Zane Safrit

Business Execution for Results: A Review

If you lead a small to medium-sized business you constantly seek new solutions, especially ones that offer steps you can take today to see results building over time but starting today.  Here’s your solution.

I'm an avid reader, always have been. I've read a lot of business books and I’ve led a small business. I recommend you read Business Execution for Results: A Practical Guide for Leaders of Small to Mid-Sized Firms. It is a very, very good book, among the best, most usable business books I’ve read.

As a writer, he does things that make the reading very pleasant, very inspiring, very engaging. Very good.

He offers personal stories, anecdotes, little clips. They’re genuine, sincere, well-organized to capture your attention, engage you in the story that illustrates the next lesson. I found myself thinking...I can relate...I am relating....I see, feel, remember this personally.  And Stephen’s writing is very crisp, very concise in taking you from these stories to the principle with each chapter...and as important to the steps you’re going to take to generate the results you want to see. No hitch in the reading flow. VERY nice.

I loved the beginning where he shares the story of  his 5-year plan to become a champion body-builder. Pow! Who does not relate to that story? Ok, maybe we're not body-builders, but everyone relates to a goal they set when they were young and how they went out and accomplished it. They, we, forgot how to do that. We forgot how, while it all flowed seamlessly, effortlessly, we attributed it to the luck of youth or its ignorance; we didn't know better. But those thoughts are irrelevant now as we have Stephen and his book to show us, remind us, how we can create and use that same process...methodically. Diligently. For our business.

Stephen uses the word ‘you’ frequently. Too many authors abuse the word ‘I’ or forget there’s a reader involved in their book. Using ‘you’ as often as he does shows he understands you, the reader and your needs and why you’re reading this book. That’s the sign of not only a good writer, but a good leader. Stephen’s both.

And for small to medium-sized business executives, who better to learn from than a peer, one who’s walked more than a few miles of their same journey and can point out the fastest path to the goals they share and that Stephen’s accomplished throughout his career.

You’re busy; I understand. Stop reading my review and buy his book.

Can You Solve Your Culture Conflict?

The USDA is the same organization that designates what food is officially organic and how much untreated animal manure is too much for our open waterways. Well, to date, they haven't cried Uncle or Stop or issue standards on how much is too much; we'll keep waiting.

That's quite a range. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote:

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

But, can it be said that the FDA has a first-rate intelligence when it accommodates two opposing principles: approving food as 100% organic while allowing twice as much untreated manure to enter the open waterway from the CAFO’d hogs in one Iowa county as the sewage from the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area. (Iowa has 99 counties.) Link.

While an first-rate intelligence can hold two opposing thoughts, can a consumer embrace the USDA as a trusted source for food safety?

What's all this got to do with your business?

• Where's your culture conflict?
• Where is your culture's bi-polar duality expressed in a dysfunctional manner in the markeplace?
• Where do you say one thing, on your website, and execute another in your rules and tactics?
• Where in your employee engagement do you say 'we love you' or 'you're the most important part of our success 'and then silence or ignore their suggestions or needs?

As a leader you're very likely insulated by org chart and careers from this cognitive dissonance of your company's culture conflict. It happens; it's not personal. We all are constantly re-defining ourselves as we move through life. And since companies are people, too, my friend, companies are re-defining their brand, their culture, their identity.

Joss Whedon* offered this insight at a recent commencement address he gave:

You have, which is a rare thing, that ability and the responsibility to listen to the dissent in yourself, to at least give it the floor, because it is the key — not only to consciousness, but to real growth. To accept duality is to earn identity. And identity is something that you are constantly earning. It is not just who you are. It is a process that you must be active in.

This contradiction, and this tension … it never goes away. And if you think that achieving something, if you think that solving something, if you think a career or a relationship will quiet that voice, it will not.

Every company at one time was personal. Very personal. Every company was built on relationships. And then bureaucracy and rules, departments and titles, creeped in. ( Some of those rules and titles may prefer to handle dissent with a different approach. Rule it out, discourage it, punish its advocates. Ask GM how that approach worked.)

Now you may not even know the name of your most recent hire. It may be months or years since you spoke to a customer, one on one. That's very different than reading a report, even if it's a report of their collective or individual Net Promoter Scores.That's very different than considering personas, too.

That's where the culture conflict arises. In that process, that transition, from a culture of relationships, of knowing and experiencing, of passion, of looking in the eye honesty to one of distanced and nuanced reports, of territories and postures, saying what is thought to be right....for some other audience, for some other reason...you (the corporate and personal 'you') stopped listening to the dissent, to the dissenters and disruptors in yourself (corporate and personal selves).

Somewhere along the line the USDA lost sight of its purpose to protect our  food supply. Its big now. Vast and anonymous. Reports and procedures and unknown decision-makers for unknown, unspoken stakeholders. No one's listening to...dissent. Sound familiar?

What if Tom Vilsack, the head of the USDA and former Governor of Iowa, stopped reading reports and making speeches to Chambers of Commerce, left his/her smart phone turned off. What if he went out to a grocery store and met with the ultimate customer of the USDA: shoppers. Families and kids, grandparent and parents. What if he asked them:

• Do you feel safer?
• Are we helping you make better choices for the health of your family?
• What can we do better?

But for you, what if you walked out of your office, sat on a park bench and called a customer?

• What if you asked the three questions of the Net Promoter Score? Then you could hear the customer's voice as they answered?

What if you just asked them:

• How do we make your life better, easier, simpler, happier?
• Do we?
• What can we do better?

Now. What if you did that with your employees? I don't mean just your direct reports. I mean the newest hire. What if you sat down and asked that person:

• What do you hope to achieve here?
• What could you achieve?
• What would you need to achieve that?
• What stands in your way?
• Where's our culture conflict? Where's the gap between our promise and our delivery?

What if you made this a regular habit? Walked outside that box you've created.

What if you began to reconcile your company's culture now with what it had been, back when it was exciting and fun and crazy and you were growing?

What if?

They Don't Need Our Permission. You Need Theirs.

Customers.

They don't need our permission to peruse our website, comparing and contrasting ours with...our competitors.

Neither do our prospects.

Now with smartphones, tablets, desktops, laptops they can do this 24 x 7. Of course, they, we all, did this via word-of-mouth from the time there were two customers who compared and contrasted...fruit, snakes, size and speed of gazelles, elephants, whales...vs us.

I was reminded of this obvious, but often and conveniently overlooked, reality last week. Over lunch with a friend from a long lost company, we caught up on our lives and jobs, successes and failures and entertaining parts of our lives. We revisited the time our Sales VP was angry at a prospect.

He should have had that conversation without us. He shouldn' have made that decision on his own....without talking to us first.

That decision was to buy our competitor's product that was priced 70% cheaper - that was easier to find on their website, that was explained in clearer terms. We both remembered being barely able to stifle a laugh, a guffaw, a SERIOUSLY? long enough to find another job.

Needless to say, but I'll say it anyway, we lost that one. We lost a lot more, too. 10 times as many, I bet, from prospects who never bothered to tell us.

We lost customers, too, because they did their own research, without asking our permission, and discovered the same. They didn't need our permission to make a decision in their best interests with the information we gave them.

Quite frankly, we gave them permission, even opening the door for them, with our out-of-date prices, poorly designed website and our leadership's arrogance.

And, we - all the employees, did our own research and realized management was not listening, would not listen and never would listen. We made our own decisions and left.

Bottomline? They don't need your permission. You need theirs.

Radio Guest: William Seidman, CEO of @Cerebyte

Dr. Seidman is a recognized expert on how to develop and sustain high performing organizations. In particular, Dr. Seidman is renowned for understanding the processes required to discover and use expert wisdom to create extraordinary organizational performance.

Dr. Seidman’s received his doctorate from Stanford where he spent eight years studying management decision-making. As part of his doctoral dissertation, he developed a groundbreaking technique for analyzing management decision-making. The technique is the core of Strategy to Action methodology and has been recognized by KMWorld, The Innovation Center, IDC and others.

Dr. Seidman is CEO & co-founder of Cerebyte, which gives organizations the ability and the confidence to dramatically improve their performance. Their pioneering technology, based on the latest science of how we think and learn, enables them to quickly capture top performers' "secret sauce" and raise the performance of everyone else to that same high level. Their solution has been adopted by companies such as Intel, Jack in the Box, American Family Insurance, Nike to name a few.

Aligning with the latest research in positive deviance, fair process, neuroscience and mass customization, their solution makes it possible to quickly capture your top performers' expert knowledge, approach and values, and then systematically help everyone else apply them in theit work.

 And he is the co-author of Strategy to Action in 10 Days: Creating High Performance Organizations.

From his website:

Strategy to Action provides a groundbreaking approach that quickly infuses any organization with the skills, attitudes, behaviors and culture vital to extraordinary performance. This practical, step-by-step approach guides readers to create a highly predicable, scalable and engaging environment that will have everyone in the organization performing like a superstar.

After reading it, understanding his principles and his methodology and as important the science behind it...I would have to agree:

This practical, step-by-step approach guides readers to create a highly predicable, scalable and engaging environment that will have everyone in the organization performing like a superstar.

Dr. Seidman reached out directly to me on Twitter which is a positive deviance from the norm of CEOs and founders who remain reluctant to embrace Twitter. He’s open, clear, passionate and brings a scientific solution to transforming everyone into organizational stars.

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[NOTE: Sometimes I am sent author's draft copies, pre-release copies of books yet to be published or published books authors and their publishers and publicists. If I like them, I invite them to be a guest on this show. Sometimes, they agree; sometimes they don't. 

If they do, I transcribe our conversation and publish them as posts, either in their entirety and/or as excerpts: See Radio Show Highlights,  What Are You Reading and Solutions for President Obama. Sometimes, I write a review of their book. My payments are the book and the conversation. ]

Peter Sheahan, What Are You Reading?

Peter Sheahan is founder and CEO of ChangeLabs™, a global consultancy delivering large-scale behavioral change projects for clients such as Apple and IBM, Peter Sheahan has worked with some of the world’s leading brands in the area of innovation and change.

He joined us to talk about his latest, maybe greatest, book: Making It Happen: Turning Good Ideas into Great Results.

You can listen at this link. You can read highlights from our conversation here.

Peter's a leader. It made sense, then, to ask him:

Readers are leaders. Jim Rohn says that, I just quote him. You're a leader. What are you reading these days?

And he answered:

I’ve given up kinda reading the really general books. I’m much more into reading the very deep, very narrow, highly-researched pieces of work.

The best book I‘ve read lately is a book called Where Good Ideas Come From. It deals with a fascinating exploration of how idea generation, like rally breakthrough innovations, really mimics evolution in nature.

Even though my world is about once you’ve got a good idea, a crucial part of my work is helping people come up with ideas as well.

I’m reading a lot of stuff about innovation and execution.

I really do believe it’s not about talking a big game; it’s about execution and getting things done. I’m reading anything that helps companies develop cultures, processes, systems that create a culture of execution.

For me now it’s really about tactics and how to get things done.

**********

Leaders are readers.

That is how you create a culture of learning as Gary Harpst talked about in an earlier show. That culture of learning is critical if you want to continually learn new tools and resources and skills and master more talents. That is how you discover new solutions for the new challenges that your growth will bring.

That is also how you develop a culture of leaders. Learners are leaders. Reading is one way you learn. Reading what leaders read is one way you accelerate that learning, accelerate that leading for yourself and your company.

3 Questions to Drive Curiosity...Again and Again

I spoke with Josh Linkner recently. You can listen to our conversation here.

Josh Linkner is on a mission. His mission is to make the world more creative.

He's written a fabulous manual to do just that: Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity.

Josh is the Founder, Chairman and former CEO of the largest interactive promotion agency in the world, ePrize. Josh led the firm from inception to being ranked the #1 fastest growing and #3 overall promotion agency by PROMO Magazine.

Recently, Josh launched the venture capital firm Detroit Venture Partners,actively investing in early-stage techn companies looking to rebuild the Detroit region through entrepreneurship.

During one of his great answers he talked about the 3 questions that drive curiosity again and again. He said:

The way to drive curiosity is asking these questions again and again and again:

• Why?
• What if?
• Why not?

Well, that is nice. You might think that now. Who cares about driving curiosity in a business, right?

Here is a good reason. Again, quoting Josh:

If you ask those constantly it forces you to challenge conventional wisdom.

It forces you to attack the status quo and refuse to accept things as they are on the surface. It forces you to examine the possibilities of what could be.

Aha. Now we get somewhere. What could be.

Again....why does that matter? Business deals with ...what is. Right?

Here is the home-run pitch:

And even in the most stifling bureaucracies today, they were founded on curiosity and innovation. They didn’t get on the map by being bureaucratic. They got on the map by being innovative. Unfortunately, though as most companies grow they tend to loose that heritage of innovation and curiosity. That’s what we need more than ever in today’s business world.

A heritage of innovation and curiosity. That is what is needed now than ever in today’s business world.

So, let me ask the question:  

Why? To create the ideas that need the small businesses that create the new jobs that drive our economy out of this rut.

Why not? Why not encourage companies to educate and train their stakeholders to ask these questions?

What if...all companies, and schools, encouraged their members to ask these questions?

We would create a sustainable heritage of innovation and curiosity...that's why.

A Secret Strategy to Increase Profits by 40%

Shhh. I want to share a secret business strategy that less than 1/3 of all companies either know about or can execute.

Don't tell anybody. This is a secret. It's a secret strategy. This secret strategy could:

* increase your profits on average by 40%

* increase customer loyalty by 70%

* decrease employee turnover by 70%

Looking at those stats, I see signs this secret strategy will increase your cash-flows, too. Why?

• Lower employee turnover means lower hiring and training costs.
• Increased customer loyalty means higher rates of repeat purchases, more referrals, more upsells.
• More referrals means the need for less advertising costs. Why advertise for strangers when your customers refer their friends?

What's this secret strategy?

Creating fully engaged employees. It will create a secret energy source for your brand, according to some research from Gallup that's discussed in a post by Eric Brody on his blog, Healthy Conversations:

In a recent article on MarketingProfs, Gallup research of 300,000 businesses indicated that 75-80% of employees are achieving much less and feeling far less enthusiastic about their work than they could be. If all your employees were “fully engaged,” Gallup reported, your customers would be 70% more loyal, your turnover would drop by 70%, and your profits would jump 40%. Last, Gallup found that great employees also tend to engender “passionate” customers.

Putting aside the fun with writing this post, I am serious this is a secret strategy. It must be. Otherwise, why wouldn't more companies create fully engaged employees? 70% of employees surveyed at these companies report they are not fully engaged.

I guess these companies think we're not in a recession or something.

Disclaimer: I published this almost 2 years ago. And it looks like it remains a secret. Employee engagement scores remain unchanged at best, dropping in many cases

My Conversation w/ Peter Sheahan: Author of Making It Happen

Peter Sheahan is founder and CEO of ChangeLabs™, a global consultancy delivering large-scale behavioral change projects for clients such as Apple and IBM, Peter Sheahan has worked with some of the world’s leading brands in the area of innovation and change.

He joined us to talk about his latest, maybe greatest, book: Making It Happen: Turning Good Ideas into Great Results.

You can listen at this link.

Peter, thanks for being on the show!

No worries Zane. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for writing a great book. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I like anybody who writes well. But you share some great personal anecdotes along with great research.

In your intro you write:

There has never been a better time to turn your good ideas into great results.

What makes this the best time to turn good ideas into great results?

I think there’s two reasons. The best reason is the fact that the world needs a few good ideas executed right now. We’re obviously not short of a few challenges we need to overcome. You mentioned the economy at the top of the introduction.

But the real reason from an entrepreneurial perspective is that there’s more cash sloshing around right now than there ever has before. Did you know that just the top 100 American companies, multinationals that is, have more than $1 trillion in retained profits overseas alone. And that’s not to say the money they have here in the U.S. as well.

Two reasons.

1. The world needs it.
2. There’s plenty of money, to get behind the people who have the good ideas, to make them happen.

Excellent. Cash is king and cash flow keeps you king.

Of all the authors I've read since 5th grade when I discovered I'm an avid reader you're the only author to have ever written:

This book is not for everyone. Who should not read this book?

By default then, who should read your book?

Yeah, well, the reason it’s not for everybody is I love these books you pick up these days particularly oriented towards personal development, which I’m obviously a huge fan of, still are talking about coming face to face with your potential and overcoming issues from your past and believe that you have the ability to get things done...where I believe there is a gap in the market is what to do next.

So, let’s assume you’re already confident you can get things done. Let’s assume you’ve got no more unresolved issued that are getting in your way now. And you really want to get out there, take your business ideas, take your social movement idea and really start to execute and get some results from that.

What we want to do is set a clear expectation up front. This book is about tactics and very specific strategies you can execute in the marketplace to start to generate the impact you’re looking to generate. If you’re looking for a pep-up book telling you you’re wonderful this is not that book. This is the book you read after that book.

Excellent. I love that answer.

Your book is less about ideas and more about making those ideas into tangible results. My friend, Erika Andersen, coined the phrase reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future. And she asks:

What is your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future?

What was yours in writing this book?

I think that there are two.

The first was that I really do sense that there are a lot of people with desire who aren’t taking that next step for risk. Selling the house or the car to get out there and start that company...the sorts of things that entrepreneurs do the world over.

So, one, to see if I could trigger a few more people into taking those necessary risks.

Two, more important, is to make sure those risks pay off.

It obviously could be hit and miss in the entrepreneurial and social-preneurial space. I wanted to make sure that people who were willing to ante up that those risks would pay off with some simple learnings, although quite deep and insightful at parts, that just accelerate their success and would get them through those difficult early times.

What metrics did you look for to measure your progress towards that hoped-for future?

I mean the simplest metric from my perspective is how many books did I sell. But, I don’t think that’s actually the right metric.

Just because someone buys a book it doesn’t mean they actually do anything with the information inside. We generally track how many unsolicited emails, testimonials and comments we get where people don’t just go:

“Hey, Pete, loved your book.”

But they go:

“Not only did I love your book, but I did these 4 things as a result and here’s been the impact.’

And we’ve already started to see that. The book has been released throughout Australia, New Zealand and Asia as well. We’ve had a number of positive messages of things people have done.

So, that’s the metric we use: Unsolicited emails where people actually citing the activity that they have engaged in as a result of having read it.

