Entrepreneurship | GROW GREAT

Pain: It Doesn’t Care If It’s Work Or Personal #4026

Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Personal Development, Podcast / By Randy Cantrell

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Pain- It Doesn't Care If It's Work Or Personal #4026 - GROW GREAT

When I read Dustin McKissen’s article on Inc. I was already filled with a fistful of stories of top executives and business owners. Dustin’s article, entitled “3 Things I Did to Come Back from Career Failure” resonated with me because I knew how true it was. Not because I know Dustin personally, although he’s totally the kind of person I’d love to get to know. No, it was because there’s just so much fraud among business people, especially leaders. Even this morning I noticed a friend, Marcus “The Sales Lion” Sheridan posted a short video about comparison-itis and trying to find balance.

Conversely, it seems easier to find content online that extols the virtues of hustle, outworking others and making choices to fuel your career or business. Success evangelists like Gary Vaynerchuk, Grant Cardone and others (whose work I respect) preach loudly sermons of 16-18 hour workdays, hitting the ground at 5am, putting in the work, giving up things so you can devote more time to the hustle of your business. Gary at least is very clear that it’s how he’s choosing to live. Sure, his sermons insinuate that it’s the way to go, but he says you should make your own choices. I know it’s hard for some of his disciples to make their own choices though because they so desperately believe and follow his advice. I don’t blame him for that. It’s just these two fundamental differences in how people approach life. Nobody doubts where Gary is placing his bet. All his chips are in the middle of the table toward buying the New York Jets one day by accumulating as much wealth as possible because that’s what it’s going to take to buy the Jets. Entry into the NFL ain’t cheap. Just this week Gary announced the start of VaynerSports, a new sports agency collaboration.

I’m not here telling you what to do. Nor am I going to judge whichever side of this debate you embrace. Roll the way you want to roll. There are prices to be paid for either choice. The work/life balance crowd perhaps could find greater financial success and business accomplishment if they spent additional hours at work. The spend-all-my-time-working crowd perhaps would find greater family/relationship success if they spent less time at work. Trade off’s abound.

CEO’s and business owners aren’t robots. Yet.

They’re people with a past. And with hopes of a better future. Sounds a lot like everybody else, right? That’s because they’re not different. Not really.

They had parents who may have failed miserably, or who may have succeeded wildly. They did well in school. Or they failed. They have advanced degrees. Or no degrees. They’re extroverted. Or terribly introverted. They drive fancy foreign exotic cars. Or they don’t even own a car. They wear $3000 custom made suits. Or they wear jeans and t-shirts. They’re articulate, able to easily express their thoughts and feelings. Or they stumble, battling to express one easily understood idea. Some are engineers. Others are artists. Some show off the money they make. Others appear to be penniless.

Welcome to the world of absolutes. This much is absolutely true – 100% of the time. There are no absolutes. For every CEO or business owner who did it one way, there are dozens of others who didn’t do it that way at all. Time and chance happens to all of us. For good. Or bad.

There’s another absolute — everybody hurts, sometimes. Cue the REM hit song. Pain is universal. Money won’t cure it. Business success won’t remedy it. Not in terms of getting rid of pain completely or preventing it. Life is a grind no matter if you’re failing or succeeding. And sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. Some months ago I remarked to a friend that success can sometimes feel like failing. I’m sure the reverse is also true sometimes.

Many things aren’t universal – like how you choose to approach business. But pain is very universal. We do all hurt. Sometimes.

During a regularly scheduled business meeting with the leaders of the organization, the CEO notices one of the VP’s isn’t himself. It’s Thursday afternoon. Just after lunch. The group is normally very business-like, but fun loving. That’s how the owner (who is also the CEO) operates. He takes business seriously. Himself, less so. It’s a culture he fosters, especially among his inner circle – these 3 people seated at the table with him.

Rick, the VP of Technology, joined the team 3 years ago because it more ideally suited his personality. He often jokes with people that he’s a “geek with a personality.” Rick is the kind of perceptive technology guy most CEO’s would love to have. He’s not so in love with the technology as he is the positive impact it can have on the company. The CEO hired him largely because during the interview process Rick impressed him with a practical approach to incorporating and integrating technology…coupled with his ability to relate to and understand the perspective of non-technical people. Rick has been a perfect fit for the role here.

All week the CEO has noticed Rick is quieter than normal. Much more so. He wrote it off as a pre-occupation with a new project management software integration that’s scheduled to go live late next week. The project is going well, but the CEO knows Rick is fanatical about details and obsesses about having all his ducks in a row. It’s just another reason why the organization loves having Rick.

The meeting opens up with the CEO going around the room asking everybody to say one thing they’re thankful for. Lots of leaders begin meetings with some sort of “check in.” This leader hopes to focus his small group of leaders on something he values – gratitude. He begins with his own story. “I’m thankful for the contract we got yesterday. I know you’ve all worked hard to land that deal and it’s going to really open up some opportunities we’ve been looking for.” He turns toward the VP of Sales who talks about being thankful for his wife of 8 years. Friday night (tomorrow night), they’ll be celebrating by attending a concert of one of her favorite bands, Coldplay. The group teases him kindly about going to a Coldplay concert. Up next? Rick.

