The physics of getting expert help for your small business and for yourself

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Jon Stow
English: Schrödinger equation of quantum mecha...

Schrödinger equation of quantum mechanics (1927) by Yassine Mrabet. Image via Wikipedia

I have a confession. I like to know how everything works. I like to know how my cameras work, ancient though several are. I like to know how the universe works so I buy and try to read the books about quantum physics and string theory. That is why I recently purchased, upon recommendation by a friend, How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog (not an affiliate link).

I have a general idea of how my car works. I have a manual for it. However, if anything goes wrong with it I wouldn’t have the first idea how to fix it other than changing a headlight bulb. Even that is really difficult with my car, just getting access past the air-con on one side and the water pump on the other.

So I have a guy who is a great mechanic. He knows how to fix cars. He has all the manuals. He has the computer and the software, and most of all he has the experience. That is worth a lot more than reading all the manuals. He is used to dealing with almost any problem and even if it is one he has never encountered in practice he will know where to look for guidance or who to talk to. He knows what he is doing whereas I couldn’t even start to fix my car.

Many of you may know I work with tax issues for businesses and in other areas as well as helping businesses with other problems they may have. Recently I was contacted via email by someone who had converted his private house into two flats or apartments he was selling and he was building two other flats in the garden, also to sell on. He wanted to know his tax situation.

In UK terms, this sounds a lot like property-developing liable to income tax on the profits, and I told him so, and offered my services.

He replied “What a load of old tosh! I can deal with HMRC myself thanx, thought you might know the answer.

By your account anyone who improves their own property could be treated as self-employed
property developers, what planet are you on? (Well, yes, if they do it with a view to short term profit)

I’ve worked out the answer for my self from the gov (Government) web site.”

I was polite in the face of this and suggested that even if he did not want to engage my services he needed to do some more research. He responded by suggesting that I was only after his money and was out to mislead him. He ended by calling me “Jonny Boy” which was no doubt supposed to be a put-down, though it was not an effective one to someone who was used to being called Jon-Boy in his youth after John-Boy in The Waltons.

If I started to take my car apart to find a problem I would soon get into trouble. If I tried to design a new brochure for my business I would make a mess of it because I haven’t the skill, the experience or the knowledge. If I tried to write my own tax compliance software or build my own website from scratch without having the right tools I would fail.

At a certain point there is no substitute for paid professional advice. We could read all the manuals in the world but without hands-on experience and good tutoring we will make a mess of things. Reading A Brief History of Time didn’t make me a cosmologist or astrophysicist and much of what I read in that book was very difficult to grasp.

I am still working on learning quantum physics as I mentioned. In the meantime I will leave the difficult stuff in my business that I can’t do for the specialists I bring in. Do you know when it is time to “phone a friend”?

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Small businesses making the difference

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Jon Stow

Chinese puzzles

Is your business just like the one down the road? If it is that might be why you are struggling to keep afloat. In the good times you might get away with surviving. In the harder times we are in now, if you are not different, if you are not standing out from the crowd and if you are not engaging your customers then you will not make money.

I have referred before to our local Chinese takeaway restaurants, carry outs or food to go; whatever you will. One has the usual front desk and the TV set that no one watches. It has one guy behind that desk taking orders over the counter and on the telephone. Except there are not many orders.

The other has an open kitchen where everyone can watch their food being cooked, and many stand up while they are waiting to have a good view. They offer a spectator sport. We customers can watch the team at work. We get entertainment while we wait. People love watching cooking in progress which is no doubt why MasterChef is so popular on TV.

I happen to believe that the food in the second restaurant is better, but that may of course be my perception because of the whole experience of going to the shop, and yes, the feeling of belonging, of loyalty.

I don’t like to see a business on the slide as one of the restaurants apparently is. They could make it so much different by engaging with their customers and making them feel part of the experience. It is not just the food. It is about the people, what they do and the value the customers perceive. That is a valuable lesson, don’t you think?

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Referral networks and joint ventures need teamwork

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Jon Stow

The whole team should be on their bikes

Over the last ten years I have belonged to several breakfast groups and even run one. I have also belonged to networks meeting at other times of the day. Some of these groups produced great relationships and also business. One produced really a lot of business for which I will always be grateful.

