Top This One! The Great Heathrow Airport Incident
Filed under: Business Growth, Pittsburgh, Profitable Growth, Uncategorized
Years ago, when visiting Turkey with our daughter, Margo, my wife Joan and I understood we would have to drag her CF-related medicines and aerosols across the world. But the allure of visiting the world’s wonders, summering on the Aegean and visiting my family sold us. We sailed through TSA, landed in Heathrow and shuttled to the European terminal all in good time for our Istanbul flight, when disaster loomed. One of Margo’s bags didn’t make it off the bus. I grabbed our passports and tickets and raced off to hunt it down. Meanwhile, Joan found the special-needs room where British Airways suggested Margo’s machine could be hooked up for her respiratory therapy. Converters and adapters were mismatched for the UK’s currency, causing the machine to catch fire, sending billows of smoke into one of the world’s most heavily guarded terminals. Curious how this mishap turned out?
Just after ambulances, bomb-sniffing dogs and the anti-terrorist squad descended on Joan, I triumphantly returned with Margo’s lost bag, only to see that my victory was a sideshow. Once she assured the police that hospitals and prisons were not needed, Joan calmly found the Heathrow Airport Clinic, Boots pharmacy and a local courier service all of whom collaboratively raced to replace Margo’s combusted machine and delivered it to us, just in time to board our flight to Istanbul. Without Margo’s machine or the bag, we would have had to abort our trip and return home. With deep gratitude to the customer- service heroes above, I challenge you to submit a more exciting example below. I will give a free workshop to the winner!
Practice “The One Thing:” Abundance and Scarcity:
Filed under: Business Growth, Pittsburgh, Profitable Growth, Uncategorized
Remember the movie City Slickers where Jack Palance tells the boys to find “The One Thing!”
What is the one thing for your business? If creating profitable growth sounds right, read on.
Whatever you make and sell, if you practice abundance while offering scarcity, your profitable growth will follow. Why?
First, let’s define abundance and scarcity.
- Abundance is your confidence that there are always more customers with new wants and needs. Your and their glass is always half full.
- Scarcity happens every time you convince buyers that your business is different, better and unlike every other business. Scarce means you are in demand.
Here are five ways to practice abundance and scarcity and create profitable growth.
Five ways to practice abundance
- Move beyond your industry’s certifications and best practices and create your own. Find and follow your own best and highest use. Here’s my YouTube video to show you how.
- Invest in your own business. You will always have too little money or too little time. Your confidence and conviction will have much more to do with your success.
- Donate your time and your money where you believe it will have impact not visibility.
- Give more referrals than you get. Paying it forward works!
- Write, speak, present and react to issues where you are an expert. Social media makes it easy.
Hines Ward, of the Pittsburgh Steelers is a great example of living an abundant life. At this writing, he’s a finalist on Dancing with the Stars. What is next for Hines?
Our two-party system, which boils most issues down to destructive platforms and sound bites, is the opposite of abundance.
Five ways to practice scarcity
- Be truly independent and unbiased in your advice and build all the trust you can with your clients.
- Find the extraordinary in the ordinary and give your customers unique ways to accomplish what they want to.
- Discover, propose and sell third and fourth alternatives to problems when everyone else sees only one or two.
- Say no to cutting your price, accepting bad business and indulging bullying or non-paying clients.
- Be fun and still get the job done. Work hard, play hard! Make people need you.
Barbara Streisand, Cher and Madonna rarely tour but always sell out when they do. They are great examples of scarcity.
Creative advertisements for GEICO, Progressive, State Farm and Allstate Insurance come so fast and often we forget who made which ad and sells what brand. Not scarce at all!
Combine Your Scarcity and Abundance and They Will Create Profitable Growth.
Being scarce with an abundance mentality comes down to having the unconscious and innate confidence that you can make life better for your customers and clients than any of your competitors or they themselves can. Practice practicing scarcity and abundance. When you do so, profitable growth will follow because your customers will connect you with their successes and will not be able to duplicate this with your competitors. And they will be willing to buy more from you and pay you more for it. And that is profitable growth!
If You Can’t Change Your People, Change Your People.
Filed under: Business Growth, Profitable Growth, Uncategorized
When asked, “What makes your business work?” You say, “It’s my great people. But really, aren’t there a few you would need to change? Not fire, just change.