Rick’s expression quickly grows serious after the chuckles subside. He looks as though he’s about to cry. The room grows tense and anxious. Rick mutters, “I’m sorry.”

The CEO takes the reins. These guys have been together as a group for at least 3 years. Rick is the newest member. The others have been together almost twice that long. The door to this meeting is closed. This is a private setting of four men who’ve been leading this company in strong double-digit growth since things started. Fifty percent annual growth is more common than not. These are exciting times, driven by some pretty exciting people. The CEO isn’t about to let this tension get the best of them.

“Rick, you’re among friends. We’re here for you,” says the CEO.

Rick is struggling to gain his composure. Speech isn’t easy. Not right now. “Take your time,” encourages the CEO.

“I’m sorry, guys,” replies Rick.

The CEO, sensing something major is happening with Rick, decides to disrupt the meeting’s set agenda. “Gentlemen, we’re in this together. Today’s meeting agenda is now changed. We’re going to conduct this meeting for ourselves. There’s nothing on our agenda that can’t be pushed off for another day. But this – this right here – this pain deserves our best efforts. Let me tell you something else I’m thankful for — each of you. Rick, tell us whatever you feel comfortable telling us. We’re here to help.”

Rick swallows, tears are now coming more freely. “My wife left me,” confesses Rick. The VP of Sales slumps his shoulders almost immediately, as if to be guilty for celebrating his 8th wedding anniversary. Rick has been married longer – 14 years, or close to it. That’s all Rick can say before almost falling to pieces.

The CEO is a toucher. I can relate because so am I. He touches people on the shoulder at appropriate times. He’ll even hug somebody if the occasion calls for it. Sensing this is one of those times, he gets up, walks over to Rick, leans down and puts his arm around him. In a scene you just won’t see in normal business scenarios, the CEO tells Rick that he loves him.

Wait a minute, what?

“Rick, I love you man. We all love you,” says the CEO.

It takes a few minutes, but Rick begins to grow comfortable and he tells them of his wife’s decision. The details don’t matter as much as their net impact. It had happened Sunday night. Here we are on a Thursday, early afternoon. Rick has lived with this for almost 4 days, suffering in silence. And now, it’s all coming out. Rick is feeling horrible, he says, for bringing this problem to work.

That sparks the discussion of pain having no respect for where you are, or what your role is. Or how much money you make. Or what corporate title you wear, if you wear one at all. Or the make/model of car you drive. Or the square footage of your house. No, pain doesn’t care about any of those things. Pain just is.

Nobody on this management team would dare argue that personal pain impacts the workplace. Or that workplace pain often travels home. Some are pompous enough – and dishonest enough – to claim perfect skills in compartmentalizing pain. Sorry, I don’t buy it.

Pain hurts and it doesn’t care where you are what else you’ve got going on. Have you ever had a headache? I get them every now and again. When your head hurts it’s impossible to set it aside. It permeates everything you do. Or everything you attempt to do. Reading isn’t going to happen. Concentration is impossible, unless you include concentrating on how badly your head hurts. You don’t feel like doing much of anything…and unless you’ve got good meds to help you get over it, laying down to sleep it off is also impossible. It’s the biggest elephant in the room no matter what you’ve got planned. No matter what deadlines are staring you down. Your headache doesn’t care about any of that.

CEO’s and business owners can experience levels of pain unique to their role. They have the authority to make decisions that have the biggest impact on their companies. Risks are higher. Consequences potentially more powerful. Rewards are also higher. Well, their potential is. The higher up the ladder you go, the more powerful the impact of the decisions made at that level. Up goes the pain potential, too.

What do you do with your pain?

Rick was trying hard to deal with it alone. He held it together pretty well – albeit quietly – until the staff meeting, where a co-worker unsuspectedly mentioned his own wedding anniversary. That’s all she wrote. Rick lost it. All the guys understood why, too. Maybe it needed to happen as it did. Maybe it couldn’t have happened any other way. A person’s personality and company culture have quite a role to play.

Thinking about the CEO though and how often I’ve encountered a top level leader who was enduring something painful – whether personal or work related – I was made to realize how valuable it is to have an atmosphere and culture where he or she can shell things down. And feel safe. Secure. Knowing that the tears won’t diminish how others see them. Knowing the only judgments being made are, “How can we help?”

How can Rick quantify the price or the benefit of his team members as they rally to support him during what he admits is the most painful experience of his entire life? He can’t. It’s priceless. It’s value no amount of money can buy. These are relationship with people, in a culture that is extraordinary. Rick knows it.

Almost daily I tell a CEO or business owner that my role is to do for them what nobody else can – to help deal with, and overcome or endure their pain. Yes, it’s about building stronger, more profitable businesses and organizations. However, sometimes our pain has nothing to do with business yet it has the potential to negatively impact our business. Where will YOU go to have those conversations and to get some perspectives to help you manage them better? Who will you turn to, not to complain and moan, but to help you take meaningful actions to fix it and get past it? Who can you lean on and not make it a burden they’ve no business bearing? Where can you go where you’re completely safe and secure knowing that there’ll be no repercussion for you or others by letting your hair down?

