Show people you care

One of my secret enjoyments is watching Bar Rescue on television.  Since the script seems to run about the same on every show I don't know how much of it is real and how much of it is staged for television, but it is still interesting to watch.  A bar is in financial trouble, the rescuer is called in who find all kinds of unbelievable problems from dead rats in the kitchen to employees who steal.  There is usually a confrontation between the bar owner and the rescuer that ends up with them shouting at each other.  There is another confrontation between the rescuer and the staff.  Experts are brought in to provide training, the bar gets a make-over, and suddenly everyone is smiling and the bar is making tons of money.  One of the things the rescuer says in nearly every episode is that until the owner cares about the business no one else will, and at least that part of the show is absolutely true.

Most small business owners begin their companies with great enthusiasm and pride, but over time the mundane demands of business, the endless details that must be addressed, the times of disappointing sales, employees that don't work out, and the challenges of trying to run a profitable business can suck the enthusiasm out of nearly everyone.  Little things begin to be ignored.  The floor isn't swept one evening which soon becomes a week.  Past due collections are ignored because too many other things are demanding the owner's time.  Phone calls are not returned promptly.  The owner starts coming in later in the morning or leaving in the middle afternoon to play golf without having resolved a potentially major issue.  Team members are watching and soon determine that the owner really doesn't care any more, and if he or she doesn't care why should they?

It's not long before they begin slacking off, violating company policies, and providing less than quality service to your customers.  You can reprimand them all you want, but this problem is really on you, the owner.  You created a climate in your business that convinced your employees you no longer cared about the company.  They were just following your example.

Small business owners must consistently demonstrate to their employees and customers how much they care about their business.  This is done by addressing even the smallest details in a timely fashion.  It's done by arriving early and leaving after everyone else does.  You show how much you care by demanding that every thing that is done in your company is done with excellence, and that excellence begins with you.  You take pride in the way you dress, the way you go about your job, and the way you relate to both your customers and employees.  You exhibit respect to everyone you meet and you treat others as you would want to be treated.  When you consistently do these things your team members will know how much you care about your company, and they will care too.

I'm afraid this is a lesson I learned the hard way.  You can read more about my own failure to show my employees how much I cared about our company in my newest  book Mistakes which is only available on NOOK.

The personal investment

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Today I had lunch at a new business in our community that recently opened its doors.  It is an art gallery with a lunch area in the back that is owned by some relatives of mine.  I had not been there yet and decided today was a good day to try out their menu.  The food was excellent and the art work was exceptionally nice.  My cousin came from the upstairs where he had been painting, saw me, and took me on a tour of the place.  Upstairs they have a guest room that is really nice for our historic community and a large banquet area.  He is finishing another section upstairs that will be their office.  We went outside where he showed me the old windows high up on the front of the large building that had been covered up years ago with boards.  He said he had spent three days scraping and cleaning those windows so he could paint them and restore the building to more of its original look.  Since buying the building late last year he has spent every waking moment cleaning, painting, and preparing it for its opening.  His pride was evident in his voice and in his eyes, and he should be proud.  The building, the food, and everything about their business was excellent.

This personal investment is what it takes to create a successful small business.  You cannot start a business and manage it half-hearted.  You have to go all-in or stay home.  We didn't talk about their financial investments, but I would assume they have a fairly large financial investment in this business, but he has even more of a personal investment in it.  He and his family have poured everything they have into making this business successful, and I believe it will succeed because of that personal commitment.

Compare that to what I see when I go into some smaller businesses today.  I walked into one shop recently and the person working there was sitting behind the counter talking on her cell phone. She never acknowledged by presence.  While I was there another customer came up to pay for her purchases and the employee rang her up while still talking on her phone.  About that time another customer came up with some items to purchase, so the employee finally said to the person on the phone, "Well, I HAVE to go, I have a customer."  (Emphasis mine)  I don't know what the other customer thought, but my impression was this employee was saying to her friend that she HAD to hang up because she HAD to wait on some customers.  I thought to myself that I didn't want to interfere with her social life so I wouldn't buy anything, and I left. 

There was no owner in sight.  I understand the owner cannot be present every moment, but he or she obviously had not taught this employee anything about customer service.  This was a business that needs the owner there every moment at least until he or she trains the employees about proper customer service.  Unless this owner gets more involved in the business it won't be open for long.  People have too many options and will take their business elsewhere where it will be better appreciated.

