In my research with small business owners and in my experience as the owner of multiple small businesses, dealing with cash flow is the biggest difficulty. Managing cash flow needs time and attention. Many small business owners work ‘in’ their businesses and not ‘on’ their businesses. Cash flow is definitely an ‘on your business’ issue. Just doing the work, issuing the invoice and ‘hoping’ the customer will pay within the terms (while the business goes onto fulfilling the next order) is not the smartest way to manage the money side of the enterprise. Having a reliable and predictable flow of cash into your business is the subject of this post.

In the last post we dealt with ‘Choose your clients wisely’, ‘Offer Credit Cards’ ‘Leverage”. In this post we’ll look at training your clients to pay on time, record keeping, dealing with government or those customers who you know will take 60 days or more to pay, and the importance of People in this whole process.

Training Your Clients to Pay On Time:

1. Have it be someone’s responsibility in your organization to keep checking that the customer’s signed delivery document made it from the receiver’s hands to the accounts payable clerk.
2. Be friends with the person cutting the check. Call a week before the payment is due so you know your check will be in the batch that gets released in the time frame of the terms. This is definitely a case of the squeaky wheel gets the oil. If you have a friendly personal relationship with the person who cuts the check, when there isn’t enough money to pay everybody, if the check preparer likes you and knows you stay on top of things, you’ll take precedence over another vendor. Sending cards and notes of acknowledgement and appreciation to the check preparer help her feel important and not just a clerk like other people may make her feel. This is where your employee who makes this contact in your customer’s company makes a big difference. If your employee establishes a warm appreciative relationship because he’s engaged in what he’s achieving, he’ll do his job ‘with heart’ meaning with sincerity and care.
3. By staying on top of the receivable as the due date approaches, you will know if there were any problems and will be able to rectify them before the payment is due. You’ll also have a better relationship with your customer because you will be known as a vendor that takes care of any problems right away. Great customer service and customer loyalty are not built on having problem free transactions. There are always minor things that can and do go wrong. Customer service and ultimately the relationship that is the basis of customer loyalty are built on how fast and easily the problems get fixed.
4. Some companies reward their customers by allowing them to take 1% or 2% off the bill if paid within 10 days. This is often phrased ‘2% net 10’. Whether you do or not depends on if you can give up that margin, if you want to set that precedent, if you think the customer will abuse it (take the 2% and still send the check in 30 days) and other factors that pertain to the situation. Getting payments in 10 days rather than 30 days can be very helpful especially if you’re borrowing money to fund the raw materials purchase, and giving 2% to the customer prevents you from having to give to your lender 2% or more.

Record Keeping

1. Having a small business is no excuse for not having accurate books that track your receivables. It’s important to have a listing of what invoices went out to which clients, when, their phone numbers and emails for easy follow up. What gets measured gets managed.
2. If I have a list of 10 invoices I want to follow up on and I have to look up each of the ten companies to figure out the contact name and phone number, it will become a big job. If it’s all readily available on a report that I bring to my screen in 10 seconds, I can make the 10 phone calls easily and with no excuses. It’s especially important when you’re paying someone else to do it. Why pay them an hourly wage to do unnecessary work that QuickBooks (or other accounting software) could do for you?
3. A metric on your dashboard (you have a dashboard, don’t you? 5-10 indicators you look at in your business every week) should be your ‘Average Days Outstanding.’ It’s a key performance indicator of how old your receivables are. If you offer net 30 terms, it would be best if your Average Days Outstanding never exceeded 30. Your accounting software will recalculate it for you every time you generate invoices and enter received payments.

Dealing with government or those customers who you know will take 60 days or more to pay

1. When you’re dealing with a large contractor, government or prime vendor, their policy is often to pay their vendors (you) in 60-90+ days. Sometimes they are very up front about it. Sometimes you have to ask. It’s important that you do. You’ll want to build into the project price the cost of the financing for your upfront costs. You may have materials, you’ll probably have labor. Part of your planning is to see how you will finance the purchase of what you need, a bank credit line, longer interest-bearing terms with your vendors, a purchase order financing arrangement? These costs should be figured into the price of the project. You need to plan how the cash flow will work and put these arrangements into place so a large order doesn’t kill your organization. Plan, plan, plan.
2. Follow up is especially important with multi-layer organizations. Did the delivery document reach the accounts payable clerk’s desk? Where did it get stopped along the way? Whose desk is it sitting on? Thank you notes are appropriate here. But don’t offer a gift. These people can’t take a gift.

