photo credit: makelessnoise

Every year, in fact – every month, I have some formal “airplane time” set aside for putting thought into where my business is, where it’s going and what adjustments it needs to zig-zag its way to where it belongs.

Ultimately all of that relates to where it leads you, how it changes your business and hopefully, your life.

Since preparations for an all-out-assault on the in-laws’ place are in their final hours, stocking stuffers came to mind.

Stocking stuffers for your business, that is.

Stuffers at all levels

When I sit down for one of these sessions, the proper mix of present, past and future is always on my mind.

On top of that stocking is the a gift from the past. If you think back, you’ve had failures. Forget ‘em. Dwelling over them is a waste of time and it’s wrong kind of self-talk. At the same time, you learned lessons. Never forget those. Leverage them. They’re a gift if you learn from them.

Which of these lessons are possible to repeat? Whatever they are, put systems in place to help you prevent them from ever happening again, just like the systems you have in place to manage and organize the rest of your business.

What have you learned from the systems of your business’ past?

Digging deeper

A little further down in your stocking is a gift from the present – What your business is doing today.

Look hard at your existing revenues and where they come from. What areas can have layers (or ladders) added? Which areas can be transformed into recurring revenue? Of the customers you have, what needs do they have that you aren’t serving? What can you do to build a stronger foundation, infrastructure for your business today that will serve your customers better?

If you have staff, are they creating enough value to make it easy to keep them on the job? If not – it’s your job to fix that. If you haven’t created work for them that generates profit (directly or indirectly), find some even if it requires training them to improve their value to you and to their family.

Stability today is what gives you the ability to think clearly, breathe and create the business you had in mind when you started. These steps are what help you get there. Every day, work on one of them. Pick the one that can impact your business the most and knock it out.

At the very bottom

Dig deep into your stocking. At the very bottom you’ll find a permission slip. That’s your gift from the future.

It’s there to grant you serious time for thought, one of the best gifts you can give yourself.

Choose an afternoon or a morning, whatever works best for you. Rather than spending time in the present, take an hour to look far enough into the future to see the business in its ideal state.

If it was hitting on all cylinders, what would it look like? What kind of customers would line up to do business there? What would you know about their needs and wants? What products and services would your business offer? Think abou every single aspect of that “perfect” business. What makes it resilient? What kind of innovation fuels its growth?

What would your staff’s experience include? Would you even have a staff?

Layers

In this “perfect” state, what would your involvement be? You might be so excited to get to work each day that you can’t sleep past five a.m. Or you might stop by the business once a week if you feel like it. Whatever seems right for you.

With those things in hand, work backwards from that ideal state to today, layer by layer, year by year, month by month. With each step, ask yourself what it would take to make each aspect of this future vision happen.

Work your way back to today. Those layers…they’re the 10,000 foot view of your plan. When you’ve worked your way back to today, you’re ready.

The next step is to work the plan that gets you to that desired state.

First, you’ve got to come up with it. You have half a day. Go.

photo credit: write_adam

As I look back over the last 12 years or so, I’m convinced that Scott Dinsmore is exactly right.

None of us have least bit of a clue what we can really do. Not the faintest idea.

On the contrary, we’re all fairly sure what we can’t do. But the whole “can’t” thing is really way too easy. It’s the can that hard.

“Can too”

Remember when you were a kid and your best friend or your brother or sister would get into a silly argument? One of you would say “Can too!”, to which the other would reply with an insightful “Can not!”?

While it sounds a lot like most modern-day political conversations, the same thing goes on inside our heads all the time.

Have you ever put any thought into which one of you wins? I mean the yous inside of you.

Rather than get you all weirded out with touchy-feely stuff, here’s an example.

Except for a couple of months when in Tennessee, I’ve been running several times a week since sometime early this year.

I’d go to the place where I run and get after it on the elliptical or the treadmill (usually both, back to back) until I’d run two or three miles. On a big day, I’d go five. As I got back in the groove from my time out of town, I managed to get 12-20 miles in every week.

Those miles were chipped away at what seemed like a decent enough pace until I was done. Despite the drenched clothes and sometimes grumpy knees, it hit me one day that I was slugging along at a rather generous pace of 11 to 14 minute miles.

Faster than your grandmother, but not what I expected after months. Something bugged me.

Kinda like Monk

It was that danged Nike+ smartphone app.

Like most running/hiking tracker applications, it has a GPS and a motion sensor so it can record your pace and distance.

