The Entreprenologist
Conway Daily Sun, Feb 23, 2011
Most business people are full of great ideas. I’m one of them; oh yeah, ask anyone, I’m freakin’ brilliant! Here’s the problem - great ideas don’t put food on the table. Great implementation does. While we’re talking about what really works and what doesn’t, we should clear up some myths.  It is easier to make success out of success – having money, education and a support system makes life a lot easier for the entrepreneur. However, all the resources in the world won’t help if you lack the commitment to see things through to the end, no matter what. I’ve found that tenacity is more important than most other qualities for most small businesses. In fact, I’ve known complete dimwits to be successful in business with a snoozer of an idea, very little resources but lots of tenacity.

If you argue that having money or experience is more critical, consider that with some tenacity, you could get the money and the knowledge you need. In fact, with tenacity, you can acquire whatever other resource you need. None of those other resources will prepare you for the crap hitting the fan in one way or another, as it does about once every quarter for most small businesses. Constantly, you have to deal with setbacks large and small; a computer dies, a valued employee quits, a supplier goes bankrupt, customers change their needs, and so on.  My point is the unpredictable nature of business requires more commitment and more creativity than most people have.

A business founded on a great idea lasts only as long as nothing changes in the world that renders the idea obsolete. Every business needs to have a source for new ideas in the face of constant change.  Enter the entrepreneur.  The real entrepreneur is the creative maniac that mentally lives in the future.  Their job is to be the endless supply of answers, to be able to put out any kind of fire in an instant, to pound out rapid-fire problems like they’re playing whack-a-mole at the fair, and make it all look easy. Yes, it helps if you wear a mask and the super-entrepreneur cape. The entrepreneur however, creates as many problems as they solve. When they have something that works, most entrepreneurs can’t help but change it anyway.  “If it ain’t broke, break it” is their mantra. When things are working well, most entrepreneurs make their employees crazy, constantly coming up with new ideas that aren’t ready to implement, or that no one else understands. Most don’t realize how much training their staff needs to be able to implement the next great idea. Most don’t have the focus (at least not without medication) to make sure the new ideas actually happen for more than a day.  We can fix this.

No, there’s no need to lock the boss in the basement and let him/her out only when you really need them. The trick is to establish the proper rhythm of the business and get everyone to commit to sticking to the rhythm. This is a process of changing the way you work on your business that typically takes a few months of coaching to achieve, so explaining it in a newspaper article will be like teaching someone to dance The Hussle via email, but I’m going to give it a try.

Step 1. Identify your real goals in writing. This is worthy of a workshop on goal setting, team building, etc., and some difficult soul searching to do it well. Step 2. Develop your strategy for achieving your goals. Step 3. Schedule a quarterly strategy session to update your plan. Keep new ideas for the next quarter before you try them, and give things a full quarter to see if you can make them work or fail. Step 4. Assign accountability and a timeline for each strategic item to a single person. Step 5. Meet weekly to have each person report in on the status of their strategy line-items. Step 6. Huddle at the start of each shift to have everyone focus on today’s primary objective.  So the rhythm is this - you write a plan annually, modify it quarterly, monitor it weekly, and energize it daily.

Like just about anything written to be informative, yet fit into a newspaper column, this is a grossly over-simplified explanation. My hope is to help you start a conversation about either your lack of new ideas or your bounty of great ideas that don’t get implemented well. The entreprenologist offers a number of ways to help you identify your business and life goals and to develop and keep the rhythm to achieve them.

Conway Daily Sun
Feb One of the most common complaints I hear from small business owners and managers is they spend most of their time putting out fires. My advice - Stop it! If I may continue with this beloved metaphor, it's time to get out of the fire extinguishing business and into the fire prevention business.

Recently, at one of my own stores, we experienced a customer coming in with a challenge that might be considered a "fire". A customer came in with a framed picture to return. Fine, we have a very liberal return policy, so no problem, right? Well the customer didn't have a receipt - no problem, we can figure out what it was and what it sold for, when did she buy it? Actually she didn't but it, but says her boy friend bought it about three years ago. That begs for a little more info, don't you think? No, the item has nothing wrong with it, they used it, enjoyed it, agreed it was perfect in every way, somehow managed to damage the piece over the years, and agreed it now has too many nicks and scratches for us to resell it. Now they want to argue that it was $169, not the $129 our records show it was a few years ago. Really? Is the customer always right?  Can the front line staff handle this matter while it's still just a conversation and before it becomes a complaint?