Conversely, how many times, have you broken the golden rule of “Hire slow, fire fast?” How often had you made a fast offer to the “perfect” person because…
- She had another offer
- He worked with one of your staff for years
- The tests said the executive was a perfect fit
…Only to regret your judgment and worse yet, live with the consequences.
So here’s the bottom line. How do you change your people? And when do you CHANGE your people? Learn some key steps you can take to decide and act here
How should you try to change your people but keep them working for you? Most people aren’t superstars and may not meet your expectations but are solid players who can improve.
- Give them clear tasks, goals and rewards.
- Observe and coach them on how to reduce their errors of commission (doing the right things in the wrong way).
- Recognize and reward those who care more about your business than they do about impressing you.
- Value those who get the work done, especially if they do it in another way.
- Value the right person even if they are in the wrong job.
When do you change the people by replacing them? When:
- You don’t trust them after comparing what they say to what they do.
- They make repeated errors of omission (not doing the right things or anything after being trained).
- You are convinced they are un-promotable or inflexible and simply are not open to learning, growing or change.
- They have no informal influence and don’t contribute to or even obstruct the results or culture you value.
- Their peers, vendors and subordinates lose enough confidence to risk their interests by telling you so.
Making people changes are the hardest moves I’ve seen owners have to make. Here’s some advice:
- Talk often to your problem people’s peers, customers and vendors and ask the hard questions. Develop proof and multiple examples of what you like and don’t like.
- Learn what really motivates your people. Honestly assess if this dovetails with what they are supposed to do to succeed in their jobs.
- Make sure you have clear job descriptions and objectives for your problem people. Most people who fail in small companies tell me they didn’t know what they were supposed to do and what their owner wanted of them.
Finally, as an owner, take the old adage to heart. You become what you tolerate. People problems rarely solve themselves. So if you can’t change your people, change your people!
If Contracting is Your “Wild West,” Here’s 3 Ways to Become the Only Sheriff in Town.
Filed under: Business Growth, Profitable Growth, Uncategorized
Even in an improving economy, why does the contracting industry still feel like the last frontier? As long as financing stays unpredictable, customers pay late and subcontractors/tradesmen slip up, does running your business seem like a series of showdowns at the OK 
Corral? After helping dozens of owners in the building trades, I’m clear that formal planning and forecasting don’t work in the face of erratic weather, desperate bidding, and poor project management. But good contractors survive. And a few have learned how to adapt and actually thrive by creating scarce capabilities and unique services. And some builders have done it so well that they have, in a sense become “The Only Sheriffs in Their Towns” in the “Wild West of Contracting.”
Recently I personally met, spoke with and asked over 20 PA-based contractors what they needed to do to succeed in the next two years. They said three factors mattered most:
1. Competitive estimating/pricing
2. Quality work
3. Great project management.
But they agreed that these factors are not a strategy for long term success. In the short run, every contractor may survive by delivering quality work on time and on budget. But as labor and material costs grow and credit stays tight, only the largest or cheapest firms may succeed over time by doing more and charging less.
So what is the answer? Focus, perform scarce services, and move with the market. Here are three “Wild West” strategies I’ve helped my contracting clients invent, develop, and implement.
1. Focus on your Best and Highest Use®. WK Thomas Construction has focused on being a leader in building Butler® pre-engineered steel buildings.
2. Invent and Perform Scarce Services. Menard USA is a design-build specialty geotechnical contractor offering expertise on ground improvement for sites with poor soil.
3. Move as the market moves. FlorLine Group® is expert in the design and application of industrial floor, wall and ceiling coatings for electrostatic and other regulated (FDA) environments.
So which strategy will you take to become the only sheriff in your own town? The first step is to decide which of your differentiated skills, expertise and services you can charge more for to generate better margins. Although new products, markets and technologies are hard to develop and must be constantly protected from copycat competitors, they will turn your “Wild West” into looking less like “F Troop” and more like “Bonanza!”
Andy © Copyrighted by Andrew J. Birol, President of Birol Growth Consulting, who helps owners create profitable growth by growing their Best and Highest Use®. Andy can be reached at (412) 973 2080, abirol@andybirol.com or www.profitablegrowth.com
