a common goal.

Linux, Druple communities, interactive media, blogs, and social media such as Twitter and Facebook are all examples of shared community. Independent programmers are meeting for a weekend and developing an application in just a few hours together.

The results? A big one is that we are now in the age of Two-Way Marketing. You can no longer afford to have a one-way “push” message. You must be listening as much or more than talking, asking more questions than you answer, and participating with your community in the development of your brand, not telling people what your brand is.

The Age of Participation – Social Entrepreneurship

An even bigger result is that the best companies will be focused on creating abundance and significance for the owner, the employees and the world around them. They will be returning to what we were taught in kindergarten, to re-learn how to share and participate with others in building a better world.

Besides two-way marketing, alert companies will understand that they can no longer afford to be interesting, but that they now must be interested – finding ways to promote the interests of their customers and their community to increase their profits.

It’s not a foo-foo idea anymore; it is becoming a staple of business. Social entrepreneurship is not a fad. It’s a result of living in the age of participation and the information sharing that is possible as a result. And those companies that put the interests of their customers and community first will make more money.

Selling a product or service doesn’t cut it anymore. Last year Wired Magazine ran a cover story on the need for people to reconnect with the concept of “meaning”. In the eighties the bumper sticker was “He who dies with the most toys wins” and in the nineties we got to try it and found it wanting. In the last ten years we have begun to reconnect with the idea that it’s not “He who dies with the most toys wins”, but “He who lives with the most significant goals wins.”

Great companies in the 21st century will move from Survival, through Success to Significance. And they will do so by changing the business mindset from one of scarcity – “I need to get mine first because there is only so much to go around”; to a mindset of abundance – “I will get mine as I help others get theirs.”

Use your business to do more than make money; you’ll make more money if you do. All the best businesses are growing as they give back. It creates the right leadership mindset for a business to grow.

You either live in a world of abundance or a world of scarcity. Whichever one you choose effects every decision you make.

Have a great finish to 2009 and an abundant and significant start to 2010!

Buy my book for a small business owner in Kenya. I’ll take it to them.

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February 7-20 I will accompany The 1010 Project to Kenya to explore ways to break the cycle of poverty by developing sustainable business models. Brian Rants, the Director of The 1010 Project asked me to work with them to think big and go beyond the typical craft-making and handwork solutions. We’ll be looking for ways to fund real businesses that work for the local economy – it’s an exciting and daunting opportunity.

We’ll be working in the Kibera slum with a population density of 1,250 people per acre. We lived on one acre in Farmington, CT for years, backed up against 75 acres of state forest. Kibera will be a different world. We’ll also meet with some nationally connected business leaders to involve them in the solution.

The size of the problem is overwhelming. Our solution will be simple – change everything; one person and one small business at a time.

What can you do?

Three things:

  1. Sign up for The 1010 Project Newsletter here – and keep updated about our trip and what we plan to do to.
  2. Make a donation to help fund the trip by clicking here. I will be funding my own travel costs; your donations will go to fund the in-country costs of the trip and the travel costs for Brian Rants, The 1010 Project Director, and to support the in-country permanent presence of The 1010 Project headed up by Keith Ives.
  3. Buy a copy of Making Money is Killing Your Business that we can take with us to Kenya and donate to a small business owner. I wrote this book as a comprehensive reference book for starting and running a small business, and I believe the principles work in any culture. It is normally $28.95, but if you want to buy one specifically to send on our trip, we’ll take it with us (it will be shipped in advance), and the cost will be only $15. This will pay for the printing, handling, shipping and for having your name placed in the book (address info will not be provided).

To buy a book to send with us to Kenya and present in your name, go to our pre-order site and click on the Book for Kenya button. We’ll present the book on your behalf to a small business owner in Kenya. We’ll only be able to take 150 books, so please order your Book for Kenya right away.

The #1 Indicator of Success in Early Stage Businesses

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Move Quickly

Very few business owners expect their business to support them right out of the gate. More often than not, the expectation to receive income from outside the business gives the owner a false sense of security and a lack of real intentionality to build a business. We assume it’s supposed to be this way, and if we look around at other business startups and some of the really awful advice we get, we’re told it could be 18-24 months before the business even breaks even. So we take that 18-24 month window and use every bit of it, burning through outside money like there’s no tomorrow, and feeling just fine about it because it’s supposed to be this way.

A great friend of mine and fellow business advisor in Virginia, Eddie Drescher, told me about one of his clients who had one fitness franchise open and was about to open another. The national franchise had told him it would take 12 months or so to be profitable because that’s how long it took them.

