Without money, you can’t do much.

Non-profit organizations are always trying to raise money with campaigns and donations.  “With more money we can do more”. They know without money, they can’t do much.

That’s the point of a “for profit” too – “With more money we can do more”.

Go for profit – get it right – and “do more”!

The Highest Calling

Few people are in a better position to make the world a better place than business owners.

“When we create a successful business, we improve the lives of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people.  There is no higher calling.” – From The Highest Calling book/audiobook.

Let’s get it right.

"Policy" = Roadblock

This is how it goes – someone in the office (ivory tower) hears a story of something gone wrong, or is paranoid they don’t have enough control or information.  So they make a “policy” or “procedure” or “paperwork” for employees or customers to follow or fill out – without getting off their butt and going into the field to understand the real issues and how bad or not so bad they really are, and considering the impact and cost of the new “policy” on customers and employees attitudes and productivity.

Soon business slows down and everyone is pissed off.  We vs. them attitudes emerge.  Employees are dis-empowered.  Winners leave.  Customers leave.

But, of course, this never happens in your business…so you don’t have any road clearing to do. 

Or do you?

How to make a 15% profit – guaranteed

Spend only 85%% of what you take in.

Am I wrong?

You are not your business

While you go about your days and weeks working hard and long to build something great, view it from above once in a while.  See your business, and even you working in and on it, as an outsider. 

While your business is part of what you do, it’s not who you are.  Stay true to who you are while you work on your business, and you can avoid being emotionally swallowed by it – the business results telling you if you can be happy or not.

You’re a human being working on a business. Not a “human doing,” trying to be, by working on a business.

"Intentionally Left Blank"

Plan a day to do nothing at work.  No meetings, no appointments, no projects.  Put it on the calendar. 

When you go in, just walk around and talk to your people.

“Hey, how’s it going?” Stay and listen a while.

It’s amazing what you find out!

The Perfectionism Brake

If you wait for everything to be just right, you’ll not likely do anything efficiently.  Heck, you may not do much at all.  Sure, we want quality, but if we wait until things are perfect then we won’t have much of a chance to learn how to get better quality.

Making mistakes is how we learn.  Have your people get out there and do their best, and have a chance to learn, and be sure they are learning quickly.

Observe the small things – Darwin

Your business’ output is made up of the sum of all the small things that happen in it. 

Observe the small stuff: little transactions, motions, activities, parts, thoughts, processes.  It’s here that you can make changes that affect the big things.

It’s easy to spend money in business

What’s harder: to make $40,000 in sales, pay our costs, and have $4,000 left over – or to spend $4,000?

Sometimes we don’t treat the business’ money like our money.  But it is.

It’s easy to spend money, hard to make it.

Be careful.

Can you focus?

Businesspeople have so much to do.  It’s a constant stream of fixing problems, working on a myriad of things that need attention, getting the right people to work on things right, delegating, training, measuring – then…repeat it all.

Success is not a matter of doing things right, but doing the right things really well.  This requires thought and focus on the part of the leader.  Leaders can’t perform if they’re crazed all the time.

Can you get to a quiet (mental) place each day for some time without interruption to work on what’s most important?