I’m talking him off the ledge. He owns his own business. A business he started over 10 years ago. A business he now hates.
Well, he doesn’t hate the business, but he hates going to work. Every Sunday evening he begins dreading Monday morning.
“I don’t want to do this any more. I just want to pull the covers over my head and stay in bed.”
The toll is high. His family bickers constantly. His health isn’t terrific. He’s drinking a tad more than before. He can’t remember the last time he exercised. Or went to the doctor for a checkup.
He tells me this isn’t what he bargained for. I tell him, “This is exactly the life you bargained for.” Silence.
I thought he hung up on me, but he was just sitting quietly in stunned disbelief that life had gotten so out of control.
I sat quietly knowing he’s not alone. Saddened by the fact that I’m encountering too many small business owners who feel owned by their business instead of the other way around.
Home offices can be from hell, but so can other offices. Small, medium and large businesses can be just as demon possessed as a homebased business. They need a cure. And like any other ailment, there’s not a single prescription because the illnesses are varied.
Don’t let your small business kill you. Or over-run your life. Today, I’d like to give you just a few simple, but powerful ideas to consider.
Hint: These powerful ideas have everything to do with YOU, not your business. It starts with YOU.
Would you do me a favor? Subscribe to the podcast. Thanks!
The proverb is true. The journey of 1000 miles does begin with a single step.
The first step is often tough though. You consider everything that can go wrong. You question yourself about every little detail of the journey.
“What if I screw up?”
“What if it doesn’t work out?”
“What if I blow it?”
I have another question, “What if you never start – even small?” You’ll never get any further along than where you are right now. Look around. Get comfortable…because you’re not going anywhere if you’re not willing to go small. Warning: getting too comfortable just looking at the current view will kill any chance you’ve got to get to that mountain peak in the distance!
Go! Move. Take some meaningful action right now!
I don’t know if you’ll ever get where you’re headed, but I know for a certainty that you’ll never get there by sitting still.
Go now. Go small. Figure it out as you go. Keep your eyes open and enjoy the scenery along the way, too.
As Spock would say, “Live long and prosper!”
P.S. My wallpaper photo isn’t the one used in this post, but I really like this one. Visit Indraneel’s Flickr page.
Now that the About page has been rewritten – and I’m not saying I’m finished with it – it’s time to release this episode. It’s been coming for quite a long time. In fact, for over 2 weeks I’ve sat down to record this episode more times than I can count. Each time I simply decided against it. I don’t think it was fear as much as it was trying to figure out how to tell the story.
This past Saturday I went into The Yellow Studio, muted the sound of the college football game playing on the flat screen, and launched forth. One take (I almost never do multiple takes and I never, ever edit). No script. No notes. I just started to tell the story as briefly as I could – because I know you don’t really care about all the details. Shoot, I don’t even care about them much!
I do care about you. I care that you’ve given me your time and attention. I care about you, and I care about your business and your life. Not in some hokey sort of way, but in a way that’s right. At least it’s right for me. Part of my challenge with the Internet is all the talk of scope and scale. As a business person I fully understand those things, but as a person — I could care less!
For the better part of 6 months I’ve been doing some heavy thinking, which isn’t that easy for somebody whose brain is as small as mine. That explains the headaches.
I reached a conclusion some months ago as I reviewed how many things in my professional life had changed. I surveyed the variety of opportunities coming my way. I examined the people who have entered my life in the last few years. Mostly, I closely examined my contributions, or lack of them. Situations and circumstances where I felt I was doing good work. Others where I definitely was not.
Things change. Thanks to time, circumstances, opportunities and a host of other variables that life slings our way. Weeks, if not months ago, I knew it was time.
For something completely different.
It’s time to move on. It’s time to get going.
BulaNetwork.com ‘s first iteration dies and now is born a new identity, a new purpose –
BulaNetwork.com becomes a new media company.
Today’s show goes behind the scenes to tell you exactly what’s been happening and why. I’d love to hear what you think about it.
As with all effective re-boots, this one means the “finder” gets a fresh start. Whatever happened in the past is now over. Whatever work was in process is now permanently interrupted and gone. The future will now be determined by what happens starting today. This re-boot won’t involve me wiping out all the past though. The previous posts and podcasts episodes will remain. They’re here for archive purposes only though. The future shall not resemble the past!
Who do you want to serve? That’s your ideal customer or your target market.
