Perception May Be 100%, But Is It Accurate?

Let's Think About The Consumer's Perspective?

Clever but legal monetary policies, layered movements of financial derivatives, creative accounting and unique business deals all come into play in a tough world economy.  Business leaders work overtime developing ways to protect their current financial interests.  They work overtime creating new ways to expand their opportunities to protect the money they currently manage.  As a result, protection policies surface at high rates of speed.  Every business 'fort' seems bent out of shape trying to find ways to protect what it has.  In all of this effort, things are not always as they seem.

Sometimes the overtime work to protect the funds a business manages becomes a silent obsession.  It creeps up into the management world without notice.  Before too long, the business decision-makers find the bulk of their monetary work surrounded by policies and exercises that include a long list of creative financing techniques.  Pick up any recent issue of the Wall Street Journal and take the time to open the pages to count the number of articles written that describe some occurrence of illegal, illicit or wrongful business process being reported.  Business publications on every newsstand are completely littered these days with reports of illegal creative financial business efforts.  The Wall Street Journal is not alone.  Bloomberg, Time, Fortune and many others...you name it they all have filled their internal pages reporting the illicit movement of money matters.

In one single Wall Street Journal issue I counted 38 articles written to report stories of illegal, illicit or wrongful financial activities of companies, leaders and officials.  Thirty eight articles describing what went wrong!  Thirty eight articles are written to describe who did what wrong to which group.  With a deeper review, in all of those articles it could be easily described how those business leaders worked hard to center their efforts on the subject of protecting their wealth.  In many business cases, protection policies work harder than growth policies.  Maybe that is why growth has become so hard to develop.  Maybe the decision-makers are spending too much time working on protection efforts and not enough time on innovation and consumer growth.  Maybe?

The level of illicit corporate policy movements may not be any larger than it was thirty years ago, but somehow I doubt it.  I recognize we have always had illicit monetary policies occur in the word of business long since before the day Christ walked this earth.  However, I doubt we have been able to be as heavily and personally affected by as much as we are in this particular day and age.  Levels of corporate wrongdoings committed today have fallen into my personal checkbook and daily life.  There are not many in the masses that are not negatively impacted by these illicit activities some corporate policy makers are dishing out.  The 'run' on wrongdoings is rising higher with each passing decade.  

In fact, just today the Wall Street Journal on the cover reports articles of distortion, crackdowns, leverage efforts, pardons and industry violations of consumer trust.  These are articles reporting how business has become the center of practicing unclean and unhealthy monetary fundamentals.  The world of business is layered in this kind of 'off-handed' activity.  That is why these publications report so many stories that surround these efforts of wrongdoings.

Things are not always as they seem.  The perception may be that corporate policies are trying to do well, but the public results are not buying that effort.  Too many business models hit the front page about back room deals and protective decisions that ignore the best interest of the consumer.  Corporate belief may actually think they are somehow working extra hard on winning the war for protecting their business strength.  However, that perception may not be as accurate as they would like to believe.  Many business leaders may be carrying the perception, 100%, that they are hired to work out how to protect the wealth their current business process is trying to maintain.  However, the consumer may be deeply considering a completely separate view.  The consumer may be arming their own buying attacks.  The consumer is producing a much more careful approach to the buying process they once performed so freely.  They trust no one, no more.

Here's the deal.  The consumer is having a tough time buying well without feeling the squeeze of life.  The consumer is losing confidence.  The consumer is noticing how it is becoming more difficult to win.  The levels of satisfaction felt by the consumer are beginning to take its long term toll.  And as a buyer, they are heading towards the 'don't care' attitude.  It is slowly becoming a process that hovers over the idea that surrounds the all for one, and one for all mentality.  Consumers are panning their buying process with a much more careful eye.  They are not afraid to sue, tweet, whistle-blow or picket.  The consumer is arriving near the level of buying procedures that haunts the halls of disgust and distrust.  They enter their world of buying with a much more careful eye.  In many cases, as they should.

There has never been a time when the phrase 'buyers beware' has become so true.  Just take a simple look at the protection of wealth policies in the drug and prescription industry, the financial institutions, the investment industry, the housing industry, the medical industry, add to them the permission of the technology wars for control and corporate dominance, the foreign policies of unfair and unhealthy tariffs, financial protection mandated by the government and its policies to force added monetary mandates onto the backs of consumers who are continually being asked to shoulder this overwhelming list of illicit burdens.  The consumer is running out of gas trying to keep up.  Business has created its own monster.  We have developed a monster that is likely devouring the limbs of our consumer.

Perception may be 100% in the corporate world.  Protection of wealth may be the work they perceive they need to do...but is it accurate?

Page two.

Immediate Versus Delayed Gratification

When I get hungry, I need to eat.  I am a diabetic.  Food sources for fuel are important to my health, sugar levels and energy production.  Therefore, when I feel that internal 'urge' to eat...I need to eat.  I have trained my body to talk to me about fuel.  Immediate gratification must be closely linked to my 'urge' that signifies fuel needs.  My body has been trained to signal for fuel.  I usually carry along some appropriate food sources to help meet those needs when I travel beyond my regular feeding time slots.

If I miss feeding that 'urge' to eat...my satisfaction opportunity is not exactly lost, however.  I am not usually the kind of diabetic that runs dangerously high or carelessly low on my sugar counts.  My fluctuations vary at small degrees above or below where my sugar levels need to remain.  As a result, when the 'urge' to eat arrives I can often delay my food fuel intake for a little while and not be in danger.  In some way I have been able to arrest my diabetes and balance that effort to respect how gratification works in my food desires.  I find good fuel when my 'urges' come knocking.  I regulate consuming foods my body cannot use.

Gratification can be managed.  Furthermore, gratification should be managed.  As a diabetic, my daughter sent me a Kindle book titled "Know Your Numbers."  She works in the medical field.  Wow, what a great read.  It was a well-written book that has helped me to improve how I manage my diabetes much better.  The management of my diabetes surrounds many issues that relate to the balance of gratification.  To win at the management game of any endeavor means to learn how to balance the urges that fly about our lives.  We all want to be gratified.  That urge is perpetual.  We must learn how to manage it.

Why I have diabetes to deal with is not my concern.  My main concern is to learn how to manage a challenge well when it arrives.  In this case, the challenge happens to be diabetes.  Diabetes arrives and begins to dominate the regular 'urge' to hack down a bag of M & M's.  A lot of good management comes from knowing how to arrest the gratification process.  Success usually surrounds those who manage gratification much better than most of those who are faced with the similar urges and circumstances yet fail to arrest those fleeting 'urges'.  The war to success often times becomes the one fought between the urges of immediate gratification versus those of delayed gratification.

Immediate gratification can take control of many success opportunities and diverts their paths away from where we ultimately want them to arrive.  Delayed gratification seems too slow for most of us to wait.  The human being wants a much faster set of good results.  Most of us are impatient souls.  We thrive for immediate results.  We want it now...not later.

Business success works in exactly the same way.  Those who learn the art of managing gratification will likely be the same ones who will win in business more often.  If there ever was a serious category where delayed gratification works wonders, it is in business.  Business comes completely packaged with thousands of connections to delayed gratification procedures.  Everything seems to move in slow motion.  This is not weird.  It is normal.

If you lead a small business and you have been at it for awhile you will come to recognize how true delayed gratification can become.  It completely surrounds the game of business, does it not?  Every good business leader eventually comes to the realization that delayed gratification is a permanent fixture in the life of business management.  Rewards seem very slow to arrive.

How do we learn the art of managing immediate versus delayed gratification?  How can hacking down a full bag of M & M's destroy how my business bottom line produces an improved set of results?  How are the two linked?  One one hand is the slamming of M & M's, on the other hand is my business process.  How do those two events clash?

Page two.

Marketing: The Death of Begging.

