This rings true even in recessions.  That’s where the old adage ‘cash is king’ in a recessionary market comes from.  Many companies saw the recession coming and moved into cash.  They were waiting for deals. They’ve been waiting for the market to turn. They’re also waiting to buy from you. Sell to them. They’ve got money – some of it could be yours.

So, how do you get some of that money? A story first…

Years ago, one of my sales teams was working with a large client called Public Storage.  We were doing about $180,000 a year in business with them.  When we asked them how much total spending they did with us and competitors of ours, they said they’d have to check.  The following week they came back and said overall, company wide, they spent about two million dollars.  Wow–and we were only getting nine percent of that! Imagine how the conversation changed at that point to, “How can we get more of your business? What do you need to see from us to spend fifty percent of that figure with us?” We knew they had the money because they told us they were spending it! Now we just needed to work closely with them to have them spend it with us instead of our competitors.

Figure out which of your clients or prospects are doing well. Do your research and really focus on them, and you’ll land them without any problem.  Ask your clients how much of their current business you are currently getting.  Spending time with your top clients to increase revenues is easier than finding new ones.  They’ve got money – some of it could be yours.

Any stories to share ?

I’ve just wrapped up a 7 city speaking tour with EO & YPO in India.  Crazy schedule to hit this 7 cities between Jan 8-19th – but we pulled it off.

Too many business lessons to cover in just one post, however, one that jumped out at me in every city was that Indian entrepreneurs focus differently.  They almost never own or run just one company, they all seemed to run between 4-7 companies each.

They see running multiple companies as diversifying, and hedging their risk.  They don’t build companies for the purpose of selling them, they build them to give themselves cash flow for better lives, and to re-invest in other business ventures.

Prior to coming to India, I’d have pushed entrepreneurs hard to only run one company at a time.  Now, I truly see the value in running multiple companies at once.  However, to do it right, Indian entrepreneurs put solid CEOs or Presidents in place to run each of their companies.  They don’t micro manage them.  And they don’t stay overly involved in each of them.  They build them up, one at a time, then like children they set them free a little bit at a time, allowing each company to grow up and spin off it’s own rewards.

Focus on growing your leadership teams, and you could own multiple companies at once too…

If this short video resonates with you, let it nag you every day, until you start getting focused.

I suggest you have ALL your employees watch it too…

Every company, and every person in a company should have their one thing to focus on.  Why everyone shows up and dives into email each day blows me away.

What’s your ONE thing that you need to get done today.  What’s your ONE thing that you need to get done next week, next quarter ?

Are you focused on it ?

Over the years, I’ve kept an updated list of tips I’ve read about to stay focused.

Every six months, I’ll come across it and re-read it, and it always gives me a little boost of focus to get more done.

Hopefully some of these ideas will help you and your team focus more, too.

· Breathe – I saw a great speaker, Victoria Labalme, and during her talk she was quoting the famous mime Marcel Marceaux, under whom she had studied.  Marcel used to say, “breathe, breathe.”  And it’s amazing how just slowing down to breathe like they do in yoga really helps the brain focus.

· Compress Time - Pretend you only have two hours a day to work.  What three to five things would you do during those two hours a day? Once you know what those are, delegate or stop doing everything else that you currently do. And start doing only those three to five things all day, every day.

· Eat – Something! It’s hard to concentrate when your tummy is rumbling, so have a light snack before you settle in to work on your top priorities. Not only will you avoid the “When is lunch?” thoughts, a healthy snack will give you more energy and help you to think better, too. Cathy Stucker gave me this advice, and it’s one I always remember.

· Get out of email – Email has got to be one of the worst time-wasters ever.  Start your day working on one of your TOP 5 projects for the day.  Check email at 4pm and no earlier. It really can wait.  As soon as you start checking email, the temptation will be to get sucked into it, draining your productivity.

Years ago, at 9am, I sent all eight of my direct reports the same email: “Don’t tell anyone, but come find me in the boardroom right away.”  I then walked calmly to the boardroom.  Within three minutes, six of my eight reports were in the boardroom.  The other two were there by the five minute mark.  It quickly showed me and them how little they were focused on the critical projects and how distracted they could be with emails. I’ve even tried this with CEOs whom I mentor and coach.  Most of them fail terribly, calling me instantly.  A few are awesome, and don’t call until the following day, saying, “Sorry I didn’t get to you sooner, I’m doing what you told me and not checking email’.  AWESOME.