The Importance of People

Cash flow is about money. But it’s also about people. People make the cash flow into your business and can make or break the timing that is so critical to small business. Treating people in your organization or in your customer’s or vendor’s organizations with trust, respect, appreciation and candor can make all the difference. People love to feel they are special. Human need for connection is paramount no matter what the situation. Customer loyalty is won at all levels, the CEO, the department head, and the accounts payable clerk. So as you are managing your cash flow, be aware of how you treat your staff. They will treat your clients/vendors the same way you treat them. If you set up a caring engaged empowering culture with your staff, they will communicate those qualities to the rest of the world. That will have a large effect on all the people in the process generating your company’s cash flow.

Please leave a comment or cash flow tip that will help other business owners.

Cash Flow -The thorn in the side of the small business owner. Let’s see – there is the ever present payroll that comes up regularly, the rent, all the other expenses. To offset all the money going out, let’s hope there is money coming in. And let’s suppose we want to take it up a notch and do a marketing campaign or hire another employee. Then we have that expense even before we land new clients and their payments to pay for it.

Let’s hope that clients pay in a reasonable time frame. But ‘hope’ is a really weak word. Certainly not strong enough to build a business on. How can we better our odds that our receivables will be paid and in the bank account in time for us to pay our expenses? After all, cash flow is all about timing. Getting the timing predictable is important especially for small business, and especially for bootstrapped small businesses.

Choose your clients wisely:

1. Paying within terms (due on receipt, net 10, net 30, etc.) is about honoring promises. I promise to provide you with this product or service and you promise to pay me in the time frame we agreed upon. This is a value. Does you client share this value with you? Did you talk to your clients about values when they were still prospects?  I know this doesn’t often come up. But maybe it should. If our clients knew our organization’s principles of doing business, they would be more likely to measure up to the level of integrity you expect. Are you telling your salespeople that you want to attract clients who also keep promises and run their businesses with principles?
2. Did you ask them to fill out a credit application? The credit application asks them to identify who their bank is and several other creditors. Call the creditors. If it’s a large credit line, perhaps you want to run a D&B report on the company. Before you become this organization’s ‘bank’ and you give them a ‘loan’ for the amount of the purchase, shouldn’t you act like other banks and check their ability to repay and their history of on-time payments?
3. Many companies make the first sale a COD sale. They want to test that the client has sufficient cash flow to pay on delivery at least once before credit is issued.
4. Have the courage to say ‘no.’ When a company asks for credit with the offer to become a regular customer, sure it would be good to have these sales. It’s tempting to say ‘yes’ to build up revenues,  especially since we’ve had a depressed economy. But nothing will sink you faster than you investing a lot of your cash into providing a product or service to a customer who then won’t/can’t pay you for it. You’re on the hook to your vendors and your credibility and credit are on the line.

Offer Credit Cards:

1. Sure you lose a couple of points to the credit card company but you get paid right away. It helps your cash flow immeasurably.
2. If you have recurring billing, the same billed amount every month, you can set it up as an automatic payment and reduce your paperwork and admin time.

Leverage:

So many business owners issue an invoice and then forget about it. They feel it’s the buyer’s responsibility to pay, and the business owner is off to handle the next sale. The aware business owner knows that the sale isn’t over til the check clears the bank because the money is in constant flow. Managing the timing is the essence of keeping it flowing. Collect from your customers early, pay your vendors late. More businesses have remained successful because they collected from the clients (pay on delivery) before they had to pay their vendors (30-60 days). They then utilize the cash during the interim period to generate interest on an investment, invest in a business tool with an immediate payback, pay down a line of credit to keep their bankers happy and reduce interest, etc. Business is all about leverage, other people’s time (your employees), other people’s money (cash flow, bank loans, investor’s contributions), and your organization’s ideas to create value. Pay attention to cash flow and you’ll sleep well at night.