The only time a desperation sale works is when it is real.  When the business is truly going out of business, that sale is real.  That is usually when the bargains are true and the discounts are realistically slashed deep.  In a going out of business sale there is usually no care given to the margins of profit anymore.  All that remains for that failing business to do is to get rid of the inventory quickly before it becomes permanently owned.  That is why this kind of desperation sale works.  The consumer finally knows that the prices are the lowest they will see.  The owner wants to get rid of the stuff.

Desperation sales work well to move a lot of goods because the customer gets their last chance to benefit well.  Customers do not go to desperation sales to support or try to save the dying business.  They go to a desperation sale because they want to get a good deal.  That's it.

Customers are more interested in taking care of themselves than they are for trying to help out a dying business model.  This has always been the truth for how customers move.  The bulk of their buying behavior is a self serving list of activities the consumer performs.  This is not a serious revelation.  Most business owners completely see and understand this consumer motion.  Customers will do what it takes to take care of themselves.  This is not all bad news, however.  What it is for sure becomes the most important pattern the business owner should always try to honor in their marketing ways.  Consumers support self.  Stick to this fact when the marketing plan rolls out.  Make sure the marketing plan recognizes that the consumer wants to win.

Saving your business does not mean I win.  It means you won.  Consumers clearly get this.

The mind of the consumer is a fickle thing.  I am a consumer.  I know.  My mind can become very fickle at times.  I buy what I want to buy and I shop where I want to shop.  However, my mind is triggered by things that I have come to like.  That makes me vulnerable to some actions of patterns that become my way of preference to choose.  I become attracted to doing some things in the ways I prefer to have them done.  My buying patterns reflect those desires.  That is exactly how everyone else shops and buys.  We all have our patterns of preference.  Those patterns of buying preferences dominate where we go, how we do it and when we purchase what we purchase.  All of us are consumers.  We have our preference patterns.

Did you know what I discovered?  I discovered that we can change up how we shop and how we buy.  We do it all of the time.  Even though we have strong preferences in how we shop and buy, we can alter those preferences in a flash and do some new patterns of buying completely out of our character of habits.  We can change it up and buy in a brand new way.  Something triggers that kind of change.  We all have done this kind of pattern.  We can switch it up.  That is one of the ways we become so fickle as buyers for the business thinkers to know.  Business thinkers work overtime trying to figure us out.  Then we switch it up a little bit on them.  That is when they must go back to the drawing boards.

Consumers have the ability to practice their fickle ways, and they do.  It is something I have discovered.

Did you know what else I discovered?  As fickle as consumers can become, they do not usually share their money with panhandlers and beggars.  Once in a long while, someone hands a beggar some money, usually small change or some small 'left-over' amounts.  That's it.  Consumers do not care to have their spending opportunities limited by giving away what they do not want to give away.  Most consumers do not see that process as a win.  They did not go shopping to lose.  Most keep what they have and rarely let it go to someone who tries to beg it away from them.  Don't believe me?  Just go sit in a mall parking lot and watch as thousands of consumers go back and forth into the stores and count how many will actually stop to give small amounts away to a beggar.  Maybe one in a thousand.  I have done this survey.  It is a lot less than you might think.
 
So why do business owners resort to begging?  Many business models do just that.  They beg for business.  They use their marketing efforts to approach the consumer with patterns that represent a way of begging.  They arrange their 'marketing plea' to encourage the consumer to buy around some principle of thought.  They play the consciousness card with the mind of the consumer.  They beg for the support of those kinds of thoughts.  Why do business owners tend to resort to marketing their sales in a panhandling way?  Why do they use the consumers consciousness to beg for trade?  Consumers do not like it.  And when they honor it, it is usually done with the 'left over' change.  We can prove that pattern.  So why do some business models fall for this kind of technique?  Why do they believe it will work?  Let's review some examples and reasons.

Page two.

Nike, Flipping The Hostage Coin?

A Great Business Example!

OK, you have billions of dollars in cash reserves. (Literally and truly.)  You have a very nasty recession that seems to ignore recovery.  You have some foreign production problems happening in your manufacturing process that can easily get out of your control.  You have media not treating you as much like the darling you once were pleasantly coddled.  The business world around your location is suffering hard times just as well.  Small business is doing all that it can do to hang on.  Neighborhood downtown independent businesses are slowly disappearing.  Some of those downtown businesses just simply cannot survive these tough times.  So what do you decide to do?  If you are Nike, you expand.  You develop an expansion plan to serve your growth with added production.  You budget millions to add more.

Nike has become very successful.  That is why it has huge cash reserves.  I have no challenge with Nike doing well.  That is why I advise business leaders to improve what they do for a living.  We all want to do well.  I get that.  Hear, hear...toast it up...and congrats to Nike.  Other struggling business leaders should take notes.  Do more like what the winners do, then do less stuff our losing ways produce.  It is simple stuff. It is usually the mind that is difficult.  Nike somehow got over that hurdle.

That brings us to the hostage coin.  Nike has announced it wants to expand.  It wants to develop and expand its operations.  Let me see?  Did I just read 38 related but separate articles yesterday in the Wall Street Journal that covered the subject of a failing recession for almost everybody?  Maybe Nike is not reading that stuff?  Maybe Nike is living on a different planet?  Oh, that's right!  When economic times get tough consumers flock to the stores to purchase high dollar sports shoes!  Right?  Not!  Then how do they do it?

People...Nike is not in the shoe sport business!  Nike is not in the shoe business anymore than McDonald's is in the hamburger business.  You see, Ray Kroc was in the commercial property rental business.  All he wanted to do was make sure his McDonald's operators could win their business war while working hard in their little hamburger stores so he could collect the monthly rent.  Call them loans or lease agreements, it still amounts to a monthly rent.

Ray wanted 5200 rent checks of $1,500 per month to appear in his account and that those checks cleared their bank when they were drawn.  That happens to be only $7.8 million dollars of "non-employee'/"non-inventory"/"immediately collectible" funds hitting your account each month.  Pretty much "keep" money.  I wonder if you could do well with that kind of recession activity?  No payroll and benefit account payable obligations, no suppliers waiting to factor payments for products delivered and no accounts receivables to wait out their normal delay spin to finally come home.  This is looking better all the time.  Ray Kroc developed a great business concept.  Tip: does your business look like this one?  If not, why not?

Nike is modeled in the same way McDonald's is modeled.  Nike is in the rental business.  They lease their reputation.  A lease is just another way of saying, rent.  Apparently, it is huge and profitable to do that.

For example, currently there is an economic corporate positioning war going on to capture who will dominate the T.V. business in your home.  Here are some of the players fighting to capture your viewing habits.  Comcast, Google, Verizon, Disney, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, Visio, Netflix, Red Box, and the long list goes on and on and on.  Do you think television viewing is in the cross-hairs of corporate America's current investment positioning efforts?  Ya' think?  Currently, the number one rated spot on television viewing is sports programming!  Now you see why Nike does so well!  It ain't about shoes!  It is all about the marketing of the logo and its lease agreements.  How is your business model designed?  Does it look for more lease agreements?  Why not?  That seems to be where the recessionary activity seems to be playing out.  (Just some business observations.)

Nike has cash.  A ton of it.  Nike has funds.  A ton of it.  Nike can afford to build its campus expansions without any government help.  No joke.  So why are they flipping the hostage coin?  Why is Nike asking the tax payer to foot some of their development costs?  That is precisely what they are asking when they approached the State of Oregon to request a lower tax rate deal to build their expansion project.  If Nike gets a 'break' on their share, guess who is expected to pick up the missing future collections?  Have you got a mirror close by?  If you look quickly, you will be able to peek at who will pick up some of the cost of that expansion plan.  How do you look in that mirror?  Better yet, where's your cash return?  That is not exactly the kind of lease agreement I am suggesting you employ.

Why is Nike leaning on the public to capitalize some of their growth?  Why is Nike holding the State of Oregon hostage by negotiating the State for lower taxation payments before they move forward on this expansion?  There are three reasons why Nike is flipping this hostage coin.  Number one, they can.  Number two, they are smart.  Number three, our government is dumber than they are smart.  That's it.

