Archive for the 'Leadership' Category

Jun262008

THE Solution to High Gas Prices

Kill everybody!

gas shortage

Just kidding…(sort of)

Here it is…

1. Spend Less

or

2. Make More

A tale of two paradigms? Yyyyyeeeeessssss….

It’s the age-old “top down” versus “bottom up” approach in business management. Meaning = you can either improve profitability by increasing sales and holding costs constant or you can cut costs while revenues remain steady - or better yet, option #3 - do both.

Believe me, I hate paying $400.00 (er, $4.15) for a gallon of gas just as much as the next red-blooded, apple-pie eating, hot-dog gobbling, puppy-dog loving, drive 50 miles just for the heck of it American consumer. But, there has to be a better way to get around this whole gas situation without blaring our lungs complaining like Walther Mathau in Grumpy Old Men.

It’s all a matter of offense versus defense. Sometimes it’s good to play defense, but only as part of an offensive strategy. The whole goal of the game is to make money, right? Why have a defensive mindset, then? Why not play the game to win instead of playing ‘not to lose’?

Worth considering further…

Test your natural instincts by asking yourself what the first thing you do when things in your business show signs of slowing down. Do you look to slash and burn costs right away? Or, do you look to re-double your sales and marketing efforts?

It’s really hard to save your way to success in business. If you take the ‘wait and see’ approach, you will likely be seeing your competitors pass you by. This is why I have found that when times are more challenging, it is best to re-focus on your top line. Always stay mindful of your costs, but if you cut back when things aren’t so rosy, you will be on the short-end of the inertia stick when the weather breaks.

Instead of complaining about high gas prices and cutting back on driving places you want to go (assuming that you are cutting back on driving to save money and not because of your un-abiding concern for the environment) try taking a different perspective - make more money. Once you start looking at things this way, you will feel your mind open up to new possibilities; you will be looking at the world through the eye-glasses of abundance instead of perpetual scarcity.

Treasure chest

So, let’s look at our choices to the gas price crunch once again:

1. Spend less

2. Make more

I hope you go down the rabbit hole of choice #2. But, if you see a lot of talking animals you may have sniffed too many fumes at your last fill-up (be careful)…

Published
by
Adam Davis
on June 26, 2008
in Entrepreneurship, Inspiration and Leadership
. 0 Comments
May232008

Excuses are like ____, everybody has one….

Have you ever heard that before? If you haven’t, I’m glad you heard it here first.

I think one of the most undiagnosed medical conditions in the world is ‘excuses-preventus’. (I don’t normally speak Latin, but that’s what 3 cups of coffee in short order will do to you). It is a chronic condition. A 2 phase affliction that begins with some rationalized reason for not doing something presents goals from being met and achievements going undone.

Let’s briefly break this condition down into plain English. Excuses Prevent Us.

So, you are probably getting on my wavelength now: excuses prevent us from our goals and dreams and ultimately lead to an unfulfilled life and disappointment.

In the business world, excuses-preventus is prevalent. Here is how the condition commonly presents itself:

  • “I can’t get any new customers on account of the recession that’s going on,” moans the entrepreneur
  • “I would have done (fill in the blank) except (fill in the blank)” cries the operations manager
  • “You don’t understand, my shop is just in a tough location,” yells the store owner
  • “American Idol was on last night,” whines the service professional

I’m sure you have seen these symptoms before. Maybe you are feeling the onset of excuses-preventus. If you are, I suggest reading this months issue of Inc Magazine. There is a great piece in this issue about entrepreneurs that started businesses in “rough” times. These companies made no excuses and forged ahead despite the winds of ‘conventional wisdom’ blowing against them. Here is an excerpt about what Method founders Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan were up against:

—-When they look back on the early days of their start-up, Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan remember that a lot of potential investors laughed at them. The Bay Area, where they were living, was awash in Internet start-ups. Each week in 2000 brought another glitzy launch party or news that the scantest of business plans had attracted venture capital. Even office landlords were demanding equity from their dot-com tenants. Lowry and Ryan, who wanted to start a company to make — of all things — humdrum household products, were decidedly out of step with the times. “You had the sense that there was this real historical thing going on in the region, even if it was not going to end well,” says Ryan. —–

Talk about being immune to excuses-preventus! If you have a hard time not making excuses for being a vegetable in front of the TV, just imagine having sophisticated and wealthy investors laugh at your business plan at the same time you were sailing into the eye of an economic storm.

