Life & Small Business Success

Simple Tools To Grow Your Business

2012-02-24T14:26:00.000-08:00

Every day I meet with people who own or run a business. I don't spend a lot of time in government offices now that I am retired from the Air Force Reserves. I like meeting and talking with business owners and leaders because they all understand the concept of "Mission".

My wife is a real estate agent, actually a Realtor (tm), and for the first time since I have known her, she now has a sense of "Mission". Gaining the sense of mission is one of the fastest and least expensive changes you can make in your life when it comes to achieving success at any level.

Let's say I want to lose weight, and get down to 180 pounds. Everytime I pass an ice cream store, I ask the question of mission. Will this ice cream cone help me lose 180 pounds? If it hasn't, and I am taking it as a luxury, have I done the exercise to add it today? The key difference between someone trying to lose weight and being on a mission to lose weight is the work to lose weight is done first. If I plan to be at 180 by June and I am on track and ran an extra mile today to earn the luxury of the ice cream, I can treat myself. Otherwise I have to keep walking. Today I kept walking.

Business is no different. If you want to make $100,000 this month in whatever you do and you make it a mission, decisions are much easier. When your buddies call to go to the ball game, you can look at your numbers and know that you are ahead of track or behind. If it is the 15th and you have already made $90,000. You can either work on the last $10,000 or go to the ball game.

On the 25th of the month and if you are at $90,000, your actions will tell everyone including the universe itself if you are on a mission or just set a goal. The person with a goal, will say "$90,000 is close enough." and go to the game. The person on a mission will stay and work. There is no "close enough" when it comes to real missions in real life, only success or failure.

Learning to accept the concept of mission is one thing, disciplining yourself to live it is another. The right side of my white board in the office has initials for several goals I have currently. Together they spell out the focus of my mission. I look at it several times a day and it makes me thing smarter about decisions. My goals cover a few areas today, and I highly suggest that you start out with just one target at a time for your mission. As you get better at hitting targets, then you can add more targets to shoot for simultaneously. The worst thing you can do is list to many targets and not hit any.

What is your first target?

The Best Business Improvement Program Ever? Create a Whiteboard of Success for Under $200.

2012-02-16T11:46:00.000-08:00

Last night a good friend of mine lost his job. He asked me what he should do next. Of course I said "Read my book." I knew he already had a copy, so buying the book wasn't a problem. Buying the book isn't the best business improvement program for $200, but it might be the best one for $15 even if the cover is goofy. (A free signed copy to anyone with a better cover idea that I use.)

Losing a job can be an amazing experience and opportunity if you look at it the right way. He did. He hadn't read the book, but he did skip ahead to the next book which I haven't even written yet. He just knew what to do because we have worked together for a long time and he knows how I think. I think everyone should act like they are their own business.

What I am going to give you today is the best trick I have learned in helping people improve both their personal life and business life. If you hire me to work with you on this it is going to be thousands of dollars, and I am giving it to you free. Why? Let's be honest, if it works for you and your business grows, I hope you'll hire me as your virtual Chief Marketing Officer or The Bourquin Group as your online marketing agency and SEO

So, Now What? is the book I wrote to help people who lost their jobs find a better life and move on. As the country song goes "If you are going through hell keep on going....you might get out before the devil even knows your there..." When you lose your job or business, regaining focus to move forward can be tough.

Another friend is going through a rough divorce. The rules are the same. At the end of the day, you have to know the answer to the question "Who do you want to be?".

What does all of this have to do with the best $200 business improvement ever? A lot really, and no I am not going to sell you a class or an e-book or anything else for $200. This IS the class. If you want my help it will cost a lot more than $200, but I think you'll get this pretty quickly. The trick is to do it.

When I closed my last business, it was a very difficult decision that was long overdue. Like most difficult decisions, I put it off way to long and took counsel from other people who would not benefit if I closed the business like my banker and my landlord. Both great people but they stood to lose if I closed so their advice was likely a bit skewed. Because I had delayed the decision, the closing was longer and more painful that it should have been.

My friend knew almost a year ago he was going to lose his job, I know this because he started calling me about it a year ago. Instead of getting a new one then, he waited. My friend going through the divorce, same deal. They both saw it coming and kept saying "I'll deal with it later." Now later is here for both of them.

The first lesson, make tough decisions early.

Now the meat of the $200 business improvement program. Simply put, I went through all of the steps in my book to define who I wanted to be in 5 years. It included where I wanted to live, what I wanted to be doing, and how often I would do it. My wife was a big part of the process. We all need another set of eyes to keep us honest. That is what a good lieutenant in the military and in business does. If you don't have one, hire one. I do have an opening or two this year.

The process is so simple I don't want you to laugh it off or skip it. Step one, go to a home store and buy a 4'x8' sheet of smooth shower panel. This is the biggest and cheapest white board you can find. If it won't fit in your car, the whiteboard paint is ok, but the drying time allows for distractions.

Option 2 is to go to the office store or warehouse store and buy the biggest whiteboard and pen set that will fit into your car. The minute you get home hang it up, anywhere. The more public the better. You need the confidence to stand behind whatever you write.

I have seen guys do this in their garage, office, family room and now even a kitchen. The next step is to write your mission across the top. Your mission is your personal passion and purpose. the reason we are using a white board, is the more stuff you put on it, the clearer the picture gets. You might want to change the wording of your mission several times. If you already have a business, you will be amazed as how effective this simple exercise is. If you are building a business, even better, you are starting off in the right direction from day one.

After the mission statement, a one or two line simple and focused statement like "Helping business owners build a better business", the work begins. I started with that mission statement because I realized it is what people really wanted from me. They didn't buy home theaters from be because I was a THX and CEDIA certified guy, they bought because they wanted to talk to me about their business. I'll let you in on a secret here, I do this exercise with all of my marketing clients, they just don't realize it.

The last time I started this I was living in Texas, miles from the beach. I tell you this so you can see how different my perspective was at the time.

Writing on the write board, I used red for things I didn't want in my business like "late payments" or "work before 9 am" so I could surf. Surfing in the Morning was in blue. I used blue for things I wanted and green for things that made money. Because my life and my business are so intertwined, everything went on this board with my wife Kelly sitting right there.

At first she laughed a little, then she walked away and came back with a glass of wine to watch and humor me. Eventually she did pipe up and start erasing things that just weren't going to happen like "Own a 50' motor boat". She knew that I just won't waste that much fuel to go fishing, and a sail boat was more likely. At the end of the day, we both agreed, I am a car guy, and an airplane guy, and renting boats was the way to go.

After two hours the whiteboard was full, I mean completely full. Regrettably, I didn't take a picture to share with you. With a full whiteboard, this is the most important step, housecleaning. Now it was time to prioritize and expand the different areas. For instance, "ride bike on beach" linked and expanded two things. It meant I needed a bike, and a new home within bike riding distance of a beach with a bike path.

It didn't take long to see which things were inconsistent with the overall picture and just erase them or change them to red. Within just a few hours I had a completely different understanding of my life and my business. It felt good. I felt relieved, because suddenly this incredible life I wanted didn't appear that difficult to achieve.

The whiteboard clearly outlined areas in my life that were not moving me forward in any way. These areas in red where the things I had to start saying "no" to. Every business has activities and products that take way to much time and effort for the benefit to the customer and the business and yet as owners we don't know how to say "no".

The other end was all the blue and green writing I hadn't given enough thought too. Areas of my life that I enjoyed, people were asking for, and I wasn't doing much of.

Every day I took a look at the whiteboard and distilled it down to a pocket card of the 10 biggest priorities and goals in my life. The implied one that isn't written is to maintain a great relationship with my wife. There is a copy of my pocket card on my sock drawer so I look at it every day.

When you look at something every day, one of two things happens. You hunger for it and start going that way, or you realize it isn't that important and you erase it. The more you do this, the easier life feels, the more time you have and you learn to waste less time and money getting there.

Today my white board is only 20"x30" and has a cork frame around the edge to hang notes, calendars or tickets to events. The left side is my daily "to do" list which I commit to the day prior to prevent "pop ups" and "while you're at it's" from getting in the way of finishing my list every day.

That was round one, and everything has been going great for the last 24 months. The was a major flaw in my perfect plan though. The entire exercise was centered around my life and I didn't really include my wife Kelly the way I should have. Fortunately, when we did her white board exercise, much of our lives overlapped. If you can't find enough overlap, you have two choices, give up your dreams, or divorce.

Your spouse or partner is the single most important element of success in your life after you. You need to support them, they need to support you and your lives must overlap to have any chance of success together.

Last Friday, the first phase of my wife's white board exercise was complete. She received her license number as a Real Estate agent and selected a Coldwell Banker office to associate with.

What is on your whiteboard of success? Don't have one? Go Buy One Today!

Barry Minkow - Fortune Magazine Jan 15 2012 - The Future Issue

2012-01-17T22:10:00.000-08:00

Elementary School is a funny time in a kids life. I knew Barry Minkow then, and that part of his life is never mentioned when you read about him. Barry lived in Southern California until ZZZZ Best was raided. At that time, Barry was part of a family that stayed put and was a foundation in the community, he knew everybody. My family never stayed in a house more than 5 years. In fact the 5 year rule has followed me into my adult life.

If you are like me and moved a lot due to parental employment, divorce and a host of other things, you probably don’t keep in touch with too many of your elementary school friends. You just have some fond memories of a time when you didn’t have bills to pay. I have the phone numbers of exactly one person from my elementary school days and we only see each other once or twice a year. I lost contact with Barry about the time he started ZZZZ Best Carpet Cleaning.

The nomadic nature of my youth made it difficult to stay in contact with any of my elementary and junior high school friends. The fact that the nomadic life stayed with me into adult hood is another story. Back then, I didn’t have a car, there were no cell phones, and as with all things new and old, new friends came and old friends faded away. We didn’t have Facebook to stay “connected” or “friends” for life even if we never saw each other again. Most of my friends don’t even have a Facebook account, and others stopped using it sometime ago. If they want to know what I am doing today, they just text and come over with a bottle of wine.
There are people I wouldn’t mind keeping in touch with or at least finding out where they ended up in life just for curiosity. About three years ago I ran across a very unique name from my junior high days, Grady G. I looked the guy up and it was the same person. We ended up riding motorcycles up Red Rock Canyon just outside of Las Vegas and had a great time. We still get together about every six months. Grady and I went to a few years of Elementary School with Barry Minkow. The school that was very class divided between very rich kids and kids of middle class parents struggling to keep their kids out of trouble. The funny thing is the ones who got famous weren’t the ones you expected.

Maybe they are famous and I am just living in the wrong circles. As far as I know, the most notorious is Barry Minkow. He graces the pages of Fortune Magazine this month for his latest antics. Quite an interesting continuation of the life story I was part of before Barry started ZZZZ Best. Barry was one of the “poor” kids like me who’s family probably sent him to a private school to avoid mandatory bussing in Los Angeles.

Ridgewood, as the school was called, was situated on some prime property in the San Fernando Valley, right on Ventura Boulevard. The most famous parent was probably Barry White. Oddly, I didn’t appreciate his music until he passed away, even though I rode in the same carpool with Kevin and Darryl for two years. The lady that drove the carpool loved Barry Whites music. Since it was AM in her car, all I could remember was static.

Alex Powers was one of the girls in the same class as Barry Minkow, Darryl White, Grady G. and me. She made an appearance in Dead Poets Society and a few other things I haven’t see according to the Wiki entry, but that is about it. There were a couple of kids who were in the movie “The Bad News Bears”. One was the “pitching double” for Tatum O'Nealand wore a wig while shooting the scenes. Like Alex Powers, I haven’t seen their name in lights since. Barry on the other hand has been gracing the papers since Ridgewood was closed and sold off to developers. About two years after Ridgewood closed I was visiting another friend whose father was an entertainment agent. When my mom delivered me to the door, my friends dad, said “Did you hear about Barry Minkow?”