You deserve to find a place where you can better manage your own pain. We both know you’ve got plenty of it. It goes with the turf, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore it. Truth is, if you keep doing that it’ll take a heavy toll on your life professionally and personally. The cost is too high. And the remedy is too available.

In a world focused on vitamins, I’m working very hard to be an aspirin.

Be well.

Randy

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Customer Base: The Foundation Of Any Business #4024

Entrepreneurship, Getting New Customers, Serving Existing Customers Better / By Randy Cantrell

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Customer Base- The Foundation Of Any Business #4024 - GROW GREAT

I’m too old to remember my first repeat customer, but I’m not so old that I can’t remember how powerful it was to have customers who’d come back and buy from me again, and again. Like most people with a sales background I was basically lazy. Repeat business fueled my inner passion to not work any harder than necessary. The effort exerted to persuade somebody to buy from me once, was at least twice (maybe three times) harder than it was to repeat that process. Enter the power of building a solid customer base!

How can more business owners fail to understand the power of it?

That’s easy. We need sales today. That whole “what have you done for me today” mindset has set up harder than the concrete foundation that serves to illustrate today’s episode. Too often we concentrate on making the cash register ring today (okay, I know we don’t all have cash registers, but it’s still the metaphor for getting customers…or actually, for making a sale). I was still a teenager when I learned that businesses can chase all sorts of things, but chasing cash is the worst one of all. Customers, inventory, employees — we have to chase many things and succeed in catching them. But nothing is worse than chasing cash. It fuels a desperation that every business person has experienced at some point in their life.

Short-term thinking sparks us to concentrate on getting customers today. Sometimes it compels us to be too transaction oriented, losing sight of the value we need to provide to our prospective buyers. As we focus on making the register ring today we can neglect to pay close enough attention to the clients who are running from us out the back door. Intently focused on the front door, we just care about getting new bodies in so we can make our cash flow dreams come true.

Problem: it’s a never-ending story!

Like the worse drug addiction, business owners grow addicted to new customers. Ask ten business owners about their existing customer list, “When you did last reach out to them?” — and quite often the response is, “Oh, I don’t know. It’s been a little while.” Probe a bit more and ask them to provide you a print out of their best customers and you’ll quickly see how little they focus on people who have purchased from them in the past. I know because I do it with some regularity and the responses are almost always the same. “I’m sure I could get that for you,” is the most common refrain I get when I ask an owner if they have a list of their best clients. Those same owners can much more easily tell you what yesterday’s sales were, or even what today’s sales are so far. All eyes are on the front door!

Pour a slab, a foundation. What’s next? Frame it up. Finish it out. At some point we’ve got windows and doors. Doors give us entry to the building. And exit.

Yet we can more easily focus on getting new customers – the entry – and not focus much at all on serving existing customers BETTER – so we can prevent customers from leaving us! Have you ever watched an episode of Gold Rush, that Discovery Channel show about gold miners up in Alaska? One of the worst things that can happen to a gold mining operation is for the sluice box (the contraption that is designed to catch the gold) to malfunction and let gold pass through. It’s money going down the drain (or out in the wash).

That’s what happens when we don’t pay attention to existing customers! Focus on loading more payload into the front end of the process — like gold miners who make sure they’ve got enough dirt to wash — and you may soon discover there’s no gold coming out the other end. No customers. No customer base.

A critical component of building a great business is developing systems that will effectively bring in new customers while simultaneously continue to dazzle the existing customers. Great businesses know how to do both at the same time. So why don’t more businesses focus on both of these? Why do some take their eyes off of customers as soon as payment is received, or services/goods are rendered?

Because they fail to see the true benefit of customers who have already said, “Yes.”

Because they don’t know the true lifetime value of a customer.

Because they’ve developed a system for attracting/getting new customers, but they’ve not developed one for hanging onto existing customers.

Because they think new customers are more valuable than existing ones.

There are likely many other reasons. None of them make any sense though because they all erode the customer base. It’s a common plight of businesses that are too focused on transactions, not customers.

It’s the siren call of the cash register. We get lured by the quest for new money. Meanwhile, the old money is walking or running out the back door taking their business to a competitor.

What’s The Value Of Existing Customers?

A: They already said YES to us.

You forgot that. All that hard work you put into attracting potential customers, and all the effort spent showing prospects why you are the ideal solution…that’s already been done with existing clients. They already experienced it and found you were worth the investment. You don’t have to go back to square one and try to attract them. It’s ground you already plowed, planted, fertilized and watered. You’ve likely neglected it so it’s going to require some effort to get the soil in good shape again, but that’s doable. Tend your garden.

B: They have feedback that will help us improve and grow.

Because existing customers have been through the process with us, they have a unique perspective. We can tap them for insights into ways we can do better. Refusing to have meaningful conversations with them is a lost and wasted resource that might make all the difference in the world in us experiencing growth or failing to grow. All because we simply didn’t ask the questions that could have helped us.

