The power of a dream

Although I don't watch every episode I do occasionally enjoy watching Shark Tank.  The people who often have the greatest success on that program are people who have had a dream and have worked hard to see it happen.  They are on the show in hopes of getting the financial backing to take their dream to the next level.  Some have described enormous sacrifices they've made as they have pursued their dream.  These stories resonate with the sharks because they've been where these hopefuls are now.  Although I don't know the stories of all the sharks, the ones I do know are stories of sacrifice, hard work, and a refusal to quit.  Their dreams were bigger than the obstacles they were facing which allowed them to continue until they became quite successful and wealthy.  When someone comes on the program with a similar story that rings true, and has a dream that can succeed, that person usually walks away with one of the sharks investing in their dream.

When we think of powerful dreams the first person we often remember is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. because of his famous I Have a Dream Speech.  Even now one cannot hear that message without feeling the power of his dream, a dream which he was totally committed to seeing occur even at the cost of his life.  As a graduate of Liberty University with two degrees from that school I think often of Jerry Falwell's dream of starting a university for Christians that would compare with any other university in the world.  Starting very humbly in classrooms in his church that school nearly closed in the early 1990s due to finances.  His dream refused to allow Falwell to give up, and today over 92,000 students are enrolled in their residential and online programs.  It has 253 undergrad programs of study and 87 graduate programs.  Barbara Corcoran, one of the sharks I referred to above, was a straight D student in high school and college and had 20 jobs by the time she was 23 years old.  But, she had a dream and borrowed $1,000 from a boy friend which she turned into a real estate business which she later sold for $66 million.

What is a powerful dream?  John Maxwell defines a dream as "an inspiring picture of a future that energizes your mind, will, and emotions, empowering you to do everything you can to achieve it."  Each of the persons mentioned above had such a dream driving them to succeed.

If you own a small business you probably started it with a dream of doing something different with your life.  One problem with dreams is that sometimes in the course of everyday business the dream gets lost and forgotten.  When dreams are forgotten they lose their power to compel us to do our best every day and we begin to accept mediocrity.  Such mediocrity will never allow us to see our dreams fulfilled.

As we enter into a new year this is a great time to revisit your dreams.  What exactly do you want to accomplish with your life and your organization?  How are you going to make a difference in 2013?  Be very clear with your response, and you may even want to print it out and frame it so you can keep it in front of you every day as a reminder of why you are here.

One final thing should be said about dreams.  Not all of them are equal.  Many who go on Shark Tank leave disappointed because they could not getting backing from any of the sharks.  Some had not thought through their dreams to determine if there was actually a need for their product or service.  Some of the dreams are, frankly, rather foolish and not deserving of a person's efforts.  John Maxwell wrote a very helpful book to help a person evaluate his or her dreams that I would recommend as you examine your own dreams.  It's called Put Your Dream to the Test: 10 Questions to Help You See It and Seize It and can be ordered by clicking on the title.

This will be my last post until after Christmas so let me wish each of you a very Merry Christmas!

Don't treat everyone the same

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In every company there are some people who rise above everyone else in their work ethic, their sense of knowing what to do, their attitudes, and their ability to execute.  Even if you have an above average team in your company, there will be a few shining stars who helps raise that average even higher.  These people are critical to the long-term success of your business, and it will be a mistake to treat them the same as everyone else.  There are so many things a business owner cannot control, but one thing he or she can control is the development of the people in the company, and these star employees need to be developed.  Providing them with the right resources will only make them even more valuable to your business.

These are the people you want to invest a significant portion of your time in through coaching and training.  A company I worked for would pay the tuition for any employee to go to college as long as the course even remotely would benefit the company.  They defined that benefit very loosely, and they paid all my tuition while I earned my undergrad degree.  A small business might not be able to do that, but most could offer at least some financial assistance to their star employees.  Owners would want to seek nearby seminars that would help their best employees learn new skills.  Top employees should also be cross trained so they can learn the various jobs that exist in the company.

Top performers should be rewarded differently than other employees.  They should receive higher pay raises and larger bonuses.  Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, in their book Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, explains that "When the wrong people get rewarded, the whole organization loses.  Problems don't get fixed, nonperformers get ahead, and the good performers start looking for jobs at places where their contributions will be recognized."  You are under no obligation to pay everyone the same or to give all your employees the same bonus.  It's your money.  The only people who will get upset if they are not treated "equally" are the lower-performing team members.

Speaking of lower-performing team members, they need to be treated differently as well.  Every six months Barbara Corcoran of Shark Tank would fire the lowest performing 25% of her real estate sales people.  While that may be extreme, their lack of success does need to addressed quickly by the owner.  It may be that they are were not hired for a position best suited to their gifts, or they could need additional training, but the cause of their poor performance needs to be corrected or they do need to be replaced.  In today's business economy no small business can afford to have a group of people who are not producing.  They are not only a drain on your bottom line; they are also a drain on your top performers.