Networking groups succeed when the members work together and help each other. After all it is not reasonable just to keep taking and not giving. Giving is what we should do first, and keep on doing it. Referral groups can only succeed where the members respect each other and work together.

Not all the groups to which I have belonged have been successful though. Those that have foundered on the rocks have suffered because not all the members were “on board” in spirit and working to support the group. Some people think all they need to do is to pay their subscriptions. They don’t turn up at the meetings often enough. They don’t look for referrals for others. They are passengers. We cannot carry passive people.

One or two of the groups to which I have belonged have worked together on major marketing efforts for the network and for its members. These sorts of joint ventures can also be very successful, but only if everyone participates by actually doing some work. You have to DO THE WORK as Chris Brogan would say.

I don’t know about you, but I need my valuable time to run my business which includes doing my marketing. I am happy to help others with theirs in joint initiatives if they really are that; not if I am doing all their marketing as well as mine (unless they are paying me suitably for doing it).

Have you come across these “hangers-on” who expect the world to come to them? Isn’t it so much better when you have all your networkers working with you rather than just coming along for the ride?

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Doorstep selling in the twenty-first century

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Jon Stow

A book worth reading

These days I mainly work from home though obviously I go out to visit clients and those who are providing me with support services to help me run my business. One of the hazards of being home-based is being “doorstepped” by people selling products and religion. I am not sure how well either tactic will have worked in the past, but it certainly doesn’t work with me. I probably haven’t given much thought as to whether I need whatever is being sold and even if I had I would want to shop around for the most suitable deal which might not necessarily be the cheapest.

When I started my own business for the first time I went on sales courses which involved learning the techniques of hard selling, getting prospects to sign up for business advice or whatever on the basis of a visit arranged by an appointment maker. I wasn’t very good at the hard sell, or maybe it was never going to work anyway because people are naturally resistant, as I would be when faced by a double-glazing salesperson I didn’t really want to see.

Whether or not the hard sell worked or still works for the sort of thing I do, I am very uncomfortable with it. I don’t like getting people out of their comfort-zone because that involves me getting out of my comfort-zone. And I only want to get out of my comfort-zone when doing something positive for my business by making a difficult but necessary choice which I can recognise. That might be buying-in marketing from an expert, or setting the legal dogs on a non-payer (fortunately rare).

I am not an expert in selling, but that is all right because my marketing brings me warm leads and referrals which are even better. Of course the referral business is a two-way street, but isn’t it great when you put together two people who need each other?

As we know that is the basis of selling really; having our prospects recognise that they have a need. I learned that partly for experience, but also from reading Zig Ziglar right after I found that the hard sell didn’t work for me. His folk wisdom of selling resonated much more with me.

In face-to-face meetings I rarely fail to close new business if I decide I want it and it is the right deal for the client. My new clients have identified their own needs and invited me to visit.

I have bought double glazing after seeing salespeople from three or four different companies. I had identified my own need and chose what I thought was the best product, which was not the cheapest deal offered.

I don’t think doorstep selling is very effective, whether physically on the doorstep or from other unsolicited calls. In difficult economic times I would have thought it of very little value. My concern is that it is only likely to succeed with those who are vulnerable such as the some elderly people and some more unsophisticated individuals. That makes it a rather unethical process. What do you think?

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Being aware of our surroundings

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Jon Stow

I always like to think I am a fairly tolerant kind of guy, but I guess we all have our Achilles Heels. Even on-line I am irritated by people who constantly sell rather than engage. Of course we all have the ability to un-follow or block or simply ignore, depending through which medium we encounter them.

It is not always quite so easy with face-to-face networking. There is this chap I bump into now and again who goes on his merry way leaving in his wake rather bruised networkers he has battered with his sales talk and confused by his various business offerings. He doesn’t listen for a moment to what others have to say, and he doesn’t seem interested in what they have to offer or whether he could help them.

In fact this “networker” seems oblivious to other people feelings and to his surroundings. If he read this piece he wouldn’t recognise himself because he doesn’t stop to think. Of course he won’t read it anyway because he wouldn’t think it was about him, which it is. Yes, he is his favourite subject.

This gentleman (a term used loosely) is not even stupid in intellectual terms. He purports to offer complex legal services. One of his websites is well up the rankings in keywords which interest me. He may have a clever SEO person but I expect he does it himself. But being clever doesn’t mean he is sensitive to other people’s feelings or that he even cares. He seems to have no empathy.