Find out from your existing customers what the experience felt like. Ask them why they bought from you. Ask them what went well…and what didn’t. Too often we’re nervous to have conversations with existing clients because we’re fearful they’ll aim a double-barrel shotgun at us and blast away with complaints and issues. Don’t fear that. Embrace it. Be hopeful you’ll get a few of those blasts because it’ll mean you can fix the problem.

C: The dissatisfied and unhappy existing clients can often become our most loyal advocates.

An existing customer with a problem is one of the biggest opportunities we’ve got. See it for what it is. Don’t shy away from it. Lean into it. This may be the first you’re hearing of it (likely if you’re not in the habit of checking in on existing customers regularly). Then, gather the facts, ask permission to look into this to see what you can do to fix it, then agree on a time when you’ll get back with them. Keep your word at every step. You’re trying to fix a problem and create the most loyal advocates you’ll ever have for your business. That’s because this client will have seen how you respond to problems. Most customers don’t see or experience that. It’s powerful so don’t neglect to use it fully.

A customer who is unhappy and willing to tell you about it can be turned into an advocate if you’ll handle it well. For starters, don’t get defensive. Acknowledge their pain and disappointment.

Next, apologize. Be genuinely apologetic about their experience. Don’t humor them. Don’t scold them. Don’t blame them. Accept full responsibility.

Then, assure them you’re going to fix it (but ONLY if you really intend to). Too often this is where I see businesses fail. They do pretty well up to this point, then implode by making a bad situation worse. They promise to fix it, then fail. Better to not promise, than to promise and not deliver! Be careful.

Ask the client what you need to do to make them happy. Failure to do this is equal to being offended by somebody only to have that person tell you exactly what they’re going to do to remedy the offense. No, YOU were offended. The terms of reconciliation are squarely on your shoulders, not theirs. But when it comes to customers we want to decide what we’re going to do to make them happy. All without ever asking them, “Mr. Customer, what would it take for me to make you thrilled?” Ask.

If you can remedy it on the spot, do it. Don’t delay. Business owners and other top leaders have the power to hit the Happiness Button for the customer immediately. Do it. Think as they’re telling you what they’d like — about how you’ll executive it, about how much it may cost (and I don’t mean in full profit costs, but in real hard raw costs to you) and make a decision. I’m not a fan of negotiating this, except in extreme circumstances where sometimes (rarely in my experience) I encounter an existing customer who is completely unreasonable. In over 40 years of running businesses I can count on one hand the number times that’s happened though. It’s rare. Most people are very reasonable and more often than not I encounter a proposal that is less than what I would have done otherwise.

Go above and beyond if you can. After the client tells you what you can do to recover, think seriously (and quickly) about dazzling them. It’s analogous to what Bible students often call “second mile religion” taken from Matthew 5:41, “And whosoever shall compel thee to go one mile, go with him two.” That’s where get that phrase, “going the extra mile.” Do that with your existing customer who is disappointed.

If you’re able to exceed their request, do it. Don’t overthink it. Don’t over calculate it. Remember, this person is going to tell everybody they know. And in the day of social media, that might mean many more people than you think. You can’t view this in isolation. This isn’t just a single client we’re talking about. It’s your company and what your company represents. It’s reputation. Handle it with great care.

D: Existing customers want to buy more.

Most people put this up front. I put it last because it’s important, but it fosters too much self-serving behavior. I’d encourage you to focus on how you’re robbing existing customers of more services, products or whatever it is you DO. By neglecting them you’re not serving them well. Worse yet, you may be forcing them to search elsewhere to remedy a problem you could more easily fix for them. You’re an existing and known supplier. That gives you a cost advantage even if your prices are slightly higher — a time cost advantage. Your customer doesn’t have to get to know you, or trust you. They don’t have to go through the vetting process, or the trust building process. That’s worth money to them. You owe it to them to be there when they need you without forcing them to chase you down. It’s your job to be on the forefront of knowing their needs as they happen in real-time. That means you have to drive the bus in this relationship. Take charge. Be of service.

Solid Business Growth Hinges On A Solid Foundation

The bigger the building, the stronger the foundation required. The same is true with our businesses. You can pitch a tent anywhere. It’s not a sustainable structure. We’ve got too many businesses being run by tentmakers. Anybody can make one sale, or 100. Can you keep making sales? Can you make people happy. Consistently, over time. Sustainable is the minimum bar you must jump. You’ve been doing that. That means you continue to find new customers willing to let you serve them. That’s excellent, but that’s not providing a solid customer base, or foundation.

Strengthen your foundation for quantum leap growth by making sure you’re dazzling customers over and over again. Start judging yourself more strictly on how many people agree to do business with you a second, third or fourth time. Close that back door and stop letting customers leave you to find a solution elsewhere. That’s how you’ll grow your business!

I know it’s not complex, sophisticated or filled with buzzwords that prove how smart we can be. That’s because business building isn’t effective with all that stuff. The guys who pour the slab have to get a few fundamental things just right. It’s not complex, sophisticated or filled with buzzwords. It’s doing the right thing the right way. Period. Go to work!

Randy

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Momentum: How To Get It, How To Keep It #4023

Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Podcast / By Randy Cantrell

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Momentum- How To Get It, How To Keep It #4023 - GROW GREAT Momentum Monday.