You see, Nike knows the State needs to immediately produce new jobs.  This Nike planned expansion is reported to be able to produce a thousand new jobs.  The State needs a 1,000 more jobs.  Nike knows this.  Nike wants the State of Oregon to cut a 'lower-tax' deal before it decides to build its jobs in this State.  Hence, Nike flipped the hostage coin.

As Nike might suggest, if Oregon does not want to play, someone else will.  The fear of loss is greater than the expectation of gain...always.  Nike gets this rule fully understood.  Governments often times miss this rule.

Governments do not fully comprehend how business is done.  That is exactly why their product, government services, is so over-priced and poorly served that users like Nike can leverage that reality into exposing the fear of loss.  Nike can easily leverage the State into believing they need to come down in price to protect the movement of the services they provide.  Unfortunately, all of this is true.  Governments are way over-priced and well under-served to the point that a big business dog can leverage their way into getting better deals.  What the heck do you think a lobby does?  Governments are so over-wrought with inefficiencies and poor production results that they become subject to dealing lower cost arrangements behind closed doors because their products are so poorly supplied.  Governments are terrible business operators.  Nike is not.    

If a government was to present their services to a competitive market, with no mandates to use them solely, all of us would elect to use someone else.  They cost too much.  We would shop elsewhere.  Is that not what Nike is doing?  Sure it is.

Oregon's Governor and his representatives do not fully see this picture.  Nike does.  Oh, trust me, Nike will play out the victim cards and the I wanna' help out the economy cards like any good salesman should do...but the truth remains, they know what they are doing.
 
Do not ever forget this fact, the State is really you.  What ever the State decides to give away it must first take.  And that place they will go to take what they need to cover what they gave away will be your pocket.  Do not ever become mistaken about that part of the math equation for doing business.  It is always far more simple than the complicated spin the government leaders try to describe.  Their product is not very marketable.  Nike knows it and will hit them hard with the fear of loss they can easily deliver.  Those government leaders have left themselves with no choice but to give in.  It is much the same as a small business owner who has a customer standing at the counter asking for a better discount on an already hugely reduced product when the store is suffering to make its daily sales.  The hostage coin is flipped.

Someone gets to underwrite that sale.  Someone gets to underwrite that tax-reduction deal.  All that remains is for you to expect to pay slightly more personal taxes to cover the amount of the discount given to Nike.  Don't worry, your life will be better off for the increased jobs.  That is how the hostage coin works.  At least, that is how it will ultimately spin out its justification.  Get it?  

Page two.

It's Natural, We Self-Fulfill Our Human Tendencies.

No Crystal Ball Here, Just Good Integrity.

Business leaders are human beings, too.  Business leaders tend to do what other people do.  Business leaders are not so completely different...away from behaving like non-business thinkers.  At least, not all of the time.  In fact, most business leaders actually walk this world in very much the same way as non-business people do.  The human condition is often times very much the same.

Even the great ones have similar tendencies that make them seem very much the same as everyone else.  You have heard the phrase, "They put their pants on one leg at a time, the same way everyone else does."

Steve Jobs, for example, was naturally afraid of facing his early signals of cancer.  As a result, he delayed getting them checked out properly in the earlier stages.  Even though he had the economic means and a higher access to better care he failed like many normal people fail to find earlier methods of preventive care.  As a result, his natural tendencies of fear took over the wheel of charge and reacted well too late to prevent his life from being taken over by a deadly disease.  A somewhat preventable process was avoided.  Once again the normal pattern to allow natural tendencies ruled out the use of higher levels of leadership courage.

Tiger Woods, President Bill Clinton, Bernard Madoff, Alan Greenspan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Paul McCartney and thousands more have become great business leaders in their own right who have permitted their human tendencies to take control of their leadership wheel.  Business leaders are human beings, first.  Then once human they begin to do their business work.  Business leaders are not above the rest of the crowd in the human condition.  In the end they are exactly the same as everyone else, human beings.      

Business leaders and the rest of the people in this world have a tendency to operate much in the same way.  Their human tendencies are as similar as anyone might expect.  The mere fact that those human tendencies are similar is often times the reason why so many business leaders fail to produce higher levels of success.  The human tendencies we produce can often times create lines of limits to our potential for success.  Failure can often come from the normal human conditions found in the business leader.  It becomes natural for the business leader to behave exactly the way they believe they should behave.  They allow their human tendencies to take over their leadership responsibilities.  They do what comes natural.

As a result, if something is too risky to introduce, or to perform well, their normal human tendencies take over and they avoid taking that risk.  Instead, they do what comes natural.  They act in the easy way.  And it is in this fashion that sometimes the business leader becomes too normal to support taking higher risks to produce greater success.  It is natural.  They do what comes natural, like everyone else.

Alan Greenspan is a perfect example of how the human condition, how our natural tendencies can take us down.  Even though he quietly escaped the public scrutiny of the disappointment expressed by Americans for the economic mess they have recently had to endure, his drive to be recognized as a great monetary policy maker went underground.  His goal to be greatly recognized failed.  As circumstances unfolded, that turns out to become very good news for him.  In the end, he escaped becoming one of the goats of the destruction.

As Greenspan was preparing his exit from the office he held he wanted so badly to go out with a memorable bang that would place his name in the lights of financial stardom.  Alan Greenspan wanted to be recognized as one of the 'greats' in the world of financial control.  Before he left the office as the Federal Reserve Czar, he arranged to produce and print more money to feed lower interest rates that he had hoped would spur an increase in potential economic growth that could be remembered for years beyond his time in office.

Unfortunately, his desire to become famous ran larger than his internal indications that something might be apt to go terribly wrong.  During a time when the investing world had developed new and unusual financial derivatives and complicated instruments; all of them designed to shift, leverage and run when the wholesale movement they created occurred.  Greenspan then infused too much new 'sub-supported' money into the economy that drove interest rates far too low to consequently support the wholesale activity that was beginning to occur.  This effect triggered the unraveling of the financial collapse.  The bubble was pricked!  As a result, the consumer could not figure out how to properly use the financial instruments introduced into the wholesale shifting of the money markets.  This consumer misunderstanding produced nothing in tangible and real products that were so desperately needed in order to help move the economy upward.  All it actually produced was the shifting of already capitalized money movements, turned into a new wholesale industry that found its way feeding on itself.  Consumers ran away.  Consumers could not figure out how they factored into this corporate plan to increase profits.  Hence, financial collapse.  This happens to be an economic lesson experts still have not figured out.  Consumers drive the end game...not the investors.  Smart people always seem to miss this component.  

Greenspan admits that in printing new money to eventually infuse into the markets during the time when complicated financial instruments were running out of check, might very well become the only real challenge experienced by the lipid rules of the housing and financial industries governing the paper flow of the mortgage and investment bubble.  Even so, with his own mindful self-warnings, he wanted so much to place his name above everyone else in that growth potential.  His natural tendencies took over.  He arranged our economic policies to work their ways into feeding the worst financial disaster this country has ever seen.  Consequently disrupting an already fragile world economy.  His business leadership knew better.  His natural tendencies took over.  His desire to be big won over his unique knowledge to know better.

Business leaders often times work their incredible magic in very wrong ways.  They want to succeed so badly that they often times get all caught up with their tendencies to win.  They become very much the same as you and I.  They work their way through life with a bent towards natural things.  They self-fulfill their human tendencies.  With that urge in mind, they find a way to destroy what they built.

Page two.

Time To Run Forward Or Time To Retreat?

Something To Consider Strongly!

The level of uncertainty in the business world is abnormally high.  There is no doubt about the uncertainty.  Even the giants of the business world are discussing various subjects of how to prevent the future of their potential business death.  Microsoft is entertaining all of the discussions about their future demise, regardless of their current size.  The discussion is very real stuff.  It flops alive on the pages of Fortune magazine, Businessweek and the Wall Street Journal.  It also has some telling points.  Who would have guessed it?

