June 2018

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Here’s a secret. Okay, not so much as secret as a little known and little-deployed truth among business owners. Congruency is central to communication. In a word, congruency is about agreement. It’s about things making sense. For your business it’s about your employees finding agreement between what you say and what you do. They’re just like you, trying to make sense of things. Trying to figure out how things fit. It’s what we all do to understand where and how we fit in the world. In this case, the world is the world of your business. 

Your employees will craft a story in their head unless you communicate compassionately with candor. Candor can be destructive if it’s not associated with compassion. 

Candor is defined as the quality of being open and honest in expression. It’s frankness. And for our purposes, it’s also clarity. It’s not ambiguous, meaning it doesn’t have multiple meanings. Let’s pile one more element on for good measure. Candor is easily understood. 

You could incorporate candor like Kramer on Seinfeld. Bluntness with no tact. That’s candor lacking compassion. 

Compassion is concern and care for others. It doesn’t mean you tippy-toe around. Or you avoid confronting poor performance or behavior. It just means you do what you do because you’re concerned for the person. 

Claude Silver is the Chief Heart Officer for VaynerMedia in New York City. She Tweeted this the other day. Click the image to follow her on Twitter.

That’s the compassion I’m urging you to have as a small to medium-sized business owner. Behave genuinely, openly…and make sure you’re devoted to the truth of those 5 words. Be willing to be the person who says that to your employees. You’ll see some magic happen when you do. 

Compassion doesn’t mean you’re soft on performance. This is, after all, about growing great. Cowards and simps aren’t able to grow. Much less to grow great! This is work for people willing to climb and achieve. YOU.

Candid is synonymous with candor. Frankness. Truthfulness. Honesty. Clear, authentic conversation. 

You’re failing if after you communicate employees ask, “I wonder what she meant by that?” It means they didn’t understand. And it generates an enormous downside for you, them and the company. Remember, they’re looking to make sense of it all. So as they walk away from listening to you, confused about what you said, they start connecting dots. In their head, they begin crafting a story as they attempt to figure it out and make sense of it. Here’s the deal: they’ll never create a story more positive than the one you could give them. People lean toward thinking the worst, not the best. Your employees will form negative stories if they’re confused. 

Another downside is a loss of speed. We’ve all experienced it in our own lives. Whether it was an employer we had when we were kids, learning our first job. Or whether it was a teacher giving us an assignment we weren’t quite sure of. We’ve been asked or told to do something, and be timid to take a step because we didn’t know exactly what we were supposed to be doing. All that halting and hesitation happened because we had no confidence in what we were doing. So we did nothing. Or we did it very slowly, hoping our delay might offer us enough time to figure it out. Your employees do the same thing. 

Speed is your friend. You kill your friend when you lack compassionate candor. There goes one of the biggest competitive advantages of your business. That agility and nimbleness is out the window, created largely by your unwillingness or inability to be clear. And to make sure everybody understands. 

If I walked around your business and spoke with enough people (and it wouldn’t take that many), I’d quickly find out how much your company values candor. I’d also find out how much compassion is used by you and the rest of your leadership team. You could tell me how you’d like it to be, or how you know it ought to be, but your people know how it really is. Compassionate candor closes that gap and sets you on course to make things be what they should be in order to foster accelerated growth. 

Yes, it’s the right thing to do. Yes, it’ll help you avoid being a jerk. Bob Sutton has got a more graphic name for it (I love Sutton’s books and his work). There’s a very practical business reason behind all this, too. The goal is to hit the trifecta of business building: getting new customers, serving existing customers better and to not go crazy in the process! It’s impossible without candor.

One of the chief things I’d love to help more business owners solve is confusion in their culture. People thinking or understanding something different than what you think, or your leadership team thinks. Being on the same page. Rowing in the same direction. Pick whatever cliché you most enjoy, but they all say the same thing. Some people are going in one direction. Others are picking a different direction. You’re blaming them, but it’s your responsibility. You can fix it. 

So now you know what you need to hit the ground running to fix come Monday. It’s your job to write the story people will believe in, follow and contribute to make a great success story. Do it properly and they’ll do their part. 

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Much of my career was spent in the world of retailing where transactions are a valued metric. But I was never transactional. Philosophically. Or practically. 

