Randy Cantrell

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Everything good is sales. 

Everything bad is lack of sales.

Go ahead. Argue against it. Push back.

But I know what I’m talking about. I’ve experienced dreadful lease negotiations. I’ve participated in tense and uncomfortable vendor negotiations.
I’ve experienced fires and break-ins.
I know what it is to lose a good key employee.

I know what bad looks like and how it feels.

A business consists of daily problems that have to be solved. A business also consists of daily opportunities that have to be spotted and seized.

There’s a good reason why the first leg of my business-building trifecta is “getting new customers.” Nothing comes before that. Not really.

The other night my wife and I were watching the History channel series on “The Food That Made America.” Part of that history involved Milton Hershey, creator of The Hershey Company, a chocolate maker.

Hershey had sold an earlier company for $1M. He poured that money into a remote area of Pennsylvania where he designed a town and a factory. All before he even had a recipe for milk chocolate, an idea he had discovered from European chocolatiers who used powdered condensed milk. He was determined to use fresh milk from the many dairies around the site of his new city and factory.

Construction went on for over 2 years and was almost complete before a Hershey employee finally stumbled on a recipe. And, as they say, the rest of history.

My wife and I were observing how backwards it all seemed. No recipe for milk chocolate…just a die-hard determination that it had to be milk chocolate and it had to use fresh milk. No customers. But he built a city and an enormous factory.

Okay, it can work. Clearly. But that doesn’t mean it’s how you should go about it. It’s not advisable. Unless you’ve got a brilliant idea, a lot of money and a do-or-die spirit. Hershey had all of that. Most of us don’t.

“We didn’t hit our numbers last month.”

“It’s a slow month so far.”

“Things are slow.”

Owners and leaders universally understand the pressures of poor or lackluster sales. “We need to make something happen,” we sometimes say. What we mean is that we need to make something good happen. We need to get more business!

We need to get new customers!

Making something good happen is what drives us. It’s what separates us from others. Confidence and belief that we can affect change. The desire to control our destiny rather than let others impose on us. And if we are going to fail, we’ll do it on our own terms by doing things based on our deep beliefs that they’ll work.

Success stories are those where it worked out.

Stories of failure demonstrate instances where it didn’t work out.

How are you gonna know until or unless you try though? You won’t. You can’t.

Let’s think about what we can do as business owners and leaders to make something good happen. 

Step 1 – You have to believe you can.

This should go without saying, but I’ve learned through the years that nothing really should go without saying because basic, foundational truths are the ones that most often escape us.

A person calls tech support for a manufacturer of a surge protector. You’ve likely seen this social media meme. I chuckle every time I see it…probably because I spent many years in consumer electronics and it resonates with me.

Starting with something as fundamental as, “Is it plugged in?” eliminates the most obvious problems. Well, unless the customer is a complete moron as the meme depicts. 😀

The point? Basics and fundamentals often provide solutions.

That’s why I begin with you – and your belief that you can do something that will affect positive change. Until or unless you truly think you have the capacity as an owner or leader to influence the outcome, then you’re sunk. What purpose do you serve as a leader if you lack that ability or influence?

Leaders must deeply believe, “If it is to be, it’s up to me.” Not in some self-centered, I’m-going-to-do-it-all sort of way. But in a way where you know that somebody – namely, YOU – must step up and get the ball rolling toward pushing back against bad things happening.

I’ve intentionally used sales – specifically a sales slump – as the metaphor for today’s show. And I’ve done so because slow or low sales create more tension than anything I know.

Imagine that your sales are 15% lower than projected. You’ve hit a dip you didn’t expect to hit. And you’re without evidence as to why. If you dive in to sort it out without deeply being convicted of you – and your team’s ability – to remedy this problem, then you’ll be grabbing at straws and likely drown. Confidence and belief are key. It starts with your own so you can then relay that to your team. A major part of your role as a leader is to provide encouragement so your team will have the confidence you have.

Do not underestimate the value of belief.

Step 2 – Find the truth. Face the truth.

Whenever bad things happen the first reaction is to finger point and find somebody or something to blame. Eliminate that. Don’t even let it get started. It can be tough to stop once it starts.