Amazon and Facebook circle up the headlines here and there about how they plan to prevent failure in the long run.  Additionally, business staples like Wonder Bread, Hewlett Packard, Motorola, Panasonic, Sears, Kmart, Olive Garden, Citibank and J.C. Penney's all have economic pictures that flirt heavily with ruined profits...some with deadly results.  For example, Google now owns Motorola that saved it from definite doom and is now pawning it off to the next best bidder.  Google purchased Motorola for some of its proprietary assets and is now willing to take a 'plus' billion dollar loss to get rid of the stripped-down version.  Google kept some patent rights and technological components then peeled them off to sell the remaining carcass to some scavenger who might see value in that kind of deal.  As it appears, Motorola is all but dead. It is all becoming very amazing.

Hundreds of strong business models are busy rearranging economic strategies.  Many are moving to borrow and secure bond developments that will help them to fund cash initiatives, like payroll and dividend distributions.  It has become some very crazy stuff.  The definite and extreme rush to bonds has devalued the returns once witnessed in that market.  In some areas of the economy, supply and demand still works.  The returns to investors of bonds are not as attractive as they once were.  Wall Street headlines are now warning bond investors to take flight, run away.  It is a 'catch-twenty-two' proposition.

The landscape for continuing profitably in the business world is risky stuff.  Maybe there are just too many financial creations, too many derivatives developed to mask what is truly going on.  Just take a serious glance around the ownership tables.  The act of borrowing time, fluffing up cash flow and stretching out payments to various investors, partners and time extensions has become the three legs of the current business model.  Even the greed we see in the corporate world is centered and ballooned by the extreme fear that all will be lost, sooner or later.  The premise surrounding the driving greed easily points to the idea that since we may go down soon, I am at least getting mine.  People, this is the core of the truth.  These are the roots to the tree we climb above ground.  Get real.  It is insane.  It is a complex world filled with very smart business leaders destined to playing this kind of game harder every single day.  What the heck!?

Keeping up with the wind of economic change is tough business.  I read almost three hours each day trying to develop a clearer picture of what tomorrow may bring.  I have to admit, it is very confusing stuff.  The economic landscape is just about as complex as the circuit boards we produce in the labs of high tech companies.  It is not the work of simple minds, simple procedures and easy fixings.  It is complex stuff.

To any small business owner, all of this information is just too overwhelming to digest.  Their own little worlds of buying and selling business activities has plenty of bumps in their own roads to recovery.  All of that other complex stuff is just added weight.  The small time business owners do not have the current strength to carry any more loads.  Enough is enough.

So we come to the real question for small business, what do we do next?

Is it time to run forward or time to retreat?

Page two.

Let's Check Out Those Customer Quirks!

Where Are Your Customers Headed?

The Wall Street Journal sure has a way of describing who the customer is today.  Do they not?  It seems as though they include at least one major article in their daily publication that covers that subject.  They have placed one writer after another onto their pages of print to give some brief descriptions about who the real customer is today.  In fact if you check them out, they support their customer descriptions with complicated charts and detailed data-mined information gathered from hi-tech giants like Google, Amazon and E-Bay.  This gives their opinions added credibility.  It all appears like a pretty sophisticated consumer review for the small business reader to acquire.  I am a junkie, so it all plays well for me.

What about you?  How much of that information does the small business owner truly absorb?  How much of that information becomes part of some strategical planning?  How does the small business leader use this timely marketing information intelligently?  I think maybe the answer to that question can be summed up rather clearly...small business.  Small business is just that...small business.  Do not become offended, however.  I belong in that world.  I am an owner of a small business.  I consult with small business models.  I write business plans as well as employee rules and regs for small business owners.  I am a small business junkie.  The Wall Street Journal and the kinds of business giants like Google and Amazon do not offend me, however.  Instead, they inspire me.  I get it.  We are different.

Small business is small for a number of reasons.  One of which may actually be that they truly do not know who their customer really is.  Many small business owners, in their heart, believe they know who their customer actually is.  I often catch myself thinking in this exact same way.  For a number of logical reasons the small business owner today drives what they do every single day in their work performance patterns not truly knowing who their customers actually are.  When I worked inside my small business model, I never stepped out of my daily world of activities to truly examine my potential customer profiles.  I did all of my daily stuff because I thought I already knew who my customer was.  I was convinced about who I was attracting.  That was good enough for me.  Hence, smaller business.

Giants like Google and Amazon have developed the incredible habit of reaching higher for new customer support.  They have no problem crossing new consumer lines.  They do not become complacent with harboring the current customers they entertain.  These giants reach for new customers every single day.  They study their quirks, their habits and their actions.  Once they get it down they target those groups and go for broke.  The big business world wants it all.  They include your customers in their sights.  That much I know is very true.

You may actually own a small business and you may actually believe you know who your customer truly has become.  My warning for you?  Look out, the giants you despise in your business world have placed those same exact customers you serve smack dab into the cross hairs of their marketing plans.  Your customer has been added to their design.  What's more, they are very good at what they do.  Worse yet, they own the capital to make it happen.  How does this picture pan out for your future?  Limited at best.  It is what it is.

This brings us down to one simple solution.  Get to know the quirks of your future customer potential.  Check out your customers.  Who are they?  Who can they become?  Why would they consider shopping with you?  Better yet, why would they purchase from you?

I think it is about time we check out those customer quirks.  Let's humor ourselves.

Page two.

In Business, There Is Always Something New To Work On

Just pick up CNN Money/Fortune Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek or any other publication related to business and you will find a constant barrage of suggestions and recommendations offered to the worlds business leaders.  Daily issues and challenges are everywhere.  There is no end in sight of things to write about.  The world of business has become very complicated, indeed.

I rubbed elbows yesterday with a small business owner.  It was Thanksgiving and we were attending a small dinner of celebration.  He had some interesting insights about the current state of small business affairs.  His view of the current challenges faced by small business was simple, direct and very determined.  I do not believe anyone could have entered that room and changed his mind about his views.  They were as dried in his mind as concrete is on a sidewalk.  Solid.

As determined as his perspectives were delivered, I still suspect he does not believe them as much as he was willing to deliver and protect them.  If you know what I mean?  I think he was more 'wanting' to have his views be correct than was his interest in admitting his uncertainty about what to do next.  Sometimes we say what we do not mean.  I am guilty of that error from time to time.  I know many times in my life others have left my side saying in their minds, "Did he hear what he just said?"

Business owners know one thing is for sure, the future of 'comfortable profits' is traveling around some very risky territories.  No simple profit patterns of steadfast solutions are waiting to be performed.  The work to produce consistent profits has become one of the most elusive elements business owners can truthfully count on.  Troubled balance sheets are easy to produce.  Terrible income statements seem all too ready to appear.  Inconsistent consumers and tricky competition have become too frequent along the trail of business travels.  Profits have become extremely elusive and short lived when they appear.  It is not easy.

My son-in-law recently asked me, do you ever run out of enough relevant business subjects to talk about?  My quick answer was, "No."

In business, there is always something to work on.  There is no end to the challenges business owners face.  There is no business model that once it reaches its final design, it is done doing what it needs to do...all that remains is to deposit the profits.  As it stands, a lot of things have a huge impact on the outcomes of profit.  Those various things are comfortably filled with layers of twists and turns that will never cease to find new challenges to place smack dab in front of the business mind.  Challenges are everywhere.  Profiteering is an elusive painting of art that is extremely hard to consistently produce.  That canvas is forever changing.  No business mind has been able to escape the troubles that arise to interfere with the simple ideas that produce profits.  There is always something in business to talk about.

Page two.

Why Are Markets So Uncertain For Small Business And Retailers?

Let's Help The Consumers Achieve!