This is not part of the questions I sent you before the show. But I was thinking it would be wonderful, easy for me to say, if there was a place where people could share their testimonials and their stories of what they did with your book where others could read it. Give tangible inspiration for those people like you said who have the desire but aren’t ready to take a tangible step quite yet. Those personal stories might inspire them over the edge to take that first step.

Yeah, actually that’s not a bad idea. I should probably check with my team and see where we would put those. I know we put slide testimonials up on the web with books. I should probably know answers to such questions shouldn’t I?

You probably got a few things going on.

Yeah, most mornings I wake up with nothing to do; you know how it is.

Why are metrics a sore point for those on the entrepreneurial journey to make it happen?

‘Cause metrics hurt. They’re black and white. There’s no BS; they tell you how it is.

And people resist the metrics. Sometimes you need some level of delusion to keep you moving on. I can’t remember who it was but I once heard a famous quote that said something like:

“Belief is like the drug that gets you through the hard times.”

I think sometimes that metrics can hit a little hard, a little deep, too soon. I think people resist it for that reason.

But I also have a sense that particularly today a lot of entrepreneurs want to do more than just make money. They want to do something that makes an impact. I think metrics sometimes diminish the value of what they hold in what they do. They’re not all measuring it by the personal benefit of what that was.

I think there’s two reasons.

1. it’s pretty black and white and tells you how it is. 
2. it doesn’t necessarily capture the whole story and why you do what you do.

But it certainly does measure the impact you make in the marketplace. And it certainly does measure the metrics the marketplace does use to determine whether or not to engage.

This is one of the key ideas from the book. Too often we get obsessed with our own idea and the value we see in that idea rather than the value the buyer sees in our idea. That’s a key part of packaging we’ll talk about later.

What is the key to knowing the right metric?

It’s actually that same point. The key to know the right metric is knowing what metric the buyer is using to determine any value. Now, one of the limitations of that or the challenge of that is the buyer doesn’t know the value until he or she has been through the experience. If that buyer is using the metric of bottom-line or that buyer is using the metric of bums on seats, humans in the room, or numbers of followers...then that’s the metric; don’t fight it.

You might have all sorts of ancillary values to add which you can later create explicit metrics around. But for now you gotta make sure you can deliver on that metric. I would make sure the buyer’s metric is what you gravitate towards.

Your book lists 5 competencies that drive buyers’ behavior, break through mental barriers and effectively position your offer in the market. What are those 5?

• Packaging
• Positioning
• Influence
• Acceleration
• Reinvention

I’ll give you a very quick snapshot of what each of those things are.

Packaging is taking what’s a nice idea in your mind and communicating it, languaging it, putting it together in such a way that you actually sell it. It’s the transition from the idea to what we call ‘the offer’.

Positioning is then taking that offer and then linking it to a market need. Occasionally that requires convincing the market it needs something it doesn’t know it needs. It’s about making sure you’re taking your supply, which is your offer, and the market, which is the demand and making sure there’s a connection between the two.

Generally what you find is that you are not the only person selling in that space, and the only one with some value in that context which brings you to the 3 competency.

Influence. This is a key and very challenging part of the process. How do you get the buyer across the line. Yeah, you’ve got them interested. Yeah, you’ve got the meeting. How do you get ‘em to write a check.

Acceleration. Once you’ve started to get some penetration into the marketplace then you’ll start leveraging that for a greater financial or social return, whatever that is in your business.

The final step is:

Reinvention. It’s essentially when should you start building the next thing? when should you start riding the next wave? When should you start leveraging your expertise to create newer and bigger opportunities.

Which one is the biggest stumbling block for entrepreneurs?

It actually depends which stage you’re in. Early stage entrepreneurs, those who haven’t got out of the stumbling blocks, then packaging is the biggest. People are far too obsessed with what they want and nowhere near obsessed with what the buyer wants. And some of the ways you overcome that packaging piece is to very early on get very, very narrow. In other words, specialize.

And if you want to know how you get to that method it’s basically adopting what’s known as the Socratic method. Instead of using the question ‘why’, you use the question ‘how’.

I want to start a business consulting.

How? Doing what?

Uh, well, I want to consult to retail companies about driving sales.

How?

Well, I want to help them work their database to better help them leverage their customer’s loyalty.

How?

And you keep asking that question and you find you get narrower and narrower around what’s commonly called “the value proposition”.

That’s the first thing would do to turn around the packaging blockage in the entrepreneurial phase.

The 2nd strategy, and I’m going to list 2, is to talk to buyers as early as you can. There’s no point in asking family and friends whether they like your idea. You need to ask the marketplace whether they like your idea. You very quickly find out that it’s really not all about you, it’s all about them. Do the questioning process around ‘how’. Then test the market as early as you can with real prospects and real buyers.

That’s the early stage. If you want me to, I can tell you about later stages and where they fall down?

I think for those of us who are already on the journey and getting some results from making an impact it’s actually acceleration that becomes the block. acceleration is at that stage where you’re making some sales, raising some money for your charity, but you’re just not fully exploiting the opportunity you have created.

The real issue with acceleration is you get in a comfort zone really quickly or you get in a fear and protect phase. Let me explain those two stages.

You used to have a job making $150,000 a year; you thought you were doing really well. You decided to start your company and things went really, really, well for you and you got positioning right and you got packaging and influencing right, you’re making some sales. Maybe, you’re making a couple hundred grand a year and you’re thinking life is good.

You very quickly say:

"I shouldn’t want more than that. Maybe, I should be happy with what I’ve got."

And you start to hit that kinda cruise-control mode and never push the next level. That’s obviously a very dangerous place to be. That’s a well-trodden territory by a lot of other authors; I don’t spend a lot of time on it.

What I find interesting is the emergence of a risk-base and a risk-aversion in the entrepreneur and the socialpreneur where you stop taking the risks. You stop having the conversations and you stop doing the market risks that got you where you are right now because you’re so scared you’re going to lose what you have created.

I think it’s just crucial for the entrepreneur to not fall into that fear-based mentality. ‘Cause what you begin to do is adopt those very behaviors that limit your success rather than increase your success.

And in the book, we talk a lot about what sort of partnerships you can start to leverage, what mechanisms for getting scale can you start to invest in, how can you leverage existing brand platforms, some really sophisticated but powerful strategies to make sure you get a disproportionate return for the time and effort you put in.

Your listeners know that they gave more to their business, they invested more in their idea in the first 12- 18 months, sometimes 5 - 10 years than they got out. It was disproportionately bad for what they got out. Don’t stop. And don’t get fearful at the very moment when you can tip it over the edge and get that critical mass and get a disproportionate return for your effort.

You talk about ideas being based on something other than money and personal gain. If not money and personal gain, then what are these ideas based on?

Not everyone’s in it for themselves. Quite genuinely I think people have dual motives. From time to time that dual motive might be:

“Look I would feel a certain significance if I was to make a certain contribution.”

But part of that motive is quite a pure motive which is:

“ I really want to make a contribution. “

I had a friend who was a very senior international law enforcement officer who went to Thailand after the tsunami. And obviously he saw the utter devastation that occurred in Asia after that tsunami. Haiti would be a similar example more recently and obviously Japan, even more recently.

And he went there and he could not go back to the life he lived prior. And he said:

“You know what? I’ve gotta start building orphanages. I’ve gotta start building schools for these kids who are now without parents.”

And he has built 3 orphanages, 2 schools, does massive fund-raising every year. He’s really made it happen. And he’s made it happen on a commercial sense but took all the money he made and plowed it into these activities of social good

I want people to realize that making it happen is not just for the selfish person who wants to make money, which by the way is ok as well and it’s certainly part of the strategies we’ll do as well. But it’s also for you who have a much more socially oriented quest who I don’t think is better or worse it’s just different.

Excellent.

One of your keys to success is rejecting acceptance. Who doesn't want acceptance especially if its for our very precious idea? How do we get over this need for acceptance or at least manage it?

You actually hit on the head when you said create a sense of identity with the idea itself. That is a destructive pattern because all of a sudden you never have to put it to a test whether or not the idea has legs. And one of the ways you do that is you keep rolling the idea out in front of people you know and like and like you.

You roll it out at such a level of abstraction that no one can reject it.

You say something like:

“I really want to invest and create a nest egg for my family.”

Well, who’s going to say that’s a dumb idea? No one, right?

Or you say:

“I really want to help the victims in Haiti. I want to build infrastructure.”

Well, um, no one’s going to tell you that’s a dumb idea at that level of abstraction.

We keep rolling our ideas out to people who are going to support us which relates back to your idea that folks reinforce our self-identity.

I hate to be blunt, but that’s really a road to nowhere. Really, that’s a path of zero impact.

You have to attach your identity to the impact you want to make. People don’t judge you by what you want to do. They judge you by what you actually do. They don’t judge you by your intent; they judge you by your impact.

There’s a gentleman who coached me at a company and he said:

“Your own people don’t judge you by if you try to do the right thing. They judge you by the impact of your behavior.”

I think the sooner we raise our standards for the impact we make. So, I have no sympathy for, I have empathy I guess, but I don’t think we should be wallowing in self-identity.

That’s why I said right up front that this book is not for those who are looking for their self-esteem to be stroked. Frankly, the only way you build self-esteem is by getting out there and doing something. Standing in front of the mirror and saying “I love you I love you I love you” will only get you so far.

The first step is to detach yourself from the idea and attach yourself more to the impact, the contribution, the progress that you make.

I have a question that may seem a little out of context but I like the point you were making. You talk about the biggest mistake most of us make in our jobs, our business and even in our relationships is to forget we are participating in an exchange. That means it is two-way traffic.

It’s such an obvious point. I can see it in myself, in other people. But, why’s that such a common mistake. Where do we get off-track from understanding we’re in a marketplace?

Because the marketplace is a scary place. Its that simple.

There are volumes and entire shelves of bookstores dedicated to overcoming the fear and doing it anyway. This book is not about that. Let’s assume you can build a bridge and here’s what you gotta do. This is a strategy book, a tactic book. This is not a PD, how you doing/how you feeling book.

It’s clearly a fear-based thing. Plenty of psychologists can give you some insight into that. When you get into the marketplace, the marketplace doesn’t judge you on your intent. It judges you on the value you bring. Period. Exclamation! Full-stop. Underline. Bold. Moving on....

And, if you don’t want to play in that world then don’t go on that journey.

Sorry if I’m not very soft and squishy around the outside.

No. I’m loving it. It’s music to my ears. I love that quote:

The marketplace doesn’t value you on your intent. It values you on your impact.

I think the sooner we raise our standards for the impact we make. So, I have no sympathy for, I have empathy I guess, but I don’t think we should be wallowing in self-identity.

That’s why I said right up front that this book is not for those who are looking for their self-esteem to be stroked. Frankly, the only way you build self-esteem is by getting out there and doing something. Standing in front of the mirror and saying “I love you I love you I love you” will only get you so far.

The first step is to detach yourself from the idea and attach yourself more to the impact, the contribution, the progress that you make.

I have a question that may seem a little out of context but I like your point you were making. You talk about the biggest mistake most of us make in our jobs, our business and even in our relationships is to forget we are participating in an exchange. That means it is two-way traffic.

It’s such an obvious point. I can see it in myself, in other people. But, why’s that such a common mistake. Where do we get off-track from understanding we’re in a marketplace?

Because the marketplace is a scary place. Its that simple.

There are volumes and entire shelves of bookstores dedicated to overcoming the fear and doing it anyway. This book is not about that. Let’s assume you can build a bridge and here’s what you gotta do. This is a strategy book, a tactic book. This is not a PD, how you doing/how you feeling book.

It’s clearly a fear-based thing. Plenty of psychologists can give you some insight into that. When you get into the marketplace, the marketplace doesn’t judge you on your intent. It judges you on the value you bring. Period. Exclamation! Full-stop. Underline. Bold. Moving on...

And, if you don’t want to play in that world then don’t go on that journey.

Sorry. I’m not very soft and squishy around the outside.

No. I’m loving it. It’s music to my ears. I love that quote:

The marketplace doesn’t value you on your intent. It values you on your impact.

Now, speaking of acceptance, what are 3 most common ways an offer can fail?

Well, the first way is to put it in the marketplace. Right? Because, sometimes, the fear of rejection is much greater than the rejection itself. So, by getting out in the marketplace and getting a few ‘no’s’ you start to realize that wasn’t so bad, that doesn’t hurt so much. and I was still breathing, I made it home, my kids still loved me, my partner was still there. You realize that rejection is just part of that gig.

And, what you start to see is that rejection is just part of the process. You start to see the bits about your offer that people respond to. You start to see their eyes light up. Even though they didn’t buy, they rejected idea overall, you start to get a better idea where that fits, what has resonance with the buyer.

That very act of testing in the marketplace, getting real feedback, is just crucial. In my book, FLIP, we call that action precedes clarity. Sometimes you can get enough analysis to know if your idea is any good. So, you have to just test it.

I think the 2nd thing from a principle perspective is to help you get over this fear of rejection or having an idea that’s too self-centric and not buy-centric enough is to make sure you’re not seduced by what I call ‘CUTE’.

Sometimes we spend too much time on the whiteboard coming out with cute names and really creative brands and sexy tag lines. Nobody gives a toss about any of that stuff. All they care about is the value, right?

I think sometimes we get seduced by cute and we think if we put enough creativity into the idea then that will overcome the fact that no one actually wants it.

NO! NO! NO!

Less time on cute. More time on actually creating stuff people want. it’s that old Seth Godin idea that if you made a better product you’d have to spend less time marketing it because people might actually want it. Spend more time refining the offer in the marketplace than you do trying to come up with really cute ways to put it together. Packaging should not be about cute and creative. Packaging should be about valuing and impact.

I think just those two would be enough when added to the one we already talked about which is:

“Ask the question how, how, how.”

You write that:

Attention is the new battleground for business.

Who's winning? Consumers or businesses?

Well, the consumer is winning the battleground, you know.

One of the principles we emphasize pretty early is that everything’s a market and in every market you’re a seller. And there’s always more sellers than buyers. That’s the nature of a capitalist, free-market, system in America and so many places around the world. It’s that bootstrap, if you can make it happen then good for you. But that means you’ve got competition. And I think you realize that you start to realize that no buyer gets up in the morning with you on their mind. No offense guys. No one wakes up wondering:

“How do I get Billy Smith more of my budget today.”

They are getting up dealing with more emails than they can return, more sales pitches than they want to answer and more problems from their boss than they have solutions.

The only way you’re truly going to get on their mental menu is to break through what we call the ‘mental barrier’. It’s this barrier that they deliberately put by blocking their email address, sometimes they put it up by not answering their phone. You’re just another voice in that crowd we’re trying to drown out.

The principle of getting sharp and getting narrow is such a crucial principle. Attention is the battleground and consumers are winning. ‘Consumers’ just mean buyers. You could be in the B2B space. You’re still facing the same issues.

They’ve got scarce resources and more people vying for those resources. Then, you have to find a way to penetrate, find a way to get through. And getting narrow is crucial.

But the next step is the whole step of what competency is about which is about positioning. Once you get narrow on the offer how do you start to language that offer. How do you pick a marketplace to really sell that offer where it really powerfully aligns with something people are waking up in the morning thinking about.

If the buyer wakes up and is thinking about “how do I get more customers myself” and your idea can talk directly to that idea, well now you’re going to get a meeting.

If they’re waking up in the morning wondering about ‘how do I retain more staff’? and your idea addresses that need and you’re narrow then all of a sudden they’ll take that need because anyone who has a solution for this problem then I’m going to talk to.

Someone’s always trying to sell us something and we’re all, all, selling something. We’re on the back side of that of that rejection barrier. The key to getting through that is getting narrow.

Number two is positioning your offer with an already recognized need.

Or three, getting pretty strategic which takes a lot of time and effort and actually generating a market need where they don’t know they already have one that aligns with your offer.

Let’s talk about Chapter 9: The Buyer. You and others report that 90% or more of our decisions are ruled and made by our emotions. And these emotions are colored in part by 4 over-arching drives. What are those 4?

If it’s alright, I’m going to answer that second.

First thing is just to address this concept of 90%. Most of the research shows that in the anatomy of a decision two parts of the brain light up before the rational processing part. In the processing, quite often at a deep level we have already made our decision before looking for a reason to justify our acceptance or rejection of that decision. That doesn’t mean people don’t make rational choices; they actually do. It just means there’s a much greater emphasis on the non-rationally, emotional, than we previously thought.

And the way you wield rational things like how much does it cost, how long does it take, and how does it compare on features and benefits to the competition...What it means is you must wield that with alignment in the emotional decision-making.

Think about executive coaching. It’s the fastest growing professional services segment in the world, right now. It’s getting real traction particularly in big companies. And the essence, what you’re really selling, is some sort of therapy. You’re helping them overcome personal issues to enhance their performance. That’s basically what it is, aka, ‘Therapy.’

When you’re selling in that market, you can’t go and say ‘therapy’. You have to call it ‘executive coaching’ because that’s much more socially acceptable. The packaging of th service as ‘executive coaching’ appeals to that rational need to justify what they want in a setting of a corporation. But in an emotional level what you’re really doing is:

• Number one: helping someone manage their poor performance which is really getting their team down and is becoming a serious issue.

• Number two: helping that person you’re coaching overcome deep seated issues with their work or how they see themselves with their fear of change and all the sorts of things that go with that pandora’s box of coaching.

This emotional piece and not being able to call it what it is has to then be supported with great names and key service deliverables and service level agreements and all the sorts of rational things that companies need to engage. But you have to understand that each of those tangible things, each of those emotional things, must align with the deeper emotion which is

‘HELP. Please.’

It’s not that people don’t make rational decisions. It’s just that it’s a very intricate and complex interplay between emotions and things that sit just below conscious thinking and things that sit above.

We spend a good 80 pages in the book not only understanding what that is and how that plays out, but actually outlining dozens of ideas and strategies for how you can basically service the interplay.

You reference in your question a key part of that content. And it’s a concept of what sits deep in the human psyche as an inseparable, constantly-there, omnipresent, set of needs that every buyer, everywhere on earth, has.