Now when I hear from owners and managers of retail or service businesses, they are not complaining about over-demanding customers, but about their staff who cannot figure out how to handle these situations on their own. The owner should not have to come treat it like a 'fire".  This is not a fire, it is just a spark and properly trained front line staff should be able to extinguish it before it catches on fire.

I can see several business owner friends rolling their eyes right now - I can see you right through this paper you know! You have a business to work on, so you don't have time to handle every customer situation. You still want to keep as many customers happy as you can, so what do you do?  You create a system  - not a policy. A policy is a one-size-fits-all statement that annoys the customer to no end and separates the employee from the company. As a defense mechanism, employees tends to blame the company for the policy they are required to quote. While you're worrying about an unhappy customer telling other people, you now have employees saying bad things about you!

Trade in your policies for systems. A system is a process any employee can use to create their own solution. Maybe an agenda item for your weekly staff meeting (remember those?) could be training on these matters. Staff meetings should be about fire prevention. You sit with your staff and go over the scenario. You come up with a strategic thinking process that would have led to an acceptable result. Entrepreneurs were born to think this way - your staff probably was not. They bring other perspectives and value to the table, but in this area, you have to teach them. Script a list of questions to ask customers, teach them to communicate instead of getting flustered and nervous. They need to know you have their back and they won't get in trouble for trying to help a customer. The customer in not always right. In fact, they're seldom right when they're acting like pyromaniacs (a good metaphor never ends, does it). The notion about the customer is always right is meant to be about the broader market in general, not every unhappy person on earth who wants to abuse your staff to get free things from you. This notion has been so abused by customers, it's insulting and debilitating to your staff. Rather than right versus wrong, let's say your customers and your staff are human beings who equally deserve respect, honest communication and a fair resolution. Fair to the customer, but the customer needs to understand solutions need to be fair to your business as well. Only honest, assertive (not aggressive, but professional and assertive) communication will allow this to happen. Once you've taught assertive communication skills to your staff, and practiced it and let them role play and practice on you and each other, they'll be ready to practice on live customers. They'll need to create a habit of following a logical, step by step process for handling situations. Your local entreprenologist can help you create such a system and communication training program if that's outside your comfort zone.

Stop putting out fires. Every time a new fires pops up, put it out and vow that this is the last time you are putting out that particular fire. Create a prevention system for each fire as they happen and you'll be spending more time working on your business and less time working in your business.  You'll have more fun, make more money and have happier staff and customers.

The Entreprenologist, The Conway Daily Sun
January 17, 2011
By Michael Kline

The title of this week’s column was inspired by a list of reasons why retired drill sergeants don’t make good therapists. This week, we’re talking about decisions, choices and leadership. A funny story - I was listening to a friend talking through some sadness in her life. She went on and on, as we all do when we have a sad event to get through. Eventually, we risk slipping into a self-pitying, complaining and whining mode which is far less productive than the initial healthy talk-it-out stage. When I had heard enough and when she was no longer helping herself by talking about it, I simply said “shut up and be happy”. She later told me it was the best advice anyone ever gave her!  My message wasn’t cruel. I simply meant it was time to move on, pick yourself up and stop whining – in Nike parlance, “Just Do It”. Dad might have said “Suck it up”, Grandpa might have said “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, or (this really happened) my gay faith-healer friend would put his hand on your forehead and say “Get over it girlfriend”! The point is the outcome is under your control. It’s simply a decision to be happy, sad, angry or creative. The situation that led to your feelings may not have been under your control, but how you respond is totally under your control.

