What is Celibacy?

The lighter side........


Celibacy can be a choice in life or a condition imposed by circumstances.

While attending a Marriage Weekend, Fred and his wife, Diane, listened to the instructor declare, "It is essential that husbands and wives know the things that are important to each other.."

He then addressed the men, "Can you name and describe your wife's favorite flower?'

Fred leaned over, touched Diane's arm gently and whispered,

"Gold Medal All-Purpose, isn't it?"

And thus began Fred's life of celibacy..........

Planning is Easy. Execution is Hard

How many planning sessions have you been in during your career? How many New Year’s resolution have you made? How many times have you followed through with your best of intentions?

Why is it so easy to plan and so hard to execute?

One reason lies in the concept of inertia. Good intentions need inertia.

Unfortunately, the amount of inertia inherently found in good intentions is not all that great. Hence, when we embark on implementing any plan and an obstacle pops up, the momentum needed to push through or overcome these small seemingly small and insignificant obstacles is just not there. There is not enough inertia. In order to muster up the needed inertia, another factor needs to come into play.

In a recent NFL playoff game, the New York Jets won the game in part because of an important statistics: yards gained after the catch. This statistic is important because when a receiver catches a pass and turns up field there is usually one, two or three defenders there ready to take his head off. Many receivers opt to head for the sideline or simply drop to the ground when they see 1200 pounds of muscular beef barreling down on them. The exceptionally talented receivers have conditioned themselves to focus on getting one more yard – not a touchdown. Those receivers that do this consistently have impressive yards gained after the catch statistics and in some cases even break it for big yards plays and an occasional touchdown.

Is there a lesson here?

Consider this. Obstacles will always be there. What you do after you hit the first obstacle is critical on whether or not you achieve plan or not. If you do not focus on the yards after the catch statistic, you will never get through obstacles.

Case Study:

Your business depends on closing deals. You have developed metrics that show that in order to close a deal, you need to make 30 contacts and make 9 presentations to close three deals.

You have good intentions to get out and make your 30 contacts this week. You come into the office to get a few things done before heading out of the day. The phone rings. You take the call. Ten minutes later you get an email. You take the time to read it and response…20 minutes later you finally get out the door, albeit much later than you wanted.

You decided to drop by Starbucks to get a cup of coffee and bump into a friend. Nearly 30 minutes later, after catching up, you are back in the car. Oops, you forgot your call list for the day. Back to the office…..and so it goes.
Before you know it, it is nearly noon. You cannot call on prospect during lunch – heaven forbid. Back to the office with a commitment to get out before 1:00 pm but all you get sweep into the Black Hole of Operations and by the time you extract yourself from the office, it is nearly 3:00 pm. Your good intentions are sidelined by seemingly small obstacles that could all be overcome with very little difficulty, if you focus on how to recognize and push through them.

NFL receivers that excel in the yards after a catch statistic practice catching and turning up field until it becomes intuitive.

Moral of the story: Flawless execution takes commitment, focus and practice and turning up the field.

Deliverables

Our 2010 Regional CAMPA meeting was held on Saturday, Jan 23rd in Ontario, CA. The meeting focused on planning and setting financial metrics for 2010. Part of that process was a discussion on what could be done to remove some of the obstacles that may get in the way of achieve plan in 2010.

A list of three initiatives was agreed to. Your regional support group committed to crafting a strategy to work throught these with all CAMPA members. You will be hearing from John Lipp in a few days via email with an outline of these initiatives and deliverable dates.

John will also help you work out your plan for 2010 and set some of these metrics using the planning tool that was provided at the meeting.

Also, each of you should to do a personal inventory of what obstacles will keep you from achieving plan in 2010 and then decide on what can be done to ensure that this obstacles do not get in the way of your success.

Focus, Focus and More Focus

I received an email from one a franchisee recently regarding PrimeVendor.com a service that monitors govt. opportunities.

I responded as follows:

The CAMPA emphasis for 2010 is FOCUS.

The CAMPA mission for this year is profitability in the shortest time horizon possible. This means walking by some opportunities while devoting a lot of resources to others. This does not mean that those opportunities that we walk by are not good opportunities but that the time, effort or resources necessary to secure any meaningful business is not as probably as other opportunities.

Every hour of every day and a portion of every dollar that leaves your checking account should be focused on business acquisition. Without this focus, time and money may run very thin, if profitability does not arrive soon.

Gov't business had not been a sweet spot. I believe this type of business will be a significant part of our business in the future but the time and expertise needed is not a good fit or the best use of our resources in most cases. There are exceptions but as a general statement each franchisee has better ways to spend their precious resources to get business quicker and easier.