The model we adopted, and by the way there are dozens of models, the model we chose to adopt was one by Paul Lawrence out of Harvard who is an evolutionary biologist who really understands the development of the human mind throughout history. He has a very simple approach. There are 4 drives that are always, always, active in every human circumstance when they are buying. These 4 drives are:

Drive to Acquire. It’s the drive to get more out of life. It’s the drive to get more social standing, get more physical goods, to get more money. It comes from this idea that he who has the most, wins, when everything runs out. Some people don’t agree with it. Some people have a faith-based opposition.

Drive to Bond. It’s this concept that we need to connect deeply on an emotional level with other people emotionally. I think that our understanding of this drive to bond extends beyond people to now include community groups. And, to brands, as well.

If you think about the success of the Harley-Davidson Owners Group, also known as HOG, you start to see that brands and companies selling products can build deep communities around their product that appeals to people’s drive to bond.

Church by the way, and if you think about the really fast growth of particularly evangelical Christian churches, the ones that bring a lot more engagement, emotion and entertainment, a lot more contemporary perspectives to faith and the ability to attract young believers to their congregation, I mean you’re talking about a drive to bond at a very deep level.

And, at that level you’re starting to look at the 3rd driver. And we call that driver...

Drive to Comprehend. Paul Lawrence’s research over the years has used a couple of different labels. It’s this concept that every human is always seeking answers, answers to the way things are. It’s not just curiosity; it’s a deep yearning for purpose. If you think about some of those faith-based organizations, they’re not just giving them a bond, but they’re giving them answers to these deep questions they have about their life and their time on the planet.

Drive to Defend. This often works in conflict to the first drive which is the Drive to Acquire. We talked about this when you asked me the question “What is the biggest mistake entrepreneurs make?” and I said acceleration is the biggest area of need for the later-stage entrepreneur. Once they’ve built things that they aka have acquired it’s very easy to slip into a risk-aversion and start to protect that. That is the drive to defend the bonds we have made or the understandings and beliefs we have established in our Drive to Comprehend. It’s why people defend the status quo. It’s why people will do anything to protect their family. We are defending that which is ours.

These are the 4 needs based on Paul Lawrence’s research that we have taken to and used to apply the buying situation on how to do you get people to part with their time, energy and money to support your cause or your product?

I’m going to follow-up on a question you’ve probably already answered. But your answers are so good I’d like to drill into them, if you don’t mind.

Which of these 4 drivers hold the greatest opportunity for those businesses seeking sustainability?

It really is all 4 or any one of the 4, to be honest with you. If you can build a product that genuinely appeals to one of those 4 drives and more importantly as the seller of that product and the position in the market of that offer, if you can get that offer really alight inside the buyer at a rational, but more importantly at an emotional level that if they buy this, that if they come to that, that if they support you, if they travel to...whatever it is your offers is asking them to do...if it can tap into anyone of these 4 then you are onto gold. But if you can tap into multiple at the same time, man, now you’re talking, right!

No one takes precedence. For instance, when the real estate market was exploding, the drive to acquire and the drive to defend were running rampant, they were on fire. People were getting anything that could help them build their wealth and improve their property portfolio, that’s the drive to acquire. Simultaneously, they’re also trying to protect that which they have. the security camera business was exploding at that time. You still see a spot in the sale of such things. You see big spike when things turn ugly and people go into a cocoon phase and they really start to protect things they have.

Brand names. You wouldn’t believe. Have you seen the numbers? The increase in sales over the last 12 months of high-end, luxury, goods has been something to behold. We’re talking high double-digit growth in brands like Louis-Vitton and Burberry and Coach. These guys are on fire.

We’re in the middle of the worst recession in 90 years and people are buying these things. And you’re asking ‘Why’. Obviously it’s a statement about who they are and the group they belong to. It’s got something to do with the drive to bond. It’s probably got something to do with how they comprehend their world. And it’s probably got something to do with acquisition.

It’s no one quite honestly. But, if you’re a smart entrepreneur you’ll use these as filters and you’ll try to appeal to as many of them in your positioning and your influence stages of going to market as you possibly can.

A couple of weeks ago we had Brian Brim, a co-author of Strengths-Based Selling, on the show. He had a formula for defining Strengths. You have a formula for defining Trust. What’s that formula?

Yeah, so let me be upfront about this. This formula is basically, there’s plenty of versions of this Trust formula getting around. They pretty much kinda tap into the same concepts. So, I don’t want to claim 100% originality here. Because, this is just my interpretation of the formulas out there and the way my buyers have behaved out there.

Trust = credibility + authenticity / self-interest.

And what that basically means is:

• does the buyer believe you are credible, competent and able to deliver on what you say you can deliver.

• are you authentic? Do they feel a sincerity? Not only can you do it, but do they think you’re willing to do it. Are you of that kind of character?

• divide by your self-interest. If the buyer thinks it’s all about you want, then they start to trust you less and less.
  

The reason that’s such an issue or so important in the buying decision is that people really want to feel like they can trust you, not just get it done. They trust you to have their best interest at heart. And when you start trying to influence someone’s decision then trust is a big part of that equation.

 Brands tend to have the self-interest common denominator pretty strong. That’s why we don’t wake up thinking about them. How have you seen brands bring more credibility and authenticity to improve their ratio over self-interest?

I think transparency is actually the strategy that’s having the most traction right now. The reason people are so hot on social media and web 2.0 is that forum, that environment, creates a dialogue with brands. That dialogue creates creates transparency. They fell like you are open and honest. They fell like they are getting closer into your world.

One of the things that’s interesting about that is that you don’t have to get it right every time. You just have to be honest and upfront about it every time. In fact, many brands have found that negative situations, or customer problems, have in fact become some of the most powerful ways that they build trust with their clients.

I had a personal experience with this recently. We manage some pretty big programs for some of the most powerful brands in the world. So, we are quite literally their public face in a very big way. And that means our behavior reflects directly on them. So, we treat them with the utmost respect that it obviously deserves.

We recently the sites of one of our clients was hacked. And I mean properly hacked. It was coming in from all sorts of foreign paraphernalia about things that were not really appropriate for our client’s brand. And we were distraught about that. The speed and response, it took us 6 minutes to take that site down and 5 minutes to restore that site with pristine code to replace that site.

Let’s be honest: the client was not too please about the fact that their site was defaced in the first place. But it was the speed of our response and our ability to showhow many people visited that site during the time it was down, the execution of our 6-point execution plan to turn it around, and most recently the mechanisms we put in place to make sure it didn’t happen.

Let’s be honest: we screwed up, right. It was our willingness to admit that and more importantly the expediency and the thoroughness with which we addressed the problem that I now believe we are now in position of even greater trust than we were in before as a result of the mistake. We were transparent about what happened. But we were also prepared to deal with the mistake when it came up.

You hear stories about companies like Zappos that revel when customer situations come up. That’s the moment of truth.

Not all brands should leverage social media to do that; some should, some shouldn’t. But just this kind of filter of transparency is really a great strategy of getting that done.

I love the story and the reminder that a little stress on the relationship can make it stronger as long as you’re honest and correct it immediately. That was the key I was getting from your story. You fixed it first. Then you came back and talked about how to make it stronger, better, moving forward.

Now. You list 6 more ways brands can improve that ratio of credibility and authenticity to a brand’s self-interest.

Number 7, I love the most. And that is pitch less, pull more. Can you give us an example of a brand who made that transition from pitching less to pulling more?

Yeah, you know, it’s my favorite as well.

I like the concept of position, persistence and passion at the top of that list as well because of some of the science that we unpack in making that happen in understanding how the brain works when either deciding to believe or not to believe.

I like “Pitch less, pull more”. It’s actually the hardest to pull off. It takes extreme courage for you to not try and push your offer on to somebody and trust that they will come to you. That is a super-courageous step to take.

My favorite example is a construction company in California called DPR Construction. Let’s be clear. This is big construction company. They do extremely sophisticated projects. They involve multiple banks, funders and contractors. Very complex projects.

This business is traditionally built on RFP, request for proposal. The clients says “I want to get this building built. I want to get 3-5 quotes. And you put time, money and energy for the work and you may not get it. It’s very expensive business because you can spend $20 - 425 million just pitching for a $600-$700 million project. You can spend a lot of cash and then not have it work.

And DBR Construction felt that it was not only a very bad use of resources but it created the wrong dynamic. It created not a partnership but a desire  for the client to basically outsource the responsibility for everything to the contractor, to the construction company.

And at the end of the day the contractor got blamed for everything. There was not a good spirit of collaboration. People weren’t in partnership even though they all had a vested interest in their success.

So, this is what DBR did. They started to refuse in certain circumstances to put a proposal in in a competitive setting.

So, just imagine you have half-a-billion dollars you want to spend and you’re asking people if they want some of that work. Every company is clamoring over this work, climbing over each other, trying to take you out to dinner, sucking up to put their proposal in. And one company says:

“You know what. We really want to do this job. But we have absolutely no interest in following your process. We think it’s dysfunctional and we think it destroys the value for you and it destroys value for us. If you decide you want to partner with someone call us up and we’ll have a conversation. If not, good luck with your project.”

The first response with clients who have a half-a-billion dollars is:

“What arrogance! Who are they to think that they can get away with that. What gall of that construction company!”

But then your mind starts to get messed with and you start to think:

“Wow! If they’re that good that they can just flat-out say ‘no’ then maybe that’s who we want to do business with and maybe they’re right; maybe this industry is dysfunctional.”

And all of a sudden this willingness to not play the game the same way had clients starting to come back and say:

“Tell us about this approach.”

And all of a sudden you’re through the mental barrier. All of a sudden you have a certain curiosity of the buyer. And they proceed to unpack that they believe in shared values, that they believe in risk, that they believe in working together, not going for the cheapest price but going for the best outcome. Which, by the way, is a better way of doing business.

Having the courage to fight back against that traction creates a pull towards the business and has people going

“Wow. Maybe I should come to you.”

The other example, on a much smaller scale, would be Gary Vaynerchuk. You know he has a wine blog, the retail wine shop and he’s created a business talking about simple matchings of affordable wine and good food. And then he’s now a best-selling author, international speaker.

He did the same thing with wine and blogs.

So, there’s a big example and a little example.

Speaking of pitching what’s the default setting in our buyer’s mind?

Oh, it’s 'no'. The default setting is ‘no’.

We can’t just say ‘yes’ to everything that’s banging down our door.

In almost every buyer, except when you’re in that pull situation instead of the push situation, when you are going to a buyer when you are reaching out to a buyer which for many of us we actually have to do far more than we would like, when you’re in that situation the default answer is flat-out ‘no’.

You’re cold-calling, you’re giving me a pitch...’convince me’. And you can actually see it in their body language. And this is why it’s so important to get narrow, understand that buyer’s needs and number three, more importantly, when you’re in that buying situation you kinda get a sense of the identity of that particular buyer and what do you think their unwritten motivations are, what do you think their unconscious biases are?

If you want to break this dynamic of ‘prove something to me, monkey boy’, then you really have to start to kinda break through that default setting.

• Understand their personal motivations.

• Understand the conscious and unconscious buying dynamics which is positioning in and around need.

• The packaging piece which we talked about is all about getting narrow.

What are the three easy’s we have to maintain in order to overcome that default setting?

It depends on what stage you’re in.

If you’re in the default position to know early, you have to be thinking about things that are easy to support. You have to give people the justifications that they need to the people who determine if they’re allowed to spend the money on it.

For instance, even when you’re talking to a senior executive in a business there’s a pretty good chance she or he has another person they have to justify the decisions to. So, making sure your product solution or service is easy for them to support and justify when they get to their client and boss is crucial.

We once did a project for a major server company. What we did was, it was the beginning of the global financial crisis and no one was buying servers. We were trying to figure out why no one was buying. We did a bit of research. Most of the procurement people in IT were scared of losing their job. And they certainly didn’t want to bring attention to themselves by spending huge amount of money on capital equipment.

So, we put a promotion in place that basically promised a hundred percent money back for any reason if they decided in the first nine months that they needed to free up the capital or they wished they hadn’t spent their money or their server wasn’t working.

We gave them a nine month guarantee. They had to pay up front cause we weren’t going to be their banker.

What happened?

All of sudden sales started climbing again. Because the real reason that people weren’t buying wasn’t that they didn’t need the equipment. It was that they were lacking justification for spending the money now when their boss asked them why didn’t you wait a few months. And as soon we gave them the 9 month guarantee all of sudden their bosses started screaming:

‘What are you doing spending money now...?’

Then they could say:

‘No, no, no. We get our money back if we decide don’t like it, or we need to free the cash up.... they’ll come back and take the server back.’

We know. No one rips a server out once they’ve stuck in the wall. But what we were doing was making it easy to justify, easy to support, for this person.

You cannot belive how often this happens to making it easy to buying a product. You're talking to small businesses who don’t accept American Express and because they don’t want to spend the 2.2%.

Oh, my gosh. Someone wants to give you money and you make it difficult? You see it with this ecommerce retailers who make you go through 6 steps to give you money. Are you kidding me?

If someone wants to give you money then get out of their way. It’s about simplifying the purchasing process and making it easier to buy.

And the third one is understanding how your product integrates into that person’s world. One of the reasons, by the way, and it’s much more common than people realize that people choose to say ‘no’ is not because they think your product is no good or your product might solve some problems. It’s because there’s so much other stuff going on in their world that they’re worried that this next piece of change will disrupt the flow and give them more things to think about. And sometimes making your product, making your service, making your offer, easy to integrate is crucial. How could you make it easy to own this thing?

For example, I use a pen that records my briefings and preparations for some of the work I do. And the other day I wanted to upgrade my pen. I went and got the pen and I did the upgrade and it deleted all my old files because I’m using a new version. I’m going:

“Are you kidding me? How stupid could this company be by spending more money and upgrading it actually becomes a really negative experience for me. ”

So, easy to justify, easy to buy, and then easy to integrate into our lives.

We have reached the imagination moment in our show. Your book is about turning ideas into great results. So this next question should be easy for you to answer. Let's imagine President Obama is calling Jessica Krakowski right now as he listens to the show. He wants to set up a meet with you in the Oval Office. The VP will be there. He leaves Jessica with this message:

Peter. Loved your book. Loved hearing your ideas. Would you come to the WH and talk about how to make it happen with our economy? In particular, what are three things we can do right now to make it, that's full employment, happen?

What would you tell him?

Thanks. That’s a really simple question. There are nobel laureates trying to answer that question successfully, much less me.

Look. I’d have a couple of pieces of advice.

Number one: Pick your battles. What are the areas where you’re going to have the longest impact. I’m Australian; I don’t get to vote. I’m on neither side of the political spectrum. But if you look at the history of the US, it’s when they invested in infrastructure for the next 20 years that they had the greatest success. Now. Infrastructure is different depending on your era. When Eisenhower talked about it he was talking about freeways. When it was 20 years ago you were talking about building technology infrastructure and the web.

The big question I would ask is where will the world be in the next 20 years. And let’s make our investments there. It might not get us to full employment by the next election cycle; but that’s the nature of the beast. But it may well leave this country with the foundation we need to be successful.

I travel the world. I work in 25 different countries, a lot them in Asia, a lot of them in Europe. It’s funny to hear the anti-China rhetoric, at the moment. The way to beat China is not to protect us, not to build walls or shut down trade. The way to make sure we dominate the world’s economy is to:

‘Be what’s next.’

Just do the next big thing better than anybody else. We should stop freaking out about the trade issues and things like that and instead just start innovating.

So, that would be my first piece of advice. What’s the infrastructure that’s needed in the next 20 years and let’s invest in that because that wil lcreate the innovations that will let us be successful.

Number two: You’ve got to allow the big companies who now have most of their money and most of their training overseas, the big companies don’t make most of their money in America, they make it overseas. End of story.

Let’s stop thinking that the world stops at the Pacific and the Atlantic on either side of the US. And let’s see if we can allow some of these companies to repatriot some of those profits from around the world. Many of these companies are in very heated debates with the government, it’s the IRS really, to bring back large sums of money.

Right now, there’s a trillion dollars in international retained profits right now. Could you imagine if those companies could bring that money back at a much more appropriate tax rate when compared to the rest of the world.

I think they could create jobs, make bigger investments locally in the American economy. All this talk about middle-class tax rates and rich tax rates, the big money is in the big end of town.

That would be my two bits of advice. I don’t know what my third one is.

Two is great. I love those two options.

Readers are leaders. Jim Rohn says that, I just quote him. You're a leader. What are you reading these days?

I’ve given up kinda reading the really general books. I’m much more into reading the very deep, very narrow, highly-researched pieces of work.

The best book I‘ve read lately is a book called Where Good Ideas Come From. It deals with a fascinating exploration of how idea generation, like rally breakthrough innovations, really mimics evolution in nature.

Even though my world is about once you’ve got a good idea, a crucial part of my work is helping people come up with ideas as well.

I’m reading a lot of stuff about innovation and execution.

I really do believe it’s not about talking a big game; it’s about execution and getting things done. I’m reading anything that helps companies develop cultures, processes, systems that create a culture of execution.

For me now it’s really about tactics and how to get things done.

Thank you very much for your time and your great book. We’ve come to the wrapup point of the show. I always have this point on my list of questions, but I never prepare for it because I never want to end the show.

Very rarely do I grab a guest’s book during their show in order to find more questions to ask. But I found myself flipping through the pages to find more questions to ask.

Thank you for that.

What’s the last quote you’d leave our listeners for making it happen?

"The world doesn’t need new ideas. It needs people who know how to execute on ideas."

That’s the governing premise on the whole book.

If you’re listening to the show, you have the ability to execute, to make it happen. You just need to understand the strategies that we lay out. Basically, it’s the 5 core competencies. If you get that right you can truly get the return on the time, money, and energy you are putting into these things.

"The world doesn’t need your idea. It needs your ability to execute."

Where can we find you on the world wide web?

Two sites.

• Peter Sheahan

• Making It Happen Book

Thank you!

Highlights From Talking with Chris Zane, Owner of Zane's Cycles

Chris Zane is founder and CEO of Zane's Cycles which has achieved an average annual growth rate of 23% annual since 1980 when it opened.

How?

"Zane credits his success to giving 'extraordinary customer service with the help of an empowered team of employees...The whole thing is about having a good time. Being positive. People have to be happy at work.' "

His book, Reinventing the Wheel: The Science of Creating Lifetime Customers, shares his story, his journey, to reinventing the wheel for his business and along the way creating lifetime customers over 3 or 4 recessions, three wars, 7 presidential elections....and achieved that stunning growth rate selling bicycles.