I had the honor of speaking to the Leadership MWV group last week, which made me feel good about our future in the valley. I shared my story of the day I graduated from being a reactor to being a responder. As a young and foolish reactor, when bad things happened, I would react passionately to express my displeasure – that’s a polite way to say yell, scream and generally pitch a fit until the problem gets fixed and I get my way. We all know people who do this entirely too often, and I was one of them. One day, perhaps at the time, the worst business day ever in the history of retail travel agencies, was the day the airlines cut commissions to travel agencies. I was President of a franchisor with thirty-five franchisees who, having just lost twenty percent of their revenue would be looking to me for guidance and solutions. It was the most sobering moment of my professional life thus far, as financially; at first glance we were ruined. We had all this business, not to mention 175 employees who would all be gone overnight if someone didn’t do something fast. We responded within minutes with instant and constant communication to keep everyone calm and to maintain a professional and congenial environment. We coordinated with our international team to pull together the best talent available to create our own unexpected strategy to not only survive, but to recover more than our loss within one quarter. It worked brilliantly. The success came, not only because of good ideas, which would not have been enough, but because of the trust previously built into the relationship and because of the choices made in how responses were carefully crafted and presented by cool heads.

Tough times make the best opportunities for great leaders. I don’t mean just for leading other people, but in leading your own life as well. Every sad thing that happens to us, or every downturn in our lives personally or economically, is an opportunity to find a silver lining and demonstrate our ability to make good choices. That’s the good news. The bad news is, this means we have to accept responsibility for the outcome of the bad situation, because it’s our response, not the problem itself that produces the outcome. That’s the hard part, because it is difficult to take blame for something caused by someone else.

Every human being has the responsibility of leadership. I believe anyone can lead regardless of their position or official authority. But, before we get serious about leading others we need to get serious about leading ourselves through our own thoughts, reactions, responses and outcomes in life. Shut up and be happy. Now go get what you want!

The Entreprenologist, The Conway Daily Sun
Jan 4, 2011
By Michael Kline

By early January, I suppose everyone in the service industry is a little tired. Hopefully, everyone is feeling good about their job or business. We had a decent retail season, followed by a snow storm just in the nick of time to make vacation week a whopping success. I’m guessing most ski areas posted excellent, if not record numbers, while restaurants and shops seemed busy too. What is there to not feel good about?

I am not blind to those I see suffering through job losses and continued unemployment, but for them I see hope for better times ahead. We’re fortunate to live in a beautiful place, with a relatively stable economy and unlimited potential for the hard worker who is willing to pay the price for success. The question is how do you define success and what exactly is the price?

My favorite definition of success I credit to Earl Nighingale “making steady progress toward a worthwhile goal”. Even while we focus on the journey, we still need a goal. Having what you want isn’t near as difficult as knowing what you want. Most people I talk to, have a difficult time articulating what it is they really want. I mean what they really, really want. If you had more money, more time, a bigger house, what is it that those things will bring you? If you want to make more money and have more time to enjoy your family with less stress, then I would say your goal is not to make more money, but to enjoy your family with less stress.  Making more money and more time is your chosen strategy – it is not your goal. If I could show you ways to enjoy your family with less stress, with less money, would that make you happy? You might start to panic and say you need the money anyway – then you need to re-identify your real goal. I’m not judging here, only saying you need to know what your real goal really is.

You see, most people cannot identify exactly what it is they really want. They just assume money is the answer. It does answer many problems, so how much do you need? Too many people spend all their time making the money, so there is no enjoyment of time with the family that was allegedly the original goal. I don’t think these folks lied about their intentions. It is not about being dishonest about the goal; it’s just not being thorough in understanding the goal and how to reach it.

If you are unhappy about what you lack in life, it isn’t that you can’t have it; it’s just that you haven’t paid the price. I’m sorry if your parents or government, or too much television misled you into thinking you are entitled without paying the price. That’s just not how it works. If you want to be successful, you need to first, know precisely what it is you want. Then find out what price you need to pay to have that. Then go pay that price. Perhaps the price you pay is years of long hours and hard work. (Been there, done that). Perhaps the price you pay is giving up the big salary and benefits in exchange for less stress, less money and more freedom. (Been there done that too). Stop thinking business goals are always about making more money. Work is about being of service to others, but you will be of better service to others if your work also serves your personal goals. It’s your life. So long as you are supporting yourself and being a responsible citizen, you need to set your goals without worrying about judgment from anyone else. Also, be careful you don’t confuse your personal goals with work goals or those of your employer or customers. When at work, be loyal to those paying your salary. If your customer’s goal is to make more money by using your services, then their goal is your goal. If your employer’s goal is to make more money, (as it always is and should be), then helping them make money is your work goal. I don’t think I can take hearing another food server declare “I hate tourists” – I bet that wasn’t disclosed during their hiring process! Speaking of goals, my goal is not to beat up on servers; they do very hard work and I understand it is easy to grow tired and start to blame, rather than thank the tourists who make our lifestyle here possible. I want every server to enjoy their work and the success it can bring them.