Treating all your team members the same is not an issue of fairness and only your less productive employees insist on everyone being treated "fairly."  In fact, it is unfair to your top performers to treat them the same as you treat others on your team.  Even worse, it is very de-motivating to do so and will soon cause them to either leave you for another employer or begin to function as the lower performers.  Either way, you lose.  Invest in your top performing employees and your business will reap the rewards for years to come.

Firing customers

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When I owned our heating and air conditioning business we had a customer who owned a number of rental properties.  He had used our business even before I took it over, but he often complained about our work and especially our prices.  Nearly every bill he received sent him into orbit.  One day he came into our office yelling at our office administrator about the bill he received and promising to never do business with us again.  When I went to the office later she was still upset.  I explained that I hated to lose a long time customer too, but we would probably be better off without the drama his business always created.

A few weeks later I answered the phone, and it was him calling about an apartment that needed the HVAC repaired.  I reminded him of his outburst the last time we did work for him and told him I was under the impression he was not going to use our company any more.  He gave a nervous chuckle and responded that since he had used us for so long there wasn't any sense in calling another company now.  I thanked him for that but then explained, "We will be glad to do business with you, but we will not tolerate any more outbursts like the last one.  We have always been fair with our pricing to you and always will.  If you have a question about a bill you receive from us, please call me about it, and as long as you are reasonable in the conversation then I will be glad to talk with you.  If you get out of control like I heard you did the last time I will hang up and we will never do another job for you.  Are these conditions acceptable?"  He said they were; we did the work he asked us to do, and he never again complained about any of our work or our bills.

Running a small business is tough enough without having to deal with unreasonable people.  I gave him a second chance only because he had been such a long-term customer.  There were others we simply refused to do any further work for after our first encounter with them.  Their expectations were unreasonable and their attitudes were toxic.  Trying to collect the money they owed us was often a challenge.  They were exactly the kind of customers we were glad to see our competitors have.

When someone is starting out they are afraid to turn away any business.  That is understandable, but it's not healthy for you or for your company.  Such clients will often cost you more time and money than what their business is worth, and they will stop doing business with you if they can save a nickle by patronizing your competitor.  If you find someone consistently complains about your product or service, wants you to lower your prices, and expects you to provide him or her with priority service over all your other clients you have a customer that you probably need to fire.   Chances are you'll see little difference in your company's bottom line at the end of the year, and you'll find that operating your business is a lot more enjoyable once the're gone.  For more about the dangers of being too loyal to the wrong customers be sure to read my e-book Mistakes: Avoiding the Wrong Decisions that Will Close Your Small Business.

Be professional

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Over the weekend I found I needed a repair done on my house.  This morning I called a company that does the kind of work I needed done.  The first phone number I called came out of last year's phone book, and I got a recording saying that number was no longer in service.  I got the newer phone book and found that the company had switched their number to a cell phone.  I called that number and a voice answered, "Yeah?"  It caught me off guard for a moment and then I asked, "Is this __________ company?"  "Yeah."  I almost hung up simply because of the way the person answered the phone, but the only other company that does the work I needed done is a hour's drive away and I didn't want to pay for that much windshield time.  The person I called is supposed to be at my house early tomorrow, but I can tell you that if he isn't here close to the time he said he would be I'll call someone else.  At this point, he will have to prove to me he is more professional than his telephone skills indicate.

I've used this company before, and I'm pretty sure he works out of his home.  I don't have a problem with that because so do I.  I also don't have a problem with him using a cell phone for his business phone.  Many small business owners do that.  But, that's no excuse for projecting such a poor professional image. 

One of the challenges people have when they work out of their home is remembering that they are operating a business and need to project a professional image to their potential clients.  My office is in a separate room of our house and this is the only thing that room is used for.  A dedicated phone line runs into that room with a different number than our home phone.  When the phone on my desk rings I know that it is almost always a business call, and I answer it much differently than when I answer our home phone.  I also don't have a television blasting away in the background or music playing loudly.  Even if I do have those on, it's a simple matter to mute them when the phone rings so that there are no distractions in the background.  I want to project the same image to people who call my home office that they would receive if I worked out of a high rise office complex.

Here are some other things to consider when working out of a home office.  Don't allow children to answer your business phone.   Isolate your business phone from household appliances.  It's nice to be able to wash a load of clothes while I'm working at my desk, but I wouldn't want a caller to hear my washer going through the spin cycle while we're discussing him hiring my services. 

I've always found it best to meet clients away from my house.  Occasionally, I have one who offers to come to my office to talk, but I really don't want people coming to my house.  I've found that if I offer to meet them somewhere for lunch, and I'm buying, they're usually happy to do that.  It keeps things on a more professional level and keeps our home from being a meeting place.