He shared an hour of his time recently to talk about his journey, his principles in leading his business, some stories from giving 'extraordinary customer service with the help of an empowered team of employees...having a good time.

You can listen here.  

Chris, thanks for taking the time to be on the show!

My pleasure. And thanks for having me.

Thanks for writing a great book! You shared so many examples of what worked, a few that didn’t, what you’re thinking was in that process and how it connected with you, your customers, your competitors, suppliers. Excellent.

It’s all front-line practitioner kind of stuff that everyone can understand.

As I was reading this, I kept thinking that an entrepreneur with 5-10 employees who is looking for some immediately doable solutions backed with good logic and data ...would be able to open your book and find 5 or 6 things in the first pages of your book. You wrote it in the voice of someone who’s been there, accomplished that.

Tell us about this book. What inspired you to write this book?

For the last 15 years or so, I’ve had tremendous opportunities to go out and speak in front of groups about what it’s like to create a lifetime customers.

You know, we have a very different focus on what we do. We look at the lifetime value of a customer and we base our relationship on multiple transactions rather than a single transaction. So, we have a different way of looking at the relationship with our customers than most businesses have. And, even businesses that say “We’re all about creating lifetime relationship”...there are holes in what they say and what they do and the thought processes behind it.

I wrote the book, basically, it’s share tons of stories...what we did...the thought processes behind it...and then what the outcome is and how it was successful or it wasn’t successful.

You can look at each situation to ok, this is a great opportunity to do something, to try it, see if it works. Let’s see if we can show value to our customers and ultimately have them continue to come to our business.

My inspiration is people who want to become customer-service focused, customer-centric organizations, give them the tools to get there.

Excellent. Excellent.

My friend Erika Andersen coined a great phrase in her book, Being Strategic. The phrase is reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future. What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future for writing this book?

Well, it’s completely unreasonable. But, again, you know when you’re an entrepreneur you’ll never look at limitations; you’ll look at opportunities at what potentially could come from stepping outside your comfort zone and creating some unique offering.

A friend of mine, Jim Issler, wrote an endorsement of the book and how this book is an archetype. That’s a pretty arrogant statement. But, at the end of the day, if the book has the ability to sit on people’s shelves, they learn from it and they move from transactionally-focused business to a customer-service focused business...that’s the goal I would love to see happen.

I’m involved in lots of organizations. I’m involved in Arizona State University’s Center for Services Leadership; I’m on the board there. We’re constantly looking at ways to improve the quality of service here in the United States.

And it’s really something that’s important to have available the tools for people to do the right thing to become a service-oriented business. That’s what I believe the book has the ability to do.

What metrics are you using to track your progress?

The metrics are the success that we’ve had.

You talk about the growth we’ve had, the 23% annual growth. It’s actually we’ve grown 23% a year since 1981. I started the business in 1981, when I was 16 years old and I bought the business from the previous owner.

Right from the start, that was the point of focus. I couldn’t compete on price because the other bike shops were larger. I couldn’t sell things for less than they could. I realized service-offerings were the most important things we had to provide to our customers.

We’ve grown at annual rate of 23% a year since 1981 right up until this year. It’s been consistent growth. It’s not a flash in the pan. Those metrics are recognizing that we can have strong double-digit growth forever is reason enough to stay on the path we’re on.

That’s fantastic!

Who was your audience? Describe the person you wrote this book for when maybe at some point you really wanted to be test-riding one of those new elliptical bikes?

They’re pretty cool bikes. They’re going to be game changers. As popular as the road bike and mountain bike are, I think the new form of elliptical bike which looks like an elliptical bike from the gym which you can use to propel the bike. And we’ve had some interesting success moving. People are really liking.

But, back to the book. The book really had two audiences. We’ve looked to expand our business to multiple locations around the country, understanding that there’s an opportunity out there and we’d love to see our business grow from the location we’re in now to having multiple locations around the country. Things tightened up with the economy and we’ve put that on hold.

But, during the process of writing the book, I wanted it to be a training manual for future employees show what the culture of the business is.

But it’s the entrepreneur, that guy that is struggling with how to be different and understanding what it takes to be different. You know, Zane’s did this but I can do this. I can’t cookie-cutter his ideas but that’s a great idea and how can I find a similar idea in my business to allow me to gain lifetime customers rather than transactional relationship.

Let’s talk a bit about science and lifetime customers. I'm an art major but even I know science is about creating a hypothesis and then testing and experimenting and judging the results to either confirm or deny that hypothesis. Where does that process play out in creating lifetime customers?

The simplest part of this understanding, and really when an ‘aha’ moment came for me and for the rest of my team came when we figured out what a lifetime customer means. Lots of of people are in the business of saying "we’re in the business of capturing 100% share of the wallet, supporting our customers for life and all this stuff. "

And what we did was we started by sitting down and thinking through ok, this bike is at 8 and this bike is at 12 and this bike is when you go to college, and this one is when you get married and then you’re mid-life crisis bike and your retirement bike.

What do all those transactions add up to be? And we looked at all those numbers without referrals, just the individual customer. We said if they’re going to buy all of their bikes from us we’re going to capture $12,500 in business from them. Subsequently, we work on 45% gross margin...so, that works out to $5600 in gross profit.

As soon as we realized what that number was, it changed the game. It became the reason we were in business. Our existence reason was to satisfy our customers so that every time they thought about what they needed associated with what we offer, then they would come to us rather than someone else.

And, if that meant taking it on the chin because there was a service thing that was questionable and he was riding down the road and hit a pothole and bent his rim and had to have it replaced...I could certainly push back on him to pay for that because I wasn’t riding with you that day.

But, at the end of the day I probably have that rim in the back. It costs me about $15.00. We replace the wheel and we send him on his way. He leaves feeling special and the investment in doing business with us was worth it and continues to support our business by fulfilling his needs with us.

So, that $5600 in gross profit is easy to relinquish if you know you’re going to capture that back.

Let's talk about your lifetime guarantee. You offer a lifetime guarantee for parts and labor. You touched on that just now. Walk us through the ROI on that because I think it’s important to understand those numbers.

Awright, so, let’s talk about the nuances of the bike business. And then we’ll talk about the service offering.

When I started in business, my competitors offered a 30-day tuneup. You buy a bike; you bring it back in 30 days; they tweak it to make sure everything is working correctly. And they send you on your way.

And from that point forward, anything the bike needs you have to pay for it at some labor rate which at today’s rates is $100-$150 an hour for labor.

What we did is we looked at it and said ok, we’ll throw in a year’s worth of free service. Because if we build our bikes correctly, they’re not going to need a lot of service for the first year. We can expand our warranties beyond what our competitors are offering from 90-days to a year.

And, then what I found is if you build it correctly, to do things to head off creative obsolescence or the need for paid service, then the bikes can go much longer than a year without needing any real service or any kind of adjustment.

I say that specifically if you tighten some loose spokes on a wheel that comes out of the box the wheel will never go out of true. If you lubricate the housings with a little bit of grease the cables will never rust and you’ll never need to replace them.

There are things you can do to offset the potential liability of service if your business is built on satisfying your customers with an extended service policy. Rather than not doing those things so that at some they’re going to have to come back and pay you to fix those things you could have offset prior to letting that bike go out the door.

So, then we went to 2 years free service when my competitors went to one-year free service. They followed suit because they saw their market-share diminishing. And then at some point we looked at it and said:

“You know what these guys are going to go to 2-years because we’re at 2-years. And we know that there’s not that many bikes coming bike at 2 years unless there’s a legitimate problem...so let’s go to lifetime.”

And we made it retroactive to everything we sold. Everyone knew they could come in and we wouldn’t nickle and dime they about the service.

And, again, it all came about at about the same time we realized our customers were worth so many dollars to us. Why would we ever want them to go somewhere else?

I remember I was at a conference in Sweden. Everybody there was talking about switching costs and how you hate to change your bank accounts and it takes so much time and energy and those are the switching costs that were built-in so you’ll stay with them. And I looked at them and said:

“Well, our switching costs are lifetime service. We don’t charge you to fix your bike. Why would you go somewhere where they charge you? And it allows you stay in front of your customers and continue to offer them the new things that continuously come out. Hopefully move them up the ranks in business. ”

So, that was all the process of lifetime free service.

At the same time we looked at the parts. And we said:

“Well, things break because they’re not manufactured correctly. If I go back to my supplier and say “Hey, here’s a derailleur or here’s a wheel or something that’s damaged that didn’t live up to its life expectancy. I need a credit for it because I’m going to give one to me customer for free.”

They follow suit because they see we’re doing enough volume with the and they say:

“You’re valuable to us. And if you offer this free lifetime parts we’ll back you on it."

So, now I’m not even out of pocket on this for parts that need to be replaced because the manufacturers realize we’re doing all this volume with them and they’re willing to support us.

Chicken and egg question. Which came first your lifetime guarantee for parts and service or your growth rate? Was your growth faster or slower after the lifetime guarantee?

It was definitely the service.

It’s funny. We’ve been doing this for 30 years and I can look over a cliff-of-service decision and jump and never worry about how to figure out how to fly before I hit the bottom.

But, early on, you don’t have that confidence. It takes a tremendous amount of time to be able to grow your understanding of the fact that not every customer takes advantage of every policy. So, that at the end of the day it’s not 100% or 0%. It’s some percentage in the middle that will allow you, some percent of customers will take advantage of the service offerings.

We started with the service and then we saw the growth. We continue to add service offerings and continue to see the growth. It’s become part of our organization, the core, to continue to find things to wow the customer, create customer excitement.

Because, it’s paying huge dividends over the long-term. At the end of the day, that 23% growth, that’s a hard number to keep going at the end of your 29th year.

At some point, it’s real money.

Yeah, it’s real money.

At the end of 1981, my first year sales were $56,000. We just closed our books on over $15 million in sales. It’s just continued to tick up every year, that 23% annual rate. And hopefully, we’ll hit $18 million.

Now, early on, when you began to realize the lifetime value of customers, as they moved through their phases of purchase and you went to your suppliers and said:

Hey, your part was broke, I’m going to replace it for free with the customer. You need to give it to me for free.

What was that initial conversation like? Now, they’d say “Well, of course. We’d be honored.” But in those early days what was the response?

Well, one of my greatest stories is my helmet supplier. You know we had a customer come in who had lost the buckle. There was nothing wrong with the helmet. They just lost the buckle, you know the buckle underneath your chin.

And we took the helmet and threw it in our warranty bin and gave the guy a new helmet. You know, he looked at us kinda strange and said:

“Really?”

And we said

“Yeah, yeah, we’re good. Be safe. Wear your helmet.”

Well, when my supplier came in he looked in the warranty bin and pulled the helmet out and he said:

‘You know there’s nothing wrong with this helmet.”

And I said:

“Yeah, I know it. But I need you to warranty because the guy lost the buckle.”

And he said:

“I can’t warranty a helmet because the guy lost a buckle. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

I said:

“Well, you really should. Because if you don’t, I’m not going to buy any more helmets from you. And, oh by the way, I’m not going to buy any helmets from you and I need $5000 worth of helmets. I can call one of your competitors and say if you’ll give me a $20.00 credit I’ll write you a $5000 order.”

And the supplier looked at me and said:

“I can write you a $20.00 credit for a $5000 order.”

And I said:

“Well, I knew you could.”

I know my customer is worth $5600 in profit. So, I can take a hit if I have to because long-term I’m going collect a lot of profit.

Same thing for my supplier. Right then we realized all we had to do was show and explain what our value was to them so that they could justify satisfying our situation and help us be more successful.

And ever since then, it’s not even a conversation. We just say:

“Here’s the deal. Write the credit. And oh, by the way, thanks for being generous with your credits. But, we’ll be loyal to you because you’re loyal to us.”

And that’s our relationship.

Who was more skeptical of your lifetime guarantee? Customers, suppliers or employees?

The people who were most skeptical were my competitors. It was actually awesome!

When I started with my bike shop there were 17 bike shops in New Haven county, Connecticut. You know, we need to start pushing back. And here’s a 16-year old kid trying to grow a business. And they all laughed and didn’t think we could get any traction.

And as we progressed and figured out the relationship with the customer and started adding these offerings, they just didn’t have any way of competing. They didn’t know what to do in order to compete with us.

One of the things I love is when my competitors offer the same free service policy we offer. But they don’t do it for the lifetime relationship of the customer. They do it to sell the customer standing in the store.

And when the guy walks in and buys a bike and then goes back in for free service ...there’s always a little loophole.

“This is covered but this isn’t covered. This is taken care of, but this isn’t. You’re going to be out of pocket for this, but not this.”

With us, there is no push-back. Lifetime free service is lifetime free service. Lifetime parts warranty is what it is.

We’re not trying to create all these barriers to get the customer frustrated.

Even when we’re on the selling floor I tell people:

“A lifetime free service policy isn’t to sell you this bike. A lifetime free service policy is to sell you your next bike. You’re going to buy this one. I’m going to take care of you; I’m not going to take advantage of you. And when you need something you’re going to come back to me because you trust me and you’re not going to go somewhere else.”

And even in the industry, there’s guys all over the country, when this article was published in INC by Donna Fenn, it explained this whole process of what we do. We had all kinds of dealers writing in to trade journals saying:

“You never give away something you can charge for. This guy’s a knucklehead. He’s going to be out of business.”

Subsequently, we’ve continued to grow. And there’s quite a few of these guys in the bike business who recognized the value of this lifetime free service and are following suit.

But it’s not the norm in the industry. Our profit margins are very high. Our growth is very high. It’s certainly working for us.

Now back in the day, the Big Three carmakers back-in-the-day financed their global multi-billion empires on a business model where a majority of their profits came from car owners buying replacement parts. But, you sell bikes and offer a lifetime guarantee for parts and labor.

What’s in your DNA that helped you see this when all these smart guys, these MBA-types, failed to see it?

Part of it is being front-line, having a one-on-one relationship with them and listening to their needs, fulfilling their needs. There’s a lot to be understood by understanding your customer, feeling the pulse of your customer.

I love the example of the car industry. It’s a great example of what they didn’t do that we did. And had they done it, they’d probably be in much better shape.

GM reorganized. Chrysler was bought by Fiat. Ford kinda gets it.

But, there’s lots of companies like Hundai, Kia and these little ancillary companies that came in with these extended warranties and not out of pocket warranties that the customer could make a single investment and trust that they made a good decision.

And look at the market-share that they’ve gained. And, just the fact that these guys were in the business of selling parts and not lifetime relationship with their customers and these guys have actually gone away and they’re not even being run by the same people who ran the company 25 years ago.

When you shift your thinking from transactions.

“We made a profit on this deal. We made a profit on this deal.”

That diminishes because a customer will switch if they find a better opportunity.

Where if you’re consistently focused on satisfying the needs of your customer and doing what’s best for your customer and trusting that they will be loyal to you...then you can grow your business on good products, good service and good profits for your company.

That’s such a simple value. People will pay for value. People will pay for trust. And when you don’t that’s when they turn the conversation.

My wife and I bought a new car this summer. And everything’s covered. Well, maybe not the tires. But everything in the vehicle is covered.

And, it was an easy decision. What you’re paying you’re paying for 4 years. I know I’m not going to have to pay to change the oil or do anything else. I can go back to the dealer because I don’t feel like I’m being take advantage of with whatever the dealer pricing might be.

And hopefully, over time, after 3 or 4 years I’ll have a trusting relationship with them so I’ll want to continue a relationship with them so when I need to buy something or I’m out of pocket for some of the relationship that needs to be done. At least they’re giving me an opportunity to try to figure out if I should trust them rather than immediately go someplace else.

That’s the attitude of everybody else because they don’t trust their provider. It’s been a bad model for so long that we’re seeing the tide turn a little. That’s the passion that we have. We want to change the tide across lots of businesses because it’s really the right thing.

My friend Len Barry wrote a book called Discovering the Soul of Service: The Nine Drivers of Sustainable Success which had this quote:

“Good service not only improves business but it also improves the quality of life.”

You know people who work with me are happier. They’re empowered to do what they have to do. Customers are happier because they know they’re not going to be taken advantage of; they’re going to be taken care of.

What’s the push-back? There no anxiety. You’re going to do what’s right for the customer and that’s that.

Beautiful. Beautiful. It’s a delight hearing that from you.

There’s an exception to every rule. And you touched on it just now. And you have one with your Lifetime Guarantee. What is your one exception to your lifetime guarantee?

Tubes. Flat-tires are an exception. You know, we’re not riding with you. If you get a flat-tire, you basically are going to be out of pocket for it.

But, we started a policy where for a single investment of $20.00 if you get a flat-tire you can bring it back to us and we’ll fix it for free forever. The tube costs a couple of bucks and labor’s pretty quick and easy to do.

So, if somebody wants to make an investment....it costs about $12.00 to change a tube if it’s not one of our bikes and covered by this insurance policy. So, basically, if you buy two flat repairs forever we’ll replace and change your tubes. And then you’re covered.

It’s a profit-center for us. I’m not going to hide behind that. The $20 is based on future liabilities. We know that some people get lots of flats and some people don’t. But at the end of the day, ultimately it’s a quality offering, it’s an investment and they’ve covered for 100%.

Let’s say even if it wasn’t a profit center they have to walk through your store. And you’ve set it up where they have to walk through your store, have a free cup of coffee at your espresso bar. Re-establish the relationship, remind themselves of what a great store you have.

That’s exactly it. We know what we do well and what we don’t do well.

One of our failed service-offerings was telling people who bought bikes that we would pick it up at their home and return it to their home. No charge. We did this for a couple of years and we sold a few thousand bikes that had this pick-up and delivery service.

And what we found was that it was detrimental to our business. Customers weren’t coming in the door. They weren’t smelling the rubber and the coffee. They weren’t getting an emotional connection to the business. They literally had the bike in their garage. They’d call us and we’d pick it up and they never had a chance to buy a power-bar or a new GPS speedometer for their bike.

So, we actually abandoned that service.

But, the thing I like to promote and the the thing I like to talk about with folks is.... we didn’t abandon it to the people we promised it to. We just stopped offering it to the people who came in. So, when someone calls us up and says “Hey can you pick up my bike.” we go into our database and realize they bought it in the window of time where we offered free pickup we go and pick up their bike and delivery it to them. It’s not a big deal.

