Red, White & Blue with Envy

“I envy people who drink. At least they have something to blame everything on.” Oscar Levant

Since starting “Tales from an XOD” I have quite naturally become more interested in other blogs. I like to read the professional ones for tips on style and content, after all these people generate revenue from their sites. I like private ones because they usually provide the best raw emotion, sharp insight and blatant humor. I obviously like the ones from people in my industry since I relate to them the most.

But then a friend sent me this link Catch. It’s my first experience with blog envy. This blog is sharp, smart and funny, it’s a professional site with all the upside of a personal one. I love everything about it to the point I’m thinking about just pointing my blog URL to theirs and calling it good.

Most of all my friend who sent me the link is the same guy I’ve had a running dialog with for years (hell, decades) about snagging the golden ring in one of these start ups we’ve trudged through and opening Bubba & Gator’s Bait N’ Tackle down south somewhere. Now, the guys at Catch Your Limit Consulting have essentially done that without having to sell minnows and perform small engine repair.

Ah, envy. It’s not a bad thing.

For every business that think they have to be shined up and buttoned down, here you go, proof positive that you can be both down home and up town.

Great job, guys. I hope to buy y’all a beer someday.

Logo your way to success

"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing." Abraham Lincoln

Business bad? Revenue down? Creditors at your door? Can’t get a win?

Change your logo like the Lions.

The Detroit Lions. Yes, those Detroit Lions. The 0-16 in 2008 Detroit Lions. The Detroit Lions owned by the Ford family. Yes, that Ford family.

The Detroit Lions changed their logo this week…kind of. Same basic shape, just with a bit more edge; different font on the name; same Honolulu blue.

It’s not like when the Cincinnati Bengals changed their logo. They went from this Old Logo to this New Logo.

Now that’s a change. They also went to the Super Bowl a few years after the change.

So maybe there’s something in changing how you look. Create a little buzz, give the sales people something to talk about with clients and prospects, put a little hop in the step of the employees with new shirts and coffee mugs.

Of course, it helps more to have a franchise quarterback, a stud O lineman and a shut down defensive back….

Death to Smoochy

“Get busy living, or get busy dying”. Andy Dufresne

I’m becoming mesmerized as an observer, and more than a little frustrated as a participant, in the death spiral this “economic condition” has put us in.

As much as I understand and agree that the highest priority of today must be surviving so you can open your doors tomorrow, the decisions some are making are distressing. It’s as if just having the Open sign on is the sole objective and being in “business” has become a foreign concept.

I was talking through this with a buddy and he correctly nailed the syndrome with the band aid analogy. When you’re taking a band aid off do you quickly rip it off or slowly, deliberately peel it off? Another one would be the getting in a cold pool of water. Do you plunge in or inch in slowly?

Small case in point: I live in the downtown of a small city so I usually walk places. Walking back from my bank one day – and by the way, they come into play later – I decided to stop in a deli to get a salad to take home for lunch. The place wasn’t crowed but a group of six people had walked in just before me. There was one person working the place, during the lunch period. One. As I watched this single entity try to take orders, make orders and ring orders I did a quick time calculation and decided to limp on home and make myself some soup. Haven’t been back, probably won’t.

Big deal? No, but it’s worth noting.

Bigger case in point: I met with my bank – you know, the one I was walking back from – because they had just consolidated with a bunch of other regional banks, changed their name, laid off a bunch of people and sent out positive, upbeat letters to their customers telling us how great this news was.

OK, but as the people who hold the paper on my commercial building, which must be rewritten this year, I thought getting a face-to-face update might be worthwhile. Here’s what I was told, “Greg, you’re a really good customer, have been for ten years, meet our prime profile as a ‘owner occupied’ client. There are no issues rewriting your loan….however, as we’re telling all our customers, if you can find another institution to take your loan, you should”.

“So, you’d really rather I go away?”

“No, no, not at all. We’re telling many of our customers they must find someone else to take their loan. We’re telling our good ones it’s OK if they do. Oh, and we’re not making any new loans of any type.”

Wow.

I was telling these stories to my friend and neighbor who’s been in the publishing business for the past 35 years. He wasn’t surprised but was equally distressed. He told me that he had made some deep and hard cuts well over a year earlier, including eliminating a publication he’s had for over 15 years, and although things were tight he was doing quite well and in fact circulation had recently increased. Mainly, he felt, because he had focused his attention on taking care of his existing customers over searching out new ones because he couldn’t afford to do both.

So my question is, once things bottom out then improve, and they will, what will my deli and my bank and those like them have left? I understand using this situation as a time to release marginal customers, employees, products, et al. I also get that hard decisions need to be made, but if there’s nothing left at the end what’s the exercise? Shouldn’t you just go ahead and lock the door and not confuse people?

Decide something! Decide to protect your good customers even if the cost is not securing new ones. Or, decide you want all new clients anyway and tell your current ones to go away. Or decide you’re going to barge on trying to do both the best you can until they drag your cold, dead carcass out of the building.

What are you and your company doing right now? Are you inching the band aid off, hoping things improve before you have to inch it some more? Are you paralyzed by the situation where you’re neither servicing your existing customers nor hunting new ones?

Make the call, take the plunge, pull that bad boy off quickly and get busy living.

Eat what you kill

“Health is not valued till sickness comes.” Dr. Thomas Fuller

Few if any startups get through any round of money (from angel on) without running short. Much of it can be attributed to Murphy’s Laws on Technology #12: Nothing ever gets build on schedule or within budget. The key word there is nothing. Therefore the sooner you get comfortable with the idea of only eating what you kill the quicker you’ll realize success.

One of the consistently biggest disconnect points with people working in a startup come from the desire to have the excitement and financial upside of a startup without giving up the security and pay scale of an established company.

Paying for results is a must unless it’s a person with a skill set that means the difference between success and failure. Otherwise, pay people the best you can afford but make the real money come from agreed upon, tangible results. Pay sales people well…after they’ve sold something. Outsource jobs that are “lumpy” (marketing communications, payroll, benefits, accounting, etc). Hire people who “get it”.

This credo used to be almost exclusively for small, start up companies. Many, if and when they “made it”, then deserted this philosophy for the more common approach of not minding the small things and concentrating on THE BIG PICTURE. One day in the future they wake up in red ink (think the horse head scene in The Godfather) and wonder what happened. Well, what happened is they’ve become a haven for excess and waste that then takes a big, heart wrenching, and if you’re big enough, public purge.

We’ve all seen and been part of that happening on a weekly basis as everyone scrambles to get themselves trimmed down so they can survive. Some will cut out sweets but not cut back on the starch and still be unhealthy. Some will cut out everything and be too anorexic to get going again when they need to. The good ones will cut back to a balanced, more healthy diet and be in great shape when it time to run.

Hopefully once healthy and growing again they will not forget the lesson learned and stay in shape. Doubtful since that goes totally against human nature.

To that point, unfortunately we also watch on a weekly basis the uber companies who are still not getting it. AIG, GM, Chrysler, The Federal Government (to name a few) still think that the only way out is to eat their way out. “If we’re eating we’re healthy, thus the more we eat the healthier we must be” seems to be the mindset. Somehow they’ve convinced themselves and are desperately trying to convince us that it’s in our best interest for them to be overfed.

Are you really buying this?