That is, I’d measure the average sale, the average number of items per sale, but my focus was always on the individual customer or shopper. The lifetime value of a customer was always a strong consideration, as well as customer acquisition cost. POS (point of sale) technology gives us great data in real-time. But, running your small to medium-sized business with a transactional philosophy is a mistake I don’t want you to make. 

Business isn’t just math. It’s people. The people who work inside the business serving the people who buy from the company. There’s some math to that you should consider. How many employees do you have? How many customers do you have? How many prospects do you have? Every encounter, every touchpoint involves at least 2 people. And people talk. Or write. Or podcast. Or create videos. 

Word of mouth used to be its own thing. No more. It’s just life now. For 30 years I’ve loved what Jeffrey Gitomer has always said about it. Your customers can say one of three things about you. Something good. Nothing. Or something bad. And it’s up to you to decide what it’ll be. He’s completely right. 

Focus on the lifetime influence of a customer. 

Various thoughts have been expressed on customer loyalty. It was once thought that you take a person from being a shopper or a prospect to a customer, a person who makes a single purchase. Perhaps a one time buyer. Then, you work to make them a client, somebody who purchases from you again. Then you work to create a loyal client, somebody who will continue to buy from you. Then you worked to create the loyal clients into advocates, people who would repeatedly buy from you and extol your praises to others. Well, that’s all been thrown out the window. It’s not how the world works.

Your prospects have influence. People don’t even have to buy from you in order to become a fan. Even an advocate. I’ll give you an example. Years ago I had a business acquaintance who would give me a box of 12 individually wrapped iced sugar cookies. I never knew where he got them, but I looked forward to getting them every year. They were made by Granny B’s. They were soft and delicious. I’ve never purchased them because you can’t even find them online. And they don’t ship, at least not directly from their website. They say they have over 50 distributors, but I’m not in the food service business so I have no idea how to find them. But I’ve told more people than I can count how good I think they are. And now I just told you. Granny B’s has never collected a single dollar from me. I’m not a customer, but I am an advocate. 

Will you buy from Granny B’s now I’ve told you about them? You may if you live in or near Orem, Utah where they’re located. That’s how it works.

There’s only one way to leverage the influence of every customer – or even prospects. Dazzle people. Be remarkable. Granny B’s has great product. It’s a great sugar cookie. You’ve got to deliver great products and services. You’ve got to provide an extraordinary experience for prospects, shoppers and customers. Every single time. No exceptions.

That means you have to create systems that will enable your company to deliver predictably awesome experiences 100% of the time. Will you hit your mark 100% of the time? No. You’ll screw up. Somebody in your company will drop the ball. The question is, “How will you recover?” To positively leverage the influence of every customer you must recover with speed and grace!

I love the occasional customer problem because the opportunity to recover is the surest way I know to create the most loyal advocates of a business. If you dazzle a customer with a problem they’ll love you forever and tell as many people as possible. And it’s not that hard to do. It just requires your commitment and willingness to do it. Recovery is an incredible business opportunity too few take advantage of, and I don’t get it. Doing the right thing, and doing it quickly isn’t that difficult once you just make up your mind that it’s how you’ll run things. I’m challenging you to do that, then watch the positive reaction of the customer — and your employees. And gauge how well you feel about yourself, too. When you make the experience remarkable for the customer you make it remarkable for yourself and everybody who works for you. Oh, the stories you’ll all be able to tell. Positive influence has insane power.

Look around. The world is filled with awful service. Terrible customer experience is as normal as big city traffic. Mostly, we lament how companies don’t care. I’m a longtime Directv customer and I hate them with a passion. Their billing practices, inching your bill up (forcing you to call every 6 months or so to negotiate it down) and their customer service rigmarole is daunting. I’ll figure out an alternative eventually. I just have to make it a priority. And when I do, I’ll leave them. In the meantime, I’m a customer who has paid them more money than I care to calculate, but I just threw them under the bus to you. And I’m a customer. But I’m NOT an advocate. 

A sugar cookie I don’t buy. A TV content provider I’ve been buying for years. One, I love. The other, I hate. So it goes.

Figure out which one you’d rather be. 

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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I first shared these thoughts over on Facebook. Just a day ago. 

Plagiarizing website copy is stealing. It’s always a curious thing to me when I see a company or so-called “professional” take the copy (almost word for word) from a competitor’s website and use it as their own.

I’ve seen so much of it I’m practiced at spotting the original because it’s not often hard to determine who’s doing the stealing. Pretenders and wannabes steal.