Success in three simple steps: Identify what you really want. Determine the price you have to pay to get it. If you still want it, then go pay the price. Given the price and the awareness that you have to pay that price, you may choose from only three paths. Do it, complain and live in misery, or change your mind about what it is you want. I hope 2011 is an amazing year full of progress toward your goals.

The Entreprenologist, The Conway Daily Sun
December 21, 2011
By Michael Kline

The one thing I’m quitting for New Year’s, is resolutions. In my experience, nothing has been a bigger waste of breath than making personal resolutions tied to the calendar year. I’ve found that making personal changes is most effective when tied to something more personal than the calendar. A better motivator might be a health challenge, or a major life change, losing a job, having a child, losing someone close to you, turning another decade older, or finally realizing how much you want to make a change.  At these points in our life, we can make a decision and a commitment to personal changes.

Business changes however, are tied to the calendar because business results are tied to the calendar. While some have a fiscal year ending at some other time of year, but for most of us, it coincides with the New Calendar year.  So New Year’s resolutions make sense for business.  We sometimes call it planning!  The truth is, the overwhelming majority of our small businesses do not have a written plan anyway, so obviously there are no changes to make in the plan for the New Year. There should be.

For those of you who haven’t been monitoring your books all along, it’s time to review our financial position at the end of the year, with critical eyes. It’s time (actually past time, but better late than never) to review marketing efforts, traffic, closing ratios, inventory, return on inventory, payroll, productivity, customer buying patterns… all the clues available to you to strategize for better results next year.

Let’s take inventory for example. How much inventory do you have? How much of it is old inventory that is not turning over like it should? What are you going to do about it?  While Christmas shopping at our local merchants, I found a piece of merchandise in a store in N. Conway that was at least five (yes, 5) years old – I know because I sold the item wholesale to the shop keeper over five years ago! I knew then it was a bad idea, but they insisted they could sell it. After all this time, it still sits on the shelf, at full retail!  Sell it at cost, or even below cost, so you can reinvest that money into new inventory that will sell! It’s amazing how many otherwise-intelligent business people will not let go of their need to make a profit on an item, thus keeping them from making a profit on their inventory in general!

Whether you work in the trades, professional services or hospitality, you have to worry about finding customers. So who were your best customers last year? Not the biggest, but the best – sometimes, our biggest customers are not the most profitable. What do your most profitable customers have in common?  How can you find more of them next year? What new technology exists that might help? Is your target audience on Twitter and Facebook? While analyzing payroll expense, (you are, aren’t you?) maybe you can find an employee to take on social media projects in slow times.  What’s that? To boost productivity, you banned the use of Facebook at work?  Perhaps requiring Facebook for five - twenty minutes a day to have an employee post and manage your business Facebook presence could be a better investment of down time.  Personally, I’ve bought ads for two of our stores on Facebook and have not gotten positive results, but I have made business contacts and made profitable relationships from Facebook.

What new things do you want to learn to improve results in 2011?  Do you get energized when you attend seminars?  Are there local classes being offered that might help? Have you considered “Leadership MWV” for yourself or a key employee? The leadership program put on by the MWV Chamber and the MWVEC expands our leadership pool in the valley while positioning you in the community in a positive and contributing way.

I’m all for dieting, exercising, quitting smoking and all the usual suspects, but you’ll do those things when you are ready to do them. The calendar, however, dictates that the new business year is starting with or without your motivation, and it’s your job to deal with it.  Now is the time to think about this year’s results and what you want to be different about results in 2011.  Your Entreprenologist can help you focus on your desired results and plan accordingly. I hope you have an amazing and prosperous New Year, filled with happiness and good health!

