“Making Money is Killing Your Business” is named Business Book of the Year

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Making an impact.

NFIB, the leading small business association with 500,000 businesses, has named my book, Making Money is Killing Your Business, the number one business book of 2010.

The National Federation of Independent Businesses, or NFIB, rated it #1 because they thought it has the most potential for real impact in the lives of the readers.

Readers are indeed finding their lives and businesses transformed by the principles and practical in this book.

“Never in my life have I read a book so full of transformational content that actually got me creating a better business for myself.” – Julia Gentry, TheUltimateE.com

“Every small business owner will benefit from this easy yet profound read. I was ready to throw in the towel on our six-year-old real estate business, but after reading Chuck’s book we have increased our gross revenue by 27% and doubled our net profit.” – Sandy Corrigan, The Corrigan Group

Making Money is built on profoundly simple ideas that have been around forever and ignored as being too simple to work. I’ve learned the hard way that the profound things are always simple and will revolutionize any business willing to give up complexity for effectiveness.

Making Money helps business owners move from a focus on trying to make money to building a business that does it for them while they’re on vacation. It debunks the idea that small business is a 30 year grind, and introduces the concept of building a business in just three to five years that runs itself.

Making Money also replaces the traditional concept of retirement with using your business to quickly build your Ideal Lifestyle, moving you and your business from survival through success to significance.

The principles and tools in this book grew out of years of hacking it up in the trenches and learning what really works. It’s been a privilege to start and build a number of businesses before helping others do it. I don’t see myself as a business coach, advisor, consultant, etc., but as a guy who built a number of businesses and now helps others avoid the mistakes I’ve made.

My company, The Crankset Group has an off the grid approach that has been adopted by thousands of business owners. We’re growing internationally now with 3to5 Clubs (our committed communities for 24 business owners each) starting in throughout the states and in Europe, with an objective of having 3to5 Clubs in every major city in the world.

It’s also been a privilege to have articles and mentions in the last year in Harvard Business Review, Entrepreneur Magazine, CNNMoney.com, NYTimes.com, other magazines and small business blogs throughout the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand.

I firmly believe Making Money is Killing Your Business inspires a new way of thinking that will transform how you approach your business and your future. I’m getting regular feedback from people we’ve never met who confirm it.

I’d love to hear how it’s impacting your business.

Wouldn’t it be great if…

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Random Hope is a lousy business strategy.

Chapter Six in my next book, Bad Plans Carried Out Violently, is about Conation, the most important business word you’ve never heard. Its antonym is just as obscure and just as critical for you to know – velleity.

Our whole community of business owners use this phrase all the time:

You get what you intend, not what you hope for.

Nothing could describe the above better than two of the 1,000 most obscure words in the English language – conation and velleity (vel-lee-ity).

Conation is “Committed Movement in a Purposeful Direction”. The dictionary says its the desire plus the volition at the same time. I know I want to do it because I already am. I don’t need to desire it and get all motivated. I just do it because I want it.

Velleity is the desire with no intention of ever doing anything about it. It’s the exact opposite of conation. Wouldn’t it be nice if things worked out better next year? Wouldn’t it be nice if I only worked half as much as I do now? Would it be nice if… that’s velleity.

What’s the difference between a visionary and a dreamer? A visionary is already doing it (conation) and a dreamer is talking about how nice it would if… (velleity).

You get what you intend, not what you hope for.
CONATION < – – – – – – – – – > VELLEITY

Conate.

Business is Full of Beaver Dams

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Struggle is Good. Embrace The Dams.

Traditional business plan thinking tells you that if you plan well enough, you’ll avoid all the “problems”. But usually it’s those “problems” that lead you to the best plan.

I’m not saying don’t plan, but I am saying don’t do very much of it in a vacuum, and don’t expect that it will keep you from hitting beaver dams on your way down the stream.

In fact, it’s the beaver dams that are much more likely to lead you to the things that will produce time and money for you than any amount of planning you do.