Here are some things I’ve noticed:

If you spend more time looking at your competition than your prospects or clients, then you’re fast-tracking toward failure. Plagiarists are too lazy to focus on prospects and customers. They’d much rather watch, then copy the competition.

Plagiarists obviously aren’t creative, but worse yet, they’re deluded. Rather than put in the time to think, carefully consider, and connect personally with their prospects and customers, they hope by ripping off somebody else’s copy they can magically generate business. Copy is important because it’s communication. But the thieves don’t realize, stolen copy won’t build a customer base or a sustainable business.

Plagiarists are frauds, hypocrites, and fakes. They pretend to be the businesses or people they plagiarize. Living vicariously through their competitor they’re hoping to be just like them. Meanwhile, those worthy of being stolen from, are rapidly moving ahead, growing, gaining clients, generating sustainable revenues and profits.

Liars and thieves (plagiarists are both), play a short-term game. They’re hoping for the fast buck to match their fastly stolen copy. At best, that’s what they may get.

Businesses and people who steal web copy won’t put in the work to perform at the highest standards in their space. I’ve NEVER seen it. I’ve seen plenty of plagiarism though. And in every case, it was a newbie or far less experienced company/person in an industry trying to appear more established. From podcasting experts to car detailers, to professional services…it’s happening daily in dozens of industries. I’ve seen entire websites copied, taking plagiarism to a whole new level.

In a world increasingly focused on IP (intellectual property), it can be a big deal. I know businesses who have pursued legal action to stop the plagiarism. Others who have chosen to ignore it. Decide for yourself if you’ve been a victim.

And one last thought, I’ve not yet seen an individual or company survive plagiarizing somebody else’s website. To every victim I’ve ever encountered, I say the same thing, “They’re too lazy and dishonest to come up with their own copy, what makes you think they’re going to out hustle you?” They never do.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Enthusiasm is defined as intense and eager enjoyment, interest, or approval. I suppose people can be committed without it. But that’s not much of a life! 

Companies and organizations have been focused on culture for the past 50 years. Before that, nobody much cared. Show up, do your job or get fired. Don’t speak up. Don’t speak out. Just be on time, fall in line and do what you’re told. Even old dogs like me don’t remember those hard times. 

Yet many of us have experienced working alongside people who didn’t have a commitment to do good work. Or even working for bosses who did nothing to foster it. 

The times they are a-changin’ — and it’s great. 

Any small to medium sized business owner who pays attention to a podcast and website called GROW GREAT is certainly not prone to leading with tyranny. I appreciate that about you. And I’m sure your employees do, too. 

Every business owner and leader I know give some attention and lip service to “employee engagement.” It’s just a high falutin way of talking about how enthusiastic people are about showing up for work and doing the work. Commitment.

What we really want is enthusiastic commitment. We don’t just want dutiful, going through the motions producing the minimal performance. 

“Enthusiasm spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment.”   – Norman Vincent Peale

Mr. Peale was right. 

The other day an executive was telling me about some engagement challenges at his office. Speaking about a specific employee, a multi-year veteran of their company he lamented, “She’s on time and does a fairly decent job. But it’s like she’s just checking the box and doing whatever she needs to do to keep that box checked.” I asked him how long that had been going on. “For a good long while,” he said. “Why didn’t you talk with her when it first started?” I asked. He didn’t know. It just didn’t happen. Life happened. How here he was who-knows-how-much-later and she’s having a negative impact he thinks on co-workers. He’s wondering what to do. 

This story is commonplace. Commitment, enthusiasm give way. When the erosion begins, we either don’t notice or by the time we do notice it’s been happening a while. And rather than sit down to find out what’s going on, and what we may be able to do to help – as leaders – we can hide. Hoping it’ll resolve itself. It hardly ever does!

Here’s what I know works – get to know people. Find out what’s going on with them. Not in an intrusive way, but in a caring, compassionate way. Fully professional. And heavily craved by employees. Especially those who really want to excel. 

A culture of commitment begins with your commitment to your employees. As the owner, you must demonstrate how committed you are to help your people succeed. If that commitment isn’t there, then all bets are off. You won’t likely build or improve your culture. Honestly, you don’t deserve a high performing culture until or unless you first commit. 

Be enthusiastic. It’ll drive your performance and help you lead your people to achieve more than they may have thought possible.

“Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.”   – Ralph Waldo Emerson

On the practical front, make time to sit down with every employee. But if you’ve got one or more employees who once had higher enthusiasm and commitment, but you’ve seen it slip, then make them a priority. Don’t drag them in and rail on them. Talk with them honestly. Express your concerns and observations. This isn’t a “let me tell you how it has to be” confrontation. Instead, make it a discussion of care and concern. You want to know what you can do to help them retrieve the enthusiasm and commitment they once displayed. Reinforce your desire and commitment to help them. Their success is yours. Let them know it’s important. 

For many employees, that alone can do the trick. Some (check that, most) people need to know somebody cares. Somebody is paying attention to their contribution. 

I know you may crave some complex, sophisticated strategy, but I don’t have it. That crap doesn’t work. Human communication does. Be human. Don’t be harpy. Be kind. Helpful. 

Be interested in your employees. Find out more about their lives. They’ll share. You just have to create the environment where they know it’s safe. It may take time, depending on how you’ve behaved in the past. Which tells you all you need to know – YOU are the biggest driver to create a culture of commitment.

“None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.”  – Henry David Thoreau

Ask your employees how you can help each of them achieve higher performance. Make their success as workers, and people, a priority. Do that and you’ll find they grow their own enthusiasm and commitment to make your company great. 

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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It’s one of the hardest things to accomplish. To get insights without the judgment. 

You’re surrounded by lots of people willing to tell you what you ought to do. Should-ing people is easy. 

“You should do this. Or that. But not this other.” 

It’s judgment. Second guessing. People who want to own telling you what to do, but they don’t have to own the outcome. They can sit safely from their judgment seat and make recommendation after recommendation. And quickly point out how you’re making a mistake by doing whatever it is you’re doing. 

It’s a completely different thing – and a much more valuable thing – to surround yourself with somebody (or a group of somebodies) who can help you find the insights you may seek. Every small to medium sized business owner needs insights because they help us avoid our blind spots. They help us figure out our false assumptions. Or the ones that may be holding us back. 

The other day I found myself on a car manufacturer’s website. You could select a model, then take a virtual tour of the interior. By holding your computer mouse, or finger over the photo visitors can move around to see different viewpoints of the interior. The dashboard looks different from the back seat than it does from the driver’s position.

Running your business without insights is like sitting in the back seat assuming it’s the only point of view. It’s limiting. 

But so is judgment. 

Consider the source.

Opinions aren’t hard to come by. Neither is judgment. 

Because the people who surround you mostly have lots of both. It’s not that their viewpoint is bad. Or unhelpful. It just comes with strings attached. Strings you have to account for.

I’m sitting down with a CEO of a manufacturing company. He’s confiding in me a problem he’s wrestling with. We’re talking numbers. Financial numbers. It’s the potential impact and opportunity of this problem. Since it involves numbers I think it only natural to ask, “What does your CFO say?” Without blinking he tells me he’s not talked with his CFO yet. It’s evident he’s not wanting to do that just yet. 

Why?

Because his CFO isn’t the most opportunistic leader. Mostly, he’s risk-averse. The CEO know the CFO will only see the downside and not the opportunity. There’s his string. Thankfully, the CEO sees the string. The bad news is, the CEO has no trusted internal advisor about such things. Do you think that’s a constraint for him and his leading the company? You bet. 

Where are your constraints? What’s bottlenecking your insights? 

People with an agenda. Aka, strings attached. Again, it doesn’t mean their insights aren’t useful. But it does mean their insights have a bias that’s likely favorable to them. You can’t blame them. This CFO has a viewpoint. Namely, that it’s his job to PROTECT and PRESERVE. He doesn’t really understand, or embrace the notion that he could also be a great gatekeeper seeking to help the CEO seize growth opportunities. That doesn’t make him a bad guy. It does make him biased toward how he sees his role though. 

Surrounding yourself with people who expect nothing from you is key. They don’t need you as their boss. Or supplier. Or partner. Or customer. Or investor. And you don’t need them in any of those roles either. 

You can find them. It may not happen organically or naturally. That is, you may not find them in the wild. In fact, I’ll be among the first perhaps to tell you — you won’t find them by happenstance. You’re going to have to be intentional and purposeful. It’s got to become a priority. And that’s your problem. It’s not. 

You’re looking at the dashboard of the car from the default view thinking it’s the only one that matters. I’m pushing you to move the mouse around. Look at it from other angles. It’ll provide a clarity you’ll never see otherwise. It’s the difference in the business owners who expand, grow and improve. 