People after and prior to that offering, they don’t have that luxury because it doesn’t work for us to stay profitable and continue to grow. So, they have to physically come in and visit our business. We will continue to service them for free.

Fantastic. Fantastic.

Let's talk for a minute about partners and customers, vendors and suppliers. There's a lot of talk with some good basis that customers should be brought into the fold, treated more like a partner. I've said it; I’ve championed it.

You write something different. You write, as you speak, directly and candidly, that with your vendors and suppliers you're their customer, not their partner. Why did you choose to draw this line?

Yeah, I’m pretty passionate about it. I promote it to them in our conversations.

You know, when my customer calls me with a need and I recognize that I have the opportunity to profit from the relationship I treat them well and I work to try to entice them to continue to do business with me.

Unfortunately, when the partnership thing comes up that becomes a different situation. Your partner is your wife or your husband. And sometimes you mistreat them. Because they’re your partner and you’re in this commitment, then you forgive them and you move on. But, at the end of the day in a business environment they’re not really partners unless they’re paying your rent or paying a part of your electric bill or paying for your people who work there. That’s what a partner is involved in.

A vendor supplies me goods and I buy them from them because they offer me a reason. They service me; they give me quick delivery; the price is competitive; they stand behind the warranty.

Whatever it might be, they earn my business as a customer or supplier relationship and not a partner relationship. Because, at the end of the day, yes, I value the idea that they bring product to me that people want to buy. But they don’t have, they’re not on the financial hook for the expenses of the business. So, they’re not a partner.

And I want them to treat me like a customer so I can treat them like a customer and not try to convince them that they are my partner and sometimes ask them for forgiveness.

Great answer. It keeps everything simple and clear, out in the open.

One of the many reasons I liked your book was Chapter 4. There you talk about giving back to the community both from a philanthropic point of view as well as from a pragmatic, customer-loyalty view. Can you share with us some of those programs and your plans for Zane's Foundation?

Yeah, we have a Zane Foundation. Zane Foundation is an organization I started 20 years ago. I looked at the opportunity in the marketplace and said:

“There’s not a lot of people, there’s not a lot of businesses, supporting education and the arts.”

You know, we’re in the bike business; we’re not in the arts and education business.

But I felt that in order to drive value to the community, if we consistently supported arts and education offering scholarships to high school students as they graduate and supporting all of the arts programs that go on in the community unrelated to our specific business. We sponsor bike rides and we’re the title sponsor of a couple of different triathlons and we do a kid’s triathlon and we’re engaged at the non-profit level supporting a lot of different things.

But, the Zane Foundation was specifically to make a mark in the community to show that the business cares about the broad scope of the community and not just supporting our own endeavors and not just being connected to the bike side of our business.

Now, it’s well over $100,000 in scholarships for students in the community we’re in, as well as, lots of other stuff that presents itself as requests for contributions.

And in the community, too, we look pretty seriously at over the last 29 or 30 years we paid out over $29 million in payroll to people who live in the community who then shop in the local hardware store and buy groceries and dry-cleaner and coffee shop.

We look at that as part of our community support as well. The money isn’t disappearing. It’s staying in the market as well. The money flows in the community and it’s an important part of what businesses, specifically small businesses do in the community. They drive great revenue in the community.

Employee engagement is a hot topic these days. That's because most companies lack it. And those companies with it are growing and hiring. Coincidentally we're in a jobless recovery. I'm thinking to do what you do must require a lot of employee engagement. New ideas, new roles, new tasks...disruption, some things work, some don't, lots of growth....

I'm thinking in some respects you're hiring entrepreneurs, those who are comfortable with risk and change and failure. What do you look for when you hire?

The thing that I look for specifically is nice people. One of the things that I’ve found over they years in hiring and firing and making good decisions and bad decisions with staffing is when you meet somebody and they look you in the eye and they’re outgoing and they’re confident. You enjoy the interaction right from the start. Those are the people you want to have in your organization.

And if you build an organization with those kinds of people it brings itself to be an even better environment. People are nice; they get along; they enjoy working together.

And then, when you empower your employees to do whatever it takes to satisfy your customer. And that’s a single mantra within our organization is to take care of the customer so that they’ll want to come back.

And, that the customer service starts when the customer experience fails. That’s another thing we talk about pretty openly in our organization: If the customer doesn’t complain it’s because they’re having such a good time and you’re empowered to say yes and do whatever they need to do....then we don’t have to go through the recovery process or the apology process. They just had a good time when they were here and they want to continue to come here.

Those are the types of relationships that we like to create with our employees and giving them the ability to do the right thing for the customers. Once you find people that fit together it’s easy to continue to add people that fit together. Because during the interview process and the interaction with multiple people as they interview....you don’t interview with just one person. You have to get the nod from a couple or three people who appreciate what the person’s bringing to the table as a new employee.

“They’ll fit in. They seem like they’re nice.”

Or they’re a friend of a friend. We tease our summer interns, our summer staff, that when they leave to go back to college they need to give us the names of one of their friends we can hire or they can’t leave. They’re stuck in the store until they find their own replacement.

Typically, they bring in someone who fits, rather than undermining the organization. Because they know they’re going to come back over Christmas or over spring break.

A lot of engagement at that level where you’re part of the family, you’re part of the club, you’re part of the group, let’s make it better.

What percent of your ideas come from your employees?

At this point most of them.

My responsibilities in the way that the business has grown is I’m not required or accountable to the organization on a daily basis. I have a Retail Manager, a National Sales Manager, an Operations Director. These guys are all responsible for running the different divisions of our organization so I can go out and find new opportunities and focus on growth and brand-building.

The ideas that have come about in the last few years have been promoted by the staff saying:

“I saw this. And it looked interesting. Is there a way for us to adapt it to us so that it works.”

When we talk about our 90-day price protection policy...and the lifetime service warranty and the lifetime parts warranty the customer assumes they’re paying a premium. So, in order to get our customer comfortable with the fact that they should make an investment with us we offer 90-day Price Policy. So, if you buy it from us and you see it anywhere in Connecticut for less within 90 days, let us know and we’ll refund the difference plus 10%.

That was a BestBuy policy 15 years ago. We looked at it read it, and realized we could do that. And we, basically, cookie-cuttered that policy and turned it into our policy. They had a 30-day and we turned it into a 90-day because we realized the liability was low.

Now that’s how we move forward now. People just bring stuff in and say:

“This might work. Can we challenge this to see if it’s good idea or not a good idea?”

It’s a collective group of like-minded individuals that want to succeed at this model. And everybody’s open to new ideas and trying to figure out if there’s a value or not.

And another thing. It’s like the bike-delivery thing. You can start things and if they don’t work you can abandon them. Just as long as you live up to the promises of the people you made them to. It’s not that it’s engraved in stone. You can manipulate the offering until it works for your organization. But, you need to try something.

I’ve had people who’ve worked for me. And the ship’s on the dock. They’re trying to manage the course they’re going to take and account for the weather. And they never leave the dock.

My attitude is get the ship out on the seas and let’s figure it out as we go. And, as long as we don’t capsize, we’ll get where we need to go a heck of a lot faster than those who are afraid to let the boat leave the dock.

I have the confidence that I can manipulate or manage the situation while I’m in it in order to be successful.

What happens, if it happens, when they hear your idea and think it stinks? Likewise, with you and their idea?

Well, it happens.

Fortunately, we’re like-minded and we’re also comfortable with one another. We’ve been around one another that none of us have thin skin. And if I come into a meeting to present a concept and I can’t defend wholeheartedly then it does stink. I haven’t done the homework.

I talk about the interview I saw with Marc Zuckerberg where he said if someone comes in with a new idea they have to build it and then they can show it him in real-time.

That’s kind of how we are with the policies and service-offerings. If you haven’t figured out how to make it work and you’re looking for someone else to carry the burden of this great idea, then it’s not a great idea. If you can’t sell it and convince folks that it’s really good, then it should go by the wayside.

One of the policies we just implemented from one of the guys in the organization was at Christmastime was when we get returns. Tom said

“What if we offered a premium to customers if they would take gift card?”

Now, of course we’ll give cash back. Our unconditional return policy says you can return anything to us for forever and we’ll always give you your money back. But how about we give them 10% kicker on their return? So, if they want to buy a bike in the spring or a different piece of spring clothing and the spring clothes haven’t come in, so there’s a benefit to them from just getting cash back.

And there’s a benefit to us. We can keep the cash in the company during the winter when the sales are slow. And the customer gets a premium on their value when they’re ready to make a buying decision. And they remain loyal to us.

We saw a pretty nice offering at the holiday there where we had about $15,000 in returns that came back with customers taking the 10% to continue the relationship with us and to get a better value when they want to make their buying decision.

That’s the kind of thing where Tom presented it. We challenged it. It made a lot of sense. And we started to move on it and everybody’s loved it since. So, it seems like a permanent policy moving forward.

That leads us to our next question. You have a theme or principle in your business called Point North. Now, not every employee, even your brother, has the same zeal for happy customers you do. How do you, not keep them in line but maybe align and re-align their actions and interactions towards your commitment to customers?

The “Point North” model is a pretty interesting one. If you think about...you’re in a room full of people and everybody closes their eyes and points in the direction they believe is north. And if you open your eyes and look around you can assume not everybody in the room is pointing in the same direction.

And, subsequently, our business needs to continue in the same direction with the same attitude.So we use this “Point North” model as basically a simple, slogan, or expression we have in our business to remind us that the only difference we have in our business between us and our competition is the service that we offer.

I’ll say that again:

“The only difference between us and our competition is the service that we offer.”

And what happens is everybody knows that. And actually there’s a little plaque in the building and we call that North. And so, if we see an interaction with an employee that’s becoming heated or we see a customer who for whatever reason is challenging our existence and potentially being unreasonable and the employee starts to get a little uncomfortable with the direction they need to make, the decisions to satisfy the customer...we can walk up to them and without interrupting the conversation, I can say to them “Point North”. And immediately they know it’s the only difference between us and our competition is the service that we offer and that’s what I need to do. And then they’re redirected to do the right thing.

As long as we’re all moving in the single direction, there’s no inconsistency in the relationship with the customer. They can interact with me. They can interact with Tom or Greg. And it doesn’t matter because they’re going to get the same attitude.

And I think that uncertainty in business is why people choose to go somewhere else. You go into the dry cleaner and one guys really nice and one guy has a chip on his shoulder. Or one guy cares you want your collar tabs back and the other guy doesn’t. Eventually, you’ll go:

“Ah, let me find another place that’s better.” 

And we’re tying to have this consistent relationship with the customer where again the customer service starts when the customer experience fails. Keep the customer service experience positive and we don’t have to do the hard work.

That’s such a great, simple, mechanism to remind people without making a big production about it: “Point North”.

Yep.

Zane's Cycles is an international company in that you celebrate Bastille Day...

Well, of course! Doesn’t everybody!

Tell us about that decision to celebrate the French Revolution annually.

Well, it happened that THE Bastille Day happened a few years ago and Tom my Operations Manager came up to me and said I’m going to close the store a little early. And Bastille Day is July 14th and it’s probably one of the busiest weeks of our year.

He says:

“I’m going to close the story at 3 instead of at 6:30. We’re going to get a bus and we’re going to take everybody up to an Amusement park. We’re burnt. We’ve all been working hard. ”

Our season kicks off the middle of march. And it had been 3 solid months of 10-12 hour days. There was a need for us to refresh our batteries and recharge.

So, he said:

"We’re going to close a little early. And, we’ll put a little sign on the door for the customers and explain we closed a little early. We’ll give them a 10% kicker tomorrow as an inconvenience. Come back tomorrow; tell us you came here today and we’ll give you 10% off your purchase as an apology for us inconveniencing you and not being here."

And I kinda shook my head. You know, I guess, you know it’s probably not in all the business books that you should close your business. But, again, the quality of my people is way more important than anything else that we have. If they’re burnt and we need to refresh then let’s do it.

We did it.

And again, Bastille Day just happened to be on a Wednesday. So, we said on the sign

“In Observance of Bastille Day we closed early”.

It was just kind of a fun thing.

Now, we just typically close early on Bastille Day and go up and do something, whether it’s an outing like paintball or something or we go to the amusement park or whatever. But it’s a refresher day in the middle of our highest season that gives everybody a chance to kickback and remember the fact we’re not just all about the profit we’re making or the business that we’re promoting.

In simplest terms, and it’s a hard thing, we’ve had interactions with customers where they’ve been billigerent or taken advantage of a situation to the point that’s been unreasonable and we’ve canned a customer for being unreasonable. But, at the end of the day, my employees are by far are the most important asset I have. And, at the end of the day if my employees are unhappy and they’re not going to come to work then I have to stand there and do the work. We’re obviously at the point where we’re too busy to do it: one man can’t run the operation.

My focus at this point is to engage the people in the business and see value in them being there. And if we have to close early to do that then that’s the right thing to do. It’s not a hard decision.

You've created very high expectations with your customers. You've beautifully fulfilled them as you continue to grow. But life's not perfect and neither is everyone at Zane's. Though, it seems might close. But your expectations leave little room for error. One little one and the tide turns into a tsunami of...customers going around say Yeah, we knew it couldn't be true...How do you deal with the inevitable screwup? People forget something, forget a promise to an important customer. How do you deal with that?

Let me tell you, it happens. It’s unfortunate that it happens; but it happens. Nothing is perfect all the time.

How you handle that is what challenges all the other things that you do. You can recover a customer after a mistake. You can apologize and do what it takes to make them feel valuable and understand that you truly made a mistake. And have them want to continue to do business with you. That’s the relationship that drives all the other things that happen.

We have this great story about a customer who’s Valentine Day, we call it The Valentine Day Massacre. We had a customer who came into the store who put a bike on layaway because she couldn’t afford to buy the whole thing for her husband for Valentine’s Day.

So, she put down some money and said:

“I want to bring my husband by after you’re closed and show him the bike I’m buying for him. And next week, when I get my paycheck I’ll come by and pay the balance of it.

If I put balloons and a message and a card on the bike, will you put in the window of the store. So, when I come by tonight with him, I can show him the bike.”

Great idea.

At the end of the day the goal was to take the bike put in the window of the store, lock up and go. So, when she comes by it’s in the window.

Well, of course we forgot.

The next morning I get a voicemail from her and, you know, she’s upset. Actually, she’s really upset. She’s really ticked. She’s like:

"You wasted my time. You wasted my valentine’s day night. I went to the store, I wanted to show him the bike. I sent him out of the car to look into the window thinking the bike was going to be there with my note and there was nothing there. And oh by the way some of my co-workers actually showed up in the parking lot to see his response him seeing the bike he was going to get. I was embarrassed because they were standing there looking and wondering what’s happening."

We were embarrased. We killed two cupids. It was a long voice mail. And I called Tom and I said:

"What’s the deal with the bike?”

And he says:

“I know. I got into work this morning and it wasn’t in the window. Greg was supposed to put it in the window cause he was the one that worked with her. And it just didn’t happen. And I got a voicemail from her, too.”

And I said:

What are we going to do? We gotta make this right. Let’s sit down and think through this and figure it out.

She owes half the price of the bike. We can certainly forgive the balance and get the bike to the husband tonight to make up for it and so he can have the bike.

I’m like:

Yeah, that’s easy to do. But, what else can we do to make her feel special? We screwed up and we want her to know that we’re really apologetic for the situation.

Well, why don’t we re-create the Valentine’s Day Dinner? We’ll call up Quattro’s and let ‘em know we have a customer coming in and let ‘em get a bottle of wine, nice dinner. We’ll cover the cost of the dinner. By the way, we should probably cater lunch for all the people who came to see this. They don’t like this either because we wasted their time, too.

And he said:

Yeah, that’s a good idea, too.

Ultimately we went through the whole process and got the gift certificates and told her we were going to come over and drop the bike off and he apologized over the phone. And she seemed to calm down a bit.

And we went to the house and gave the bike to the husband and gave her the certificates for the dinner and for the lunch. I should have saved the voice mail. But he called me and left a voice mail after he left their house and said:

“Dude. She kissed me.”

So, we went from the morning where she hated us, despised our existence and hated our time because she went through this thoughtful process to something nice for her husband and we were the reason it didn’t come about. So, the fact is she’s kissing my manager because we stepped up and did what was the right thing to do.

It could have been easier to say:

“Hey man. We made a mistake. Mistakes happen.”

But that’s not what we do; that’s not what we’re about. When we make a mistake, we apologize and we’re willing to do whatever it takes to satisfy the relationship so that it becomes a great story for us. And the customer knows it’s a great story for them because we really do care about them.

The best part of the story was 3 days later I get an envelope with a letter from my employee, Greg. He was the employee who worked with this woman and in there was this really nice letter saying:

“ I apologize for making a mistake and I potentially cost us a lifetime customer. And oh, by the way, here’s a check for $400 to cover the costs of all the stuff we did for this woman to satisfy her as a customer.”

Now, of course I didn’t cash the check because we all make mistakes. And Zanes can afford to pay to fix the mistakes our employees make. I want my employees to feel that they can do whatever it is they need to do. But, to have an employee take a week’s pay out of his existence, to write a check, to cover the cost of his mistake...that’s an employee I want working for me.

Actually, he’s still here. Greg’s going to be a lifer. He gets what we’re about and he wants to make this a greater organization.

I just looked up and we’ve come to the end of our hour. The time has just raced by. I thoroughly enjoyed talking with you. I know you’re crazy busy and a million things waiting for you.

You're a leader. Leaders are readers. Jim Rohn says that; I just quote him. On your website, you have a page where you have a recommended reading list. One of them caught my eye. The Offshore Nation. How do you offshore or outsource your customer experiences? Where do you draw the line in that dynamic?

I certainly believe that readers are leaders. One of the reasons I promote this book on my website is because we all need to know what is out there and what’s changing.

There are a lot of books out there that are talking about looking at the global economy. When you look at the US economy as whole, we’re not in the manufacturing business, we’re in the service business. IBM is spending time promoting that you’re going to get an academic degree in service management or service science like you can get a degree in service science.

People need to read books on potentially what’s happening out in the marketplace, or the world, that will challenge our existence to be successful.

And The Offshore Nation is a great book to know what is potentially coming down the line.

Where can we find you on the web?

We’re at Zanes and I’m at Chris Zane. Those are the two main places we have to visit and give us feedback. Good or bad. I’m a customer service guy, so it doesn’t matter.