As this client was about to open his second center, he told Eddie about this timeline. Eddie immediately challenged him, saying, “Who made that rule?” After talking through it at length, they decided to shoot for profitability in the first three months. Instead the location turned a profit in its first month, and stayed close to break even in the following few months. Rather than burning cash for 12-18 months because he was “supposed” to, he intended to do something much better much sooner, and did so.

Speed of Execution

I believe strongly that the number one indicator of success in an early stage business is not how good your product is, or how smart your marketing is, or your uniqueness, or your funding, or any of those traditional ideas of what makes for success. The number one indicator of success in early stage business is simply speed of execution.

Think of that successful six figure sales person you know, or that business owner who seems to turn everything they touch to gold. Almost certainly they are people who, when they get an idea, move on it immediately. Most of us spend way too much time thinking, researching, and planning. We would be better off getting a very basic plan in place and acting on it, and perfecting it as we go.

It’s the subject of my next book, but for now I can’t encourage you enough to just get moving! Stop thinking about starting up, and if you’ve started up, stop thinking that it’s supposed to last until the end of your cash, then magically switch over to funding itself.

Get intentional about getting your business through startup as quickly as you can. And whatever stage of business you’re in, keep Speed of Execution as one of your top business principles. You’ll make more money in less time.

Is Your Business Making the Rules for You?

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He who makes the rules wins. The problem is your business is probably making all the rules for you and beating you up at every turn.

We have it all backwards. We build a business intending to work hard and make money at it, and then we just take whatever lifestyle the business is willing to throw off for us. We live in reaction mode – reacting to everything our business needs us to do in order to make money this month.

Every business should throw off three things for us – time, money and significance. We only expect it to generate money so that’s what it does. But a healthy business grows up and gives us all three.

Let’s get it right. Figure out what your Ideal Lifestyle is and what it will cost you to live there. Then intentionally build your business to produce that lifestyle. Stop taking whatever your business will give you, take control and start making decisions that will bring you time and significance as well as money.

He who makes the rules wins. If you’re in charge then make the rules and build a business that responds to your direction, not the other way around. Do you own your business or does your business own you? Who’s really in charge?

It depends on which one of you is making the rules.

The Single Most Important Marketing Tactic Ever Devised

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The most important marketing tactic ever devised is also the simplest. And it wasn’t invented by marketing people, but by business owners and sales people looking to grow their business the best, fastest, least expensive way possible.

Unfortunately it doesn’t get much traction because it doesn’t have enough complexity, bells and whistles or cost to make people pay attention to it. It’s just too simple to be that effective. The profound things are always simple, but we don’t believe that either. Yet people who have done it are almost always successful.

What is the single most important marketing tactic ever devised?

Make a list of everyone you know.

I mean your dentist, your mother, your sister, your clients, the bar keep – everybody.

Yep, boring, dull, simple, can’t be that helpful. Wrong. It’s the first thing every business owner and every sales person should do to before they open the doors. I could tell you a few dozen success stories of people who believed and did this, even a restaurant owner who did it, gave away four free nights of food to people on their list to open their restaurant and never looked back (or did much traditional advertising either).

Once you have your list made, divide it into two categories – potential clients and potential gate openers (people who can refer to me). Potential clients got a 1, 2 or 3 (most to least likely to become a client, and potential gate openers get an A, B, C (most to least likely to refer someone to me). I did this on Excel so I could then sort the two and all the 1’s and A’s floated to the top. Some people were 1-A (great potential client and also great potential referral partner). Others were 3-C (and some of them became great clients – our guesses are many times pretty bad).

Once you’ve got the list, figure out what to do with it.

  1. Call your best friends and family and beg for work. If you’re reluctant to do it, it’s almost certainly more your problem than theirs. They want to help you a lot more than you think, more than anybody else you know. Beg!
  2. Call others you know well and simply ask if they want to do business or know someone that does.
  3. Have a pizza party for your highest potential gate openers who aren’t likely to become clients and have a brainstorming session. Give them your 10-minute spiel and get 30 minutes of feedback. Then ask them to make a list of everybody they know (or 5-10 people in the meeting) and go around and ask each of them to describe somebody they are referring. That will help everybody to immediately think of someone they forgot.
  4. Create interest groups from your list and get a guest speaker to serve them – just put together the meeting to build relationships. They’ll love you for serving them and later you can ask for referrals.
  5. Go through the list and see whom you should connect with each other – you’ll be surprised at how much power you have to connect people who would love to know each other, and you’ll be the person who made it happen.
  6. Start a weekly or monthly interest or business group for those that have some common needs (get 5-10 other people on your list to do it with you and recruit 10-15 others you’ve never met – your list just grew exponentially). Put some structure and commitment to it – play kids games and that’s whom you’ll get.
  7. Do the usual where appropriate – send an email or a direct marketing piece or similar for those you really don’t know very well.
  8. Assemble your top 100 potential clients and gate openers and commit to call two of them every day and say hello – no agenda. Build the relationships and do business after it’s appropriate.

