Posts

If You Can Plan a Vacation, You Can Plan a Business

/in /by

The Random Hope Strategy Doesn’t Work

What are the first three things you have to decide to plan vacation? They are the same three questions you should have asked when you started your business. You’re where you are because you didn’t.

  1. – “Where are we?” If you don’t know that, you can’t begin to plan your vacation. Where you are right now determines everything about how you get where you want to go. Almost no business owner has a “sane assessment” of where they truly are – their leadership abilities, their staff’s capabilities, their finances, their true target market, why their product or service is actually selling. We’re too busy surviving to ask those hard questions. Yet without knowing where you are, you’ll never get where you want to end up.
  1. – “Where do we want to end up?” If you know you’re in Cleveland, then you can ask where you want to go. If you say, “We will vacation at the beach in Florida”, you can begin to picture what it will take to get there and what you need to take with you.
  1. – “When do we want to be there?” Only after you answer this question can you know whether you have time to drive, or are taking a plane.

Once all three questions are answered, you can finally know how to pack.

What if you didn’t answer any of the three? What would you pack? When would you leave? And where would you go? Nobody would plan a vacation without answering these three questions first. Yet just about every business owner goes into business without answer any of them. They just starting “packing” their business with “stuff”, pull out of the driveway without even knowing where they are, and then drive their business around aimlessly because they’ve got no clue where it is supposed to lead them, or when it should arrive there.

The Random Hope Strategy
This is the Random Hope Strategy of business, and is the most common strategy business owners follow. But there is hope. You can ask these three questions any time, and in fact, you should re-ask them all the time.

Get a sane assessment of where you are, figure out where you want your business to take you (how much time and money should my business provide for me?), and by when. If you take the time to answer these three questions, and re-ask them regularly, you’ve got a great shot at success. If you don’t, expect the same result you would get by not asking them to plan a vacation.

Clarity. Hope. And Risk.
Stop everything you are doing, and get Clarity on these three questions now. Clarity brings Hope, and Hope allows us to take the right Risks.

Clarity. Hope. Risk. The answers are worth the questions.

How to Get Five and a Half Months Off Every Year

/in /by

After 15 years of not.

Two partners I’m working with are doing $40 million a year with 35 employees. For years they’ve had 2-4 weeks of distracted annual vacation, filled with Crackberry emails and calls, while the family was having fun. Now they’re both going to get five and a half months every year. How?

They haven’t changed who they are. They aren’t smarter, better educated or more enlightened than they were for the last 15 years. But somehow they’re going from a lousy lifestyle to a great lifestyle in just 15 months.

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

For years they intended two things and hoped for one. See if you can relate:
Their two intentions for 15 years:
1) To work really hard.
2) To make some money.

Their one big hope for 15 years:
1) …and we hope it all works out.

They got exactly what they intended – hard work and some money, but not what they hoped for – a life. The fatal assumption coming out of the Industrial Age is that if we just have money, we’ll somehow get a life, too. These guys are living proof that money doesn’t equate to a great life.

So how did they make such a life-changing transformation of their business in such a short period of time? Simple. They changed their intentions.

1) They no longer intended to work hard. Why in the world would you make that an intention? But we all do.

2) They intended to get a life, not just hoped for one, then started making all their decisions to accomplish that objective.

3) And they intend grow the business and make more money in less time.

Peter Arnell wrote a book called “Shift” where he described how he went from being a 406lb man to a 150lb man. The first step – “I decided to do it.” The strength of that initial decision determines the outcome. If you are tired enough of the treadmill, you will intend to get a life. The partners in this business made a clear and final decision that things were going to change, and change radically. If you’re not at the end of yourself yet, you won’t make this decision.

The second thing Peter did to go from 406lbs to 150lbs was even more important. He said “from that moment on [after making the clear and final decision], I saw myself as a 150lb man.” He even went out that week and fired some clients who he felt were the clients of a 406lb man. He wasn’t hoping, he had clear intention to get to 150lbs and saw himself already there. And every decision he made going forward was filtered through the question “Is this the decision of a 150lb man or a 406lb man?”

My clients have done the same thing. Once they decided to both take five and a half months a year off, they started making all their decisions in light of what they needed to do to begin to take five and a half months off per year, while still growing their revenue. Their intention changed from working really hard to working really effectively, distributing the workload, finding geniuses already in their business to take over things, and a long list of other actions designed to get them off the treadmill.

You get what you intend, not what you hope for. The biggest reason this is working for them is because they changed their intentions, and decided they could make more money in less time.

They got what they intended.

You Only Need One
By the way, they’re not special or unique, and neither are you. Every business owner can do this – every single one. As Henry Ford said, “If you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” Intention. There may be 1,000 ways to keep you from doing this and only five ways that it might work for you. How many do you need? Just one, and the sold-out intention to make it happen.

What are your primary intentions? Are you intending to work hard and make money, or are you intending to get a life as a result of owning a business?

What’s the one way off the treadmill that will work for you? Stop focusing on the 1,000 ways to keep you from doing it and focus on the one way off.

Intend to get a life, then make every decision intending to make more money in less time. You’ll get what you intend, not what you hope for.

Then go public here and declare your intentions. I look forward to hearing how you’re doing it.

Peacekeepers lose everything at once.

/in /by

Gradually. Then Suddenly.

Don’t be a peacekeeper. It won’t do anything for you or for those with whom you are keeping the peace. Successful people are not peacekeepers.