The troubling part is that there’s a records display and the 10k one was empty. I’m one of those undiagnosed sometimes OCD types about some things (we all have “those things”, it seems) and that empty spot just made me nuts.

One day, I couldn’t take it any more. I decided to fill that box one Wednesday a few weeks back.

Took me 90 minutes the first time. Pathetically slow, but the box was filled with nowhere to go but down (in pace/time). In over 50 years I had run a 10k once.

Two days later, I ran another one. Then a weird thing happened.

My regular run pacing started to shrink like a fat guy locked in a sauna. Instead of 15 minutes on average to do each of slightly more than 6 miles, I started seeing my long run fastest-mile-pace dropping from 12 or 13 minutes per mile to nine and change.

Because I didn’t know I could do that, I guess I just did. The Nike slogan suddenly made more sense than ever before.

Start.

Not all that long ago, a guy told me I couldn’t do something. Said I’d be back in 6 months.

So I did it anyway…12 years ago.

The specifics don’t matter. The lesson is simple: Start. Then don’t quit.

I know…it’s a platitude you’ve heard 1000 times. Have you heeded it?

If you’re going to invest your time, energy and money in something, put it into something impossible, insane, unprecedented, life-changing. Don’t waste all that energy on something that isn’t worth darned near losing your mind over. Do something that’s so killer, so incredibly difficult, so rewarding and yes…so profitable that you don’t have any idea how you’ll make it work.

That hunger has value you can’t imagine.

Start. Now.

Maybe you’ve already started

Your business might be stuck at that 15 minute mile type of plateau. What do you do? How do you go faster, better, stronger? Every week I write about strategies to break through business plateaus.

Is your plateau breaker sitting there like that empty 10k record box?

Sometimes you just have to do something you’ve never done to learn the potential of what you really can do.

Anyone can just plod along. Why not do something impossible?

photo credit: vramak

Lately, there has been a lot of talk in the news and around the Flathead Valley about the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) offering a four year power supply deal to Columbia Falls Aluminum Company (CFAC).

The deal is subject to environmental review and other what-ifs, so it isn’t a done deal quite yet.

Given the economic struggles facing Columbia Falls, any news of new jobs is good news. Really good news, in fact.

The topic of CFAC concerns me – it always has. Folks who have lived in Columbia Falls far longer than I know the history of CFAC first hand. To summarize for everyone else: It opens. It lays off / closes. It changes hands. It opens. It lays off / closes. And so on.

Again, Lucy pulls it away
CFAC has at times been our employment Lucy (from the “Peanuts” comic strip). Just as Charlie Brown approaches to kick the football, Lucy pulls it away and Charlie goes flying through the air, screaming and lands flat on his back. Imagine having that done to your career and family -  several times.

No matter how good things are when CFAC is rocking, a shutdown ripples through the financial well-being of our fair town’s families and the businesses that serve them. The impact of the historical ups-and-downs of CFAC on those families is unimaginable.

To their credit, CFAC’s troubles haven’t always been bad news for the valley.

In at least one case, their troubles have generated substantial benefits. Several years back, CFAC paid their people to do what amounted to volunteer work for a number of groups that couldn’t have otherwise afforded the labor. Many organizations benefited big time from the hard work their employees provided back then – and continue to benefit from the work done back then.

Don’t be a commodity
It isn’t as if these troubles were created on purpose (feel free to argue about that in the comments).

While it may not have started that way in the 1950s, the CFAC of modern times is incredibly sensitive to the whims of commodity prices. Many businesses deal with commodity prices somehow affecting some part of their business. CFAC’s business has it as part of their raw materials supply, energy supply and their finished product. As things sit today, it’s a tough, tough business they’re in.

Imagine having someone else setting the prices of every major component of your business. Now imagine that the ingots you ship are not substantially different (speaking very generally here) from those shipped by a Chinese firm using labor that works for $10 a day, ore that’s mined locally by workers paid similarly, and so on.

Advice to everyone else – do whatever you can to avoid getting yourself into a commodity market. If you’re in one, work on your business model to get out of it.

In fact, that’s my advice to CFAC, though they didn’t ask. Let’s call it a wish for the betterment of Columbia Falls and the entire valley.

The Whole Valley
Wait a minute…the whole valley? Absolutely. It’s about airline seats, hotel rooms and rental cars. It’s about cafes and catering. It’s about grocery and clothing stores. It’s about car dealers and construction work. It’s about the schools that get property taxes from an active thriving business instead of the waiver-level taxes of a dead one.