Is that how you view Mondays? Most don’t. It’s time for you to stand apart from the crowd.

Today’s show is a quick 15 minute episode recorded while out and about hustling. Pardon the less than studio-like sound quality, but hopefully the message is one to spark inspiration as you start a new work week.

Prompted by my passion for Stanley Cup hockey and business, I’ve had conversations about momentum in the past week. Those talks provoked me to hit the record button on my iPhone while out and about today, hoping to avoid the thunderstorms looming here in DFW.

Enjoy.

Randy

P.S. Today’s show was recorded with my earbud microphone (JBL Inspire 300 Yurbuds).

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Lip Service, Customer Service & Employee Happiness (People Determine Your Profits) #4019

Books, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Podcast / By Randy Cantrell

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Lip Service, Customer Service & Employee Happiness (People Determine Your Profits) #4019 - GROW GREAT

In the summer of 1998 one of my all-time favorite sales gurus, Jeffrey Gitomer, published a book that would become my chief “most gifted” book – Customer Satisfaction Is Worthless, Customer Loyalty Is Priceless: How to Make Customers Love You, Keep Them Coming Back and Tell Everyone They Know. I’ve given that book to employees, friends, business owners, CEOs and even people with no real business element in their life. It’s a book about and for fanatics – or those who need to become fanatical about service. I had encountered Gitomer sometime earlier – I don’t remember where – and I was already a fan by the time the Business Journals around the country picked up his column on selling.

Gitomer-Satisfaction Hard to believe a southern boy fell for a guy from Philly, but I did. Gitomer was blunt, candid and delivered his message with a passion I felt was long-overdue. From my earliest days I saw the benefit and long-term value of not being transactional. Customer happiness was always my focus, even as a teenager selling stereo gear. Why would any sales guy or business owner be okay with customers who just felt “okay” about their purchase or their service? Made no sense to me.

What did make sense was Gitomer evangelical passion and candor. Twenty years ago – as now – businesses continued to market how much they cared about their customers. Few walked the walk. That’s still true. It’s common to see salespeople and business people grab the money. And run.

Earlier in the 90’s – years before Gitomer’s book – a couple of authors wrote another book I had fallen in love with – The Customer Comes Second: Put Your People First and Watch ’em Kick Butt by Hal Rosenbluth and Diane McFerrin Peters. At the time it was quite a remarkable message. Love your employees before you love your customers because the employees are the ones serving the customer. Again, I had intuitively believed that and been mostly attracted to companies who behaved that way. It helped that Mr. Rosenbluth ran a high growth company that wound up topping revenues of $6B (that’s BILLION) before selling to American Express. How could a guy like that get it wrong? Well, he didn’t get it wrong. Others do.

This clearly was a time of enlightenment for me as a business guy because somewhere during this time I became aware of a man who appeared to be the epitome of a nice guy, Jim Goodnight. He ran a little enterprise in North Carolina called SAS. Talk about fanaticism. Goodnight was fanatical about making SAS the best place on the planet for employees. The Internet had yet to be born. Silicon Valley startups wouldn’t happen for many years. Goodnight put employees on a pedestal and provided services for them that made other business owners cringe. Even then employers were searching diligently for ways to reduce overhead in the way of employee benefits. Instead, Goodnight was searching for ways to provide more benefits that would enhance the lives of his employees. He fascinated me. And made me want to be more like him albeit on a much smaller scale. Goodnight’s SAS blew past the $3B (that’s BILLION) mark last year.

Why do business owners and CEOs still not get it?

I’ve only reached one conclusion. It’s because most are too short-sighted. Yes, some just don’t see people as valuable as they should. They figured humans are like generic parts, interchangeable. One is as good as another. If you lose one, no big deal. Let’s just plug another in place. But even those who believe people are valuable has set limits on that value. I mean, after all, the benefits packages have to be reduced by 25% this year no matter what. It’s easy to say people matter, but it’s very different to make the investment to prove it.

Even privately held companies are under constant pressure to exceed last month’s numbers. Group think kicks in because we’re all reading Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company and Inc. Innovation. Creativity. Blah, blah, blah. We read about it, give it a few seconds of thought then we go back to the reality that it has little to do with our life and our business. We’ve got to get sales up. And costs down. It’s the ying and yang of business building that mostly lures all of us. Along the way, we can easily forget the impact on our people — and our customers. We grab today’s dollars because we’re unable to see the five dollar bills we might be able to garner next month. A bird in the hand and all that.

It’s understandable. Well, sorta.

I’ve sat with too many CEOs who lamented about an employee’s performance – a key employee – who performed well until a bit more pressure was applied (intentional or not), proving they couldn’t quite hold up. We’re no different. Apply enough pressure on us to grow that top line, or the bottom line…and we’ll be likely to grab the dollar in front of us. I don’t make harsh judgments about leaders who grow short-sighted, even if I don’t always agree with that strategy.