I think I was 17 at the time. It turned out Barry had started a commercial carpet cleaning and restoration company called ZZZZ Best, known as “For Z Best” Carpet Cleaning, and created one of Southern California’s most famous Ponzi Schemes. None of us could believe it, but the more we read about it, the more we knew it was the same Barry Minkow. He was 16 when it started. Barry Minkow was always a smart guy, and we weren’t surprised that he figured out how to do it, we were more surprised that he got caught.

The part that didn’t make sense was the money. What happened to it all? Barry Minkow only bought a few vans and on paper looked like he was playing the same game Donald Trump played when he rented bulldozers to “prove” he had investors for a property. Barry staged trucks and bribed security guards to make it look like he had more work than he did from what I read. Nothing really new or ingenious there really, and unlike Madoff, he didn’t have private jets. He did have a Ferrari though.

What I don’t understand is with all of Barry’s skills why didn’t he just become a TV pitchman for his carpet cleaning service? It was clear he could sell. Maybe he should have sold Oxy-Clean? The article in Fortune magazine this month had an interesting insight about that most people would miss not knowing him. Barry said that he worked best in confinement, which is basically the only way I knew him.

Ridgewood was called Ridgewood Military Academy until the last three or four years. I guess the owners figured out it was easier to market “Ridgewood School” to middle class kids in the San Fernando Valley. Uniforms, restricted travel and corporal punishment for failing to comply were among several of the traits more common to prison than public schools that I can recall. I get it. Personally I ended up joining the military for many of the same reasons. I wasn’t ready for a “normal life”. I didn’t know any better at the time, but the funny thing is, unlike Barry, I didn’t perform well in confinement. My military career was basically uneventful for the first 15 years, just like my time at Ridgewood.

Maybe I was slow since it took me 15 years to find the right spot where I fit and really hit my stride. As far as I know, the rest of the group from Ridgewood are either quietly enjoying their place in life or seeking the place where they find their own stride. I hope Barry Minkow finds his soon, it is a shame to see that much brain power going to sit in prison again instead of helping society move forward. I haven't read his books, or seen the movie about him starring James Caan, simply titled Minkow. I don't know if I ever will invest the time, after all there is a lot of other things to do in life isn't there?

So why am I writing about this? A couple of reasons, the first is, you never know who will make the papers or why. Barry White's kids should have been regulars. Alex Powers after Dead Poets, I thought would be a regular, instead it is Barry Minkow. He is paying a big price for it too.

The second reason I thought that Barry's back story was important was to point out, that Barry Minkow started out as a regular kid. He wasn't the school bully, drug dealer, or even really that big a trouble maker. You couldn't pick him out of the crowd. Sort of like the "overnight" success, Barry didn't really change or do all of this overnight.

The big lesson from Barry Minkow is this; It really doesn't take much before crossing the line becomes comfortable, and that is exactly what is wrong with our countries' attitude. Politicians make promises and don't care what the real results are because they aren't accountable. Some CEO's do the same thing, telling us to invest in their companies for "growth". Politicians run on the premise of "freedom" and then cast votes to peek into your house. I am sure like Barry Minkow, they started with baby steps, a minor ethical violation and talked themselves into it for "the greater good". After all Hitler didn't think he was a monster, but I am sure a few others do.

Porter Stansberry wrote a great letter in his Investment Advisory last December. I am working on permission to share it with you here. We really need to be responsible for our business, our lives and our country. Creating a show like Donald Trump to get the job done is one thing. Creating a show like Barry that leaves people broken is another. Make sure your business builds people, both inside and outside the business.

How To Do More By Doing Less

2011-12-13T11:01:00.001-08:00

There is a saying that “If it were easy, everyone would do it.” Last night I was watching the Amazing Race. It was interesting to watch a team try and land a LearJet simulator. As an experienced pilot I found it remarkable how frustrated the teams got. The last place team took twelve try’s and that was just a landing, no emergencies or bad weather.

Before I could laugh at the teams results, my wife said “Wow, I could never do that!” and she has been in simulators. Having nearly 12,000 hours of practice flying airplanes and simulators, I am pretty confident I could have done it in one try. Two at worst, and if it took two I would be pretty embarrassed. If asked to fill in for one of the teams like a “phone a friend” I would have gladly stepped in because after all of my years of practice it would be relatively easy for me to do.

Many books have been written on mastering a skill with 10,000 hours of practice. The idea is that if you do anything for 10,000 hours you will be pretty good at it. There are two other factors though. One is natural talent.

Natural Talent is the the mental area that lets you get the 10,000 hours to begin with. Because you have the right talent you actually get the 10,000 hours of practice. Let’s say that you don’t have a Natural Talent for talking to people. You could work very hard at learning how, but you will never get to the point of being an expert at it because you won’t like it and won’t have the drive to get there. Put it on your “do less” list and go find something else to do.

Physical ability is another factor. This one should be obvious and is often overlooked. I don’t ever expect to have the physical ability of this years winner of the US Open Surfing contest. While that should be obvious, some parents try and “round out” their children forcing them into activities they aren’t physically ready for or able to do.

NFL players have both a natural talent and a physical ability to play football or they would have been filtered out some time sooner. There is only so much time in life, and at the end of 5,000 hours of practice, the players with the natural talent and physical ability really start to stand out. The others, have to start over and find something else to do.

The Natural Talent factor is fuzzy for many people. They don’t know how to put into words what their natural talents are. Even after getting test results back, most people have no clue what to do with them.

I like to look at it a different way. Just look at the last month and list all of the things that came easy to you, and the things you had to really work at. In school what classes came easy, which ones were hard? For instance, what if you got tired of looking at your storage cabinet, and cleaned the entire thing in a day. You organized and labeled everything so it was ready to go. No one else did it because it was “hard” and yet you found it easy. There is a task to put on your list of “do more”. You have a talent for organization, the physical ability to do it so it should be more of your role in your job or business.

What if you were asked to help teach a group of people and you really hated standing up and talking to the group? Simple, just add public speaking to your “do less” list and find a way to make sure it isn’t part of your job or contribution to your business.

In business, each person has their own set of talents and strengths. In addition, there are physical limitations that can change a persons ability. For instance in flying you need to be able to lift 75 pounds and press on the brakes with 75 pounds of force. Why 75 pounds? I really don’t know, but if you can’t do it, the chances of becoming a commercial airline pilot are slim to none.

In business my former employees can tell you what I am really good at, and a couple of things I am not good at. Generally though I try not to do anything I am not good at so they just won’t know. I learned a long time ago that I will never be the “whole man concept” kind of guy, and I don’t think you should either.

In todays world, superior specialties are rewarded. Your business should specialize in a singular area, and you should specialize in tasks that suit your natural talents. If you hate calling clients, don’t do it. Hire someone who likes to do it and has a high empathy talent. Do more of what you do, and you will get more done in less time with less effort. Simple as that

While I like to write, I don’t like to write code for websites and I really don’t like to work with graphics. I am not good at it, anything I make looks amateur and worse I don’t even enjoy trying. I recently spent three hours to try and get one picture right on a Saturday, and someone else had it done in 12 minutes Monday morning. What a waste of my Saturday. Now, I come up with the ideas and spec out the details and let Sveta and Christine do their magic. Most of the time they take my idea and make something even better in way less time than it takes me to turn on the computer.

Golf is one of those things that I can be good at, I have the physique for, but I don’t have the desire to practice enough to make a living. It is something I do for fun. Surfing and Skiing are in the same category. I have enough practice that I can do any of them to an average level. I stop there because it is no fun to try and become better. I don’t live and breath any of them.

In business, it is very different. I look forward to finding another book to read to find just one more idea that can help my clients. Writing down ideas that might help a business owner make a breakthrough is something I work on constantly. I am always looking for advice to get better. If a client calls when I am on my way to the beach, I will turn around 99% of the time, because the business challenge is more fun than the beach. Golf, Skiing and Surfing are mental breaks, not a profession for me. I still put a focused effort into each of them, just not a continuous focused effort.

In your business, what are the things that you like to do? What is it that comes easy and what do you hate to do? Find a way to do more of the easy things, and less of the things that you hate to do. If you dread calling the client for money, find someone who likes doing it. There are people out there who are very good at it. Do yourself a favor and ask them if they want to do it first though. Don’t hire someone and later drop the bomb on them.

If everyone could play golf easily, there would be no reason to play, and no PGA tour. If everyone could land a jet, it wouldn’t make a great challenge on the “Amazing Race” TV show. If everyone could do what you do in business easily, you wouldn’t have a business The good news is they can’t do it as easy as you can so they pay you. Only you can do what you do. Only your business can do what it does because you are there.

At the end of the day, the more things you can do on your “do more” list and the fewer things you can do on your “do less” list, the more effective you will be, the easier your workday will be. Trying to be what you are not is just that, trying.

Are The "While We're At Its" Killing Your Day?

2011-12-12T17:12:00.000-08:00

The Four Hour Christmas Tree and Train

Have you ever had one of those days where you felt like you didn’t get anything done? One of those days where you are sitting at dinner an hour late and can’t seem to remember actually doing anything?

Have you ever had a project take several times longer than expected? Something you thought would take a day and it took a week or maybe even longer.

Does this happen to you on a regular basis? It used to happen to me all the time. When I ran a custom home electronics company, something most people would call a “Home Theater” business, it plagued us regularly, The builders we worked with called it the “While we are at its”. During construction the homeowner would see something they missed or didn’t like and decide to change it mid stream and poof, two days are added to the project.

Even starting a project can be slowed by a similar problem called “analysis paralysis”. So much time is spent analyzing that the job never really gets started.

For my day job, I now run an SEO business, and I see analysis paralysis hit my customers regularly. I will give them a worksheet asking for 10-20 keyword phrases they think their customers would use to find them online. They will come up with hundreds and take weeks to narrow the list. This is how I ended up adding business coaching to the programs my company offers. My friends in the print advertising or “offline” world tell me they see a similar problem. When that happened I knew that the "While We're At It's" were about to take over.

In the military we called the problem of the "While We're At Its', “mission creep”. You would start off with an idea and get a small mission approved. One day General Hasanidea stops by and adds a few notes to the plan, and the plan grows to accommodate him. A short time later Colonel Nee Danothermedal steps in to make sure he is included. The simple three day mission turns into a four month planning process and a 3 week event that doesn’t do what you set out to do from the beginning. The original mission was lost or forgotten. Mission Creep.

It is why the government can’t get anything done. In business it will eventually bankrupt you.

Is any of this sounding familiar? Would you like to know a couple of little secrets to stop the problem of the "While We're At Its"?

The very first step is always to identify the goal or mission clearly and get everyones buy in. For instance this week my wife wanted a Christmas Tree with a Train around the bottom and a maximum budget for things we didn’t have of $X. I agreed to help her and support this goal. You would think this was pretty simple. Did your holiday decorations get out of hand? Do you know anyone that took days to get it done when it should have been hours? Some years ago we started the same mission only to end up with a train sitting on half a track around a really big tree. It looked good, went way over budget and didn't actually work.

With the mission set and agreed on, we followed the advice Napolean Hill claimed to give Charles Schwab in his timeless book “Think and Grow Rich”. We created a task list of what needed to be done and agreed to it before opening the first box from the attic.

Measure area
Take inventory of what we have
Test trains we already have
Repair/Replace needed parts
Build train set
Get Tree
Finish decorating

While this doesn’t look like much, step three turned out to be a major slowdown. The transformer was dead, and we had lost one piece of track so we couldn’t build a test loop.

Looking at number four, I grabbed all three of my engines and made a list of what track parts and transformer we needed. Using my smart phone I found a train store not far from my home. When we arrived they were already closed. Again using my phone I found another, this one was open and very helpful.