Thank you so much for a wonderful conversation!

WARNING: Self-Promotion.

If you want to know more ways to engage with your employees as opposed to anonymous surveys, my book RECOGNIZE THEM: 52 Ways to Recognize Your Employees in Ways They Value offers 52 ways to recognize your employees, easy exercises to reinforce those habits and skills and inspirational quotes to keep you going.

And if you’re wondering what the bottom line with low employee engagement is, it’s estimated to cost the US economy roughly $370 billion a year.

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Zane's Cycles: Lessons in maximizing the lifetime value of your customers

Your Company's 'Secrets' on WikiLeaks

The brouhaha about the most recent WikiLeaks release of State Department cables and the secrets they reveal has been in all the news, recently.

What would happen if the same thing happened with your company?

What if every internal email among your executive officers were published for everyone in the company to read?

Would it be a secret that IT had no respect for the endusers throughout the company?

Or that Customer Service thought Finance was too restrictive, ok anal, about their customer credit criteria?

Or would anyone be shocked, shocked they'd say to hear that the CFO thought the CMO clueless and his most recent marketing ideas would generate no ROI.

And everyone thought the Board of Directors were what and did what?

Would you be really surprised at the infighting, name-calling and childish positioning?

How many would be shocked, shocked they say to hear that key decisions were made based on politics and whose buddy you are. Everyone seemed to data, results, logic and feedback from those implement the policies and those who suffer under them?

No one, really.

Now, wouldn't those same executives or their minions claim corporate secrets were revealed and their ability to negotiate with vendors hampered by these revelations of what everyone knew but no one could acknowledge?

These secrets and the unspoken, unwritten rule in the employee manual that everyone play along pretendng they are secrets are like the child's tale: The Emperor's New Clothes. In that tale, everyone told the king his non-existent cloak is gorgeous and he is handsome while wearing it. That's what the king wanted to hear. And telling the king what he wanted to hear was how you curried favor. Finally, a child pointed out there was no cloak; the king was nekid. N-E-K-I-D. Nekid.

Guy Kawasaki had a list of 10 ways to create employee evangelists. One way was to open the kimono; show everyone the reality. My point here is there is no kimono there. The company's culture is already transparent, nekid. Everyone already sees. Everyone sees clearly. Everyone already knows and discusses it. Only a few select people demand the illusion be maintained.

That's where employee dis-engagement begins. It's the source of cynicism and distrust. It's where the passion and motivation are lost. It's the starting point for people to actively undermine a company's brand.

So, now let's acknowledge what's seen. And what it does or doesn't do. And what it could do if everyone joined in. We're all adults.

It will be a bumpy ride. Like the faux fainting spells, and the and the senatorial grandstanding with the WikiLeaks there will be those in your company who want to keep secrets, whose career and influence are built on maneuvering those secrets like chairs on the Titanic. Help them understand they are capable and talented and you are there to help. Show them what's possible when everyone works together. It's change and the lack of control they fear.

And if they can't understand it then...rescue yourselves. Man the lifeboats and let them stay with the sinking ship and their precious chairs.

I guess my point is that the 'secrets' revealed in WikiLeaks are not secrets if you just read the news on a regular basis.

 

Facebook! A Little Help Here, Please

What to Expect with the Facebook Merge of Pages and Places

NOTE: Page and Place merges take 7 days to propagate, knowing what to expect will help people and page admins understand the initial changes better by reading our experience.

August 18, 2010 – Facebook rolls out Facebook Places. ; Some business locations are now showing up as ‘Community Pages’ on Facebook. ; Some Facebook Business Page administrators will be given a small notice at the top of their page with a match-up between Facebook Pages and Facebook Places asking “Is this your location?” ; And prompting them to ‘claim’ that location.

December 1, 2010 – Follow our experience when we did this for a customer; first shocking, then scary, then comes the long wait to see what is going to materialize...

1. We “Claim the Facebook Place”

• Innocent and worked like a charm

2. We are prompted to Merge the Facebook Place with the Facebook Page

• Curious and want to learn more

3. We clicked on Learn More, ; the Facebook Help Page and FAQ to see if this is a good idea

• It said; The core content, such as Photos, Videos and Events from your page will remain, as well as any custom tabs or vanity URLs.

• Risks appear limited, we are not given any indication there will be a significant difference with exception to the addition of the location and map.

4. We discuss with Client and make a decision to move forward because we believe Facebook has a pretty cool idea....

• Geo locations for targeted ads for customers who “already” have visited and like the business – brilliant!

• Location and map available on a Facebook Business Page to find the business easily – brilliant.

What followed next freaked us out! (And I won’t kid you, we went into freak-out overdrive!)

• The first page is now called the “profile” including the address, phone number and map filling the space once home to the status update and tabs.

• Default tabs disappear –but eventually propagate over as navigation links on the left sidebar.

• The default landing tab options cannot be found in permissions. – this is where the Business page was set to land on a custom tab if folks do not already “like” the page (yet to determine if these are returning)

• The left sidebar appears to be reduced in width as our picture is cut-off to the right.

• No clear explanation is given for creating custom landing pages for this new page format.

• A new FBML application can still be created, we ran a test and where there was once a tab, it now is a navigation link on the left sidebar as well.

• We no longer see the little boxes of people’s profile pictures who ‘like’ this page in the sidebar, Instead it shows the number of people “500 people like this” and a “show all” link.

While Facebook Claims this to be a “Richer” design, the jury is out on that as we await the 7 days to see what “materializes.”

Right now our concern is for our many clients who are utilizing the current custom pages and who were lined up to have one made. ; We have seen only unfavourable comments here, and here and here, but have not yet found any positive comments. ; The only thing we can find on Facebook Help is this and this (which say exactly the same thing).

One article suggests that all Facebook Business Pages will be moving over to this format, but we have heard nothing official from Facebook at this time. ; ;

Recommendation: ; Wait, as with most Facebook Changes, until the dust settles, if you are prompted to “merge” your Facebook Place and Facebook Page – decline.

********************************

About the author:

Patti Blackstaffe, is Founder and President of Strategic Sense Inc. She's has over 15 years of experience in Behaviour Management, Plans of Action, and Business and has recently been voted One of World's Top 30 Leadership Gurus for 2010.

 

 

Disclaimer: The title was mine.

Recognize the Routine Makers. Week 24 of the 52-Week Employee Recognition Plan

I announced in May, 2010, the 52 - Week Employee Recognition Plan. This is the 24th week. The lesson this week is:

Reward the routine makers. 

The rage in business books and experts and coaches today is...change. Change. Innovation. Disruption. How to handle it, create it, embrace it, live with it. Make money from it. Survive it.

Along with this trendy rage comes books and seminars on how to manage the disruptors, those who think outside your box, the ones willing to ask why and why not and keep asking us until someone listens.

Who are the lost, forgotten, and overlooked as we celebrate the disruptors, the creative-types, the rebels who come up with the latest coolest idea? These are the cogs in your machine, the routine-makers.

They are the ones whose, often silent, efficiency in executing the mundane tasks of every business form the foundation for your business. That foundation, their successes, allows you to experiment with all those ideas, innovations, projects, skunk works, disruptions. That foundation generates the cash-flows that provide the cash to invest in these experiments. Their efficient routines, boring and restrictive to some, create the efficiencies that allow others to experiment. Some of which prove successful; some of which don't.

Recognize those efficient routines. 

Recognize their successes.

Show how new ideas and innovations and solutions are built upon and made possible by this strong foundation of routines and the efficiency to which they are kept.

It’s easy to overlook them. But without them, you have nothing to stand on. Be sure to recognize that and them.

**********

You can start with any week of the 52 - Week Employee Recognition Plan and make that your first week.

You can take one of those weeks and turn it into a month or commit to an accelerated pace and complete 6 of the weeks in one month.

You can create your own week of employee recognition. Share that journey here. Share it in your blog or Twitter or Facebook.

But, do something to recognize your employees! They set your brand apart as your ultimate competitive edge.

And the more you recognize their achievements, the more achievements you'll see and they'll enjoy, along with your customers and and shareholders, partners and vendors.

 

Highlights from My Conversation with Murray Smith, Co-author of The Answer

Murray. Thank you for hiring Sean, your book and being on our show!

I don’t encourage stalking but I do encourage our listeners to follow our guests. Where are you on the web? And what cool project are you working on right now.

I’ve dedicated the rest of my professional life to helping small business owners to try to change their failure rate. I’ve got 3 business I’m working towards that end.

Mainstreet is my most recent endeavor. And you can reach me at AccessMainstreet.

Get The Answer is my personal site where I do a lot of personal work and philanthropic work and scholarship programs.

We have another program we work with to give as much access for free as possible to entrepreneurs through our initiative called Business Growth Makeover. There, what we want to do is reach out and provide the basic principles, the first three steps before anyone spends any time and money on any lead generation efforts. These three must steps are stongly recommended which we provide at no cost at that site.

Let’s talk about your great book.

Who was the reader you pictured in your mind as you wrote this book? Describe them for us. What need of theirs does it satisfy?

We wanted to write a book for people in business. Anybody in business that felt that that business could be the vehicle to achieve their financial success. It could be an employee, it could be as a partner, it could be as a direct sales person. Anybody that was looking for abundance in life and that were willing to consider doing things differently and were open-minded.

73% of people want to get in and start their own business. This book was written for those people who have that mindset, they want abundance and the instruction manual for how to be successful.

Your introduction talks about the Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. What is it? And why does it matter.

That’s a very big word for a very simple statement. The statement is when you look at something different the very thing you look at changes.

We’re dealing with a client who was in the process of developing a website. They had built a $25,000 website and only to find out after they had gone through that exercise and they went through our attract more clients exercise and determined who their ideal client was did they realize their ideal client did not use the web as a means of identifying and finding where they are. They use other strategies to do that.

And this client then realized they had a $25,000 white elephant website with no traffic to it and won’t have any traffic to it because the customers aren’t looking for it as part of their decision-making process.

And we got them to change the way they were looking at their website from being a major lead generation device to being a supportive device and in this process it shifted the way their clients perceived them from being a web-based organization to their clients being able to them to go to other distribution channels to buy their products.

The Heisenberg Principle suggests that when you have a new set of parameters, a new set of considerations, for when you are looking at that thing... then that thing can change for what it references for you.

I wanted to ask you about how you mentioned in your biography that you were diagnosed with a learning disability early in your life. Clearly, that diagnosis was incorrect. And I’ve read where a high percentage of successful business leaders had learning disabilities.

There are a limited number of styles of learning. There are 37 possible styles of learning . And the public schools offer only 3. Reading for me...I couldn’t comprehend what the words meant.

Obviously with schools being reading and intellectual based I was several years behind the other students.

I was told I would never amount to much.

My first job when I got out of school was sewer cleaning. I began to study the owners of the company. They were no smarter than I. They were focused on the critical things responsible for revenues.

The owners of successful companies all focused on the same critical few things.

All I knew when I got into business was to focus on these critical few things. it worked. The formula for driving revenues became absolutely key for me and I spent 30 years perfecting it.

Success is not directly linked to intelligence. It’s linked to another set of criteria and another formula that has not been so easily fleshed out for other people to embrace it.

That’s what we believe The Answer does. It gives people the insight and the knowledge base to align themselves with the right mental conditioning and then to align their business those critical few strategies that drive revenue.

It’s almost irrespective of the industry and the predictability of success is very measurable.

15:00

Your book has 15 chapters. And at least 7, maybe as many as 9 of those chapters have nothing to do with strategy or tactics, execution or marketing. You don’t mention social media....Instead you talk about the brain, our thinking patterns, dreaming, big thinking, changing our minds, the universe inside our brains...

Why did you choose to spend so much time on this topic: our brain and how it works?

If you looked a race car and a race car driver and asked yourself which of the two were required for that race car drive to win a race 100% of the people would say both.

Yet, when it comes to the most complicated thing you’ll ever do in your life which is to start up and run a business some people think that the business can run on its own.

You need both. You need you as the business person and you need the business as the vehicle to get to where you want to go. And both have to be in alignment.

The driver in this metaphor needs to be excellent at what he does. He needs to have the right mental conditioning, the right training, the right belief system. The vehicle itself needs to have an engine that’s tuned to perfection, needs to have the the best tires. And they both need to be in harmony.

And when you get them working in harmony and then you put them on a race track with 50 other drivers one of them is going to win.

Same thing in business. We spend the first half of the book talking about how you can develop the right belief system, the right mental conditioning and we’re not talking about airy-fairy, personal growth stuff, we’re talking about the proven principles that give you an operators manual to tap into the most powerful resource in the universe, that’s the brain.

Get yourself ready to be the race car driver in your business.

If 95% of small businesses close their doors within the first 5 years and 95% of business books fail to mention that resource, our brain, maybe we’re on to something.

More interesting is the reason why they fail. It’s because they lose the hope and belief that their business will deliver the lifestyle they hoped when they began their business.

And that’s the power of the human brain. It can get you jacked up, so hyped on wanting to something, you can go out and run a marathon or scale a mountain. It’s also equally powerful going in the other direction: depression, doubt, fear. These are not so positive emotions that hold people back. As you start to slip down that slippery slope, you start losing confidence, you ultimately get to that point where you give up.

If you look at every other living thing in the universe it has a period of time to develop. A human being is 9 months. An oak seed to an oak tree is predictable. They are all predictable and scientifically proven.

Every idea has the same gestation period and manifestation period. It takes a certain amount of time for it to develop. The only thing is that scientists haven’t figured out how long that gestation period is. Ideas have a thing about them that manifest and change all the time whereas those other examples are more physical.

So at the first sign of trouble we start doubting our idea is a valuable one or a bonafide one. We start digging up and not continuing to give the nourishment and we end up digging it up and abandoning the idea.

This is nothing to do with strategy or tactics. This has got to do with you, the individual. Could you imagine if a race car driver gave up when they were in the 15th position?

When we’re first conceived as humans from the time that happens throughout the course of our lifetime we’re surrounded with coaches to advise us, parents, mother to carry us, teachers guiding us, sports coaches, doctors. We’re looking to them to give us advice.

And, then when we come to doing the most complicated thing of all, to step out, take responsibility and to take an idea and birth it in the marketplace as a business, we think we can go it alone. And all of a sudden we think we can do it ourselves.

That’s right those failure rates are so high.

I love business strategy, theory and models. I love those who say that the key is execution. How are you going to bring execute that strategy, apply that theory, make money from your model. But you write that People tend to be focused on looking for the how, thinking that is where the answer lies. But it’s not.

If the answer rests not in the how, then where does it rest?

Most people have been taught that the answer is in the how. There are three parts of why people become successful. Back in the 70-90’s people used to focus on the what. Those are the secrets that were being uncovered. There are no secrets. They just are unaware.

What you need to know. Tell me what I don’t know, tell me what I need to know and what I need to focus on.

Why. Tell me why that’s important. If you get my why big enough I’ll swim an ocean to get to the other side, I’ll do what it takes to succeed.

How. And THEN the how falls into place.

We call it the what, why and how.

Tell me how to do it. Make it very simple. We refer to it as a grade 6 language. If we can do that with a grade 6 language we should be able to do with anybody on the planet.

This may be a good time to talk about neural reconditioning. What is neural reconditioning? Why is it so important for an entrepreneur or anyone really if they want to live a life of abundance?

I’m 55 years old. I’ve been conditioned my whole life by my environment, by my actions, by the people I’m involved with. Professionally or personally I am who I am because of my environment. I have a certain conditioning for the way a I believe and the certain priniciples and morals. They are what make me what I am.

By the time someone is 16 years old we’ve been told no 155,000 times in comparison to yes only 7,000 times.

That amount of bombardment conditions you to become who you are and what your propensities are.

We can’t change them on our own. It’s not easy to change them on our own.
It’s not easy to change our conditioning on our own.

Neural reconditioning is the ability to change your mental conditioning over the course of about 30 days with about 5 or so minutes of exercise every day. If you’re not willing to do that neural reconditioning process anything you attempt to do is not sustainable.

It’s not just related to business. It could be it’s related to business or training for a marathon.

My dad ran a marathon when he was 70 and he just went out got a college credit for French when he’d never spoken a word of it before.

The answer to this next question seems obvious. But sometimes the obvious answers need to be repeated. Why is it so important to go through this neural reconditioning.

Einstein said it best. If you want something different from what you presently got and you’re only willing to do the same things over and over, that’s the first sign of insanity.

If people are looking for abundance in your life and they don’t have it, doing the same thing over and over again is not the answer. Working smarter is the answer.

Working smarter is first understanding the power of the human brain and being given an operator’s manual to tap into its power. If you could in 30 days develop a millionaire mindset, ie, think like other successful millionaire’s think like, almost clone a millionaire’s behavior and mindset, you would some time in the future get what they got.

What are the elements of neural reconditioning?

I'm going to talk about three that I know work.

Affirmations, visualizations and meditation.

30:00

Affirmations by saying things as though they already exist. Let’s say I wanted to be a successful business owner, I would have affirmations like this:

• I am a successful business owner.

• I have all he money I need to live the life that I want.

• I have a small business with a dozen people who love working together in a collaboration to serve the customers we are serving.

The brain needs to hear it is though it is the present.

The other way is visualization. I have a vision board in my office. A bus plan is nothing more than a vision board. On my vision board I have my financial objectives, my non-financial objectives, and my personal objectives.

Another very powerful way is meditation. 10 years ago I started to meditate. I meditate every day.

Through the combination of all three of those I am constantly reprogramming and updating for the current market conditions for my current belief system and for my current wants and desires.

One hesitation I had for bringing you on the show was your use of affirmations. Don’t laugh. I see so many people use affirmations and the Law of Attraction as their sole tool for success and yet they never reach it. What are they missing?

They’re missing the single most important aspect and why The Secret doesn’t actually work. They’re missing the law of GOYA. And the Law of GOYA is Get Off Your Ass and Do Something. Or in other words, referred to as the Law of Action.

If you knew the combination of a safe with a million dollars in front of you and you knew the combination to the safe but you never reached out to turn the dial...that safe would never open for you.

The Secret gave you information for people who wanted the easy way out: to wish, believe and receive

The Answer gave you insights for taking the action to get what you believe.

If you don't get up and take action, action is the most important thing, once you have the right mindset, the right strategies. It’s the secret sauce.

Pablo Picasso had the saying that "Action is the foundational key to all success."