How committed to your business are you?  What are you willing to do to make it successful?  If you have a 9-5 commitment to it you may as well close up shop and find a job because that's all this is to you.  At least with a job you won't have the headaches that go along with ownership.  The successful businesses are the ones where the owner is all-in and completely committed to seeing it succeed.  I hope that describes you.

Staffing a start-up

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A common mistake some entrepreneurs make when they start a new company is spending money on things they don't need.  I recently heard a caller to a radio program explain that one of the reasons he was having financial problems was he had bought a new pick-up truck for the carpenter business he was starting.  He had made virtually no money in this new enterprise, and he spent $30,000 for a new pick-up truck.  The radio host told him that was a huge mistake, and the business owner responded that he had to have a truck to do his construction business.  The radio host agreed that he needed a truck, but he didn't need a $30,000 truck he had to finance before he ever got his business off the ground.

New businesses make the same mistake when they purchase or rent office space or equipment.  They overspend on these items before they have any cash coming in thinking they have to have all the latest technologies and a prestigious office.  Actually, unless you are a retail store you may never need to meet a client in your office.  When I think of many of the service people with whom I do business I realize I've never been in their office or even know where that office is located.  You can work out of your garage or your basement when you start out.  For only a few dollars a month you can get a post office box for your business mail and add a second business line that comes into your home which will transfer your calls to your cell phone.  Most people will assume you are working in your office when they call. 

Another unnecessary expense some start-ups encounter involves their staff.  It is doubtful that most new start-ups need to hire a full-time person when the business first begins.  Many entrepreneurs do not realize all the expenses such a hire creates.  This person will need supplies, equipment, and training.  There will be additional taxes due with such a person now on the payroll that will eat into those early sales.  There are better options that hiring a full-time person right off the bat.

1. Get a virtual assistant.  There are now numerous companies providing virtual assistants who will handle the administrative tasks you need to avoid so you can be more productive with your time.  These will cost your new business much less than hiring someone, and if they don't work out you simply end your agreement.  You don't have to worry about unemployment compensation or any of the other issues that goes along with terminating an employee.  There is one thing to make sure of before you get a virtual assistant.  Have a detailed list of what you need this person to do and ensure that is clearly communicated before signing any type of agreement.
2. Get a part-time person.  Maybe you have enough administrative work for someone to do for 10-20 hours a week and you're not comfortable with a virtual assistant.  A part-time person might be the best option for you.  I know a person who did some work for a local professional in her home during the evenings on a part time basis.  The work was such that it could be done at her convenience which made it appealing to her.  
3. Hire a temp.  The benefit of having a temporary employee is you only have to worry about paying a salary to the temp's agency.  They handle all the taxes for the person.  You write out one check each week for the person's services, and you don't have to worry about it after that.  A second benefit is that you can hire the person for a particular project, and when that is completed his or her employment with you is completed as well.
4. Use interns.  If you are located near a college or university there may be some students willing to do intern work for the experience and so they can add it to their resumes.   Interns usually need a lot of supervision but they also bring a lot of energy to the position.  In some cases, you may find a great future team member at little or no financial cost to you.

Starting a new business requires a lot of time, and it may be appealing to hire someone to help.  I agree that it does take a lot of time, but chances are you still have more time than money.  You can't afford to pay someone to answer the phone for you.  Answer your own phone.  Order your own supplies.  Open and close your business yourself.  If your idea for a business is a good one the day will soon come when you will need to add team members.  At that point begin to add part time people or follow the suggestions listed above.  If that is successful it won't be long before you will be adding people, but at that point you should be able financially to do add people who will contribute even more to your business' bottom line.

Growing as a leader

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People sometimes ask if leaders are born or made.  The right answer is yes.  Obviously, leaders are born or they wouldn't be here, and people have the ability to become leaders.  I do believe that some people are born with innate abilities that help them develop into leaders, but I also believe that anyone can learn to become a leader.  I further believe that anyone can learn to become a better leader, and more importantly, have an obligation to their company and to themselves to do so.