Anytime I think about excuses-preventus, I remember a great line from the movie The Edge, starring Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin, that I believe sums up how to cure excuses-preventus in short order.

In this movie, Hopkins and Baldwin’s characters are stranded in the Alaskan wilderness and they are being pursued by a hungry grizzly bear. They come to the realization that they won’t be able to outrun or outmaneuver the bear on their journey to safety. They decide that they must kill the bear in order to survive.

Alec Baldwins character (Bob) seriously doubts their ability to kill the bear and survive. To ensure survival, Hopkins’ character (Charles) must motivate Bob.

Charles: “Did you know, in many African tribes, 11 year old boys must kill a lion with a spear in order to prove their manhood.”

Bob: “What’s that got to do with us?”

Charles: “What one man can do, Bob, another man can do.”

Bob: “What?!”

Charles: “Repeat after me: what one man can do, another man can do”

Bob: “What?!”

Charles: “Repeat after me, Bob: what one man can do another man can do!”

Bob (getting the picture now): “What one man can do, another man can do!”

And there it is: what one man (or woman) can do, another man (or woman) can do. Take a dose of that the next time you feel yourself coming down with excuses-preventus. Somebody else is getting things done - so why aren’t you?

Published
by
Adam Davis
on May 23, 2008
in Leadership, Motivation and acheivement
. 1 Comment
Feb92008

Lead, Follow or Get the Heck Out of the Way!

Take this to heart in your business:

Continuous Change

Continuous Improvement

Continuously Looking for Opportunities

All of these must be a part of your DNA if you want to build and maintain a successful business or career. Give this week’s podcast a listen and find out why.

You can click HERE to listen to the podcast. Feel free to download the mp3 and listen on your favorite music player.

As always, your questions, comments and feedback are welcome.

Published
by
Adam Davis
on February 9, 2008
in Business, Leadership and Success
. 0 Comments
Jan312008

30 Second Thursdays - Volume 4 - Make Fear Work For You

This Thursday, I want to talk about the “F” word - that’s right — F-E-A-R. Fear is something that can cripple even the most ambitious people, however, this is where unprecedented opportunities often are. Learn to look for areas where others are afraid and watch your business or professional life take off. 

Think about it…people were once afraid to sail beyond certain points because they thought they would never come back; fear is often derived from misinformation or perception of misinformation.  Those that can dig deeper and uncover what others are missing will reap the rewards.

Here is your 30 Second Thursday for this week:

Published
by
Adam Davis
on January 31, 2008
in Entrepreneurship, Investing and Leadership
. 0 Comments
Nov82007

Does Anybody Want to Do Business?

I am routinely astounded at the number of business that keep telling me ‘times are tough’ and ‘business is slow.’ The frequency with which I hear this has been increasing in recent months. For me, the issue arises when people complain about something yet don’t do anything about it. The beauty of America is that, if you don’t like your current situation – YOU CAN CHANGE IT. To put it as frankly as I can, many business owners and service professionals simply don’t want to ‘hustle’ – they want to hang out a shingle and watch the customers just roll right in. Let me clarify, by hustle, I mean getting up everyday with a laser focus on making customers happy (A happy customer is one who receives and perceives great value and service) and doing everything you can do to drive business. The days of simply hanging out a shingle and running an ad in the Yellow Pages are long over.I want to share a recent experience to illustrate my point:

Recently, I found a home I wanted to purchase. I decided that I would go with a mortgage broker versus a bank for my financing, and thus began searching for a reputable mortgage broker that could take care of my needs. After two weeks of looking, these were my results:

-2 out of 10 called me back after I left them a message
-1 out of 4 called me back after they said they would
-0 out of 6 emailed me back after inquiries to their website
-1 out of 5 gave me an actual quote in terms of interest rate, closing costs and the like

Needless to say, I got a bit discouraged. Especially in light of the fact that I was bringing a 20% down payment, my wife and I have good credit and stable income and we were purchasing a home in a good area that we could comfortably afford. Could I be crazy? Were these people doing so well and did they have so much business at the time that they could just blow off a lucrative new customer?