Within 20 minutes we knew two things. First, all of my engines still worked which was great news and second, that we could buy an entire kit for less than the transformer and track I needed. We ended up buying an entire kit and decided to sell one of my engines, it’s caboose and all the track that we had online. Making the decision was easy because the budget was part of the mission to begin with.

With numbers three and four now complete we proceeded to number five. One of the things I should point out is that while at the train shop, we could have easily spent an hour or two just admiring the trains they had of all different sizes. Instead we stayed focused and were in and out quickly. No “While we are at its” or “Mission Creep” was allowed.

Numbers five and six involved a trip to the local home store for a tree and a piece of plywood to place the model railroad track on. We also stopped at the local craft store for some felt to cover the board. The opportunity to shop and get side tracked here was again staring us in the face. Instead we stuck to our plans and headed home with only the required items.

I can hear some of you saying things like “But if I am at the home store and need light bulbs, why not get light bulbs?, it will save time in the long run and save gas.”

The bottom line is this line of thinking just isn’t true. When you set out to do one thing at a time and get it done, it will get done. If we has stopped to enjoy the trains at the train store, and shopped for light bulbs at the home store and shop for more decorations at the craft store, the tree would still be at the home store. We have all done it and know it is true. It just feels “better” many times to lose focus and “get other things done too”. From experience working with some great leaders and very successful people, I learned that unless your house is really on fire, everything else can wait until it makes it to a list. If it never makes a list, it isn’t that important. This method keeps the "While We're At Its" from jumping on the priority list out of turn.

If light bulbs were that important, they would have made a list some time ago, and there is the key to success. Over time, as you focus on one major goal or task at a time, things start getting done. One day you will be one of “Those people” who make everything look easy. The trick is getting started with a task list every day and sticking to it. And yes, the propeller is still hanging on the wall behind the tree, taking it down didn't make the list.

Happy Holidays,

NAS Drive or Server, Which Should You Choose?

2011-12-07T08:47:00.001-08:00

One of the personality traits that the military and airlines look for in pilots is a combination of perseverance and dedication to perfection. There is a slang for this, and yes most people just say I am a little xxxx retentive.

When you put that together with a guy who has started several different businesses including a business focused on small business technology, some people think they have found their “go to guy” when they have a technology question. A good portion of the calls I get from clients have nothing to do with my current business, instead they are related to one of my past businesses. Since this question is a regular one, and not everyone has my number, I thought I would share a little knowledge about Small Business Servers, Windows Home Server and NAS systems. My apologies to those computer support people reading this.

Periodically in business, new computers, printers, fax machines and scanners are part of the game. This week I had the owner of a very small law firm call me about a quote that he got for a new server. His office was working fine, but it was “getting out of date and hard to support.” according to his computer support company. The law firm has 4-5 attorneys at any given time, three legal secretaries, a receptionist and a part time bookkeeper.

This probably sounds like the size of a lot of small businesses, maybe even yours. To make it more challenging, the bookkeeper is part time and uses an Apple Mac. Everyone else has a desktop PC running Win2000 and Wordperfect Legal.

When my client called about another matter, he slipped in an extra question and asked if $15,000 was reasonable for a server, and upgrades to 6 computers. Not new computers, just upgrades. He also wondered why it would take 40 hours to do it. For anyone that has paid someone to upgrade a computer or server, the 40 hours might sound high, but it is very realistic. Even though on the surface it seemed like a reasonable price, I agreed to review the quote and offer my thoughts as his business consultant.

When I got the fax copy of the bid, I noticed it was a bid for just the server and upgrade licenses for each of the workstations. That was it. The server had an auto archiving tape drive and some other nice features but this was a law firm with less than a dozen computers, and all they do is store documents. As I looked at the situation I realized the question really was this: So they need a Server or could they use a NAS?

A NAS is a Network Addressable Storage Device. Think of it like a giant thumb drive the whole office can share. If you are like me and store a ton of music you might have some kind of NAS on your home network. The NAS in my house stores over 10,000 songs that I could access with iTunes since my NAS drive included an iTunes server. Sadly with iTunes 10.5.1, that feature quit working. I don’t know what Apple is thinking, and I hope they fix that soon.

Microsoft has a system called Windows Home Server. It is a NAS type system without all the features at a higher price. I am just going to say, skip Windows Home Server. I sold our test unit for $200 on Craigslist, and I think the guy bought it for the two 2TB hard drives.

The cool thing about a NAS Drive is that everyone in the house can share the pictures, documents, videos and music stored there. Some even have the ability to store TV shows recorded on a TIVO. We hope that iTunes will let us share the music again soon too.

All of these features are great for an office too. For instance, in the law office that called, the attorneys can all share and edit documents without running a thumb drive or CD around the office. It also means that you don’t have to leave computers on to share data. It all gets stored in one place.

Most NAS drives are very simple to set up and can be expanded very easily. My home NAS has 4TB of usable storage, and the office NAS has 6TB of usable storage. At home I built three “virtual drives” on the PC’s. The “I” Drive is each persons own backup space on the NAS, the “M” Drive has “Music”, the “P” Drive has “Photos”, the “S” Drive has “Shared Documents” and the “V” Drive has “Videos”. Pretty simple. With Windows 7 the drives show the full name so M shows up as “M: Music” On my Mac Air it just shows up as an external drive called “Music”.

The office NAS drive for us is quite large because we are building an online video library of courses for an online success class for small business owners. If you don’t store video, you will probably do fine with about 100GB/user in most office settings. We used a similar drive lettering and naming convention for the office computers and it works great. We are all Windows 7 x64 Pro or Mac OS 10.7 or better.

Some NAS drives feature support for Apple’s Time Machine feature. All you need to do is plug the NAS into the Apple Router and set up the Time Machine configuration and you have a huge automatic backup capability. The NAS we have for the office also has remote access capability using dynamic DNS over the internet. Since everyone works from home, this was a key feature.

So if NAS drives do all of these things, why would someone need a server? I can’t think of any reason in a home environment that a server would be needed. In a business there are a couple of things that can trigger the need for a server. The first is e-mail. If you host your own e-mail server, then you need a server. Blackberry Services and MS Exchange both run smoother if you host them in the same building as most of your computers.

For businesses over 25 employees, or with specific needs, hosting your own email might be required. I have only one client that hosts his own e-mail and I can’t figure out why. My guess is because he needed a server for another reason and the support guy just put it on the bid to make more money. Most web hosting packages include at least 25 email boxes. My account includes 500. Why should I deal with a server if they will do it free as part of my web hosting account?

Email isn’t the only reason you might need a server. Quickbooks doesn’t play nice with Windows Home Server (many times called WHS) or NAS drives. Since Quickbooks is the number one small business accounting software, it becomes a consideration. If you have just one person doing all the bookkeeping then you can use a NAS. If you have two people it is a maybe, and three or more you are going to start looking for a server.

In order for more than two or three people use Quickbooks, you need a dedicated computer to host the database file, and a server works better for this. With just two or three people there is a workaround where you can use one persons computer as the Quickbooks server but that computer needs to be a real hot rod if all three people have the same hours. The reality is, the minute you add a second full time user to Quickbooks it is time to consider looking at a Small Business Server.

When you use one persons computer as the server, the other users are using part of that computer to run Quickbooks. That is why they either need a more powerful computer or different hours. In this situation, you just need to create an automatic backup to the NAS drive for your Quickbooks data. It isn’t as clean as using a dedicated computer but it can save several thousand dollars a year in server costs and support costs.

Finally any kind of database program will require a server if you have more than one person using it. Auto shops with two or three computers will have to use a server to host the database are an example. Just about any contractor or professional office with specialized software will need a server. After a closer review of the Law Office, I found that they were running three different legal programs that required a server.

Even if you need a server for your software, you still don’t need to use it for hosting email. If you have less than 50 employees, I would look into moving your e-mail to your web hosting company. It is just one more way to reduce your support costs.

So the question of NAS v. Server in small business really should be a simple decision. Do you have any software that requires a server? If not, the new NAS Drives can save you a lot of money in both hardware and support costs, and I haven’t met a small business owner yet who doesn’t like to save money. What about a server in the cloud you ask? Let’s save that for next time.

Grow A Small Business By Doing Less

2011-12-02T07:46:00.001-08:00

In today’s market, small business owners have more going on than ever. If you have a small business you are probably wondering “What is going on?” You probably feel like there are so many opportunities, that you can’t possibly handle them all, and if you don’t handle them, you might be wondering how you are going to stay in business.

I have a lot of friends and customers who feel just like you do. After doing a lot of research to understand how some small businesses make it and others don’t, I found something.

Scott Bourquin in 68' Mustang GT

It is pretty typical for a business owner to fail once, twice or more before really hitting their stride. I wondered why that was. I know I fall into this category. When I took over my dad’s little mail order auto parts business, I didn’t know anything about anything in business. I knew I had parts for 67’ and 68’ Mustangs, and a couple of customers who owned 67’ and 68’ Mustangs.

One day a guy with a 66’ Mustang calls for a part. Of course I didn’t have one, but being the duteous small business owner, I found one so I wouldn’t lose his business. I realize now, that decision to save his business was the beginning of events that helped me to lose my business. This was a recipe for disaster. After working at two fast food places to pay the bills of the mail order business, I gave it up. The problem was I got the business bug, and haven’t been able to get rid of it. Fortunately, I figured a couple of things out over the years.

Recently I was visiting my friend Chad who owns a very small gym called MyOGenics. He does personal training in a gym that can’t be 1500 square feet. Interestingly enough just two days earlier, I sat next to an executive with LA fitness in first class on my way to Dallas Texas. He had been in Los Angeles looking at new gyms LA Fitness had purchased. Two very different businesses and business models, or are they?

Chad and I were talking about ways to expand his reach without adding more space. I suggested reaching out to Pro-Athletes who wanted a private place to work out. Chad quickly gave me the set up of his perfect client and athletes didn’t fit the mold. Chad’s entire business was built around the person who is very focused and doesn’t have a lot of time to work out. His methods are low time usage, high physical usage. That doesn’t fit the needs of athletes. We’ll call this the “busy person with disposable income that wants to stay in shape” market.

Chad knew his market. More importantly Chad knows the niche in that market that he serves. He also knows where they are. He gym is on the border of West Hollywood and Beverly Hills. If I were that smart about car parts I would probably be giving JC Whitney a run for his money by now. Simply put, I wasn’t good enough at supplying parts to 1967 and 1968 Mustangs, so there was no way to be profitable at 1966 Mustangs.

What Chad was really looking for wasn’t new business niches, but instead methods to go deeper into his existing niche. If I had worked to be the best 1967 and 1968 Mustang restoration mail order parts house, I probably could have become the “go to” guy for everyone else. Instead I tried to be everyone else and it didn’t work.

Once Chad has total control over the “busy person with disposable income – Gym” niche, then he can expand into either other niches, or more ways to service the same niche. To paraphrase Jay Abraham “There are only three ways to make more money in business, one of them is to get more money from your existing customers. “

Jim Collins of “Good to Great” fame has a new book out. If you read it, you find that each of the major corporations had a long term slow growth plan much like Chad. What is your plan?

Improve Your Business Just a Little Each Day

2011-11-15T07:46:00.001-08:00

As a business owner, it is sometimes hard to sit down and read a book. Most of the business owners I work with try to read something that helps their business and they don’t always get through it. The chapters are too long or they just run out of time.

Over the weekend I sat down with a book that had very short chapters. Most of them three pages, four if they had a cartoon included. This is an easy book to keep on your desk and read just one chapter each day before you start work.

The Daily Drucker was the first book I read this way. Before that I had used Benjamin Franklins method for self improvement. Not to the letter, but the same plan. Each week I would work on just one thing. Ben Franklin created four personal resolutions, and from those thirteen virtues. He would work on one virtue each week.

