Stop complaining and stop making excuses. So what if the economy sucks? Yes, there is/was a recession. Yes, the housing market plummeted. I know. I get it. I read more news from multiple outlets than I probably should.
As an entrepreneur and as a business coach, I don’t really care that the economy sucks and neither should you.
I was doing a speaking event recently in San Francisco. It was a four-hour workshop on how to grow your company and foster an awesome culture. The group I was presenting to was a large group of entrepreneurs from all over the United States. Some had sixteen employees, some had one hundred and sixty employees, and a few had a couple thousand employees. They were all planning on growing roughly 20% in 2009– and we’re in the throes of a recession – but they didn’t care. Yet they kept talking about the economy in spite of the fact that they all planned to grow their businesses.
Finally, I told them every time I mentioned the word “economy” during the four hour session they were to scream,“STOP IT!” loudly at me. We practiced a few times, and they were really loud for sure. I never mentioned the word for the rest of the presentation.
Everyone should play this little game with themselves: Every time you hear yourself saying either“economy” or “recession” silently scream,“STOP IT!” to yourself.
The reality is that there is a huge slowdown, and when it runs its course, we’ll all learn that it was worse than anything we’ve gone through since the Great Depression. However, the smart and focused entrepreneurial companies will work around it will still do well. We may have another recession somewhere down the line, and if we do, there’s no reason to behave any differently than we did during this time.
As an entrepreneur, “the unknown” will always be a part of your life.
“Never miss out on an opportunity like a good recession.” – Jack Welch
When culture has a chance to flow freely from individuals and across an organization, it grows stronger and more rapidly.
As a CEO coach, I would advise you that once you get rid of private offices, make sure your employees aren’t divided from one another either.
Mix in sales with engineering, marketing with support. Put members of your leadership team in various parts and floors of the office.
Not only will this build culture, but also it will enhance each employee’s understanding of what other people do in your company.
How can you possibly be connected to your customer or your employees if all your la-di-daa senior executives are on the top floor or in a corner office with the door closed?
Don’t act all ‘Les Nessman’ by removing yourself from the same space your employees occupy. If you sit with them there won’t be an us/them mentality, and you’ll absorb the same work culture your employees do.
If you have private office, take a sledge hammer to the walls and put the door on eBay.
Also ideas like a ‘Dream Room’, a ‘Wii Room‘ and a ‘Nap Room‘ will be very popular and drastically help break down department barriers and reduce employee turnover.
If you’ve read the book or seen the movie called, ‘ The Secret ’, you know about the law of attraction, or the idea based on quantum mechanics that explains how, at the molecular level, we are all energy, and if we can get our energy vibrating at the same resonance as other people, we can create change. It sounds funny, but if you can get your energy vibrating in a positive way you’ll create more positive vibes.
Are you afraid that by sharing your ideas, someone will take them? Forget it. The reason you put them all in writing and then give them away is that it your Painted Picture doesn’t show how you’re going to do it. You’re not giving away your secret sauce.
As a business coach, I always mentor CEO’s that what you’re giving away is what the future looks and feels like so everyone in the room conspires to help you make it come true. ‘The Secret’ is about telling people what your dreams are, and if you’re dreaming about building a great world-class culture, or a company with a great work/life balance, then sharing that with people will only serve to attract others with a similar mindset.
Many have already heard that five awesome companies paid to have advertising on my MacBook Pro for 2010. They are already getting great exposure too.
Upon finding that the 5 ad spots were already taken before he could grab one EO member John Ruhlin offered to advertise on the back of my iPhone. In exchange for the one year placement John traded me $2,500 worth of awesome, high end, personally engraved Cutco Chefs knives – a wicked set.
These knives are one of the product lines he helps companies use to reward their top clients in unique ways, and also to get into the doors of CEOs they are targeting.
John had me at hello – remember he’s the guy who blew me away two years ago by filling my hotel room with clothes from Brooks Brothers. Now we’re close enough friends that I was invited to his wedding, and that he knew I loved cooking. iPhone Ad for a year in exchange for the best chefs knives. Done…
I always ask the CEO’s that I coach these questions:
What are you doing to thank your top clients ? How are you getting creative with your advertising ? Let’s hear from you…
On Saturday I got part way to my dream of speaking at TED. I was able to speak at TEDx Edmonton about something I’m super passionate about.
As a kid in school I was always told I wouldn’t do well because I didn’t fit the system. In high school & university I figured the system out and beat it – graduating while being able to run little companies on the side.
The problem was the school system never say nor nurtured my entrepreneurial traits. They also never showed starting & owning a company as equal to careers like law, medicine, dentistry etc. Amazingly they actually felt working for government was a better career move that starting my own business.
Thankfully my father & grandfather nurtured – or perhaps forced is a better word – me into running my own business. I grew up feeling sick thinking about having a ‘job’. So an entrepreneur I’ve been. And having been able to run a successful business, I started coaching CEO’s on how to run their own.
