See the wood from the trees

What differentiates great military leaders from inferior ones.

Is it the ability to inspire?

Is it the ability to train others?

Is it education?

Is is bravery?

Well these may contribute but the primary difference between great military leaders and inferior ones is their ability to see the whole battlefield.

To have that overview - the so called helicopter view.

In business you need to "see the wood from the trees", to blow away the fog of confusion and see the entire view.

When planning a victory military leaders look at the big picture and within that big picture are smaller battles, within those smaller battles are smaller skirmishes, to get to the smaller skirmishes are deployments.

If you start with directionless deployment and don't see the big picture will you win the war? - well you might but more by luck than by design.

When you start with directionless deployment the possible future outcomes are endless and victory is just one of those possible outcomes. If however you start with the big picture, see the end point and then plan back from that to the point at which you are now, then all you have to do is reverse the plan and execute it to get to your desired end point and victory.

This is abslutely true in business. You need to have your eye on the big picture all the time.

Remember the military strategy of reverse planning. Once you see the big picture use it!

"We read to know we're not alone"

I very much liked the film Shadowlands, with Anthony Hopkins. The film details a period in C. S. Lewis's life (Lewis wrote the the Chronicles of Narnia amongst other things). Lewis is introduced to us in the film as a man who feels that all pain should be suffered with patience. But he discovers that the simple rules by which he lives no longer apply when his own wife, Joy Gresham is afflicted by cancer and ultimately dies.

During the course of the film, C S Lewis (Hopkins) says "we read to know we are not alone". It seems to be a matter of debate as to whether Lewis ever actually uttered these words but it is a great line and all budding entrepreneurs should take it on board.

As entrepreneur, you don't have to be alone. Guess what no matter how bad things may seem for you right now , someone else out there has probably made all the same mistakes as you - only ten times worse. So learn from others. Alterately, business may be going well, but guess what I bet it can go better - a lot better!

There are lots of great books out there and with the rise of blogging and the internet, the support rescource of reading is even more accessible. The weight of shared emotional experience cannot be underestimated, so put some time aside and read!

I am currently reading "The E myth revisited" by Michael E. Gerber. It's a great book for small business owners and it divides our characters into three portions "The Entrepreneur", "The Manager" and "The Technician". Unfortunately these are not equal divisions! From that unequal division many of our business diffculties emenate.

If you are a small business owner (successfull or not) have a look at this book, I guarantee you'll see a lot of yourself in there!

There are a number of blogs out there recommending various publications and blogs for entrepreneurs:Diane K. Danielsons Top Shelf Reading Picks - book abd blog reviews for savvy entrpreneurs. Bootstrappers the 100 daily must reads for entrepreneurs

Ps. When nobody's looking I still reach into the backs of wardrobes and give a little push - I haven't found the door to Narnia yet but I still believe!

Show me the numbers! I'll show you the money!

Show me the numbers, they contain the answers and I'll show you the money.

How do you carry out this supercritical analysis of your business?

Simple you put in place systems to monitor the numbers (so called key performance indicators - KPI's) and then guess what you do - you look at those numbers on a regular basis and make informed decisions. Otherwise there you are up to your eyeballs, trying to manage every aspect of your business, you come up with a brilliant plan. You put the brilliant plan into action and then your distracted by another brilliant plan, crisis, disaster, success whatever. 8 months later you look at the figures and all your successes have been wiped out by the poor performing "brilliant plan" that has been steadily losing you money in the background! Worse you discover that one of your less brilliant ideas was actually quite successful and was making money and with a little adjustment could have made lots of money! Ouch!

You wish you'ld looked at those numbers earlier.

Find out what works and do more of that.

Find out what doesnt and do less or preferably no more of that.

Churchill said "success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm" - an entrepreneurs motto perhaps?

An admirable quality but Churchill also boasted decisiveness, self-discipline and attention to detail. Need it be said that these qualities, too, are to an entrepreneur's advantage? Perhaps the entrepreneurs motto should be "success is going fom failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm but when you find success act upon it, act decisively, pour your time, energy and money into it, capitalise on it, make it grow and make it great!"

Additional revenue opportunities

You must be absolutely self critical and super analytical at all times, about your product, sales processs, aftersales , repeat sales.

In the process of this continual self-analysis keep your eyes open for other revenue opportunities. You'ld be amazed where they lie. Ideally look for opportunities where you do the work once and it brings in an ongoing revenue stream without any additional work (other than collecting the money / auditing the return - what a nice problem to have).

