Up Your Business LLC

What really makes the economy and world function is people and love. Since everything starts and ends with someone in a business transaction (an exchange), what are you doing to enhance, develop or romance those relationships? I see profits or money as the fruit of working with and developing relationships. Many in business have the exact opposite view- they are forsaking relationships and work to achieve profits at all costs. Money is leveraged in order to achieve growth and profits.  I say relationships and love come first; leverage relationships in order to grow and produce profits.

Colleen Barrett, former president of Southwest Airlines, blazed a trail in developing a culture at Southwest that promoted validating the very best in every employee. She celebrated the Southwest family and the many achievements of its employees.  A champion at valuing and empowering the employee, her leadership philosophy was grounded in giving employees the authority to make decisions.  “The people on the front lines are the ones who face the challenges every day. They are in the best position to come up with solutions,” Barrett declared.  In her estimation, it was “rare” for an employee to let her (or the company) down because “when they realize the success of the company is tied to their own personal success, that we’re all in this together, everybody wins.”

Do you empower your employees, coworkers and other associates?  Is there a spirit of celebration that comes from your heart when others accomplish company or office goals?  When is the last time you celebrated someone’s special achievement in your organization?  If you as the owner, CEO, supervisor or department head don’t, who will?  The loyalty and good will that such celebration builds into an employee is huge and often underestimated.  When people are validated for who they are, what they achieve and for their significance they become fiercely loyal.  We all have a need to be valued and respected. Boiled down to its core, it is the need to be cherished and loved. 

Embrace a new way of doing business: love someone!  Appreciate those in your employ and workplace. Tell your employees customers, and all your stakeholders why you value them.  Celebrate someone’s accomplishment.  Show some leadership: get a $10 cake and have a 10-minute surprise party for an employee or coworker who has just reached a milestone or done something special in the office.  “We don’t do that in our company,” you say?  Why not?  Start now!  Your small investment in validating (loving) those in your work-world may be just the traction your company needs. Give others the freedom to reach beyond themselves. Cultivate a festive atmosphere!  Come on…work hard, have fun and encourage the human spirit all around you!  If you will, you and your company may gain the traction to climb higher and further than ever before. 

Economics can be defined as the science and study of the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. In reality it is the flow of money, or the cycle of money through a business.  At this time rather than concentrating on the economy and all the negative effects on money and sales, I suggest focusing on relationship economics. I define it as the flow of love throughout your business as it relates to all your stakeholders. My hope is for you and all your team members to make an emotional investment by romancing each and every employee, customer, prospect, supplier, person who calls or drops into your location. Treat them as if each day is Valentine’s Day and the other person is the most important person in your life. I believe by transacting business in this way great things will happen in your business such as: heightened productivity, greater efficiency, increased sales, greater understanding, improved morale, less stress, less absenteeism, less sickness and more joy and cooperation in the workplace. Your business will create greater value causing sales to soar.

Recall the Fram Oil Filter TV commercial of the 70s?  Its theme was, “pay me now or pay me later.” In other words, an ounce of romance can produce a pound of rewards.

To complete the story about Shackleton and his crew – he and his crew reached the settlement, as their slide down the mountain in the dark led them to safety and not death. In addition to this 1914 trip, in 1908 Shackleton was the first explorer to come within 100 miles of the South Pole, but failed in his quest to reach the Pole. The 1914 mission actually became five historic survival stories, just as harrowing as the one mentioned above and with each involving heroism of the highest degree possible and each a success against all odds. The fact that Shackleton never lost one man, on either of his trips to the South Pole makes his story truly incredible. One of the reasons Shackleton failed to reach the Pole is that relationships were more important to him than achievement, colleagues more important than conquests and campaigns.  Success of the mission and personal honors were secondary to the value of his relationship to his crew.

What really can help give your business traction? It is people and LOVE. There’s an old song from the early 80s by a group called the Motels titled, “Take the L out of Lover and its OVER”.  This song title is absolutely true about your business. Without being or playing the lover in all your business relationships it just might be OVER!

I see a lot of spinning tires and smell burning rubber as a result of businesses losing traction in today’s economy. Can you afford to stay where you are in your business or keep doing what you are doing and spinning your wheels without achieving the results you want? What can help you increase or improve your traction?

What is true about 99.9% of everything your company does?   You’re right – people or relationships are involved. You need greater traction – more profits, more customers, more sales, increased productivity and efficiency, increased cash flow, more capital and reduced expenses – and the common denominator is people or relationships!