In the next post we’ll address:

• training your clients to pay on time,
• record keeping
• dealing with government or those customers who you know take 60 days or more to pay.

Please leave a comment or cash flow tip that will help other business owners.

Disneyworld has a customer experience story that illustrates how the customer experience is designed and choreographed like a dance – a memorable performance with staging, lighting, performers, music and a variety of other elements. The customer experience is the product of strategic thinking and execution as much as it is personal warmth.

The Disneyworld Story

The most remembered part of any experience is usually the last part of the experience. It sticks in your memory because it’s the most recent. When leaving Disneyworld after a long fun day, the kids are tired and starting to get cranky. The parents are worn out and the kids are starting to frazzle their nerves. The last part of today’s experience is going to be finding the car and leaving the parking lot. But there are a zillion parking lots and bezillion cars in each one. Sometimes we remember to look at the lot and zone numbers where we parked when we first entered and write down the numbers. But if we’re really excited to go on our first ride, we might have forgotten to write it down, or maybe we just lost the slip of paper.

Is it Disney’s problem that you don’t know where your car is?

In all fairness, no. But if Disney wants your last impression to be your best impression, they will anticipate your inadequacies and choreograph a work-around that delights you. And here’s how they do it. When you enter the park at the beginning of the day they steer you to a parking lot and a row that is filling up at that time, which is recorded. So when you’re leaving the park, all you have to know is the time when you entered and they can drive you to the exact spot in the exact lot where you parked your car. So they get the family loaded in a little golf cart and take you directly to your car.

What’s involved in solving this problem? Certainly listening to the customer, anticipating their needs, caring that their experience is a WOW experience, creativity to find a simple solution, having the tools to record the times different rows are filling up and golf carts to take people directly to their cars.

Who are the Disney staff that know this problem exists? The parking lot employees. They see it everyday. They hear the kids. They see the parents with shot nerves. Who are the best people to come up with a creative work around? They are – especially if they are part of a culture that empowers its people and encourages regular employees to show initiative and even make mistakes while they figure it out.

Choreographing the Dance

Here’s how different aspects of this metaphor match up to your business’ creation of the ideal customer experience.

• Just like a choreographed dance has the choreographer’s ideas, a business needs a leader with vision, strategic thinking about profitability, and care for the customer.
• In a dance there are performers and a cast of characters who co-create the roles with their own style and project with their own personalities.  A business’ employees do the same. They enhance and execute the vision of the ideal customer experience. They personalize the delivery and treat every customer as unique and valuable.
• Lighting, music, set design, props, costumes and makeup create an environment for the performers to create their magic. The ideal customer experience also benefits from a planned and aesthetically pleasing environment that’s engaging and appealing. (includes branding, location décor, graphically pleasing website, etc.)
• The sound system, lights and stage mechanics create the behind the scenes infrastructure just like a business needs technology systems to track customer information, orders, and parking lot entry times and golf carts (in the case of Disney).

Are you planning your customer’s experience with your organization? Are you choreographing it like a beautiful dance to delight and engage your clients? Are you committed to earning your client’s loyalty and reaping the benefits of more repeat business, more referrals, increased market share and higher profitability?

I invite you to tell a story of a well-planned customer experience that you either created or were delighted by. Thank you for all your ideas.

Recently I hurt my knee, devastating for a dancer. I got an MRI and found out I tore both menisci and a ligament. So I started going to physical therapy. Some of the physical therapy work is on specific things for my knee, tracking of the knee over the toes for good alignment, exercises for flexibility of the knee, building up the strength of the small muscles that surround the knee and knee cap. But most of the work is general strengthening, not only of the knee but of the back, interior pelvic muscles, quad and hamstring muscles, ankle and foot. Why am I telling you all this?

In your business, everything is related. Just like your body and leg. If your knee or your marketing (for instance) is broken, it affects everything else. Yes, you have to look at specific things like your marketing activities. But you also have to look at strengthening your general business outlook such as how you handle time management, your mindset, your decision making abilities, your vision and values. You need to strengthen these things continually so that your business systems flourish. Things like marketing activities, sales conversions, budgeting, staff management don’t happen in a vacuum. They are all connected like the back to the hip to the knee to the ankle to the foot. Together they create a strong balanced environment. They grow together and support each other. Are you growing your mindset, your possibility thinking, your positivity? Are you opening your mind to seek new opportunities? Are you creating repeatable systems that offer some predictability? Are you focused on your vision and adhering to your values? Are the specifics written into a business plan to make sure that what you’re doing actually leads you to the goals you seek? Are your systems measuring what’s working and what’s not so you can make changes that yield better results? If you were going to prescribe physical therapy for your business, what would you do to yield better success?

