Brand new Economy?

Don’t you wish we could wake up tomorrow to gleaming news on the economy? News so bright and shiny you need your shades just dreaming about the possibilities for your company? Because right now it seems like Groundhogs day redux over and over. Bad news drips on to everything we deal with in life. Where’s the fresh shower to clean it all off? And it doesn’t just smear your daily newspaper or favorite Internet site. The economy’s trail of dirty news blows into your business and mucks with the bottom line. It muddies the minds of your star performers and puts powerful ideas on hold.

Is a brand new economy wishful thinking? Not for some business owners. They’ve stopped listening to the news and that’s as good as shower. “You have to focus on what you do want, not what you don’t want. Then you see the possibilities unfold before you,” says Rob McGregor, a specialist in coaching business owners. Don’t want to hang on hold any longer? You need new indicators to guide your thinking.

What’s good, what’s new, what’s coming?

1. Capital IQ, the market research firm says that the mergers and acquisitions outlook data shows there are a lot of great companies on the market which means great buys for acquirers. Some owners are getting premium offers because they have discovered what it takes to make their business saleable.

2. Mobi Ditto, the new start up that’s transforming main street businesses into mobile marketing machines with their community heros program is racking up new accounts everywhere. Owners are signing on to use their text messaging program to help bring in new clients and give back to charities that help the people and animals of their communities. Their customers use the coupon to try the new business and get their investment back on the first purchase as well as know they are giving to charity. Everyone wins.

3. Success Magazine is pursuing stories of business owners who have made big come backs. The common theme? Every author of a comeback had to write a new chapter in their business strategy manual. Following the pack was not the way out. Innovation, recognizing the truth of the situation and talking to customers brought out the way forward.

What are you doing to separate your self from the muck that slimes the best of intentions? Tell us your story and we will select the best ones to showcase.

Thinking about your Company’s Future?

How are you thinking about your Company’s future?

There are two types of company leaders. You are either:

1. Fearing for what might happen OR
2. Steering to what you want to have happen

If you are in the first group, it is very likely that what you fear will occur WILL HAPPEN. If you want to beat the habit of running your company with fear about the future, click here.

If you are in the second group, it is very likely that what you want to occur WILL HAPPEN. If you want to know how to make sure everyone on your team agrees with you, performs at a level not thought possible before and is working toward your vision, click here.

How are you thinking about your own future?

There are two types of company owners. You are either:

1. Not thinking like an investor and therefore not taking the time to think about how you will extract your retirement money from your company OR
2. Thinking like an investor and steering your company to a well understood and defined exit strategy and have implemented a growth plan to be attractive to investors, financiers, employees and especially customers.

If you are in the first group, it is very likely that a Disease, Divorce or Death will do your thinking for you. That puts your investment at risk of not being realized (meaning no buyer can be found for your company) or that the amount that you actually get for your company is substantially less than what it might have done had you prepared you and your company to move toward a specific exit strategy. (Pick one, there are three-four options.) If this is you, click here for more information that might change your life or at least your perception of what might be possible.

If you are in the second group (thinking like an investor) but didn’t know you also needed a growth strategy, click here. If you are in the second group and are in growth mode and are moving toward a Strategic, Financial, MBO or Harvest transition or transaction, congratulations. According to the US Small Business Administration and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, you are in the small minority of business owners who will need/want to retire in the next 3-5 years and have a plan to get there. But ask yourself, are you getting the performance you’d hoped for? If not, click here.

Of Fear and Stimulus

Stimulus is everywhere these days. In the daily news. In our conversations. In our hoped for future. But what is actually ‘stimulating’ in your company? The word, “stimulus” means something that generates a response.  In these times we think we need a stimulus to bolster us and our economy out of the alligator pit of economic quicksand. Yet stimulus can be self-generated.

In today’s economy, it is very easy to slide into a sense futility about the future. There is evidence to support the belief of a gloomy future for you and your employees everywhere you turn today. From your accountant telling you that you had better ‘cut costs’ to your customers telling you to ‘cut your prices or we’ll have to ‘cut you’. Chilling words for any investor, CEO, business partner or stakeholder.

How you think about this time in your company’s life will determine what happens to it in the future. If you think about what you don’t want to have happen, if you think about what people aren’t doing right, if you dwell upon all the bad things that might happen, if you issue dire warnings and pepper your speech with ‘hard line’ adjectives you will likely get a continued diet of uncertainty, fear and gloom. Is that what you really want?

If it isn’t, then the first place that you need a ‘Stimulus Plan’ is in your own mind. Check in with your inner chatter. Do you like what you hear? Would you be motivated to move mountains for this person if they spoke to you like that day in and day out? Most of us wouldn’t, but we indulge ourselves in fear mongering and criticism or judgement anyway, planting seeds of doubt wherever we go. Then we don’t like how we feel after a daily diet of it so we pretend that dialogue is coming from somewhere else and park the blame for having to feel its affects on other people – employees, managers, assistants, spouses, the dog. Like Newton’s law of movement, our lovely thoughts ripple out of us into our environment and then we are aghast at being awash in all this negativity.

Don’t like this picture? Turn up your ability to listen to your inner chatter and change the conversation. Drop the adjectives (adjectives are embellishments). State what is actually true for you, and your situation (Just the facts Ma’am).

Most company owners we know aren’t sure what to do at this point in the history of their companies. Cut, expand, stall, improve, tune up, turn down, refocus, fire, hire, lecture, cajole, demand, placate, downsize, right size, grow, pare, acquire, divest, drag, wait, hurry.

None of these directions will help unless you know where you are going and why you want to get there. Grow? How? Sell? To whom and at what loss? Retool? Will customers like it? Will it pay off? You are not asking the right questions therefore you won’t get to the answers or plans that make sense, sit right and, most importantly’ that will get buy in from your stakeholders.

How you choose to face your reality is the first step in knowing what you want. Here is an example of a game plan you could steer toward. Each statement starts with what you want to have happen and then a statement about what actually happens. Try writing one for your company and see what you find out.

1. The truth is, we are experiencing (list pains, gains, attitudes of employees, managers, customers and stakeholders). What frustrates me most is…

2. What I/We really want is to grow X% per year and sell to a strategic buyer in 3-5 years. The truth is, we don’t know how to do that. Do we make enough money and sell the right solutions now to be attractive to a strategic buyer?

3. What our customers really need are solutions to the problems they care about in a way that is easy, hassle free and affordable. Their success becomes our success. We actally don’t know if we are selling to the right target market, with the right solutions in the right way that is experienced as hassle free. But we like to think we are.

4. Our internal systems give us the data we need to manage our company day to day. Actually, the truth is, I don’t know what data to pay attention to and I’m very attached to certain reports and probably don’t get other indicators that would tell me how to get better performance.

5. Our people know how to deliver on what the business development/sales/front line people promise. Actually the truth is, this is pretty hit and miss. There is a lot of miscommunication about how to do that and departments that should work together aren’t. They point fingers rather than refine processes.

6. Our culture is one of mutual respect, excitement and self-responsibility. People want to work here. Actually, I don’t want to work here some days. Its frustrating, irritating and feels like I’m dragging a lot of resistant people around all day long.

So take a minute and write up your own version of this list. Then ask yourself if you feel Inspired? Deflated? What do you want to about it? You do have the power to change it.