Most small businesses operate too often by the “seat of their pants” and don’t have enough policies. Last week, we heard all over the news channels, about a nurse at a senior living facility who refused to offer CPR to a resident. I know the story is complicated at best. What I am sure of, is that it set off a firestorm of controversy about the topic
– should an employee always follow protocol, even if they find it objectionable, immoral or deadly? Mind you, we don’t have enough information to form a final opinion in this specific case. Then we heard a new headline about Tim Hortons restaurant refusing to let a teenager use their phone to call for help during an asthma attack – again, quoting company policy. In the marketing game, managers quoting policy does not work as a defense of the policy.

Details of these particular incidents aside, my point is that we create policies for a reason. Occasionally, it is
even for a good reason. Most policies are about sales, service issues, handling exchanges or refunds, etc. When we use policies exclusively to run our business, we risk replacing the ability to think like humans. Policy can be handled by computers, so customers may as well only shop online. However, is it realistic to trust employees to use their best judgment and not give away the store? How do we strike a balance to empower employees to offer the best customer service and the safest environments, while following policies that we create for good reasons?

First, you have to have reasonable policies that balance the interest of the company with the interest of the employees and the interest of the customer. Have an objective mentor or consultant review your policies for you – what you think is fair, may be very one-sided and costing you sales, staff or both. At the very least, involve staff in the creation of policies, so you have input from different points of view.

Second, check with your competitors to make sure you are at least as generous. If you sell clothing and have a no-returns policy for example, this is completely unacceptable to the majority of retail customers. Customers don’t care about your legal loophole or small print; they expect you to take returns. I’m not telling you what to do with your business; I  know, you are the owner or manager; it’s your decision so you can win the argument and lose the customer if you want. This week, one of my employees was unable to buy aspirin at a convenience store without buying more items to meet their minimum purchase requirement to use her debit card. I’m glad she wasn’t
having a heart attack at the time. After spreading the bad word-of-mouth advertising, she swears she will never darken their door again. If the standard in your business is free refills, or easy returns, or to take credit cards, or
free delivery, then you really need to do those things or have a compelling reason not to.

Finally, know the personality types of your staff and train accordingly. Some of our employees tell us that their prior
employers literally told them not to think. It’s your job to teach them to think about work situations, the way you
need them to think. Employees with a certain personality type may take every policy as absolute gospel under any circumstance. Others think rules are just general guidelines. In truth, most policies vary between the two and your staff needs to know which ones are which, and how much leeway they have to make decisions, especially in extreme situations. I don’t have a hard time getting employees to follow policy; they’ve had a lifetime of rules drilled into them by large companies trying to turn them into policy-quoting drones. This is seldom a good thing. I have a harder time getting employees to believe that they have the power to create better solutions on the fly. Give them examples, engage them in discussions and have them help you make decisions. This creates empowered people
to free you to work on more important things.

If, on the other hand, your particular problem is a lack of policies to worry about, well, that’s another matter. Small
businesses often lack policies that guide them through tough situations.  Any situation (outside the normal course of what the owner does), that requires the owner’s personal attention on a repeating basis, probably needs a system or a policy. Let’s cover that another day, or contact me directly if this is an issue causing you great
pain.

Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He may be reached through his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail, mike@klineseminars.com.

Top Five Strengths for
Business
By Michael Kline

In our last column, you had some homework to do. Thank you for those who emailed it in to me, and while it does earn extra credit, it isn’t really necessary. In case you missed it, you were to identify your top five character strengths, so that today, we could talk about applying them to your success. Don’t panic if you didn’t do your homework. I’m guessing it’s not the first time, and it probably won’t be the last. Simply go to www.authentichappiness.com and take the “VIA Survey of Character Strengths”. Invest 15 minutes and get some answers that could take days of self-reflection to realize and admit on your own. While you’re at the site, feel free to play with some of the happiness surveys as well, but be sure to write down your top five character strengths. 