My TEDx talk which I’ll post soon was about “Raising Kids to Be Entrepreneurs Instead of Lawyers Will Change the World”. And my TED Wish if I’m giving the chance to speak at TED (nominations are welcome) is to see Entrepreneurs be viewed as equal to professions that schools push kids into currently: Law, Engineering, Medicine, Dentistry, Teaching, Finance, etc.
Were you raised as an entrepreneur? What’s your story? I’d love to read your comments…
What does your office environment look like when you first walk in? Is it organized? Fun? Stimulating?
People should be able to get an idea for what it’s like to work in your office from the moment they walk through the front door.
If you don’t bother with first impressions, believe me, people notice.
One of the companies I’ve mentored for years is called Nurse Next Door. The very first time I visited their office in British Columbia, paper and boxes were everywhere. As their business coach, I honestly told them that it was a disaster.
They listened, and every Wednesday ever since then, they have held “Wasteless Wednesday,” a day where they throw outanything they can to make the office, the walls, and people’s desks look clean and neat.
The difference in their space and the mood of employees has been profound: the energy is different, and they can actually fit more people into the same space without feeling crowded at all. Best of all, just recently, they were named #1 Company to Work for In British Columbia!
Oh and here’s a tip, since it’s 2010 and all: GO PAPERLESS!!
And because this is my blog I felt like doing something really random and a bit manic. I’m posting it here. I laugh my ass off watching these. Google “Fred” and watch a few. My two boys and I literally tear up while watching them.
This one just made me think about how manic I get at times running companies. I’m sure a few other entrepreneurs feel the same. Do you ?
I’d love to say that I was chilling out at Whistler and I came up with this brilliant idea to let you promote your blog here, but I cannot take credit.
Turns out she learned about it a couple of weeks ago, from Toronto HAPPO champion, Danny Brown, invited his blog readers to pimp their blogs in the comments of his blog. You should go check it out – An Invite to Pimp Your Blog
So, you can do the same here. Let’s see what kinds of blogs you have and let’s see if we can find you some new readers.
Please include the following:
1. The blog’s name and link
2. A one sentence description about why someone should read your blog.
3. Your full name
4. Your Twitter handle (if you have one)
As an alternative, if you don’t have a blog, give us one blog post you’d like me to write about in the comments.
The best potential employees aren’t looking for a job because they’ve already got one. That’s why you have to poach them.
In close to thirty years of my professional life, I’ve only had two job interviews. The rest of the time I was poached by one company while working for another.
I always advise the CEOs that I mentor that there are lots of reasons why finding the right people is hard, but if you want your business to be exceptional, your staff must be exceptional people. It takes work but it’s worth the investment of time.
I had to remind someone of this while on a multi-city speaking engagement. At a talk in Sydney, Australia, a member of the audience commented, “What you don’t realize is we have a really tight economy in Sydney right now, and there are just no employees out there. We have the lowest unemployment in forty years.” I replied that I felt her pain—in Vancouver, we were at the lowest in fifty years! But honestly, I asked, what difference does it make? Even in tight job markets the great employees still exist, they’re just working somewhere else.
Poach them! Show them why working for you is WAY better!
Bill Gates had a great idea with getting a computer on every desktop, but he fell short with that goal. Every company should have two to three monitors on every desktop!
Think about how many seconds each hour that you wait for windows or a browser to open and close. Add all of that open and close time together and you waste minutes each day. Those wasted minutes would be completely obliterated by having multiple screens open at the same time. And additional monitors don’t cost very much anymore – only around $150. The time saved and additional productivity gains well off-set that small investment.
I coach and mentor CEOs to use your additional monitors by having your web browser open on one at all times, and keep Google as your homepage (you likely use it more than anything else). I keep Twitter as my homepage and I have a little Google Search bar in Firefox so I get the best of both worlds. On your second monitor, keep your email open, but keep it open in draft mode. I also set up my mail client to only sync and find new mail manually. I don’t want it reloading new messages as they arrive. I find that it makes it easier to only check a couple times a day when I don’t see new messages arriving. On my laptop (the third monitor) I’d be using whatever application I’m working on (which happens to be Word, since I’m typing this right now). Also, in using a Mac, I’ve set up ‘Spaces’ so I can have nine application windows open and very quickly shift between them.
Do whatever it takes to shave off ANY downtime so that you can perform even better.
STOP IT!
’, you know about the law of attraction, or the idea based on quantum mechanics that explains how, at the molecular level, we are all energy, and if we can get our energy vibrating at the same resonance as other people, we can create change. It sounds funny, but if you can get your energy vibrating in a positive way you’ll create more positive vibes.
The best potential employees aren’t looking for a job because they’ve already got one. That’s why you have to poach them.
Bill Gates had a great idea with getting a computer on every desktop, but he fell short with that goal. Every company should have two to three monitors on every desktop! 