Instead, insist on evidence and make people prove their theories. Theories and assumptions aren’t bad. You just need to insist that people effectively argue their positions.

Key: Have your team focus on themselves and the organization. Rather than look to things as nebulous as the economy, or the weather – hold them accountable for keeping their search on how the company is reacting or managing all the external forces.

It’s vanity to think external forces don’t influence our businesses. But it’s NOT vanity to focus on how our business is dealing with those forces. That’s where we’re going to discover some ways we can improve.

Don’t spend time crafting fairy tales to make everybody feel better about their effort. Nobody cares about your effort. Lots of folks are out here working hard and going broke. Besides, when you impose a culture of truth-finding and truth-facing you’ll build a culture of high performance.

Don’t let anything or anybody – including yourself – off the hook. That doesn’t mean when you find the truth that you rail against it. Or that you find somebody to barbeque. It means together – you and your team – stare it in the eye, acknowledge what you think you did wrong (collectively), and you then focus on the final step.

Step 3 – Work out a plan to answer the question, “What should we do next?”

It’s great to know the future years from now, but none of us have that ability. We sometimes think we do. We’re wrong.

How provides that confidence that is so important to you and your team. Belief kicks in when we can best see how we’re going to get out of this mess. This is the business strategy part of the solution.

Let’s assume that our 15% sales decline (we missed our budget by that amount) appears to be due a few things. One, we based it on our historical seasonality. The month before we blew the lid off our projections. That month was also based on historical seasonality. But some of our key vendors had special financing for our customers this year that didn’t happen last year. When we look at the financing data it’s clear that our financing business is off the charts. Those inducements drove business and shook up our seasonality. Two, the competitors to our key suppliers responded and a month later they offered their own financing. Our team concludes that we were both ill-prepared to take full advantage of the promotions offered by our suppliers and we were equally unprepared to combat the competitor’s offers a month later.

Deeper investigation shows that almost 80% of our sales with the promotional financing involved bundling – that is, customers purchased more because of the financing. Our average ticket was significantly higher.

The team decides a good strategy would be to incorporate in-house financing coupled with aggressive bundle pricing. They discuss concerns about how that may adversely impact margins and future business, but they’re more concerned about losing momentum during these months that are historically their strongest.

When people are buying, help them buy more. When people aren’t buying, you’re not likely able to compel them to buy. It’s a classic mistake businesses make, especially businesses without deep pockets to drive promotion and advertising.

The team leans into making the most of the seasonality that has persisted for more than a decade with very little variation.

Bonus Step – Keep moving forward and keep asking and answering the question, “Now what?”

Business success is about making wise adjustments. Will the team’s strategy work? They don’t know, but they believe it will.

Now it’s time to keep your eyes on it and see how it goes. Adjust as needed. Course correction may be necessary. Don’t be afraid to learn from failure. Find greater success. Make something good happen, then make something even better happen.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

Randy

P.S. Yes, I’ve gone back to Grow Great as the name of the podcast. It just feels better. Right. And it’s in keeping with what I do best according to trusted advisors. I leveraged the power of others – other people with whom I feel safe – who urged me to lean into my natural state of being a counselor. It’s congruent with my character strengths, my talent strengths and my personality. It’s also evidence of working live without a net and letting you behind the curtain to see how things work around here. Next time I’ll share more details so you can learn from my process. It’s all part of the plan of us helping each other figure things out for ourselves, but without having to do it alone!

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Getting your vehicle stuck in a rut ain’t fun. And it can be difficult to get yourself out. Which is why sometimes we have to get somebody to pull or tow us out of a rut.

In life, our ruts are just our habits. Sometimes we call them what they truly are, but more polite language makes them seem less destructive. They’re the habits that prevent us from moving forward. We get stuck. In a rut. Or in multiple ruts.

It happen when the habits have persisted for so long we’ve worn such a deep groove into our life that we can’t escape it. Not without some help. Maybe a lot of help if we’re really stuck.

Are there ruts in your life that have you stuck?

Need some help being towed out of them?

Or…

Are you just going to sit there and remain stuck?

This is the week to do something about it. Shake it up. Jump out of it and jump into an improved track so you can move forward.

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple or easy.