I guess this serial networker (or even “cereal networker” since he likes breakfast meetings) doesn’t actually get much business from networking. That will be because he puts himself ahead of others as well as in front of them when they would dearly like to escape.

Have you met someone like this? How do we get him to reform when he doesn’t listen, or is it a lost cause? Shouldn’t we all show our fellow networkers a fair degree of respect?

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Learning from experience – the choices we make

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Jon Stow

Learning to ride the business bike

It is only natural to wonder about “what ifs?” which are the choices we might have made in our lives but didn’t. Mostly we will form a view when it is too late to change. That is because as time passes we have the benefit of experience and feel we might have made a better choice.

So my choices might have been:

  • Should I have gone to that college? – No idea.
  • Should I have proposed to that girl I was madly in love with? – Yes.
  • Should I have emigrated to Canada in my twenties – Maybe but at least now I am not far from my parents who are really getting on a bit.
  • Should I have bought that house thirty years ago? – Probably yes.
  • Should I have found out what problem my colleague seemed to have with me over twenty years ago? – Yes.
  • Should I have bought our current house -Yes.
  • Should I have taken that job? – No, bad decision but I learned I was darned good at what I do so took away positives.

So we do at least have some of the answers after we learn from experience. What is important is both to learn and also not to have any regrets, because they distract us. So if I should have proposed to that girl all those years ago, at least I did propose to my wife much more recently and I am very happy that I did and she accepted. 🙂

When we start out in business we do make mistakes. We waste money on directory listings, we get caught out by scams. We try to compete on price rather than value for services when that should not be our market. We don’t differentiate ourselves from the competition.

We should learn from our experience. I think I have learned a lot about running a business. When we get on our bikes for the first time we have to learn how to ride them. I am sure I don’t know all the answers in business, as no one does. I am still willing to learn. Have you learned any harsh lessons which helped you make a better business?

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Why we need mutual respect between managers and their staff

Posted on February 23, 2012 by Jon Stow

A winning team (choir) I was once in. We all pulled together.

Such is life with football (soccer) managers that we can be quickly overtaken by events, or in other words, sackings. That is unfortunate in the context that the two most successful English clubs over the last fifteen years or so have had the same manager, albeit one is struggling at the time of writing.

Generally in management in any business, continuity is very important. But it is not the only thing that is essential. The other is the support and loyalty of your staff, and particularly those that earn the profits. It doesn’t matter how much your workers are paid, even when they are paid large and silly amounts. They have to want to work with you. They are not ciphers. They are human beings with emotions, and emotions have a lot to do with best performance.

So when the Chelsea football manager, Andre Villas Boas, says “it doesn’t matter if the players back my project” he is 100% wrong. What naivety, probably as a result of lack of experience. Having the support of his players is essential.

So many companies and businesses have foundered on strife and having a workforce who are not in tune with the management has been the cause of so much failure and chaos in industrial relations. Even if the manager has the support of the owner or managing director of a business he will fail if he cannot carry and motivate the staff and have them share a vision.

As we know, if there is mutual respect between a manager and her team, the sense of belonging to that team and an eagerness to please and be successful will bring about that success, and with that, profits.

It really is that simple. I have been junior staff and I have been a manager, so have seen it from both ends. The greatest business achievements are rooted in a sense of belonging to the team. A team is people who enjoy working together, not a list of people you pin on a board.

Don’t you love team work?

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Customer service and that nice warm feeling

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Jon Stow

 

Putting your stamp on the business

French bread and letters

We all like a bit of a moan sometimes. At least, I do. Recently on Twitter I complained that I had missed the post as the local collection was made early. I just saw the back of the van as it drove away.

To give them great credit, @royalmail responded within a couple of minutes and registered my complaint via Twitter, complete with reference number. I don’t know how far this will be followed up but I immediately got the feeling that they do care, so my feelings towards Royal Mail became a lot warmer.

I have mentioned before our local baker in the village. They have great products in the bread, and they are very friendly and helpful and allow us to reserve our favourite loaves over the telephone from 7:30 AM onwards. This sort of service inspires loyalty and of course testimonials since my wife and I tell everyone what a brilliant bakers shop they have.

Hospital hospitality

As a family we have seen rather a lot of hospitals recently. I guess we cannot avoid them all our lives.