One other thing I started doing about a year ago was I got a post office box and began switching my business mail address to that box number.  I don't consider that a big thing, but I wanted to separate my personal mail from my business mail.  Most of the contacts I have is through e-mail so I have found that if I stop by the post office once a week to check my box I can stay on top of my business mail.

There are many good reasons for working out of your home, and for many of us it makes a lot of sense to do so, but we must remember that it is important that we always project a professional image in everything we do.  When a new client first calls us it is the one chance we have to make a good first impression so be professional.

What are you doing to intentionally grow?

I became a big John Maxwell fan when I first read his book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You.  I had never read anything that impacted my leadership as much as that book.  Since then I have bought most of Maxwell's books, but none of them had the same impact on me as that first book until I read his latest, The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth: Live Them and Reach Your Potential.  Unless I am very surprised it will be the important book I will have read this year.

In my earlier years I was like many people who assume that we grow as we age.  That simply isn't true.  Getting older just happens.  If you stay on this side of the grass long enough you will get older.  However, growth requires intentionality.  We have to take certain steps throughout our lives if we want to grow as persons and as leaders.  We need to take those steps every single day of our lives if we want that growth to be persistant.  Maxwell would take that even further and say these are not merely steps we need to take; they are laws we must follow if we want to reach our potential.

For me, this book did two things.  It opened my eyes to some things I had not really considered before when thinking about growth.  For instance, he writes about the law of the rubber band.  A rubber band is only useful when it is stretched.  I have a pile of rubber bands in one desk drawer that are completely useless unless they are stretched over something I want to keep together.  As I read that chapter I realized that I am very similar to those rubber bands.  I am at my best when I am stretched, and the primary times that I have seen growth occur in my life is when I've been stretched by situations and challenges.  If I want growth to occur in my life I must put myself in situations where I will be stretched.

The second thing this book did was remind me of things I already knew but sometimes forget to practice.  The law of the mirror is one of those things.  The way we see ourselves has a huge impact on what we are able to accomplish and on our ability to grow.  Many years ago when I coached Little League baseball I used to tell my team to never let a mistake hurt you twice.  We would often see a player make an error on the field and in the next inning strike out because he was still thinking of that error.  Sadly, there are many times in my life when I forgot to take my own advice.  I would preach a poor sermon and beat myself up throughout the next week because of it.  I would make a poor business decision that cost my business needed profits and feel like a complete failure.  In this chapter Maxwell provides ten steps that will improve our self-image.  I know everyone of them, but I found it so helpful to be reminded of them.  Growth will occur as we implement these steps in our lives.

I just finished this book a couple of weeks ago and plan to read it at least once more before the year is out.  I can't give a book a higher recommendation than that.  I may be approaching retirement age, but that doesn't mean I want to stop growing as a person and as a leader.  I hope you feel the same way.  Too many people are counting on you for you to stop growing now.

The cost of the election

Many millions of dollars were spent on the recent election by congressional and presidential candidates, but the real cost of the election may yet to be seen.  Almost immediately after the results were in some business owners were announcing lay-offs and reduced hours for their employees.  One mine owner announced over 150 employees would lose their jobs, and it is reported that 54 people have already been notified that they were being laid off due to the concerns of the President's view of the coal industry.  The CEO of Papa John reported this week that most franchise owners would reduce the hours of their employees as a result of Obamacare.  Only those working 30 or more hours a week are required to be covered by employer provided insurance.  The corporation that owns Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurants announced similar reduced hours for their employees, and the owner of Applebee's is reported to have said their restaurants to cease hiring new employees.  Large corporations such as these make the headlines, but one has to believe that many small business owners are having similar thoughts.  Of course, the public is outraged and boycotts of these businesses are already being considered.

American people have become somewhat schizophrenic in recent years.  We love millionaires who play sports and will buy clothing with their names plastered all over them.  We love millionaires who star in movies and on television.  We love millionaires who sing.  We love millionaires who go to Washington and pass laws they don't understand that impact the entire nation.  But, we hate the millionaires who provide us with jobs.  These are the greedy ones that must be destroyed so "the playing field will be level for all people."  I simply don't understand this line of thinking.  Not once in my entire life has a poor person ever gave me a job that provided for my family.  I've never even had a person on the same economic level as me give me a job.  Crush the ability of a business to make a profit and the unemployment rate will go up even higher than it is already. 

