2. January 2010 by Bob Griffin.

When we talk with owners, there is a need for them to ask certain questions immediately that always makes me think they may or may not be ready for the next step in the evolution of their business.  The issues are money and time.  If you want to have a strong business, you need to spend either more money or more time or both.  If you are not ready to do so, please find the time and money and then find the help in getting started right.

Business owners have a desire to fulfill a vision for what the business should look like and sometimes miss the basics of how the business should run.  I do not blame them for that fact.  If you start a business from scratch, even a franchise, requires that you are a real estate expert, contractor (or at least oversee the contractor), and the middleman between the business and the government agencies that require that you have permits and fees paid before you are allowed to make any money.  Transitioning to from that to handling the day-to-day operations can be a dilemma when the store opens.  At this point, they either invested well enough to hit the ground running or they stumble out of the gate.  You spend a lot of money and time getting things rolling.  The last thing you want to think about is how much more time and money it will cost to get the business open and keep it open, but that is where your thinking should be.

More often than not, owners stumble on day one.  The problem starts with having the basic operations knowledge and then translating it to a function of getting the job done by leading the team and communicating the vision.  Working in an industry for more than a year is a sure fire way to learn from the ground up.  This gives you a chance to work as a leader, find the answers on how things should work, and how to communicate effectively to employees.  Most entrepreneurs do not spend that kind of time or want to make that kind of sacrifice.  It is the difference between being in business in five years or dying out your first few months.

One problem that I see very often is - Ego.  When someone wants to start a business they say it is for the money.  That, unfortunately, is only half the reason.  The other reason is that it is something that will give them the ability to tell friends and family that they are a business owner.  Most people you see each day do not own a business.  They are happy to work for someone else, but do give credit to others who jump over to being an owner.  Ego gets in the way because the owner wants to be the owner more than the operator of a business that may require them to be on the front line.   Do not think you can delegate to a successful business.  Bulldog Rule # 14 - The right people never want to work with the wrong people - hits the nail on the head.  Make sure you are the right person to lead…not yell at people and be angry or make the place a “work-hell”.  Otherwise, you will spend more money to hire the right person to lead.

I have been enjoying reading for the millionth time The E-Myth Revisited by  Michael E. Gerber.  He makes many valid points on hiring people who can be trained and can follow your lead.  This requires that you have a training program for them to follow and are able to lead someone through training to be the best employee for the job. You can’t have a big ego and lead employee through training (no one would follow).  Creating a great training program removes you as the main focus of the business and makes the system most important.  I was also reading What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell where he made this point.  He interviewed Ron Popeil, the founder of Ronco and the Inventor of many products you probably have in your kitchen.  I was impressed with the way  Ron took the interest off himself and made the product the star.  Coming from a family of salesmen, that was always the formula, but for someone without that kind of knowledge and with an ego going into business, it is easy to see where a person can slip up and make the product or service second to the messenger.  Lose the ego and make the system follow the sale.  You may want to take a vacation.  If the emphasis is on you and your ego, what happens when you are not there?

Great leading through training requires a few items:

• Each job has a cost and an outcome.  List the parts of the job and the desired outcome.  Be prepared to change the training and the costs as your business grows.  There is never just one way to do a job and costs change over time.
  
• Be a coach, a mentor, and a teacher that someone would want to learn from.  This implies that you can lead through teaching.  If you can’t or are not very good, find someone who can.  Yes, this costs more money, but it will save you from wasting time and money in the long run.
• Invest money and time early in the game to make more later.  When you spend, spend wisely.  Getting the ship headed in the right direction from day one is the best way to jump ahead of the competition and find better people who want to work with you.
• Fire yourself if you need to.  Being an owner does not mean that you need to be the leader of the organization.  Set the tone, set the budget, keep up with the data, and get the heck out of the way.

There are great ways to make a great business and they all come back to spending your time and money in ways that make you more down the road.  Be prepared to keep spending time and money on training, firing/hiring, better information, and better processes.  The investing does not stop when you start making a great paycheck.