Focus, focus and more focus is the watch word for 2010.
n of every dollar that leaves your checking account should be focused on business acquisition. Without this focus, time and money may run very thin, if profitability does not arrive soon.

Why Metrics Are Important

“You cannot measure what you do not know” is a business axiom that is frequently overlooked and in some cases completely ignored. Often the entrepreneurial mindset is the “shoot from the hip” mentality. By nature entrepreneurs are creative thinkers and frequently push the envelope on conventional thinking and operate outside of the box. This type of attitude and thinking is very powerful, if it is channeled properly. The key is being able to harness this creative energy and then execute on it.

In professional sports, statistics and benchmarks is everything. Football draft choices are refined to a point that the difference between a first round and third round draft pick is a few hundredths of a second in the 40 yard dash or the ratios of passes thrown to interceptions. Metrics are used as a standard for predicting future success.

As we focus on reaching profitability this year, the varying degrees of success will be measured by how well the metrics of your business are defined and implemented.
The regional meeting will focus on five key component of benchmarking your metrics:

1. Defining
2. Executing
3. Measuring
4. Refining
5. Redefining

The objective for the next year is to focus on our daily metrics, execution and achieving profitability.

Is Your Ladder Leaning Up Against The Right Wall?

I had intended to follow up my last blog posting with a discussion on the agenda for the regional meeting later this month. However, as I started to draft this posting, it occurred to me that the entire purpose of the meeting was not about the agenda, which of course is important, because we need to ensure that we are focused on essential elements of achieving the purpose of the meeting. The purpose of this meeting is about identifying what are the critical things that need to be achieved to reach profitability this year.

To achieve profitability this year is about focus. Success in any entrepreneurial venture is rooted in understanding how to organize events and people to create a desired result. This will not happened unless there is a laser-like focus on the critical elements of success.

To orchestrate success three things need to happen.

1. Your ladder needs to be leaning against the right wall. Or in other words, you need to understand the crucial elements of success such as which vertical markets that are the most profitable in your territories. The market Bob Duncan is deriving success from may or may not be the same that Jill Chioino is having success with.

2. What are the events/tasks need to be focused on to ensure that you are climbing up the latter.

3. How can you make sure that you get to the top of the ladder in a timely fashion when it seems that there are so many distractions that cause you to stop climbing or even take steps back down the rungs on the ladder?

In my next posting, I will discuss “Why Metrics Are Important”.

Why Take the Time

Several franchisees have emailed and asked if it is necessary to take the time to attend the upcoming regional meeting on January 23rd. Yes, it is true that everyone is busy and there is always an issue of the expense of attending these meetings.

I responded to one such inquiry as follows:

This Regional CAMPA Meeting is primarily about developing metrics for business development. It is just too easy to let time slide by and rely on the “shoot from the hip’ strategy of marketing. This meeting is about each franchised location accepting personal accountability and committing to developing a plan and then executing it.

This year is the hump year. Everyone needs to make progress toward profitability. Everyone has their own breakeven point and line to profitability. In a startup mode, everything is usually about execution on the operations side of the business. After those early times in business, the focus needs to shift to the scalability of the business acquisition model and the execution of this model. Everyone’s attention needs to be concentrated and all of your resources focused on the single most important issue facing each franchisee - execution on a basic set of metrics (without excuses), the implementation and execution on a basic set of customer acquisition metrics to achieve profitability.
It is just too easy to blame all of the things that come up during the day, week, and month on why executing on the basics did not happen. This is the business equivalent of the “dog ate my homework” excuse of our youth.

The challenge is removing the obstacles and execute on getting and keeping new customers. The meeting is centered on three issues:

1. Developing business acquisition and other profitability metrics.
2. Understanding what has to be done to execute on these metrics.
3. Removing the obstacles that will block each location from execution on these metrics and developing a plan to remove and overcome these obstacles.

This process is no different than any business, sports franchise or individual that has achieved any measure of success goes through.

Next Blog posting: The Agenda

Business Planning

Years ago in my college business course work the conventional wisdom was to develop a 3-5 year business plan.

I have written detailed and lengthy 3-5 year business plans over the years that have included exhaustive financial, market and operational analysis. These plans have served as a tool to force market research, understanding of the financial metrics and a thoughtful analysis of operational strategies.

This type of business planning is certainly useful but today’s economic environment is so different that a business plan developed today often migrates from a useful tool to being dated in less than a year because the world we live in changes so rapidly.

Does this mean that business planning and all of the attendant homework is irrelevant? Absolutely not! What it does mean is that this planning tool needs to be a living document vs. simply a tool to secure financing, hire people and provide the initial strategy and tactics for the business. It needs to be updated quarterly, if not monthly.

