Success Through People

At the heart of every business are its people. At the heart of success are your people. If you want your people to care for your customer/client, take care of your people. 

Owners often contact me with frustrations about their people. When we dig into the root cause, we find most often; it is not a problem with people. It often is a leadership, management, or systems problem. Problems with people are a symptom of something not working in the business.

When owners are frustrated with their people, they can explore factors that impact people.

• Right People: Having the right people means people who are qualified to do or can learn the work, but most important are people who align with your vision for the business, the values you hold, and the customer experience you want them to deliver. Find this out before you hire a qualified person.

• Inspire and Engage: You can’t make people do anything, so your role as the leader is to engage and inspire your people to work with you to achieve your vision for the business, which includes building the culture you want in the company, care for your customer, your people and the financial health of the business. All three aspects must be taken care of by everyone.

• Precise Results: Let your people know what you expect from them precisely. Be clear about their responsibilities and the results you desire. Without that clarity, they are just working and perhaps frustrating you. It is just a job. Have those responsibilities written, discussed, and mutually agreed upon. Without their agreement, you cannot expect results. Track and review those results together regularly. If it matters to you, then help it matter to them by being on top of their results.

• Resources & Support: Give your people what they need to achieve the objectives they have agreed to perform. People will work to achieve goals that seem possible to them and have the resources they need. Train and continue to develop them to do the work well. Give them a primary manager who will meet with them regularly to see what the employee needs to achieve their objectives.

• Develop & Retain: Focusing on results develops your people in ways that they become high-performing members of your team. Recognize results. Provide opportunities for personal and professional growth. Do you people see opportunities within the company, or do they feel they will need to go elsewhere for professional growth? Talking with your people about their personal and professional goals helps you retain your best people.

Having great people who produce results begins with your leadership to engage and inspire them. Managers make clear their responsibilities and expected results, then give them what they need to succeed. People want to succeed, to feel good about what they do, and to know how they contribute to the business’s success. This is the foundation of a successful business.

Success Needs EVERYone

You want a successful business. You have a great idea, product, or service and a plan to deliver it. Who else knows your great idea? Who else knows how you see your business, where you are going, and how you plan to get there? Who else knows? Who else focuses on this vision being achieved? Your closet advisors?

The answers to these questions determine your success. The correct answer would be that everyone in my company is working to achieve the vision.

The reality is that most people have a job. They come to work, do their job, and no one expects more from them. Why not? You do not need people to do the work. You need people who know that they are part of something that matters, that the work they do matters, and that they are working with each other to achieve a vision.

Engaging your people with a vision that inspires them is critical to success—not just sharing once. Create a strategy to continually engage and inspire your people so that anyone and everyone can express the company’s vision and see how what they do contributes to achieving it. It sounds simple, but it is not easy, and it takes focus and commitment to your company and your people.

How Your Think Creates What You Have

Business owners struggle to find what is wrong that keeps them from having the right people, good cash flow, enough sales, enough time, and the list goes on.

Owners are looking for answers outside themselves. It’s the “great resignation.” No one can find talent these days. The economy is shrinking my revenue. I can’t get people to do what I want them to do. No one cares as much as I do so I have to do a lot myself. I could go on.

These are unproductive beliefs that get in the way of a successful business. From EMyth, “How you think about your business is how you do your business.” From my point of view, I can add, “Whatever you believe is created.”

My first goal with business owners is to have them notice themselves and how they think about things. If they allow this awareness, they see their thinking reflected in their business.

Often in coaching sessions, I ask an owner, “Why do you believe that to be true?” It is not true, but it is what they believe. Or I might ask, “Why do you think that?” to help them to realize it is simply what they think.

When we create a way of thinking, we build all the logic we can to support our thoughts about something.

Many owners talk about the “great resignation” as the reason they cannot find talent. I read a study done in 2018 about the challenge owners had with finding talent. In 2018, they blamed the availability of job opportunities on the internet as the problem. The issues businesses experience are not new. What matters is how we think about these challenges.

I have clients who believe they will find the solution to whatever comes their way and they do. Other clients focus on the problem, and it seems to get bigger the more they think about it. Or I could say how they think makes the problem bigger.

We can decide to wither in frustration about our business, or we can decide we will find a way. We can decide what to think and believe then think in productive and positive ways. We have a choice.

