Running business in the dark, without a map is bananas

Driving downtown Toronto on my honeymoon, I got lost. I am from the country and the big city scared me a bit. More importantly, as I was driving, my newest and lovely co-pilot couldn't navigate me out of the labyrinth of greasy streets and wall-to-wall cars. Before GPS, the ancient travellers used paper maps bought at a corner store for $3.99. This piece of paper was integral to navigate our lost souls back onto our chosen path.

That one dark afternoon on our honeymoon reminded me of the usefulness of a business map.

What do entrepreneurs use to map their business?

Unless she's a pioneer, someone has already been there.

If a person was driving a car, she''d pull out a map, phone or  GPS. Someone has already been there and tracked the route for everyone to follow them in the future, like my wife and I had done.

The pioneers created the maps.
Everyone else improves on them.

Business is the same way.
Someone has already drawn out the map.

So why would anyone try to do it alone?

American pioneers who didn't learn from other pioneers got killed.

Business people who don't learn from other business people get ideas and dreams executed.
85% of businesses fail in the first five years.

Maybe part of the problem has to do with the inability to ask for help.

The best entrepreneurs attribute their success to some other person.

Doing it alone is... well, lonely. And riskier than jumping off a bridge without checking the level of the water below.

The best entrepreneurs find the roadmap, find others who've already been there. They ask for advice and build upon the known path making the road a little more travelled.

No one can do it alone.

Which begs the question why anyone would try?

The whisper of time

Let's kill time.
I need to burn some time.
I can't wait until tomorrow.
Tomorrow will hopefully be a better day.

Time is all we really have. If you're like me, you sometimes take it for granted. Until one day it will all be gone.

Where has the time gone?
Time surely has flown by.

In a whisper, our lives are over.
150 years ago, people existed that none of us know.
Books tell us a story of their lives.
But do we really understand what they went through?

And in 150 years from now, the same will be said of our civilization.
Forgotten in reality. Remembered by youtube footprints.
Isn't it sad to think that youtube might be used as an accurate depiction of our lives?

And even then, youtube will be stored on computer libraries long forgotten by the future masses as they live their lives capturing memories on their futuristic medium.

Ask anyone in their sixties or older about time and they will say something like, "Where did it go?"

Is that what you want for your life?
Wondering where it went...

The only difference between an old man and a young man is his experiences.

Are you working for 40 years. Or are you working for one year and repeating it 40 times?

Time is whispering away, with each repeated experience.

The best cheapest, most efficient way to advertise a business

Growth in revenues is what we want in business. More revenues means the expenses get taken care of easier and the doors get to stay open.

Here's where most entrepreneurs stumble:
They think that a growth in revenues is determined only by attracting new customers to the product.

Attracting new customers is the hardest and most expensive form of revenue growth.

A new business, with no customers, has no choice to go down this road. That's part of the reason why 80% of businesses fail in the first five years of operations.

An existing business that already has clients isn't forced down that path.

There are three ways to grow sales:
1. Attract new clients
2. Increase frequency of purchase of existing clients.
3. Get existing clients to buy more each visit

Two of the three ways are attributed to existing business.

In my first year of business, sales had to be increased or the doors would be closed. We focused on number 2 and 3, without any outside advertising. Our sales increased by 42%. I heard a similar story of a Burger King franchise who increased his sales by 40% in one year by focussing on cleanliness and customer service.

Could it really be that simple?

So instead of investing valuable marketing dollars towards a yellow pages ad, newspaper ad, TV commercial, radio commercial, or whatever you might think about doing, understand that sales can be easily influenced by your current actions INSIDE your business. Fix your internal stuff and sales will grow.

Then, if you still haven't hit your sales targets, you can advertise.

Advertising speeds up the inevitable.

Don't allow the inevitable to be negative.

Dealing with employee morale

Ever work for someone who's self interests are greater than her interest in the growth of the team? 

It's demotivating. It's poisonous. The negativity vultures start circling, eyeing their prey waiting for the perfect time to pluck out thine eyes.

Don't give into the vultures. You have a choice. You can quit or you can change.

If you actually like your job, quitting is not the right answer.

So change it is.

How do you change?

What you focus on expands. Focussing on your boss's inadequacies will piss you off more.

The only way to go to a positive place is to focus on the positive things about the job. 

Ask yourself what you're thankful for with this job.
Ask yourself what you love about this job.
Write it all down. 

If you're a team of one, you keep doing this. If there are others on the team, whether you're a supervisor or not, it's your time to lead. Your happiness depends on it. Can't do it? Then you should quit your job. Your happiness also depends on it. 

Quitting a job in this way is like running away from a problem. Unfortunately, this problem will resurface at another job someday. Ever notice that life is like a video game. Until you learn how to get past a difficult level, you keep reliving the same old mistakes.

Today, you're going to get past this difficult level. You're gonna go Jedi on them with this mind trick.

Get the team together on Monday morning and lead them to positive change. Ask them to list the five things they love about their jobs, the team, and working with each other. You write down their answers but don't let them write them down.

Every Monday, do it again. At first, some will push back. Keep doing it. It will get harder before it gets easier. Keep referring to each employee's list. Write down the new answers they give. And there will be new answers because they will forget their previous responses if they didn't write them down.

Happiness comes from gratitude. This tactic will force employees to remind themselves why they are grateful for their job and their coworkers.

Focus on gratitude, and what they love about their jobs. 

Happiness, gratitude and love will expand.

Balancing work and family

My kids were both born in the 22 months between my last corporate job and the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey.

My son was born exactly one month before the first restaurant opened. I couldn't be the dad I wanted to be. I wanted to play with my boy. Teach him how to throw a ball. Go skating, play hockey, watch TV. But I was tired.