The Entreprenologist, The Conway Daily Sun
December 7, 2010
By Michael Kline

It occurs to me there might be some business value in debating holiday etiquette – is it wise for a business to wish a “Merry Christmas” to their customers? Most seem to think it’s smarter just to wish the much safer and more politically correct “Happy Holidays”. I’m not sure it was a corporate decision, or simply a trend of front-line staff being afraid to say the word “Christmas”. I don’t think I offended anyone when I wished a happy Hanukkah to our Jewish friends last week. I respect their beliefs and traditions, having been lucky enough to share in some of those celebrations with friends, I truly wish for them to enjoy their Hanukkah.

Being in NH, we don’t get the variety of non-Christian religions other areas get. In my stores, it’s up to each staff member, but I’m happy to have our staff wish all our customers, from all walks of life, a Merry Christmas, or any other specific positive wish they like. I never met a non-Christian who was offended by being wished a Merry Christmas. Most of the symbolic parts of the season, like Christmas Trees and gift-giving are traditions that have nothing to do with religion anyway, so I don’t think we’re having a religious discussion with making a wish, and anyone who finds offense in a good wish, probably finds offense in just about everything anyway. The holidays are stressful enough, without getting grief for wishing someone happiness.

For retail business owners of any belief, the season brings tidings of great joy and good cheer with black Friday, which has everything to do with commercial enterprises going into “the black” and making a profit for the rest of the year. This happens because of the tradition of gift-giving for Christmas, so regardless of beliefs, political correctness aside, there isn’t a business owner alive who doesn’t yearn for a very Merry Christmas season!

This business owner, wishes for the well-being of every entrepreneur who puts themselves out there, risks their own financial security, takes on all the grief, bureaucracy, risk and headaches of ownership. They expand our economy, create jobs, improve our community, support our non-profits, constantly get beat up by their suppliers, customers and competitors alike, all in the hope of eeking out a decent living while putting their talent to good use. Whatever the word god or God means to you, God bless you, and I hope lots of people are spending good money with you this Christmas season.

The Entreprenologist, Conway Daily Sun
November 15, 2010
By Michael Kline

In recent weeks, I’ve been teaching seminars on sales and customer service. Because we cover both of these topics with a different twist than most expect, a common thread quickly becomes apparent to students - that having the proper intention in your dealings changes everything. I don’t mean to start a debate between intentions and results. I believe results are paramount, but only when results are defined to include everyone involved being properly considered in the process. Once the goal is righteous, results are everything. In typical customer service or sales training, or even in supervisory skills training, techniques, rather than a character based approach are usually taught to get what you want. When dealing with people, if your intent is to manipulate, control, defeat, etc., then all the training and scripting in the world won’t help achieve lasting results. If your intention is to be of service, that intention shines through more often than not, and desired results are achieved. We need to identify all our internal and external customer sets – we serve our suppliers, our employees, our regular clients and customers, and the community as a whole. Once we identify the importance of treating our suppliers and our employees as if they were customers, we can be of service to them, and grow the relationship into a win/win proposition.

Next week, I’ll be teaching supervisory skills and I expect a similar thread to guide our lessons. To simplify, ask the question “Am I Being Kind?”  Not a push-over, but kind. Dealing with any staff, difficult people or otherwise, requires strong but kind communication skills. Last week we talked about aggressive communication vs. assertive communication. Aggressive is not kind. Often, being passive is where many people go to avoid conflict or being rude. However, passive too often becomes passive-aggressive in the end. Being passive is not fair to you, becoming passive-aggressive is not fair to others. Asserting your position in a professional and polite manner is the kindest and most effective path to making everyone happy, or at least accepting an honest position in whatever you are discussing. So, assertive communication is always the goal. It seems that we can sum up years of lessons with “Be Kind”.

All this talk about kindness is inspired by the book “Am I Being Kind” by Michael Chase of The Kindness Center. I was very proud to be involved in bringing Michael Chase to Kennett High School yesterday. Two local businesses, Soyfire Candle and The Met Coffeehouse, along with the non-profit Evergreen Institute for Wellness felt strongly enough about the kindness issue to pay to bring “The Kindness Guy” to address our community’s youth. Like every other issue we face, nothing happens until someone takes action. I’m always telling business clients to stop complaining and get to work, so let’s stop complaining about what “they” should do go about getting something done. As for our students, these are our future entrepreneurs, employees and employers, our future teachers, selectmen, volunteers and parents. As such, our investment in them and their minds is probably the wisest investment we can make in our community.  Kindness should be a part of that curriculum.