My wish is that in four years no one cares what electricity costs CFAC. Not because they are gone, but because whatever they sell has so much value that people will pay whatever it takes to get it. It worries me deeply that in four years we’ll be right back where we are now.

What I’d like to see is for CFAC to add a ton of value to the aluminum they produce, *before* it hits the rails. I’m told CFAC had some of the best millwrights anywhere who could create “anything”.

I wonder
I wonder what CFAC could make that would allow them to sell a product that doesn’t get sold on commodity markets based on someone else’s price control. I wonder what they can manufacture with the skills and backgrounds of the people who worked there for the last 20-30-40 years.

I wonder what would happen to a community manufacturing valuable products for today’s economy, rather than commodities from my grandfather’s economy.

I wonder what would happen if Charlie got to kick the ball.

Are you paying this much attention?

Are you putting this much thought into what your customers’ do with your product?

Are you then following it up by shipping what they need?

Yes, these stackers are a blatantly obvious invention to anyone who has made a smore at a campfire.

The important thing is that Kraft thought enough to make them.

photo credit: timlewisnm

In almost every market, there’s someone who seemingly owns that market’s customers and prospects.

They’re the household name in that marketplace.

A common assumption is that they get so many customers that they may as well get them all.

To be sure, doing things that make you that household name is something I strongly encourage you to do. So what do you do if the market you want to enter already has a household name?

You’ve heard me suggest that you: Do more. Do it better. Do it more often. Do it differently.

The owner never has 100% of the market. If it’s a market you’re truly interested in, you need to figure out if there is enough left to make a business of it.

“Enough to make a business of it” has to last at least long enough to get a foothold so you can start to chip away at the leader and/or create new markets for what you do.

Can’t Get No…

For example, every single market includes customers who are dissatisfied.

They might not be that way because the market leader treated them poorly or failed to meet their expectations – though that’s certainly possible.

Every market has people who aren’t aware of the market “owner”, people who will intentionally choose someone other than the market leader just because that business is the leader, people who want something more/better/faster than what the leader does, people who want something different, people who have had a run in with the leader, and so on.

No matter what the reason is that you have them, the expectations thing is a big deal.

In the absence of someone setting expectations for them, people assume their personal expectations will be met – at whatever level they have them. Failing to set expectations almost guarantees dissatisfaction among some portion of the population you serve because their assumptions will be higher than yours.

Different levels are OK. Disappointment is not.

Because you’ll find different levels of expectations, you have an opportunity to create good, better, best, unbelievable, and rock-star class tiers of products and services. Still, your job is to set those expectations as appropriate so that even the lowest tier of service gets *at the very least* exactly what they expect.

How often do you get *exactly what you expect* from a business?

Think hard about that.

Now the hard question: How often do your customers get exactly what they expect from your business?

photo credit: sarahsampsel

In the process of elliptical-ing across some wide open (virtual) spaces recently, I thought to myself, “What would I change if I owned this place?”

I might warm up the pool a couple of degrees, but that really isn’t the kind of change I meant.

The things that came to mind were in the spirit of “Be indispensable“.

So what would make that place the ONLY place to be a member?

When I have these conversations with a client, the first thing we often talk about are their clients.

We start simple. Who are they? What do they need?

A Day in the Life

To answer the “Who are they?” question, let’s look around at a day in the life of a fitness center and see how we can segment the members (customers) into groups based on gender, age, level of fitness, “Why they are there”, and so on.

I don’t mean a group like “People who need/want to work out.” Obviously, most people who join qualify for either need to or want to.

I’m thinking about a list like this, and I’m sure it’s far from complete:

• Professional or semi-pro athletes, such as people who regularly marathon, triathlon and/or Ironman. You might include players for the local semi-pro teams. Around here, the Glacier Twins and/or Glacier Knights would be included.
• Bodybuilders.
• Post-partum moms who want to get their “pre-pregnancy body” back.
• Pregnant women.
• Men recovering from heart surgery.
• Anyone newly diagnosed with diabetes.
• People who are new to working out.
• “Formerly disciplined workout people” who haven’t worked out in five, ten or more years.
• People recovering from an injury, possibly under the direction of a physical therapist.

Within these groups, you’ll find breakdowns for gender and/or age group. Don’t underestimate those.

Everyone should be considering the sizable wave of Baby Boomers heading into their 60s-70s-80s might impact their business and what opportunities they suggest. Likewise, research has repeatedly shown that women control or influence 80% or more of household spending.

