The Business End

It’s been said, there is nothing new under the sun. This much we know to be true. Every day I love hearing from all of you who are out there trying to make your idea happen. Sometimes it’s hard making a dream into reality. Most times we think best case scenario and forget all the things that can go wrong. Less of course you are a lawyer and then you are always thinking how it won’t work.

I don’t want to pick on my lawyers out there. I love them, as long as they are working for me and not against. It is important that you look at a couple issues when starting a new concept. I remember when I first started, I thought about creating a company because it would be great to be my own boss and do what I love.

Yes, sure we have all heard it. The American Dream right? Well, if your idea is playing XBOX all day you might not be able to profit from that unless you work on the Microsoft Game team and then there is a revenue stream attached to that. 

I good amount of you are current clients and past clients who read and post to my blog. I am grateful that you stopped by to take a look. Some of you came to me with no concept of how you were going to run a business. Others had a strong idea and we worked through the logistics of making it into reality.

The hard part is trying to figure out how to make money at what you love. Sometimes we tend to see our business through rose colored glasses. We want it to work so bad that we fall in love with the deal regardless if it makes good financial sense.

Look at your market, ask yourself: What does my customer look like? Where does he/she shop? How will I advertise to these people? Why would they buy my product? Do I have any competition that can do this better? Would my clients pick my competition over me? How will I control the barrier to entry?

These are some basic questions for ANY business on the planet. I don’t care if its a Tire shop or a Bridal Salon. You need to constantly be looking at all these variables and these are just a few. Once you can clearly tell someone why you are in business and how you plan to attack the market then you are on a good start to making it big.

I have talked to a number of you over the last few days or so. So much that I thought I would write about it. I talked to one very intelligent inventor. I honestly believe that his product will change the way fuel in vehicles is spent. The problem is when I talked to him he said he only had $200 to spend on marketing. How can you expect to educate the masses that your product is the next light bulb for only $200?

Last year, I made it to the ULI Spring Council Forum in Chicago. I was walking through the lobby and I ran into Ken Hughes. This guy is really sharp, I asked him to lunch and we shared a cab on our way to the metropolitan club in sears tower. I remember looking across the river at the new Trump project. I asked him about his deals and what his philosophy was on marketing. He leaned to the side and told me this: “Jeremy, if you don’t have an unlimited budget for your project then you won’t have a project for long.” I will never forget that. He is absolutely right. Some people might think he’s crazy but I asked that question too. When he developed Highland Park Village in Dallas, He was crazy. When he bought the land which is now called mockingbird station, yep you guessed it… They called him crazy. Now? Both of those properties are sold and he no longer is involved. He had the vision and the know how to get buzz and create something that people would ultimately be a fan of.

So as you go about your day thinking about the next big idea, don’t forget. If you don’t intend on spending whatever it takes to market your product, don’t bother. I know that seems harsh but you don’t want to create a product in what my old CEO would define as “HA”. It stands for Half-Assed. My wife tells me that I am all or nothing. Sometimes that’s bad, in this case its sink or swim.

In the past couple days, I have run up against business strategy. I went to a business mixer last night and the individual I spoke with I could tell she was very frustrated with the technology that she implemented that was supposed to fix all her problems. Same thing with a close friend of mine. He is really trying his best to automate his business and only finds himself frustrated at the end of the day because he didn’t get his expectation of what that software was supposed to do for him.

I’m sure that if this happens in my small circle of friends that its happening all over. In fact, since I started putting a coaching program together I have experienced an unparalleled increase of new business startups. I’m sure it has something to do with the changing economic climate. Even so, most of the people I talk to have no clue what they are doing much less how they will take the next step. I worry about folks because they have no strategy.

We live in age of mass advertising and with the advent of the internet we can research what we think we need to buy to run our businesses. Most of the time the reasons why someone picks say an operating system over another is personal preference. In some cases it seems to be a religion. I wouldn’t put it past some apple owners to convert their user groups to prayer groups. There are all types on this earth.

The danger in relying too much in technology is that you become lazy and you let people dictate to you how you run your business. At the end of the day, isn’t that part of the reason why you started a business? So that you and you alone could make executive decisions?

I tell everyone come up with a strategy. Figure out what you need to do on a daily basis to run your business. Try running your business without a computer for day and you will see that you need to develop some kind of system. They did it 50 years ago and guess what. You can still run a business today without a computer. I don’t recommend it, but its possible.

When you completely remove the business boob tube, you gain a perspective on your business and you build processes based on necessity. Then when you define that process, open up outlook and other tools and see how you can automate that process. Pretty soon you get rid of the crap that wastes your time and ruins your life.

With a little ambition and goal setting you will be on your way shortly to running smooth engine. So smooth you might even find out you can do without much of your overhead.

If you try this, send in a comment. I would love to hear your feedback good or bad.