Oh, and at the end of the day, you need to do what you think is best. It’s your show. Get the arm-chair quarterbacks out of your life. That scoreboard isn’t reflecting their performance, but yours. Own it. 

Who you surround yourself with matters. Put in the work to make that group the most powerful group possible. 

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Managing first growth is different than later stage growth. Or it *can* be. 

Recently, I’ve encountered a few folks who have started up. They’re early stage. Some are 2-3 years in, and others are less than a year in. They range from solopreneurs to companies with 3-5 people. 

Growth is challenging, but it’s a lot nicer than stagnation, or shrinkage, or dying. 

Sure, growth is a nice problem to have, but it’s still a problem. And it needs good solutions. 

Consider the size of any space rocket. They’re multiple stories high because of the fuel they need to escape the pull of earth’s gravity. Once they get into orbit, they jettison the fuel part along the way. Just goes to show you the enormous power required to get into orbit. Momentum is hard. It takes a lot of energy. 

So when you start to get momentum, you need to leverage it fast. Don’t hesitate to seize the opportunity for growth when it’s clearly present. 

The first thing all of us must do, as business owners, is put in the work to achieve momentum and get the opportunity for growth. We want to get there as fast as possible so we can exhaust as few resources as possible. It’s no different than making our dollars go further. Get all the bang you can for your buck. 

Speed is the first rule for managing growth. Especially your first growth spurt. 

That doesn’t mean you act impulsively or recklessly. It just means you focus on it fast and avoid putting off decisions. You shove growth on the front burner where it belongs. Think about your alternatives (nearly every problem has multiple solutions). Don’t fixate on one choice. Be open to consider what may be best.

For many businesses, growth hints that we need more manpower. People. 

We sometimes hesitate to hire or expand our team. If that’s you, ask yourself why? Why are you hesitating? Are you worried that quality will suffer? Are you just a micro-manager who doesn’t want to delegate? Are you convinced you just can’t find anybody good enough? 

Do you hire somebody who has what you lack? Or do you find somebody with whom you have much more in common than not? 

Here’s the thing about successful business building. It’s a process that’s learned. You have to figure it out. There are no standard answers to these questions.

Hire the very best people you can afford. Look for the qualities that are non-negotiable to you. That means you have to first figure out what your non-negotiables are.

What skills and traits will contribute to the growth opportunities? I’ve got one strong piece of advice – hire for what you need right now. Too many small to medium business owners obsess about what they need down the road, and end up overlooking the things needed to handle the immediate opportunities. Admittedly, it’s a philosophy you may not share. The good news is, it’s your business so you can operate it any way your choose. It’s okay. 

It’s easy for us to think of today’s opportunity, then get ahead of ourselves. I don’t like getting too far ahead because it fosters a counting-chickens-before-the-eggs-hatch mindset. I’m a longterm player always looking for sustainable, predictable revenue and profits. And willing to forego a dollar today if I’m convinced five dollars can be earned a bit later. It’s mostly math. Sometimes a dollar today is necessary to keep us going. Sometimes it’s best to let go of today’s dollar because a year from now we can earn 5 times, 10 times or more…just because we waited. Patience can pay. But mostly, I’m a speed freak. Speed of getting it done. Speed of learning. Speed of pivoting when necessary. 

Whether it’s people, capital or anything else – go for what you need today to seize the opportunities you may be losing. That’s mostly the challenge: the loss of business. Growth may be happening – in a spurt – and you find yourself unable to take advantage. That’s a growth spurt and you need to address it. 

The worst thing you can do it avoid thinking about it. Or making a decision to handle it. If you do, the growth opportunity will pass. Momentum never lasts. It ebbs and flows. You want to create it as quickly as you can, then live in it for as long as you can.

There’s another secret you should know. Nothing is forever. We sometimes lament making a decision for fear we’ll be wrong. You may be wrong. Just weigh the decision’s downside. Count the cost. If the risk is high, be as certain as you can. If the risk is nominal, act with greater speed because you can fix it later if you’re wrong. News flash! You will be wrong quite a lot and it’s fine. Err on the side of taking action, not on avoiding action. 

Be thankful you’re experiencing the growth spurt. Marshall your resources to take full advantage of it…and do everything you can to prolong it. Stay in the momentum “growth zone” as long as possible. Keep feeding the beast and it’ll feed you back (in time). Be patient. 

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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