In a recent local goals workshop, my students overwhelmingly agreed this exercise was very helpful to them. Let’s start with an easy example. If your top strengths include creativity, energy and wisdom, imagine how limited you might feel at work on an assembly line. If you can’t change jobs, you might benefit from finding very expressive and creative activities as hobbies, volunteer work or with your family. If work is a big part of your life, you might feel completely unfulfilled, even depressed and hopeless. On the other hand, if other strengths like self-discipline and humility figure into the equation, you might appreciate the routine work as almost meditational in nature. The point is, to know ourselves is critical before we start working on ourselves or our businesses. 

When writing a job description before hiring someone, you decide what qualities you want in a successful candidate. You might even use adjectives to describe personality traits such as attention to detail, outgoing, etc. Have  you written your own job description? Have you evaluated yourself against the expectations your work should require? Honestly, most of us are not well-rounded enough to be entrepreneurs. Who could live up to the expectations of work that requires every strength to be at the top of the list at all times?! To be creative and optimistic is critical, but so is self-discipline and being industrious. The need for humor helps, but so does high energy, honesty, humility, bravery and caution at the same time! No, most of us rely on a partner, a spouse, a key employee or outsourced professional to do our bookkeeping, our marketing, our organizing, our selling, or whatever area we dislike or consider a weakness or distraction from our primary work. This allows us to focus on the things at which we excel and it compensates for our so-called weaknesses.

Let’s consider the stereotypical entrepreneur –  if your zest for saying yes to everything has you overcommitted, ask yourself how you can use your creativity to learn to manage your time. Can you learn enough self-discipline to focus on one project until it’s successful before you invent new sets of problems? (yes, you can). Are there some things you should learn to avoid altogether? Of course. Get to know yourself, and then consider how to manage yourself. The good news is I want you to focus on your top strengths; you don’t necessarily need to consider your lower-rated strengths as weaknesses. It is valuable to be aware of them however.

If, on the survey of strengths, you read your complete report, you probably feel pretty good about having 24 strengths and no weaknesses. It is a very different way of looking at things. Consider applying the same logic to your employees, partner, spouse or children. They too, have a lot of strengths, on which you would do well to focus. Yes, everyone needs to be able to function in life and work, at a minimum level in all required areas, but they do not need
to excel in every area. What we normally call “areas for improvement”, or “weakness” might be better done by someone else who processes that talent as their strength. This approach to life and management is easier to understand and apply if you understand Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Habits #4,5&6 cover thinking win/win, understanding then being understood and synergy. If you still haven’t read this all-time best-ever life and business  book, that’s this week’s homework. If you have read it, consider that knowing  something is not the same as doing something. Think about ways to apply the lessons to real life and enjoy!

The Entreprenologist
Conway Daily Sun
By Michael Kline

Lately, I’ve been blending practical business thoughts with more
of my touch-feely, woo-woo ideas on happiness, goals and relationships. In  truth, you already know if we separate business topics from psychology for very long, we are only kidding ourselves. Every aspect of business management is riddled with deep psychological issues. Consider hiring and leading people, or trying to know what really drives our customers’ decisions to buy from you. Do I really need to bring up the fear that keeps you from being super-successful?! Okay, so I hope you agree to indulge me a little more on my quest to identify  the convergence of small business and personal success. 

How happy are you? It turns out, you can scientifically measure happiness. You might find it interesting to know how your own happiness in life compares to your peer group. Over two million people have participated in online
research surveys that help you measure your happiness, as well as other valuable self-discovery metrics like identifying your top character strengths. The results are scientific, fun, interesting and invaluable when you’re working on personal or business matters such as goal setting. Recently, I took several tests designed to measure my level of happiness and satisfaction in life. I was happy to learn that I am happier than 97% of participants. My “happy index” was even slightly higher compared to most men and most people living in my area. Of course, I’m dying to meet the other 3%. I want to know what they’re doing and how to do it!