Today’s business plans should serve as a compass that is reference frequently to see if the business is on course. Sadly, this rarely happens. Too often the static in an entrepreneur’s daily life is so great that the compass is never check because entrepreneurs often are so busy putting out fires they rarely check their compass.

CAMPA is going to focus on this key aspect of business planning for 2010. Prior to our regional meeting in a few weeks, John Lipp will work with all of you to assemble the key metrics of developing a business plan. During the regional meeting we will focus on things that will keep you from achieving plan and during the year work on removing these roadblocks.

The Law of Unintended Consequences

Often we do things that have an opposite effect. For example, you tell one of your children not to lick a metal post on a freezing day and they will likely to try it to see if what you said is actually true. Or, a standard response to a "Fresh Paint" sign is to touch to see if the paint really is wet.

In managing a business the best intentions often have unintended and far reaching consequences. For most entrepreneurs there is no greater unintended consequence than working hard and not getting the results because the ladder is leaning up against the wrong wall.

Planning for success in an entrepreneurial venture requires organizing activities and time to facilitate the greatest probability of success. However, there is one thing that stands at the front of the line when organizing time and events – focusing on the right things. Let me share an experience on how trying to do the right thing does not always end up that way.

Jim Arsons became a franchisee after being downsized from his 25 year stint in the corporate world. As he started his new business he spent 12-14 hours a day, five and six days a week. He loved and was passionate about his job and being his own boss was definitely better than working this hard for someone else.

However, his business just did not take off like he thought it would. He arrived each morning before 7:00 AM with the intention of preparing for the day and then get out and call on prospect and clients to generate sales. However, he usually never got out the door because “things happen” and he got sucked into a flurry of operational issues. Every day he seemed to disappear into the fabled Black Hole of Operations before he could get out the door.

Intent: Get into the office early and plan the day.

Consequence: Things happened and he disappeared into the Black Hole of Operations.

Solution: Plan the day at home before leaving for the day and come into the office later in the day vs. first thing in the morning.

Result: Dramatic change in sales.

Moral: Often we do one thing with the right intent but the opposite happens.
As you plan for the future, think about what you do and what actually is happening.

If you focus on the core aspects of making money, it is more likely than not that your bank account will grow vs. working hard and not having the right things happen and seeing your bank account slowly drain away.

THE 7 STEPS OF OUTRAGEOUSLY SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEURS # 7

OPTIMIZE, OPTIMIZE, OPTIMIZE

Successful entrepreneurs make money two ways: Increasing sales and managing expenses.

Increasing sales does not necessarily mean more profits. In order to make sales profitable, you need to know the profitability of each product or service you offered? Do you know what customers are the most expensive, demanding or time-consuming to serve? If you doubled your customer base, do you know the implications on costs, revenues and the operations of your business? Knowing these answers are essential in making sales growth profitable.

As sales grow, there should be a focus on reducing, or at least managing expenses, and to optimize and streamline operations. Seeking to make operations better, faster, cheaper is the holy grail of profitability by maximizing the performance/expense tradeoffs.

To optimize your business results, think highest and best use of your time, energy and money.

Next up…..Bonus thought.

THE 7 STEPS OF OUTRAGEOUSLY SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEURS # 6

MULTIPLY PROFITS THROUGH THE POWER OF LEVERAGE.

Many entrepreneurs build their businesses the organic way – without a lot of direction and taking what comes. Successful businesses grow their businesses by applying the power of leverage. They look for new ways to convert their current assets, operations and relationships into new revenue streams. There are three things that can generally be leveraged in a business.

1. Assets (e.g., yourself, employees)
2. Operations (e.g., your knowledge base, processes)
3. Relationships (e.g., your business network, customers)

By far, leveraging yourself is the quickest way to inject profitability into your business. Where do you spend the most time on a daily basis? My guess is if you tally up your daily Entrepreneurial Timesheets it would be weighted toward operational issues vs. sales oriented issues. Leverage is one of the most under-utilized principles for multiplying profits in business.

If you can figure out a way to spend more time in direct incoming producing activities such as being in front of prospective customers, seeing existing customers asking for referrals and networking your sales will reflect that reallocation of time.

Next up…..Optimize.

THE 7 STEPS OF OUTRAGEOUSLY SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEURS # 5

ADDING VALUE

Successful entrepreneurs are in the business of creating value. Their goal and mission in business is to develop and create value to their customers.
In creating value Step #1: Let your customers know they matter. Customers must feel that you not only want to make the sale but that they will be taken care of after the sale.

Where is your focus right now --- on adding value, or making the sale? Make "adding value" a business priority. When you do, your products and services will sell themselves.

As we begin a new year....these simple insights can reorient your thinking process to improve your business.

Next up……The Power of Leverage