As a business coach this method works very well when the students take it to heart. Sometimes they want to fix everything now. All that does is teach us the habit of failure. The Daily Drucker was the longer course with simpler lessons. The truth is I usually only did two or three “daily” items each week. I think I needed more work than Drucker expected.

Harvey Mackay just released a new book that was recommended to me by one of my coaches. Yes, the business coach has a coach, several in fact.

The new book is only 331 pages but has 84 chapters. having that many chapters means that each one is a short easy read. Mackay says that he hopes you don’t read the book. He hopes you dog ear it, write in it and highlight it among other things. I bought the digital version, and ended up writing a lot of notes.

I blazed through the book in a weekend and now that I have had a little time to digest it, I have ordered the hard copy, and suggest you do to. It isn’t expensive and if you use it, it will pay for itself in a matter of days. If it doesn’t call me, lets find out why.

Harvey’s new book, The Mackay MBA of Selling In The Real World, if a book everyone should read, if you want to live a better life. I would suggest just one chapter a day, and spend the day practicing the lesson. Better yet, use the Ben Franklin method of one chapter per week and really put the lesson to work.

If you own a business, The Daily Drucker should be next on your reading list.

Now that the reviews are in and the final edits finished for "So, Now What?" I am holding a re-title/cover design contest. See if you can beat the pros. The creator of the chosen cover and title will WIN A NEW iPad and of course credit for the work. Any takers?

To Better Business -

Scott

If You Cut Your Costs To Zero, That Is What Your Business Will Be.

2011-11-06T20:55:00.000-08:00

Step Back And Get A Better View

So what is more important, making more money or having the lowest costs? Every business owner takes a different approach to managing the finances of the business. If you read the business section of just about any paper, there is some one talking about how to reduce costs, or some executive blaming higher costs. Generally when I work with business owners, I have very little influence on cutting costs so I focus on how to make more money with what they have.

Recently while talking with a business owner we were planning out his income target for the next year. As I started going through options for making more money, he turned the conversation and focused on overhead costs. I tried to redirect him, and like many owners he felt that growing the business would "cost too much." He was sharing his amazement at how much his payroll was costing him. The people were one thing, but when you add in the unemployment, Social Security Taxes and Employer Taxes, the numbers where really starting to bother him. He was telling me about how his payroll was going to kill his business if he didn’t find a way to cut back.

If you have employees in your business you know how expense hiring really is. But proper hiring wasn’t why we were talking. He wanted to brainstorm some ideas to increase his income and yet he decided to focus on how to reduce his costs, including payroll. You see this in the business section all the time. There are complete business cycles where profits are increased by cutting costs, reducing maintenance and then a new boss comes in to buy new equipment and start the badly needed maintenance program.

After talking a little longer I reminded the owner that there are only three ways to make more money, and none of them have to do with decreasing costs. He pressed forward so I let him continue and was reminded of a lesson a very wealthy man shared with me.

Tony, who ran a beverage distributor and I were out on the golf course one day and he said “Scott, do you know how I really make money?” My puzzled look must of answered his question so he continued.

Tony told me about one of his work vehicles having a major breakdown just days after the warranty expired. The repair was several thousand dollars. Tony went down to the dealer and politely asked that the dealer back him up and have the manufacturer cover the new transmission under warranty. They did.

The relationship that Tony had built with the dealer over 15 years paid off. Tony made his money by keeping up good relationships with his vendors and being brutal with his expense monitoring. Not one penny went across his desk without a reason. He ended the conversation saying that if he walked away, and no one else monitored expenses, all of his profits would be gone in less than a year. All of his profits were about equal to the expenses he was able to prevent.

None of this leads to making more money per se. What cost cutting might do is increase margins giving the image of making more money with less. Tony had the right idea about preventing unnecessary expenses being very important to the business. Uncontrolled expenses can kill a business without a doubt.

The problem with spending to much time on cutting costs, is you might cut costs that cost customers. If you do like Tony and spend most of your time focused on increasing your customer base, and the rest of your time focused on managing expenses you will likely have a much better business.

At the end of the day, a business must make money to exist. The trick is to bring in more than you spend to get it, simple as that. You can cut all of the costs you want, but if you don't bring in the money, costs won't matter anyway.

Build the Most From the Least

2011-10-03T11:53:00.000-07:00

This weekend I came home from Houston Texas with a plaque that I couldn’t have earned a few years ago. This might sound a little funny, but bear with me for a moment. If you run a business, you need a hobby. Sometimes your hobby is purely an outlet of stress, other times it is a place where you can let your mind do some background processing and clarify problems you have in life or in your business. This is how successful people see a way around obstacles in life. Sometimes, your hobby is a reflection of the problems in your life that need to be corrected.

One of my longer term hobbies has been racing in the 24Hours of LeMons series. No, that isn’t a spelling error, it really is lemons. The cars are junk, literally junk.

The idea in the 24 Hours of Lemons is that you are supposed to take a junk car that you paid $500 or less for, and race it. There are a lot of safety rules and track rules and team rules. When my friend and business associate, Gabrielle Magno of Maxxom Communications in Houston and I first came up with the idea for the team, we both tried to do everything. We couldn’t get other people to help or pay money to be on the team. Just like many small businesses, we were targeting the wrong customer base. Just because someone is our friend, it doesn’t make them a team member.

I had an idea of how to approach the race. I treated it like a business student project and not a startup. We came up with a theme, a mission and a set of goals. Then, short on time we jumped the gun and bought the wrong car. Gabe took the initiative to change the goals of the team and shorten the goal list to “Get into the race”. He found a better car that was nearly a perfect interpretation of the letter and intent of the race rules. Without him taking action, there would be no team.

Since you need at least four drivers per team, we each went digging and brought some more people in. We ended up overselling and creating a waiting list. To make matters worse the first race was a disaster. We didn’t build the roll cage right, the car failed safety, and because we left half the interior in it, it was really heavy. Even before the race started, the non founding members of the team started to grumble about our bad idea. Every business owner that steps out hears the same grumbling from people who won't try.

We also noticed that everybody cheats a little here and there. Gabe and I trudged forward. He took care of the campground and the disgruntled team mates. I took the car to another teams shop and started cutting the roll cage out. At 3:00 am I returned to the racetrack to find it locked up. I called the emergency contact numbers and no answer. Here is where some military training paid off, and by 3:30 I was in my camper sound asleep with the car right next door ready to be inspected at 8:00 am. The emergency contact guy stopped by to ask how I got in, and doing my best Sean Connery, I just said "Trade secrets my son." There were more than a few lessons learned here.

over the next year, Gabe and I bought a second car, grew the team too quickly and even though the second race went better, a big portion of the team fell apart. This might sound a lot like a business that grows to fast without direction doesn’t it.

Even though Gabe left the team and we lost a huge contributor, I pushed forward with Jack Stephens, one of the first to join the team. After several years of struggling, we now have all of the right pieces in place. We are lean, only seven people with two cars. Four per team is the normal minimum. As the saying goes, "you are closest to success when you are about to give up". I nearly gave up on the team before this last race.

Everyone on the team pitches in with both labor and financial support. It doesn’t cost much to run the team any more, and no one wants to pay more than their share. With the exception of our master mechanic Mark Stephens, everyone pitches in where ever needed, and when needed. There is no finger pointing or “what should I do know” kind of thinking. Everyone looks around, makes sure everything is done and then supports the guys on the track. Mark does everything else we can't do.

Each of us is a little better in some area. For example, Jim Brenner runs an accounting firm, so he takes care of the team financials, nobody asked him, he stepped up and started collecting receipts, he also keeps everything very transparent so everyone knows where the money went. Jack Stephens is a dentist who also is great at brake jobs. No one ever said “Hey Jack while you're sitting there….” Instead he grabbed the tools and brake pads and has been the brakeman since day one.

Vic Urenholdt is another Dentist who is pretty good at cooking, so we never go hungry. You never need to ask, if he isn't on the track there is something to eat waiting for you. Lee Manning and Don Tamborello are the newest members and they both jump right in and pick up the slack wherever it is needed. You are never sitting there wondering, "Do we need brake pads?" or "Do the gas cans need to be filled." It just happens. The right team can change everything.

The plaque we got from Grassroots Motorsports was the award for "Most From the Least”. When our rusted out, bone stock Chevy Cavalier that we nicknamed the “Crapolier” first showed up, one of the Judges, Scott, said to Jay (the Chief Perpetrator of the LeMons events), “This thing won’t make it one lap”. Jay replied, “I bet it dies at 20”. The over under was set and clearly we have made the over.

This past weekend was our best performance yet, the “rust bucket racer” was second in our class for the third time and 9^th overall. The teams other car was third in class even after a series of missteps by me and the newest member of the team. Those misteps got us a little more attention from the penalty judges than I would have otherwise liked. You might find some of the team in pink jail suits on the LeMons website. We beat teams with BMW’s and Celica's that had stiff racing suspensions. We also beat a couple of former racing Miata’s that bribed their way in and we even beat a really fast Taurus SHO that just couldn't keep the transmission in the car.

It isn’t the same kind of racing as the guys from TruSpeed MotorSports did this weekend at Road Atlanta. Instead it is lean and mean racing that is a lot of fun while still doing “The most with the least”. More importantly it is something I am proud of because all of the rules of success that I share in my book are in play here and they are working. We couldn't have earned this award without the right people, who had the right attitude and who were all going in the same direction. This was the first time the team was exactly the right people all going in the same direction and it showed.

The first place car in our division was 4 seconds faster every lap, and stopped for fuel much less. Without them breaking down or getting into the penalty box, 2nd place was the limit of our equipment. Sometimes second place is pretty cool. I think the entire team went home with a smile on their face, feeling great about the performance, even though it was "just second place".

Now we are ready to shoot for first place, are you?

What Will Your Retirement Be Like?

2011-09-26T06:00:00.000-07:00

Will You Spend Retirement At The Beach?

I was having a conversation with one of the people I work with pretty regularly. He is getting close to retirement so we discussed all kinds of interesting things. He doesn’t have any children and has no desire to leave a “legacy” behind. He is worth over a million dollars and has a healthy retirement account.

The conversation started off with his house. He wants to sell it and buy a nicer place on the water somewhere with a very large down payment. Because the market is down he thinks this is a good time to buy. I couldn’t agree more. Then he took a tangent I never expected. He wants to take out a reverse mortgage where the payments he gets will cover the first mortgage until he dies. Ideally he figures that when he dies he will have nothing in his home for equity. The house will just go to the bank.

So I asked what happens if he needed the equity to buy into an assisted living facility or had some other major expense come up, or what if he outlived the reverse mortgage and had to start making payments again. He didn’t have an answer. He was more worried about getting to enjoy every penny, or to put it into his words, “be a mega consumer”.

The problem I have with this logic is you never know when you are going to get to the last day. I would rather find ways to live my life that make money instead of just spending it all the time. I think when you only spend there will be some point where the funds get low and your stress level will rise. Some people tell me I work way to hard, and in my mind I really don’t work at all.

I get paid for doing many of the things I like to do like writing, teaching and flying. For things I don’t get paid for, I can usually create a good writing project to sell. Lucky for me most people hate to write and like to read. I can’t imagine trying to just live as a consumer.

One of the tricks to building wealth so you have more control over what you do is to keep more of your money now so you can put it to work later. Growing wealth requires that you keep as much as you can. This means you need to know how to use the tax laws to your benefit in order to maximize the money you keep and control each year.

One of the smarter financial advisors I know of is Ken Fischer. He wrote a book called Ten Roads to Riches. It is a very good book, but the reality is unless you are a PHD, as in Parents Had Dough, there really are only two ways to get and stay rich. Real Estate Investing and Business Ownership. The government encourages you to do these things with the tax system. The reason the government gives tax breaks to business owners and real estate investors is that these two groups actually increase the tax that the government gets even though on the surface they pay less.