The tests are part of Dr. Martin Seligman’s research, Director of the Positive Psychology Center at the  University of Pennsylvania and founder of positive psychology. Visit  www.authentichappiness.com.

Let’s get back to business. My partner Sal and I operate four businesses in very small market. We suffered from the recession, lost leases, had unexpected turnover, lost  suppliers, had malls go empty on us, dealt with mean neighbors, nasty landlords,  etc. I’m still happy, so either I’m either the village idiot, or I’m on to  something really awesome! I vote the awesome thing. So, what awesomeness do you  want to get from your business? 
  “You don’t get in life what you want;  you get in life what you are” says Darren Hardy, publisher of Success Magazine. Having completed a great deal of research on goal-setting, in preparation for a  new seminar I will be offering soon, I can tell you that this quote is supported  by most of the wisdom available from experts be they modern, ancient, scientific  or mystic. To create success at anything requires more than wishes and goals. It
requires more than being in the right place at the right time. It requires being  the right person (in the right place at the right time), doing the rights things, in the right way. That’s simply a lot to ask, and frankly, it is more than most people are willing to figure out and execute.  

The experts also agree that before you do anything, you need to know yourself. Go to the authentic happiness website and take the VIA Survey of Character Strengths – you will need about 10-20 minutes of quiet time, and you
will instantly know your top 24 character strengths. The good news is you have no weaknesses; only areas that have more strength than others. That’s your homework for this week. After you do that, we’ll talk about incorporating your
strengths into your business to create more success. 

Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He may be reached through his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail, mike@klineseminars.com.

By Michael Kline

Frustrated employers frequently ask themselves
and each other about what employees want. 
If you are a fellow employer, having to deal with the day to day
challenges of employee requests, suggestions, complaints or drama, you know what
I mean and you know it is not as simple as asking the employee. 
I’ve been making it my business to ask employees. I try learning from my
own, but because of the complex relationship employers have with employees, and
because I want larger numbers of employees to study, I find it easier to learn
from the employees of other companies. 
If someone else controls your ability to have the hours you want, the
schedule you want, the promotion you want and entirely, the income you make, you
might feel less than excited about being totally honest in discussing what it is
you want. Such honesty would require a great deal of trust, self-confidence and
a positive attitude that may have already been beaten out of you over the
years.  I have the pleasure of
working with relatively large numbers of employees of my client organizations.
The anecdotal evidence I see, is interesting enough, but when I can start to see
commonalities across the spectrum, I find it downright fascinating. 
 
When asked outright, most employees do not know
what they want, or do not know how to answer the question. I think they know it
when they see it or feel it, but it’s very difficult to describe, and the
question is even difficult to comprehend, since in real life, their wants have
little to do with their job anyway.  A little cynical, right? To be fair,
when asked, most employers don’t really know what they want either. Based on
what I’ve learned over the years, influenced more heavily by local research
through this year, I see two aspects of this as a challenge we can overcome and
I see great opportunity for improved productivity, financial success and
personal happiness. First, organizations don’t know what they want. Second,
individuals don’t know what’s really important to them personally, so even if
they knew what their employer’s goals were, they wouldn’t see how it relates to
fulfilling anything for them personally. 
Finally, the opportunity for greatness is right in front of us when these
two problems are resolved. Nearly 100% of employees agree that there is more
talent, creativity and passion available among them, that is underutilized, or
even undesired by their employer, who is at the same time, asking for more
productivity, creativity and passion. It seems so obvious and simple, doesn’t
it? Simple things are not always easy to execute, so let’s start at the
beginning. 

First, most individuals and organizations lack
specific goals they can clearly state. This is true of most businesses, most
not-for-profits, most business owners and most managers. 
It seems pretty obvious that every organization needs to have a clearly
stated mission if it expects to achieve anything close to greatness. Forget
greatness. Let’s just have a fighting chance at developing a strategy or simply
to communicate with staff, financial backers and clients.  If
this is so obvious, and it’s not hard to do, why do I keep finding so many
lacking? Do it already! What’s more, is if it is so obvious that organizations
need to have a mission, some goals, and a strategy, why is it not obvious that
individuals need the same things?

