2. January 2012 by Bob Griffin.

I have always been the guy to look around the next corner to see what new things are coming.  This new year is no different.  There will always be new technology and new trends to check out.  There will be tough times and times when things go perfectly.  I am interested in all of it and you should be too.  It’s the looking that matters most.

My Dad had a saying that I mentioned in a prior article.  He said, “You will always find what you are looking for.  The trick is to keep looking.”  That is all the wisdom you need as you start the long road from January to December.  The more you stay focused on the right things in your life, the better a life you will have by the time 2013 rolls around.

What is it that you want?

Do you want money?  Money is not that hard to find.  Sell something, get another job, or offer your services for a fee.  I didn’t say it would be a lot of money, but it is there for the taking when you do the right things to get it.  On that note, are you doing the right things to earn your money?  If it all comes from one place, you are probably doing it wrong.  If every financial planner says to diversify your long-term income, then why are you not doing the same with your monthly income?  I am not saying drop what you are doing to find something else.  What I am saying is that this is a new year and there are new lines of products for you to sell, new ways to get to new customers, and new people to help you bring in more profits.  Are you ready to look?

Do you want a bigger business?  How big?  What does a bigger business look like?  Is it adding more outlets or is it expanding the location you already have?  If you can’t paint the picture clearly, you can’t find it.  If it is more outlets, there are plenty of spaces open to rent to add another store.  If it is online, adding a new webpage or buying another site name is as cheap as it will ever be.  If you want to expand what you already have, you need to look at the use of the space.  What are you paying to grow versus how much more will you earn by growing.  In a brick and mortar business it is easier to see the usage.  How many more square feet are you adding and how much more can you sell per square foot?  Focus on the cost when you focus on growing a bigger business.  It has to be worth the cost.

Do you want to lower costs?  Look at your P&L Statements.  There are as many people who do not keep up with their profits and losses as there are people who dig through them like they are searching for buried treasure.  What are your biggest costs?  Payroll and all the costs associated with hiring others is one of the biggest and most controllable costs on that statement.  If you are going to focus on lowering costs, you have to start with the cost of being a boss.  After that, you have rent that can be renegotiated and utilities that can be curbed.  There is some money to be saved in those monthly statements.  Are you going to look?

Do you want more customers?  They are there waiting to be invited.  What is your message?  Does it look inviting to someone just learning about your business or are you focused on existing customers and leaving the rest to chance?  If your advertising doesn’t educate, inform, and invite, then you need to make changes.  Also, brick and mortar friends, go outside.  If you have more than one message plastered to the front window of your store, you need to start scraping until you do.  Also, if any advertising has been up for more than one year, it needs to come down.  Focus the way a customer would and you will get more customers.

Finally, do you want a better you?  That better person is there to look back at you in the mirror.  What will you change in 2012 to make yourself smarter, healthier, and more productive?  Like I started with, there is new technology and trends to check out.  Get organized with your efforts.  Your time is your most valuable asset.  What you do with that time is what makes it priceless.  Start by looking at how you are spending your time each day.  Log it into a journal.  Once you have the time wasters listed, you will see where you can cut out the things that don’t help you and start using that time to get a better you.

As for me, this year my goal is to publish my first book.  It is something I have been writing and re-writing for years.  It is time to get it out there.  That is the success I am looking for this year.  

Posted in Creating the Culture | Print | 26 Comments »

25. October 2011 by Bob Griffin.

I was speaking with the manager of a restaurant recently when I asked a simple question. Any reader of this site knows how much I love a good simple question.  It aims the conversation directly where I need it to go in a way that I can follow up on after they give a “knee-jerk” response.

Very simply I asked, “Why do you think a business owner would ask the staff to do small, time-consuming things before they leave for the night when it doesn’t add customers or save money?”

The interviewee said “He’s a MICRO-MANAGER!”  I smiled and told her she was wrong.

Micromanaging is one of those terms that people like to use when they have a boss that goes over-board on ensuring his business is run a specific way and in turn gets in the way of getting the job done. 

Sometimes when an owner wants something random done, it isn’t for reasons of control…although it could be.  I wouldn’t put it past a bad person to be a bad owner.  Power in business is something that should be wielded to keep market-share, not hurt your own team.  Micro-managers are a tough lot.  It is an element of TRUST that they lack, so they fire off at the mouth and end up with a small, very low profit business.  On the other hand, managing the random things keeps the important things in check.  How can that be, Bob???  The answer lies in the nature of being an owner.

