Reason #1 why your marketing doesn’t work – You are using Big Business marketing rules. If you’re playing by their rules, you’re going to lose just about every time. Make up your own rules and you’ve got a better chance of your marketing working.
It’s a problem of penguins. Continue Reading
Do you live in a world of abundance or in a world of scarcity?
What?
Really. The answer effects just about everything you do in business including how you make money, how you grow your business, how you serve your clients and employees, and how you impact the community around you. Continue Reading
Make more money – serve, don’t sell.
The stereotypical used car guy focuses quickly on what he could say or do to make the sale. What emotional string can he pull? What weakness can he exploit? Do they hate confrontation? Are they easy to confuse? Do they have big egos? Do they fear losing out on the car to somebody else? Most importantly, how are they perceiving me, the salesperson?
Problem - We all want to buy things, but nobody really wants to be sold anything. I might actually enjoy buying furniture if I didn’t have someone in my face as soon as I walk in trying to “answer my questions” (translated, figure out what they can start selling me). Continue Reading
I was at a customer appreciation event for a large telecommunications company in Beaver Creek last week. Jonny Moseley, 1998 Olympic gold medalist in freestyle skiing, and I sat and talked on the shuttle bus together on the way to the golf course the first day. And on the second day we played together. He had some great insights about skiing that apply to business and life in general. Continue Reading
After Kinko’s was bought from Paul Orfalea in 2000 by FedEx, Kinko’s went from a paragon of “good profit” to an unfortunately great example of “bad profit”. In recent comments, Orfalea said that Kinko’s used to be about “shared power, shared profits, and shared knowledge,” but that the Kinko’s he created “has been gone for a very long time.”
One small but significant change FedEx made was to change the payment process for copies from good profit to bad profit. Continue Reading
We identify Seven Stages that seem to apply all businesses. See what you think. Which stage is your business? What’s the ONE THING you need to do NOW to get to the next stage? Sure, there’s probably a number of things you could do, but what is the one thing you will do to move ahead? Continue Reading
What’s the biggest issue you face in selling your products or services? Market positioning? What to say? Collateral? Bad Product/service? Too many potential customers (don’t we wish)?
For most businesses – it’s not any of those, but simply a lack of interested prospects to engage in the proposal and acquisition process.
The Marine Motto.
When I was on the Marine soccer team many years ago, our team action plan was:
“Bad plans carried out violently sometimes yield good results. Do something.”
We weren’t the most talented team out there. We played a Brazilian team that was like watching a Monet get painted, or poetry in motion - something like that. The ball stuck to their feet like velcro and they passed and controlled beautifully. When we were lucky enough to get in the way, we would kick the ball as far down the field as we could, run under it and hope we got there first. It was a bad plan, but we carried it out with commitment, and more often than not, our bad plan worked better than their good plan, because we were more committed to our plan than they were to their good one. We didn’t win the league, but we went far beyond our collective skill set, and made it to the finals. Not bad for a bad plan.
These are the elements of a business that all businesses must pay attention to in order to be successful. They exist whether we pay attention to them or not.
Most businesses reflect the strength of their owner/founder, who are really good at one, two, or maybe even three of the seven. The successful business makes sure they get the people and systems in place to have all seven humming.
Why do businesses struggle? Real simple. They rely on the strengths of the owner and don’t understand that until all seven elements are addressed, managed, and contributing to the business, that the business will never get out of survival mode. Want to move from survival, through profitable success, to significance? Get a handle on these seven elements, and get off the treadmill.
All great businesses do.
What is the Purpose of OWNING a Business?
To create the lifestyle we want for ourselves and our significant others/families.
WHAT Lifestyle? – We go into business to create a lifestyle for ourselves and our families, but at best, our families get to enjoy the lifestyle. We bought or started a business and ended up being an employee of ourselves, unable to get off the treadmill.
Most of us are stuck in Survival or Subsistence. How do we get to where we own the business instead of the business owning us?
My name is Chuck Blakeman and these are some of my thoughts on business, growth, and success. My company, TeamNimbusWest, provides outcome-based peer advisory, coaching, and consulting for Business Owners, CEOs, and their growing businesses.
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