What killed me about this experience was the total lack of respect and professionalism. Each of the mortgage “professionals” that blew me off probably kissed about a $1,000 (minimum) payday goodbye. Not to mention, they lost repeat business from me when I refinance my home in 18 months and when I look for somebody to work with me on financing investment properties. And, MOST IMPORTANTLY they lost any possible referral business from me.

If you are a business owner, service professional or real estate investor (if you are a real estate investor, your tenants and motivated sellers are your ‘customers’), and you think ‘times are tough’, ask yourself these questions:

-Do you call your customers back within 4 hours?
-Do you email internet leads/inquiries back within 4 hours (or have auto responders set up)?
-Do you call each person back that you say you will in the time frame you told them you would?
-Do you regularly call your existing customers just for the ‘heck of it’ to see how they are doing and to THANK THEM FOR THEIR BUSINESS?
-Do you send out cards or correspondence to your customers for Christmas, Birthdays and other events (anniversary of a deal)?
-Do you let your customers know you care by showing them tokens of appreciation out of the blue?

If you answered ‘no’ to any one of these questions, then STOP complaining and START taking action.

We live in an ‘on-demand’ world now; people expect fast turnaround times for service and every little thing counts. The devil is in the details. I can guarantee that if business owners, real estate investors and service professionals were able to answer ‘yes’ to the six questions above, they would not lament to me that ‘times are tough.” I would wager that they would barely be able to contain their excitement about how much money they were making.

DO YOU WANT TO DO BUSINESS?

Published
by
Adam Davis
on November 8, 2007
in Leadership and Motivation
. 1 Comment
Nov72007

There is No Time Like the Present

Living in SE Michigan, it is easy to get caught up in all the negative media attention surrounding the state of the economy. Every time I turn around, I see headlines, news clips and grumbling about ‘how bad things are’ here in Michigan.

It seems like all we hear about here in Metro Detroit is the increase in home foreclosures, the ailments of the Big 3 auto companies and the unemployment rate. The bombardment of negative attention is constant and intenstifying. Quite frankly, it is starting to get on my nerves!

This never-ceasing ‘henny-penny, the sky is falling’ mentality reminds me of the story by Jerome K. Jerome from his classic work Three Men in a Boat:

I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch—hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into—some fearful, devastating scourge, I know—and, before I had glanced half down the list of “premonitory symptoms,” it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.
I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever—read the symptoms—discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it—wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus’s Dance—found, as I expected, that I had that too,—began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically—read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight…

The analogy I see is that it is very easy to get caught up in a swirl of bad things that you perceive to be happening and it spirals more and more. The media fans the flames. Roughly 93% of the employable population in Michigan is still working. We enjoy a higher per capita income here in Michigan than many other states in the U.S. We have the natural resources, infrastructure and collective human capital that many states envy. The question is: what do we do with it NOW?

Yes, we have our share of people here in Michigan that have fallen on hard times. Does anybody remember a little thing called the Great Depression? How about 25% unemployment? (and that was nationwide!) How about families moving all over the country, wandering like nomads, just to find food and shelter?

If I was a doctor and Michigan was a sick patient, and the sick patient came to me asking for a cure, do you know what I would do? I would prescribe the following:

-1 shot of PERSPECTIVE

-2 doses of INITIATIVE

-4 doses of HARD WORK

-10 doses each of PERSISTENCE and DETERMINATION

The bottom line is, for entrepreneurs, THERE IS NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT to move ahead toward your goals. If you are a real estate investor, good properties abound for pennies on the dollar. If you are thinking of starting a dry cleaning business, the technology available and abundant commercial space make for a perfect recipe for a profitable business. If you are selling cars, the Big 3 are giving away huge incentives and the finance companies still have cheap money available, a perfect recipe for a record year.

If you have any inkling of doubt, like “now might not be the time” or “I’m going to wait it out and see,” take a moment and ponder a great thought by Keith Cunningham, co-founder of Prime Cable and respected Wall Street dealmaker: “Many people will not head down the street until all the lights are green. That is why they don’t go anywhere.”

THERE IS NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT

Published
by
Adam Davis
on November 7, 2007
in Inspiration, Leadership and Motivation
. 0 Comments