Last year I met Dean Graziosi at a marketing seminar we were both attending in Scottsdale Arizona. I purchased his books years ago along with another real estate infomercial “guru” named Carlton Sheets. Both of these guys really did (and still do) make good money in Real Estate. They just make a lot more as “information marketers”. I watch them to learn how to market better for my clients.

Graziosi and Sheets both have systems that do work. At one time my wife and I owned three rental homes. Had we stuck to the program, they would be worth over $1 million dollars today and I would have them paid off with several thousand dollars a month income. As Forest Gump said "Stupid is as stupid does."

Instead I sold the houses and invested in a business I had no business being in. In my mind I was a failure in that business, even though it was that experience that helped me regain focus and find my own road to riches. I learned a lot from the experience and recently bought new versions of Deans Graziosi’s books as reference to buy real estate again. One of the ten rules for success - Never Ever Give Up!

The other method of keeping more of your money is to own a business. It can be as simple as joining an MLM like Send Out Cards or ACN. The government wants to see you succeed in business so you can help grow the tax base for them. Because of this they let you keep more of your money to build the business. That is what I call a win-win. It really is the basis of the American Capitalist system.

Ken Fisher talks about eight other ways to get rich in his book but the reality is that all of those people will either end up investing in real estate or owning a business. For Instance, Shaquille O’Neill made a lot of money playing basketball. Since then, he has become quite the business builder using the money from his basketball fame as capital to build his business. Basketball stars might make a lot of money and look rich, but if they don’t invest right, they don’t stay that way. Real Estate and Business ownership is a great way to get rich and stay rich.

If you aren’t ready to buy a house and rent it out or flip it for a profit and don’t want to invest a lot of money in a traditional brick and mortar business, then start with an MLM. An MLM really is a business. You have to learn all of the aspects of selling and hiring. Think about it, when you bring someone on board, aren’t you hiring someone that you are going to train for success. Even though you aren’t paying for them you are investing in them.

It helps if you believe in the MLM. I joined Send Out Cards because I send a lot of “Thank you” cards to my customers, and sales postcards to potential clients. Send Out Cards made it easy and it makes sense for many of my business clients. No more going to the store to say “Thank you”. I just log on, fill out the card, add a gift if it is appropriate and hit send.

When I retire, many people won’t even notice because to them what I do is work. To me, I am almost retired now because I am having so much fun doing what I do. I can’t ever picture a life where I just spend and wait for it to end. There is something out there for everyone, you just need to go out and do it. Skip a little TV time and start building your own fun road to riches!

Build Your Business With Standards and Rules

2011-09-09T09:50:00.000-07:00

He has a Destination, What is yours?

Aren’t successful businesses built with good rules? Shouldn’t every business have rules and standards for everything to succeed? Pilots use rules to fly, the big burger chains like McDonalds and Burger King use rules to make burgers and the government is loaded with rules. Last I heard Pilots were doing a pretty good job getting people where they wanted to go, the burger chains were making good money because the rules create a product that people are comfortable with. As for the government, ok I’ll skip that one.

As a commercial rated pilot for over a quarter of a century, it is pretty rare that I go flying without a purpose, reason or direction. Even as a student pilot, I had a purpose when I went flying. All the while I considered my flying career a success. When I fly, there is always someplace to go, something to see, or something to do in the airplane. Isn’t that a lot like business? When a pilot starts out, he has a destination or an aim point, a plan to get there and a few thoughts in case the plan doesn’t work out. The rules are simply guidelines to stay in.

It isn’t any different than driving a car. When you speed a little or hit the road turtles, you have exceeded the rules. The rules of flying and driving are there to make it safer for more people to do the same thing every day. The reality is you don’t drive to follow rules, you drive to get somewhere.

Doesn’t that sound like a successful business? Using rules to safely get somewhere? It does to me. Just like pilots and drivers, business owners need an aim point or a destination. If they don’t know where they want to take the business how will it ever get there? How can the employees help them get there? That aim point becomes the focus that creates the ‘strategy’. Ask my clients, I make them crazy sometimes with this stuff, and they agree it works.

In flying there are a lot of rules and regulations, just like in business. The flawed thinking that many business owners use to build a business is to create rules for everything before the rules are needed. Rules are great for assembly lines and other highly repeatable tasks. As a business owner, I have fallen into this trap once or twice myself. I once heard it said that “Rules are for people that don’t know what to do.” Using that thought process I built step by step rules so all of my people would know what to do. Eventually I was so totally saturated just writing rules trying to cover every situation I forgot why I was in business. Never mind that I was making myself and everyone around me crazy.

Why did I think rules were needed to build a business? Like most business owners I started out working for someone else. My worklife started when I worked for a Burger King while I was in High School. There were exacting rules for everything that happened inside the store during business hours right down to the simple task of filling a soda cup. There were even lines on the cup to show the ice line before filling the rest with soda. I learned a little phrase for filling a tray “Drinks, Sandwiches and then Fries”. These days, when I see fries getting cold waiting for a soda, I want to scream out “Don’t you know it is Drinks, Sandwiches THEN Fries.” That phrase was such a simple and usable rule, it sticks with me nearly three decades after I quit working there.

At some McDonalds now, the rules for filling a soda are so exact they have programmed a machine to do it.

So if rules work for Burger King and soda filling robots at McDonalds, how come they didn’t work for me in my business? It is really a matter of perspective. At Burger King, I was employed to run a business. As a business owner I was trying to build a business. When you are running a business, there isn’t anywhere to go; you just need to fulfill the customer’s orders. As an owner, the perspective changes and you always need to be thinking about building the business. The adage of “If you aren’t growing you are dying” applies directly to business. Owners need to worry about the direction of the business so it can grow. Rules don’t grow a business. A focus on an aim point does.

I realized some years ago the owners of the franchise didn’t have any rule books for how many Burger Kings to build, or what kind of flowers to plant out front. The owners had strategies. The smart owners knew that if the restaurant was clean and well-kept with nice landscaping, it made more money that stores that didn’t. The owners that didn’t keep up their stores won’t make as much money.
As you look at your business, building some rules is ok. If you have a service company, the old saying “Five minutes early is late…” is a great rule. Rules should be very basic and simple. When they get complicated it is time to use strategy and goals instead.

What exactly does that mean?

What it means is that your employees should treat your customers like they want to be treated. This can be sticky if you hire people that have never been treated well. I will save this topic for another day. Basically, there is a strategy for treating customers that has been called “The Golden Rule” for centuries. If you follow the rule you will get the gold.

It also means that your customers should already have an expectation of how they will be treated before they ever get to your business. Your strategy should be clear on your website and the minute they meet you or your employees.

Recently I had an automotive service center owner ask me to go market to, and get all the “soccer moms” in the area to get their car serviced. I asked him to take a walk with me. We walked out the front of the shop and I said, “OK, here you are Mr. Soccer Mom. Two kids in tow, and you are coming here for an service because your check engine light is on. Let’s walk in and tell me if this place says ‘welcome soccer mom’”. He quickly agreed it did not. When we looked at the website, it didn’t either. The print ads? Nope, not them either. Nothing about the business said, “Soccer Mom’s will love an Oil Change here”.

When you walked in the place it said “Cool Car Guy Hangout”. That is the message that the website also portrayed. That is what we should be marketing to, because when those guys arrive, they will get what they expected. The generic Soccer Mom won’t be happy sitting at a bar surrounded by expensive cars watching the racing channel.

When all of the employees know to treat the place like a soccer mom haven, they will make the right decisions and buy the right furniture without any rules. When you build the cool guy hangout the same thing will happen. Many times the owners are looking at opportunities while they inject their “hidden strategy” without knowing it. This guy saw an opportunity to get more business through “soccer moms” but his actions created an environment for racing fans, and that is what his employees continued to build without any rules.

In flying, the pilot in command (or “Captain” at at airline) always has the ability to declare “emergency authority” and override any rules in order to keep the aircraft safe. The rules say you can’t land in the Hudson River, yet Capt. “Sully” did just that and was made into a hero. Sometimes you need to break the rules to get the job done.

If the implied strategy in your business is strong enough to create a single destination, your people will know what to do. At the end of the day, the rules are only there to support the strategy, not the other way around.

Who Is Your Perfect Customer? You?

2011-09-03T08:43:00.000-07:00

Knowing your customer is critically important for a business to grow and prosper. I work with my clients and students on this all the time. In my book, So, Now What, I had dedicated a chapter and worksheet to helping business owners like you figure out exactly who the perfect customer is. Every once in a while someone approaches me and they show me how they did the work, filled out the worksheet and it didn’t help them in their business. When that happens, like any good business owner, writer or teacher, I start by looking in the mirror to see what I did wrong. And in this case, as in most cases, it was something I did wrong.

Not Quite a Theater, a Great Media Room

When Mr. R called and went over everything happening in his business, and I could tell nothing had changed in three months, I went back and re-read the chapter in the book. Everything looked ok there. I revisited my notes from past conversations with Mr. R, nothing there. Finally I looked at Mr. R’s notes on his perfect customer and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. My wife came running in to ask what was so funny, and even my dogs where worried. I had her read the information on the guy’s perfect customer. We both immediately knew what I did wrong in teaching and in the book.

As I went through the chapter yet again, I couldn’t miss it. Since most of the book is about you, the reader and upcoming mogul, not your customer, mentally the readers like you are thinking about themselves. This guy had perfectly described himself as his perfect customer. The problem was, to put it in his words, “I wouldn’t buy my work, I just think it is cool.” So his perfect customer won’t buy his product! Do you see a problem here? Funny isn’t it.

Clearly I forgot to add a couple of criteria for the perfect customer description chapter. 1. Make sure they are people who want and will buy what you sell (desire), and 2. Make sure they have the money to buy what you sell (means). Establishing means and desire is one of the first lessons in many professional selling courses.

Looking back, I made both of these mistakes when I had my Home Theater Business, so it makes sense that I didn’t see it missing in the book yet. During those years, I marketed to people who wanted six figure theaters. In truth, these were rooms that I neither wanted, or could have afforded at the time. I liked the rooms, and they were cool but I was very happy with my “media room”. A media room is a very different price level.

Many owners in the high end home theater business are really in the same boat. There are only a handful of owners who could afford to have a six figure custom theater in their home and even fewer who did. A couple of the owners that I knew lived vicariously through their clients and it made them happy for a while. Inside neither felt like they could achieve a level of success that would allow them such luxury, so it was there way of hanging out with it. Like me, neither of these guys own their home theater businesses any longer. With the down turn, they realized they could achieve success elsewhere and left to pursue it.

Mr. R had the same problem. He knew what it cost him to create is work, and just didn’t feel like it was worth much more than a couple times the materials costs and minimum wage labor. Since he really was doing artist/craftsman quality finish work I told him it needs to be way more expensive. Additionally, he wasn’t making enough money to buy his own product anyway, so he really didn’t respect the value of his work.

This lead to another thought I will save for later….Making sure you value your own work.

The big difference with Mr. R and the two home theater guys was that working on these high end projects wasn’t making him happy. The fact that “they” had money and he didn’t was causing him stress and angst. This is never a good way to carry on a customer relationship.

What I would add to the chapter on the perfect customer is this. If you haven’t already had at least one perfect customer, that customer that was just fun to work with, paid on time and was profitable for you, then go find one. Even if you have to go to a competitor to learn what one looks like. Don’t consider the next guy that walks in the door the perfect customer because you won’t know if they are for weeks or maybe years. Looking back, I had one “perfect customer”. I would do anything for him and his wife. Like me, they built a nice media room and automated a lot of their home. But I never marketed to my “perfect customer”. Big mistake.