Most employees think that a business owner is a lazy SOB who hired someone else because he wants to free up his time for a good game of golf.  The truth is far from that perspective.  An owner has paperwork, costs, management, marketing, and his personal life all wrapped up into the business many people resent him for having.  It is a 24 hour a day job that does not get a real break where he can toss the workload over to someone else to handle.  So, with less time than he would like to have, he needs to find out how healthy the business is without living in the store.  (These are the paragraphs that I get the most mail about. Someone wants to add something to the list or tell me a horror story about being an owner.)  These are not micro-managers.  This the nature of the job of being an owner.

If you are a real business owner and not a micro-manager, you want to know how your business is being run without having to spend 100% of your time inside the four walls of the business.  If you want to stay in business, you can’t be there.  You have to get out and get customers in.  So, how do you run a good business without having to check on everything every day?  You have small, time consuming tasks that you can check on to know whether the business is being run to your standards.

I used to check handles on every piece of equipment.  If the handles weren’t clean, the restaurant wasn’t clean.  If you don’t clean the one part of the equipment that everyone touches, you don’t know what clean is.  If that one little check is wrong, I want more answers because there is more that they are neglecting.  I will do a top to bottom check of all the daily duties, run an audit, and ask the staff questions about what they think their job is at the store.

Why go for something small and not just check the big things?  Because things can “look” right and still be very wrong.  I have seen faked deposit slips, fraudulent inventory counts, and people on the payroll who didn’t exist.  If your business is bigger than one location, you need a red flag to let you know when you need to dig deeper.  It keeps the paranoia in check and lets you in a few seconds know if you need to jump in and stop everything from falling apart.

So, what can you have your team do to ensure they are managing your business the way you want?

Bob Griffin - CEO
Questions@BusinessBulldog.com
Twitter: @BusinessBulldog

Posted in Customer Service, Creating the Culture, Being the Boss, Saving Money | Print | 89 Comments »

9. October 2011 by Bob Griffin.

I always enjoy working with new business owners.  They have a keen eye toward profits and a clear picture of where they want their business to go.  It is that fresh attitude and vitality that I thrive on and keeps me going.  I love the look of pure energy that they show.  It is what makes other people around them encourage them and also to be a little jealous of the path the owner is on.  Every book on leadership, entrepreneurship, and self improvement talks about that spark of life that the person who breaks away and runs toward the freedom of owning a business.  It is also what doesn’t last…at least not long enough.

There is a reason that a store sees huge boosts in sales and customer counts when a new owner takes over.  There is a reason that word of mouth marketing buzzes with the talk of a change to an old establishment and how much better it feels.  It is because of that spark.  And sparks flame out.  How do you keep that spark alive? 

At Business Bulldog we live a business philosophy of “Small Wins”.

A small win is when you can easily see a change for the better and nobody had to move too far from where they were.  Small wins change things gradually and are sustainable.  I have been in business consulting for far more years than I care to mention here and I can tell you that the guy who buys a business and turns it around fast can’t keep it that way for long.  Small changes every day make people notice a something is different (like when there is a new owner), but it is easy to keep going and build on.

Big changes are exhausting and cause chaos.

There are people reading this who can point to a store that they bought, gutted the place and the personnel, and made a million dollars.  Good for you.  I bet you can’t do it again. There is a reason why gutting and burning the old way a business was run is a bad idea and it falls on the reason you bought the business in the first place.

If the business was so wonderfully great that you were willing to put good money down to buy it, then why did you think that making big changes would be a good idea?  If was run so poorly that you had to break out the blow torch and start making charcoal, why didn’t you just lease a space down the street and put them out of their misery?  It was because there was a brand worth saving.

If you want to be the grand savior, you have to start by realizing that the reason you wanted to buy the place is the same reason customers spend money there.  Move too far away from that and you will fail.  I watch major companies struggle with leaders who want to make their mark when they take over and they run off customers and great staff.  how many companies can you name that had a change of leadership and when down in flames? Far too many.

No one likes change.

Small wins make huge differences.  I can tell you first hand that I have been the guy to shake things up as well as the guy who walks quietly into the room.  I have been stabbed and shot at for being the guy trying to make quick changes.  I like being the guy with the smile and the even temper.  I think it added ten years to my life to be the quiet guy with a simple plan.  People aren’t trying to kill me now.  Man, I wish I had learned that lesson sooner.

