It didn’t start out this way. 

When you first started your business you had a dream, it was exciting…maybe even fun!  Sure there was a lot of hard work, but you can still remember the thrill of your first clients, cashing your first check and the quiet satisfaction of delivering on a job well done.  Unfortunately that seems like a long time ago.  Now you feel more like a caged animal…trapped by a business that demands all of your time and energy and doesn’t give much back in return.

You’re not alone – according to a recent study, only 40% of small business owners took a vacation last year – some because of lack of money, but many of them because they can’t physically be away from their business for any length of time!  You’re past the point when running harder means you go farther and faster – now running faster only makes the wheel in the cage spin harder!

Are you a slave to your business?  Here are some surefire ways to tell and more importantly what it takes to escape that slavery.

How to tell when you’re officially ‘trapped’

Never Ending Long Hours – As a business owner, you’re going to work hard, but you’re at least a couple years into it and the hours are getting worse with no signs of relief.

Gerbil Wheel Syndrome – Running harder doesn’t cause a lift in the business…or if you have to run just to maintain what you’ve got.

Touch Everything – Your business requires you personally to make every significant decision…nothing gets done without you involved,

No Practical Plan Forward – Planning on the lottery, or landing a huge and unrealistic client to break you out of the rut?  You spend all your time fighting the day to day fires without a strategic plan.

Stuck with Status Quo – You’ve stopped asking ‘what if’, you’re not proactively looking for better ideas…you hear yourself saying defensively “That’s how we’ve always done things”

There are lots of other potential symptoms but in general it can be summed up as ‘a strong feeling that you’re out of choices’…you know what you’ve got isn’t working but there’s no real options and the only thing to do is keep working harder and start it all over again tomorrow.

What can you do about it?

The good news is that most businesses can be saved – but you’ve got to break the cycle if you want different results – here are some ideas of where you can get started on making a change!

1. Get a candid review of your business model.

A big part of the problem may be the fundamental design of the business – does your business scale?  Are you strictly trading your time for money?  Can you get any leverage…with other people’s time or can you develop other streams of revenue?

It may be difficult for you to really look at your business in an honest way – enlist a business savvy friend (maybe even a Business Coach?) and have them give you some perspective.

2. Get clear on where you’re going

Assuming your current situation is NOT what you really want, then you must take the time to paint a better picture of the future.  Try projecting out 3 years to a future that’s attractive to you.  How are you spending your time in the business?  What’s the revenue and profitability like?  What’s your client base?  What’s different from today?  Without a clear picture / goal there’s no way to move in the right direction.

3. Get clear on your strengths

Right now you’re probably doing everything…or at least involved in everything.  However if you want to break free, you’ll need to focus on your strengths and let other people do things that aren’t a strength or that you don’t like doing!  The first step is to really understand where your talents are best used in this great business of the future that you’re planning.

4. Lay out an Organizational Accountability Chart

This is more than just an org chart.  Develop a fairly simple (but complete) breakdown of all the roles and responsibilities in your business and outline who owns those boxes on the chart.  Right now, your name is probably in most places…but that becomes a great starting point for planning what things could look like in the future.  Start with today, but also look at the next phase…what could you step away from that would free up your time and focus?

If you’re interested in learning more about this idea (and how to do it) – Contact us for a short whitepaper on creating this kind of planning tool.

5. Identify Opportunities to automate, systematize and delegate

In addition to your roles and responsibilities, you also need to build an inventory of your major business processes (the things you do to run your business).  From that inventory, which of those processes take up a big chunk of time or is painful? 

Are you spending 2-3 days a month on bookkeeping and invoicing your clients?  How could you improve that process?  Could you hire someone to do it for you?  (I know money is an issue, but if you had 2 extra days to prospect and sell…I’m pretty sure you’d bring in more revenue).

Identify the top 2 or 3 process candidates and figure out what it would take to streamline them or get them off your plate.

6. Take action…focused, planned and systematic action to make things better

Here’s the part where things generally fall apart.  Things are painful enough to drive you to come up with some projects, some initiatives that you know would help in the long run, but you can’t find the time or the focus to actually get them done!  Or maybe you just don’t know where to start or how to get started.  By the way – this is absolutely what Coaching is best at…helping you get things done.  The top recommendation is to get some help to make things happen.  However If you need to do it yourself, then lay out a reasonable plan, allocate time every week to move that plan forward, find a way to stay accountable and step by step you will make progress.

