Do You Sometimes Feel Like A Juggler?

Last week we discussed how to climb your business Everest; the idea being that if you were to climb 12.12 metres per day you could reach the summit of Everest in just 2 years.

On that climb you will, no doubt, meet lots of distractions that can (if you allow them) take you off track; the weather, your equipment, other climbers, you might view other peaks, your own self-doubt/ego, difficult areas to climb, but if you want to reach the summit you have to get past these obstacles.

What has this got to do with you and your business?

Quite often when we get into business our focus is on the doing what we do, that’s makes sense after all, it's going to pay the bills. Yet, at the back of our minds, we instinctively know there are other drivers we should be focusing on; marketing, sales, time management, customer service, understanding the numbers, HR, leadership the list goes on. It’s no wonder when we have to juggle all these balls that we drop a few, often with the intention of picking them back up later.

The challenge is, those dropped balls make the climb very risky.

Quite often you will see businesses growing, everything appears to be going well and suddenly a decision is made to downsize or move the company back to a level where things are a little more comfortable.

The number one reason this happens is because the business is out of balance (a number of balls have been dropped or never picked up in the first place).

What I would like you to do is consider 4 balls (drivers) that if you want to climb your mountain, need to be kept in balance at all times. They are; Time, Team, Money and Delivery.

Let’s consider a start-up business owner on their quest to climb their mountain, although these principles do relate to all businesses that are going through growth phases.

As the business begins to grow the owner finds themselves getting busy servicing customers and realises that there is a need to bring on more people (TEAM). Because they are so busy dealing with the ‘doing’ of the business, they haven’t got the TIME to dedicate to recruitment, and because TIME is now a premium, other balls can get dropped, which may mean a juggling act between new opportunities and existing customers which leads to DELIVERY problems which can lead to complaints, refunds or rework which effects cash flow and profits (MONEY). It all gets very stressful and, what tends to happen is, instead of climbing the mountain, a decision is made to step back down to a more manageable level.

A cycle can now begin; pressure and stress become manageable, the market and environment look favourable, so the decision is made to start the climb again with the same inevitable outcome because the original imbalances have never been addressed.

What can happen here is the business owner can become risk averse and think, "Perhaps I’m not cut out for this mountain climbing lark." They drop the dream of reaching the top and settle for a level that feels right to them. For many, this is the actually the point at which they plant the seed of business failure, it may take a little while, but a business can’t stand still; it is either growing or dying.

All that is needed to change this cycle is a change in mindset and, in particular, learning the difference between spending and investing.

Investing time building solid, reliable systems for things like recruitment, delivery, or financial management are often seen as a waste of time because they don’t produce an immediate return.  This is the problem, because it is only by investing the time in these systems that the business will ever be able to grow safely and keep a balance between Time, Team, Money and Delivery.

So where should you start?

I would suggest getting to understand the numbers will probably be the most beneficial starting place. Numbers are the language of business and if you don’t understand the language, how can you play the game?

Next week we will take at some critical numbers you really need to understand that will enable you to remain in control as you start your climb. 

How to Conquer Your Business Everest

Last week we discussed the concept of having a compelling vision for your business; a vision that will enable you to decide and create the necessary culture needed within your business to ensure you to move towards your vision.

Before we start to look at the “How” I just wanted to check in with you that you have got your vision and it is compelling; does excite you, will enrol people into your business?

I remember talking to a lady a few years back, she had a rather good floristry business. When I asked her what her vision was, where did she see her business in say ten years’ time? Her reply “I want to have the biggest and best floristry business in my village." There was at the time only one other floristry business in her village. Unfortunately, that lady has now gone out of business. I’m not sure that she ever reached her vision. It is not for me to judge, yet I can’t help thinking that maybe she was aiming a little low. The danger being if you aim low you may well achieve your goal. Aiming high, just this side of impossible, might be a better goal.

In our seminars I like to use the analogy of climbing Everest because I believe it shows how a vision can be achieved.

Was Edmund Hillary out for a stroll one morning when he happened to arrive at the foot of Everest and thought to himself, “I think I will have a go at climbing that today...”