Why is really knowing the perfect customer so important? Simply put you can’t make a living serving yourself. You cannot be your perfect customer. You will make yourself stressed out if you have bad customers just to pay the bills and finally referrals are required, and you can’t get them from bad customers. My perfect customer was like me with one really big difference. My perfect customer also had the money to pay for it, on time, every time. Sadly I must admit that I could not afford to pay my company for the media room I had. I did all the work myself at night and on weekends. Crawling the attic in a Houston Summer isn’t fun even if you are your own best customer.

Not knowing who my perfect customers really were was probably a factor in making me the ogre in the business I was back then. But don’t worry I am cured now, having fun every day. Back then I was marketing too and attracting the wrong customers! How can you have fun if you are doing work you don’t like and working for people who aren’t having fun working with you? My perfect customer had so much fun that one day he and I spent an hour playing Wii baseball. That is a guy who truly enjoyed my work and for who I truly enjoyed working.

In all truth, I don’t think the home theater business would have survived the downturn anyway, but it sure would have been a lot more fun if I had marketed to and served another five or ten perfect customers each year. Yes they are out there. I know because I have figured out who my perfect customers are for my online marketing business, and turn away anyone that doesn’t fit. I don’t need the money or stress from customers who don’t really want my work. If they tell me they just “need” it why should I work for them? There is plenty of money out there and plenty of perfect customers for you. You need to start by knowing who they are first. A few perfect customers are worth more than dozens of painful customers.

Who is the perfect customer for you to serve?

What Is Your Customer Really Worth?

2011-08-01T19:00:00.000-07:00

Lately I have had more than one discussion on the lifetime value of a customer. While there a few businesses that are one shot programs like wrongful death attorney’s, most other businesses have a long term value and benefit if they can maintain a customer relationship. Every owner I talked to wanted more customers, and agreed that the customers they have are the most profitable. So when I wanted to add a customer relationship program to the mix, why do they hesitate?

It is a very interesting phenomenon and attitude among business owners. All of them will track how many customers are added to their “list” but they rarely track how many leave. Online marketing is an interesting field because the total list is always a moving target. If we forget about the existing customers for even a minute, they fall off the list faster than we can hit the refresh key.

So why is it that an owner will spend a small fortune on online advertising and not a penny to engage the existing list and make sure they don’t go anywhere else? I don’t know. The Harvard Business School has a pretty cool calculator to estimate the lifetime value of a customer.

When I owned the home theater businesses, the customers first purchase was generally small, a test of sorts. The second purchase was the major purchase, sometimes it was the third. Imagine if we turned away the little job at the beginning? After the major installation, it was a very small stream of income until they moved and built a bigger and better theater. The mentality in the industry was to get the next big deal and move on, much like many custom home builders. A friend of mine is on his third custom home in the same area. All three built by different builders. When I asked why he doesn’t use the same guy the answer was simply “He never called”.

Some of the top performing real estate agents I know have it down to a science. They not only keep in touch they ask for referrals, compounding the value of each customer. The area I live in is pretty much handled by one of two agents. Over 60% of the people in the area bought up or down in the same area they liked it so much. A few even kept the first home as a rental. These two agents are so tight with all of the homeowners in the area, there isn’t much of a consideration to go elsewhere. Once in a while a different sign shows up and is eventually replaced by one of the two regular guys.

Are you keeping in touch with your customers? I use a whole set of tools. I use an Email manager to keep everyone up to date on the latest in the Online Marketing world. I also use Send Out Cards to send real, and personal notes to thank my customers. Sometimes I’ll send a gift card even if the referral doesn’t pan out just to say “Thank you for trying!”. I also keep in touch with Facebook and use the techniques I learned from the FBx system.

When I first started my business life, I started selling cars. All but one of the salesmen I knew just stood around the lot and hoped to “get a good up.”, meaning someone that buys a car and doesn’t grind too much on price. Then I met Jerry. Jerry sat in a nice office with a Rolodex and was consistently the highest grossing salesman on the lot. His secret? He kept in touch with his customers. Sometimes he would get a little aggressive. One time he had me drive a new Porsche to the house of a Doctor and ring the bell. When he answered, I said “I know your car is a couple of years old, do you want to take a new one for a spin?”. He of course did.

While he was getting his house keys the neighbor came by and asked what was going on. I told him that I was delivering Dr. M’s new car. Not to be outdone, the neighbor met me at the dealer two hours later, and Jerry and I split the commission on two cars that day.

Don’t forget that the customers that got you where you are might be all you need to get to the next level.

Keep your aim point and grow your business.

Where Are You Going?

2011-07-14T16:55:00.000-07:00

There are some great lessons in life that everyone can learn from taking flying lessons, shooting lessons or learning how to drive a race car on the track. All of these lessons apply to business as well. Paul Newman was a great actor and race car driver. John Travolta, a great pilot and actor. Many business owners that are very successful race cars, fly airplanes or hunt. Is there a connection here?

I think there is. All of these skills, running a business, acting, flying, shooting and racing require planning and practice. In the end they all have a target of some sort. The actor wants to make you think it is really happening to him, whatever it is. The pilot has a plan of where he is going before he ever gets in the airplane. The race car driver knows every corner of the track and the fastest way around them.

So how does this relate to the business owner? There is an often over looked or mis-applied rule of success. Successful people have a direction and an aim point. When was the last time you saw someone you thought was successful and said "he can do anything?" I would guess never. The best heart surgeon is a heart surgeon, not a podiatrist that does heart surgery on Saturdays.

The businesses that are the most profitable with the least effort are those that have a definite direction and aim point. Look at any major business. Dominoes Pizza for example. No live music, no bar, just pizza, hot and fast. It doesn't matter if you make the worlds best pizza if everyone thinks that you are running a bar. And if you are running a bar, you better have some really cold beer and don't worry too much about the pizza.

So what is your direction? If you aren't sure, I got a deal for you, I just dropped the price of my book on the Kindle to $2.99. I wrote it to help more people figure it out, and with the economy the way it is, I figured I can reach more people at $2.99 than $16.99. Find your direction, pick an aim point and go find success!

Can You Succeed Without Failure?

2011-03-18T09:26:00.000-07:00

Failure. Just looking at the word can make some people stop reading. Fear of failure is what stops most people from succeeding. Failure means you pushed beyond some limit. The problem is if you don’t fail, you never learn the limits.

I can tell you about failure first hand. I pushed the limits of USAF pilot training and lost an F-16 job. I learned quick enough that I was able to get back in the limits and still fly for 15 more years.

In business if you don’t fail once in a while, you aren’t pushing your business to be it’s absolute best.

I can spend a lot more time on this but Honda has been kind enough to post a great video on failure I think is worth watching. Here is the link http://dreams.honda.com/#/video_fa

Keep Your Eye On Your Targets for Your success

2011-02-13T08:54:00.000-08:00

One of the smartest things I ever did was move into a neighborhood I couldn’t afford. On the surface this sounds stupid, so please let me explain why it wasn't. This wasn’t a neighborhood of new fancy tract homes that all of the other couples my age were moving into. This was a neighborhood full of what my friends called “old people and junky homes”. My wife and I both liked the neighborhood because you had to pass by a winery while cruising down a road lined with old walnut trees to get there. The area just had a great romantic feel and was very close to both of our offices at the time. There was also a private country club featuring a championship golf course.

Years earlier I had discovered this little area of about 100 homes while out on a Sunday drive. My wife and I later set our sights on living in that area at any cost. We would scrimp and save and just about when we thought we could afford a house out there, the prices would go up. We drove the neighborhood at least twice a month. We thought we knew every street and every house in the area cold. We went to every open house, and knew all the real estate agents.

Eventually we were the last of our friends in our old neighborhood. Everyone had moved away into some “cool” area. Some new tract of houses with a neighborhood pool, or that was closer to shopping would attract our friend’s attention. I knew it wasn’t right for me to move into one of those neighborhoods so I stood my ground and waited.

I didn’t lose focus on my target, the golf course neighborhood of “old people”.

One Sunday there was an open house sign on a little crossing street, the name of which meant parrot. I laughed out loud since we were listening to Jimmy Buffet. As we turned the corner I told my wife, “Look we can be Parrot heads on Parrot street.”

This street was completely overgrown with trees and shrubs, so it hid three more houses we never knew existed. One of them was an open house and the realtor was brand new. As we approached the front door there was a stench that was unexplainable, my wife turned and went back to the car shaking her head. The house was what 99% of the world would call a tear down. It was a good thing for me because no one else even looked at it.

After a month and a half of research and negotiating, we made a deal. The agent selling the house had never sold one so she didn’t know what to do. I called another agent with some experience to help get the deal done. Just before closing, while the home inspector was laughing, my wife and I were on the back patio with our agent. The agent said to me and my wife. “I think you are an idiot (looking square at me) to buy a house like this and Mrs. B, if you want to cancel it, we can get out now.” When my wife didn’t ask to get bailed out, the agent continued “ok, next offer. My husband is a builder and he will give you an extra $10,000 to walk away from this deal, he thinks you are a genius for finding this place.” Two weeks later we moved in.

Moving in turned out to be even scarier than buying the house. We filled a three yard dumpster with the stuff the previous owners left behind. We also cut down a half a dozen over grown shrubs and a couple of sick trees to let the light into the house. Later we had a bulldozer come in a clean the smaller walnut trees the squirrels had planted out of the back lawn.

When we were finished, we had the dream yard of the neighborhood. The back yard was lined with 50 foot and taller redwoods that were stunning. The west side of the lot was lined with over grown Texas Waxleaf Privets. After shaping these into a 12 foot tall hedge it looked great. The east side of the yard had a fence that was falling down. I wanted a pool over there eventually so I didn’t care.

Throughout this cleanup process, we met our neighbors one by one. Yes, some were old and they brought brownies and cookies. One was a collector of cool cars and had built a huge paving company from scratch. One of them invented one of the most iconic electrical effects boxes that shaped modern Rock-n-Roll music. Another much younger guy owned a very large beverage distribution company.

Eventually we started meeting other younger couples like ourselves. They were all out working their fingers to the bone to be in the neighborhood like we were, so we didn’t get to meet them at first. We knew they were there because we would see kids walking to school. Five of the younger couples started hanging out on a regular basis. One was a contractor, another guy a geologist, two were business owners and there was me and my wife. We were by far the lowest income in the area when we moved in.

The “older” people in the area would stop by when our group was being too loud or having too much fun or doing some big project and share their wisdom of life and business with us. This is what the friends in the tract homes were never going to get. There was a bonding of the group that was good for all of us. Like any group there were some personality struggles. Within two years the entire groups’ income had started to grow exponentially, creating different challenges.

the most part, the men became an informal mastermind group with the older neighbors acting as the guides. All of us built businesses and lives much faster than my friends across town in the new fancy tract homes. One weekend, we had a fence building party to fix the fence on five homes. The contractor wouldn’t let it be just any fence since it went across his back yard. He designed a really cool “craftsman style” fence and taught us all how to build it.

This was the kind of team building experience companies pay thousands of dollars for. In the tract neighborhoods, social interactions were usually talking over the fence. In my little neighborhood, we built a fence and lifelong friendships.

When I first saw the neighborhood, I knew I wanted to live there. I couldn’t really say why, there was just a feeling of peace I got driving out there every time. The how was even less clear. By keeping my eye on the target and not letting anyone else move my aim, I could continue to improve my focus and hit my target. In the end I got way more than a nice place to live, I got an entirely new direction in life.

Take aim, focus and don’t let anyone move your sights off your target.

Is A Business Strategy Important to Building a Business?

2011-02-12T05:00:00.000-08:00

Recently I have been working with a couple of business owners who are stuck on the whole strategy thing. These owners want me and my company to take over their internet marketing, you know SEO, pay per click and all of that kind of stuff. The problems is they can't clarify their strategy for us. My rules are pretty simple, no strategy, no marketing. The simple reason is I want to keep clients for a long time.