What do you need to do?

The business closure rate in the US is right around 50% within the first 4 years of being in business.  Most of the businesses that shut down had viable products and services, many were making money and most had business owners who were competent.  But they couldn’t figure out how to stop being a slave to their business! And without that breakthrough they eventually had to throw the towel in…it’s not a sustainable approach in the long run. 

You can break the cycle for your business…but you have to be ready to make some changes.

What about you?  Do you own your business or is it owning you?  I’d love to hear your thoughts on this issue – drop me a line or comment below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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Do you ever get that feeling that you’re just beaten down…that it’s too hot and nothing really matters?   There are times (especially after you make the mistake of watching the news) when it seems there’s nothing out there but bad things, people struggling and an endless parade of gray.

Well it’s time to perk up because I’ve got 3 things to inspire you:

• Bookbinding
• Shoes
• Unicorns!

It may not sound like an inspirational list, but keep reading and I think you’ll find something to get you moving!

Bookbinding as a hot new business!

There are plenty of stories out these days about businesses failing and industries going bankrupt, which makes it especially refreshing to hear about a skyrocketing success that leverages techniques that have been around for centuries and technology that’s been around for decades.

The company is called DodoCase and currently their sole product is a hand made case for an iPad.  Priced starting at $60, more than 60,000 cases were sold in the first few months after the release of the iPad, with much bigger numbers planned (the iPad is projected to sell 17 Million units in the first year of production). 

DodoCase uses a local San Francisco bookbinding company to create the custom cases – saving a dying and declining business (and in fact tripling their headcount with more to come).  Check out this great story about Dodocase – the winner of the Shopify business contest. 

What simple product do people want and need that you could deliver?

Shoes and a totally different business model

Toms Shoes started back in 2006 – you might have heard of them.  The founder Blake Mycoskie was inspired on a trip to Argentina where he encountered lots of children who didn’t have shoes.  That trip inspired the company’s very straightforward premise:

With every pair of TOMS shoes you purchase, TOMS will give a pair of new shoes to a child in need.  One for One.

The idea of helping people out is pretty inspirational – but even more amazing is the business model Mycoskie is using to help  those people out; a for profit, socially conscious business.  The company isn’t looking for a handout, they won’t be signing up for grant money, but they have a bigger purpose beyond just making money…and that’s making a huge difference!

As Mycoskie puts it, there are some great benefits to having such a clear and unselfish value statement:  “First, consumers are now conscious about where they put their dollars. A product like TOMS that gives to others is appealing to people more than ever.”  Another major benefit is the attraction of well above average employees who are willing to work for less than average pay.  Read more in this article from Success magazine.

What core values does your company stand on and how does it impact your business?

It’s so fluffy!  Inspiration from a unicorn.

The technology behind movies continues to be amazing, but what’s even better is when the technology takes a back seat to a creative story and great writing (and acting). 

Sometimes you need to find your inspiration in the little things that are around you – comedian Louis CK had a great interview with Conan O’Brien a while back where he talks about how Everything is amazing and nobody is happy.  We definitely take things for granted these days – if we took the time to really look around at our day to day things (like 3D animated movies) we would find a lot to be inspired by.

The reality is that we’re lucky to live at a time when amazing and creative things are created almost every day.  One of the more recent examples of inspirational creativity is the movie Despicable Me released to theaters just a few weeks ago. 

If you haven’t seen it yet, make the time to catch it in the theaters (3D is good, but you’ll enjoy it just as much in plain old 2D).  The animation is great, but what really stands out are the characters and the overall premise. 

It’s a story about Gru who’s gunning to be the most famous super-villain of all time.  He’s had some success so far, he has his own army of minions and he has a rival arch-nemesis, but he just hasn’t hit the big-time yet.

In a desperate contest to steal the moon and become famous – Gru ends up taking in 3 orphans that ultimately end up melting his heart.  It’s got a lot of style, it’s very funny and everyone in the family will enjoy it – for your final bit of inspiration, go see Despicable Me.