It was in the early 80’s when I first wrote down and began preaching what I called “non-negotiable standards.” I was involved in turning around a company that was just a few years old, but quickly the inventory had grown obsolete, the people disenchanted and the systems non-existent. Two things ruled all my early actions: cleaning up the company (physically) and establishing non-negotiable standards. I wasted no time telling people what that meant – “non-negotiable standards.” It means things you must do or refrain from doing else you’ll put your job at risk. Now before you think, “Man, how heavy handed” — tap the brakes.

It was fair. Candid, but fair. I wanted employees to own their behavior and performance. That hadn’t been happening. People were lackluster, lethargic and apathetic. Many of them didn’t last. I don’t doubt their goodness as people, but the culture had betrayed them. They had grown accustomed to the pathetic environment. Good performance happens at the hands of good performers. Good performers need fostering, training, encouragement and rewards. In short, they need standards to meet.

Quickly I learned that the good performers who survived had long been frustrated by the unfairness of busting their humps while the slackards sat around without accountability. They embraced the changes and soared. I’ve since seen it happened many times.

Talk is cheap.

I’ve not yet met the CEO or business owner who openly admits, “I don’t much care about my people. They’re all replaceable.” Instead, most of us – okay, all of us – give it lip service. Yes, some of us back up that talk, but many of us don’t. Some of us wish we could or would back it up. Others of us don’t much care, we just want to be polite and politically correct. A few of us are bullies who honestly don’t care about people. They’re a necessary evil and they vex our existence as leaders. Those are the folks I call “managers.” They’re not leaders. Honestly, they may not be very good managers (that is, people who oversee systems, processes and operations).

We lead people. We manage the work.

That’s my view. You may not share it. It’s okay. You can be wrong. 😉

I could write volumes of books on the horror stories I’ve heard about bosses who behave badly and who treat people even worse. You could likely be a contributing author. We’ve all got tons of these stories. But the behavior still persists.

I cringe every week because every week I hear multiple stories of bad boss behavior. Yelling, screaming, threatening – they’re just too commonplace in some workplaces. Grown people treated like pre-school children. Workers being humiliated. Supervisors and bosses feeling good about themselves by making sure the staff knows who is in charge. Like medieval fire breathing dragons, they roam the office just waiting for a white knight armed to the teeth to cut their head off. Unfortunately for many employees, no such knight ever arrives. Eventually, human indignities realize their limits, and people quit.

No big loss. Hire somebody else.

How much does it cost to hire or replace an employee in your company?

Most don’t know. They’ve never taken the time to compute the lost time, lost productivity, lost revenue or any other losses associated with a good employee walking (or sprinting) away. Sometimes it’s because the profits and revenues are high enough, it doesn’t much matter. That’s really shallow thinking. A business earning strong double digit net profits doesn’t seem bothered because they’re fat and happy. Unproductive perhaps, but fat and happy none the less. If an owner is banking $1M…it can be a daunting task to show him how a shift in his culture might result in a $1.25M income.

I live in the Land Of What’s Possible. What if?

What if we really embraced finding, training and retaining top talent? What if we pushed our chips into the middle of the table to build in some consistency and longevity among our employees? What if we actually put our employees first – above our customers? How would all that impact the customer experience?

Unfortunately many businesses will never find out. They’ll churn through people never figuring it out. They won’t calculate the cost – human cost or business cost.

Some will go out of business. The odds of failure in business are still staggering.

Others will survive in spite of themselves. They’ll never realize their full potential, but they don’t care. Enough. If they did, they’d find another way.

Books and articles about leadership may help shift a collective culture, but then again there’s Steve Jobs. Tyrants get worshipped. Some buy into the notion that you must be an insufferable maniac to succeed. Rather than try to persuade people otherwise, long ago I just decided to urge people working for such people – or people working in dysfunctional organizations – to find new opportunities. Get gone. Sooner than later. Protect yourself. Guard your heart and your own passion for doing good work. Life is way too short to work for a tyrant.

I wish I could impact the bigger picture, but I’m not naive about my own reach. Instead, I think it best to soar with my strengths as Donald O. Clifton wrote (the father of StrengthsFinder). I’m committed to serving leaders who already know the truth of profit generation and business building. People make THE difference. It’s not lip service. It’s not some better-felt-than-told philosophy. It’s a working culture that daily is willing to be tested to prove itself. Owners and CEOs who refuse to give an inch to behave otherwise. They remain committed to doing the right thing all the time, no matter what.

That kind of leadership resolve is rare, but it exists. Just today I had a nice conversation with a CEO who shared his story with me proving that his talk was anything but cheap. Big customer, little customer. They’re all the same to him – deserving of a great experience. He’s in the real estate game. He’s got a good sized team. Back last summer he recounted how he had to part company with an employee who simply didn’t understand that the CEOs “non-negotiable standards” are indeed NON-NEGOTIABLE. Grabbing the money – even for the firm – violated the principles and culture established by this high integrity CEO. He put his money where his mouth was. He acted, not based on financial gain, but on doing what was right. Why? Because he understands how big he’s going to win over the longer haul.

If business guys who achieved $3B and $6B respectively don’t convince you to value people, then I’m certainly not successful enough (financially) to persuade you.