What I have learned in 20 years of owning and building businesses is that anyone can grab an opportunity, throw money at it and fail. I don't want these clients because I am lazy. Not lazy because their business is too hard to market, but lazy because I don't like chasing down new clients if I lose one.

Before we had the strategy requirement in place, clients would last anywhere from six months to about a year and a half. The few that have been with us over five years all have two things in common. First they have a strategy. While the strategy has changed a little over time, we have been involved with the changes so we could change the marketing to meet the needs of the client and their market.

The clients that we took on who were opportunists and didn't have a strategy would not see the progress they expected and jump on the next opportunity. Every six months we had to completely revamp their marketing. In the world of the internet, consistency is a critical component of success. The first month of any campaign is the most expensive, and we usually lose money getting a client set up. In fact most of the time, you don't see real progress for two or three months.

When a client jumped from opportunity to opportunity it was like getting an entirely new client. None of them would pay the higher fees of the first month, so each time they "re-invented" their business we lost money. The clients with a strategy are all still in business, still clients and still profitable.

As we grew our business, we saw that a small base percentage of clients were floating the entire business. It was a pretty clear testimonial to the accuracy of the Pareto Principle. You might know the Pareto Principle as the 80/20 rule. Sure enough more than 80% of our margins were coming from less than 20% of our clients.

As we started looking at these clients, we realized they all had one thing in common, a solid strategy or as some would say a business “mission”.

Don’t roll your eyes just yet. I don’t mean mission like some goofball plaque on the wall or feel good save the world stuff, I mean mission like a military mission or a sports mission.

In order to have a mission or strategy in business that the entire team can focus on, it must come from the top. That was the second element we discovered all of our “good” clients had in common. They each had a leader. Someone who was clearly in charge and set the tone for the business and it’s strategy.

In sports, teams have a strategy to achieve certain objectives. Working backwards, the final objective each year is the championship. Before that the playoffs, and before they reach the playoffs, the objective is the game of the day. Even within each game there are play objectives. A batter might have an objective to get on base so he may bunt instead of swinging for the fences.

In the military, the real difference between success and frustration is the strategy. “Stormin Norm” Schwarzkopf had it pretty easy compared to his successors. He mission was “Free Kuwait”. That was it. With that mission, the lower generals could create a strategy. That strategy would set objectives. The soldiers could clearly see and understand the objectives, and then were turned loose to achieve the objectives.

In management practice this is no different than a sports team heading to the field.

At the other end are vague missions like “bring peace to the region.” No one knows how to do that, and what you end up with are frustrated troops, higher casualty rates and higher turnover because the troops don’t feel fulfilled when attempting to accomplish this vague mission. Humans are always looking for purpose. Leaders need to have a vision that creates a mission that builds a fulfilling strategy for all of the players.

Business isn’t any different, and I learned how to start coaching the owners that I liked so that they could build a mission and a strategy that they could get their entire business to focus on. If they are not willing to do it, then they can go find another marketing company. I am just too lazy to rounding up lost clients because they have no idea where they are going.

When you look at any opportunity in life or business ask one question; Is this part of my vision of a perfect life or am I settling for an opportunity?

If you want to learn more about strategy in business and life here is a great book to read.

Stay Fit and Healthy To Better Help Your Business.

2011-02-07T10:14:00.000-08:00

One of the hazards of being a business owner is getting caught up in the day-to-day operation and minutia. Staying fit is difficult for most people already in becoming a business owner can make staying fit even more difficult. Finding a fitness program that works and doesn't destroy your schedule can be a huge bonus for a new business owner who is already completely time stressed.

Even if you are fortunate enough to live in Southern California so you can take advantage of my friend Chad Morris's program, you can at least watch his videos. Chad is done something very cool and outlined his entire program for busy executives in an easy to watch video format. If you don't think you have the time to stay fit, invest a few minutes to watch the videos and then reprioritize your time so you can make this exercise program work for you.

Chad has been coaching busy executives and business owners for years and helping them stay fit. Even if you don't think you have the time for this program, you need to find the time. Staying fit is critical to keeping energy level high and running your business effectively. If you get out of shape or worse yet get sick who is there to carry your vision forward. Staying fit to be high on the priority list for any upstart or growing business owner.

One of the most important elements of success is time and priority management. If you do not stay fit, it is extremely difficult to reach your goals. Exercise and taking the time to eat right should be part of your time and priority management program. I know the fellow business owner that you can feel like there is always more to do. Don't let the busyness of life and business get in the way of your health. Check out chads program at www.platinum.myogenicsfitness.com .

Stay fit, stay focused and let life be great.

A Letter To The President

2011-02-04T09:15:00.000-08:00

Normally I don't write letters to politicians, but I felt this letter to the president was worth sharing with anyone in small business. Feel free to copy it and send one yourself.

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

I am writing this letter to you in response to your selection of Jeff Immelt to run the Jobs Council.

Selecting the man that built GE, Jack Welch, might make sense, but his replacement doesn’t. Mr. Immelt like many bankers and large corporate leaders have been quick to accept help from the government and slow to work towards the goal of a better country.

It is the small businesses that the country depends on, not those who are chosen to be members of the S&P 500. Your thoughts of working with businesses to solve the problems of the country are on the right track. A council of small business owners are what you really need. Big banks and big business need to be disrupted from time to time in order to prevent a larger melt down.

The choice is minor revolutions that look like evolution in history, or an outright revolution as the USSR experienced leading to its demise. It is the little businesses that make big change. Apple didn’t even exist when GE first made the S&P 500 and the Fortune 500. Look what Mr. Jobs and Mr. Wozniack have done in so few years, or Mr. Gates. Both creating whole new industries and Microsoft being one of the country’s few major exporters.

It is time that we as a nation stop asking for our banks, our unions, our employers and our government to take care of us. What makes this country the greatest in the world is the Freedoms we are guaranteed in the constitution. With liberty and freedom come responsibility and risk.

Since most small business owners can’t afford to take time off from their business to write to you, I would like to offer a few quick thoughts as one of them:

1. Reduce the burdens on small businesses. Businesses under 100 employees are the bulk of the nation’s business and therefore tax base. As an example, a small company with two employee’s has the same payroll tax reporting requirements as a company with 50.

Growth as a small business is the most difficult because of the government’s requirements on all levels, Federal, State and Local. These requirements create non-producing jobs like bookkeepers and accountants. While I appreciate the work these people do, it does not lead to a gain in productivity. In small business this is time and money lost from production. Accountants should be offering advice on where the company makes the most money, not whether there is a form 940 or 941 due or how often.

Let’s say the business owner uses an online payroll solution. The W3 and W2 forms for this owner can run over $60.00 at the local office box store. This is simply more time and more money taken from building great things to accounting for things. This should be a one line on line report for any sized business. Why do we as small business owners care if we are paying futa taxes or medicare taxes. It is all money and time account for it that is taken from our ability to produce.

2. Simplify the hiring process - I am all for verifying that a person who wants to work in the US has a right to do so. I don’t think any small business owner wants to break the law, we just want to get the job done and pay our bills. Since we have to verify who we hire, it seems only fair that we verify who we give benefits too as well. E-Verify is a good start and maybe E-Verify can be used both ways, to verify employability and benefits eligibility.

3. Simplify the Termination Process - If an employee isn’t working out for any legal reason, the employer should be allowed to relieve them of their job and give it to someone who wants to work. All work should be at will. If you don’t like your boss you can quit and compete against him the next day. Why is it your boss can’t fire you without worrying about paying unemployment while you goof off at home?

4. Be Proactive – For most small businesses to get paid we have to send an invoice and a reminder to our customers. We know they are busy too. The government on the other hand expects a busy small business owner struggling to make payroll to know what is due and when. The only other legal choice is to pay money to someone else and hope they know.

5. Spread the Word - There is a very cool web tool for electronically filing W-3’s and W-2’s and printing them for free. Also the IRS provides these forms for free. Most small business owners are convinced by the big box stores and software companies they have to buy expensive forms to meet the IRS requirements. When the government does do something good, spread the word.

Small business owners don’t have the resources to create big lobby’s. We don’t get big handouts to save our businesses. The owners of small businesses that weren’t “too big to fail” had to give up their homes to pay back the banks what they could. The banks made the decision to be partners in these small businesses. They should have taken some risk with it. Small business owners will bounce back, hopefully smarter this time. The big businesses haven’t learned a thing, making the entire economy more at risk of greater failure.

Somehow all big businesses are created because someone started a little disruptive businesses. AT&T grew so big that a judge had to break it up, just a few years before mobile phones would have done it anyway.

Some disruptions take longer than others. Asking big business to help create productive disruption is like asking the wolf to guard the golden goose that might put him out of a job. The government should promote disruption as a means of growth, not hinder it.

You started your campaign with the idea of change. Small business is where the change is. Small business is where the change for the future is hiding.

Respectfully,

Scott Bourquin

Some suggested business reading too....

Todays Internet Marketing Tip - Are You Yelping?

2011-01-17T08:12:00.000-08:00

This is going to be short and sweet. If you own a business, you need to be on Yelp!. Why? The simple fact is you need to stay in touch with what your customers are saying about you and your competition. While there are at least a dozen similar websites with mobile apps that we watch for our customers.

For a small business owner, the most important is probably Yelp!. If you have time, look at the others to see if you have more ratings and reviews somewhere else. If not, get on Yelp! and stay in touch with your business and your customers.

There are two sides to Yelp!. One for customers and one for business owners. You need to be on both as an owner. As the customer, you can see what your customers are saying about the competition and what you can do to improve your relationship with them. Improving your relationship will improve the business automatically. If you have a smart phone, the Yelp! app is free.

The business owners side of Yelp! will allow you to post correct information about what you do, where you are, what your hours are and other information that potential new customers need to know. When this information is wrong because you didn't sign up and you made Yelp! guess, then your potential new customers start off with the wrong expectations.

Get on Yelp!, set the right expectations from the start and see new customers every day.

A Quick Start On The Internet

2011-01-14T07:35:00.000-08:00

In todays market place, having a website that is easy to find is critical to your business success. The bad news is there are over 1 million new websites being added to the internet every day. These new websites are all after the same eyeballs and dollars that you are. The yellow pages don’t work anymore and you’ve tried pay per click ads only to blow your budget and give up. What is a business owner supposed to do?

The good news is that the search engines are making enough money and are starting to listen to complaints about fake or misleading advertising pages. Google is starting to look closely at websites to make sure that there is a real business behind it. Even the big domaineer sites are starting to add content that is almost worth reading.

The bottom line is good news for you. Real businesses with a brick and mortar location can quickly climb up the ladder of search engine rankings just by following a few simple steps. The search engines all want to be number one and that means they want people to find what they are looking for and not get annoyed by fake or misleading websites.

The most important things to focus on are your businesses local listings and your sites popularity. What does this mean to you? Well the first step is to claim your local listing on Google places, formerly Google local. When you claim your listing make sure you update and correct all of the information listed there. This is critical. If the information is blank or wrong, that is how most people searching on a mobile phone are finding your business, blank.

The next step is to build a facebook page and link it to your website. When you do this you can ask your happy clients to “like” your page and help the major search engines recognize your business as a real business. You have to keep up with the information about your website and make sure it is accurate.

Success on the internet starts with cleaning up, correcting and posting correct information about your business. Next is the monthly maintenance that keeps your information correct and your clients connected. Over time the search engines will move you up as more people find your business “relevant” to what they were looking for.

Remember the single most important thing to do is to start with your customer in mind. Act like your customer and ask yourself, what would they be looking for when they need your business. Then put on your sales and copywriting hat. Talk like you are having a one on one conversation with your perfect customer. Don't know who that is yet? You better get started on figuring that out or your business will go nowhere. Even Wal-Mart can't serve everyone.

Success on the internet is about knowing and loving our customer. Most owners fall in love with their business. Don’t be one of those business owners.