Businesses, both large and small, must make a profit to survive and be able to provide jobs that benefit everyone.  The small business I owned went enough years without making a profit that it finally had to be closed putting all my employees out of a job.  For anyone in Congress and anyone else who never studied Economics 101, a business cannot survive if it is not allowed to make a profit!  Of course, we can complain that the salaries of those who operate such companies are out of control, but the ones who make that complaint have probably never owned a business.  Founders, owners, and CEOs of these businesses are the ones taking the risk.  Employees may lose their jobs when a business goes under, but the owner of a small business is often at risk of losing his or her home, life savings, and retirement accounts.  Why take that risk to earn the same salary you could earn working for someone else without any risk?

Only people who have owned a business can understand how mandated health care will affect the company's ability to earn a profit.  Others like some in Congress who said they would read the bill after it was passed don't have a clue how it will affect small businesses.  After all, this is the same kind of thinking that convinced Congress they knew how much water it took to flush a toilet!  They got that wrong, and many business owners believe they got this wrong as well.

People will argue that businesses will just pass on the cost of the insurance to their customers, but here is where that American schizophrenia kicks in again.  The public loves Papa John's $10.00 pizza.  What happens when the costs of that pizza goes up to reflect the real cost of mandated health care coverage?  People will be outraged at the "greed" of the company.  They will stop buying the pizza resulting in stores closing and more employees out of work.  Take that across the board and include more than just restaurants.  Begin to think of supermarkets, department stores, service providers, wholesalers, and other companies all facing the same challenge of trying to earn a profit with increased government interference.  How many costs can be passed on to the American consumer before the entire economy collapses?

Health care insurance is expensive, and we should not expect to see it become less expensive just because it is mandated for everyone to have it.  I've yet to see any government mandated program result in lower costs.  Small business owners are going to have to be very careful that their health care costs do not jeopardize their ability to remain profitable.

The need for health care reform is real.  Too many people have been without health care and have suffered as a result.  Could there have been a better solution than Obamacare?  We'll probably never know now since President Obama's re-election ensures that it will move forward.  My fear is that in the next five to ten years that the changes under Obamacare are enacted we will find that this election cost America much  more than just the money spent by the candidates.

Making things work

The USS Enterprise recently arrived at Norfolk, Virginia after making its final deployment.  The first nuclear powered aircraft carrier, it is the oldest active duty ship in the Navy.  It's reactors are being shut down now and it will soon be scrapped out.  It hardly seems a fitting end to a ship with such a glorious history, but after removing the reactors it would be cost-prohibitive to try to repair it and turn it into a museum as some wanted.  The reason this matters to me is that I served on board the ship from 1968-1971 making two tours to the Tonkin Gulf off Vietnam.  I have a lot of fond memories of my days aboard the ship.

A primary reason for its decommissioning is the lack of parts available for repair.  It is the last of its class, and many of the parts needed to keep everything running are not produced anymore.  It is very expensive to buy one-off parts even with a military budget.  Some things simply aren't available at any price and must be hand-made by people on the ship.  When you are running flight operations in support of troops on the ground you can't stop what you're doing waiting for someone to ship you a part they first have to make from scratch.  You find ways to get the broken part fixed to continue the operation.  Even when I was on the ship there were times when things had to be fixed on the spot to keep the operation running.  You just had to learn to improvise.

What a great lesson for a small business owner.  You can read all the textbooks on business management you want, but eventually you will encounter something that isn't covered in the books.  You can attend every workshop available, but one day a customer will present you with a challenge or a problem that wasn't covered in any of them.  A natural disaster may hit your business forcing you to scramble to keep your business open and serve your customers during an exceptionally difficult time in their lives.  Small business success is often determined by how well you can improvise and make things work when it seems everything doesn't want to.

During normal times businesses need systems to make things happen.  Many small businesses struggle because they are always dealing with the same issues and having to make the same decisions time after time because they never developed the proper systems to address those issues.  Systems and policy manuals are needed to maintain consistent quality in the normal course of business.  Without such systems your business will be much more difficult to manage than it needs to be.  But, during times with unusual challenges your systems may not be adequate to solve those challenges.  it is here the small business needs to be flexible and move outside its normal way of doing things.

This gives you an incredible opportunity to surpass your larger competitors.  These large box companies are managed by people who often do not have the authority to bypass company policies that were set by people in distant places.  "I'm sorry, but that's company policy" is the only answer they know to give as if that is supposed to satisfy a disgruntled customer.  I often compare my experience on the Enterprise to the years I owned a bass boat.  It took miles to turn that ship around; it only took me a few yards to turn my fishing boat 360 degrees.  Small businesses can make corrections much faster than their larger competitors, and that gives you an advantage they will never have over you.

Look for ways to satisfy your customers.  Find new ways to resolve problems and challenges.  Challenge everyone in your organization to think creatively every day.  Regardless of the challenges, find ways to make it work.  You can read more in my recent e-book Mistakes: Avoiding the Wrong Decisions that Will Close Your Small Business.