Posted in Customer Service, Training, Making Money | Print | 6 Comments »

16. December 2009 by Noel Guilford.

It is obviously difficult to live in a society that is permeated with the idea that only total and absolute disaster can be the catalyst of necessary and long over due change. That may be the case for most of us, but we have the choice to be a fish that slips through the net or canned tuna. Many, many businesses and organizations find themselves too far along to take any type of corrective action that will make a difference. They flop around on the deck in vain protesting to be thrown back into the sea. The sad part is, that as the net of this recent economical environment sweeps up more and more businesses…I mean fish, how many will really be missed in the commotion?

So a show of hands for everyone that would prefer to sabotage their own business by being reactive rather than proactive…anyone? Great!

Now, lets not make this complicated shall we? It takes more courage than anything to put ourselves underneath the microscope. I’ll give you 7 easy steps to giving your business a self diagnostic and we know that checkups should be done regularly so your first time should not be your last.

• Step 1: Why am I in business for myself?

Never stop asking this question as the answer can change over time. The current answer will be the direction that you drive your business in and the ultimate goal of all your work. If you don’t clearly know, you will be like a ship lost at sea with no bearings. Totally subject to the forces around you and utterly powerless to determine your own destiny.

• Step 2: What is my role in the business?

There are no right or wrong answers here just honest realizations.  Are your a front-line type of leader or more of a hands-off delegate type? Perhaps you don’t need to lead your business at all and it would be best lead by another person accountable to you.  It could simply be that you best serve the business by managing the financial aspects rather than the day to day. Decide and stick with that decision.

• Step 3: How do I rate my business?

On a scale from one to five, rate exactly how you believe your business performs in four separate areas. Five being excellent, three being fair, and one being poor. Not sure what a five looks like, that’s where step four comes in.  This step is to make sure you calibrate what you believe to be good performance.

• Marketing
• Operations
• Training
• Customer Service

• Step 4: Do I have a second opinion?

If the President needs an adviser then so do you. Some solicit the counsel of other business owners that they may know or have met through an organization of business owners. Others opt to enlist that aid of a consultant, personally this is an instance where the more really is the merrier. Let your adviser or advisers rate your business on the same scale and see what they have to say. At the end of the day the decisions are still yours to make. If others can help you see your situation from every angle would you not be able to make a better informed decision?

• Step 5: Compare/Identify/Plan

Take everything you know and everything that has been said by your adviser or advisers and lay it all out together. Give it all equal amounts of consideration, if it doesn’t work (even if its your idea) then it hits the cutting room floor? It helps at this point to remember step one. Keep what works and what has never been used. From these things create your business plan. This can be an overall business plan or one to tackle an area of your business that needs improvement.

• Step 6: The right players in the right positions

Before you start leading employees out to the gallows lets give this a second look. Everyone has their strengths and their weaknesses, and in order to use an employee to their fullest you must know what those are. As loyalty is hard to come by, before you replace someone determine if there is another position on the team that makes good use of their talents. If not then the decision is clear. Always use a diagram on this step. It helps to make sure that you pair who you have and what they can do, with what you need done.

• Step 7: Commitment and Accountability

Alright coach, now you should know your role, know where you are, have a goal, have what your need done, and who you need to do it. Great! Now it’s time to get everyone on board. This may require one large meeting or several small ones. Lead as many as dictated by the role you play in your business. Just remember that most of all they need to know why they are there (why they work for you ), where they stand in performance (just the facts), what function they have, and what needs to be done next. Lastly give them your reasonable expectations to be accomplished in a reasonable time frame and who will be holding them accountable to these expectations and why.

Wondering who is going to hold you accountable? Each time you perform this seven step check up have your previous one handy. Commitment and accountability should begin and end with you regardless of your role. Even though no business fails in a day, and no business corrects itself in a day, there is only one time to begin change and that time for you can be today.