So, how does a new owner make small wins?  Find the reason that the business works in the first place and build on that.  I can tell you that there are really bad things going on at any business.  It is human nature for some employees to try to get away with whatever they can.  Even if it costs the business and their job.  I have no idea why they do it, but I can tell you there is someone working against you right now.  If you start to minimize the time that person has to do bad things, they will either work somewhere else because they can find the time to be bad or they will change with you.  Most people want to be recognized for being good.  So, recognize what is good about your new business.

Even if you have been the owner of your business for decades and want to see that new success, you can.  Find a way to have a small win and celebrate it.  I mean REALLY CELEBRATE IT!  Don’t go half way and expect your team to be hungry to show you more wins.  They will just think you have lost your mind and walk backwards away from you smiling and saying something reassuring until the reach the door.  Go BIG!

You can have rotten sales (it is one of the worst economic times in history) and still find a win.  It can be as simple as a customer compliment.

Find the customer who gave you good feedback and honor them.  Then, find the employee and make them king for the week.  There is no end to the new path that you can walk down if you are willing to celebrate small successes.

Tell me about your success and I will celebrate your business on this blog!!!  We have readers from 44 countries and I am sure you could use the free press.  Tell me about your small wins.

Email:  SmallWins@BusinessBulldog.com

Bob Griffin - CEO Business Bulldog

Twitter: @BusinessBulldog

LinkedIn:  http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=33704176&trk=tab_pro

Posted in Marketing, Customer Service, Creating the Culture, Being the Boss, Making Money | Print | 371 Comments »

20. August 2011 by Bob Griffin.

I was working with a small business owner recently.  He grossed about $2 million a year and does a good job at keeping things moving.  He has been in business for himself most of his career and understands his industry well.  He is likeable, pays well, and is respected for the job he does and the services he provides his customers.

He is also losing everything he has worked so hard to build.

In business we want to create profit as well as provide a good service.  We also know that if it can happen to a good businessman like my friend, it can happen to anyone.  And it is happening very fast to many owners.  The $2 million question is “WHY?”.

When we were growing up, as many of you learned, the world of business was based on what you know.  Being a person of knowledge was the thing that kept the business growing. Reputation was earned over time and through many different ways - internship, college, on the job, etc. If you increased your knowledge then you increase your worth to a company.  The mantra was, “Want to move up the ladder of success?  Get more education.”  It was difficult and you had a system to prove yourself through grades and performance.

*(Thank you Chris for great information. You are a true Business Bulldog!)

Posted in Creating the Culture | Print | 503 Comments »

16. June 2011 by Bob Griffin.

Follow us on Twitter: @BusinessBulldog

Simple questions always stump busy people.  When you see the same thing every day, you get stuck seeing it the same way.  Redirecting the focus moves you off course and into a new way of thinking.  It can also be the best way to make a better business.  From time to time, I ask small business operators questions that a normal customer wouldn’t ask such as, “What floor cleaner do you use? or Have you thought about renting more space?”  I get “knee-jerk” answers and then sometimes the floor is cleaner when I come back.  Sometimes the owner is inclined to run some numbers and move their location.  Simple questions are powerful.

So, when a customer asks, “When do you close?” and you have a chance to make a customer loyal to your store, do you?  Better yet, ask one of your employees when the store closes.  You will be even more startled.  You are not going to get the answer you want.  More often than not, you get the time that has been carefully posted on the door.  That is, of course, the wrong answer.

Customers want to give you money and routinely we forget to train our staff to help customers as they come through the door…every customer any time we are open.

Are you closed the hour before the time posted?  So, why are you closed the ten minutes before that same time?

Pretend I can hear you through my blog.  The excuses I just listened to are the reason you have not added customers.  Not just customers, but loyal customers. What I hear you are saying is, “payroll costs, there aren’t any customers that late, blah, blah, blah”.  You made a decision (probably when you had to close the store once) that cleaning and resetting the store can happen before the closing time.  That is the right thing to do.  It is also the right thing to do the hour after you open and all day long.  Your business should look great for every customer, not just the first ones through the door.

Are you so busy being cost conscious that you forgot to make it all about the customer?  I hear it all the time and cringe often.  I fully expect you to save money where you can.  I also expect you find ways to increase the number of paying customers you have.  If there is a conflict between the two, go with the customer.

Ask the questions that will help grow your business, be ready for everyone to push back at you, and start growing your business again.  The clock is ticking and you customers to help.

Bob Griffin

CEO@BusinessBulldog.com

Posted in Customer Service, Being the Boss, Making Money | Print | 509 Comments »