No!  That would have been a really bad idea and one that would be doomed to failure.  Instead, he invested a great deal of time working on a plan to achieve his vision.

Everest is 8,848 meters high, so reaching the summit was going to be difficult and it would have been easy for him to think, "This isn’t achievable, so I might as well give up on the idea." But, what if there were a secret recipe to climbing 8,848 metres would it make the journey a little easier?

There is a recipe and its 12.12 metres per day. Could you climb 12.12 metres per day? If you can, in just 2 years you will have achieved 8,848 metres; you will have climbed the highest mountain on earth.

This is the key to reaching your business vision.                

As a business coach, one of my primary responsibilities is to help my clients define their Everest, and then break it down to 5 year, 3 year, 1 year and quarterly plans. During our weekly meetings we decide the steps needed to achieve their 12.12 metres per day.

Now some of you may be thinking “If only it were that simple!”  My question to you is, “What if it was that simple?”

Sometimes, when I speak with business owners, I am told that I am being naïve and I just don’t understand their industry, their industry is different! They are convinced that reaching their Everest summit just isn’t possible. And yet, if they learn how to set aggressive goals and overcome the barriers to achieving their 12.12 metres per day, it is surprising just what they can achieve if they are fully committed to their goal.

To achieve your business equivalent of climbing Everest you just need to make a decision to go there.

Thoughts:

“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment”…Jim Rohn

“When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps”…Confucius

“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals”…Zig Ziglar

“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible”…Tony Robbins

“I don’t focus on what I’m up against. I focus on my goals and I try to ignore the rest”…Venus Williams

Are You Excited About the Future of Your Business or Do You Suffer With Mondayitis Every Week?

If you remember last week, we discussed Norman- a once proud business owner who after years of stress, firefighting and health problems decided to close his business down with the loss of 35 jobs. I suggested, that it needn’t have been that way and that there are alternative ways that Norman could have gone about building his business. What I would like to do over the coming weeks is to show you a step by step method for building a business that works.

One thing I would like to point out is that you can if you choose, miss out some of these steps, but the holes left in your business will mean that your profit, cash, time, team members and customers will be leaking out.

Let’s first look at why would Norman (or come to think of it, any sane person) would decide to start a business; after all, statistics tell us there is a massive failure rate... it could well end in tears.

For many people, they have a change in circumstances, for instance, redundancy or inheritance.  They now have the means to start their ‘dream’. For some, it could be they have the entrepreneurial spirit. For others it may be that they have had enough of making money for somebody else or they are fed up working for an idiot!

A big challenge when leaving employment and starting a business is lack of income and, in the drive to put food on the table and at least get earnings back up to the level they were when employed, many business owners take a few short cuts and turn a blind eye to a few business no-no’s. Most of these will be with the promise that “someday I’ll get round to fixing that.”  Problem is that, as the business owner gets busier, these important fixes get pushed further to one side because of all the urgent stuff that is going on in the business and someday rarely arrives.

It's around this time that a lot of people have the realisation that they are not creating a business, they are in fact creating a job. Working longer hours for less reward and with great deal of stress, in actual fact they are no longer working for an idiot, they are now working for a lunatic... themselves! They are stuck on the hamster wheel of business: sell,sell,sell, do,do,do, oops- got not customers, sell,sell...

So what can you do to avoid or overcome this stage of your business growth?

I believe you need to go right back to the beginning and to the thoughts that led you to originally start the business.

WHY did you take the plunge?

What did you envision you were creating?

What were your goals?

What was the timeframe for their achievement?

These questions are aimed at finding the motivation that drove your decision; if those thoughts fired you up then, they will almost certainly still fire you up now.

What can happen is that we have this vague idea of what we would like to create, which gets lost in our day to day 'busyness.' We get bogged down in the how or what we need to DO instead of focusing on what we want to HAVE.

So I am suggesting a better way for Norman to build his business would be to decide what he wanted to HAVE. What is his vision for his business and in what timeframe? Questions he might ask himself include:

How big is my business?

What does the business look like?

What geographical areas are we working in?

How many people are we employing?

What are we famous for?

How are we measuring success?