Is your pricing helping or hindering your ability to reach your target market? Your value proposition must befit the market you’re trying to conquer.
Every week I work on other peoples’ businesses. I regularly encounter both problems. Small business owners who haven’t properly defined their ideal customer struggle to find any market. Businesses sometimes fail to present the correct value proposition to reach their target market. That is, they price their offers too low and aren’t taken seriously, or they price their offers too high and are unable to justify it.
Small business owners desperate for revenue often choose to do business with anybody who will say, “Yes.” It can tear their business apart as they soon find out that they’re now tethered to a bad customer who drains their time, money and resources in the never ending quest to simply satisfy a customer not likely to ever be satisfied. “I wish I had never done business with this customer,” is a common refrain I hear.
Sometimes – in fact, more often than not – I find small businesses who under price their services. Again, desperate for revenue they think by lowering their price they’re giving the prospect a compelling reason to say, “Yes.” Instead, they’re diminishing their opportunities to serve their target market.
Every small business owner should find some quiet time to more seriously consider their target market and how their pricing strategy can be adapted to help them more effectively reach that market.
Are You Serious About Building Your Business? Click Play.
Let’s Start From The Beginning. Or The End.
Among the most important work of building any business are the following:
1. Getting what’s in your head documented so the gap between knowing and doing is closed. When principle players of a business don’t document what they know, the organization is unable to learn. Only learning organizations remain viable over time.
2. Getting systems built so products/services can be delivered with predictable success over and over. Some call it scale. Some call it sustainability. Whatever you call it, it’s urgent that every business build a work-flow that enables the delivery of the service to be excellent every single time. The exception, poor service, should be the exception – not the rule.
3. Once systems have become second nature, it’s time to consider automation – putting some activities on auto-pilot. This may involve lower cost labor executing activities previously done by more skilled people. It may involve using technology to perform functions previously done manually, giving the company more man hours for more profitable functions.
All of this boils down to a simple “easier-said-than-done” approach to business building:
If Then Systems
“IF” this happens, “THEN” here’s what our business does to respond.
Every business is nothing more than a series of requests. Daily our lives are driven by requests. Customers have requests. Prospects have requests. Partners have requests.
Businesses run into trouble when they aren’t able to effectively and efficiently handle all these requests. Every stress felt by a company stems from that company’s inability to properly handle all the requests put upon it. From cash flow, to lead generation, to making payroll – and every other challenge facing a business – they all can be fixed with an improvement to more consistently deliver superior value in answer to all the requests.
Among the big challenges facing most small businesses is this one, “How can we say YES to this request?” Unfortunately, too many small business owners don’t consider a more important question, “SHOULD we say YES to this request?”
It really starts with making decisions that put the business in the best possible position for success. Success is based on financial results, number of happy customers, how many customers will recommend our company, happy employees and ongoing innovation and creativity.
The Solution Is Also The Problem
The problem is TLC. The solution is also TLC.
Time • Logistics • Communication
Time is an obvious problem. We don’t have enough of it. Ever.
Logistics is a multi-faceted problem. It’s who and where, all at the same time. Who has it. Where are they at with it. Simply put, logistics is work-flow. It’s how we get things done. We do it with the help of other people.
Communication is internal and external. It’s how we talk, what we say, when we say it and it involves every aspect of our communication with people inside the company, or those directly involved in our work (suppliers, vendors, partners, anybody who is associated with our serving customers). It’s also how we communicate (in all forms) with our prospects and customers.
The elephant in the room is one word: EMOTION.
Every element of TLC evokes emotions, either positive (calming, excitement, intrigue, comfort, happiness) or negative (fear, dread, anxiety, depression, unhappiness).
It’s important that a business establish basic guidelines and expections to build a TLC model that is effective in building the most successful business possible.
An Obvious Truth: If the business suffers, everybody associated with that business suffers. If a business thrives, everybody associated with that business benefits.
That means every decision must be congruent with the purpose of the business. So we begin with the end in view, “What is the purpose of your business?”
Money. Well, of course. But that’s an outcome – a hopeful outcome – of what a business does. The purpose is something deeper, more important. “There’s something more important than money?” Sure.
Time is more important. You can earn more money, but you can’t create more time.
And this first component of TLC presses on us how the purpose of our business has to be focused on one big question, “How do you want to spend your days?”