The average business goes through five to 15 iterations of lame products or services before they land on the thing that puts them on cruise control. And the only good way to find that groove is to go through all those bad attempts, not by planning.

One of Hewlett Packard’s first products in the late 1930’s was an automated bowling lane aisle violator. That lame product led them to a harmonic tuner, and after that beaver dam they decided to do an automated toilet flusher. Traditional business planners would have applied all of their collective “wisdom” to kindly putting HP out of its misery. But it’s those dumb products, and an unwavering commitment to finding good ones, that led HP to make such great contributions to modern technology.

Bill Hewlett understood that it wasn’t about how good their plan was, but how committed they were to the bad plan they had. Business is full of beaver dams and it’s those beaver dams that will cause us to turn right or left and find the best way downhill. Don’t create a highly detailed plan and slavishly follow it – you might miss the beaver dams that could take you to the promised land.

Instead figure out what your end goal is as a company (Hewlett said that for them it was “to make a contribution to society”), then be fundamentally committed to getting there. And use the beaver dams of business to help you figure it out.

We’re taught to avoid struggle of any kind, which is a really bad idea. Struggle helps us run a four minute mile, write a symphony, build a road and learn our ABCs. People who expend all their energy planning to avoid struggle miss all the opportunities to grow personally or build a great business.

Don’t go looking for beaver dams but don’t avoid them when you run into them. Embrace them, learn from them, figure out whether you have to go left, right, over, under or through them and use them to get to your ocean.

Expend all your energy avoiding them and you’ll hate them because they stood in the way of your great plan. Learn from them and they’ll be fond memories in the rear view mirror that pushed you in the right direction.

Embrace the beaver dams. Struggle is good if you use it to get where you want to go. It’s your choice.

The Industrial Age is Dead – Time is the New Money

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The Industrial Age is Dead – Time is the New Money

As a business owner, you’re likely carrying a lot of baggage from the Industrial age (1800-ish to 1965-ish) that won’t fully go away for decades to come. He who makes the rules wins. You need to stop running your business on Industrial Age rules.

The Industrial Age brought us two incredibly bad ideas that led to many other bad ideas:

  1. Retirement
  2. Separation of work and play

A few weeks ago we said retirement is a bankrupt industrial age idea . Here we’re saying separation of work and play is a bad idea.

Time vs. Money
A young web designer friend of mine just one year out of college was given a huge pay raise by an ad agency, from $48,000 to $69,000. The company saw him as indispensable and didn’t want him going anywhere. A few months later, as winter approached, he quit. They wanted him there 8am-5pm and in the winter the only time to ride a bike was in the afternoon.

He would have worked in the evening, and that would have had no impact on the company, but they were stuck in the Industrial Age that valued money over time, and couldn’t see it. They were giving him the same tired “I’ll trade you money for your hours” deal that was dominant in the Industrial Age. He now runs his own very successful company and goes for a run or bike ride in the middle of the day any time he wants.

The Old (and Returning) Normal
For thousands of years people lived where they worked (over the storefront, on the farm) and played where they worked. Community was built around work and small markets. The kids ran and played, learned and worked there, the grandparents helped out – everyone was involved.

And there wasn’t much separation of work and play in the process. We look back and have a dreary and incorrect view of what life before “jobs” was like. What we miss is that above all else, we had community, something we’re only now beginning to recapture.

Humans as Extensions of Machines
It’s easy to see how this happened. During the Industrial Age, machines needed humans to become extensions of them in order to serve the machines properly. The machines needed people to be there all the time to run them, so we created humans in the image of machines. That “condition” was spread across all vocations, and “jobs” that separated work and play become the norm, even where there were no machines.