I find too many people live their life reacting to situations
over which they think they have no control. Most students leaving high school
think about what they want to do with their lives. That is often the last time
many people think about what they want. Somewhere along the way, they compromise
and take jobs they don’t want and life marches on. Add to the unwanted job, the
rent or the mortgage being due, or children take over any last glimmer of
financial or personal freedom, and they submit to simply reacting to whatever
life throws at them next. They get up every day to see what fresh new hell
awaits them, until they count down the days to retirement. Have I gotten you
sufficiently depressed yet? Now imagine asking this per person, who has every
reason to feel cynical, what it is they want from their boss! That is almost
laughable, isn’t it?! Yet, we
aren’t going to get anywhere unless we know what we want. 
Let’s start with that. One of the tools I give my seminar students is a
personal mission statement builder website.  Anyone with Internet access can do this
by themselves, for free. Go to www.franklincovey.com/msbsign in with your email
address, study the inspirational mission statements of others if you like, and
then complete the form. When you’re
done, you will have the option of printing out a suggested personal mission
statement, based on your input. Is it perfect? I think it’s pretty close, and at
it’s very worst, it’s a great place to start figuring out what it is you want in
your life and to begin bringing it to reality. You will have a much clearer
sense of what you value and don’t value about your relationships, your home,
your career path, your attitude, your behaviors –it’s an amazing new insight. 
 
Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He
may be reached through his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail,
mike@klineseminars.com.

The Entreprenologist
Conway Daily Sun
By Michael Kline

One of the more popular seminars I’ve been teaching lately is Time Management. The title alone begs some argument as to whether there is any such thing as time management. Lest we get lost in semantics, let’s agree what
we really mean is self-management in reference to how we use our time. It is a pretty level playing field, since we all get the same amount of time each day.
All the money in the world can’t buy you an extra hour in the day. The smartest scientist cannot find extra minutes in their day. Yet, we still put things off until we “find the time”, and we still try to “make time” for new projects. 

Real productivity increases do not come from managing our time better.  Sure, most of us can find some value in the tips and tricks to making better use of our time. In fact, our seminar is full of useful ways to be more productive.
Based on feedback from my students, most everyone finds a trick or two in a seminar that makes it worthwhile. They are ready to start a new habit or two that could free up maybe an hour a day. I would argue that a shift in philosophy
could more than double productivity.
1. What to do. Busy people focus on doing more. Effective people focus on doing the right things. You need to know the goals, the real goals – what really matters at a deep and meaningful level. For the entrepreneur, if you don’t have a plan for your business, I guarantee you are not making the best use of your time doing the right things at  work. If you don’t have a personal mission statement for your life, chances are you’re waiting to find time to do what is most important to you personally. Starter versions of these planning tools for business and life are easily available for free online or you can ask for help. Until you do these things, everything else is just filler.
2. How to Prioritize. I’m a big fan of Stephen Covey’s Time Management Matrix. Everything we do can be  rated as either important or not important, and as either urgent or not urgent. With only four possible combinations, this tool is simple to use and helpful at identifying tasks that can be eliminated altogether and tasks that deserve more attention. The difficulty most people have is they put unimportant things in the important box. This is why step one above is so critical. If you would like a free chart that might help you prioritize tasks for yourself and your staff,
just send me an email and I’ll make it so.

3. When to Delegate. The most common answer to why we don’t delegate is “it’s easier to do it yourself”.  Think of delegating as an investment. If you spend two hours teaching a task that only takes an hour, most people do it themselves. If the task is to be repeated every week, then a two hour investment is paid back in two weeks, leaving you another fifty hours of free time added to your year!  That’s more than a week off! Another aspect of the delegating investment is money. If you can train a less expensive person to do the work, then delegate and spend your time bringing in the big fish. This is an investment in making other people more valuable while doing the same for yourself. You’ve heard me bang this drum before - most entrepreneurs would benefit from working in  their business less and on their business more.