But then, that begs the questions, why do people like me call what I do business coaching? Why don’t we call it business therapy? What are your thoughts?

Have you ever watch somebody dancing on the stage or on TV? If it’s done well, the movements flow easily into each other. Each movement is performed with maximum energy, maximum stretch, maximum power, maximum concentration. Each segment leads to another which builds on the one before. There’s economy of movement meaning that there are no stray movements that distract or waste energy or don’t contribute to the value presented to the viewer.  There’s a planned use of all the space on the stage or within the viewing angle of the camera. If there are multiple dancers, they don’t run into each other or trip over each other. They sometimes move as a unit, and when they don’t, they complement each other. The purpose of the dance is to present a theme, picture or story, to communicate to the audience an experience portrayed through dance. Often the movements are done in conjunction with music.

Is all this random? Hardly.

Behind all this movement is a choreographer who has created a concept, orchestrated the players, selected the music, laid out each performer’s path through the space, coordinated their efforts, demonstrated the power and intensity and shape of each of the movements to convey the theme, determined the rhythm and timing to maximize the audience’s perception and enjoyment, selected the right performers for the right roles, determined the deadlines so that the performance would be ready for opening night.

Here are 10 business planning parallels between the world of dance and the world of business?

1. A business without a plan is like a dance without a choreographer. Movements are haphazard. The purpose is fuzzy. It’s a mish mash of what everybody (every body) thinks might work, but it most likely doesn’t work together.

2. Employees like dancers create more value (a better dance) when they work together toward a common purpose or theme.

3. When everybody knows the path (direction) and what they are supposed to do, they can dance (execute company goals) more freely with greater concentration, conviction, energy, strength and stretch (of their comfort zones). It’s very freeing to have indecision removed and know precisely what will lead us to complete our purpose.

4. Better use of resources and less waste. When the choreographer (like the business leader) determines a progression toward a destination, resources such as space on a stage or dollars in a budget can be better leveraged for highest and best use.

5. When a dance is well choreographed, or a business is well planned, it is highly sustainable. Just like legendary ballets such as ‘Swan Lake’, well planned businesses such as Southwest Airlines have long standing reputations and legacies for their ability to delight the audience.

6. The performers often help the choreographer plan the dance. The choreographer has an idea (sometimes the performers, also) and she tries it out with the dancers. The performers help her to know if it works, if it fits, if what’s in her mind plays out well in reality. Isn’t this true in your organization? If an idea really doesn’t work, there is push back and the plan is modified or better communicated. The performers (employees) create reality checks for the business owner (choreographer).

7. When the performers (employees) buy into the choreography (business plan) because they perceive it works, and when it furthers their own personal and professional goals, they will support it and execute it with engagement and commitment. They will become better dancers and better employees because they want to, not because you want them to.

8. Great choreographers (and great business leaders) attract great dancers (and great employees.) Everyone wants to work for the best because they want to maximize their potential and be part of something wonderful and significant. Well planned businesses don’t have trouble recruiting or retaining top talent.

9. Choreographers know the talent they need for each role and select dancers for their strengths. Business leaders do the same.

10, Great leaders (and choreographers) mobilize and motivate, set deadlines, handle obstacles and help the employees (performers) accomplish the strategic business plan (dance performance).

Whether on the dance stage or the theater of business, a famous line from Yogi Bera puts it into perspective, “If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.”

I love to dance. I love to feel the music take hold of my being. I love to feel the music use my body to express itself. I love when a good dance partner feels the phrases in the music, the same as I do. I love when he interprets the passion in the music the same as I do.

The dancing unfolds without effort. It emanates from our shared connectivity. He leads and I follow, sometimes I offer a change and he follows. He gives me time to embellish with something special, we make each other look good.  It’s creative. It makes me feel good physically. I feel like I’m putting beauty into the world, in fact we’re putting beauty into the world together. I love to have an audience watch me while I’m in the flow of movement, music, rhythm and partnering.