Begin to pay attention to what you say and what you think. Change your thinking and watch the changes in your business and life. The change will be immediate and powerful.

What should you do today?

Starting from the life you desire.

When we work with a to-do list or wake up thinking about our day, we are missing the point. Sometimes we just move from one moment to another, from one thing to another without a second thought as a matter of routine. Other times we are focused on one thing that we feel we need to do.  Every day started in any of these ways can be a wasted day.

Wasted in that these approaches do not move us forward in any way. We just fill our day, being busy, doing things without regard to whether any of our actions are getting us where we want to be.

What if, we started each day reflecting on our life, where we are and where we want to be? Don’t be afraid of where you are or to dream. Starting our day with our vision in mind changes our perspective, realigns our values and creates different choices. Don’t think about this. Take a moment to try it.

• Stop right now and reflect/meditate on where you are now – in every aspect of your life. Don’t judge yourself, just notice. Write it down.
• Next, reflect/meditate on the life you desire. Don’t think, just image until you are clear.
• Now reflect on what you can do today to align with any aspect of the life you desire.

Don’t get me wrong; we may work that to do list or maybe not. Too often what we chose to do is a reaction to something or just a matter of routine. Acting in this way keeps everything the same with maybe a superficial, temporary change.

On the other hand, when we keep our focus on where we are going, the life we desire and act from that perspective, we create real change from where we are to where we are going.

Try a new way of being. Take five minutes (or longer) each day to begin by focusing on where you want to be in your life then act from that perspective. Do not be distracted by routines or being unconscious to yourself. Starting each day with your eye on the bigger picture will change everything.

My List for Success

The clearer our vision, the greater our success.

Focus time on actions that create success.

Avoid distractions.

Decide how you want to be in your life, work and relationships with others.

Know how you are being in the moment.

Believe in your vision.

Believe in yourself.

Create your success with the support of others. We never do it alone.

See your vision manifesting now, not in the future.

Allow it to be uncomfortable to change.

 

Create a plan and stay grounded in it.

Ask for help.  Get help.

Have enthusiasm for your vision of success. Stay focused on that.

Don’t give up on vision, yourself or others.

 

What would you add to this list?

Capitalism for the Many

The content of a business seminar put on by state agencies may not be sexy, but this one included a surprise. As a business consultant and coach, I attend seminars to stay abreast of changes in laws and regulations that impact businesses at the state and federal levels. This week the Board of Equalization invited a keynote speaker that inspired many and made the rest think twice.

Joseph N. Sanberg spoke about coming from poverty to operating billion dollar businesses. That was impressive, but his message was not about success. It was about capitalism. Joe described our form of capitalism is, for the most part, the capitalism of the self, meaning that businesses are started solely to make money – our national pastime. Joe offered another form of capitalism that he and many others subscribed to – capitalism of the other, meaning start a business to serve the many.

In his view, design your business for your customer versus creating your business just to make money. If you develop your business to serve your customer, money will come.

Joe feels this perspective is essential because capitalism of self, places money in the hands of the wealthy who have enough and have no need to buy. Capitalism of the self keeps money out of the hands of those with less money but who need to buy. With this in mind, Joe was a force behind California adopting the Earned Income Credit. One of his strategies for getting money into the hands of those who have the need to buy.

Joe’s advice is to obsess about ways to serve your customers and do right by your employees. He is an evangelist for capitalism for others. He is a public and private sector entrepreneur and investor with a desire to harness innovative ideas to improve the quality of life for all.

Among Joe’s many private and public companies:
• His first company was Blue Apron, the largest fresh meal-kit delivery company in the United States. Joe created this company for his customers, working parents who needed a fast and simple way to provide quality meals and have a family dinner together.
• His company Aspiration, a mass market financial services company that bring investment and savings products to the middle class.
• Because he believes entrepreneurs have an important role to play in public policy, he co-founded the Economic Innovation Group whose mission is to bring business leaders together with public policy leaders to expand economic opportunity. On the board of UC Riverside School of Public Policy, he gave full scholarships in this program to seven graduate students so far.
• Joe recently founded Golden State Opportunity, a platform to support efforts to improve the lives of lower and middle-income Californians.
• As a founding member of Bright Funds, Joe hopes to increase employee charitable giving through a digital platform for companies.