During my lifetime I have worked with for many different people.  In the military I served under some very good leaders and a few who somehow managed to advance in rank but who had zero leadership abilities.  In my 30 years working in a factory I worked for some excellent supervisors and some very poor ones.  My biggest disappointment was one person for whom I worked for two years.  For a number of years he had taught quality control classes for the company, and I had attended several of them.  I was excited when I heard he was transferring to our department and would be my supervisor.  Unfortunately, I soon found out he knew a lot of theory and little about real life manufacturing challenges.  More than once I had to ignore his advice to correct a quality problem. 

Each of these share something in common.  The best leaders I worked for were continually growing in their ability to lead.  The worst leaders never did anything intentional to grow as leaders.  They were content to be managers, like the boss I described above, and had no interest in being leaders.

In my book Mistakes (see the right hand column for ordering information) I admit my failures as a leader and how they led to the eventual closure of our company.  I was a fairly successful leader in ministry, but I was much less successful as a business owner.  Although I learned a lot about leading a business it turned out to be too late to save our company.  My purpose for writing Mistakes was to give the readers the benefit of my learning so they could apply that to their own situations.

You may be someone who owns a small business or you may be thinking about starting a business.  For many, that is the American dream, and it is a great dream.  Your company will bring employment to people, offer a quality product or service that people want, and enable you and your family to enjoy a better lifestyle IF you are willing to commit to growing in your leadership abilities.  I am convinced managers cannot grow a successful small business; it takes leaders.  The good news is that no matter where you are in your leadership abilities you can improve.  You can grow as a leader, and there are many resources out there to help you in that process.  One good one is an older book by John Maxwell called Developing the Leader Within You.  I really cannot overemphasize how important this book can be to someone who wants to grow as a leader.  My copy has been read several times and is filled with highlighted sections that I have reviewed even more times.  If you haven't read this book and want to grow as a leader you need to get it this week and begin to read it.

Going from here to there

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In both my ministry and my business writings I often emphasize the importance of vision.  Without a vision of a preferred future for your business or your life you are merely drifting along hoping that somehow something good will happen.  In workshops I use the illustration of my experiences when I owned a bass boat.  As long as my big engine or trolling motor was running I never had a problem.  The only problems I had in the boat is when I would be drifting along with the current because it seemed that I would always drift into a problem.  More than once my boat got stuck in the fork of a submerged tree when I was drifting while fishing a river bank.  With the engines running I was going somewhere on purpose.  I had a direction in mind, and I was moving in that direction.  The same is true in life and business.  As long as you are moving forward with purpose and with a destination in mind you will encounter fewer problems than you will when you are content to drift.

Notice how I defined vision in the above paragraph.  It is a preferred future for your business or life.  It is a place that you can see in your mind's eye that will be a better place than where you are right now.  The question is do you have such a vision for your life or your business, and the follow-up question is what are you doing intentionally to help you get there?

You begin with a vision of a preferred future, but then you have to connect that to a plan that includes short-terms moves that will take you in that direction.  Without such moves you will never achieve that vision.  You have to know where you are currently and where you want to be in the future, and then you can begin to develop the actions that will help you achieve that.  This is all that strategic planning is.  It is a way to help you get from where you are to where you want to be.

The problem with such strategic planning is that it often gets cloudy the further out you go.  You may know where you are now.  You may know where you would like to be.  You may even have some immediate short-term steps in mind to take.  The problem is we are not sure what happens next, and this unknown factor is often what keeps people from even beginning the journey.

Chip and Dan Heath has addressed this so well in their book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.  Their challenge is "When you're at the beginning, don't obsess about the middle, because the middle is going to look different once you get there.  Just look for a strong beginning and a strong ending and get moving."  I cannot tell you how important this statement is.  It is impossible to plan out all the steps on the way to a vision because you can't possibly know all those steps.  You've never travelled that way before.  The key is to start moving.  Identify the vision and the initial steps you need to take and begin the journey.  Along the way you will identify next steps and take those until one day you'll realize that you achieved the vision you had at the beginning.

One way to help take this journey is with the help of a coach who can guide you along the way.  A coach can offer encourgement and challenge you with questions that will help you identify the steps along the way you need to take.  I've been fortunate to have been able to coach a number of people who were on various journeys in their lives, and if you are interested in having me coach you I invite you to respond to this post with your contact information so we can discuss it.  In the meantime I would certainly recommend the Heaths' book to any small business owner and entrepreneur.  It is filled with practical, helpful information you'll use on your own journey towards your vision for a better life and a more effective business.