Retailing used to be a simple process.  Someone in a little area had a special love for baking cookies or fixing cars and before you know it, off they go to open up a small business.  Since they liked windsurfing, they decided to open a windsurfing shop!  That’s what they know.  That is what their true passion is.  That is how most small business models got off the ground.  It was a simple passion to do what they knew and loved to do.  It was very simple.

Once they opened up shop, hung a shingle outside to let everyone else know who they are and what they did, they began the process of moving money around.  Not knowing how to move money around properly, they began the slightly confusing trek to operate their business model...emotionally.  This process lead them to discover the art of finding a ton of little nose bleeds.  Some nose bleeds were more serious than others.  Moving money around for keeps was not as easy as one might expect.  In most cases, the home wallet took a small beating.  Hopefully the passion did not fall into the same ditch.

If the passion survived the economic ditch, and after a bit of time and experience, some necessary adjustments were made.  The adjusted small business models began to deliver a little bit of business returns.  Most of those ‘self-taught-business-adjuster-types’ eventually found their way onto the plus columns of their properly recorded balance sheets inside their business books.  Those were the ones able to survive what mistakes they could constantly find.   The school of hard knocks ultimately helped them to mold their ways into becoming part of the small army of pretty savvy operators.  Their business models had become worth something to parade around town.  They learned the art of employing a few people and their futures where no longer as dim as once before.

What happened?  Where are these savvy small time business owners today?  Where are the people they once employed?  A good deal of them have all but disappeared.  Many are so strapped down with operational debts, ever increasing business costs, lost consumer buying abilities and complicated patterns of consumer diversity that they cannot see the forest of growth opportunities through the immediate line of towering trees.  It has all become overwhelming.  Hope has become delegated lower down that pole of priorities.  Survival has become the current fire of attention.

For those remaining in the small business game, they are the sharp ones.  Even the lucky ones have taken on too much water to survive.  What’s more, the remaining sharp ones are working their way through the maze of economic change, through the effort to find useful technological advancements and trying to discover some of the more clever trials the new consumers have quietly become accustomed to using in their desire to honor where they go to buy what they buy.  All of this small business effort has quietly become the new daunting challenge.  It consumes the life of the owner’s clock and spits out little rewards that do not always measure up to the return the owners had once felt tolerable.  Job creation is not one of their current concerns.  Survival has taken up all of that space.

The uncertainty of effort coupled with the uncertainty of returns has become such a dominating part of the daily pattern for most small business owners that hope is dwindling fast.  These unwanted patterns have spurred the need for small business owners to become more innovative in how they learn to find better ways to process what they do.  It has unfortunately become more than fixing cars, baking cookies and surfing the winds.  The small business owner has recently discovered that they must learn how to behave like they are writing a thesis for the Harvard Business Review, or MIT, hoping to get at least an A+ on the paper.  If they fail writing a great paper plan, their business model will certainly fail.

 

Even then, the consumer markets remain uncertain.  So why are the consumer markets so uncertain?  Holy cow, all of this thinking has become very complicated.  Does anybody dispute this truth?  Let's get real.  We aren't in Kansas anymore.  In fact, even Kansas is complicated.

Let’s take a cleaner look at what small business owners and retailers are facing.

Page two.

What Is The First Thing Your Customers See?

Be Careful Who You Decide To Chase Away...A Zero Deposit Is A Zero Deposit!

There are three parts to the answer of this question.  What is the first thing your customers see?

In every business a certain list of duties become very important things to do.  Those things not only become very important to do but can rarely be found written somewhere in the business plan.  They became important to the business model as they evolved with time.

Those 'special' duties of consideration occur with their own volition, in their own space and time inside their own 'special' art of attraction policies.  Those 'special' considerations eventually grow and become part of the personality each business successfully creates.  They become in large part, the driving cloud of your business atmosphere.  In most successful business models, you will find an atmosphere of 'special' considerations that is significantly different than anything their competitors provide.  The really successful ones do it differently.  Their business atmosphere reflects a wholly separate set of 'special' attraction considerations.

If you are blessed enough to experience how the growth of your business model becomes directly tied to the atmosphere your model generates, you will be one of those who can share this wonderful effect better than I can articulate.  For those who have experienced this kind of success first hand, make sure you share with the readers how you made that kind of thing happen in your business affairs.  To the business leaders who have never experienced this effect, it can be a very invisible thing to see.

Now, back to the three questions of description.  There are three questions that can help to describe the title of this post, "What is the first thing your customers see?"

Number one, what do your marketing efforts say to your customers?

Number two, what is the impression your customers get when they enter your establishments for the first time?

Number three, what does your business say to every one of your repeat customers?

Answering all three of these questions will help you to evaluate how your business answers the question in the title of this post.  What your customers see when they glance at your business is as important to them as what you decide to do next.  The day you forget the value of this impression is the day you misunderstand how to market your wares properly.  That kind of misunderstanding will cost your business its pursuit of greatness.  Hands down.

Too many business owners get all wrapped up with the distractions of life and limb long before they lift up the importance of knowing what their customers see.  I chit chat with a lot of small business owners who spend too much time manipulating how their time is spent, placing their ego's above the art of proper business balance and directing their personal opinions to the front of the consumer line.  These small business owners suffer greatly in their pursuit of economic success.  They may not actually see how they have placed untold limits on the shoulders of the atmosphere their customers see.  What's worse, in most cases even the customer cannot easily articulate why they do not prefer to do trade within the halls of these broken business atmospheres.  The 'special' duties of consideration are null and void.  Somehow those customers know it.

To some, this might be too slippery to discuss.  It might be too heady to consider.  Whatever the case, the effort to improve the view the customers see becomes less important to the leader who finds it too hard to understand and therefore, manage.  A kind of 'oh, well' sense of attitude takes over the drive to improve.  This allows the harder working competitors a better chance for gaining more.  Each business model faces these critical realities.  What is the first thing your customers see?

Let's examine your answers to the three questions posed.

Page two.

What Goes Through The Mind?

What goes through the mind of a business owner who is having serious economic challenges in their business model and failure has become a very real and dominating consideration?  What are they thinking about?

I have been in those shoes before.  I have felt what they feel.  I have experienced how empty and troubling those thoughts can be, while at the same time, how heavy they can feel.  It is an awful place to live.  I know, I have stood for a very long time in those kinds of troubling shoes.  I have walked down the halls of not knowing what to do next.  I have worked beyond hard to push flashing and terrible thoughts out of my mind to remain on track with my level headed sensibilities.  Not always succeeding at that effort.  Losing control and allowing my temper to take over.  I have crashed hard, cried, worried so deeply that at times I almost blacked out with the high pressures of this kind of stress.  I forgot who I am and began lying about who I was and how I was doing.  I did not want anyone to know I had failed.  It was utterly shameful...but very secret.

What goes through the mind of a business owner who is having serious economic challenges in their business model and failure has become a very real and dominating consideration?  Too many wrong things.

The first trick to initialize the process for healthy repair is to flat out admit it.  Just simply sit down and admit that help is very much needed.  That is where the real work begins for becoming a better business owner.  When the light of admission finally goes on the darkness of not knowing begins to shine.  In my case, it was the very first time in my business career that I was able to shed some light on where I was not able to do well.  No more cover-ups for the skills I lacked.  Get them out and noticed immediately.  That way my business team can begin the work to help solve problems where those weaknesses occurred.  My leadership magically grew well when I allowed them to be good where I was not.  It is an utterly amazing thing to watch happen.

What goes through the mind of a business owner who is having serious economic challenges in their business model and failure has become a very real and dominating consideration?  Emotionally wrong thinking goes on in the mind of a failing business leader.  We get quietly consumed with the fears that surround how we feel about losing control.  We feel threatened by knowing what others see.  We work overtime to protect what those fears want to reveal.  Our emotions grow larger and our denial works harder as we subconsciously manifest clever ways to survive.  We inadvertently change our personal being in an effort to protect who we want others to see.  We get out of ourselves and become someone else that nobody close to us recognizes anymore.  Conflict becomes how we manage our closest relationships.  Conflict becomes the way we manage our business affairs.  Conflict becomes how we treat certain customers.  We pick and choose who we want to serve.  Conflict arrives to quietly rule how our business model survives.  It all becomes a terrible spiraling effect.  It becomes the drain that drives the business.