In fact, many life choices for all of us at any age deal with the kindness issue. I hope we can launch a community wide kindness movement in the valley.  All our business goals exist to support some other bigger goal, which exists to support ultimately, the goal of what makes us happy. The shortest route to happiness is kindness. Let’s put that in our school’s curriculum and in our staff meetings, strategic planning sessions, Employee Handbooks and training programs.

The Entreprenologist, Conway Daily Sun
November 1, 2010
by Michael Kline

I talk with a lot of fellow business owners and managers about everything from sales trends to finding qualified help. I feel their joys and their pains, I understand the feelings only they can have; the feelings you can’t fully appreciate until you’ve been there. I also talk to a lot of employees because I learn things. It turns out there is much to be learned from the nice lady at the grocery store, agents at the insurance company, servers, cashiers, bank tellers, and middle managers of any industry. I learned that their attitude is often a result of the environment created by management. Management meanwhile, thinks labor just doesn’t care about their work. From the worker’s point of view, the employer doesn’t care much about the worker. Let’s see if we can find some middle ground.

We do not want a compromise – a compromise is when no one gets what they want. Rather, we want a solution that works for everyone. Generally speaking, I don’t think employers really want workers to work harder or longer than they do, or to work for less money or benefits, or to do anything disagreeable, so long as they get the desired results of the relationship. Meanwhile, employees I talk to, (and those surveyed in more sophisticated studies), value a pleasant work environment over money or other benefits. So, it seems like a simple solution – create a pleasant work environment, get more productivity and everyone is happy! I’m not so naïve as to think it’s that easy; it is not.

It is that simple, and we shouldn’t confuse simple with easy. This desired environment is possible however, and it’s far less expensive than the alternatives of high turnover or higher pay and benefits that won’t achieve the results anyway. Create a positive and pleasant environment where doing things well becomes a way of life and the higher productivity will allow you to provide higher pay and benefits -everyone wins. To make this happen, we need much more than we can cover in one article. We need goals and a sense of mission. We need personal buy-in from all the stakeholders. We need clearly defined roles and systems so everyone knows what they’re doing and why. No less important, but sometimes easier to establish, we need a customer service attitude that makes sense and we need a supervisory style that makes sense, which is why I’m covering these topics in my next two seminars. We need staff to be trained in these areas, and we need owners and experienced managers to do the training as well, if only to get focused and to create a new system for their team.

Next, we need a caring culture of respect, personal and professional growth and enrichment. Do you help your employees become better at their jobs and better at getting more out of life? Incentives sound great, but be careful you don’t confuse rewarding good behavior with giving preferential treatment to “pet” staff, while expecting the same results from everyone else. When you offer training, have regular productive meetings, personal development opportunities, etc., you get and keep the most productive staff.

Of course, you can’t just throw out a list of programs without actually being and living the whole package – it doesn’t work without complete integrity. If you are always honest and fair with your suppliers, customers and staff, you will get and keep better staff. Now, everyone thinks they are honest and fair, but I’ve learned that like humor and common sense, everyone thinks they have it! Some owners or managers won’t point out being under-charged by a vendor, but has a fit if they are over-charged. Is this unethical? What does that tell your employees they should do with their overage in the cash drawer? Some people think it is okay to inflate an insurance claim to cover their deductable, or take a little cash to avoid paying taxes; how many ways do you tell your staff (or your employer) you are at least to some degree, a cheat, a thief, a liar and a fraud while expecting them to treat you with respect and take care of you? To the degree we demonstrate integrity, fairness, honesty, work ethic, respect, etc. we can expect reciprocation from our staff or employer.

So how do we pull it all together; how do we create this magical environment where doing things well is just a way of life? You just start. There’s no single point of entry that’s necessarily best, just jump in and start. It’s a journey, after all, and a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I’ve created our current seminar series to be just one possible starting point, but mostly, I just want you to start.