 Time is the most precious commodity on earth, and no one has any more of it than you do. Invest it wisely.

Conway Daily Sun
The Entreprenologist
By Michael Kline


To do just about anything, there is always a better way. Just ask your staff, customers, suppliers or you’re your spouse; everyone has a better way for you to do just about anything. If you are the decision maker in your business, it’s probably for a reason. 
Chances are you actually do know better than most people what to do and how to do it. Chances are also pretty good that you employ people who are at least as smart as you and you collect input from those people on a regular basis… uhoh.


Surely, no one is as smart as you, certainly not those who work for you, or those pesky suppliers who don’t understand your problems, or those fickle customers who just like to complain and aren’t really trying to help you.
Now let me put aside my sarcasm and talk about a real opportunity here. These helpful people like to say things like “why don’t you just______”or “you know what you should do, you should_______”. We tend to shut down when we here these statements – no matter what they fill in the blank with, it is almost never a good idea. Most people are not consultants, and certainly not coaches. They like to make suggestions based on their perceptions of what you need to make your business better, and because they are not professional advisors, they do so without first understanding your goals or challenges. However, we do like free resources if we can make them work.

We have employees who know a lot about what’s going on at your front line.  We have suppliers who know a lot about what’s happening in your industry and at your competitors.  We have customers who know something about what they would like to get from you. Why do they all seem so stupid and keep wasting your time with their lousy ideas?!  I suggest we need a system for taking advantage of these free resources. We’ve identified the first problem is the free advisors don’t know what your goals or problems are before they start  giving advice. For that matter, even you may not know exactly what your goals or problems are. If you have a communication system that allows for input from people in-the-know, you can benefit from their wisdom and make better decisions. 

First, everyone needs to know your top priority. It needs to be crystal clear to everyone in the company exactly what you are most focused on this year and this quarter. Goals should be set with your team annually, modified quarterly, monitored weekly and pulsed daily. At each of these steps, the team is invited to have input. At weekly staff meetings you are open to input and better ideas. These are not sessions for the manager to yell at employees about things they didn’t do correctly or for employees to complain. These are sessions in which you and your staff identify challenges and opportunities to establish better practices that will become the new documented standard in your procedures manual. The more frequently you have these sessions, the closer you will come to having constant improvement. Customers and suppliers can be invited to special events where they are given some background information and asked for feedback and creative input.

In summary, identify your top three priorities. Communicate those priorities in words, actions and policies that are congruent with your values and goals. Involve everyone you can in creating a strategy to meet the priorities. Keep score and measure progress on your goals. Follow up on everything. Most people will expect you to abandon your ideas in a month, week or day because that is how it has always been. You have good ideas but nothing ever really changes. They never change because the idea didn’t get shared, strategy didn’t get developed, measured or followed up on. Without all five steps, you will continue to be perceived as someone who needs free advice from uninformed
people that make you crazy with their silly opinions. There is a better way.

Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He may be reached through
his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail, mike@klineseminars.com. 

The Entreprenologist
Conway Daily Sun

By Michael Kline

Sometimes. We live in a world of alternatives. The ugly truth is you do not need to be the best in the world, or make the best product in the world. You only need to be better than the alternatives available to your
customer.
First, if you are not very good at something, success may require you to be even better than your current best. “How can I make myself/my business better?” is the big question you need to ask yourself. Next, you need to know three things really well. You need to know your competition, know yourself and  know your target customer. By the way, if you are an employee, then consider your competition to be others who could do your job, while your boss and
co-workers are your customers.
Research your competitors –they may have gotten better or worse in recent years. To know yourself may be hardest of all. Hire a secret shopper, or better yet, really listen to customer and employee feedback. Some of us need to be way easier on ourselves, and some much harder on ourselves and face some facts. To know your target customer, understand you can’t be everything to everyone. Be sure you can explain who wants your product, why they want it, and why they want it from you.

