Juxtaposition: Music versus Business

Divine Brown had just finished performing Saturday night at the Waterloo Jazz Festival.  My wife and I both stood to stretch as the Matt Dusk band was coming on stage to warm up.  This is when the stranger seated behind us said hello.

This is one of those strangely coincidental conversations.

After exchanging several generalized pleasantries, we learned that Mr Friendly is an executive business coach.  Small world!

As the wind instruments gathered strength on the stage, we were discussing the word reflection and sharing our mutual thoughts about the amount of reflection that takes place in a business world where the mantra seems to be “go, go, go”.

Crowd listening to Matt Dusk (courtesy M. Dusk)

This led to my new found friend asking the question “what single skill yields the greatest benefit for the small to medium sized business owner?”  I widened the question by adding knowledge and attitude to the mix and then responded by saying that an overall attitude towards striving for differentiation was key.  His answer was communication, to which I agreed that it was hard to argue against effective communication.

What do you think?  What single skill, knowledge or attitude would you say yields the biggest return?

I invite your comments to the above.

Story Telling

Summer seems to have arrived, so I went to camp last week.  Well, not actually.  But, I did attend a story telling workshop.   It seems to me that the role of story telling in our lives is getting an increasing amount of media attention.  I’m interested in learning how we can employ story telling to improve our emotional connection with our internal and external customers.

So, for some fun, I  thought that I’d pose the following challenge.  Write a story that has happened to you since June 21/13.  As with most things in life, there are some requirements.  Here they are:

1. keep it short
2. write it in the first person
3. what learning occurred for you that can be applied to your business life?

Here is my story.

“I had decided to attend a story telling workshop in Stratford, as part of the Stratford Festival Theatre season.  I had been confronted by the story telling theme four or five times over the past six months and I was excited about getting some first hand exposure from the experts at Stratford.

Late the night before the event I was going over my checklist for the following day.  I was to attend a 7:15 am networking meeting.  This would end at 8:30 and I had previously arranged to meet a client who was accompanying me at 9:00 am.  We had to be in Stratford for a 10:00 am start to the workshop.  Sitting in front of my computer is when I discovered that my email confirmation for the workshop did not contain the tickets.  It was too late to contact anyone at the theatre.  Right I thought, I’ll call just before I meet my client.

The next morning I drove out of my driveway and this is when I noticed that the fuel gauge was hovering on ‘barely fumes’.  Rats!

I dashed out of the networking meeting and got to my car shortly after 8:30.  Hey, I might just pull this off without my client being any wiser.  That was before I encountered road works; a diversion that took me out of my way; and a senior apparently practising driving stealth.  And this was just trying to get out of the city on my part.  I finally managed to reach the highway and head towards the assigned meeting place.  This is when I thought that hands free phoning would be a useful tool.

As it turned out, I was extremely punctual and was promptly rewarded by my client suggesting that he would drive to Stratford.

My learning: Don’t leave all of the details until the last minute.  When planning, you can anticipate that something will go wrong and an allowance for this is more than a good idea!”

Scaling Up This Summer

This isn’t a plea from your dental hygienist!

Have you encountered situations where your customer or prospect has given you the impression that new initiatives can wait until September? Do you sometimes get the sense that business owners mentally take the summer off?

Dun and Bradstreet conducted an interesting analysis of business failure. Based upon US data, firms with fewer than 20 employees have only a 37% chance of surviving four years and only a 9% chance of surviving ten years.

When business owners put together their annual business plans, they might have to anticipate a seasonal softening of sales during the summer months. However, the expense side of their business will continue to function and with statistics like those in the paragraph above, business owners should continue to look for opportunities to move their business forward.

Businesses generally experience a life cycle that moves from start-up, to growth, maturity and then decline. The decline phase can often be preceded by complacency on the part of the owner on one hand or by success on the other.

Three tips that will assist you in avoiding the decline phase:
1) External focus – if customer involvement slows down, are there strategic alliance opportunities with key suppliers that can be pursued?
2) External focus – networking opportunities may increase significantly with outdoor activities. Ask for leads and referrals.
3) Internal focus – use the summer for training of employees.

By all means, take some time off so you can re-charge. But use the balance of the time to keep moving your business forward. If a business isn’t going forward, it is likely going backward.