It seems like a good sentiment – “Can’t we all just get along?” Peacekeepers invest a lot of energy into just that, keeping the peace. The idea is that if you can keep the lid on, there is going to be fewer problems, less dissension and more time spent on being productive.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Peacekeepers fool themselves into thinking that if there is no present external evidence of a problem, there is no problem. Or if there IS a problem, just give it some time and space, and it will go away. Time heals all wounds, etc.

We take this approach all the time by not dealing with high maintenance clients, uncooperative or non-responsive employees whom we’ve allowed to become indispensable, or business partners who are going a direction we don’t want to go.

To deal with these we employ one of two strategies:
1) The Random Hope Strategy – I plan to deal with it, but I’m waiting for the right time. I’m hoping the right opportunity will arise that will bring it up for me.
2) Time Heals All Wounds Strategy – I’m afraid that dealing with it now will create more problems, and things usually just work themselves out with addressing them.

Both of these strategies usually result in something much different than we hoped.

Border Skirmishes vs. World War
The real problem with these strategies is that our unwillingness to have a border skirmish eventually turns into a world war. That little thing we didn’t want to address piles up on top of a dozen other small things and eventually the whole thing spins out of control. We could have managed it when it was small, but by time it’s world war the best we can do is try to ride it out and survive it.

We need to be peacemakers, not peacekeepers. There is a very big difference.

Peacekeepers vs. Peacemakers
Peacekeepers avoid small issues until they blow up into world wars. Peacemakers are willing to deal with little things as they arise and as a result, they avoid the long-term intransigent issues that cripple us and our businesses.

Peacekeepers function reactively – waiting until an issue blows up on its own to deal with it; usually when it’s too late. Peacemakers function proactively – confronting small issues without emotion and before they become world wars.

All Successful People are Peacemakers
My Irish friend, John Heenan says, “A person’s success is directly tied to the number of difficult conversations they are willing to have.”

In Ernest Hemingways book, “The Sun Also Rises”, two characters have a very revealing conversation.

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

Peacekeepers lose control gradually, then suddenly. Peacemakers do just the opposite, they create success gradually by attacking small problems when they arise, not “later”. Later never comes.

A few years ago I invested the time and money to fly across the U.S. simply to end a business relationship. I could have simply faded away, or just talked to the person on the phone. But this difficult conversation was necessary for full closure and to leave no room for the issue to grow into something bigger. I fought the border skirmish to ensure there would be no world war.

Too often we see only the last stage of success in someone’s life, and we think they were “suddenly” lucky. The fact is that their willingness to deal with things all along the road create the gradual accumulation of good decisions that pile up and become what appears to be sudden success.

We don’t fail suddenly or succeed suddenly. Both roads are worn very gradually by a commitment to either peacekeeping, which eventually leads to failure, or peacemaking, which eventually leads to success.

Don’t wait until it all happens to you. He who makes the rules wins. Take control of your business and your future and become a peacemakers.

Life is too short to be little. Play big – be a peacemaker.

Why Product Focused Owners End Up on the Treadmill.

/in /by

Last week we tried to give perspective to the idea that being the classic Systems Focused owners are great business builders but aren’t such great business starters. This week we want to see why Product Focused owners start the most businesses, but are the most likely to end up on the treadmill.

There are three basic business owner profiles:

  1. The Market Focused owner
  2. The Systems Focused owner
  3. The Product Focused owner

We’re all a mix of all three, but we all lean heavily on a primary profile for the way we manage and make decisions.

Business owners whose primary profile is Product Focused are passionate about the product or service they provide, but usually not about business itself. They are experts, professionals, craftspeople, and artisans; implementers, producers, doers, and finishers. They like being tactical, on the ground, getting things done, and they take great pride in the product or service they offer.

Passion for their “craft”; their chosen service or product, is what drives them to build their business. Product Focused owners have difficulty giving production over to employees (or even having employees), who, in the craftperson’s opinion, might lower the quality. And customers can get in the way because they want to modify the product or service – “I make a great chair, you ought to buy it.” (as is)

The Product Focused owner can’t see the need to waste time thinking about the future or the past. They act on what needs to be done today. They don’t expend much energy on “strategic” planning or action, which is also as a waste of time that could have gone into today’s production. This is a great asset in getting things done on a day-to-day basis, but doesn’t help set them up for future success.

Selling a Great Product by Random Hope is their default business strategy. The product or service itself is so great that customers will simply flock to my door. This product focus keeps them from taking on board good feedback from customers about how to make it more sellable – this feels like compromise to the Product Focused owner.

Their greatest assets are passion for their product/service, the ability to act quickly, creativity in developing and perfecting their product, finishing each task, and a great focus on tactical day-to-day production. Their challenges include focusing more on their product then their customer, doing too much themselves, seeing employees as lowering quality, “rugged individualism” (not getting input or working as a team), and implementing without thinking.

Most new businesses in the U.S. are started by business owners with a strong Product Focused primary profile. However, that same focus on production keeps them from improving the business or planning for the future, leading to stagnation of the business when it reaches the capacity of the Product Focused owner to produce from their own 168 hours per week.

Their biggest issue is actually ironic – They are so busy making money that they never think about building a business that will make money while they’re on vacation. Until they get tired of being the producer, they will be on the treadmill. The Product Focused owner is most likely to spend 30 years producing and end up with a business that can’t be sold because it never grew up.

If you’re a Product Focused owner, and most of us are, get serious about growing a business that will make money while you’re on vacation. Get the influence of the Market Focus in your business to keep you planning for the future, and the Systems Focus to help you build processes and systems that will help you grow a real business. Just because most small businesses are on the treadmill doesn’t mean they should be.

The only reason we don’t grow a mature business is real simple – we don’t intend to.

Be intentional – grow a business that makes money when you’re not around. You’ll enjoy life a lot more.