1. Dance full out. You can dance small or you can dance big. Have you watched ‘Dancing With the Stars’? Do the performers get any points for holding back? No, the judges want to see full expression and commitment to the movement. Are you committed to your business? Do you really go for it? Put in your heart and soul? If you’re going to do something in your business, do it fully. Accept the risk. Make the leap of faith. When you make a decision, get fully invested in implementing it. Get past your comfort zone. Go for it.

2. Leaders take care of their followers. Followers have entrusted themselves to you. It’s your job to steer them toward open space and away from potential bumps and bruises from obstacles along the way. It’s your job to give good instructions so that they can respond easily. You will learn by how they respond if your instructions were clear enough. You’ll continually fine tune your instructions so their responses produce the results you’re looking for. If you don’t get the response you’re looking for, hold yourself accountable and figure out how to be a better leader. Make your followers look good. Whether you’re a leader on the dance floor or the office, the same tenets hold true.

3. Followers maintain their own strength, balance, and frame. It’s your job to be steerable, not wimpy. Dancers maintain frame, which means they don’t let their arms collapse or their shoulders give or their spines twist. If their bodies turned to spaghetti, the leaders wouldn’t be able to steer them anywhere. In the business world leaders expect you to use your judgment, maintain the company values, keep yourself stable and strong to fulfill your role. Followers provide real feed back that comes from a center of strength. It helps the leader be a better leader.

4. The value is in being connected. Leaders and followers are responsive to each other’s movements. Good dancers connect with each other. In business we connect with our clients and with our employees. Gallup polls show that customer loyalty is not as much about customer service as it is about empathy and the emotional bond that forms among people who make each other feel special and unique. Retaining clients reduces marketing costs and increases buying frequency. Employee retention reduces turnover costs, increases the stability of the customer experience and retains knowledge within the organization . Understanding the emotional intelligence of leveraging points of connection can make or break your bottom line. It’s a business strategy.

5. It’s all about action. Dancing requires action. You can’t learn or practice dancing by just watching. You have to get up and do it. In business we also learn by doing. Sure you can watch someone else for a while, or read about a subject. But you really need to be doing business everyday to sense the pitfalls, understand the terrain, and experience the joy of success. You can plan all you want, but it’s execution that will make revenues

Recently I was looking to update my morning routine. I really wanted to exercise at least 15 minutes each morning. Probably not enough, but something is better than nothing. And I wanted to be able to give myself a dose of super confidence each morning, give myself a power surge to attract new clients based solely on the attitude that emanates from my spirit. Last month we talked about the inner critic and the empowering advocate as two little elves sitting on your shoulders whispering into your ears shaping how positive or negative your attitude is. Well, I wanted to give my empowering advocate a super dose of sugar water so that anyone I talked to couldn’t help but get a sugar high as well. But my morning time is limited. I’ve got places to go and people to see. So I combined them. Duh! I can exercise and speak my affirmations at the same time. And wouldn’t that anchor them into my muscle memory? Wouldn’t that utilize another channel into my unconscious mind? Doesn’t Tony Robbins do that? Well, with my dance and yoga background, why didn’t that occur to me before? See the picture of my brain burst?

For a few weeks now I’ve been saying affirmations while doing my exercises and I love it. Affirmations, if that term is new for you, are those things we say to ourselves that help us create the future. If we imagine ourselves with the goal completed, we’re putting ourselves into the mindset of already being there, which turns on the light and eases us right into the new level of proficiency or achievement.  Of course, you have to believe yourself, and after a while you will. And they work best if you say them out loud. They are more reinforcing when you say them and hear yourself saying them. But they are even more powerful when you move to them. When I do my exercises while saying how powerful I am or how I will get paid today, I feel like a cheerleader cheering myself on. When I do arm exercises, I feel like I’m punching and accenting each arm movement with the emphasis on the accented syllable of the word. When I do yoga sun salutations (a series of movements and postures that have you reaching, bending, stretching, and breathing) I have linked certain movements to certain words. For instance I’ve linked ‘wealth of experience’ to the opening of my arms. I think of “my unique talents’ when my legs are moving backwards because my legs enable me to dance. I come away feeling exhilarated and really excited and supercharged. I encourage you to write out about 10 affirmations, things you want to make happen, ways in which you really want to believe in yourself. Establish a few exercises that are repetitive. Now do your exercises while you say each of your affirmations aloud a few times.