I put that one last because things like it (frequent, personal, relational contact) are the best way to use that list to build your business. And serve, don’t sell. Find out what they need, meet them where they are at, and watch your business grow.

If you have lots of money and no time, than just do advertising. But if you’re like most small business owners, you’ve got a lot more time than money, and you can reach people you already know a lot easier than going out cold-calling.

I’ve never done a cold call in my life and was the top sales person in every corporation I was in, with annual sales of up to $10 million. Make a list of everyone you know and build relationships with them. It’s the best-kept non-secret in marketing.

Making Money is not an Empowering Vision

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To build a business that provides you the lifestyle you want, you need a vision that motivates you. And guess what? Making money is not an empowering vision. I know plenty of people who’ve tried it including me.

My friend Eddie Drescher has a client who told him, “After $150,000, it didn’t make me any happier to be making $500,000.” Some people push the numbers up or down, but you get the point—money never makes life more meaningful.

What we do with it can.

I made healthy six-figure incomes for years before I started The Crankset Group. One day a few years ago, while in one of those jobs, Diane, my much better half, came to me and said, “I don’t know how you keep going, because I can’t take this job any more and I’m not even the one doing it.” She was responding to the listlessness, the lack of power and meaning that comes from just making money.

She helped me identify that I hadn’t made any connection between the money I was making and what I could do with it to build a life of success and significance for myself, let alone for anyone else. It was as if making money was an objective that lived on its own and had no way of influencing what went on in the rest of my life beyond buying shiny objects.

But I knew intuitively that there is a deep connection between my work, the fruit of that labor, and how I could use that work to create a life of success and significance. It was the turning point that led to starting The Crankset Group. I make a great living now, too, but with better reasons than just making dough. I get out of bed easier and with more purpose.

A successful business owner eventually figures this out. Making money is not an empowering vision; neither is being trapped as an employee of yourself something you can call a lifestyle. Either way, if you want to be successful you’re going to need to figure out how to build a business that makes money while you’re on vacation, while you’re also trying to make money.

The successful business owners make sure they make money today, but they make sure they are building their future at the same time. And building your future almost never makes you money today:

  1. deciding what your business looks like 3 years from now
  2. putting together a simple 2pg Strategic Plan to get there
  3. Process Mapping your business so somebody else can do it for you
  4. hiring the right people and training them, etc.

None of these things make you money today. All they do is help you build a business you can enjoy for decades. If you’re focused on making money, you won’t get there. If you’re focused on building a business that makes money while you’re on vacation, you’ve got a much more empowering vision.

Are you working to make money or to build a business you can use to create significance for yourself and the community around you?

Kids and Businesses should both grow up.

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Within a few weeks of the birth of our first child, Diane and I were already imagining and anticipating how it would be when he was all grown up, had graduated from college and was out on his own. We had these same conversations after the birth of all three kids.

From very early on we really looked forward to having adult children whom we could enjoy, and with whom we could build adult relationships. We’re now reaping the rewards of those early years of investment and simply couldn’t have better kids to be around.

We haven’t stopped being parents (we were never fans of being “your kid’s best friend”), and will continue to always play a role in giving unwanted advice and meddling where we shouldn’t. But we fully expected and looked forward to that point in our relationship when it would change from one of complete dependency to what we have now, a reciprocal relationship with our young adult children where they now give back to us on a regular basis with their lives.

Maybe Diane and I are weird. From the beginning we thought of our kids not just as kids, but also as adults in the making. We were very aware that at some point the great amount of personal time, emotion, and money invested in guiding our kids would eventually grow into a more of a two-way street. We hoped that as adults, we could all invest in each other, help each other find significance with our lives, and simply enjoy each other for decades.

Maybe that perspective is why I see business differently than other people. I think businesses should grow up, too. I don’t mean “it would be nice if it happened”. I mean we should all, every one of us, expect our businesses to grow up and start giving back to us and to the world around us.