The Silent Generation – the worst label ever given
And it all worked in response to the needs of the machine, not the person. As the companies that owned the machines became huge, the pervasive need was to serve the corporation, and we were told to shut up, sit down, live invisibly, be loyal, don’t make waves and go out quietly. The generation which lived at the pinnacle of the Industrial Age, who are now in their late 70’s and early 80’s, have been labeled by marketers and sociologists as “The Silent Generation.” Can you think of a more condemning label? But it accurately reflects the damage the Industrial Age has done to us as a culture.

Time is The New Money
The Industrial Age taught us to value money above time. Giant Corporation, Inc. wanted you to focus on making money, not on having time to do anything with it. They needed all your time to run the machines. In the 21st Century we will understand that riches may equal money, but wealth equals freedom – the ability to choose what to do with my time. We will understand that money does not give us freedom, only time can do that.

Do you have time (wealth) or just money (riches)? Stop focusing on making money (see my book, Making Money Is Killing Your Business on the same subject), and intend to be wealthy instead. You’ll actually make more money and have a lot more fun in life, too.

Your Competition, Isn’t.

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Scarcity thinking will keep you poor.

I’ve sold millions in big contracts and small and never once thought about “competition.” It’s NEVER a factor. I don’t think I have any. I don’t believe you do, either. If you think you do, you’re probably not thinking straight.

Big business loves to teach us to do “SWOT” analyses” where the “T” is for “Threats”, those evil competitors who are going to swoop in and steal our clients any day. The only threats you should ever be worried about come from within your own company and your own head.

The problem is bad thinking and bad strategies on your part. Here’s some examples:

You either live in a world of abundance or a world of scarcity, and whichever one you choose affects everything you do.

This isn’t woo-woo crap. This is hard-core success thinking. If you live in a zero sum world then there’s only so much to go around, and you better get yours before the next guy gets his. If you live in a world of abundance you figure out how to help other people be successful so that you can be, too. I do a weekly lunch with 50-60 business owners and regularly have “competition” there who “steal” potential clients. I’m glad they find clients there. I do, too. Everyone says it’s the best weekly lunch environment they’ve ever been around, because it’s based on living in a world of abundance.

People who focus on trying to figure out what makes their competition successful don’t have enough good ideas of their own.

We don’t have time to figure out what others are doing – we’re too busy trying to breathe life into our own ideas. Focus on getting better, not on your competition.

Focus on your client’s needs, not your competition’s products.

I expend a lot of energy figuring out what my clients need (which isn’t necessarily what they always want right away). If you do that, you won’t have time to focus on what other providers are doing.

You’re a terrible guesser, anyway.

I’ve seen companies dissect the products, services or marketing of other companies, then mimic it, only to find out they were mimicking the worst part of what the others were doing. The mimic thought it was what made them successful, and so did they. They’re thanking the mimic for helping them see it clearly while the mimic goes out of business.

The two last words of a dying company are “Me, Too.”

The best way to ensure you are irrelevant is to mimic other people’s successes rather than creating your own. That strategy is fundamental to a world of scarcity, but worse yet it shows a complete lack of originality, passion, cause, mission, or joy in what you do. And it means you’re only in it for the money. And people who try to make money make a lot less than people who birth something the world can use.

If someone “beats” you, they simply have something the customer needs that you don’t.

Rejoice for the customer. If you also have things other customers will want, you’ll attract those relationships and the other guy won’t. When you try to be all things to all men you become nothing to anyone (a wandering generality vs. a meaningful specific – Ziz Ziegler).

If you have something meaningful to offer, you will get customers. If you don’t you won’t. Blaming “competitors” for “losing” contracts is nonsense. Just get better in a few things and go deeper, not wider. If you’re not losing a lot of opportunities, you’re too wide and likely are delivering on the edge of mediocrity. Not a great long term strategy.

The bottom line

Get the idea of competition out of your head and focus on being the best at whatever great idea you’ve birthed. And while you’re at it, try to figure out how to make the other guy successful, too. You’ll make a lot more money and have a lot more fun.