The list of Joe’s efforts to create capitalism for the many goes and his message is consistent. Create a business to serve your customers and your employees and the money will come. Get money into the hands of people who need it. In this way, we have an economy that thrives and people have a quality of life.

Before You Sell. What is your selling persona?

As a member of various NAWBO Boards, I attend many networking opportunities to engage business owners for the purpose of determining how we can best meet their needs. As a business owner of a consulting and coaching company, I have the same intention. In the process, I have learned lots about selling styles and selling personas.

While there are several styles, I can narrow it down to those that work and those that do not. The most common are those when given the chance will bend your ear with how great their business is and how what they do is so unique. Honestly, they lose me the second they go down this path.

On the other hand, those we engage with me in a give and take, starting with understanding who I am and what is on my mind, I am involved in a conversation with them. In this way, they can relate what they do that can help me with what is on my mind. I do not have to listen to their list of great products and services that are of no interest to me.

Curiosity
One selling persona is someone who engages in a real way with another person. At a networking group, I am not their customer, but the principles apply. When speaking to a potential client, take off your salesperson hat and just engage with curiosity in how they are and what is on their mind. Selling does not start until they ask you to sell to them. If they never ask, you never sell. In the meantime, you are learning about them so that you can determine if they are someone you would like to have as a client or a customer. Your curiosity shows a lot about who you are.

Your Selling Persona

If this is contrary to what you have always done or were taught, then it is going to take some undoing to change the energy you bring to a conversation. Prospects can feel the energy of someone when they want to sell something. They are in the energy of selling even if their words do not say so. If you are like most of us, when you feel someone selling to you, you withdraw. Selling in this way feels like they want you to buy something before they know who you are and what you need you. They lose you at the start of the conversation, and you are looking for a way out.

Prospects Are Intuitive

People are intuitive so you cannot put on a good front. You cannot pretend. You have to feel yourself not selling.  This may take some time especially if you have been selling for a long time.  Get to know yourself as a person with curiosity.  Understand how you are when you are selling.  Feel the difference so that you can be in the right space at the right time.

Don’t Sell Yet

To identify a potential customer means having a conversation, being curious about who they are so that you can determine if you want to have a different conversation that is about sales but not yet. There are no fancy sales gimmicks and strategies needed. Just two people in conversation and being curious. The curiosity is on both sides.

In the age of the Internet, most people do not need to speak with anyone to determine the product and service options available to them. People are informed. Now they just want someone who understands them, their business and what they are trying to solve.

Not Right for Your Brand

During this conversation, you may realize that your products/services are not right for their needs. Knowing that keeps the integrity of your products and services. Selling to the right prospect maintains your company brand.

Are they ready for you to sell?
There comes a point when you feel that you understand the prospect and their conscious and unconscious needs, well enough to suggest the conversation take a step. Make no assumptions. Indicate that you understand their frustration or need for solutions. Ask if they would like to hear a solution you recommend. You are still not selling because they have not agreed to engage in that relationship with you. You are creating a relationship should they become your client and that relationship would start here. Remember they are less interested in your passion for your products and services than they are that you care about them and what they need.

In summary, take the time to understand how you are in conversation with a prospect.  Get to know when you are selling and what that feels like to you.  Know what it’s like to you when you are not selling but just caring and being curious. With this awareness you are ready.

Business and Meditation

Frank is considering changes in his staffing that will help his company grow but also impacts the business in significant ways. He could not decide, arguing both sides of this decision and wearing himself out. Frank had all the data, a new organizational strategy, a three-month budget, new position agreements, projected metrics and had conferred with all his staff yet he could not decide.

Not all decisions can be made with logic and data, when we cannot decide it is time to stop thinking and meditate. Call it meditation or some other term but it refers to an experience in which we stop thinking, get quiet, go within and reflect. In this way, we open to our intuition about things. Getting out of the logic of the situation, the pressures from others and the risks of either decision, we find a calm and quiet place to simply know the right decision. When Frank asked me what to do, I suggested that he meditate.

Carol was burned out. She wanted to sell her business and get a life. The pressures of her work followed her home and she could not enjoy her husband or her kids. She asked me what she should do. I suggested to Carol that she meditate at the end of her day before she went home.

