© 2008 Vinny Ribas

In a perfect world, every piece of your business puzzle would fall into the right position as soon as you opened the box and dumped the pieces on the table. Your invention would work perfectly the first time you tested it. The first person you showed it to or told about it would immediately write you a $5,000,000 check and say, “Go for it!” Within a week, every appropriate retailer in the country would be calling you because they want to sell it for you. Within a month, your product is flying off the shelves because consumers just can’t get enough of it!

Unfortunately, it’s almost an unwritten law that it is going to take more time and more money than you expected to launch and grow your business. Over and over again, businesses fail because the unexpected stopped them in their tracks. Prices go up, demand slows down, competition moves in, key personnel quit, prototypes don’t work, the large customer you were counting on falls through etc. The list of things that can go wrong is endless.

Please don’t let this discourage you. There are things you can do to avoid being cut off at the knees by surprise events. Here are a few:

• Plan for the worse case scenario. Every aspect of your business should have safeguards and emergency plans in place. It’s no different than policemen and firefighters doing disaster training just in case there is a tornado or a flood. It may never happen, but you need to be prepared.
• Interview people who are experienced in your industry. Ask them about the bumps in the road that they had to navigate around, or the brick walls that they had to climb over to move their businesses forward. Bring one onto your executive team if possible. This will help you to prepare your company as much as possible. Don’t try to think of all of the “what ifs” by yourself. Some challenges will be industry specific.
• Stay on top of all trends. It is important to know what is happening in the world around you, not just in your industry. Many circumstances, such as a slow economy, can have ripple effects that touch all businesses.
• Start with adequate capital. Nothing can kill a business faster than not having enough money to weather the storms. Before you open your doors, it’s wise to set aside 18-24 months of operating capital, including your own salary. This allows you the freedom of taking up to 2 years to build the business properly, instead of scrambling for every penny 2-3 months into the business.
• Keep up with technology.  Be certain that you are providing the highest quality products or services in an acceptable amount of time. Never skimp on the technologies that will keep you competitive. If you do, your rivals might leave you in the dust.
• Study your competition. Your competition is studying you, watching your every move. They are trying to anticipate what you might do next to get or keep ahead of them. That is why it is vitally important that you know what you’re competition is doing, how they think and what their next move is. It is the only way you can avoid being caught by surprise.
• Measure your marketing. Never do any marketing in which you can’t measure its effectiveness. Not knowing what is and isn’t working will drain your marketing budget in very short order. Also, give your marketing efforts enough time to take hold.  Repetition is key in effective marketing. Remember that marketing that works for your competitors may not necessarily work for you, and vice versa.
• Study your customers. Survey our customers to find out why they do business with you and what might cause them to take their business elsewhere. Often, the things that we believe are attracting customers are only incidental, and the real reasons are completely different. When you know your customers’ likes, dislikes and habits, you can build marketing campaigns to emphasize those strengths before your competitors do. Also, be sure to have a customer retention program in place, such as a weekly email newsletter, that keeps your business in front of them on a constant basis.

Some precautionary measures may seem tedious, time-consuming or expensive. Some might also seem quite obvious. However, every precaution that you can take equips your company with the tools, knowledge and wisdom that will keep you afloat during the wildest storms. The better prepared you are, the better your chance of not only surviving but thriving during those rough times when your less-prepared competitors don’t.

It is all too easy to get so caught up in the day-to-day operations of our businesses that we lose track of our goals and our progress towards them. It is also common that we get so busy running the business that we don’t take the time to take a hard look at the big picture. As the business owner, it is important to always know what is going right and what’s going wrong in your business. You should be completely aware of why are you growing (or not growing) at your current pace. You should have one eye on your competition at all times. You should be looking for ways to fix problems in your industry or that your customers have. You can take advantage of challenges and turn them into huge profit centers for your business if you learn to listen to what others are complaining about.

One of the most common tools that business owners and strategic planners use is called the SWOT Analysis. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. By simply listing what each of these are as it relates to your business and its performance ever 3 months or so, you can insure that you keep doing the right things and fix the things that are wrong. You will also recognize trends that you can either lead or ride, and you can ward off potential serious problems.