What goes through the mind of a business owner who is having serious economic challenges in their business model and failure has become a very real and dominating consideration?  What happens to their future when all of this stuff takes over?  That depends.  It depends on how that business leader responds to these daunting challenges.  The next steps they employ to begin the process of repair become the new beginning to a better path their business model will travel.  The steering wheel still remains in their hands.  Turning that steering wheel still becomes their next choice.  Regardless of how deeply my business was challenged when I was faced with sheer destruction, I still had my hands on the wheel of its direction.  It was still up to me to decide where to go.  It still remained in my influence to go get some help.  It still remained in my influence to consider changing my ways.  It still remained in my influence to correct what I did not know.  It still remained in my influence to admit what I could not see.  My habits began to be challenged.  My ways began to be destroyed.  My being felt like it was disrespected and I also felt like everyone else was trying to flip it over.  I had a grip on the steering wheel that nobody else wanted to touch, in the way I wanted them to touch it.  I felt lost and alone.

What goes through the mind of a business owner who is having serious economic challenges in their business model and failure has become a very real and dominating consideration?

Page two.

Be Careful...It Might Be Irrevocable Passion!

Your Weird Idea Might Be Found!

The world of marketing is crammed full of great ideas.  I have a few of my own that I would like to share.  However, good ideas do not always work.  For one reason or another, they can fail miserably.  I have a few of those skeletons on my business trail also.  In fact, I think I have a lot more failed marketing skeletons on my business trail than I do in left over good ideas worth pursuing.  That might be something to think about.

I have taken a quiet stroll through some of the small business models located in a couple of little cities in the northwestern United States.  I have chatted with the owners of those small endeavors.  It is easy to strike up a simple conversation with them.  After a moment or two, they get real comfortable sharing their business passion with their audience, me.  That is when I discover some interesting things about marketing.

I can certainly appreciate it when a small business owner gets a bright idea.  I have a whole basement full of them.  Business owners tend to think that just because the idea sounds cool and interesting  it is also able to be translated into the market with great potential.  Unfortunately, that plan does not always work out so well.  A lot of great ideas and wonderful thoughts turn out to become very poor in the area of producing increased sales.  The longer a person remains in business the more they discover this relative truth.

One of the more challenging things for a small business owner to overcome is the inability to control the balance they must supply to the cool ideas they develop in their minds.  This is a requirement of success that often times goes unnoticed.  It certainly does not receive the overall respect it truly deserves.

Why is that?  Why do small business owners fail to recognize how to properly examine their market needs for cool ideas?  How do they do this step well before they invest time and money into trying that cool idea out?  Why do so many small business owners wait to discover not enough people in their market cared about that cool idea as much as they did until well after they have thrown a lot of time and money at the dud?  Why does that happen so much?  I think my travels may have found one of those driving reasons why this happens.  Passion.  Unbridled passion.  Irrevocable passion!

We see the world of business made up of extremely successful business leaders like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, Zukerberg of Facebook and the likes of Larry Page and Sergey Brin founders of Google.  They were extremely passionate about some very forward and zany ideas.  They moved well before the market was ready to accept what they had rolling around in their minds.  It worked.  It not only worked, it worked extremely well.  That is one of the reasons why our passion to produce a sewing alterations shop into a healing boutique with beer, food and drum music in a laid out hippie den looks very much like a good idea in a small, rural farm town.  The only problem remains...no customers.  It is a very cool and progressive idea!  I grant that.  The passion for telling me why it is so cool is wonderful and deeply driven.  I also get that.  But marketability?  Oops.  That is looking much more like a flat tire in the remote heat of a vast desert.  Not good.

How does a small time business owner truly prepare themselves for the right kinds of effective check and balances needed when they go to the creative drawing board with new innovations?  Wow, now that is a big time challenge.  On one hand, standing ovation for the small business owner who produced a great retail environment surrounding the passion to get that alteration sewing shop converted into such a beautifully progressive supporter of this great idea.  What an amazing job done on a silver nickel.  Yet on the other hand, pray for the deeper requirements of understanding as to why the neighbors have all pitched in to help that small business owner make the next monthly rent payment.  How long can that kind of relationship remain?

Be careful...it might be irrevocable passion.

Page two.

Managing A Sales Staff, Anything New?

Sales Meetings Galore!

Where has the time gone?  The minute I turn around another ten years has gone by.  Does this seem normal?  Where did all the time go?

Guess what?  Time flies.  There is so much to do and so little time.  The next thing we know, a decade has passed.  First one, then two and now three decades have gone by us in what seems like a flash.  Does this sound familiar in your business world?  It does mine.

Time has traveled so fast that sometimes we do not notice the changes that have occurred around us.  Some of those changes are huge.  Some of them are so subtle that we usually do not notice them until we go back and try doing something we used to do and it no longer fits.  Our old ways become obsolete.  They don't work anymore.

I think I have discovered one of those subtle changes.  The art of directing a sales staff effectively is no longer useful in the ways we used to do it.  Trust me, many sales managers are still trying to force a round peg into a square hole.  The way sales managers rally their troops to get motivated in going out to sell stuff to their customers has always been a predictable pattern to witness.  We pull them into a 'rally' room or a joint conference call and begin encouraging them to share their success stories with the others.  We might even play roll a situation or two.  Then we get to the brass tacks of the numbers.  We check to see what the current numbers of performance are with the wrap up emphasis directed towards our goals today.  We get closing commitments from those in attendance about what numbers they plan to achieve today and we send them out with a rah, rah set of encouragement.  We believe we have fired them up!

Oh, I forgot.  We also share any product specials and announcements since we have all of them together at once.  That is how we used to manage our sales staff.  Guess what?  I still see this kind of format and methodology still heavily used.  Everything else in this world has changed a great deal but the motivational work a sales manager does is somewhat the same as it has been performed for the past few decades.  Not much change here.

Well I am not satisfied with this type of leadership in sales.  Are you?

Is it time to reconstruct how we lead our valuable sales teams?  Just because we have new electronics and upgraded technologies does not necessarily mean we have developed better innovations for motivating our sales staffs of tomorrow.  In most cases, we are still doing the same patterns only with newer tools.  Today we use laptops, smart phones and online web cams.  Yet the sales meeting is much the same.  Gather together and share some unique and challenging common experiences, have a laugh or two, maybe dry run a play rolling situation, discuss some issues, review the numbers and set our daily goals...then pat them on the back and tell them to get out there and knock 'em dead.

Not much has changed in this world of directing sales.  Or has it?

Let's take a deeper look.  In a recent Google attempt I reviewed several top sales management websites.  Did you know what I found?  They all say about the same kinds of things.  They described various ways how to motivate the sales staff.  They offered importance to the methods needed to blend recognition with income.  They all have a favorite pattern of metrics for performance measurements they like to employ.  Each site had a various set of suggestions to describe how to manage routine meetings, motivational gatherings and information sharing opportunities.  I found a good deal of a lot of the same stuff that has been occurring for decades.  In a business world of change, the methods for motivating a sales staff apparently has not found much change inside the halls of its work.  Is it time for someone to develop a new set of useful innovations?  I wonder.

Management has seen a lot of emphasis surround the idea of best practices.  New ideas, new techniques and new ideologies have evolved.  Some very good ones have surfaced while some not so good ones came into the light.  That happens when innovation is pushed.  Some new ideas drift foul.  They once looked good when they first hit the air but with time, they curved well off the course of the expected desires.  Sometimes we simply fail.  Big deal.  Now we know what will not work.  To many innovative leaders, this is good news.