We should assume that at some point our business would move from survival right through success to significance. Everyone would agree that we should intend for our children to grow up, leave home, and become grown-ups we could enjoy for decades, and yet when was the last time we had a similar conversation about our businesses? It’s normal for children to grow up, so why isn’t it normal for businesses to do the same thing? Frankly, we’re in charge of both of them at birth, and if you have had kids, you’ll know that you’ve got more control over the maturity of your business than the maturity of your kids.

And yet most businesses never grow up. We spend decades changing the diapers in our business and reporting to the vice principal on a regular basis to get it out of detention. Twenty years after we hung out our first sign we seem to be spending as much time, emotion, and money on our business as we did the day it was born. Why would we so eagerly anticipate the maturity of our children and never expect the same for our business? Shouldn’t we expect to be able to enjoy our mature business for decades as well?

I would enjoy your thoughs on this.

Is Your Business Actually Going Somewhere?

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We love to know exactly what the near-term process is we’re supposed to be doing, we’re almost obsessed with it, to the point that at least in business, we’re too often okay with knowing exactly which direction we’re going without any idea where it’s leading us. It’s a little Yogi Berra-like “I don’t know where I’m going but I’m having a great time getting there.” Or in many cases, we have an insatiable need to know the process in all its detail before we will make a single move. Either way we find the process to be more important than the goal.

Mike Shanahan, two time Super Bowl winning coach, would plan the first 15-20 plays of a football game before the game started and not deviate from that plan. What was happening in the world around those plays did not affect his commitment to the order those plays. And he won an awful lot of football games with that approach. It was brilliant football.

But business success just doesn’t work that way. In the early stages of building a business or a new product line, fully knowing in advance the process we use to build it with is never as important as we think. What’s really important is two things:

  1. Great clarity on where we are.
  2. Great clarity on where we want to end up.

If we know with certainty where we want to go, and have equal clarity on where we are right now, we will figure out how to get there. As long as we have the beginning and the end, that will allow us to create a few “next steps” to keep us going.

A stream seems to meander meaninglessly; quiet, rushing, muddy, clear, looping back where it came from – it doesn’t seem to have any clear purpose to it. We see it this way because we’re focused on the process, which does seem random. But the purpose of the stream couldn’t clearer – to do whatever it has to do in order to get to the ocean. And the stream, with all it’s apparent randomness, is 100% successful – every time.

Frodo the hobbit needed to get to Mordor to drop the ring in the volcano. He could see it a hundred miles in the distance with vast expanses of unknown land and obstacles in front of him. He had no idea how he was going to get there, but he knew exactly where he was and where Mordor was, and that allowed him to plan the next few steps. He got to Mordor not by having the entire process laid out first, but by simply knowing where he was and where he was going, and the next few steps.

My mother and father would drive from Ohio to Boston to visit my sister in college. Mom would always take 10-15 miles outside Boston and drive right to my sister’s downtown apartment with no maps. She tortured Dad with this for four years before she told him all she did was point the car at the Prudential building (tallest building at the time), and then turn left to get to my sister’s apartment one block away from it.

Do you know exactly where you’re going with your business? What does it look three years from now at maturity? What does your lifestyle look like then? What is the specific date you’ve picked to get there? Do you know with clarity where are you now – what are the gaps that need to be filled first?

Know where you are and where you’re going, and that will give you enough information to create the next few steps. If you have these three things, you can get to your Mordor. Focus on these and create (and recreate) a process as you go that serves you getting to your destination. Stop serving your process and build it to serve you. You’ll make more money in less time.

Why You Didn’t Learn to Run a Business in School

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“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” ~Albert Einstein

Centuries of academic emphasis on “teaching” (which fills our heads) instead of on learning (which fills our lives) has left us more proud of our ability to reason than of our ability to know. Knowing flows from learning, which goes to our heart and our life. Reason flows from teaching, which goes to our head.

We’re taught not to know, to not be certain of anything. Knowing is, in fact considered narrow-minded, arrogant, and dangerous. Reasoning is considered open-minded and allows us to fool ourselves into doing nothing for extended periods of time because we are “thinking about it”. Intuition is considered foolish, dangerous, reckless and knee-jerk, while rationality is considered wise, safe, sensible and measured. Apparently one of the greatest thinkers in modern times, Einstein disagrees. So do I, and I’m no Einstein.

The ancient Greeks had two words for knowledge; Gnosis – knowledge of the head, and Epignosis – knowledge of the heart/life. A friend of mine, Doug Root, had a conversation with someone recently who rewound the well worn tape, “Knowledge is power”, which really means “head knowledge is power”. Doug’s intuitive response was dead on, “That can’t be true, because if knowledge was power, librarians would rule the world. Knowledge isn’t power, execution is power.”