Experience has taught me a few things about ruts. Largely, they’re habits. We sometimes refer to them affectionately because we fool ourselves into thinking they’re serving us…when in fact, they’re restricting us. Holding us back. Digging us in. Sticking us so we can’t move.

There’s a phenomenal impact that happens to us when somebody cares enough about us to ask us challenging questions. Understanding, compassion, and support from people willing to invest in us, and willing to let us invest in them, will either pull us or push us out of our sticky habits. First, by making us aware of them. Until we see our habits for what they are – sometimes they’re excuses, sometimes they’re crutches, sometimes they’re something else – we’re unlikely to change them. That’s where the friendly, safe challenges serve us. But the phenomenon I see is how people react when those habits or assumptions are challenged and they then see things more clearly. Sometimes they see clearly for the first time.

Some get physically ill. No, nothing serious. Nothing worthy of seeing a doctor necessarily, but I’ve seen people quite literally get sick finding it tough to get out of bed for a day or two. The shock to their system is so severe they physically need some time to process the clarity and deal with the truth that THEY have become the problem.

Has that ever happened to you? I know the feeling. As awful as those hours are, the impact is powerful. For me, it was the realization that I had it so terribly wrong. As much as I didn’t see it earlier, once it was pointed out to me…I couldn’t resist seeing it. And glaring at it. It made me sick! But the sickness didn’t last because determination quickly set in.

And that’s the other side of the phenomenon. Making up your mind to face and deal with the habits that have become the ruts of your life.

It’s possible to do this work alone. It’s just highly improbable because comfort is more important to us than challenge. So we stay comfortable with our bad habits. The ones that are holding us back. Sometimes, the habits are more properly assumptions.

It’s why business performance plateaus. And why performance can largely become stagnant. It’s why leaders once thought to be superstars can lose their starlight power over time. It doesn’t feel like complacency. Until it’s too late.

Leaders don’t confess, “I’m comfortable. I’m complacent.” Because it doesn’t feel that way to them. “I’m working as hard as I can,” they’ll say. Or, “I’m working just as hard as I ever did.” But that doesn’t always address the real issue. It doesn’t address their now stale assumptions or bad habits. Facing those is best done with outside help. Safe people brave enough to serve because they want to see you accelerate past those assumptions and habits.

New levels of performance rarely happen organically. They need drivers. Those drivers can be competition. They can be the quest to survive. Humans own and lead companies. Humans need other humans willing and able to push or pull them toward something greater than the status quo.

There’s no need for our bad habits to become ruts. No need for our blind spots to expand into something bigger. We’re without excuse to be stuck because we’re humans with an enormous capacity to connect and engage with other humans who can help us.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

Randy

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For the past few years, I’ve worked with and alongside Leo Bottary. We do a podcast together – WHAT ANYONE CAN DO PODCAST (the title is taken after Leo’s latest book). On Wednesday we recorded an episode centering around an article Leo wrote for CEO WORLD Magazine entitled, How Great CEOs Maximize Peer Relationships. Today I’m going to share that conversation with you here on The Peer Advantage podcast because it speaks to how CEOs and business owners can better leverage the power of others.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

Randy

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It was one of the first business books I ever read. I can’t be sure, but I think my grandfather (my mother’s father) had a copy. The book was published in 1949. It’s the classic book on selling by Frank Bettger, “How I Raised Myself From A Failure To Success In Selling.” 

There’s been a copy of this book in my collection ever since I started reading and collecting books. I picked it up for the umpteenth time the other day. The first page is by Dale Carnegie, followed by the author’s forward. These few pages demonstrate how powerful friends can be, especially friends who are peers with professional experience and know-how. Listen to them and learn.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

Randy

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I’m an introvert who can often appear like an extrovert. I follow a few social media accounts dealing with introversion. Just because. I chuckled over the weekend when I saw an Instagram post by IntrovertDear.

Dentist: Open up, please.

Me: Sometimes I get sad.

(Oh, you meant my mouth)

There seem to be three basic groups of people when it comes to opening up. There are those who open up to everybody. If you’ll listen, they’ll talk. And talk. And talk. And talk.

Then there are those who won’t talk. Hardly ever. They barely open up about anything to anybody. These are the “cat has your tongue” people.