Is your business catering to these groups? If not, is your business even passingly friendly to these groups?

I Have Needs

The second question on my list was “What do they need?”

Until you create the list above, your needs list might be simpler than it should be because you might just be thinking “What do my members need?”.

Once we’ve gone through the customer (and prospect) identification and segmentation process, we’ll find more needs.

That’s why we go through this probably tedious, sometimes eye-rolling process that almost always helps you find new things that your customers need. The result should be obvious.

What do they need?

Now look back at that list of customer types from a “wants and needs” perspective. Consider the needs of body builders, post-partum moms, heart patients, and semi-pro athletes, for example. In some ways, they’re similar. In others, they have wildly different expectations.

They all need machines/weights, steam room, hot tub, pool, showers, restrooms and so on.

After that, the needs among the groups vary quite a bit:

• Some would benefit most from instruction and/or working in groups.
• Some prefer private facilities.
• Some prefer gender-specific workout times/rooms.
• Some prefer age-specific.
• Some work evening or night shift.
• Some would prefer to find a workout partner for motivation, spotting weights and/or accountability.
• Some would like to be gently nagged if they don’t show up 3 times a week.

One example of many obvious ones: You wouldn’t necessarily have 20-somethings in a Yoga class with 60-somethings. Not because they can’t enjoy each other’s company, but because the instruction and goals for one group probably don’t parallel the other. That might drive you to have separate Yoga classes for singles, post-partums, “retirees”, physical therapy patients and so on. In each case, the instructor could be matched with attendees.

“What about me?”

If you don’t own a fitness center, you might be thinking this discussion isn’t much help.

Use what you can after adjusting it for your business. Can you take any idea here and make it work for you?

Finally, take a hard look at the thought process itself (“Who are my customers, what are their unique needs”) and see what you can come up with for your business. Even if you’ve done this five, ten or fifteen years back, I suggest doing it again. You might find yourself in new markets, focusing on a particular type of customer that you’d previously ignored, etc.

photo credit: Keng Susumpow

A friend told me recently that his family filed a homeowner’s insurance claim for slightly under $600.

After filing no claims in over 20 years of keeping their insurance with this company, this was the 3rd claim in 5 years.

During that 5 years, their annual insurance rate went from $1300 a year to $4000.

After the 3rd claim was paid, their insurance was cancelled without warning.

Do the math

Somewhere, a bad piece of software or a misguided underwriter just killed a 20+ year customer relationship.

That aside, let’s do the math.

Even if a family had no other insurance with this agent/company (highly unusual, I suspect), they’ve been worth well over $20,000 to this insurance company.

In this case, ALL their insurance is at that company. Think they’ll move it? If they fired this customer over a $600 claim against a $4000 per year policy, it wouldn’t surprise me to see the family move their coverage elsewhere. All of it.

At $4000 a year, the recent claim is nothing.

Yet because they didn’t really look at the math the right way, they just discarded a customer with 20 years of loyalty over $600.

If this family keeps their home another ten years, that’s a loss of $40,000 in premium revenue, not counting the other insurance policies they have.

Who does the math at *your* business?

Are you throwing away thousands of dollars by not paying attention to the Lifetime Customer Value generated by recurring revenue?

Please do the math.

photo credit: geoftheref

Are you indispensable to your customers?

I was thinking about this earlier this morning, started this post and got sidetracked by “real work”.

Apparently, it was destined to stay on my mind because a couple of hours later, Hugh’s email newsletter sent me this, which is RIGHT ON POINT with the indispensable question.

The question that you have to ask yourself – daily, rather than once – is “What can you do to make yourself indispensable to your customers?”

A few examples to get the juices flowing:

• If you sell coffee, how can you help your customers wade through the coffee buzzword maze and enjoy *better* coffee? What’s fair trade? Is it really fair trade, or is it just another marketing buzzword?
• If you sell cars, how can you help your customers make better decisions, get more from their investment, and save time and money on repairs? How can you help them remember to perform the regular maintenance that allows them to depend on their vehicle regardless of the weather?
• If you repair lawn mowers, how can you help your customers get a better looking yard, without injury, cheaper, safer and faster? How can you save them time and money on upkeep and repairs? How can you help them remember to change their oil, sharpen their blades and make their mower perform better and longer?
• If you help people deal with (and prevent) legal problems, how can you help your customers avoid rushing into your office with a problem that has to be solved NOW? Ounce of prevention, pound of cure kinda stuff. Be their lawyer every day or every week, just a little vs. being their rescue squad every 5 years.
• If you treat people’s injuries and diseases, how can you help them be safer at home and at work? How can you help them by advising them on nutrition and other preventative care, without becoming a nag? Knowing that these things require lifestyle / habit changes, how can you help your customers/patients make that happen? How can you help your patients make sense of the constant flow of health, nutrition and prescription information placed in front of them each day? How can you help them prevent injuries and disease, rather than waiting until they occur so you can treat them?
• If you sell building materials to professional contractors, how can you help them find more business so they can buy more building materials? Can you help keep them informed about industry promos, tax incentives and other things to help them be more competitive?
• If you sell advertising (better sit down), how can you help your clients track the effectiveness of all their advertising? How can you help them calculate the ROI on the advertising? Not guesswork, but real numbers based on the foot/internet traffic, revenue and profit each advertising source generates. Who is indispensable, the ad salesperson or the ad salesperson who is also a partner in profitability?
• If you sell computers, ANSWER YOUR PHONE. Those people on the other end of the phone who don’t know as much as you’ve forgotten about a computer are the ones with all the money. They’d like to give it to you, if only you’ll help them. Yes, to be indispensable in the computer business, quite often it’s as simple as answering your phone and helping them with their problem without being arrogant. In fact, just answering your phone will be a huge first step.

If I didn’t mention the business you’re in, use these things as inspiration to do what makes your business indispensable to your customers. Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that because your specific type of business wasn’t mentioned, it won’t work for you. Likewise, if you’re thinking to yourself that “my business is different, it won’t work for me”, you’re right. If you don’t do these things – they won’t work for you.

The goal in doing all of these things is to position yourself and your business as the only place that your clients will consider doing business. Arrive at that position by doing this kind of stuff and both your checkbook and your customers will thank you.

Take care of them like no one else is willing to.

photo credit: joiseyshowaa

One of the things Scoutmasters teach their Scouts is the Scout motto – “Be Prepared.”

We don’t stand around saying those words all that much (or ever, really).

When I ask a Scout what it means to them, I get a lot of different answers. I talk about it with the boys because I’m curious what it means to them – which tells me where they are preparedness-wise.

Depending on their age and their seriousness when I ask the question, I hear answers that include things like:

• knowing how to select the right gear for a campout,
• having the right fishing lures,
• making sure that bacon is on the menu (not kidding),
• being in good enough shape for the upcoming hike,
• making sure the car is full of gas and has proper levels of other fluids/air and so on,
• having charged batteries in the camera,
• having a sharpened pocket knife,
• knowing how to tie a rescue knot, or
• having the proper gear to safely canoe or kayak a river/stream.

What it ultimately means to me is being prepared for what life/business serves up, whether it’s a class V rapid, an unexpected flat tire during a snowstorm in a remote area, that five figure invoice that your “customer” still hasn’t paid, the new box store down the street, mention of your business in the Wall Street Journal, by Scoble and on TechCrunch, or stumbling upon an idea that changes your life and/or business.

Embarrassment? No.

To someone who has a job, I ask them what they would do if they lost their job today? Are they honing a new or enhanced skill so that they can react quickly to a downturn in what they’ve done for the past 20 years? Do they have a network of people in their current (or desired) line of work that could help them identify opportunities?

To someone who has a business, I might ask them what would happen if the building housing their business burned down, or if their biggest customer stopped buying from them, or if they suddenly got 100 new customers tomorrow.

I don’t ask these questions to embarrass employees or business owners any more than I ask them to embarrass a Scout when asking them what would happen if their friend cut his hand or lost his water bottle on a week-long hike. I ask them so they’ll think about their level of preparedness.

Being prepared isn’t just about having a poncho in case it rains, having backups offsite, and having a marketing plan that never stops finding new customers for you. It’s also about being mentally prepared to deal with what happens next.

Be prepared, not only to take a punch, but to make big leaps when opportunities present themselves.

photo credit: elevatorlady

Today’s guest post from Tom Asacker continues a theme from yesterday.

Taking yourself seriously…or as Tom writes doing what risks everything.

Read Tom’s post about risking it all.

How are you risking it all?

photo credit: skedonk

Today’s guest post from AJ Leon is about getting serious about your ideas and goals.

Dan Kennedy talks about “massive action” more times than you can imagine. That’s all about getting serious.

Do you take yourself seriously? If not, how can you expect anyone else to?

What have you learned from the Angry Birds – other than how to burn up a ton of time?