I strongly suggest that you bring your entire executive team together to perform this evaluation. Everyone has a different perspective, so the things that you see as strengths may actually be seen as weaknesses by the rest of your team, and vice versa. It’s important to have everyone’s thoughts and input in order to see a true picture of your business as it is at this very moment.

Here is a closer look at why each of these components is important:

• Strengths: Make a list of all of the things that make your company strong. Include key personnel, your capital position (if you are fully capitalized), your geographic location, your reputation, your market penetration, your successful marketing campaign etc. Don’t leave anything out. Once you’ve done this, you’ll know what you need to keep doing. You’ll know who you need to reward or protect. You’ll know where you need to continue marketing or what might possibly the focus of your next marketing campaign. You’ll understand what is giving you an edge over your competition. You’ll also have a handle on why your customers buy from you, why your employees stay with you, and why you have a lot to look forward to!

• Weaknesses: Make a list of all of the things that weaken your business. Include under-performing employees, location, lack of capital, holes in your executive team, unreliable vendors, an ineffective marketing campaign and anything else that you can think of. You may feel like you’ll never be done with this list because we all know there are so many things we’d like to change or improve. Doing this exercise alone may bring to light problems or challenges that, when fixed, can turn your entire business around. It may also uproot some serious situations, such as bad employee moral or poor customer service, that will take some hard work to reverse or repair.  But once you’ve included all of the company’s obvious major weaknesses, you are positioned to develop a very productive and profitable to-do list for yourself and your team.

• Opportunities: Make a list of all of the opportunities that your business has to increase its profitability, market presence and/or reputation. These might include making facility or equipment improvements, entering new markets, finding new resources, developing strategic partnerships, hiring a key employee, accessing additional funding etc. The entire direction of your business, the introduction of a completely new product line or the chance to become the leader in a certain segment of your industry are all possible outcomes from this exercise. Take each item listed very seriously and watch your business transform for the better right before your eyes!

• Threats: List everything that is threatening the short and/or long-term success of the company. This could range from changing trends or increased competition to a lack of sufficient capital. Take a close look at the weaknesses you listed and determine what the outcome will be if you don’t find a way to turn them around, because these are also threats. Are you at risk of losing employees? Is your lease about to expire or your rent about to increase? By acknowledging all of the things that can hurt or destroy your company or its progress, you can begin putting plans in place to thwart them. Once again, take each item very seriously. If it is big enough of a threat to put on this list, it’s big enough to command immediate attention!

Once you have completed this list, your next task is to prioritize the weaknesses and the threats you listed, then strategize on ways to reverse them. Also prioritize the opportunities you have so you can begin the process of taking advantage of them. At the same time, analyze your strengths so that you can develop ways to capitalize on them. You might even use this simple exercise to build an entire short-term strategic plan for your company.

© 2008 Vinny Ribas

Every one of us has our own comfort zones in our personal lives as well as our business lives. When we’re in that space, we are floating along almost on automatic pilot. We repeat things we’ve done and said before, and don’t have to take any risk. Nothing more is expected of us that what we are already delivering. We’re completely confident in our ability. We’re comfortable, and at some level we’d like to stay like that forever.

Starting and running a business often requires that you get out of your comfort zones. It may mean taking on a new role, like moving from employee or sole practitioner to employer. It might mean switching your mindset from friend or co-worker to being the boss, which at times requires a completely different approach to everyone around you.  You may need to learn a new technology or master a new skill, even though you’ve been doing things the same way for a long time. You may have to adjust your hours or even your vacation to meet the demands of the business. You may have to raise capital for your new venture. For many people, that is the scariest transition of them all. After all, asking other’s for money might make us look needy, weak or vulnerable. You might be thinking, ‘I don’t want to ‘take on that much debt’, - which is erroneous thinking because that is not how raising capital properly works. And of course, no one wants to be responsible for losing someone else’s money if for any reason the business should fail.