Then there are those in the middle. Perhaps these make up the largest group, but I don’t know. These people open up sometimes. To some people. They’ll open up, but they’re discriminating.

If my 3 category theory is correct, then it means two-thirds of us have some difficulty opening up. Really opening up. We need the right circumstances and the right people. Without a safe space and safe people, we’re not likely going to open. And only those who exercise no discrimination don’t much care about the conditions for opening up.

I’ll argue that even those non-discriminating folks who talk and talk and talk with anybody and everybody aren’t truly opening up very often. Mostly, they’re just blabbering without reaching any depths that can accomplish something positive.

That likely means 100% of us (okay, we’ll allow a small degree of variance in case I’m not completely correct), find it tough to open up and engage in deep enough conversation to help us unearth the source of our challenges or the reality of our opportunities (and I’m not talking about our pie-in-the-sky-dreams). Depth of discussion required to get to the heart of a matter!

A decade plus of coaching executives, leaders and business owners has given me sufficient evidence to know how rare it is for most of us. People of all ages, all walks of life, all levels of formal education and experience have shown me how infrequently they’ve been able to find a safe place with safe people. I see it in their eyes. I hear it in their voice. It’s both a relief and a challenge.

The relief to finally open up and face something head-on without searching for hiding place is cathartic, but mostly – helpful in finding ways to move forward.

The challenge is in finding another strength – one beyond the strength to open up. It’s the strength to face the truth and deal with it. That process isn’t the same for everybody. Some process it more quickly and easily than others. Others can get ill. Physically. Nausea. Headache. I’ve watched it happen.

But those who make up their mind to lean into the process for the high value they know they’ll get — they put in the mental and emotional work knowing it’s safe and for their best outcome. Once they battle through the fear of false belief that their vulnerability will be used against them (and when they’re in a safe place among safe people that will never happen), then they take off like a rocket. They soar finding new altitudes that were impossible before. The weight of the constraints and challenges prevented them from going higher. Now those weights are lightened or removed. It doesn’t mean there are no problems from now on…it just means now they have a new resource with which to face them. And deal with them.

It’s amazingly rare though. The resource, that is.

There are 17 rare earth elements. No, I don’t know all their names. Or even have a rudimentary understanding of their power. Shoot, I can’t even pronounce their names. That’s how rare they are! 😉

But I know that entrepreneurs (really ANY humans) finding a safe space with safe people surrounding them so they can leverage the power of their peers is equally rare. It’s the 18th rare element – surrounding yourself with people who can be helped by you and who can help you.

Because it’s so rare some don’t even believe it exists. I mean if you’ve never seen it or experienced it, you may think it’s just somebody’s fantasy. But it’s very real. Fewer than 1% of entrepreneurs know it firsthand. I told you it was rare. Like most rare things, it’s extraordinarily valuable. But it’s not valuable because it’s rare. It’s valuable because it works. It transforms businesses and lives. It generates greater revenues and profits. It solves problems. It seizes opportunities.

There’s nothing like it because the resource is the human brain. Multiple human brains engaged in helping each other. Multiple viewpoints. Multiple experiences. Multiple approaches to problem-solving and opportunity-seizing. AI may be in the uptick, but leveraging the power of other human beings who are individually pursuing the same thing we are (entrepreneurs and business owners) is powerful because it provides us with the strength to open up, which gives us the opportunity to grow.

Tinker Bell said it best…

All you need is faith, trust and a little bit of pixie dust.

Be well. Do good. Grow great.

Randy

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 10:29 — 13.0MB)

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Was Magic Johnson pushed by the likes of Larry Bird and Isiah Thomas? Were they benefited by competing against him?

Did Phil Mickelson push Tiger Woods? And vice versa?

People playing the same sport, but competing. Peers, but competitors. Each likely benefiting from the sheer presence of the other, knowing if they didn’t do their best – they’d be defeated.

It just speaks to the power of positive pressure, but in these cases, it’s the competition of the sport. For us, we’re competing in a market battling to hit the trifecta of business building:

1. Getting new customers
2. Serving existing customers better
3. Not going crazy in the process

We have competitors who we want to best. Maybe we’re driven to excel because we want to defeat them, but our inner drive to excel needs to be deeper than that. Magic wasn’t just driven to defeat his opponents. He wanted to be world-class. And Tiger is still chasing a record-setting career.