A full day of work will do that to a person. Adding to the fatigue was the stress of trying to make a dream come true, working with 30 other people who depended on me for their paycheques and all the other individual problems that come from hiring 30 people.

I made a commitment to my business that I would work 6 days per week to make it a success. With Wednesday off, it would eventually become known as Family Day.

Family Day was set up to be the one day where we would do stuff together, not answer the phones, play, go on a day trip. The goal was to just have fun.

People said I was going to burn myself out working 6 days per week. I didn't believe it. I know lots of people who go to a paying job Monday to Friday only to work their butts off on Saturday and Sunday with house chores. Clearly, I neglected the house chores. But I didn't like doing them and I was paid more at work than I was cleaning the garage.

But as the kids got older and started school, balance became more of an issue. Family Day consisted of just me and my wife, while the kids were off to the education factory.

When they were off, I was at work. Eventually, my wife got in the business and she was also working on Sundays. I only saw the kids at nights for a few hours between homework and bedtime. My wife got Saturday with them as she cleaned the house.

I hated it. The only balance we had in our lives started with IM.

I wanted to work.
I liked the work.

But the stresses got too strong. And everything started to bother us.

The marriage was strained.
Relationships with business partners went downhill.
The kids were being cared for by everyone but us.
It felt like our lives were built on a deck of cards, just waiting for the wrong move.

Until one day, we decided to sell everything.

Nothing was more important than us raising our kids. We had them because we wanted a family more than anything else in the world.

And even though I knew that, I kind of forgot about it as I pushed my business interests higher.

Balance does not exist when it comes to work and family.

It's more like a swingset. You push and then you receive, only to push again. While the swing goes up, you can do other things quickly so you can be there to receive the swing as it comes back down. You can ignore pushing the swing a few times as you focus on the other task. Eventually if you don't give it another push, the swing stops.

As we try to survive, provide and nurture, we drive ourselves crazy trying to be all things to all people. High school taught us that we can't do that.

What's sitting on your swing, work or family?

The key to hiring success

Talk to anyone about hiring and they will tell you to hire for attitude not experience.

Although it's a known fact, how many of us actually do it?

Most will say they do. But what they really do is take a small pool of EXPERIENCED candidates and interview them for attitude. They choose the best attitude amongst the experienced short list.

The cost to train an inexperienced employee is high. Yet the cost to replace an entire team decimated by an experienced jerk is obviously much higher.

The restaurant industry is no different. Because restaurants are on the front lines of business warfare, this challenge comes up often. Hire for skill and try to untrain bad habits or hire for attitude and try to train skill. In restaurants, the time required to train skill is short compared to more skilled jobs corporate jobs.

Hiring an employee in a restaurant is a pain in the ass. It's not like the trainers don't have anything else to do. It's not like business likes to pay for the extra cost of training labour. There is no HR department...

Yet hiring is still necessary.

Here are two tips that I learned for hiring success in the restaurant industry.

First of all, get referrals from existing employees. Not only do birds of a feather flock together, but now you have a mentor, a training buddy, a support team for your new employee.

How often have you seen a new employee get plucked to death by the team? A friend won't let this happen to the new recruit. A friend will bring the employee under her wing and protect her from the predators while feeding her advice and tips. 

The other phenomenon I witnessed in these scenarios is the creation of study buddies. The friend trains the new recruit off company time, which saves valuable labour costs.

You don't always get enough referrals so you may have to advertise the position or review the pile of resumes in the file. Trying to get through the bullshit that resumes dish out, a decision is made who will be interviewed.

The second tip for hiring is more ninja style.

Hire for attitude. But hire for a specific attitude. Look for someone who has the ability to CARE. 

Trying to find an employee who cares can be difficult. Everyone cares about something. Look specifically for someone who has a deep desire to help others.

How do you assess that?

If you're hiring a part-time employee look to university, college or high school kids. More specifically hire students who are studying or wanting to study Education or Nursing. 

If you're hiring a fulltime employee, ask them if they had to do it all over again and had to go back to school, what field of study would they take. Again, look for the Education or Nursing answer.

I know it's crazy. I stumbled across this in my third year of business. I never had one bad hire using this methodology.  You can end the interview after this simple question. Nothing else will give you more information.

It worked for me and I'll bet it will work for you. Just saying...

No longer employable

Entrepreneurs don't make good employees.

Some companies look for entrepreneurial employees. What they really want are employees who are ready, willing and able to take initiative.

Employees who are entrepreneurial are risk takers. They will work hard. But they may not spend a lot of time in the office. They may be networking, shaking hands, and looking for opportunities for both their employer and themselves.

These people are not employable. They seek new challenges. They can't be pegged down. Don't ask them to sit at a desk for 40 hours a week. You'll kill them and more importantly their spirit.

Don't ask them to work bank hours. They may start working at 5 am to go golfing at noon with some prospective clients only to be seen two days later. They may be gone for days, knocking down doors of new clients.

Be clear on the goals in the beginning. If not, the entrepreneurial employee will set his own goals, which will probably not be in line with corporate objectives.

An entrepreneurial employee will disrupt. If the current systems don't work for him, he will change them. He will do whatever it takes to find success.

Don't allow the disruption, and he'll suffocate. Real entrepreneurs don't work for money. They work for fun, the thrill, the fight, the challenge. Money comes because they are so damned good at it.

Piss him off and he won't think about quitting. He'll pick up his stuff and leave. He's a spoiled brat that way.

You will never, ever, ever be able to control these people. So you have two choices: don't hire them or hire them and get out of the way.