I want to share a comeback story that many of you have heard about. It has only happened 4 times in professional sports. A professional sports team coming back from a 3 game deficit in a 7 games series and win 4 straight.

I am not writing this because I am a Philadelphia Flyers hockey fan because I am not. Hockey is my favorite sport so I enjoy any good game. The importance in this lesson is to NEVER give up.

Even in game seven Philly was down 3 goals and fought back to score 4 unanswered goals and win the series.

The Flyers coach Peter Laviolette called his one time out after Boston scored their 3^rd goal. I don’t what he said in that huddle during that timeout, but it inspired his team to a rare comeback.

Some of you may have experienced a tough business environment. You don’t need to be one game away from elimination to motivate your team. How you handle leading your company when under pressure will have tremendous impact on your future success.

What is interesting to remember is the hockey coach doesn’t actually play in the game however; he brought the team together through adversity to help them win. You too can motivate your team to victory. If you want some tips on how to coach under pressure to rally your team give Ron or I a call for advice.

While working with a coaching client this morning, I was compelled to remind him  “You are NOT what you build.”

Loud silence followed.

We both realized that my emotional reaction had just uncovered THE mental roadblock that was preventing him from realizing the service he performed.

It was preventing him from breaking the sales spiral that he so often found himself in. It was a self-image that had to be shattered and re-built.

Do you suffer from the same identity problem? Do you define yourself by the work you perform?

It’s okay to tell people that you are, say, a roofer. It’s not okay to think of yourself as a roofer.

When you think of yourself as a roofer, your conversation with prospects will always boil down to price and quality. Since quality is controlled by the design team. You’re left with a buying decision based on price.

As long as you think of yourself as being what you build, you will never compete on any other factor.

You are NOT what you build.

You are a business person who provides a valuable service. Never forget that.

In a future  newsletter we are going to address three phases of business. Every day tasks, crisis management and strategy. You probably spend most of your time on the first two.  Don’t neglect strategy! It is the important road map of where you want your business to be in the future. It is often underrated. Just ask contractors who have plans for good times and not so good times.

We are interested in hearing from all of you contractors out in there in cyber world about how you use strategy to create advantages in your marketplace. What works best for you? How do you monitor and revise your strategic direction? Share some success stories.

For those of you who have not really done much planning we’d like to hear from you too. Why haven’t you created a strategic plan? What would you need help with if you decided to create one? Let us know so we can help you!

Don’t hold back!!! I expect a lot of feed back over the next few weeks. Let’s hear from everyone!

Guy and Ron

While glancing through my bookcase the other day looking for my go-to resource for proposal writing, my eyes came across a book whose message you might find interesting…and useful.  The book is Blink: the Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell.

In Blink, Gladwell  explains that your subconscious mind is far smarter than your conscious mind.

Remember know how you’ve always been told that the first answer that comes to mind on a multiple choice test is usually the right one. That’s your subconscious at work. Here’s another familiar example.

You wake up in the middle of the night, or you’re in the middle of a shower, when a sudden “Ah Ha!” hits you. Something you’ve been trying to figure out for awhile, couldn’t, and the answer just flashed into your mind.

That’s your subconscious at work.

In Blink, Gladwell explains how the process works. We won’t go into that.

What’s valuable about his message is that you can actually put your subconscious to work. Purposefully. Skillfully.

I had read about the process several years ago from an online financial commentator, Jim Sinclair.  This commentator’s father happened to have been the business partner of the most famous Wall Street trader of all time, a man named Jesse Livermore.

Sinclair explained that both his father and Livermore would study and study, cramming their mind full of information. Then they would completely shut off their thoughts about it. They would push all of the information into their subconscious and let it work on it while they were completely unaware of it.  At some point in time, the correct answer would pop back into their thoughts. Somehow, those two men knew to trust the answer although they had no idea how they reached the decision.

Blink explains how the mind does that, and far more importantly, why you should trust your subconscious instinct instead of your conscious logical reasoning.

So the next time you need to make an important decision, cram your head full of as much information about the decision as you can – then forget about it until it reappears to you.

Crazy, right?

Apparently, it works.

Hoping the best for you.

Ron & Guy,

The Contractor’s Business Coach

The ball’s in my court. Time to return serve!

You all are getting a rare opportunity to eavesdrop on the type of conversations that Guy & I frequently have…but never within earshot of others.

We always hold them in private. Either over the telephone or, if we’re lucky, face to face. You see, staying on the same page publicly is something we both feel is of utmost importance. Rarely (ever?) have we disagreed on something once we talked it out.

Trust me. Our take on leadership and its impact on business success is IDENTICAL. We just have different ways of expressing it. Back to the topic at hand.

The point of my original post – which Guy isn’t disagreeing with,  he’s just kind of redirecting it – is that on a daily, in the trenches type, basis a weak employee distracts and demotivates all those around him (or her) for more forcefully than a leader’s positive efforts do.

We both mentioned that the leader is responsible for the recruitment, development, and possible dismissal of that weak link.  Of course, being responsible and taking action are two completely different things.

My point was to remind our readers who happen to own their company that they really can’t afford to overlook the negative impact bad employees have on their entire staff.

If you own your company, you have final authority over staffing decisions. If you’ve hired someone to run your business, or a part of it, for you, you’re still the one that has to hold that person accountable for removing dead, or diseased, wood.