We gather a lot of energy in our space during the course of the day, creating stress and tension. If we do nothing about it, the energy builds day after day until we explode, quit, and get ill or some other undesirable outcome. To avoid these experiences, if we simply took time at the end of our day to stop, get quiet, close our eyes and relax, it would change everything. I call this meditation. You may call it something else. During this time of quiet, we stop thinking, place our attention on our self and decide what we want to let go of. What are we holding onto? We can relax and release the tensions from our day so that we can transition from our work to our personal life with ease.

George could not think straight. He felt there was no right answer and desperately wanted to be clear and make the right decision but he had lost his perspective. So many people with differing opinions were pressuring him to decide and he was not certain. When George asked me what I thought he should decide, I suggested that he meditate. In this way, he could get out of all the noise in his head, release the pressure and regain perspective to be clear.

I could go on with stories about how business owners and professionals use meditation to support their success and their life. When you cannot decide, meditate. When you feel stressed or overwhelmed, meditate. When you want to gain perspective, meditate.

Meditation in its simplest form is tuning out all distractions, closing our eyes, getting quiet, releasing energy and not thinking then placing our attention on our self and observing our self. It can take one minute, five minutes, an hour or whatever time you have. Take time to meditate. Meditating will change everything.

Business Without a Leader

Routines, responding and being busy never achieves real success.

Business owners can sabotage their success. The sabotage is not deliberate, it happens unconsciously and in subtle yet noticeable ways. As I outline some of the ways we can destroy our businesses, you are going to say; I heard that before. That is what amazes me. We know and yet we don’t change.

When our business started, there was enthusiasm, a clear vision and a plan to get there. Over time we get into a flow that works at first then it does not. We stay in the routine regardless, lose sight of our vision; our enthusiasm wanes and revenues go down.

We start to find blame. The staff is not doing their job. We don’t have enough leads. Expenses are going up. The list goes on, but the real reason is we lost our focus and the WHY behind what we are doing. Our days are spent going through a routine without much thought. We respond to whatever comes our way, opportunity or problem. We are busy, and nothing changes. We have lost our focus, our sense of purpose and our passion. Our aim does not go away. Our attention is simply not on it, so it fades. Businesses and business owners suffer when this happens.

Carol

Carol owns a successful law firm focused on estate planning. She has competent staff and associates though everything seems to be slowing down. Carol admits that she starts her day reading her email and responding to social media posts. Reading and responding to online content takes a lot of her time. So many people run their business by responding to emails and social media posts about their business. Carol cannot describe her strategic plan for her business. They are just busy doing the work for their clients. Carol is unclear how to lead, so she merely responds in the moment. Her responses solve the problem at hand but does not move the business forward.

Sam and Fred

Sam and Fred own a successful IT company. Their staff is competent, and the company is growing, but it is in danger of failing. Sam and Fred are still doing the daily work of the business side by side with their staff. Neither of them has the time to lead the business beyond making decisions as issues come up. They are busy just keeping up with the work. Their business is about to fail because they did not create time to address their capabilities long term and how they will continue to provide the level of service they promise.

Suzanne

Suzanne owns a successful home health agency. Revenues are dropping. She wants to close the business. Years ago Suzanne wanted to quit as well. At that time, Suzanne was providing direct care for their clients, something she no longer wanted to do. Rather than close her business I suggested she stop providing care and become a better manager. She did, and the company flourished again. Over time she has become tired, so she wants to close the company again. I suggested that she develop a manager and move into being the leader, visionary and strategic planner. Suzanne does well with change but cannot always see the change that is needed. The business has needed her leadership for some time and being a visionary leader is something that inspires her.

In these examples, the owners were not leading their companies. Whatever is happening in their business is the result of how they are day to day. They are busy. Every business owner needs time to review their vision and their strategy to move from where they are now toward that vision.

Routines

Their challenge is to get out of their routine, which can also mean being unconsciousness. When we are in a routine, we do not have to think. We are on automatic and lose sight of whether what we are doing is moving us toward our vision of success. Routines tend to limit our focus to an immediate result, which may not support the larger vision of the company.

Leading

Another challenge is learning to do less or none of the work of the business and spending more time leading the business. Leading is so much more than making decisions and responding to what comes up. Being a leader may not be comfortable for some. Stepping into this new or uncomfortable role gives us the opportunity to grow as a leader.