A Focused Business Strategy should Lead to a Focused Marketing Strategy.

2011-01-09T09:16:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was putting around Orange County in my favorite little car, a 1966 Mercedes 230SL. There is something mystical about this car that creates an immediate love or hate response just like Beetles and Mini Coopers do. The people that own them are more often than not smiling while they are driving around. There is just something fun about it. The controversial Pagoda Top of the late 60’s model Mercedes SL’s has been the butt of jokes by many great automotive writers.

For me however, there is nothing cooler than putting up PCH in my little convertible. The only thing missing is a cup holder. As a Porsche engineer once told me “We make cars to drive, not to enjoy a Coca-Cola.” Since I still have an addiction to Diet Coke, I am pretty familiar with every McDonalds in the Reno-Lake Tahoe area and Orange County, my two major hangouts.

As long as I can remember I have been going to McDonalds and In-n-Out. My dad liked the chocolate milkshake and coffee at McDonalds better so we went there more often, at least that was his story. I think it was because the owner of the McDonalds franchise next door to his office was a patient and we were getting free food.

The thing about McDonalds and In-n-Out is that they were always the same. It didn’t matter which one you went to, they looked the same the food was the same, sometimes you couldn’t name the city you were in because the McDonalds looked so similar. I remember the first time I saw the McDonald’s built into an old train in Barstow California. I didn’t believe my dad that it was a McDonalds.

Today something is amiss today with McDonald’s strategy, and I am not sure what it is. In business schools across the country, McDonalds is a case study in real estate management. The champion of the “location location location” mantra of real estate. Rarely do you see a McDonalds close, pick any other chain and they are closing at a regular basis.

Several years ago Starbucks showed up and created a $3.00 coffee and the “third place”. The strategy of creating the “third place” worked very well for Starbucks for many years. Lately a few of their store have received the ax. Now Starbucks has received the other end from McDonalds.

The family friendly McDonalds I grew up with that had playgrounds and Burgers is being turned into McCafe’. It will be years before this strategy is finished and the answer to the question of its success may even take longer.

Right now, if you go to a McDonalds that you have never been to, you never know what you are going to get. In Kingwood Texas the owner build a hybrid, funky McCafe with a playground. Yesterday I stopped in a McDonalds in Irvine California near the John Wayne Airport and might have thought I wandered into a Starbucks. There was a plasma display with the prices of at least two dozen drinks, all unique and separately listed like commodities on the big board in Chicago. Do the prices change so fast they need a plasma TV for this? Or maybe the product mix is changing so fast?

Either way I could see confusion on several people’s faces as they looked around and ordered. Being near the airport it was clear most of the people were passing through, not regulars on a Saturday morning.

There were a few people probably affected by the economy glad to have a Latte for a dollar less than the Starbucks right across the street, the rest were confused like I was. A little boy walking in as I was leaving said "Mommy, this isn't McDonalds, there is no play place."

I ended up buying Oatmeal instead of my usual Egg McMuffin, and sat there wondering, “What is next for McDonalds?” Today I am wondering, "Do they even know?"

Whatever you do in life or with your business, pick a direction, and go there. Never let anyone take it away from you or derail you from the path to your target. Your path to success and fulfillment will be shorter and easier if you stick to what you do, than if you don't and keep trying new things.

The family that owns In-N-Out hasn't changed much in the thirty plus years I have been going there. They added indoor dining and self serve drinks, and that is about all the change I can think of. I don't hear anyone in there wondering what is happening, or if they have a strawberry-fat-free-coffee-mocha-caramel-macciato. I just hear them telling their friends "You gotta try animal style protein dude it's like on the Atkins diet and stuff."

Set your target, relax, have fun and hit your target dead center every time. As the title of this article said “A Focused Business Strategy should Lead to a Focused Marketing Strategy” and the same is true for life. Get focused, stay focused and have some fun.

Resolutions for 2011

2011-01-01T18:06:00.000-08:00

Closing out 2010, I had a conversation with a guy about starting his own business. He really wanted to do it but he just couldn't give up the security of working for somebody else. I explained to him that security is a mindset which is based on the confidence you have in your own environment. You can work for a big company or government and you put your trust in them that they will protect your environment and your job. When you give away that trust you are hoping to exchange it for security. This is a false confidence that you receive when you trade your time for money.

If you look at the current state of the economy you can see businesses failing right and left and government workers losing their jobs almost as quickly. Security in the sense of somebody else taking care of you is gone. The truth is it has never been there. It is only when you trust in yourself and invest in yourself that you continue to build your internal confidence so your security is unfazed by outside influences.

You should never let anyone else be responsible for your security blanket this is the easy way out and it never lasts. As we go into 2011 there are a few simple things that are very hard to do yet can make a huge difference in your life. Some might call the secrets, I just call them the obvious things that most people won't bother to do.

1. BE AN INDEPENDENT CONTRACTOR. I don’t care if you work for someone else. You are always selling your services and need to act like it. Begin by accepting that you work for yourself and no one else always. You are your boss and you are completely responsible for what you do and what you earn. You are also responsible for your children, your relationships and most importantly your health. When you accept the fact that you are responsible for your actions and the outcomes or your actions, you start acting like the employee that everyone wants to hire.

I call this acting like an independent contractor because your boss now becomes your customer. When you learn to take care of your boss like a customer your boss will look after you. When you do this, and are responsible for yourself it doesn't matter if your company can make it or not, there will be a line waiting to hire you. I have had former bosses call me 10 years later asking if I would like to work for them at their new job. There is no better compliment

2. SET REALISTIC GOALS. I don't mean simple, easy to accomplish, lazy things like increasing income 5%. I have absolutely no heartburn with a goal of tripling or quadrupling income in 2011. That one is on my list. What makes it realistic is that I have broken it down into a series of steps in order to get there. In order to have a realistic goal you have to have three things. First is an understanding of where you are, this has to be a realistic viewpoint and not idealistic. Second you need a very clear picture of the goal. When you know where you are and have a very clear image of your goal, it makes it much easier to create the steps that get you there.

3. REACH OUT. When I say reach out, I mean reach out to everybody. Reach out to loved ones and let them critique your goals and dreams. My wife is one of my harshest critics; my brother and mother are fighting for second place with my step dad a very close third. Fight back and develop the willpower and discipline to get there.

Reach out to friends for ideas that will help you leap over obstacles and move more quickly to your goal. Reach out to colleagues and experts have them help you find the shortest path to obtain your goal.

Reach out to customers. This is the most important whether you own a business or your customer is your boss. If you have a business and don't have an online customer connection program, build one. I'll keep posting ideas and checklists here to help you get this done. If you don't have the time, give me a call will be glad to help you out. I think this is so important I'm going to give away a lot of this information for free on my blog this year. In fact you can buy our entire checklist for less than half of one month's fees to do-it-yourself. Otherwise just come back to this blog and it will all be here over the next year.

4. GET FOCUSED AND STAY FOCUSED. As the old 80/20 rule goes, 20% of your time is creating 80% of your income. Focus like a laser on the 20% that is making your income. Double your efforts there and skip the 80% that is only making 20% of your income. Over and over I hear excuses of why people can't do this, "my customers will quit coming in." and things of this nature. What a load of hooey, when you focus and get better what you do people will line up to have you do it. When you take on the extra activities that you're not very good at and don't bring you income it will irritate the people who want what you really do best.

Don’t focus on developing your weaknesses, leverage your strengths and do the same with everything around you.

5. BE THE BOSS. This is the toughest one for most people. It is having the discipline take the time and get the job done. Most of the time I work from home and can easily be distracted by dogs that want to play kids that want to go shopping for my wife who is always finding something for me to fix. Spending 3 to 4 hours straight every day in the office getting things done takes discipline.

I do get more done and that four-hour session that I used to get done in a week. This is what allows me to maintain what most people think is a crazy schedule of production and still have plenty of time off to write magazine articles, blogs and books. When you combine numbers four and five you will be amazed at how much you can accomplish in a very short amount of time. One trick to this is to treat every day like it is the day before you're leaving on vacation. Every day at noon my vacation starts for the rest of the day, and I can't leave the office until my entire checklist is complete.

6. FOLLOW THE 3-6-6 PLAN. This is the one that ties it all together, setting daily goals that are realistic. This is different than number two, because we're not talking about long-term goals were talking about tasks that will be accomplished each and every day. If you have a list of 30 things to do and only get four of them done you will always feel like you let yourself down. If you stick to my 3–6–6 rule, you will get something done and feel good about it every day. The more you get done the better you feel and the more you can accomplish in less time. It takes practice so don't give up.

Get focused stay focused and let life be healthy and prosperous in 2011

If you don't have a job and want to find the right one or start a new business, start with this book:

The Economy That Network Marketing Loves.

2010-12-24T14:50:00.000-08:00

There is an old saying "When the going gets tough, the tough get going.", and if the news is right, then this is a very tough economy and the tough are getting going. Are you hiding in the house or jumping on a new Harley and getting to work? So, what are you really doing? There are places like California whose governments are really looking at the entire economy all wrong. When the tough stand up to take on the challenge, the best thing the government can do is move out of the way. Increasing business taxes and adding burdens to businesses will only shrink the economy in the long run.

Payroll taxes, business taxes, permits and anything else the city or state can charge for will act as a deterrent to growth. This creates an opportunity for a very specific market segment, network marketing. Personally as a network marketing participant I have never been what anyone would call successful. The reason is simple, I have never found a network marketing program that I liked so much I wanted to quit my business and dedicate all of my time to it. Several of my friends have and they do quite well. What I have found is a network marketing program that supports my business, and that of my clients.

You might be wondering what all of this is doing a blog about starting and building a great business. The answer is quite simple, network marketing is about the lowest cost business you can start. You don't hire employees so you don't have payroll taxes. You work from your home so you don't have to pay business taxes or permits. If you want to do it in your own name, you can start a business for just the sign-up fee.

Even if you choose to create a separate business entity from yourself, the filing fees can be pretty small in most cities. Some states like California have ridiculous incorporation franchise fees that are imposed just for the privilege of doing business in the state. Most network marketing programs can be run quite well under a sole proprietorship and DBA.

True entrepreneurs look at the barriers that the governments create and find ways around them, over them or through them. This is why network marketing is growing so quickly. Even though I'm not what some people would consider successful in network marketing, I do use in network marketing product every week in my business. This tells me there is a fantastic opportunity out there for someone who wants to take it.

The current state of the economy is something that network marketers can't help but enjoy. Just think about it for under 1000 bucks you can start a business at home that is a real business. Instead of hiring employees, you get people to pay you to join the program that you have already joined. Just like an employee every time they produce something profitable you make a small percentage. The big difference is you aren't saddled with payroll taxes or the threat of paying for unemployment if the person does not perform. More importantly you are never paying them when they don't work.

Network marketing is therefore one of the most efficient and effective business models today. When the founding fathers created this country, everybody was a contractor of some sort. Employees were paid for their work, not for their existence. If you ever hear somebody making fun of network marketing, just smile and walk away. I am personally connected to several multimillionaires who got their start in network marketing.

It doesn't matter if you're retired, a stay-at-home mom, an unemployed janitor or a college student. Anybody can reap the rewards of network marketing program. Just like starting any business one of the keys to success is to find the program you believe in and let you work your strengths. If you are McDonald's number one fan on yelp, joining a network marketing program selling nutrition products is going to make you crazy.

If you're thinking about starting a new business in 2011, start with my book to really understand where you want to go in life. Then take a few minutes to consider a network marketing based business. There are a lot of them out there, and they sell just about anything you could ever want to sell. In fact even if you don't like selling, you can be successful in network marketing. What you really need to do in network marketing is help other people find success. When you do that, you find success and happiness to. Good luck and best wishes for a great business start in 2011.

Post your thoughts on network marketing, have you tried a program? How did it go and why do you think it went that way. Was it the right program for you?