I could go into a lot of brain and body research that explains that the mind is just not in the brain, that we can retrain new pathways in the brain, how enacting nonverbal facial and body habits can reshape your mental attitude and a whole lot of other stuff. The bottom line is that all that verbiage isn’t necessary. This works. That’s the bottom line.

Now instead of putting off my exercises, easily sloughing them off when any little thing comes up or dreading getting started, I’m eager to do them. I know I’ll feel great when I’m done. It’s self sustaining and self reinforcing. I’m feeling successful, victorious and triumphant these days. How about you? Give it a try!!

Are you waiting for a stimulus package that will really have an effect on your small business? Maybe it will come and maybe it will touch you. Maybe you’ll be out of business by then. You can’t control a lot of what happens in the macro-economic world, but you can control what happens in your own environment. You can stimulate your own economy. You are the master of your own future. What you believe to be true, you will make happen by what you do and don’t do. Here are two ways to make money in this economy:

Capitalizing on new opportunities.
Being so positive that you attract what you need.

Capitalizing On New Opportunities

In this economy, what do businesses want more than anything else, need more now than this time last year when things were better? More sales, more cash, right? So how can you be a player in getting them what they want while you take a small piece of every transaction? Find businesses with extra inventory, extra staff capacity, extra space, extra trucking capacity, a mailing list, or any under utilized asset; then match each of them up with another business that needs those exact things. Both benefit and you take a piece of the new sales or savings that result.

Put yourself in the middle of a profit making/saving exchange. What is your area of expertise? Do you know the players in your field, the vendors, the trade association, the customers? What can you do to get the players together that benefits them all? A bigger joint buying contract from a supplier who is happy to have the business and offer the discount? A hurting advertising media source who appreciates that you’re negotiated a buying contract with several advertisers all at once, when he wasn’t sure he’d be getting any? A reciprocal endorsement campaign that wouldn’t have happened without your engineering it? Businesses that have complementary but different products who can market together to the same audience?

People are still buying, they’re just buying more carefully. Do a good match that provides benefits to both parties and creates value for the buyer and you’ve got a winner.

If you know of businesses with extra capacity, space, staff time, client lists please email me. I’ll match them up to businesses with whom they can make a deal and both generate more cash flow.

Being So Positive That You Attract What You Need

I was at a meeting today where the fill-in facilitator was describing the regular facilitator. “She is just so warm and welcoming that she seems to have an aura. You can’t help but want to be around her.” Has anybody ever described you that way? If you were that positive and magnetic, wouldn’t more people be attracted to doing business with you? Watch this video about ‘Validation’. It’s fun and also has a message. By validating others, people want to be around you. How can you build your positive attitude?

I recently went to hear Dr. Barbara Frederickson be interviewed about her research and new book called Positivity. She found that a 3 to 1 ratio of positive to negative feelings each day creates a flourishing life. When people are positive, they are open and they gather and attract more resources. Therefore, they are presented with more opportunities for growth and success. You can go to her website each day and take an emotional assessment that will calculate and track your positivity ratio so you can grow it over time.

Appreciative inquiry is a solution creation strategy used often in organizations to ask the right questions that will help grow appreciation of the individuals as well as glass-half-full thinking. Because it helps participants focus on and discuss times of appreciation, it heals wounds, builds consensus and gets buy-in for win-win solutions. Imagine this in contrast: Studying and analyzing poor morale in order to ‘fix’ it. The more we focus on it and get mired in it, the less likely we are to grow positive morale. We’ll get further by just focusing on the image we’re trying to bring into being. Learn more here.

In the ’70′s I was using the creative force of dance/movement therapy to build positive parts of the personality to replace negative parts. Now combined with my business experience, I’m developing the “Dance of Business” concepts. I will be getting a group together shortly to try out some of my experiential exercises. Please respond to this newsletter if you’d like to be included.