To lead a business requires stepping out of our routine. To stop doing the work of the business to spend time imagining the company we are creating and how to get there. When we take the time to reflect, meditate or imagine the bigger picture or vision, then we can make adjustments to the work in present time. Change breaks up routines that no longer serve the business.

Self Reflection

Notice for yourself. Are you in a routine, responding to what comes up and just being busy? Or do you see clearly the vision of the business you are creating? Are you implementing a specific plan to get there?

Take the time to be clear about your vision. Let go of where you are and determine a strategy for moving closer to your vision. Focusing on our vision will undoubtedly create change. Change might be just what is needed.

Done doing the work of the business?

Kathy is a tax preparer who started a tax preparation company. Fred is a painter who started a painting company. Claire loves tea so started a tea company. Mike was an attorney who started a consulting company. They all have something in common. They are solopreneurs. At this time, they are technicians who created a business that provides them with work. Not all soloprenuers want to own a business, but these three say having a business that does their work IS their goal.

Technician Business Owners

Not all companies have an owner who is a technician. Some owners are good managers and run businesses. Other owners are entrepreneurs, and they run businesses as well. Each type of business owner runs their business very differently. This article is about technicians who start businesses with two very different results.

Technician Turned Business Owner

Mark is a graphic designer who started a webs design business to leave a corporate job and to give himself work. Frank is an insurance broker who started an insurance business. Sarah, who left a corporate job as a graphic designer and started a marketing promotional items marketing business. These three have something in common. They are determined not to be the technician in their business but to create a company that does the work of the business.

Technicians Business To Do List

These two groups of business owners have very different experiences as business owners. The first groups, the solopreneurs, are master technicians. They know how to do the work of the business and are busy doing it with dreams of freeing themselves from this role. What keeps them from making this change from being the sole technician in their business to owning a business that does the work? They think like a technician. They approach business development from a tactical perspective; thinking of things they can do to get work, increase income and products/services they can sell. They have a long business development to do list. The list is a technician’s to do list.

Creating A Job

From an EMyth perspective, business development is not about creating work a technician can do. Some of the technician to do list involves work with their clients, and some of their lists include ways to create more work and income for themselves.

Business owner technicians are not open to another way when in this mode. They do not need someone to help them. They already have an extensive list of things they know they need to do to grow their business, to keep them working.

Creating A Business

The second group of business owners takes a different approach. They were technicians but want to stop doing the work of the business. They know they have to change and suppress the urge just to do the work themselves. These men and women are expert technicians, and it feels easier just to do the work than to grow a business, hire staff, training them to do the work the way you want your business to be. This group is different because they are determined to create time to think strategically, to find solutions and create ways to stop doing the work of the business themselves. They are willing to face the challenge to change how they are as a business owner.

I feel I am retelling Sarah’s story from EMyth Revisited, a woman who loved baking, so started a baking business that gave her work to do. Thankfully, Sarah realized what she was doing and was willing to get outside her comfort zone of baking to create a business that made and served baked goods.

Tactical or Strategic

The first group above has not reached that point of looking for help to grown their business a new way. They are very busy, even overwhelmed, thinking of things they can do to make more income, create passive income, get more clients and thus more work for themselves. Their mind is filled with great ideas, feel they are too busy and have no time to create a change. They actually cannot stop. It is energy spent on continuing to be a technician business owner.

The Courage to Change

Creating a business that does the work of the business and a business that helps you create the life you desire takes a change in how we are as business owners. Mark, the owner of a web design and online marketing company, has moved from being the technician to having an excellent staff that happily does the work of the business. Mark’s new role is being the leader of the business who has the vision, a plan, and mentoring staff to get there. His company is growing, but the change was not easy. He admitted the other day that he took on a project that only he is qualified to do. He slipped into technician mode because it was easier than being the leader at that moment. Mark now realizes how letting this happen disrupted his business, his time and his role. It was a good lesson. As a result, Mark made a list of projects their company will not do moving forward. Mark realized that when he becomes the technician, it disrupts the business he is creating.

If you know that you are a technician business owner and want to change to create a business check in with yourself. Are you ready to become a leader, to spend time building a sustainable business in which you mentor others, build systems to run your business and are eager to get help to make these changes?

Best wishes for your success, Kay