What’s inspired you lately?  Share your thoughts in the comments below – I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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"You are the same today as you’ll be in five years except for two things, the books you read and the people you meet."  – Charlie ‘Tremendous’ Jones

I really like this quote from Charlie Jones.  I believe most people want to grow, want to learn and want to evolve into a better person, but just wanting something doesn’t make it happen, you have to learn new things, take new actions and meet new people in order to really become something more than you are today.

As a business owner or professional today – you are really busy!  No doubt about it.  However if you don’t make the time to learn new things or think about how you can change…you’re going to have a hard time getting ahead.

The good news is there are some great resources out there that can help you out of this conundrum.

Buy and Read books

The first resource is 800CEORead – an online only book store and ‘think tank’ of sorts.  They only deal with business books and they do a lot of research and review of everything that’s out there, so hopefully you can find something that fits your situation faster than you might by just staring at the aisles in the library or bookstore.

The guys behind this wrote ‘100 Best Business Books of All Time’ so they know what they’re doing and they live and breathe business books – which should give you a good shortcut when it comes to deciding where to focus your time.

They also have some pretty good deals in terms of pricing and bulk discounts.  If you find a book that all of your clients or employees should read, they can customize your bulk order in a lot of different ways (which might make a pretty cool gift).

Buy and Listen to books

The second resource is Audible.com.  I will admit that until last year I was fairly against anything other than the written page.  I had listened to books on long car trips, but for business books I didn’t really see it as a viable alternative plus I like having the bound book in my hands…!

However as I’ve continued to get busier and have clients who are farther away, I’ve found listening to business books a great way to stay caught up on my reading list while I’m driving around town or sometimes even at the gym.  I still think hard copies are better…and I often find myself buying or wanting to buy a hard copy when I find a book I really liked listening to, but in terms of convenience and making good use of my time – Audible gives you a great alternative.

One caveat on listening to business books – they’re not all created the same.  If a book tends to be dry or overly detailed, it’s going to be much, much worse to listen to.  The best choices are those books that have a story to them (The Go-Giver was a great choice to listen to) and have some personality.

How much do you read business books?  Have you found other great ways to find (and consume) new ideas?  I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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Do you know what you’re subconsciously telling people about your business?  Are you sending messages that don’t match up with the impression that you’d like to send (assuming that you know what that is)?

The thing is that you and your employees are constantly sending out messages whether you mean to or not.  Have you ever been to a retail store where one of the clerks was rude to you or someone else close enough for you to overhear?  What about a restaurant where they don’t clean off the tables before they seat you?  Or maybe it’s something small like forgetting to respond to an email from a prospect.  Any one of those is likely to cost you a customer.

What messages are you sending about your business?

The good news is that you have control over the messages being sent.  It’s all about being consciously intentional.

Jay Conrad Levinson – the author of Guerrilla Marketing defines the first competency of a strong Guerrilla Marketer as Intentionality:

I see every contact with my customers and prospects as marketing.
My words, attitudes and actions are all intentional and based on
my marketing goals.

There are two aspects of being consciously intentional – the first one is that you need to have a clear idea of what it is you want to project.  What message do you want to send to people?  It needs to be genuine and it should be something that elevates you and your company when it comes to your target market.  Do you want to be professional?  An expert?  Friendly?  Helpful?  Warm?  Cheerful?  This is your chance to intentionally share your company’s timeless core values with everyone you come in contact with.

The second aspect is that you have to be constantly aware – train yourself to always be purposeful on the conscious and unconscious messages  you’re sending.  Here are a couple of areas to think about:

• How are you or your employees dressed?  Is it projecting the image that you want?

• What about body language, attitude, eye contact?  It may seem small, but are you smiling when you see people?

• How do you act?  Are you polite…to everyone, including the waiter!  Are you always ethical?  What kind of language do you use?

• How about your written communication?  Is everything spelled correctly?  Have you proofed your marketing materials for typos?

All of this may seem overly nit-picky, but think about the people that you choose to do business with (or better yet, someone that you’ve chosen not to do business with).  Did they portray themselves in a negative way somehow?  It’s not fair, but people are innately judgmental and they will react to an unintentional slip-up.

Are you intentionally marketing yourself with everything you do?  What messages are you sending and are you aware of how you’re sending them?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on intentionality – share your comments below.

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

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So I had the ‘opportunity’ to go to the dentist this week.  It’s not my favorite thing to do, although luckily there were no issues!