Teaching comes in a classroom from books and much too often, from people who have experienced very little of what they are filling other’s heads with. Teaching is about information that goes into my head.

Learning comes from doing, from the classroom of life, and from people who have walked that road before you. Learning is about knowledge that comes out through my life. Knowledge of the heart and life comes from intuitive and conative experience (see last week’s blog on Conation – The Most Important Business Word You’ve Never Heard), and forms the basis for wisdom. Knowledge of the head comes from cognative and rational teaching, and forms the basis for expertise.

Which would you rather have help you with your business, someone with expertise or someone with wisdom? I want the guy who has lived it, bled from their mistakes, rejoiced in their victories and has truly “learned”, not just been educated.

With all the emphasis on teaching, education, reason, rational thought, information and “open-mindedness”, I can tell you as someone who has walked the road and bled from my mistakes, if you want a successful business, you can’t afford to rely on the rational mind. You must DO things first (conate), learn things in the real world (make mistakes), draw conclusions from your experiences (have a bad plan you are totally committed to), and know for certain what works and where you are going – which is knowledge of the heart/life.

The really successful business owners all have a few things they know for certain and are fully committed to. They aren’t open-minded about these things at all, and that knowledge comes out in their successful businesses, not in a 3” binder gathering dust beside their “shelf-help” books.

What do you really “KNOW”; what have you DONE, EXPERIENCED, AND LEARNED from that are making you wise in the ways of business?

Stop trying to become an expert. Expertise will only confuse you, because there is no end to the head-knowledge you could gather. And in the business world, confusion is just a form of victimology; “As long as I’m confused or don’t have all the information, I’m not responsible to do anything.” The endless pursuit of information will not get you there.

You don’t need to be dead certain of a lot of things. That mindset can keep you from learning other things you’ll need to know. But you do need to be dead certain of a few things that no one can talk you out of, that drive your business forward with clarity, hope and risk.

Where is your business going? What does it look like when you get there? Intuitively, what do the next few steps look like? Are you completely and totally committed to a very few things that are driving you relentlessly forward? He who aims at nothing hits it every time. What are you shooting at?

“In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” Eric Hover

Learn a few things by doing them and living them out and use them to build a successful business. Honor the gift by moving forward intuitively and use the servant of rationality to learn from those experiences. You’ll make more money in less time.

Conation – The Most Important Business Word You’ve Never Heard

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I have somewhere I have to be.

The only motivation book I will recommend to others is Self-made in America, by John McCormack. John introduced me to an obscure English word that I now use as a cornerstone of my daily activity – conation.

I’ve truncated John’s working definition: Conation – the will to succeed that manifests itself in single-minded pursuit of a goal. – to:

Committed Movement in a Purposeful Direction

Social scientists have long talked about the Three Aspects of the Mind. Cognition (doing), Affection (feeling) and Activation (doing) are the three legs. Conation is when we take all three of these and figure out where we want to go, then start going there. Conation isn’t thinking, it isn’t feeling and it isn’t doing. It’s having crystal clarity on where you want to end up, and doing anything you have to in order to get there.

I find it fascinating that almost everyone I know has a good handle on what cognition, affection and activation are, but virtually no one I know is familiar with the word that puts them all together – conation. The most important of the four words, the one that creates action as well as results, is nearly unknown. Why?

Our educational system has promoted thinking and feeling almost to the exclusion of even activation – doing. Conation is most closely related to doing. If you don’t do, there is no conation.

We are all taught that if we just get enough information into our heads and feel good about it, that we’ll eventually do something about it. I believe the reason this valuable word hasn’t gotten much attention is because we’ve all bought into that idea handed down from the ancient Greeks on through that

We think our way to a new way of acting.

We see cognition – thinking – as the all important fundamental on which the other two swing. And of course we all like to feel stuff. So affection gets plenty of attention, too.

But we do not think our way to a new way of acting.

We act our way to a new way of thinking.

Even Einstein supported this when he said, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

Want to grow a Mature Business? Add “conate” to your daily verb count. The will to succeed that manifests itself in single-minded pursuit of a goal, or

Committed Movement in a Purpoesful Direction

Clarity – I know my goal. Hope – the will to succeed, that comes from knowing my goal. Risk – singleminded pursuit.

How do I know I’m conating? I’m already moving in a purposeful direction, with complete commitment to getting there.

Get out of my way, I have somewhere I need to be.