If you offer no point of differentiation, why do you exist? Maybe just being there is good enough. Convenience, location, price, quality all figure into the mix. If you have a gas station or a restaurant on the turnpike for instance, perhaps your location is what makes your business good enough. You can offer generic products and poor service at high prices; it is almost expected. If you’re making your numbers and that is your only goal, then it appears you are good enough. The problems appear when the economy slows and people get more demanding with their dollars. Do you have any loyalty?  Have you built relationships with people or just cash flow? Or if you make your living from tourist dollars, will locals support you in the off-season? 

You will have to consider your goals. Is your goal to pay the bills through the next quarter or to build repeat business for a lifetime? Is personal pride a factor? Is setting an example for your employees, neighbors and children important? When you know what you really want, why you do what you do in the first place, only then can you define what is good enough. Once you’ve set the bar at the height you want, then that is your new definition of good enough – good enough to meet your goals, is all you need. There is no need to make your service or product of such high quality that no one in your marketplace could afford to buy it. You only need to know your goals, and offer your service or product to be good enough to achieve your goals. Considering  the trade-offs for customer taste and demand, price, convenience, quality, relationships, guarantees, etc., you need to be competitive with the alternatives in your marketplace.

Remember though, you need to really be honest and know what you are delivering. If you think you have it exactly right, then your host/receptionist/desk clerk/server/technician/etc. turns people off at the front door, your business is no longer good enough. If you have everything perfect, but the consumer no longer wants what you offer, your business is no longer good enough. And of course if your competitor is faster, cheaper, smarter, cleaner or friendlier, your business is not good enough. Given the continued existence of mediocrity in the world, it appears that good enough is in fact, good enough at least some of the time. Given the high failure rate of business, it appears a lot of businesses were in fact, not good enough. Given the rate of change happening in the world, the definition of good enough will change tomorrow anyway. Given the amazing rewards of a job well-done, it would appear that there is always a better way to do what is already good enough. Be the first to take what is good enough and make it a little better. Let’s all commit to setting our bars a little higher on what we call good enough, and make everything in our lives at least that good.
 Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He may be reached through his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail, mike@klineseminars.com.

The Entreprenologist
Conway Daily Sun
August 8, 2012
By Michael Kline

As promised in my last column, I want to share lessons learned and/or relearned in this spring of change we’ve experienced in our businesses. In case you missed it, we moved one retail store, opened another new retail concept, and dramatically increased our seminar activity. This brought about three lease negotiations, hiring 6 new people, establishing about a dozen new supplier relationships and rethinking what really matters to us personally and professionally. All this made for fertile ground for lesson-learning and character building, I assure you. The last column shared four lessons in commercial leases. Today we’re talking about integrity and personal missions.

I am blessed to be able to deliver a series of workshops to employees of Memorial Hospital as part of their Culture of
Excellence movement.  A recent workshop involved writing personal mission statements, which of course necessitated making a connection between work and personal missions. If our work is incongruent with what matters most to us in life, we will never be as effective as we would, if there was integrity.

Teaching this seminar also inspired me to update my own personal mission statement.This caused me to realize that business owners have the same problem as employees in this area. We went down a work path because of a passion, or maybe because of a need for income. We got embroiled in the thick of it, to a point where it now defines who we are; it is what we do. We need to know what is most  important to us, what makes us our highest and best versions of ourselves, what we admire in others that we wish we could emulate, what we want our lives to
have been about when it’s all over. These answers help us define our life’s personal journey while we can
still direct it. I asked a young friend recently what she wanted to be when she  grew up and she said“happy and interesting”.  I was convinced that she is officially grown up!  If you want to be more effective at work, decide what values, experiences and relationships are most important to you and your family. Find a way to draw a connection between your work and your personal mission. This may require a career change, or maybe just a shift in the way you look at your work. Perhaps the solution is to use your personal ability to work on things that are within your area of influence to make small changes in your work place or home.