What are you chasing?

Every human endeavor may involve testings, measuring, changing (trying something else) then seeing if that change is working or not. It’s the activity of forward progress.

In the case of professional athletes, the pressure of competition likely provides sufficient inspiration to try different things. A new move here or there. A different shot. Perhaps even a new strategy. To see if it may work against them better. And if it does, then to work harder to master it so you can keep advancing. And keep winning against them.

Business owners and entrepreneurs aren’t in a business that feels quite as personal as the world of a pro athlete. We don’t have an opponent on the schedule. Every day we face opponents. Things that would crush our business. Pressures from the market, regulations, relationships and more.

No sooner do we get one area pretty ironed out then we hit a snag in another area. Opponents are coming from every direction and we can feel overwhelmed to even spot opportunities. It’s the ongoing game of whack a mole that every business owner plays.

Our internal motivation is high. If it weren’t, we’d be doing something different than running our own business. But even our internal motivation can be tested after awhile. Energy to move forward is often tested. Complacency can settle in. And it can be hard to spot, harder still to overcome.

Enter the help others can provide. For us, as business owners, the persona of an individual competitor doesn’t do the job, but peers do. By surrounding ourselves with peers – other business owners, but not competitors – we’re able to experience the push to test, change, measure and move forward. Being part of a professional peer advisory group brings out our very best. It does for us what Bird did for Magic. But it’s very different because it’s not at our expense. Magic wanted to win. That meant Bird had to lose. Sports is a zero-sum game. Business isn’t.

A group of business owners is gathered. They’ve agreed they want to review their financials. A financial/accounting expert is going to help the group. Everything is confidential. This is a safe place.

The members are interested in key numbers and the ratios that indicate company health. Most admit they’re not as comfortable with this stuff. Some are savvier than others because the group is diverse. Not all of them have a financial background (or knowledge). Some admit they wish they were more fluent in financial understanding, but they’re just not as interested in it. That’s the reason they’re doing this.

Most admit they’re feeling a bit uneasy about it all. This isn’t comfortable. It’s like showing folks your underwear. It’s a level of vulnerability that everybody is feeling. But they know each other well enough to know nobody is going to judge them. They trust each other. And each of them is in an industry pretty unique to them. Profit margins vary wildly. So do costs.

The financial/accounting guru begins by telling them about key numbers worthy of their ongoing focus. He suggests a one-page dashboard each of them can craft for their own business by inserting some key numbers. He explains what the numbers mean so everybody can better understand how those numbers reflect their own company’s performance. They learn it’s like the dashboard of your car – it indicates what’s happening at this very moment. But the moment may change. Watch the numbers long enough and you’ll likely get some sense of a trend or direction he says.

They’re excited about what this push is going to do for them and their business.

As they dive into their own numbers, doing the exercises presented by the accounting expert, they’re filled with questions. The discussion is lively, energized by business owners who are sharing, asking questions and figuring out new things to test, measure and change. They’re all driven to grow by learning and understanding. Many of them admit they’ve never done anything like this before.

At the end of the meeting, they go around the room to provide any feedback on today’s session. Every member says it’s been one of the most profitable meetings they’ve ever been in. Not just a meeting with this group, but any meeting. Ever.

Almost every member mentions being pushed. Many confess entering into the meeting with some dread. None of them doubt the value of using what they’ve learned. In fact, they want their next meeting to focus on how they can incorporate what they’ve learned into their weekly management. So the agenda is set with unanimous approval to not let this excitement dwindle. “Let’s make this a permanent improvement in how we operate our business,” suggests one member. Agreed.

A private survey at the end of the meeting reveals that these high achieving, successful business owners would have NEVER done something like this were it not for this group. Wrote one member…

Never in a million years would I have told you I’d share my financial information, but it was eye-opening. It left me feeling more confident that my company is performing well, but I now know some things I can do to make it perform better.

Another said…

I was quite nervous about this meeting. I wasn’t sure how my company would stack up. So happy this happened though because my company’s success doesn’t depend on anybody else. Thank you.

Would this have happened without the group? Each member would tell you, “No!” And they all know they’d have lost one of their very best opportunities to grow and move forward.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

Randy