The Holiday Advantage

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Getting Ahead When the Rest are Resting

Assumption – December is a black hole for growing our businesses. We might as well just relax & make peace with it. Not really.

Reality: People are busy at night and weekends but their workday has slowed way down. They are waiting for you to call! It is head trash and/or anecdotal business lore to think that we can’t get great results in December. Last year I had three appointments a day between Christmas and New Year’s (this year I’m taking it off!).

Speed of Execution is the #1 indicator of success in small business. While the other rabbits are taking a December snooze, keep the tortoise moving – make money in December and set up your January to revenue-generating, not planning.

Here’s ways to build your business in December:

  1. Do a seminar on managing credit – one of our clients did it last year on Dec. 22 in the afternoon and had 100 people come – three days before Christmas!
  2. The forgiveness factor – Holiday hellos to stale contacts – great excuse to reconnect.
  3. Forgiveness factor newsletter – Teach your power partners/gate openers to reconnect using Holiday Hellos. Box of chocolates with their Name/logo to give to someone they need to reconnect with. Over-sized chocolate bar; funky desk calendar; holiday wrapping paper. Opens the door for them to call me, get coffee, re-establish the business relationship.
  4. Client appreciation events DURING THE DAY – Holiday goodies, gift-wrapping – ongoing if you have a retail location. A little live music is always a great addition. You can send out an e-mail invitation with all the details.
  5. Host a planning event Host a planning seminar for next year (get a futurist, CPA, etc.)
  6. Take on a charity as a company and get everyone involved. Donate a day as a company. PR consultant-newspapers. Write article, frame it, hang it on your wall, email to your list.
  7. Press Release – Holidays offer a great excuse. Newsworthy idea – great PR exposure. Called piggybacking (on the holiday theme) Here’s some ways:
    1. Make donations in honor of your customers. 10% of profits for one week to the American Cancer Society. Or donate employee time.
    2. Give something back Offer an award (for someone you admire, courageous kids, notable givers, create a scholarship) – dinner and a ceremony.
    3. TurkeyPardon.com – Pardon a turkey, put a camera on it and YouTube, then give it to a petting zoo after the holidays. You can borrow TurkeyPardon.com from me at no charge (1st one to ask).
    4. Holiday poll – Poll/survey and announce results. What business owners really want for the holidays, biggest complaint about holiday shopping? Or something from perspective of your business – get a PR person to shop it to the right audience. Email/send results.
  8. Hand delivered gift cards from a local coffee shop or restaurant. Get an appointment to go with them!
  9. Send a watch – “Happy New Year! It’s about TIME we did some business together.”
  10. Send a New Year’s card – don’t get lost in the Christmas card shuffle – and everyone celebrates New Years.
  11. Crystal office candy bowl Send refresher candy 3-4 times a year at other holidays. Their name engraved.
  12. Offer gift certificates ($25 billion last year – 15% of Holiday revenue!) Carpet cleaning – a great gift certificate! Make the offer for your slow time of year.
  13. Tie your product/service to the holidays – What do people need from me during the holidays? Do they need more balance, a time to relax, a plan for how they’re going to do something better in the coming year? Insert yourself!
  14. Organize a shopping trip for elderly clients PLUS THEIR FRIEND (CPAs, Fin. Planners; anyone with elderly customers).
  15. Bonus ☺ – February 18 – Chinese New Year celebration event Cultural experience– a slower time for activities. How many people would go with to an event where a Chinese person could teach us those traditions?
  16. For Yourself – focus on your Loyal Customers and Raving Fans – do something for them. Do some simple strategic planning for next year. Find out what your Big Why is. Establish a Business Maturity Date. Develop a simple system to streamline your operations. SET APPOINTMENTS FOR JANUARY 3rd RIGHT NOW (don’t’ wait until January – hit the ground running!). Or just relax and enjoy family.

Happy Holidays!

A Business Maturity Date Really Works

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We bought our tickets to NZ today.