Randy

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Will You Make A Better Decision Today? (Refuse To Stay Stuck) - GROW GREAT Podcast Episode 4015

4015 Will You Make A Better Decision Today? (Refuse To Stay Stuck)

Entrepreneurship, Leadership, On Being Extraordinary, Podcast / By Randy Cantrell

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:27 — 20.0MB)

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Will You Make A Better Decision Today? (Refuse To Stay Stuck) - GROW GREAT Podcast Episode 4015

CEOs and business owners, and every other kind of top leader, suffer losses. Businesses win and businesses lose. Some idea work. Others don’t.

It’s easy to gloat over the wins. Maybe it’s easier to get depressed about the losses. It can sure be easy to dwell on the losses and grow angrier at the world.

Cynicism runs rampant. Fiction does, too. Last week I talked quite a bit about beliefs and how we can get it wrong. Our wrongness, our losses and all the other garbage that fuels our complaining — it’s time for us (all of us) to own it.

Maybe we mostly see what we want to see. The path to Complaintville is smooth, easy and straight. “If only,” are two powerful words most of us use every now and again. They’re stables in the vocabulary of excuse-makers.

“But sometimes there is a valid reason for the loss,” says a CEO. And he’s right. Expert economists and finance folks will tell you that our businesses go one of four ways:

Our business mirrors the economy.
Our business mirrors the industry.
There is a Black Swan event.
We screwed up.

It’s that last one that we don’t like to admit. During my years of running luxury retailing companies I would often hear other people in my space lament everything from the weather, or big events happening in their market, to whether the local team won or lost a game. When you need a reason (a’hem, an excuse), they’re quite handy.

As leaders of the enterprise we certainly can impact the outcome. If our company mirrors the economy or our industry, we can directly affect an outcome for the better — or the worse.

Your brilliance isn’t always the culprit. I know you’d like the think you’re special in the brains department, and you may be. But not likely. Businesses are full of really smart people who still can’t seem to get it right.

Your experience isn’t always the culprit. In the early 70’s I started selling stereo gear. The turntable was the source in every system I sold because customers bought vinyl records. It was our only music source. If you wanted to convert the music to tape you had to purchase a reel-to-reel recorder. That was before 8 tracks and cassettes arrived. My experience in selling turntables stopped serving me when vinyl bit the dust. I could have done what I see some business owners and CEOs do — they fell in love with earlier experiences and now they’re too romantic about it. You see it (well, I mostly hear it) whenever they begin to talk about the good old days when things were different. Sometimes nostalgia can morph quickly into complaining.

Those of us involved in business or organizational pursuits – leaders of companies and other enterprises – recognize that we’re not all created equally. Our skills differ. Our personalities do, too. And our opportunities vary just like our connections, how our parents raised us and how we see the world. Heredity, environment and natural aptitude – they all matter in business careers just like they do anything else.

Entrepreneurship Means Being Responsible

It’s wildly popular. Well, the notion of it is highly popular. The true meaning is taking financial responsibility for the outcome. It’s what we do running our businesses. That whole “taking responsibility” can be tough though. And painful when things aren’t going well. We enjoy getting the credit for a win. We also enjoy finding an excuse when we don’t.

That’s why some people inside businesses are Blamers. Whenever there’s a problem, or things didn’t do according to plan — they’re the ones who want to make it a priority to find out who’s at fault. They’re also the excuse makers and they can poison us, and the whole culture we’re trying to create. I’ve sat in far too many meetings where a Blamer tried to hijack the meeting to accomplish just one thing: find out who’s at fault.

Wasting time that would be better spent solving the problem, or coming up with an improvement of a process, or anything else that would be more positive. Besides, we usually know the team members who didn’t perform well. Maybe they’re not to blame entirely, but they’re not helpful in moving us forward. During a crisis, or a time when we’re solving a problem – or trying to make an improvement – it’s probably not the ideal time to be distracted in finding people to blame. There’s always time for that later. I’m not fond of accessing people problems during such times because I want to make sure I’m doing the right thing, in the right way. Unless somebody has done something illegal, or violated a non-negotiable standard I’ve set (honesty issues, drug/alcohol issues, violence in the workplace, etc.), I’m going to make personnel decisions at a more appropriate time.

But all this score keeping thing is mostly about our own performance, not somebody else’s (including our team members). This score keeping is more personal, less an enterprise kind of thing. You need to keep score in your business. Whatever KPI’s you’ve established are the ones that likely serve you well. Maybe there are better ones, but the ones in place are serving you well or you wouldn’t have them in place. A subsets of those KPI’s are the ones that are personal to you – the ones you can affect. As the CEO you can affect all of them. If not directly, indirectly.

Everything You Want

Fear In The C-Suite

We mostly buy into the belief, “Never let ’em see you sweat.” Vulnerability isn’t popularized in mass media. Certainly not when you’re the top leader of an enterprise. Instead, the jerk who operates like a maniac, driving people to mythical levels of achievement is made to be a hero. We like to make a correlation between the personality and the performance, but I just don’t buy it. There are too many good people leading good enterprises and creating value at every turn.