When the work we do contributes to something greater, we are more effective. When the work we hire others to do matters to them, they will be more effective.  Is it even possible to  create meaningful work out of mundane everyday work-related chores? 
I certainly hope so. As for my friends that work at the hospital, they have the blessing of important work either directly helping people in the most serious and literal sense of the word, or supporting the work of people who do. In retail, we have the blessing of helping someone acquire something they worked to be able to acquire – something fun or useful, something inspiring or uplifting, or maybe a gift to express their affection or appreciation for someone else. I dare say that is important work, even if it isn’t everyone’s highest calling or biggest challenge. I hope you will join me on this journey of figuring out what really matters to us as individuals and how to help others figure it out for themselves. Dr. Stephen Covey calls this the 8thHabit – Find your voice and help others find theirs.

Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He may be reached through his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail, mike@klineseminars.com.    

Changing for the better, with four lessons
in leasing
Conway Daily Sun, July 25, 2012
By Michael Kline

I’ve missed you! I hope you noticed my column has been missing since early April, when I took a break to focus on other business projects. It seems that having a good business idea isn’t enough. Getting a store it up and running and even profitable for years still isn’t enough to guarantee it will still be profitable next year. The world changes constantly and quickly, so a good idea last year may need some tweaking this year, or could even be a loser idea completely this year. We spent the spring inventing and reinventing ourselves.

After a half dozen successful small businesses of our own and helping dozens of franchisees build successful businesses, I occasionally slip into this zone where I feel like I know a few things. In my experience, there’s no point in getting comfortable with what you think you know because the world is going to insist you keep changing, growing and adapting, or die. It’s a humbling realization. 

In April we moved Soyfire Candle, followed in May with the opening of The Funky Bubble Bath and Body and in June, I launched a busy new seminar schedule. Three major undertakings, each with its own share of lessons,  I hope to share with you as my column gets back into full swing.

Let’s start with some lessons on commercial leases. The features that make a location appealing to you are subject to change. What will you do, if those features go away and you still have years on your lease?  This needs to be asked, answered and included in your lease negotiations up front.  When the landlord says “don’t worry, I would never screw you”, fine - define what that means and put it in the lease – no exceptions. In the event the landlord is sincere, they still may sell the property, die, or turn it over to other management and you will besubject to the lease exactly as it is written. Having had two mall locations, each sell three times on me, I’d rather have a good lease with a jerk, than a bad lease with a nice guy. The lease governs the relationship, not the person.  At Soyfire Candle, three mall owners ago, we put a clause in our lease allowing us to leave if the anchor store left the mall.  The store did leave, and we decided to stay, because there was no better location available at the time.

This spring, when the T-Shirt store downtown left, we jumped at the chance to get that super-prime space. 
Yes, the rent would be double, but (highlight and underline this as lesson #2) high rent is the best investment a retailer can make. Assuming it’s fair market value and your retail product benefits from traffic, shut up and pay
the price and be thankful for the opportunity.  In our case, we also had to negotiate
our way out of our old lease. Lease lesson 3 – if the cost of moving, including getting out of your
lease is less than starting a new business, and it makes your business new again, compared to dying, you probably would be wise to pay it. We paid it. Did I mention the lesson about saving for a rainy day? 
Having cash to pay for these unexpected opportunities makes a huge difference. For our first three months, sales are up 100% over last year, and if we stayed where we were, we would have been hoping to break even this year
compared to past years when we made a decent living at that location.

Lease lesson #4 – there is no such thing as a “standard”lease.  That’s a phrase landlords like to use to comfort you into signing it. It may be standard to them, but it may or may not be good for you. After being through this process
dozens of times, I still found new lease features I never heard of before. I also was reminded that legal and financial aspects of the lease are not all that need to be considered. There are “what-if” scenarios that lawyers and
accountants don’t ask. You might consider asking a business coach, mentor or  entreprenologist for advice and opinions before taking the plunge. 
 