Having a (if not the) best selling game glued to the top of the iPhone AppStore charts has made Rovio a household name among smartphone users. But what have they done that you can learn from?

Free works as a marketing strategy, as always (@chr1sa would agree): The Angry Birds free edition is at the top of the AppStore charts for free games. That it’s also at the top of the paid charts is indicative that they chose the right price point and gave the free version just enough to get players hooked.

Use the news and the calendar: They created a Halloween version, a holiday version with Christmas hams and so on.

Would you like fries with that? Get stuck? You can pay a small amount to get past that annoying place in the game that’s frustrating you.

Perfect, then project: Once making the game a success on the iPhone was complete, they moved it to other mobile platforms (iPad, Android) and then to the Mac – leveraging a substantial investment in development, as well as expanding their market to new customers on other hardware.

Get value from the gatekeeper: Apple’s AppStore is the gatekeeper to Rovio’s biggest market to date. There’s nothing wrong with using a gatekeeper’s services as long as they deliver value…and customers. Often they’re exactly what you need to reach cruising altitude.

How are you using these strategies? Which ones did I leave out?

photo credit: [carlo cravero]

As I drive around the area, I see lots of businesses who are trying to reap the potential rewards of local marketing on Facebook.

One sign: they have “Facebook us” or “Find us on Facebook” or similar on their roadside signs.

The idea is for you to click the “Like” button or become a fan of their business on Facebook, which will appear in your Facebook feed.

Because it appears in your Facebook feed, friends will see it as well and presumably some of them will check it out.

And that’s where it ends for many businesses. One time.

The smart ones talk with their fans/clients regularly via Facebook, even if they have a blog or other web presence.

People made the effort to friend, like or become a fan on Facebook.

What are you doing on Facebook to keep them paying attention?

Attention span

What are you doing to stand out amid the ever-present flood of game-related posts, surveys and other stuff on Facebook (note: you can hide that stuff without hiding the friend by clicking on the X at the right side of items of the type you don’t want to see – something you may want to share with your friends).

Does your restaurant have a Facebook fan special? A night where fans of the restaurant all get together IN PERSON (how’s that for frightening?)

Do you communicate daily or weekly with your fans to let them know what you’re up to? I don’t mean unnecessarily, but in cases where it makes sense.

Morning Glory Coffee and Tea in West Yellowstone, Montana does a great job of this and should give you some ideas, even if you don’t run a restaurant.

Ideas

What are people unaware of about your business? What knowledge would you like new (or existing) customers to know / have immediate access to?

What would they ask you in casual conversation about your business? What reason would people have to continue to visit your Facebook fan page?

Do some thinking about it – and act on it.

photo credit: jlastras

As I spent the last month mulling over my strategic plan for this year, I started by looking at what I was doing operationally as if I was my own client.

In the software business, it’s called “eating our own dogfood“. In other words, a vendor using their own software for the task it was designed to perform.

But it isn’t limited to software.

From a day-to-day operations perspective, that process quickly tossed a few things in my face.

I thought I’d mention some of the higher level things in case they happen to spark a ToDo item for you.

Technology

I need to automate WordPress updates across several dozen sites (some mine, some not). It was semi-automated, after today, I have it down to one button, right down to opening the site WordPress admin page to make sure I know whether I need to hit the “Database upgrade” button in the WP admin interface. No, I don’t use the built-in update process because I’d have to manually go all over the place to make that happen. Old school.

The upside of systematically handling this critical task is that I can finally hand this task off to an intern because there’s a system in place to make the work happen. Can you say “E-Myth”? Yes, I thought you could.

Last year, I moved all my web and other development work (including marketing/strategic client documents and even blog posts) to source-controlled environments after a few fits and starts in the past. This year, the software projects will get further screw-tightening by adding automated build and test processes.

Accountability

I’ve had some trouble with getting consistent action out of some folks this past year. Dan says I shouldn’t care because I can’t control the actions of others, but it isn’t about control. It’s about encouragement. Worse yet, client results reflect on me and I don’t like seeing folks failing to take advantage of my best efforts. I think I’ve found a way to solve the problem. We’ll see.

As for me, I need to lean on the calendar even more than I have in the past, especially on projects important to me.