Who is trying out some new sales management innovations?  Anyone out there doing some unique and useful stuff?  Let's see.

Page two.

Business Innovation Is Not A Fundamental Step

Innovation Is Not Magical.

I wonder how many business leaders sit down at their desk and once in awhile ask themselves if they are doing the right steps to perform their tasks?  How many business owners take time to reflect on the kinds of things they are doing to run their business model?  For those who sit down, take the time to re-evaluate what they are doing, good for you.  Once in awhile, taking stock of the things we work to do is a forward step to making sure we are productive leaders.  It is an essential task to perform if winning is desired.

Meanwhile, if some important responsibility is discovered that has become noticeably missing in the leadership process, reflection can help to find those missing parts.  The truth is, business leaders get busy.  Time and again some of the important yet fundamental strokes they perform get quietly omitted as they take on new surprises, added duties, complicated tasks and responsibilities.  This is a natural occurrence.  The life of a business leader can easily be filled with high adventure.  High adventure can become very distracting.   Welcome to leadership.  Maybe it is time for reflection.

There is a lot of time spent on making sure the work a business leader performs is up to speed performing the things the business needs to see done.  This is often times secured by the way the business leader arranges their time management structure.  An effective approach to managing a useful method for time structuring is not only helpful to a business leader, it is vital.  Managing time well is essential for success to become sustained.  This kind of respect to leadership can be daunting.  It is an art that requires a lot of good practice.  Time management.

Some of the things a business leader includes in the personal performance review are viewed routinely because they help that leader discover to see if the use of time is as efficient as is possible.  There are certain  components of leadership that are included in that kind of review.  For example, the business leader must review the art and science of studying the numbers.  This task must be part of a daily routine.  However, be very careful in creating too much art in this process.  The banking industry fell in love with derivatives.  Unfortunately, the process of shifting paper to chase that product actually produced nothing, with the exception of the friendly returns those derivatives offered when they performed well.  The bank had no direct control of how well those derivatives could perform.  The creation and movement of that paper did not produce anything new and of sustaining value.  The lack of useful productivity associated with the work involved could not measure up to the value that was being perceived and marketed.  Time worked its magical wonders and those efforts imploded to their real value, which was less than what was artfully being traded.  Be careful of injecting too much art into the management of your numbers.  Stick to knitting here.

Another component worth daily consideration is the review process the leader uses to evaluate the performance metrics of the human resources employed.  Business success is all about improving relationships.  The relationships with staff, customers, agencies, suppliers and every little pocket of connectivity comes front center to those business models who perform well, consistently.  Get the calendar of daily duties rubbed up next to this responsibility.  Those who strategically avoid this area of responsibility have a lot of internal challenges to deal with.  Trust me.  Those who avoid this area of work may become business leaders with the ability to perform well in most market place positions, but they will never be a part of a great growing company that can sustain incredible growth patterns.  It takes great relationships to do that kind of work.

One more component worth daily attention are the areas of product and distribution.  Set aside daily time chips to manage these business affairs.  There is nothing more important to business success than knowing what to produce, when to produce it and how to get it to where it wants to go.  This is fundamental.  Work on making sure this kind of fundamental becomes part of your daily management routine.

Now for the reason this post was written.  The one fundamental that cannot be placed on the reminder list of duties.  The one component to success that should never become a listed item on the time structure calendar.  The business task that cannot serve well to become something that is forgotten once in awhile.  Innovation.  Innovation is not a task, a component to success or a fundamental to be remembered once in awhile.  Innovation is a mental state of mind that is the driving character of who your business model becomes.  You are either innovative or you are not.  It cannot be added to your time structure calendar for Wednesday's and Friday's at 10:00 A.M. to be reviewed.  Innovation does not work well this way.

Unfortunately, I meet many business leaders who try to perform innovation in this fashion.  They actually have it structured into their weekly calendar like reviewing their e-mails first thing each day.  Innovation simply does not work well in this fashion.  It only works best when it becomes who you are.  Innovation should become as natural as flushing the toilet.  You should never need to remind yourself to do it.

Page two.

The Economic Plight Of Small Business

First of all, when it comes to describing the plight of small business in America uncertainty is tops on the list.  I am also confident to say that uncertainty may also be on the top of the list of small business challenges worldwide.  Uncertainty is a very crippling thing.  It causes the small business owner to make some softer decisions.  It also helps small business owners perform less critical decisions.  Uncertainty can interfere with the notion that more risky stuff needs to occur.  As a result, calculated risks will not find their way to the strategic top of the cream of ideas.  The actual plight facing small businesses today is uncertainty.

I just spent a week traveling about chatting with small business owners.  Some I know rather well and some I have never met before.  I posed several nebulous questions before them.  The answers and chit chat they offered was kind of telling.  For the most part, all of them are a bit unsure of where their business might be three years from now.  Not one of them shared a high degree of confidence in their near future of performance opportunities.  Not one.

Just taking the time to read the Wall Street Journal recently, through and through, and the same uncertainty concern seems to hold true for corporations and the world's top companies.  Uncertainty is not just a political buzz word lately.  It is also becoming a mainstream habit, a part of our business world of reality.  Too many business owners and business leaders are pulling in their creative reins at a time when innovation is screaming out loud for more things to do.  This is not a very good scene for the world of business.  I am certain that the largeness of our looming debt on the balance sheets of countries, corporations and personal home budgets has a good deal to do with the higher levels of uncertainty being expressed.  Debt is a heavy weight.  It's benefit has already been realized.  So all that remains is its requirement to be lowered.  Nothing good remains to be enjoyed by that kind of a problem.  Debt brings on last years enjoyment at this years expense.  How certain is that?  Maybe it is not uncertainty that we fear?  Something to consider, for sure.

Uncertainty also circles around the fickle nature of the consumer markets.  Consumers have come to prove how unreliable their spending habits tend to lean.  With the complicated methods technology offers to identify how and where the consumer will release what it offers to spend has become a maize of metrics that read like a complicated, strange jigsaw puzzle.  The task of marketing new growth has become a daunting chore.  Not to mention, expensive to acquire.  This fuels the notions of uncertainty as well.

What is a small business owner to do?  How will they fight this overwhelming world of economic plight with the very limited resources they have to tap?  No wonder they are expressing higher levels of uncertainty.  Be also reminded that this is an election year.  The business owners have had to endure some of the most complicated, well-designed, high volume productions of lies and promises that they know their future political leaders will never be able to provide.  Uncertainty looms very large right now.

The economic plight of small business in America becomes sandwiched between the breads of these challenges.  As a result, innovation appears worn out.  Innovation sounds fruitless.  Innovation has found its dim light to the end of its promised tunnel of joy.  The business world is pulling in its horns for a time of breathing.  It is exhausted with this last run for survival.  Most small business owners are hanging on with sheer determination and with as much creativity as they can muster to stay alive.  That's it.  That is where the good ones seem to remain.  The not-so-good-ones are folding up shop, selling off assets or re-positioning with the help of shared ownership in order to move forward towards the next days.  The economic plight of small business today is learning how to manage its way through the current ocean of waves pounding uncertainty to the shores of their balance books.

The economic plight of small business today is uncertainty.

So what do we do about it?

Page two.

Let's Unscramble This Business Mess

Do These Guys Look Like Good Business Partners?  Neither Does Debt.

Several years ago I was struggling with my business.  I could not generate enough money to cover my expenses.  The amount of debt my business was managing was tolerable at that time.  Nearly every business model manages a certain level of debt.  Debt becomes much like a routine line item on your financials.  It seems to always show up on the income statement every month and the corresponding balance sheets.  Debt has become a routine fixture to the business world.

My business several years ago was managing its routine debts.  Some of those debts were short term, 'on account' product purchases from my suppliers while others were longer term debts coming from loans secured at my local bank.  At that time, my business was managing a debt package of about 15% of its gross sales.  To some of you who do not know what that means, this amount of debt is too large to carry.  Typically, if fifteen percent of your business income is dedicated to servicing your monthly debt payments you are carrying too much economic burden in your business model.  There are a lot of exceptions to this policy of thought, but make no mistake about when and when not to allow this kind of debt management to get out of hand.