If you ignore the impact that weak link has on the rest of your staff, you are making a HUGE strategic mistake.

Now it’s back to being your turn, Guy.

Eager to see your reply.

Ron

P.S.

Guy and I really haven’t shared publicly our deep insight into leadership. Our leadership techniques and methods are unique, simple, and HIGHLY effective at transforming people into amazingly successful leaders. It is a competitive advantage for us and we typically only share it with our paying clients (which will include the members of our private club).

Merry Christmas

Well Ron perhaps we can cause some real interaction with this topic. I too will go with the leader! See we are in agreement again. However the question you raised is who has the MOST IMPACT?

In a successful organization I unequivocally believe that leader(s) have the most impact. It is the leaders responsibility to make sure the organization hires the right people. In the event that a poor hiring choice was made the leader is also accountable to determine if the newbie can adapt to their new environment in a reasonably short period of time. If not making a decisive decision to remove this person from the “bus” before cultural damage can take place is a necessity.

Another question is what is the definition of a leader? Is it the owner, an upper manager or any individual in the organization.

I would assert that their are leaders that are appointed by title and others that step up to the plate and take a leadership position. Which is what Ron is pointing out to our readership in his preceding post.

An excellent leader will develop players that will step up to plate on a daily basis. Leaders who may not be empowered to hire and fire can still spread  positive culture and when necessary inform the powers that be that the organization has a problem employee on its hands. This will probably will not come as a surprise but presenting examples along with good documentation makes it easier to remove the problem.

Now it’s time for you to chime in with your thoughts on the subject.

Happy Holidays.

Guy and Ron

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Good morning (at least for me it’s morning).

Something caught my eye while drinking my coffee and surfing the internet. Something that Guy and I will research and argue about ’til the cows come home but something you might want to chew on.

The question raised is “Who has the most impact on group success? The leader or someone else?”  I will go with leader, only because the leader gets to choose his or her worst employee. However, on a daily basis, I suspect the worst employee has the greatest impact on group success.

What got me thinking about this was something Henry Abbott mentioned in an article posted this morning.

Another part of the story mentions that in some research, across many industries, the best predictor of a team’s success came from assessing the worst person on the team. As in, that person has a bigger effect than the leader or an average player.

Now, there’s something to consider. Your business’ success may be more affected by the quality of your worst employee than by the quality of your leadership skills.

Although the author is referring to a sports team, the observation probably holds true for a business. The weak link, non-performing, lazy employee is going to drag everyone down.  The negative pull will be stronger than the positive pull of the leader.

Taking this thought further, the observation supports why Guy and I preach the need for creating a company culture that rejects poor performers. A culture where mutual accountability is found in every corner. A culture where the leader isn’t the only one who steps up and confronts employees who aren’t behaving correctly, working hard, and pulling for each other.

Stay tuned. I’m sure we’ll have more on this soon.

We pray you and your family have a safe and happy holiday week.

Your friends,

Ron & Guy

Ready to get back to work after the craziness that is Thanksgiving and the day after?

I thought you might find the following two catchy blocks of advice interesting. They were passed on to me from Tim Hmelar (650-888-4745). Tim has perfected the execution of kitchen and bath remodels. Soon his system will be available via the internet as a membership site.

Tim follows a handful of key thoughts to drive his success. I don’t know the origin of the two sayings he shared, but they’re both really good and really useful. Here they are.

Tim’s 4 Conditions For Profitable Selling

1. Visibility

2. Credibility

3. Convertibility

4. Profitability

Your business must have visibility and credibility. Your prospect must be convertible and willing to pay a sufficient price for you to be profitable.  Only when you have all four conditions will you be able to consistently land profitable work.

Tim’s Five E’s to Wowing Customers

Expectations: set them correctly

Economics: make sure the money is sufficient to meet expectations

Efficiency: get in and get out quickly

Effectiveness: manage the client through the entire process

Evangelist: turn your client into someone who will stand on the mountain and sing your name to all he or she meets

I’m not sure where Tim found these nuggets of advice, but the sure are dead on.

Do yourself a favor. Have someone in your office make large posters of these two sayings and hang them in your office in clear line of sight.

Wishing you great luck with your business.

Ron & Guy

You know when you’re listening to someone or reading something how a word will really grab your attention in a new way? A word that is very familiar to you but suddenly hits you with a new meaning or insight?

That happened to me the other day.

In this case, the word that made me go “hmmmm” was TALENT.

I hear the words ABILITY and SKILL used frequently.  When I heard a talk radio guy mention that a well known public figure had a TALENT, I thought eureka! That’s a great way to phrase a person’s natural gifts. They are TALENTS.

When you hear that someone does or does not have a certain talent, you know what that means, right? It means the related task will be really easy or really hard for the individual to perform.

It made me think about the difficulties of running a business by yourself. The wide range of talents required to run a business effectively is almost mind boggling.

That wide range really points out the difficulties of being the one and only rock of your business. It explains why all great businesses, no matter how large or small, are built on a high performance team. Sure, they are inspired, lead, and driven by the top dog. But, it takes a team to pull it off because rare is the person who was born with all the talents necessary to run smoothly something as complex as a business.

If you’ve been thinking that maybe you need to find some additional players to help you with your business, you’re probably right. It’s highly unlikely that you possess all the talents necessary to achieve your business goals all by yourself.

Wishing you the best of luck with your business.

Ron & Guy,
The Contractor’s Business Coach