The result of pondering this is that…

• I’ve already chosen my charitable time commitments for the year.
• I’m actively seeking a new mentor. Yes, pretty much everyone who is getting anything done has a mentor. Even Dan Kennedy has a mentor. Think about that for a minute.
• I have to be more demanding of my marketing clients in 2011. You may have figured out that I have a certain level of expectation of my clients after creating a strategy, tools and other materials for them. When they don’t get used (regardless of the reason), that hurts them and me (eventually). That level of accountability will rise markedly later this month as I complete a few tasks that will help me “enforce” it. Those who are willing to take their business seriously will be glad I’ve done this. The rest will probably end up working with someone else, if they do anything at all.
• Because I had to more or less ignore the needs of several prospective clients in 2010, I will be narrowing the clients I personally serve in 2011 while expanding the number of clients that can get my personal help. Yes, I know that sounds like opposite directions. Stay tuned, it’ll make sense as I roll it out. Planet Dan folks – think “ladder”.

Focus

John Haydon mentioned the other day on Twitter that his boss was a jerk. Of course, John works for himself. The hardest person to manage is yourself.

Focus comes up because a few personal projects slid last year. This was mostly due to an abundance of customer work. While I’m grateful for the work, I’ll be more demanding of myself in the selection of projects this year because these other things MUST GET DONE.

That’s already being corrected, partly via the accountability change noted above, partly via the mentor thing, partly via kowtowing even more to the calendar and via a few other steps I’ve taken. Like Jim Rohn said, when you say yes to one thing, you’re saying no to something else.

My existing clients will get even more attention this year. If you aren’t a client now and you’ve been thinking about it, now would be a good time to make a decision.

Writing

My writing (in the blog) has suffered immensely the last two years. I think it’s gotten better, but the frequency has really fallen off due to my workload.

The upside of this is that it’s given me time to think more about what I write and how you guys consume it and take action on it. That has resulted in the BIP book taking a few turns strategically. Now that I’ve finally, really (no kidding) figured out what I want to do with it, well, it’s moving along much better now.

I’ve also waded most of the way through an editorial calendar for the blog for the year, something I’ve never taken the time to do before. I suspect that’s pretty obvious to long time (it’s been 6 years this week) readers.

Bottom Line

One of the things that stood out in my mildly-freaky conversation with myself was that I need to put even more effort into doing for me what I do best for others. Imagine that.

Oh yeah, by now you should be asking me why you should care. “Boy, doesn’t that seem all about you and not at all about your readers?”

Yes, except that most of what I talked about is…for my readers/clients. And I hope it has made you reflect on what your plans are.

Do your clients know where you’re going? Does your staff?

photo credit: OakleyOriginals

If your customers are treated like the enemy when they give feedback about your products, services, customer service and so on; that’s exactly what they’ll become.

How are you treating your customers when something you did (or something they *perceive* of you) manages to set them off?

It’s easy to take it personally…but do your best not to.

The high-value feedback you might normally miss out on is hiding right behind the bluster.

It’s often the most valuable you’ll get. It’s coming from a customer who cares in a vulnerable moment.

Soak it in. Thank them. And take action.

PS: That doesn’t mean you let people become abusive. Defuse, then discover.

photo credit: joiseyshowaa

Lots of people have todo lists that keep them on track throughout the day.

Without them, a lot of things would never get done – including by me.

Think about all the stuff you do. Make a list.

Start with daily tasks, then weekly, then monthly – but do 1 at a time.

Oh yeah, there’s another list of stuff that needs to get done.

Just not by you.

Stop

Of those things on the list(s) you just made, what can you stop doing?

What can be delegated?

What can be automated?

What really doesn’t need to be done at all?

What doesn’t move you forward toward your business goals?

Think hard

What things – if no longer done – would free up the time to do all the high-priority things you should be doing, but aren’t?

What could you get done if you weren’t doing the things on the “Stop Doing” list?

photo credit: moonjazz

Or at least, minimize/manage it.

Today’s guest post from Everett Bogue (posted over at Julien’s place) is a nice little wake up call if you’ve been thinking about making changes in your life (or lifestyle).

One of the biggest things about taking the big step you know you need to take is dealing with the risk involved in making the change.

Here’s one way to abolish risk.

FYI: What he’s really talking about is managing risk, but that sounds boring compared to abolishing it.

At first glance, you might think this is a video about climate change.

Maybe it is, but there’s a story about a young, focused entrepreneur here. It’s also a story about making choices when change happens.

Do you choose to sit and watch, or do you decide to adapt and flourish?

In this video, a story is told about a boy who noticed a change in the success of the crops he raised.

Rather than sit and watch, he made changes his family’s business to take advantage of what he saw.

The result? He ignited a new, local industry that saved his family’s economy and perhaps his village’s…simply because he was unwilling to give up, even after getting negative feedback from influential people in his life.