If any of these paradigm shifts are keeping you and your business from reaching your true potential, there is good news. If you stretch yourself to move your business forward, these new roles and attitudes become your new comfort zones. You learn to thrive in those new zones. Things that might have seemed scary at first are now second nature to you. Things that frightened you before now exhilarate you. You start to challenge yourself to stretch even more. Even raising capital will become a fun game! And as you realize that you overcame the challenges that first loomed like mountains in your way, you’ll find yourself seeking out bigger and better challenges!

Whether you’re buying a new house or needing to make executive decisions, change can be scary. And of course, making those initial moves to get out of your comfort zones is the key to jumping to the next level. Here are some suggestions to help you take those first steps:

• Talk to people who have ‘been there, done that, bought the tee shirt’. Whether it is a formal (paid) relationship or just a conversation over coffee, ask them about all of the things that concern you. Chances are they had many of the same fears. Find out how they overcame them. You may need to find different people with different experiences to answer all of your questions. Often times a lack of knowledge or understanding is the only thing that prevents us from moving forward.
• Analyze the “worst case scenario”. Most often you will find that making a few mistakes until you get it right will not cause any long-term damage. Sometimes you learn the most during the transitional phase because all of your energy is focused on getting it right.
• Talk to the people who will be affected by your changes and voice your self-concerns. Most people will give you a grace period to make the adjustments you need to make. This can work in your favor, because they will rally around you to support you.
• Prepare yourself by reading, doing research, taking classes or simply asking for help or guidance. The more informed you are, the clearer the steps become that you need to take.
• Declare your decisions to change to people around you. Ask them to become your accountability partners, keeping you in check while pushing you forward at the same time.
• Manage your change by making sure that you are not taking on too much at one time. If this is a really big decision for you, just take baby steps.
• Keep focused on the end result. Use reminders such as photographs, a screensaver, a calendar etc. to help you make transformational decisions. Visualize what the future will look like if  you just overcome one obstacle at a time.
• Surround yourself with successful people who are comfortable with change and making big decisions. Just learning how they think will influence your ability to step up your game for the better.

Keep in mind that change is inevitable. No matter how hard you try to stay in your comfort zone, something is going to shake you up. It may be things that are completely out of your control like a natural disaster. However, often it is driven by the people around you, such as when the company you’ve dedicated your life to for years decides to downsize or move to another state. The best way to avoid being forced into change is to create it and direct it yourself. By initiating change, you have the opportunity to pick and choose what it will be and how it will affect both you and your family.

On Sunday, I leave the beautiful hills and rocking sounds of Nashville TN to attend a week long CEO conference called the Free Enterprise Forum, produced by CEO Space. This organization provides the most powerful business launch and growth training in the world. I have attended this conference t least 10 times, and I learn more every time I go. The faculty are all Fortune 500 trainers or executives. This coming week, some of the faculty will include Mark Victor Hansen, Jack Canfield, John Grey, Bob Proctor, Harv Eker, Lisa Nichols, Bob Circosta and many more, all of whom got their start in this organization! During the course of the week, the faculty remain completely accessible to coach any CEOs who need help with their businesses, or who might need doors opened for them.

If that weren’t enough, there will be about 1000 CEOs on site, helping each other find whatever customers, capital, resources, contacts, strategic alliances or professional support they might need to move their businesses into hyper-growth mode!

This is where I learned all of the information that is in my book, “CEO Secrets”. If you’d like more info about the book or CEO Space, please contact me at vinny@ceospacetn.com.

I have just released a new book called “CEO Secrets – What They Know About Business That Every Entrepreneur Should”. It reveals the ‘never-taught-in-school’ knowledge and wisdom that separates successful CEOs and Entrepreneurs from small business owners. Over the past 6 years, I have interviewed and/or coached over 1000 businesses of all sizes, and have been mentored by some of the greatest business minds in the world. This book is a product of those coaching, mentoring and masterminding experiences. You can find out more about the book at www.businessstart-up.net or at most major bookstores. If you are a CEO, a small business owner or an aspiring entrepreneur, I guarantee this book will put you and keep you on track for unlimited success.

To Your Success,

Vinny Ribas