This past week we spent the entire day at one. I really cannot praise too highly the service, but in particular the helpful friendly caring staff who made us so comfortable (patient and patient’s moral support) and looked after us so well. Of course no one really wants a reason to go back to a hospital, but we would certainly recommend it to others in need, and if we have to be hospitalised ourselves, I hope it is there.

It’s how they do it!

All bakers’ shops sell bread though not all bake on the premises as our does. Our baker stands out because we are made so welcome and can rely on top service. So we recommend them.

Our posties mostly do a very good job, and it makes me feel better about them that the business follows up on complaints rather than shrugs its shoulders.

A great hospital is worth knowing about and great service will help spread the word as well as allaying concerns about having to be admitted.

If we serve well our clients with a smiling face they will recommend us more easily. Smile!

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Planning a small business failure

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Jon Stow

Local shops need the right passing trade

I don’t always like to be right, but when a bookshop opened in our village, I really couldn’t see how it would stay in business for very long. It has lasted only about six months and has now closed. It really is very sad, and I can imagine the owner’s happiness at the start as I suspect he always wanted to run a bookshop. That sort of ambition in the face of stark reality is so often how these business misadventures start.

The shop stocked mostly local interest, remaindered and second-hand books. Such a shop would have to rely on passing trade and also would need to offer a choice not readily available elsewhere locally. Yet in the small “main drag” of the village there are three charity shops selling books (such is the state of local retail anyway), and those books will be of much the same variety as the bookshop had, including the local interest stuff, but of course much cheaper. And then there are the boot fairs and car boot sales to satisfy the second-hand book browser.

A bookshop needs to rely on regular browsing by visitors anyway, and like a website that means having visitors, because you need a fair number of those visitors to get enough purchases. Yet so much of the new and second-hand book market has gone on-line, in particular to Amazon, and many second-hand book dealers sell through the Amazon outlet; some grudgingly, but that is another story.

A shop has overheads such as business rates, and there will be a rent, because the landlord needs to have some return on his investment. The bookshop owner needed to ask those critical questions:

  • Do I have the right product?
  • Who is my market?
  • How will I get customers?
  • Can I afford the premises?

I don’t doubt that the proprietor had a dream of being successful and of being a fixture in the village. Starting a new business often has some risk and needs care. It doesn’t make sense to plunge our cash recklessly into a proposition which really has no chance because we have not done our homework.

However, like the road to Hell, the road to ruin is paved with good intentions. We need a proper business plan and to have someone with experience cast their eye over it.

Do you sometimes hate to be right?

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Taking our business lives seriously

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Jon Stow

Be nice to your customers!

Playing at business

You may think the title states the obvious, but some people don’t use their heads. They take short cuts in their work, such as the carpenter who does a quick botch job, or they take long holidays and wonder why their business income falls and they are broke. It would be hard to believe for most of us, except it happens. Not attending properly to customers’ or clients’ needs means they will go elsewhere.

Doctor Doctor I feel like a pair of curtains. Pull yourself together!

If those slackers, because slackers they are, don’t pull themselves together and offer proper consistent reliable customer service rather than indifference and shoddy work, their businesses will suffer. In so many ways it is easy to make the change. I don’t understand how there can be such people who must rely on the next mug to sign up because they don’t keep their customers for long.

Don’t neglect the marketing

‘Doctor, doctor, people keep ignoring me.’ ‘Next please!’

It is no good setting up in business and not marketing. It is much better to make sure that everyone knows about you. You have to be visible. We know there are people who don’t market, but that is when they are so established and offer a great service or product. They get brilliant and deserved referrals.

If you have a new business or one quite young, that won’t work because you have no track record. Otherwise no one will know you are there. Get out there and market, and if you don’t know how, find someone with experience to help.

Make sure you are taken seriously

‘Doctor, doctor, there’s a strawberry growing on the top of my head.’ ‘I’ll give you some cream for it.’

Some people trash their businesses at meetings or networking event by talking too much and not managing their reputations. It is even worse on-line, so everyone needs to watch what they say on Facebook, in on-line forums, in their blog, or even in a thoughtless email. Google is our friend generally, but our enemy with our careless talk because it will come back to haunt us.

Reputation is the most important asset we have in business. Do you know people who are careless about their main source of income?

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