Where or on what is your focus today?  Profits, sales, customers, or capital?   What you focus on is where your energy goes. If you are not getting good traction – your focus may be off.

The key today for many business owners is to find the power, the push or pull or both to move their business out of its present condition or situation. Where is your power today?  

My experience has shown that profit, sales, customers and capital are all the fruit of well developed and maintained relationships – employees, customers, prospects, suppliers, community, competitors, alliance partners and all stakeholders in your business. Where you are not receiving traction – push and pull in your business – is where relationships have not been properly developed and maintained. 

Many businesses are like a car stuck in sand or mud with tires that are spinning rapidly, trying to grab onto something, to propel it forward yet all it is doing is spinning at an ever increasing speed, losing tread (gripping power, influence and authority) and smelling badly as it burns itself out.  

Tachi Kiuchi and Bill Shireman, authors of “What We Learned in the Rainforest”  – one a hard-nosed CEO of a major corporation and the other a dedicated environmentalist, learned from their numerous trips to the rainforests that the most valuable resource in the rainforests was not the timber that could be cut down and hauled out to make things, the therapeutic and medicinal value of the plants and minerals that could be mined and sold, or the exploitation of the various other resources found there. They discovered the most valuable resource of the rainforest was the relationships found and displayed there – the vast array of individual designs – with each filling a particular niche. Through these relationships they witnessed and learned how the forest sustained itself in the face of limits or shortages (droughts). They learned how each species used its niche efficiency (special, unique gifts and talents) which was a source of net gain in the forest – or its source of “profit.”  

What Kiuchi and Shireman learned quite accidently in the rainforest was how interrelationships and interdependence (versus independence) displayed by nature actually produced gains or “profit” in business terminology. This demonstrates something that business owners should seriously note and apply to gain traction.

People, whether in their personal lives or businesses, were created for relationship. Rugged individualism and the independence of the entrepreneur are promoted as distinguishing marks of American heroes, however, such self-sufficiency can lead to relational poverty. I believe each person is called to do something great, but no one can do it alone.

What fosters good relationships? The grease or glue is LOVE.

Living in the mountains in far western North Carolina I take advantage of the natural surroundings and beauty and look for that next mountain to climb or the next great picture to take as there is an abundance of both within driving distance of my home. Being a flat lander from Texas, I seldom had to worry about traction while traveling in my car.  I drive a 4-cylinder Camry so going places and doing things off the main highways now must be given some thought and consideration prior to launching out into unknown territory.  I have lost traction a good number of times in the mountains and wasn’t able to get where I wanted to go. If I had an 8 cylinder truck or jeep with 4-wheel drive, it would be a different matter.

Due to insufficient traction I didn’t have the force, power, authority or influence to achieve the forward motion I needed to get me to my goal.

Traction can be defined as the force that achieves forward motion or is the act of drawing or pulling. From a business point of view traction is to give solid footing in today’s continually shifting terrain (economy).  

How do you get a better grip (traction) – add power and influence to your business in these times? Do you have a grip on your business?  

How do you feel about this definition from a business point of view?  Traction is the profit, revenue, customers, users, sales in your business – in other words – it’s the only thing that matters.  Investors care about traction over everything else in a public company.  For many the only thing that matters is getting to product/market fit – being in a good market with a product or service that can satisfy that market.

In “Summoned to Lead” Leonard Sweet relates an incident of British explorer Sir Earnest Shackleton and his crew in 1914. Shackleton and his crew were attempting to make it to the South Pole and became stuck (the ship froze in the ice and was being squeezed to pieces) 600 miles from their destination. Winter had set in and they were outside normal shipping routes so no ships would be coming by. He decided to take one of the life boats and five members of his twenty-eight person crew and head to an island 800 miles away where a settlement was located.  After a 17-day trip, they reached the island but put in on the opposite side of where the settlement was located to avoid being washed away from the island by heavy winds. They were next faced with crossing several mountain ranges that had never been crossed, in the dead of winter and without sleeping provisions. They came across three different mountain ranges, which were dead-ends, forcing them to find other routes and to travel in the dark.  As they reached the summit of the fourth, they looked into the darkness below not knowing if the steep mountainside ended in a precipice or sloped all the way to the bottom. They had traveled for 24 hours and didn’t have the strength or provisions to look for another route.  It was dark and freezing cold and stopping would mean sure death.  What to do?  What if they hit a rock?  What if the slope didn’t level off?  These were all appropriate questions, however, Shackleton asked the right question, “Can we stay where we are?”

More traction in the next blog!