· Let Fear Guide You – Nothing helps you focus quite like it. Harness it.

· Minimize Distractions – I think there is actually a Latin phrase for this, but I have no idea what it is.  Essentially it means, “a messy desk is a messy mind.”  The more clutter you have on the desk, workstation and walls around you, the more distracted you are. Keeping a clean work area will help you focus.

· Put Your Headphones On – Put ‘em on, put on some great tunes, and crank out your work. I actually can be hyper-productive listening to a genre of music called “Psy-Trance.”  It’s gets every ounce of me pumped up and focused.

· Reward Yourself - Break your projects into small achievable parts and upon completion of each part give yourself a reward, like a night out.  I don’t allow myself a glass of wine with dinner unless I have the next day’s TOP 5 in writing.

· Set Timers – It may seem crazy, but you can use a simple timer. Set it for thirty minutes and then focus on ONE THING until the thirty minutes is up.

· Slay the Dragon – Figure out what the big ugly task is that you have to do today.  Then, start with it first. Once you have the thing you are dreading out of the way, the rest looks easy.

· Tell Two Others – Tell two to three people that you are going to do something and by when. Be very specific about the date and what the outcome will be.  Get them to tell you the key projects they will get done today, too.

· Turn Off The Damn “DING” – Turn off the notification on all software on your devices.  The last thing you want if you’re trying to focus is something telling you your attention is required elsewhere. Remember the old AOL,“You’ve got mail!” announcement? Evil. But it’s been replaced with a million other “dings,” “pings,” and “pop-ups.” You don’t need any of this when you’re trying to be productive.

· Write ‘Em Down – Know that saying, “out of sight, out of mind?” It applies to the items on your daily to-do list, so put your weekly and daily lists on a white board, flip chart, or even a Post-It note on your monitor.  I used an app called “Stickies” on my Mac.  Seeing your key projects in front of you all day will force you to focus.

Years ago, Brian, the founder and CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, came up to my desk and said, “I’ve found it!”

And I was thinking, “you’ve found what?”

He explained that he came up with the “formula” to create the “flywheel effect” Jim Collins talks about.

Basically it amounted to this:

F x F x E = Success (being the flywheel effect kicking in)

Focus x Faith x Effort = Success

· Each letter is scored as a percentage out of 100

· You simply ask yourself on any given day:

o What percentage of today was I focused?

o What percentage of faith do I still have in my business?

o What percentage of effort did I put in?

Let’s say you were 50% focused, 50% faith, 50% effort– that only comes out to 12.5% chance of success, which is pretty crumby odds that you’ll succeed.  I wouldn’t bother starting.

But if you’re 80% focused, with 80% faith, and 80% effort on every day, or every week, if your whole business or you were that focused, have that much faith, and had that much effort being put in, then you have a 51.2% chance of success. Better but still not great. You might as well go put all your start-up money on red in Vegas and take one spin of the roulette wheel to see what happens and save yourself years of heartache.

If you want to build a great organization and double your revenue, double your profits and take the amount of days you’re working at and cut them by 50%, you’ve got to start getting in the range of 90 x 90 x 90 – which still only gets you to 72.8% chance of success.

To build the kinds of businesses like we did with College Pro Painters, Boyd Autobody, 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, you need 98% focus, 98% faith, and 98% effort – that gives you 94% chance of success.

I’m convinced that not doing this is why 85% of businesses in the United States and Canada fail within the first year.  Most of them don’t wake up in the morning doing this stuff.  They read great books and they don’t put any of it into practice.

Most companies and most employees wake up and start working on email with not a thought put into goals.  Most companies aren’t focused.

Flywheel

In Good To Great, Jim Collins described the Flywheel. In rough this is the analogy:

Are you doing what it takes to get your flywheel turning?

Picture a huge, heavy flywheel.

It’s a massive, metal disk mounted horizontally on an axle. It’s about 100 feet in diameter, 10 feet thick, and it weighs about 25 tons. That flywheel is your company.

Your job is to get that flywheel to move as fast as possible, because momentum — mass times velocity — is what will generate superior economic results over time.

Right now, the flywheel is at a standstill. To get it moving, you make a tremendous effort. You push with all of your might, and finally, you get the flywheel to inch forward. After two or three days of sustained effort, you get the flywheel to complete one entire turn.