That is, what do you want to do with your time? Specifically, what do you want to do with your working time?
Every successful person – in our case, business people – must determine how they’d like to spend their time. Every day people get up and DO something. It’s that something we DO that determines our daily purpose. It establishes who we are. It defines us.
We can fight against it. We can even deny it. But when all is said and done, it’s what’s done that defines who we are – and what kind of business we build.
If everything is important, nothing is important.
Be congruent.
Establishing priorities is one of the most important decisions facing every leader. It forms the foundation of the entire business. Openly and subtly it tells everybody what we value most.
Business owners often make the mistake of making everything important. They love the mantra, “Sweat the details.” Or, “the devil is in the details.” It’s a cowardly way of justifying their poor management style.
The autocrat – a person with absolute, singular authority – rules with an iron fist. Unmoved by input from anybody else, he’s the center of his own universe. Every good idea must be his own, otherwise, it’s a bad idea. Every job in the company is best performed by him, but he only suffers the foolishness of others because he’s too important to do every job. He’s not too important to be the backseat driver behind every decision and every action taken by others.
Over time – sooner than later – the business realizes that there really are no priorities because every single thing is important. The owner’s ire is provoked by everything. People are unable to get a read on what really matters because it all seems to matter.
The practical reality is we all know things have a value based on their relation to other things. Some things are more important than other things. It’s important that people in a company draw the proper conclusion. That is, they must quickly learn what matters most. Leadership provides that answer with the establishment of priorities.
Congruency. Have you ever seen somebody in a place where you didn’t expect them? Sure, we’ve all done that. Perhaps we’re accustomed to seeing a person who waits on us regularly at our favorite eating joint. One evening we go out to attend a concert. We see somebody who looks familiar, but we’re unable to place them. They approach us and all of sudden it dawns on us who they are. Why did it take us so long to recognize them? Because in this moment of time, our congruency meter is thrown off by the context of this concert. In the restaurant setting we have no problem recognizing them. That’s congruency. It’s how we all make sense of the world.
It’s also among the many components that explains why the abused wife stays with the abusive husband. He says he loves her…after he’s beaten the crap out of her. He says one thing and does something different. Incongruities confuse her. She must make sense of it somehow. So, over time, she convinces herself his words mean more than his actions. “He just loses control sometimes,” she might say. Or, “I shouldn’t provoke him.” She has to make sense of her world in any way she can. And she does.
Employees and other people associated with our business do the same thing. They must make sense of things. When ownership says one thing, but does something different…or when ownership does one thing, then contradicts that with an opposite action…people naturally seek to make sense of it.
Being congruent speaks to every aspect of TLC. Our ability to be congruent with who we really are, what we really want and what we think is really most important – those send strong signals inside and outside the business. They mean everything to our business.
In the next show I’ll dive into the T of TLC, time.
Today’s show addresses one of my most recent urgent topics with clients, pricing.
Coupled with pricing have been ongoing conversations about budgets and discounting. Blame it on the economy, but whatever the reason I’m finding so many small business owners experiencing challenges to their pricing structure.
Prospects blame it on the constraints of the budget. “I don’t have the budget for that amount,” they claim. Quite often we’re stuck with a single priced offer.
Look at those crabs. You’re budget won’t allow you to spend $6. Well, that’s why that one $5 crab is sitting there. Notice there’s only one $5 crab. Brilliant marketing and sales strategy. Save a buck, but there’s only one of them! Buy him. He’s puny, but you can save a whopping dollar. He’s a budget crab!
Washington, D.C. is living proof that budgets were meant to be broken. I’ve never seen a budget yet that wasn’t flexible. It’s an easy scapegoat for buyers. Blame it on the budget. Don’t fall for that.
Mentioned in today’s show is SaltyDroid.info. It has to do with commenting on blogs. Listen to the show and let me know if this has ever happened to you. Call me an “idiot,” but I’m willing to own my words. I was very tempted in today’s show to riff about the curse of digital anonymity, but I’ll save that for another day. My comments at SD’s site do have application to today’s subject though. I did make an effective tie in.
Check out the “Hire Me” page. It’s brand new.
Plug in your email address over there to the right and I’ll make sure you get my Bula Business Builder Newsletter. Don’t worry. It comes out quite randomly.
I’m talking him off the ledge. He owns his own business. A business he started over 10 years ago. A business he now hates.