You talk about there are 5 Musts with the Law of Action. What are the 5 Musts?

• You must find something that stirs your soul. That’s something you’ll do whatever it takes.

• You must become excellent at it. You cannot slide by. Excellent goes far beyond good or great.

• You must condition your mind to believe you have it in you and can achieve it.

• You must figure out how to make money from it.

• You must take daily action. If you’re not taking the action, then you’re not going to be achieving the goals you set out.

Each one of these has a whole show in itself. But this is a wireframe.

Which is the most important one?

Number 5: The Law of Action.

What is the mental financial capacity and how does it effect our success?

This goes back to our own mental conditioning both from creating on our own with our limiting belief system and our family’s limiting beliefs.

Everyone sets a thermostat at what they’re capable of earning based on what their belief system is. We all have this mental condition belief system that says we should earn $70,000 a year. If we set our thermostat at $70,000 we will never earn $700,000.

Many businesses these days may think that any paying customer is their definition of the ideal customer. But you have a more specific definition. What is your definition of an ideal customer?

If we’re going to leave the brain for a moment and step into the business, the ideal client is the single most important factor for business success. If you don’t have your ideal client to market to you’re wasting your time and money marketing.

You offer a great real-world plan to identify your ideal customer, the gap between your current and the ideal customer. I encourage everyone to recognize this as one more reason to go buy your book.

[Great discussion of Dave and Buster’s process of discovering their ideal customer]

The profile is only one aspect of it. How they make decisions is a huge consideration.

What makes up the ideal client is nothing more than matching up what they want and what you want from them.

So what are the top 5 things they want from what you provide and what are the top 5 things they could provide you.

What makes it ideal is not that they buy from you but it is the enjoyment you get from their buying from you.

To know that is to know the combination to your safe.

Your ideal client is the foundation of your business. Whatever you put on top of that will be successful. If people are interested in finding their ideal client they can go to BusinessGrowthMakeover we’re giving access to a 55 page workbook, an hour coaching session, an hour interview...we’re giving that for free to help out during these tough financial times.

What role does need and want play in defining the ideal customer. Why’s that important?

People buy what they want not necessarily what they need. If they’re looking at it from a need standpoint they’re putting it off until the need is greater.

It’s the emotional side of the business process.

People buy what they want and not what they need. If you sell to someone’s needs you won’t be nearly as successful as if you sell to their wants.

Erika Andersen was on the show a couple of week’s ago. She’s authored a great book also titled Being Strategic. As part of that process she asks that we define our reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future. What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future with writing this great book, The Answer?

We wanted to impact the lives of 1 million small business owners worldwide. We wanted to positively impact those lives. If we impacted a million lives then word-of-mouth would take over and we’d impact 10’s of millions.

What are the signs that will show your progress? What metrics are you using to measure you progress?

It’s the success of any of our businesses because they’re all in alignment with helping small businesses.

For example my attract more clients business growth system is licensed to more than 10,000 businesses worldwide.

Our Business Growth Makeover has helped more than 100,000 businesses.

The Answer has been translated into 37 languages and sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

If we can get to that critical mass of 1 million then our message will be heard.

49:00

There are 7 great laws of the universe. The Law of Compensation says that you will be directly rewarded for the number of people you help.

Our focus has got to be finding the cure for small business so that our economy and our future has the hope.

Jim Rohn wrote that Leaders are readers. You’re a leader and I assume an avid reader. What are you reading?

Unfortunately I’m not an avid reader. I’m an avid reader of bites and soundbites of information.

If you go to the back of the book, we have a list of current and great reads. My co-author and I have gone through them and I’ve gotten the nuggets of inspiration from them.

• How to Think Like a CEO

• Success Principles by Jack Canfield.

• Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham
  

• How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be.

We’ve gone out beyond the business books to some of the more newer reads.

What is the one thing you would do different with one of your successes? Had I know this I could have done more...?

Had I embraced the concept of understanding how the brain works and the idea that you are a bigger piece of the puzzle than your business is.
I had great success. My biggest challenge was thinking that after 2-3 years that I had done my part and it was time to move on.

In most cases my passion and drive is not duplicatable. My biggest regret is not sticking with any of the deals for longer than 2 or 3 years and then watching them collapse in my wake.

Thanks, Murray!

Highlights from My Conversation with Ed Muzio, Author of Make Work Great

Ed Muzio, CEO of Group Harmonics which provides Analytical Solutions Maximizing Human Potential. He is the author of the excellent book Make Work Great: Supercharge Your Team, Reinvent the Culture and Gain Influence - One Person at a Time. And he joined our show last week to talk about his company and the solutions he offers in his book for those who want to Make Work Great!

You can listen in streaming mode at this link.

Good morning, Ed. Thank you for being on our show.

Good Morning Zane, ... Thanks for having me....I've been excited about this all week, especially after reading your last blog post about it.

I don’t encourage stalking but where are you and what projects are you working on now?

Ha, I think the information age mandates stalking. So, that’s ok. Anyway, I’m in my office in downtown Albuquerque this morning. This week I’m gearing up for a few upcoming sessions I’m giving for clients, and also working on the instructor certification materials for the seminar based on Make Work Great. We just began offering instructor certifications and we’ve already got people asking for them.

When did you begin to think about offering instructor certification programs?

We do it for all of our programs. It’s always been part of the plans. for this program. The reception has been warm for this program. So, we pushed it in the schedule a bit.

Who did you write this book for? Describe the reader you pictured as you wrote this book?

It’s initially geared for people who have a true desire to do something in their workplace. They wanted to make things better at work but felt trapped between a rock and a hard place...

Why do they need to read your latest book?

The why is in some ways self-evident. But in other ways it’s not.

 

I think there’s a drive to make work better. After I wrote the first book which was 4 Secrets to Liking Your Work ...but have you heard that people complain about their job? If you write a book named 4 Secrets to Liking Your Work it’s an invitation to complain about your job. Everybody comes up to you and tells you what’s wrong about their job...it’s not a bad thing. I learned about what what’s wrong in work and what people are struggling with and it’s a good path towards fixes. But there was one subset of those people who would come up and say you have a good set of ideas for improvement but I can’t do anything because...someone else, the employees, the leaders, the management someone else controls everything and I can’t do anything until they fix it.

And, I would say...

• Well, do something anyway.

And, they would say:

• I can’t; I can’t do anything.
  

And, I would say:

• Well, quit.
  

And, they would say:

• I can’t.
  

And, I would eventually say:

• I guess I can’t talk to you anymore....

Eventually, my friend and advisor, Dr. Deb Fisher who was a co-author with me on this first book, said you can’t do that. You’re telling them to shut up and do it any way. And you can’t do that. You have to give them the answers. You have the answers anyway.

And eventually I wrote what she described as the Ed Muzio guide to do it anyway and that’s Make Work Great.

My friend Erika Andersen coined what’s become a favorite phrase for me. That’s reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future. What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future when you wrote Make Work Great?

I can share with you the purpose of my company. That’s to change the way America works and that’s to put companies back in control in the information age, and put individual people and employees back in control of their careers and their lives. A lot of people don’t feel that way right now.

More reasonable – I view my purpose in this book is to help leaders increase their group’s output and reduce stress, for themselves and their groups. I’ll help a few people, today, then I know I did something and if it spreads from there, that’s the goal.

What are some of the metrics you’ll use to measure your progress?

There’s a lot of ways to look at progress. My favorite metric is voluntary reporting. Just last week somebody posted on my personal Facebook page that said something like:

I put the book to work and started making my cultural crystal and I immediately saw and felt the changes in myself and externally saw the results.

If my goal is one person at a time, that’s a good metric.

What’s been the biggest or most common obstacle? Is it from the management side or the employee’s side?

The biggest obstacle I have to overcome is that initial sense that I can’t do anything until management fixes things. That is really a crippling belief system. That’s

If I can get somebody in a room and start to experiment with some things they can do then they can leave with a smile on their face saying I can do this or I can do this tomorrow.

 

But getting them in that room sometimes is tricky. But people are really firmly set in their belief system that it’s somebody else’s job, that it’s Management’s job is to make me happy.

And that’s not a good place for management to be and it’s not a good place for anybody else to be, either.

There’s no idea that there’s a put your head in the sand and ignore structural problems. I would never recommend anyone ignore problems. But at the same time there are things you can do no matter what the problems are that can be useful.

I was sold on your book with your first section: It Starts with You. Personal responsibility is bandied about a lot these days. But it’s rarely bandied about in the workplace. Your two books clearly point to that personal responsibility. This sounds like a silly new-age, pop psychology, question but where and when did we forego personal responsibility for our happiness and performance at work? Forget life. Let’s just deal with work.

You know, it’s funny. It seems we have foregone it in a lot of areas. And, much of what I do is in the work context. For example, I have a very popular seminar around reading behavior and responding to it to better engage people in communication. I finally had to put a policy in place to offer the tools and materials to spouses for graduates for my class.. Because after each seminar a couple of people would come up afterwards and says please could I have these tools for my spouse because I need it for that person . . My policy ends after I provide the tools I stop talking. And the focus is work and when I get asked for marriage advice, that’s where I stop talking!!

The focus is what you can do and not what others are going to do.

On the other hand your first sentence is You’re not as autonomous as you think you are. So...personal responsibility is just a nice phrase for the employee putting the yokes on themselves?

Haha! The yokes are already on you, or not, depending upon your perspective. In reality, we’re all somewhat free and we’re all somewhat yoked. That whole first section of the the book that says you’re not as autonomous as you think you are goes through some of the reasons that you have forces acting on you that are real and strong and are not all you. You have some freedom and you have some constraints. What the book is about, what Make Work Great, is about taking advantage of the areas in which you’re already free and leveraging that to make yourself even more free.

I saw, but now I can’t find it, an article that said 30% or more of those currently employed will leave their job once the economy turns around. And in a recent 4-minute video your host shared that 75% of currently employed are looking for new jobs.

Yeah, that 30% sounded low to me. It’s definitely 30% or more and maybe as much as 3/4’s looking to get out.

Why are so many of those currently employed thinking that in order to Make Work Great they need to work someplace else?

...Well, it’s really easy to say “things are better elsewhere than here,” because I’m here, I’m not elsewhere and I can see and fell all the problems that take place. And you’re comparing all the problems you can see “here” with your ideal version of “there.”

But the statistics suggest that’s not an accurate perception. If 3/4’s of the people thinks it’s better elsewhere, where is elsewhere?

I read where companies hold in excess of $2 trillion in cash. Clearly they’re waiting to invest in productivity assets. Clearly the companies are getting productivity from their employees. Are those companies putting too many demands and too much stress on those employees?

...Either the companies are putting stress on the employees, or the employees and managers and leaders are putting it on themselves. From what I’ve seen, if you look at it that way, it’s both.

But, I think that’s a confusing lens to look through, because either way, the fix is not for “the company” to do something different because “The company” isn’t a person, it’s just a bunch of employees. You have to ask yourself who’s on the other side of the question? When the employees start doing something differently, increasing output, reducing stress, that changes the company.

That’s the critical ratio, the output divided by stress, you talk about, isn’t it? Define your critical ratio.

Right! The critical ratio is output versus stress. This harkens back to my engineering background.

If you’re a leader or an employee in a company, you’re trying to do something useful, I hope – that’s output – and you’re trying to do it in a way that doesn’t burn you out – that’s stress.

You’re engaged in an optimization problem.

Maximum output minimum stress is the only way to survive over the long term in the information age.

Companies create less in relation to the stress their stakeholders experience or create. Their key stakeholder, employees, have had enough.

Stress is not just a new age notion, it has direct impacts to family and friends and health. It’s real. Studies have shown we’re all overstressed, and we shy away from those companies or situations that add to it.

It’s not a position you want to be putting your employees in or customers in...to be adding to their stress.

How does Make Work Great address that?

What’s different about what I’m doing is that this is not a stress reduction program like meditation and deep breathing. Not that those aren’t valuable. . What this says is we’re going to optimize that balance. We’re going to make the most of that control you have. What we’re doing is maximizing the most output with the least amount of stress.

Should it address that? I mean if so many companies are so poorly managed that they motivate their most important asset to flee at the first opportunity...can these brands be rehabilitated to or with Make Work Great?

...That’s creeping up to the question, on the individual level it’s the question of should I quit or stay, which is always an interesting one, and of course the answer is different for each person and each situation.

Of course it’s an unique question for every person and every situation.

I would never say if you should or shouldn’t quit because how would I know.

If you’re going to work and stay there then you should do these things. You practice the behaviors that give you more output with less stress that will be good for your career and that would be good for your health. There’s no reason to do it if you’re not going to stay employed.

But I’ll tell you this: if you’re gonna stay, do these things. Do them for your company, do them for yourself, whatever – it’s just practical common sense that you do them because they make things better for you.

What are the four simple guidelines that define the process to Make Work Great, a process you call a special type of moderation?

The four things are:

1. Don’t put your career in jeopardy. Do things that help you, not hurt you.

2. Don’t compromise your ethics. Never. Again, common sense. The book talks about ways to be overt and honest about the work you do.

3. Don’t use all your time. Don’t look at it like you’re going to spend 20 hours a week or 40 hours a week and change the culture. Make small changes and realize the benefit. This is about slow changes with lasting effect, not quick changes or programs du jour. Make small changes, realize the benefit, then change again.

4. Don’t get impatient. That's the flip side of don’t use all your time. Develop good discipline and then wait for the rest to take care of itself. It’s like planting a tree. It won’t grow if you keep digging it up and looking at it.

Of those 4, which one presents the most common, greatest challenge?

Well, I don’t know about other people, but for me patience is my greatest struggle. I’m one of those people who want things to happen RIGHT NOW.

Unfortunately it’s that short-term thinking that gets companies into messes in the first place. We think if we can throw more resources at it it will go faster.

Company culture is an organic process, and you can’t shortcut organic processes. In business, we have a hard time with this idea. We tend to think you can speed up anything by throwing people and money at it. But it’s like Fredrick Brooks said, “nine women can’t make a baby in one month.” You can’t change the culture faster, just because you want to, or because you try to hurry. All you do is stress yourself out.

So, If you want long term changes to your workplace, you have to be okay with making small incremental steps and watching the progress.

You outline the personal responsibility with 2 big steps: Overtness in Task and Clarity within Relationships. Tell us about those two.

Sure, well overtness about task is about being clear and overt about the work you’re doing and the task. There are 6 principles involved:

• What you’re doing (purpose),

• Why it matters to the company (impact),

• Why it matters to you (incentive),

• Whether or not you’re doing it (progress),

• What you need from the company to do it (resources),

• What you need from yourself to do it (capabilities).

Overtness about tasks is I’m talking and syncing with these issues all the time with as much overtness and obviousness as I can. If nothing else I’m thinking to myself all the time about these with as much clarity and overtness as I can muster.

And this inevitably leads to questions. You don’t know exactly what you’re trying to do or why you’re trying to do it. Those questions lead to conversation with others who can help you get what you need. Those questions with others lead to ...clarity within relationship: clearly define the purpose of your interaction, the approach, and be very limited in seeking need for agreement.

For example, if you and I are managers and we have an employee whose workload we want to share.

I should be clear with myself of what I’m wanting to do, I want 5 more hours of their time, and I’m careful to approach you in a way that makes sense, and I’m going to limit the need for our agreement. I’m going to try to keep our agreement focused on that one employee and their time and not our management philosophies.

All of this sounds so simple. Be clear, honest, transparent. Don’t compromise your ethics. Why is that so tough for so many?

It’s all about discipline. Overtness about task and clarity about relationships is a discipline. And disciplines are tough. I often tell people, for example, that I go to the gym a few times a week. Many weeks that’s true. But it’s amazing how easy it is to say those words even after a two or three week run in which I haven’t managed to get to the gym at all.

This is the same thing – overtness, clarity, honesty, and transparency are a discipline, and one you need to practice on a regular basis. Easy to say, not always easy to do. Job or life will sometimes try to pull you in another direction.

Another thing I liked about your book is you addressed that this is hard. You have a chapter titled When Growth is Difficult. Which of these two steps, Overtness in Task and Clarity in Relationships, presents the biggest challenge for people? Why?

...Well, we’ve talked a little already about the purpose piece and overtness about task. Again, I can’t speak for everyone, but it does seem like a lot of people have trouble with the relationship part of the puzzle. Figuring out what you don’t know about your work and all the 6 aspects of overtness about task getting ...then finding the people who have the answers, and getting them to give you those answers, can be tricky.

That’s a lot of what my firm does is help companies deal with those issues or better yet avoid them in the first place by having good tools in place so when conflict comes up in the workplace they are prepared to deal with it.

You talk about Conflict in the Crystalline Network. You reference and summarize some excellent researchers in this field of conflict. You discovered commonalities among them all. What are some of these commonalities they? Why are they important?

After reading quite a bit about conflict, I came up with my model which I called the building blocks of reality. It’s 5 pieces.

In every situation, you have:

• the objective data which is what is going on,

• the situational factors,

• your interpretation of the situation,

• your preferred approach,

• your deeply held beliefs.

You can conflict with someone on any of those levels, whether you know it or not. You may be conflicting over the objective data, you may be reading it differently. You may be conflicting over your deeply held beliefs. or you may be conflicting anywhere else in the middle.

The key is to be overt and transparent in your communication about what issue you’re talking about. First we talk about the objective, then we talk about the situation and then the interpretation and if we need to go further then we can go into our driving approaches and beliefs, if we can.

There’s a great video on our site at Make Work Great. It’s called Disagree, Don’t Argue. It goes into this model.

Basically if we’re clear about what part of the situation we’re talking about we’ll at least know where the conflict is that we’re talking about and address it appropriately.

Otherwise if I’m concerned about the data and you’re concerned about my beliefs we’re just going to go in circles.

What tells us our crystal we are now building will turn into a network, a lattice if you will?

The idea of what I call the cultural crystal is that you start to practice the disciplines yourself and over time they start to spread out. And when you see other people copying your patterns of behavior, that means your influence is spreading.

If you attend one of my sessions or you watch the video titled Say no without saying no and you learn about this 90-second format for talking about your output and you start to use it you’ll see this pattern start to spread out.

The key is to not try to push it, and not to try to take credit for it, rather, just be happy that you are making a difference. And just know that the patterns are starting to propagate.