Posted in Creating the Culture, Being the Boss, Training | Print | 72 Comments »

3. October 2009 by Bob Griffin.

When I am asked by small business owners how to improve their business I ask questions.  The more questions I ask, the better I can see how their business operates.  More importantly, the more questions they answer, the more they can see about their business.  Often we put blinders on when we look at our business, employees performance, or customer service.  Having a list of questions to answer about facets of your business can bring a clearer focus to what you think you know about things.  The way to do that is to SWOT it.

SWOT stands for:

Strengths

Weaknesses

Opportunities

Threats

Have four sheets of paper ready to work on this exercise.  The more you are able to write (even if you think it is not important) the more clearly you will see your business and the changes that you can make to have an immense impact on your success.

What are the strengths of your business?  This is also known as the elevator pitch.  You should be able to give a clear description of what your business is about and why someone should work with you as opposed to a competitor in the time it takes an elevator to go from the lobby to the top floor of a building.  Of course, you should have more bumpers sticker phrases to give all the strengths about your business.  Starting with, “Why should I buy from you?” is a good focus for the first run-through on a SWOT analysis.

Weaknesses are tougher to name.  Both because you do not like to mention them, but also because you may not easily see them.  Answer the question, “Why do people NOT buy from my business?” and you will have an uncomfortable list of things to fix.

Opportunities are the part of your business that more often than not costs you in time, money, or effort.  Be honest with yourself.  Think, “If I had unlimited time, money, or manpower to make changes, what would I do?”  The answers to where your opportunities are will show up on your list easily.  Take you time and think back to when you were first starting your business.  What vision did you have when you wrote your business plan?  What do you need to change to bring that vision to life.  Business Bulldog Rule #7 - Dream about where your business can go and then make it happen.

Threats are easier to see, but no less tough to see on paper.  Competition is the first on the list, but what about internally in your organization?  Are there people on your staff who are not helping make your vision come to life?  What about cash flow? Are you able to ride out this economy and still make payroll?  Threats can come from every direction imaginable.  Are you covered if someone gets hurt at your store?  What if the street in front of yuor store closes down for a week or a month?  What can you survive and grow despite?

Bulldog Rules for Business were written using this format. Bulldog Rule #6 - Failing to plan for your day, week, month, and year is unacceptable is a good example of where this website came from.  How about Bulldog Rule #8 - Re-examine your business often is what we are doing when we use the SWOT method.  Even Bulldog Rule #12 - Be aware of your entire business is a SWOT in the right direction.

SWOT every business you can.  Not only will you find interesting facts that can help make your business stronger, but you will be able to forecast when business opportunities become available before your competition.  You can SWOT anything really.  Your business is just one part of you day, so why shouldn’t you look at what else in your life takes time away from building your business.  SWOT your business and then make the changes you need to grow, thrive, and build a business that exceeds your vision.

Posted in Creating the Culture, Being the Boss, Training | Print | 109 Comments »

20. September 2009 by Bob Griffin.

We talk with employees every day.  We need them to complete tasks for their job and they need to tell us about the job they do.  Seems simple enough, but why is it that there are still employees that we can not get through to and have one team all working in the same direction?  Maybe it is because you are not speaking the same language.

It is not the phrasing or the words, but rather the lens they see your business through BEFORE you start talking that trips up a good conversation.  Before you start a conversation with your employees, you need to understand what biases your employees bring to the table and how they are going to see what you have to say through that point of view.  You are, after all, living in two different worlds and may never meet in the middle.

You think about your business like a prize fighter does a big fight.  You plan and train for the day and know that everything you do brings you closer to your goals.  From the paperwork, the inventory you account for, and even the taxes you pay - both financially and physically, you are your work.  It is something more than pride that keeps you going and you expect the best from everyone you meet.  It is the lens that you see your business and your life through.  Often you can not see a reason not to work as hard as you do or why anyone would live any differently.