You keep pushing, and the flywheel begins to move a bit faster. It takes a lot of work, but at last the flywheel makes a second rotation. You keep pushing steadily. It makes three turns, four turns, five, six. With each turn, it moves faster, and then — at some point, you can’t say exactly when — you break through.

The momentum of the heavy wheel kicks in your favor. It spins faster and faster, with its own weight propelling it. You aren’t pushing any harder, but the flywheel is accelerating, its momentum building, its speed increasing.

This is the Flywheel Effect. It’s what it feels like when you’re inside a company that makes the transition from good to great.

***So for the next two weeks when I’m on vacation, let me know in the comments here, what % chance you’re creating to get your flywheel spinning.

I’m still not great at this but I’m getting a lot better…

Stop the insanity of checking email first thing everyday.  Yes, email is great.  Yes, email helps us.  However, the people getting the most done are not checking email first thing in the morning, nor are they checking email throughout the day.

You’ve heard this dozens of times, so why are you still choosing to be one of the unproductive ones?

Instead of watching the clock, watch the results.  Some of the most productive people work less hours, but their work is by far more focused.

I used to make jokes about bankers’ hours only to see how it punished those who got into the office early, worked hard, and left at a normal hour to play sports.  I had it backwards.

Many of those being praised for staying late actually showed up three hours later, worked less focused, stayed late, got less done, and inspired nobody because they had no balance in their lives.

Hide the clock on your screen and phone. Put the stupid ticking clock on the wall in the broom closet. And for one week, I challenge you to check email twice a day. TWICE. A. DAY.   Email me at the end of the week to let me know how productive you were.  Do it.

cameron at backpocketcoo dot com

pic Inside SoCal

STOP IT!

STOP IT!

STOP IT!

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 writing this post I was sitting in a quiet room with a fireplace up at a Whistler, BC lodge.  No people, music, phones or email.  Just me sitting beside a window watching the snow fall = perfect environment for me to focus and get some real quality work done.

Being   a CEO and running your own business  comes with a lot of pressure. It’s critical to take the time to think and be away from the distractions of the business.  I coach and mentor CEO’s to find an environment to focus weekly and productivity improves.  So will the quality of your work.

Strict Focus Days are helpful. Slowing down every month or quarter long enough to sit quietly and obsess about the future helps fuel more thoughtful decisions about the present and future of your business.

During these times, it’s good to think about the following:

• Where in your business could you be focusing more?
• Who could you be building better relationships with?
• Who are your biggest clients?  How could you get more business from them?
• Are you taking time to really focus without the trappings of day to day life distracting you (laptop, email, phone)? If not, I strongly urge you to think about taking a Focus Day (or a few) to disconnect from the rest of the world and be alone with yourself and your thoughts.

I’ve looked at my companies metrics or KPIs every week.  Back in my College Pro Painters days, we called it the “Weekly RAG” (Results At A Glance) and it was critical to the goal-setting and planning we did weekly to drive the business.  If you’re not looking at a dashboard for your business weekly already, how’s that working for you?

To assist me in keeping teams and individuals focused, I’ve had one-on-one meetings each week with all my direct-reports.  And I’ve ensured that they had these same one-on-one meetings with those who reported to them.  At College Pro Painters, we called it GS&R: Goal Setting and Review. This simple meeting rhythm provided a ton of focus for all of us.

Fortune magazine asked me once, “How do you motivate your employees?”  I said, “I don’t.”  I continued, “I refuse to try to motivate people. What I want to do is try to take people who are already motivated and inspire them to do the stuff they know they have to do, and give them the systems and tools to create change. Then be there to support them.”

Help align and keep people focused who are already motivated.  That’s a recipe for growth.

Are you struggling to stay on task?  Do you often feel like you are jumping from here to there and back to here, only to forget where ‘here‘ was?

Good news: You’re not alone.

Bad news: If you don’t fix it, you will be alone (with a struggling business).

Tom Peters, the author of In Search of Excellence ,used to say you need to be a “monomaniac with a mission.”

True leadership is saying “no” more than you say “yes”.  Saying “no” will allow you to focus on one project rather than taking more on.

As a CEO coach, I always tell my clients that multi-tasking may make you feel busy, but it doesn’t drive results.  It’s impossible to get real results while doing two things at once. One of the core things the CEOs I’m mentoring benefit from is me helping them say no to the big shiny objects they are attracted to starting as entrepreneurs.

pic: foxnomad