How are you watching for, detecting and adapting to change in your market? Your community?

photo credit: TheTruthAbout…

Not long ago, I was helping some friends make a major decision in their business.

Deep down inside, I suspect they might have already made the decision (or were confident of the eventual outcome).

The process of opening up and making the decision publicly with the help of their friends, colleagues and clients would end up cementing the decision as not only the right one – but the only one they really ever had.

Once the decision was made, it seemed to spawn an even bigger one (and perhaps, a collection of others).

But really – it didn’t spawn any decisions, and that’s what I shared in my comment on the page linked above.

When the direction-changing decision is made, you should know that you’ve made a bunch of others as well.

For example, when you start a new business, you don’t have to decide to get internet and electricity. Those “non-decisions” are part of the process. You’ve made those decisions by virtue of deciding to start a business. When you decide to get married, that makes a lot of other decisions as well.

Now you just have to act.

The Obstacle

The real decision is the one you might not have even made: the one to push past that big obstacle that the original decision confronts you with.

What you have to figure out is what the obstacle really is. What’s making you cringe a little? What’s the thing you’ll blame that last decision on?

The money? The difficulty? The people?

Probably isn’t any of those. It’s probably just a little bit of hesitance in facing the elephant (obstacle) standing behind you / looming over you.

You can only ignore it for so long.

Go ahead. Introduce yourself to the elephant.

photo credit: Ash-rly

A couple of weeks back, I received an email from a website owner asking for one of my OpenLine sessions (which are currently booked about two weeks out).

In essence, the question was “Why aren’t our clients registering for our services?”

The situation required more discussion (in detail, anyhow) than I could cover in 15 minutes, but it also screamed for a blog post – because some of the things their site needs to attend to are core things that all of us need to think about.

It’s a great looking site, but the conversation with their real customers’ core thought process just isn’t there.

The reason for that might not be obvious, especially since the site looks nice and invites you to dive right in to do a search.

Problem is, there’s more than one customer population, and the second isn’t getting much attention on their website.

The site is a service directory, so by nature that means there are going to be at least TWO populations of customers: people wanting to list something in the directory and people wanting to find that something. Maybe more.

Because you might have other ideas, take a look at RentMyChurch.com and comment here if you feel I’ve missed something.

Customer #2?

The churches listed there.

If I’m renting my building to “strangers”, I’ve got a lot of questions.

Most rentals tend to be to church member families or friends of the family and this helps break down a lot of obvious barriers. Even so, many church boards require a vote at a council meeting before a rental is approved.

Now we’re talking about starting to commit to rentals to just about anyone who clicks a link.

At the very least, there’s needs to be a section that addresses all the what-if’s, questions, concerns and risk factors for a church who wants to start renting their facility in this manner. Something that describes the process step by step.

So what else is missing?

Let me put my church lady hat on…

I’d like to see a serious guarantee for the church listing their property/facility. A guarantee needs to make me feel like I’ve got as little as possible (or nothing) to risk and everything to gain, but in this case, the risk reversal just isn’t there. The current guarantee might be reworded this way: “If we don’t do anything for you in an entire year, we’ll do that again for nothing!”  Sounds different when you look at it that way.

Sales objections aren’t addressed. Try to hit them in advance, before you ever hear them from the prospect.

How does RentMyChurch get prospects in my local area to look at the site?

What are common signs I should look for to know I’ve got a good renter? Likewise, what warning signs should I look for?

Do you have sample rental agreements for churches who are just starting to dip their toe in this water.

If I’m a little church in a town of 5000 people, do I pay the same as the Lakewood, North Point or Willow Creek? (all are huge churches)

What about insurance and bonding?

Do you have sample check lists for check-in/check-out?

What paperwork should we need to create a successful rental?

What works and doesn’t work when creating my church’s “bio”?

What about photos? Can you refer me to a good building photographer in my area? (that is a gift, btw)

How do I know what dates are available?

Testimonials – there isn’t a single one from a renter or a church.

Where are the social aspects of a service? The 3 R’s: rankings, referrals and reviews

That’s just a start, but I think you get the idea. These aren’t things to be addressed AFTER the sale, these are things to show up front that show you DESERVE the sale.

Make a case

As we talked about with the compelling discussion the other day, make a case such that this is a no-brainer. What makes it clear that I’d be nuts not to list my facility on this site?

As for everyone else – what makes it clear that you are the only choice for what you sell or do?