Your employees, on the other hand, think about when they need to work and when they get to clock out.  Their lens shows them how much money they bring in to the company (your company) and how much of that they get to keep.   They see things in black and white.  Black is the money that is coming in and white is the amount they get to keep after working hard all day long.  They see other workers and calculate that you are rich off their hard work and they just get a small cut.  They work - you get paid.  They see when you drive up that you are in a nice car and that you have nice clothes.  They know you take good care of your family and that, as your own boss, you have the time to spend with your family.  They work and do not have as much to go home to.  Their lens, to them, is clear since they see things this way every day.

Recently, I was speaking with an owner of a successful company and he stated he could not get his employees to get extra training and was adamant that they would call in sick, just not show, or have one of a hundred excuses to keep them from showing up.  My knee-jerk response was, “You pay them don’t you? Just tell them it is mandatory.”  This advice was poorly given and received.

What I should have done is find out more about the employees and why they did not want to show up.  Once I asked the right question, I found out that they wasted their time in a training class in years past and did not want to repeat this.  Simple.  To them, they wanted to know more about the training before committing to the time required to go.  Once we wrote an agenda and had a conversation about how it would help them, they all agreed to show up.

What else do you want your employees to do that they approach halfheartedly or not at all?  The job never end, it just takes on new challenges.

Find the lens that they see things through by asking questions and removing your own biases and you will get the job done.  Follow a few standard questions to help you see things more clearly.

1. Is there resistance because of time, money, or education/ training issues?

2. Is there prior experiences that keep them from committing?

3. Does the message need to come from someone else?

4. Have you had success discussing this issue before? What is different now?

Stop before you talk and think things through by looking at it as an employee would.  Talk with them…not at them.  You will find that they return the favor and explain things in terms you will understand too.

Posted in Creating the Culture, Being the Boss, Training | Print | 75 Comments »

29. August 2009 by Bob Griffin.

Do you really KNOW what you want to know?

I was in a room of executives when they were wondering how to get more customers.  Sales were way down and everyone was desperate to make something happen.  So, why didn’t they ask the right questions?  Mostly no one spoke up because they were afraid.  These highly skilled and well educated people were afraid of looking foolish in asking the right question or questions.  I tell my son, “Smart isn’t what you know.  Smart is what you do with what you do know.”  So, getting up from my seat I did something - I asked the questions that needed to be asked.

• Were we the right people to turn the company around?
• How much time, money, and/or effort were we willing to put into changing the culture of the company to something customers wanted?
• Who is ultimately leading the charge to turn things around?
• How much power will this person have to make things happen?

How do you know when you have the right questions?

When you get to the point when people have to face tough questions and the temperature of the room goes up a few degrees you have a situation where the smart start moving and the weak make excuses.  It is much easier to make changes when you ask the right questions from the start and get people out of their comfort zone.

Hypothetically, if you were asked by a good friend to help him with the same situation where he worked, what would you say?  Very often we are too close to the situation to ask the right questions.  Step back, use Bulldog Rule #10 - Leave the emotion out of your business (most of the time), and ask questions that come to mind.  Write them down and then ask another question for every question you wrote down.  Soon you will have a list of questions that matter.  Cut out the questions that won’t impact your situation and then you have the right questions.

Like I mentioned earlier - Smart is what you DO!  So, go do something.  The right questions can give you the right answers only if you do something with them.  Sitting in front of the path to success does not mean you will move down it.  Get off your butt and move!!

There are too many people who are going to say that they are not in charge and can not make things change.  You built a wall to keep yourself from changing things and you are the right person to tear it down.  Changes come because you do something more today than you did yesterday. I have a friend who said, “If you could just improve your life 1% everyday in 100 days you would be 100% better.”  He was a strange man, but he was onto something profound.  Taking the time to change a company and ask the right questions does not have to be a big deal.

Remember - small changes make things better too and many times you can get a larger force to help you than if you try to change everything at once.  Too bad there are many leaders who do not understand that lesson.  Start small and change things. Do something smart.

Bgriffin@BusinessBulldog.com

Posted in Customer Service, Creating the Culture, Being the Boss, Training | Print | 2 Comments »