On this trip I distracted myself from the scraping and polishing by observing how they ran their operation.  Maybe  a lot of dentists are this way these days (I’ve been going to the same one for quite a while) – but they have things running like a well oiled machine.

It got me to thinking – what could other business owners learn from this?

photo by azrainman

Although it’s a medical treatment, there are a lot of similarities with other kinds of businesses.  They have customers who have an issue, they create the solution using fixed resources and generate revenue based on their team’s efforts.

What could you learn from my dentist?  Let’s take a look:

Build the schedule

It all starts with efficiently building a schedule.  Because they’ve been doing this for quite a while, they know what their capacity and throughput is.  They know how many slots they have available each day.  To make it work, they do a great job of committing clients to their next appointment before they leave the building – letting them build the schedule out 3 to 6 months in advance.

They also do a good job of maintaining that schedule.  You can expect that you’ll get at least 2 or 3 calls, starting as early as 2 weeks ahead of your scheduled appointment (along with a reminder card) to make sure you know and recommit to your scheduled time.

What could you learn?

If possible come up with a clear, tested results of how long and how much effort it takes to ‘do the work’.  Estimates are always going to have some guesswork, but you should be reviewing and improving them all the time.

Schedule the work as efficiently as possible to maximize profitability.

Efficiently line things up and follow through up front to minimize wasted efforts / no-shows.

What could they do better?

My only thought for improvement is to use automated electronic / email reminders instead of the post cards (or maybe instead of the phone calls).

Work the System

Once you get to the office it’s a pretty impressive scenario.  They have 4 levels of staff members – the first level checks you in and gets the ball rolling (and checks you out at the end).  The second level welcomes you, reviews the file, sets everything up at the chair and does some basic setup.

The third level – the hygienists come in to clean the teeth and that’s all they do.  The whole process is built around making sure the hygienists are very focused and productive.

The hygienists even have a step in the process to up sell a fluoride treatment or a whitening treatment (pending their observation of the teeth).

Finally – the dentists are there to do the final walkthrough, answer questions and make sure you are officially ‘checked’ at their superior skill level.

What could you learn?

Create and use strategic processes!  I know of very few businesses that have anywhere near the documented and executed operational processes my dentist office is using.  It’s clear they have strategically created and tweaked every step of the maintenance visit process (which is the bulk of their work).

Maximize productivity by having people focus only on their strengths.  The dentist doesn’t answer the phone or run the credit cards.  The hygienists don’t spend any time making you feel welcome or looking at paper work.  Everyone has a strength and a focus and that’s all they do!

What could they do better?

Not much – although they are incredibly efficient, there’s nothing interesting or unusual that they do….although I suppose excellent operations is probably unusual enough by itself.

Get the Money!

Finally at checkout they do a great job of making it easy to pay them and make sure that everything gets submitted the way it’s supposed to.  If you pay in full at checkout you get a 10% discount, encouraging better cash flow and fewer hassles.

They also encourage a referral by giving out a card that gives the new patient some free up front services.

What could you learn?

Make sure you get paid!  I don’t know how many people pay in full at check out, but I bet it’s a lot more than might do it without the discount.  Would they like the additional revenue?  Maybe, but I bet they’ve built their pricing so that it accounts for the discount.

Make it easy!  They understand that the insurance piece is a headache at best for  people, so they have figured out how to totally remove it from the customer’s plate.

Ask for referrals!  The best time to ask is when your clients are happy with what you’ve done.

What could they do better?

The referral card is a good idea, but the person giving the referral doesn’t have any incentive to pass the card along.  They should consider giving both the current customer and the new customer some sort of benefit (especially considering the lifetime value of a new customer!).

Summary

As far as I know, they don’t really do any marketing other than the referral piece – likely because they are near the maximum capacity with the space and number of dentists they have.

The kicker is they typically only work 3 or 4 days a week (3 for ‘regular’ visits) and even though those are long days, they still enjoy significant time off every week and a high level of revenue and profit – primarily because they’ve created the systems and hired the right people to make it all work like a well oiled machine!

Is your dentist this efficient?  What could you do in your business to learn from this example?  I’d love to hear thoughts – share them in the comments below!  (And if you need a new dentist in Kansas City, drop me a line – I have a referral card for you!).

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

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