In the process of developing new supplier relationships, hiring several new employees, and launching a new concept, I learned or was reminded of valuable lessons I can’t wait to tell you about. But that’s a conversation for another day. 
For now, if you’re experiencing good times, congratulations. Ask yourself  how you’re going to replace that good fortune when it changes. If you’re having hard times, ask how to reinvent your business to be new again, or even if it
still makes sense. Change is good for us and we have to do it anyway, so we may as well get good at it. Good luck. Let me know how I can help.

Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He may be reached through his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail, mike@klineseminars.com.

By Michael Kline

A penny saved is a penny earned. A penny saved is really more than a penny earned, since the penny you save is tax-free compared to earning another one.  Sometimes saving money can cost more in the long run.  Never short on clichés, let’s get “penny wise and pound foolish” out of the way too!  The nice thing about clichés is they become clichés because they’re true.  In this case, it would be wise to remember them both together.

One of my favorite lessons is about negotiating better deals.  When I “beat up” a supplier for better pricing, I always try to make sure I get the best price I can get, balanced with the need to still be a good customer to the supplier. Always make sure you offer them a good reason they should give you the deal you want.  If my supplier doesn’t still make decent money every time I call, they can’t afford to give me service or support their product.  In supplier relationships, (or customer relationships if you are the supplier), trust is a huge driving factor in determining costs.  Low-trust drives up costs and slows down the speed of transactions.  High-trust speeds business up and lowers cost. When a supplier makes a billing error in your favor, call them on it and pay them. Catch people doing something right and thank them. Send holiday gifts to your top suppliers, not just your top customers.  I have found these things to drive up trust, and drive down costs. The opposite of these things, drives costs up and speed of transactions down.

When we put off spending money until absolutely necessary, we often spend more in the end.  When we don’t pay for preventative care (think health care, or oil changes, or a roof repair on your house), we not only end up with a more expensive problem, but we get the more expensive problem as an emergency rather than on our own schedule. I’m reminded of the power of living proactively rather than reactively.  I read with great interest the reports about the cost of all-day kindergarten and the money it may save the school system in future years.  If this is true, it seems like a no-brainer.  These are not always easy truths to determine when we look at investments and expenses in our towns, lives and businesses.  If they were easy, everyone would be a wildly successful entrepreneur.

I’m forever hearing about the unexpected emergency that a business owner was not prepared for, such as a 6 year-old computer crashed, or a truck with 300,000 miles, suddenly out of the blue, needs unexpected repairs!  For any reader that may not yet be aware, all equipment has a life expectancy. The first thing you need to budget for when you buy a new computer for instance, is the replacement of that computer – they last 3-5 years. Who am I kidding?! - let’s just budget three years. Your job is to know your equipment, and how long it should last, given your environmental conditions, usage, and scheduled maintenance.

Other than equipment, we waste money on all sorts of expense areas.  Maybe you, like so many others, continue to run ineffective marketing campaigns because you don’t know what else to do.  Keeping the wrong employee for months after you knew it wouldn’t work is a very common and costly mistake.  Not hiring someone when you need them is saving a ton of money every payday, but how much is it costing in lost sales or productivity? The point of hiring people is to produce more. Producing more makes you more money. Not making more money is expensive; ergo not hiring someone when you can use them is expensive. If your business benefits from advertising, then remember that advertising is expensive, but not nearly as expensive as not advertising. This seems like a good place to throw in my reminder that making sales calls is free (or close to it). Joining organizations and getting involved is very inexpensive, and networking is free. Joining the same organizations and not using them is expensive. I suggest you sit down and make a list of things that you would like to accomplish and the related costs. Then work and rework that list of costs to look for ways to save money or to get creative and achieve more with less.  Now go back and ask yourself if there are long-term ramifications that you may not have considered, and then consider them.

Now let’s think about how silly we get over spending and saving money and make sure we’re thinking smart as we go about advancing our businesses, home budgets, and even our town and schools, since it’s town meeting season.

Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He may be reached through his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail, mike@klineseminars.com.