Two years ago, in March of 2009, I wrote this blog http://chuckb.me/xF about how I started my business 3 1/2 years ago in March of 2007. Four years after we started we’ll have a Mature Business, which is what we intended to do.

In March of 2009, I wrote about March of 2007:

“2 years ago this week, March 6, 2007, I started my business…

But something is different. I have a Business Maturity Date…

In 3 years, 11 months, 2 weeks, and 22 ½ hrs. from when I started, I expect to be done building a business that makes money when I’m not around. I’ve got a lot of work to do and the clock is ticking relentlessly, the train is screeching, belching, and going in circles, and at the same time I’ve got little time left already to build this business to maturity.

My Business Maturity Date? Friday, February 18, 2011, at 10am – 1 year 11 months and two weeks from now. At 8:30am on that morning I will have a staff meeting and turn over the business to them to run, leaving the office in good hands, and be out of the office by 10am to pack my bags. At 6:10pm that evening my wife and I will be on a plane to Auckland, New Zealand, her dream vacation, for three weeks of celebration. We land in Auckland at 7:25am Sunday morning. The trip will cost $12,380.”

There were three problems with that blog post nearly two years ago. 1) The plane now leaves at 5:30pm, not 6:10, 2) it lands at 7:05am, not 7:25am, and 3) the trip will cost $12,840, not $12,380.

But other than that we’re on schedule. Our business will be making money while we’re on vacation for three and half weeks in New Zealand and it will be in great hands while we’re gone. In most ways we’re farther ahead than we thought we would be in 2009 when I wrote that blog post.

It shouldn’t be surprising because I’ve said for four years “You get what you intend, not what you hope for.” And for a number of years we’ve been intending to build a business that would make money while we’re on vacation.

We stopped intending to work hard and make money a long time ago because that always gave us exactly what we intended – hard work and SOME money.

Does it change you a little bit even reading this? Imagine what it’s done to me, and what it will do to you when you make the same commitment. It will change you forever.

What are you intending to do?

Bismarck had it all wrong – Retirement blows chunks.

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Shut up. Sit down. LIve invisibly. Go out quietly.

I’m working on my third book “Retirement is a Bankrupt Industrial Age Idea” and the research confirms everything I’m seeing in the world around us – the title of my book reflects reality. We’ve got to rethink the whole idea.

The Industrial Age, which is a very short 175 year snapshot of life in the last 10,000 years, left us with a lot of great toys and a luxurious lifestyle, but we’ve paid dearly as a society for it. The whole bankrupt idea of retirement is one of those casualties. You should get a Business Maturity Date instead.

Retirement – The Worst of the Industrial Age
We were sold a bill of goods by Bismarck who thought up the crazy notion of retirement in 1889 (he set it at 70 when the average age at death in Germany was about 49). The entire idea is only 121 years old – for 10,000 years before that we did just fine without it.

It is the icon of the worst of what came out of the Industrial Age – “Shut up, sit down, work hard, live invisibly, don’t talk back, make the company successful, be loyal, and go out without making waves. We’ll take the best 45 hours of your week and the best 45 years of your life, and if you survive all that, we’ll let you do something significant with your life when you’re done.”

The Next Generation Has Already Opted Out
The X,Y and Z generations know this is bankrupt. But they’re still hearing their mothers voice in their ears telling them that the top three priorities in life are safety, security, and stability – all three which are deadening to the idea that anything significant will happen in your life.

Great reward only comes from taking a risk – it doesn’t even have to be a great risk, just take one.

Big Business is Dead, Long Live Small/Local Business
Retirees who bought the lie know by experience it isn’t working. There is a better way. Fortunately the world is actually going back locally.

The era of big business is as dead now as the railroad was in 1903 – neither one of them knew it at the time, but it’s over. Long live the local business owner, which is exactly what they will do – without the bankrupt notion of retirement and all it represents hanging over them.