You’ve received some tools to create your own stimulus package. Take back your power and control your own destiny. Be creative and take advantage of the economic situation to help people who need help. Keep yourself positive and validate others with plenty of appreciation.

I’m looking forward to achieving new goals with fresh energy. This is a time for new beginnings and creative thinking.

When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills. –Chinese proverb.

The picture above is an acroyoga (acrobatics and yoga) pose and was taken by Tyler Blank, a good friend of my daughter’s.  How appropriate for this year’s business environment. Have you turned yourself and your business into a ‘wall’ or a ‘windmill?’ Are you fighting the ‘wind’ or harnessing it and turning it into your own advantage? (Keep reading to learn about the Magnified Marketing program that can help you harness the ‘winds of change’ and two success stories of people who’ve used it. Also, a free teleconference on January 8th to learn more. Register here)

After all, you have a choice.
You are creating your destiny by the choices you make now. If you build a ‘wall’ (scale back, layoffs, reduced marketing, no innovation), then you’re giving in to your fear of uncertainty. If you’re building a ‘windmill’, you’re:
-thinking creatively and strategically about how to make lemonade from any lemons in your path, -using your time to become better at what you do and develop yourself and your staff,
-going after new markets,
-developing new products,
-taking advantage of the opportunities opened up by the ‘wall builders,
-marketing to grab as much market share as possible,
-hiring the best in the industry that the ‘wall builders’ have laid off (after they’ve trained them for you)

Do you know what this symbol is?

This is the Chinese symbol for crisis.
The character on the left means danger. The character on the right means opportunity.

Let’s take some lessons from the Great Depression of the 1930′s. At that time Lawrence Gelb wrangled a free write up on the Chicago American, which sold out his first batch of product. Then he wrangled credit from a bottle manufacturer. Gave credit to wholesalers so they could put product in beauty stores on credit… Sold the resulting company, Clairol (ever heard of them?) for $22.5 million in 1959. That’s over $100 million in today’s dollars.

Chock Full ‘O Nuts founder sold candy on street corner, switched to coffee when a nearby drug store complained, and grew to become major coffee brand.

Good Humor was founded as an attempt to expand ice cream sales by delivering the product to neighborhoods. In the Great Depression, most people fell behind, but others prospered enormously. It always works that way, you know. Vast fields of opportunity lie before you, and some people do take advantage.

It would be a shame to inspire you without giving you tools to actually accomplish becoming a ‘windmill’ to harness the ‘winds of change.’

We offer various group and individual coaching packages, all to help you build your own windmills. Give us a call.

Do you ever feel like you’re having a lackluster day? Or maybe a lot of days are feeling that way lately. Are you blaming the economy because you’re not motivated to do anything but procrastinate? Do you go through the motions of your day and do the required actions and wonder why your heart’s not into it? Do you have some employees who appear to function like this? Is it affecting the quality of your work, your engagement with customers, your interest in being in business? Here are some ways to renew your energy and commitment.

Focus on your child. Each one of us has different parts of our personalities. Our internalized parent tells us what to do, tells us what we’re capable of, and also nurtures us. Our internalized child feels passion, is creative, is often stubborn, exuberant, angry or playful. Our adult makes rationalized choices, separates fantasy from reality and tries to be objective. All are necessary in our world.

The point is our adult and parent are boring! If you go around all day using your adult and parent, no wonder the passion is gone. You need to tune into your child. How do you do that? Find something you’re passionate about. It could be the arts, singing, dancing, drawing, drama, performing a sport, playing a musical instrument, developing a hobby, climbing a mountain, hiking, working with children, volunteering. Have fun! Find anything that draws you out into something you like. I’ve had clients who started singing on the way to the bus, started taking dancing lessons or took a class in creative writing. When they got passionate about something, they got motivated about many things, even their businesses. It allowed them to get more committed and more engaged, and therefore, more focused, and their businesses took off.

Get moving! Movement is especially good because it releases brain chemicals and gets your whole body involved. There is more and more research pointing to the fact that our minds, memory and what we’ve always considered our brain functions are distributed through other parts of the body as well, in muscles, in the spine and other parts of our nervous system. Getting involved in movement, in sports, dancing, jogging, exercise sets our energy in motion. It helps us feel freer, more like that child who enjoyed movement just for the pure enjoyment of it, and couldn’t sit still.