Back when this was happening to my business I was able to manage the payments and keep the debt from climbing any larger.  The mess began to occur when I trusted that process and allowed that debt to become a permanent fixture in my business management process.  I permitted that debt to become a 'line item' of allowable cost.  It was permitted, expected, budgeted and planned.  I was doing what most Americans have learned how to do.  I was living above my business means.

This kind of economic policy will eventually create a terrible financial mess.  Sooner or later it will grow too large to be manageable.  It will become larger than the business revenues can support.  It is also a problem in that this kind of expense is not something you can cut out of the budget without paying it off.  In other words, you cannot trim down debt like you can cut back on energy use.  You cannot trim down debt like you can cut payroll expenses.  If budgets need to be cut, laying one employee off will do the trick immediately.  However, regarding debt, you cannot decide to stop paying it and cut it off.  Debt cannot be trimmed from the budget.  Debt is a permanent fixture in your package of business requirements.  Debt is a sneaky little monster boss.  Be very careful how much power you give it.

Debt also has a tendency to limit where you can cut back on other expenses.  For example, if you are working to expand your business and you have placed some major capital investments into new markets, your business demand for increased marketing money has come alive.  The demand for spending more money to market your expansion successfully has cramped where your cuts can occur when the debt exceeds your ability to keep up with the cost of its servicing.  The cost of reaching new markets is not as serious of a contender in expense attention as is the debt you carry.  Debt limits the decisions you have for cutting where you would prefer to cut.  By the pure nature of its demand for being serviced first, debt reduces the funds you have for feeding the other important business costs you need to be servicing.  Debt limits what you can spend, when you need to spend it and where you want to select what to spend.  Debt is a terrible boss.  It is a clear boss with a terrible business partner attitude.

When you manage debt, especially by plan, you admit to taking on a business partner.  That debt becomes your new boss.  It might not be much but it will govern a lot of what you prefer to do.  Debt will see to it that your future gets a few limits placed on its expense spending ideas.  Debt will grow up and begin to govern where you spend your business income.  Debt will not only boss you around, it will want its money first.  I know what I speak to be true.  If your business has any debt, that debt has become your silent boss.  It controls a portion of your business model.  If that portion is 15% or more, you have a little mess developing.  You have a boss who is beginning to dominate what you can and cannot do in your business model.  You have a small business mess.  You have an unwanted silent partner.

Let's unscramble this business mess.

Page two.

Warning: This Is Not A Politically Correct Post!

What color is your nose?

I warned you.  The title was absolutely correct.  This piece will not cover friendly ground.  You were properly forewarned.  Read on or go away if it might offend you.  It is your choice, not mine.  I am comfortable with it.  You have been warned.

Therefore, if you are of the sensitive type, looking at the world through critically adjusted sunglasses, you might quit reading this post right now.  This particular post is not aimed at being careful enough to wake up on the politically correct side of the bed.  For those who believe everything in the world needs to be more sensitive to all people and all things, you may perfectly excuse yourself from reading anymore of what is to follow.  You may want to keep your nose clean.  You may go away right now because I am going to write on.

The world of employment has gone overboard to be politically correct.  Did you know that?  It has.
I know a lot about this subject, I take a lot of notes in the workplace.  I also do not worry much about what others think of me.  I am solid with who I am and why I do what I do.  Has it cost me promotions and support along the way?  Well of course it has.  Being politically correct does not guarantee success but it will help reduce the challenges you face that destroys good opportunities.  That is a certain and 'for sure' statement.

Why write about being politically correct?  We all know it exists and we all know it actively runs true in the workplace.  Political correctness has a lot of influence regarding elements that come with a lot of the important matters regarding workplace respect.  Remaining politically correct is a prudent and clever way to help an employee keep from being overlooked for the next promotion.  Trust me on this one.  If you know how to keep your nose colored brown you will help your promotional chances.  I know that is not politically correct, but it is true.  In my book, the truth trumps a politically correct stance.  If that is too direct, excuse me.  Furthermore, I do not care if it strikes the more-sensitive spots remaining on the skin of someones true character.

We have become very soft as a society.  No tough stuff is allowed anymore.  Being direct and tough on personal matters looks like bullying, off-colored remarks, insensitive tongues and aggressive behavior.  All of these things are no longer allowed to run at all in the current workplace.  I happen to respect this approach.  I agree that being insensitive is a very wrong thing to perform.  It destroys the potential for success in such a quiet way.  I do not promote an aggressive and insensitive tongue.

However, sometimes the truth needs to stand taller than the quiet tongue that is trying so hard to remain politically correct.  This is where the conflict finds its best debate.  Should we permit some 'not-so-politically-correct' positions to enter the workplace if they reveal some unfair and protective management practices?  Is there a time when being politically correct can hurt the future integrity of the workplace environment?  I say it is true, can happen and does happen more often than we have the courage to reveal.

For the sake of keeping your job, most will remain steadfast to practicing the art of controlling their thoughts and tongue.  Most clearly recognize how dangerous it might become to permit their mind and tongue to come out and tell the truth about something being practiced wrong in the workplace that should be exposed.  The potential to become a whistle-blower brings with it some very real employment risks.  How brown is your nose?  How serious do you feel about protecting the status of your job?  These are real questions with real consequences.

Let me give you a classic example.

Page two.

Remember This...Always Keep The Faith.

Faith, Learn How To Keep It.

There is something to the idea of keeping faith.  I know a lot of people in the world, smart ones too, that will dispel the idea of keeping faith.  They just do not want to believe that something like faith can carry a huge advantage in the marketplace.  Although there are tons of great examples scattered all over the trail of business success, where faith has won its presence, they continue to dispel it.  They have that right.  They can believe what they want to believe.

I, on the other hand, have seen too many wonderful examples of the opposite.  I have seen how keeping the faith has helped to inspire many business leaders to do some things they might otherwise never attempt to do.  I have witnessed faith do its magical work, over and over.  There are not a limited supply of examples.

Faith is a very powerful deal.  Faith is also one of those things that is difficult to teach.  You cannot tell someone to keep up the faith and it automatically sticks solid in their mind and actions.  Faith is a process that requires some practice.  Faith is a process that requires support when it does not deserve support.  Faith is a process that occurs when all else makes sure it cannot occur.  Faith is amazing.  It works best when it is least likely to be proven.

There are thousands upon thousands of business leaders in this world who are managing their business models through some very tough economic times.  The past five years have been especially difficult.  The road to profits have been a real bumpy ride.  In fact, some of that ride has come to a complete stop in certain circumstances.  The pain felt when the activity stops for a short period of time is not a good pain to experience.  There is not a business leader alive who has not had this terrible feeling.  The fear of business failure is a real and devastating feeling.  Business leaders deal with it off and on in their careers.

Sometimes the pain of feeling the loss a business can produce overcomes the business leader.  They can become depressed and filled with added anxiety.  I have seen this happen to me, my associates, my business friends and many other business leaders in the business world.  Anxiety for business failure is a real thing to navigate.  It can take possession and dominate the business decision process.  It can cripple the good efforts a business leader needs to perform.  It can alter the clean thoughts, the healthy procedures and the needed clarity for a business leader to find their way through some tough times.  Anxiety and the fear of business failure can become a very devastating process.

Faith becomes the hero of the day.  Faith provides a solid way to help struggling business leaders get through some of the most difficult times they will or have ever faced.  Faith is likely the only thing that provides the necessary strength for a failing business leader to get on with getting on.  When all else fails, grab some faith and move on.  Do the next best thing and work your way out of where you are.  It will work out and your faith will help see it through.  Learn how to practice the art of faith.  Learn how to believe in doing well.  Learn how to practice reaching the improvement side.

Have faith.

Page two.