CEOs can be driven by their fear to be jerks. The highest value is found in being human. People connect with real people. When the real person is at the top of the food chain, it’s even more powerful. If you don’t think so then let me introduce you to a man I’ve long admired, Jim Goodnight, CEO and founder of SAS.

“Treat employees like they make a difference and they will.” That’s a Goodnight quote you can find on their company website. Goodnight isn’t that maniac on a mission who will step on anybody and everybody to get his way. He’s a real guy who understands that his employees have real passions, drives and desires – professionally and personally. He takes care of his people and they take great care of the business. The man has a solid grip on how powerful people are in helping build a great business.

Goodnight keeps working. He’s been doing it successfully since he started the company in 1976. He’s had up’s and down’s just like you. And me. He’s won a bunch, and lost a few (maybe more than a few). But he’s an ideal example of a CEO and founder who just keeps on working.

I don’t know him personally, but I can promise you he’s afraid of many things just like us. Running a multi-BILLION dollar business may elevate his fear to levels we don’t understand. He’s in touch with his own humanity – and vulnerability. That’s why he’s a great leader devoted to his employees.

If you want to learn more just type his name in the search bar at YouTube and you’ll see some terrific interviews.

Past Wins Are The Problem

Here’s the point of it all — CEOs may be among the most vulnerable people on planet to fall in love with a past win. Mostly, I think we’re an optimistic bunch. We focus on the possible. Our work involves solving problems that vex others. We thrive on the stress of knowing there’s a lot on the line. It’s what we do. It’s why we have the role.

Don’t misunderstand the point of today’s show. It’s not an indictment of keeping score. It’s certainly not a show against celebrating victories. Frankly, too many of us don’t do that enough. We lean on our people to produce better results today after we refused to let them enjoy the win they produced yesterday. Big mistake!

No, the point is that we need to live in the present and operate our business today. I hope you had great success yesterday. And I hope you led the parade for your people to celebrate it. But if you didn’t win yesterday I hope you don’t get distracted by that today. And I really hope you’re not cracking a whip today berating your people over it. Instead, I hope you’re using today to get the work done – better!

It’s about doing the work. Well.

Always.

Without fail. Without excuse. Without letting fear stop us. Or romance.

Romance? Yep, you read it right. That’s where keeping score can really mess us up. We fall in love with our ideas and our successes. Sometimes our players.

The opportunities today don’t much care about any of that though. Today’s challenges, issues and opportunities need our focus in this present moment. If we’re so locked into the scores we’ve accomplished in the past, then we’ll fail to maximize today. Ditto on our past failures. Whatever misses make up our past have no bearing on today, unless we let them.

It’s not merely head noise. It’s focus and a way of thinking. We get stuck in a paradigm. We don’t stretch the possibilities. Sometimes because we don’t know how. We fool ourselves into thinking that what once worked will still work. And what didn’t work the first time, will never work. That’s not necessarily true. But if we believe it, then it may as well be true. A major hurdle of doing the work – well – is to be willing to change our beliefs. That requires an openness, vulnerability, honesty and willingness that only the rarest CEOs have.

CEO Coaching

This is why I do the work I do. It’s the driving force behind my service to CEOs, business owners and other top executives.

I know it’s not for everybody. Not everybody understands it. Or believes in it. That’s fine. Extraordinary means not ordinary. If it was for everybody, then it wouldn’t likely have the value or remarkability that it does.

Your leadership hinges on making the best decisions possible today. That’s the name of the game for every CEO. You can fly alone and gut it out, or you can get unstuck and find heights you never thought possible. Lately I’ve been seeing some geese fly over my house. Small groups of them flying in a formation. Because they know today’s distance is determined by going together. CEOs can be stuck working by themselves, or they can embrace a novel – but powerful – practice of joining forces with other CEOs in small, intimate groups and having a coach lead the way.

So I’ll end with challenging you to consider breaking free. Maybe it’s a good fit for you. Maybe not. Just give yourself a chance to find what suits and bests serves you…because the work continues. It depends on you and your leadership.

Randy

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The Power Of Peers

Entrepreneurship, Leadership / By Randy Cantrell

The Power Of Peers: How The Company You Keep Drives Leadership, Growth and Success by Leo Bottary and Leon Shapiro is a new book extolling the virtues of surrounding yourself with people willing and able to help you. Peers with no other agenda, other than to help you succeed.

It’s an experience most CEOs and top leaders have never experienced. Most of us are accustomed to going it alone. Well, sure we’ve got our direct reports, our employees, our vendors, our service professionals who help us with things like insurance and legal things — but we’re stuck knowing that at the end of the day, the decision is resting squarely on us and all these other people have a perspective based on what they need from us. It doesn’t make them bad people, and mostly they’re not driven by some conscious decision to tell us what we want to hear – it’s just how things go. People don’t want to disappoint us, so they acclimate to the culture.

It doesn’t have to be that way. There are better ways to go. Ways where we can surround ourselves with other CEOs and top leaders who are in the same boat we’re in. People capable and willing to help us move forward and people who need us to help them move forward. It so powerful that it can feel magical. The authors offer compelling reasons why CEOs should abandon the Lone Ranger mindset and find peers who will help them, and who will accept their help in return.

Randy

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