Celebrate small wins and give yourself rewards.
Focus on a goal. Make it a S.M.A.R.T. goal. (specific, measurable, attainable, realistically high and time targeted so you know when to celebrate) When you achieve it, go out to dinner, see a movie, buy yourself something, or do something that makes you happy. Let other people know so they can celebrate with you. Have a virtual ‘victory dance’ with your friends who may be miles apart. Celebrate the small wins you have in your workplace. Make a sale, ring a bell. Focus on the rewards and have fun!

Recently I was leading a workshop on Customer/Employee Loyalty which I entitled ‘Dancing With The Stars’. Many of us have watched that TV show or a similar one called, “So You Think You Can Dance.” Some of us have even tried some partner dancing, taken lessons, or danced at weddings.

One person told a story about what they witnessed on a cruise, There was some dancing going on in the lounge. Joe was sitting at the bar. Susan, his wife was sitting there, too. She’s getting motivated by the music. She’s watching the other couples having fun, getting close, interacting with each other. Joe is focused on his drink. So she pulls Joe off the bar stool and says “Come on, let’s dance.” What is Susan seeking? An emotionally positive experience that’s hassle free, where she is individually recognized and respected. She wants to feel a connection. She wants to have fun. Joe has a choice. He could get up and do the minimum, go through the motions without really connecting. He could ignore her and continue to nurse his drink. Or he could get up and interact with her, respect her desire to connect, look at it as an opportunity to co-create something between them.

You are given an invitation everyday to interact with customers and employees. The choices you make will dictate your success. When you join the ‘dance’ or interact in a focused caring way, you create a point of connection. Just like dancers have points where they touch so they can respond to one another’s movements and feel bonded to one another, your customer and employee points of connection are very important. Research shows that emotional points of connection create customer and employee loyalty.

So what else can we take from the dance metaphor?

Partners must trust each other. It’s certainly not a good experience if Joe is stepping on Susan’s toes or makes her bump into other couples. The leader needs to be trustworthy. Are you developing long lasting trust relationships with your customers and your employees?

Dancers make each other shine. Give and take happens as the leader and follower roles switch back and forth. Followers add flourishes and kicks to augment the move the leader leads. Sometimes there is ‘playing’ done by both to interpret the music. In the world of sales, being effective means being an assistant buyer and helping the buyer discover what he needs, then offering several solutions from which the buyer chooses and modifies the one that he likes best. There is give and take. Empowered employees think up great solutions to problems that the boss might never have thought of.  Achieving an outcome is about us, not about me. 1+1=3.

Each dancer maintains his or her own balance. It’s no fun dancing with someone who is falling all over the place. Employees need balance. Are their personal goals working in concert with the organizations goals? Are your personal goals and professional goals dovetailed? Do you seek quality customers that seem to be have balance, can pay their bills, realize you have a life also, and maintain an emotional even keel?

A good dancer has firm arms, strong abs and sturdy legs and ankles. Each partner supports herself/himself and maintains a connection and a strong frame. Strength in the business world is identified by core values such as integrity, respect, customer service and providing value, Vision of where you’re going and where you’ll be in the future is also a source of strength. Probably the biggest source of strength is self-esteem. Do you foster the core values, vision and self-esteem of each of your customers and employees so they can be better partners in the dance of business?

If you’d like to watch a real dance (not show stuff) with great connection, please click this link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TyqjMp2HNI

Last week we started understanding concepts from Jim Collins’ book Good to Great. After analyzing companies that had met his criteria for explosive and sustained growth, he discovered that each had what he calls “Level 5 Executives”. While levels 1-4 include competent people, Level 5 Executives distinguish themselves by a “paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will.” They are “fanatically driven to produce sustained results”. They make hard decisions and do whatever it takes to make the company great. They are not ambitious for themselves. He believes that many people have the potential to develop into Level 5 Executives. Level 5 leaders got started on the quest for turning a good company into a great company by bringing on the right people first before developing a vision and strategic plans. They got the best people in the right positions (eliminating people who were not appropriate) and then worked on vision and strategy.