How do people who work for us feel about their jobs?

What do we refuse to do?

Why do people care about what we do?

What’s my role in the business?

Creating a vision is about finding what you would truly desire to accomplish, it should get you excited and at the same time be a little bit scary. It should make you feel proud, it should inspire, excite and enrol the people you want to attract into your business including your ideal customers, team members and suppliers.

Think about it... if you don’t know the destination, you are unable to give directions and, 

as the leader in your business, how will you attract followers if you are unable to tell them where you taking them?

A compelling vision is the starting place for defining the culture and DNA of your business. Culture, being the glue that holds your business together and effects the way people interact with each other and is ingrained in everything your values, your systems, your language, your beliefs and your daily habits.

Every business has a culture; the challenge is that it’s sometimes not the right culture to drive the business towards the business owner’s vision.

A few questions for you to consider:

How clear are you on your company vision?

What are you doing on a daily basis to make sure the company vision and culture are maintained?

What specific actions are you taking to show you are walking talking role model for your vision and culture?

Next Week

Now you have your clear vision we will look at the HOW you can achieve it.

Thoughts:

“Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.”…Warren Bennis

“Where there is no vision, the people perish”…Proverbs 29:18

“In order to carry a positive action we must develop here a positive vision.”…Dalai Lama

“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.”… Jonathan Swift

The Sad Tale of a Proud Business Owner...

I had a really interesting conversation with an extremely frustrated former business owner this week and I have a feeling that it might well resonate with large number of you reading this.

The business owner (we will call him Norman) had started his business in 2003 and, in the first year, it far exceeded all his expectations in terms of growth. During year two, he found himself having to hire more and more people to keep up with the demand for his product and his team quickly grew to over thirty people.

As for Norman, even though he had all these people at his disposal, he was working more hours, fighting more fires, seeing less and less of his family, and his stress levels meant that he was finding himself making more and more trips to the Doctors or Chemists to get a magic pill to help him feel better.

In early 2005, Norman decided to reduce the size of his company and so that he would be able to overcome his stress and get closer to his family once again. He reduced his marketing, the size of his team (which he found really stressful!) and the number of hours he spent at work. He did this with the expectation that his stress levels would dramatically drop; in reality, that never happened… He soon found himself working even more hours, fighting even more fires and, surprisingly, for less reward because with less work coming in, there was less profit dropping to the bottom line.

After a few months and a lot of soul searching, Norman decided to reverse his decision to downsize and started growing his business again. Once again, the business grew really quickly and Norman’s health began to decline until one day in 2006 he suffered a heart attack.  Fortunately, it was a minor one and he was able to recover quickly.

Once again he found himself downsizing his business and laying more people off. It was just as stressful the second time around.

Fast forward seven years and we find Norman still stuck in the loop of growing, stressing and downsizing.

Eventually the whole experience took its toll and Norman suffered a further heart attack. This time though it was different his recovery took a lot a longer and in his absence his business went into sharp decline. When he finally got back to work he realised that his values had shifted and he was now placing a much bigger emphasis on his family and himself. He also realised that he didn’t have the fight in him to rebuild his now struggling business so he decided to close it and that meant the loss of 35 jobs.

A sad end and yet a story that, although the circumstances may be different, is being replicated day in day out throughout the UK.

An interesting question here is “How many years was Norman in business?” easy you might say “He’s was in business twelve years.” Has he really or has he like so many business owners, been in business just one year yet lived that same year twelve times?

Norman is no different to a vast majority of the people who are brave enough to start their own business. He started off with a great deal of enthusiasm and big dreams that quickly dwindled and got forgotten about during the day to day busyness of running his business.

It is a sad fact in the UK that for every business that opens its doors today 80% will not see their fifth birthday and a further five years out and 80% of the remaining 20% will not survive to see their 10^th birthday. A simpler way of putting this is that for every one hundred businesses that open their doors today only four will survive to tell the tale in ten years’ time……

It needn’t be that way….

Over the coming weeks we are going to focus our blog on ideas, strategies, tactics and a system that Norman and any other business owner could use to ensure not only survival but also that they thrive in any business environment.