A recent guest here was Molly Anderson, co-author of The Corporate Lattice. You offer complimentary perspectives on how to create lattice networks of engaged employees in cultures of learning that unite to create passionate brands. You both deserve more than that one sentence summary. But I hope one day you two connect. I think you’d have a lot to talk about.

I’d like to meet Molly, The lattice metaphor works for me, although I think in some cases it may suggest a little less randomness than what is actually in play. But it’s definitely a far superior metaphor than a ladder or a hierarchy.

We haven’t talked about social media. Your book doesn’t discuss it either. Even though I’m a big fan of it, I’m glad you didn’t. However, that seems like a perfect resource to expedite creating crystals, building networks, moving from contributor to advisor.

Well, I think you’re right and you’re very perceptive for noticing it. I made the conscious choice not to talk about today’s social media sites likeTwitter or Facebook, because we all know those can be different tomorrow.

But those are just mechanisms, anyway. I didn’t talk specifically about public speaking, or e-mail, or telephone etiquette either, because those are just mechanisms.

What I tried to do was talk about the contents of communication, what you talk about and how you talk about it and leave the reader to select the mechanism.

I see you have just begun to wade into the social media pool.

I’ve been on Facebook for years, but only got my company on it and started the Twitter stuff this year. I’m surprised how fast our following is growing, but it’s still pretty small.

Of course I’m doing my best to base my self worth on how many followers I have, so please, follow me somewhere!!

Jim Rohn said that Leaders are Readers. You’re a leader. Judging from the footnotes and references in your book, you’re an avid reader, also. What are you reading these days?

Thomas Kayser’s follow-on to “Mining Group Gold: How to Cash In on the Collaborative Brain Power of a Team for Innovation and Results. I’ve been asked to endorse it, so I’m reading that right now. It won’t be out until next year but so far, I’m seeing a balance between theory and application for getting groups of people to do something useful.

I also just read “The Big Short:Inside the Doomsday Machine” by Michael Lewis, a book about the subprime mortgage collapse, because I’m intrigued by how systems of people make decisions that are ultimately bad for nearly everyone within them.

I haven’t written it up yet, but as I read the story of what happened, I was struck by the lack of overtness and clarity being practiced by those who set up, ran, and ultimately suffering under the subprime mortgage bubble.

Let’s revisit who should read your book and why should they read it.

Anyone who has a job as a manager, leader, executive, or even individual contributor in a workplace that is complex and multifaceted. What I’ve been told is that if someone has a sense of wanting to make the workplace better for others, or even just make it a little better for him or herself, my book will help.

Where can people find you on the web?

The company's website is Group Harmonics and from there you can click through to the book websites, and also to my social media. And, we just added a free giveaway too.

Riding the Wave?

It's important where you sit.

From 5 Companies, 5 Strategies, 5 Transformations.

Barbecue Guru Mike Mills Offers A Recipe for Success, Too

via www.openforum.com

Mike Mills, the 58-year-old owner of 17th Street Bar & Grill in Murphysboro, Illinois, known within barbecue circles as "The Legend" offers a side of lessons on business success, in addition to his delicious barbecue.

DO WHAT YOU LOVE

He learned the craft at his father's knee... "I've barbecued all my life. My motto was, 'Give me the meat, and I'll cook it."

A notorious workaholic, Mike jokes that at his age, he's "taken to only working half days," by which he means 12 hours.

GENERATE WORD-of-MOUTH.

Start with a great product.

It wasn't until 1988, when his barbecue team started entering -- and winning -- the professional barbecue circuit that he realized that his barbecue might be something more

Give them something to talk about.

I used to cook barbecue out in the back lot and give it away free...

SKIP THE SHORTCUTS

"What I've found is that whether it's with barbecue or running a restaurant, anytime anybody's tried to show me a shortcut -- an easy way out -- it's never worked for me. I've tried all the shortcuts there are, but there's no substitute for hard work"

CONSISTING BRANDING

"People go to Vegas knowing that I have restaurants there, but they look around and can't find a 17th Street Bar & Grill." They don't realize that Memphis Championship Barbecue is the same product under a different name, "so they don't come in."

LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES

In part because of this early mistake, Mike and his daughter Amy Mills Tunnicliffe -- now the marketing guru behind their mini-empire -- takes extra care in ensuring that all barbecue that gets served under his name is consistent, regardless of which of the four 17th Streets or three Memphis Championship Barbecue locations a customer dines at.

OBSESS ABOUT THE DETAILS

"Everything we do is tested," Mike says. The spices that go into his Magic Dust recipe are carefully inspected for potency and rejected if they don't make the cut. "I get my spices from a company in Arkansas that has a specific supply chain, so they secure their spices from the same growers all the time."

MEASURE, MEASURE, MEASURE.

"I take temperatures of everything. I know that if my pork shoulder's not up to 193 degrees, it's not done, no matter how long it's been in the smoker."

IT'S ABOUT THE PEOPLE YOU HIRE 

[It's] all about the people you hire. They have to have a desire to do better in life as strong as your own. They have to have that same basic need.

AND HOW YOU RESPECT THEM

I don't set 9-to-5 hours," he says. "All a schedule does is force someone to be somewhere they don't necessarily want to be. I tell my employees what I expect from them, and tell them to do whatever it takes to get the job done.

CREATE A CULTURE of LEARNING

The first thing he tells new hires is that "by the time you're trained, you'll be better at this than I am, 'cause I'm gonna teach you everything I know, and you got brains of your own, so add 'em together, and you should be smarter than me."

HELP THEM REACH THEIR DREAMS.

Everyone who works for me has the same basic needs as me: They want to get ahead, I want to get ahead, and they will help me live my dream while I help them reach theirs."

There's more. Read the full article.

Murphrysboro, IL. That's not too far away...>

What the customer described ...what the company delivered.

via www.litmanlive.co.uk

Pretty much describes it for too many companies.  The value-added proposition for every company is two-fold:

1. to help the customer describe what they actually want

2. deliver it.

The only way to do that is to communicate.

1. Communicate with the customer.

2. Communicate with each other.

Pretty simple when you think about it. Now...let's look at world peace.

Mike Sansone turned me on to this site, LitmanLive. I think he's right. It's a great site.

Make Work Great by Ed Muzio (McGraw-Hill 2010)

via www.makeworkgreat.com

I just started reading this book. I like it already. He's a good writer with a specific style of writing that's personal, clear and able to maintain a complex idea while communicating it clearly. And his topic is of special interest for me and probably a few of you, also.

Here's a couple of quotes:

Culture Building Is a Conscious Choice

As I said earlier, you are not as autonomous as you think you are. Neither am I. It's an important fact to understand if your goal is to make your workplace great by creating a new culture at work.

And this one:

Consider a definition of [of Corporate Culture] penned by Edgar Schein, who is often credited with coining the term:

The culture of a group can now be defined as: A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and therefore to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.

He makes it clear we're a product of our environment and we have the opportunity, even the responsibility, and the means to change that for the better.

I look forward to reading the rest of it.

Highlights from My Conversation with Joan Koerber-Walker, founder of Core Purpose

Joan-Koerber Walker is the founder and President of Core Purpose. She joined the show for a 2nd time recently. You can listen to our conversation here.

Core Purpose specializes in building solutions that enable clients to focus more of their resources and energy on what they are passionate about and best at in a way that makes financial sense.

See? Joan and her organization help their clients find their core purpose, connect that with their clients’ employees and execute in a sustainable fashion.

Joan was the CEO of Arizona Small Business Association where she worked with the talented team of staff and volunteers tackling challenges like health-care, workforce development, and growing local businesses as an economic development strategy. And before that she was successful in the Big Corporate World.

Joan, how are you? Thank you for being on our show. How are you? What are you working on?

When we spoke last summer we talked about we were in a recession, a depression and how were we going to tackle all the challenges that impact business at every level.

We’re still bumping along the bottom. Companies, start-ups or big global companies are still struggling with the question of why are in business...what are we trying to accomplish and who will we get to the yes that gets every team member to sparkle.

And when you get to the yes that’s when you’re following your core purpose.

You live in Arizona. How is Arizona's economy now?

Arizona was hit hardest by this economy. We’ll take them as a leading indicator for the rest of the country for receiving from this economy.

Arizona’s economy was based on two areas hit hardest by this recession. We had two primary streams of income:

• Income stream #1: real estate.

• Income stream 2 was retail, consumer, spending.

When we had banks collapsing, real estate construction coming to a halt and foreclosures rising then retail spending came to a halt.

Budget cuts but not enough to balance it. Tax increases were approved to keep key ares of the infrastructure then

When government can’t solve the problems their self then citizens come up with creative ideas to solve these problems.

There’s been pretty high profile legislation in the recent 12 months. We’ve seen everyone coming together on a critical issue to find a way to come work out what’s come to be a national issue.

That’s the Arizona Immigration Law, SB-1070. It pertains to jobs, business growth, what’s your thoughts?

It’s been very momentous piece of legislation. From a small business perspective, it’s the first time a state is boycotting another state on this issue. That’s how divisive it is.

The important thing about SB-1070 is that it’s not an immigration bill. It’s an illegal immigration. It’s focused on people breaking the law.

The challenge is that it’s based on federal law. And not all federal laws are that great. And it’s like a patchworked quilt where not everything lines up right.

It has ramifications for law enforcement, business, current residents.

Hundreds of small business people gathered and shaped themselves in a big SOS asking the Washington to please help. Otherwise, we’ll continue to have these patchwork solutions in each state.

Arizona is a gateway where these problems come through and they don’t stay here. And they show up in places like...Iowa.

We have to remember that there are different issues that have to be addressed. Issue one is we have to secure the border. Equally important is the crime statistic you hear about. They are not the guy coming across the border to find a job. It’s the people in the business of bringing people and drugs over the border. Very often instead of taking cash back across the border they take guns. That creates problems for our partner south of the border.

The reason you see laws like this...holding employers accountable for hiring undocumented workers, penalties for aiding and abetting bringing people over the border and checking people for citizenship when they break the law.

The reason they go after employers is that if there’s not that opportunity for a job then less will come over.

Now, dealing with SB-1070 is like closing the barn door. You still have the situation of all those people here now. Some of it is generational. And it gets difficult when both sides start screaming at each other.

It goes back to a post I wrote, Answer or Hypothesis, where you need a place to test a solution. Thinking about your own career, our roles as leaders, it’s really important we remember we rarely have a perfect solution. We have a hypothesis and we test it. We take a step forward.

The reality is that when you have a complex answer you have to start with a hypothesis and test it, take a step forward, test the parameters.

Compare this conversation about the SB-1070 bill to that of a company needing a solution to a complex problem. Every department has their stand, their perspective. It seems like there was no real clear purpose leading that discussion.

No, no. Their purpose was clear. They were going to act because the federal government had not. They had specific things they needed to stop. And they had only a few things they could do.

The reality is that the states do not enforce federal law. So, they created a state law that mirrored the federal law.

They had to do something and that’s the best they could do.

Let’s say we talk a year from now. And Arizona’s governor, Jan Brewer, has made you Immigration Czar. What are the three things you’ve implemented that move this conversation forward.

That’s tricky. It’s tricky because the reason we’re talking here is that the conversation is very diverse. We’re a nation of laws. The reality is that we can’t restructure a state or federal law and implement it in a year.

Whomever is given the job will fail, if they are measured on a 12-month forecast.

Let’s bring that back to having a core purpose, understanding why you are doing, what you are going to do and how you are going to do it and getting a consensus on yes among all the members.

Everyone’s going in their own direction instead of one unifying goal.

SB-1070 is addressing a challenge we hope can be solved in our lifetime.

The first thing is everyone on board has to agree why you’re doing what you’re doing. If you cannot as a leader clearly explain why we’re doing what we’re doing...it’s highly unlikely a consensus will follow.

If you have the wrong core purpose you get the wrong results.

We saw that in the banking community, the Wall Street debacle. If the reason you’re in business is to make more money and that’s it....you’re going to make a bad decision.

Those things we talk about are the results of making good decisions. If you’re in the business to make life better for your customers or make a better widget...to prevent pain and suffering...those are reasons to be in business. You can find people who truly believe in your purpose and you can hire those people and you’re not going to have to motivate them because they come to you motivated. You just need to give them direction.

The first question that I ask is why are you in business. Why are we having this meeting? What do you want to accomplish by following the path you’re following.

If they can’t answer those questions then they’re not going to get the results they want.

Let’s talk about what you do with Core Purpose. What are the catalysts that bring a client to you? What are the events that let them know we’re not on track on moving towards their common goal.

The time that people normally come knocking at my door, the people I spend my time with are Boards of Directors, Executive leaders, General Managers, people who are leaders. Leaders need help. They don’t have people they can turn to for help.

Normally when there is a challenge, it’s marketing is changing, it’s customer base is changing, there’s a problem the leadership has looked around the room and said we don’t have a solution.

Then someone in their organization will say “Someone needs to call that girl. And approaching 50 I like being called a girl.”

Most of the time when they say ‘we have this problem we need to solve.’ normally that’s not the problem. That’s the symptom of the problem. We keep going and asking why this is happening. And we’ll follow the why’s all the way back to the root causes.

When we go in and start asking those questions and that root cause can be anything...

The main thing is that being in business for over 30 years Core Purpose has a network of over 200 experts we can bring in to address those root causes. We can do triage but we can also bring in the best experts from around the country who can not only stop the bleeding and start getting the organization healthy again.

Our goal at core purpose is to help companies make the most of who they are...for the people who matter: their shareholders, their employees, their customers and partners.

Just imagine if every company focused on doing what’s right then we wouldn’t have an economic downturn.

That’s a great economic recovery program. It sounds so simple. How do companies get off-track?

We have to separate it into public and private companies. When you look at public companies you are only as good as your last quarter. And the markets adjust. That drives us to short-term decision making so that our stock price doesn’t tank and we have a ll sorts of problems from that.

We drive public companies to short-term, opportunistic, decision-making. That’s what effected our economy.

John Talton wrote an incredible piece talking about Apple, specifically about the iPad.

• 25,000 employees working at Apple here in the US.
  

• 250,000 working for Apple overseas.

Is there any question why we have a competitive challenge here at home.

On the other side, let’s look at small business. Small business is very much in survival mode. It’s only as good as its last bank statement. If that business starts runs out of money it’s going to come out of the small business owner’s pocket.

Where is the capital coming for small business in his downturn? It’s coming from the small business owner. Banks, angels, VCs are all on the sidelines. It’s coming out of the personal life saving of the small business owner. They invested their entire life savings in this company.

The challenge that faces big and small companies goes back to short-term decision-making rather than going back and looking at the root causes with a team that shares a common goal.

My friend Erika Andersen coined a favorite phrase of mine. That’s reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future. She used it in her book Being Strategic. What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future when you created Core Purpose? Has it changed in this past year?

That’s a tricky question!

Core Purpose is one of the things I’m involved in. In the case of Core Purpose, we started in a downturn. Core Purpose started in times like these...It does best in times like these because people see they need help. Our purpose in starting Core Purpose was in helping people grow.

We’ve continued with that focus. That’s served us well.

I love being involved in multiple projects. I serve on the Board of Directors of a bio-tech firm in San Diego. That’s personally when I look at my RA it’s that not only my core purpose as an individual but find organizations whose core purpose I can believe in and help them get there.

I hope that I can do that for awhile.

What are some of the metrics, other than longevity, that show your progress towards hoped-for future?

Our customer base has expanded and we’ve learned over time who our customers are.

The small businesses in the community, we’ll work with in a seminar format and through our blogs and giving back to the community. Many of the problems we work on are too expensive for small businesses to pay for.

I personally find it very rewarding to work with small businesses. That’s why I work with organizations that help small business in disadvantaged communities. That’s why I write the Core Purpose blog which doesn’t sell anything. That’s why I’ll talk with any small business for an hour for free. And then I’ll point them to the resources they need.

That’s how we move forward.

I was going to Tweet about this but then I thought maybe you don’t want a lot of quirky people talking with you for an hour.

I have 5 public Twitter profiles:

• JoanKW
  

• JKWLeadership

• JKWGrowth

• JKWinnovation

• CorePurpose

Each of them is focused on  those subject areas.

Tweet me a question and I’ll see if I can find a solution or articulate a hypothesis.

All entrepreneurs face and overcome challenges along their journey. What have been the 3 biggest challenges you’ve faced and overcome since starting this journey.

The biggest challenge I faced when I started was being alone. All of a sudden when I left corporate American was how do I survive on my own. That’s rebuilding an infrastructure that’s cost effective. Understanding what was the right working structure.

Marty Zwilling wrote a post about Corp executives who leave. If you’re over 40 don’t, because you’re too set in your ways. That’s a real challenge from being part of an eco-system to being on your own.

#2 is understanding capital budgets. When you get into start-up mode, if you think you're going to be cash-flow positive in a year, you need the money to run it for a year. You get paid last. You have to have enough personal capital to pay your own bills during this time, while you’re building that business.

If you can’t finance your business and your home life then you are dangerously under-capitalized.

Make sure you understand what you need to live and support your business. You have to enough for both.

#3. It’s going right back to where we started this conversation. Know why you are in business. You may change the how. You may change the what. But stay true to why you started your business.

Jim Rohn said Leaders are readers. You’re a leader. What are you reading? What’s been your favorite books this year, fiction or not, business or not?

Actually this Fourth of July I read two trash novels with no redeeming values. Leaders, sometimes, need to regroup.

I also was re-reading The Recipe: a recipe for leaders that Core Purpose recently published.[can't find the link. sorry.]

I just got a preview copy of Bob Sutton’s new book Good Boss, Bad Boss.

Where can we find you on the web?

The easiest ways is to go to JoanKW on Twitter. If you’re looking for my blog it’s JKW.typepad.com. The company site is Core Purpose dot com.

Thanks, Joan, for another great conversation with insights, tips and solutions not only on business challenges but on the tougher challenges facing us.

It Actually IS Personal

We talk about aligning the workforce with business strategy but what does that mean? Conversations on this topic typically turn into a discussion around processes, practices and rewards that are supposed to focus the workforce on company objectives. . . but do they really? via www.compensationcafe.com

This is a great post.

I love the phrase:

It's nothing personal; it's just business.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Business stops when it stops being personal. Forget B2B or B2C. It's always person-to-person. It is always personal.

The link to this article is from Hinda_Incentives on Twitter.