Read more on what Rieva Lesonsky says about the retirement myth here, then come back and talk with me.

Here’s some ways to solve it, too.

I believe you will enjoy life more, have more fun, relax more, and probably even take more vacations if you never retire. Love to hear if you think I’m nuts.

More – Business Is Like Surfing

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Don’t surf with sharks.

  • Take lessons, learn how. – Who’s your business advisor?
  • Never surf alone – Where’s your business community?
  • Don’t surf with sharks – Make your own business rules, don’t play by others’.
  • Stay out of unfamiliar waters – stick to your knitting.
  • Ride one wave at a time – do one thing good first.
  • Watch the weather – pay attention to your market.
  • Balance well – it could all come crashing down quickly.
  • Know where you’re going – plan the next few “steps”.
  • Don’t get distracted waving for the cameras – don’t relax too early.
  • Ride the small waves first – grow into the big ones. Grow into business.
  • Let somebody else make the board – outsource everything.
  • Get advice – Just because you’re wet doesn’t mean there is surf – where is your target market?
  • Know when to jump in – time kills deals.
  • Know when to stay on the beach – big opportunities aren’t always good.
  • Change technique before you decide to quit (it’s not surfing, it’s the way YOU are surfing).
  • Never think you’ve learned it all.
  • Don’t fight a rip tide. – Roll w/ the punches.
  • Know when to go home. – Don’t bet on the come.
  • Paddling is everything – Conation – committed movement in a purposeful direction. – commitment is more important than anything else
  • MOST IMPORTANT – Paddle harder AFTER you get momentum! It’s the only way to catch the wave so you can stop paddling altogether! (see last week’s Business is Like Surfing)

Business is like Surfing

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Don’t Float. Paddle Hard. Catch the Wave. Enjoy the Ride.

A long time ago I lived on the ocean and while describing the cycles of business to somebody last week it dawned on me it’s a lot like surfing –

The first thing you have to do is jump in and start struggling against crashing breakers and strong currents. You’re swimming against the tide, diving under the breakers, getting knocked around endlessly, holding your breath too often, and not seeming to make much progress. And you’re dog tired as a reward. Starting a business or any new initiative in an existing business gets you pretty much the same response, doesn’t it?

Once you get past the breakers you are still paddling like crazy against the tide and up the swells and rollers. Most of the time you can’t see much farther than the next wave coming at you and even though you’re paddling endlessly, there are almost no reference points for whether you’re making any progress. Business is the same – once you’re past the initial struggle, the long slog to success doesn’t seem to have any context – is this getting me anywhere? Oh, and you’re tired.

Once you’re finally out where the big ones are forming, you turn around, point yourself at the beach, and after all the paddling against the waves, now you have to paddle even harder WITH THE WAVES in order to catch one going in.

This is where most businesses miss the wave. We paddle so hard against the momentum that when we finally catch some good times and the current is with us, we relax, turn over on our backs and catch some rays. It’s an instinctive reaction and after all we deserve to goof off – we’ve worked really hard to get there. But you’ll never catch the wave that way.

The reason most business owners don’t ever get off the treadmill isn’t because they don’t have the opportunity, it’s because every time they catch some momentum they start floating. When we get momentum, we should be paddling harder then we’ve ever paddled before. When we do, we can catch the wave and at that point you don’t have to paddle anymore, just ride the wave, pose for the cameras and enjoy the ride.

If you’ve got some momentum, don’t float, paddle harder. There is nothing more rewarding or exciting than finally catching the wave. Do you want a business that has enough momentum to regularly make money while you’re on vacation? Wouldn’t it be great to have a business that prints both time and money for you?

The don’t call it “catching” the wave for nothing. It doesn’t just happen. You get out in front of it and paddle like crazy. We create our momentum, THEN we enjoy it when the business gets a life of its own.

Don’t float. Paddle Hard. Catch the wave. Enjoy the ride.