The danger of growing too quickly

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It seems almost impossible to even think that a small business could grow too quickly.  Isn't growth one of the indicators of a successful business?  Doesn't growth mean that sales and profits are increasing, and what could be wrong with that?  When entrepreneurs begin their business are they not looking forward to the time when that business is growing?  Actually, there isn't anything wrong with growth as long as it can be properly managed.

Growth becomes a problem when the owners/managers find out they can no longer manage the business.  The business has grown faster than they have when that happens.  A growing business demands more of its owners/managers, and sometimes they are not capable of meeting those demands. 

Growth is also a problem when the business does not have the systems in place to manage the growth.  A few years ago a university set a limit for new students for the first time in its history.  They had grown so fast their personnel and computer systems could not keep up.  Their student advisers were overwhelmed by the demands of incoming students.  Much of administration was in shambles so the university president announced a limit on the number of new students the school would accept.  He also announced major changes in personnel, new computer systems, improved dorms and eating facilities, and a general upgrade in much of the admin department.

In the company I owned we had grown the business to the point that we needed to add new team members to install the equipment we were selling.  I hired new people, bought them a vehicle to use, and waited for a big increase in profits.  It never happened.  We were not structured as a company for that rapid of growth.  There were breakdowns in communication.  People were not properly supervised.  In short, we were not prepared to grow, or a more appropriate way of looking at it, I was not prepared for the changes that would be expected of me as our company grew.  My leadership was the lid that held our business captive and eventually forced us to return to our previous levels of sales and manpower.

Sustained growth should be the goal of every small business owner.  You want your business to grow, but that growth must come slowly and include everyone involved in your company.  For this to happen the owners must be committed to on-going growth in their own lives.  You must be continually growing so when the time comes for your company to take it up a notch you'll already be prepared.

Sustained growth also depends upon the systems in place in your company.  Do you have the computer hardware and software that will enable your business to grow?  Do your team members have the training they need to handle new expectations as the business grows?  Do you have the right policies and procedures in place for sustained growth?  These are important questions that must be answered before your company enters into any type of growth.

Failure is an event

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Several years ago I heard Zig Ziglar say at a conference, "Failure is an event, not a person.  Yesterday ended last night and today is a brand new day."  I have used that truth as I've coached people who felt like they were failures because something they tried didn't work out very well.  I've used it in some of my sermons as I was trying to instill hope in people who may have felt they had made too many wrong choices in their lives.  I've also had opportunities to remind myself of this truth when I've been tempted to get down on myself.

Anyone who attempts to do something will fail at times.  We may think we've thought through every possible situation, but suddently something happens that we never anticipated and we find ourselves battling yet another set back.  Sometimes the failure is rather small and except for the embarrassment there is little impact.  Other times the failure comes with a lot of zeros at the end, and some of these can be very harmful to the future success of our business.  But, the road to success is full of potholes marked failure.  Many successful entrepreneurs tell us that until we have experienced enough failures we will never be successful.

Most successful people I know will tell you the secret of their success is experience, and the way to gain experience is to fail and fail often.  The key here though is to learn something from the failure.  I once read a chapter in a book titled "Never waste a good crisis."  The idea behind that chapter was that if we were going to go through a crisis anyway we should learn all we could from it.  I thought it was good advice when I read it and still do.  The best book I've ever read on failure comes from John Maxwell titled Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones for Success.  Maxwell also promotes a positive view of failure and challenges his readers to use every failure as one more step to achieving the success they want.

However, to be able to do that requires that we learn from our mistakes.  It's OK to make mistakes; it's not OK to keep making the same mistakes.  When we find we have failed at some endeavor we need to take time to analyze why we failed and determine what we could have done differently that would have led to a better outcome.  Only when we do that will we be able to apply that learning to the next similar situation that comes our way.

You may want to have a coach help you with this analysis.  Sometimes it's hard for us to be objective about our own mistakes.  We may either go too easy on ourselves or too hard.  Having an outside person who can take an objective approach to our failures can be a valuable asset to our personal growth.  I've been privileged to serve as a coach for a number of people and currently have a few open slots for two or three more.  If you believe having a coach could help you work through some of the issues you are facing feel free to contact me.  Just respond to this post with your email address, and I'll be glad to get back to you.