In my business we provided a free additional service for our existing clients. The clients loved the extra service and it kept them coming back for more. With a careful look at what we were doing and a very simply set up crossmarketing agreement our clients now get exactly the same service and we earn an additional revenue stream of between €750 and €1,000 per month for doing it. Ok it's not a kings ransom but a return of €10,000 per annum beats the hell out of our previous return which was a big duck egg €0.

How did I find this opportunity?

1. I stopped


2. I took a breath


3. I looked for it.

Sometimes we get so caught up in the helter skelter hamster wheels of running our business that we miss the opportunities that stare us straight in the face.

My business also runs a blog. We run some adsense ads between the posts. It took about 1/2 an hour to set up the adsens account. Low and behold we currently bring in about $45 per month with visitors clicking on the links. Not a kings ransom but it pays for the coffee and biscuits in the office! Half an hours work and it brings in $500 per year.

Schedule some time every day to stop, look and think. It's not wasted time and it just might increase your revenue. Regular recurrent income without additional work is gold dust - look for it.

Reverse Planning - use it for business and to write bestsellers!

Where would you like your business to be in one year, 6 months, 1 month , 1 week. We all probably have answers, but the question is "how are you going to get there". We write a business plan but starting from where you are now and going forward has many (millions) of possible outcomes. So what to do?

I really like the miitary strategy of reverse planning. This is a process whereby you determine a long term (6 month) target. Then you imagine yourself at that point. You then envisage yourself at the point just before you reach your goal. Write that point down as a target. Then you envisage yourself at the point just before you reached that point and write that down. You continue this process backwards untill you reach the point at which you are now. Voila you have a plan with clearly defined targets along the way. All you need to do us reverse the plan and carry it out.

If you plan forwards it is easy to lose your way because there are so many possible futures. Reverse planning sees only one end point and creates a path of targets / goals for you to acheive on your way there.

It turns out that JK Rowling used reverse planning in the writing of Harry Potter and the Philosophers stone The basic idea... Harry, I saw Harry very very very clearly. Very vividly. And I knew he didn't know he was a wizard. So I see this skinny little boy with black hair, and green eyes, and glasses. And erm... Patched-up glasses, you know, that got scotch tape around them, holding them together. And I knew that *he* didn't know what he was. And so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was. And er... at the same time I'm thinking that he's gonna go to wizard's school. And that was when it really caught fire for me, I got really excited of the idea of what wizard's school would be like."

So you can use reverse planning for business life and writing multi million bestselling novels (apparently).

Use the power of "leverage"

One of the lessons that I have learned over and over again is to try whereever possible to use the power of leverage. In simple terms leverage turns a small amount of inputted energy into a large amount of outputted energy. You can use systems to leverage your energy e.g. think of the difference between handwriting 500 letters and writing one e mail and sending it to 500 different e mail addresses (I don't advocate spam). You can use people to leverage your power and actions. Think of the difference between an individual fighting against the invading mongol hoards and one great leader marshalling an army to fight the invading hoards (neither do I advocate war!).

The one thing you cannot leverage is your time. Your time is your time and you cannot buy another moment. Not a morose thought, that's just the way it is. But that thought should energise you to use your powers of leverage to utilise your time as best and as efficiently as you can.

One of the (many many) mistakes of which I have been particularly guilty is the thought "I can do it all". The truth is yes I can - but the question is why should I?

This is particularly true in regard to "small" jobs like say payroll - "why should I pay my accountant €100 per month to process my small salary run, I can buy a small payroll package and do it myself and save the €1,200 per annum". A clear case of "penny wise and pound foolish". The job is "small" untill it goes wrong and go wrong it surely will - because you didn't really know what you were doing in the first place.

Use exteral expertise. Let that expertise do what they are good at whilst you do what you are good at. Once you have spent a wasted 4 hours pulling your hair out, reading the manual, bashing your head off the wall trying to resolve that problem of your own creation which you know nothing about. At that moment you'ld gladly pay any payroll, bookkeeper, IT persons the full annual fee to resolve it.What have you achieved - high blood pressure. Save your time, use it to leverage more sales, use it to think, use it to relax, use it to come up with the brilliant plan to double your turnover, whatever but don't waste your time.

This was brought home to me again today by my accountant who recounted how a new client showed him how he had run his own payroll program over the previous three years. Unfortunately he had incorrectly coded himself as a employee rather than director and had subsequently overpaid the Revenue by over €7,500 per annum. Of course he'll get it back eventually, but wouldn't it have been better off in his pocket in the first place?

Death of the Alpha Female - Bring back Richard Farleigh!

I am not suggesting that Richard Farelighs long locks are affecting his sexuality but I did read an an amusing anecdote on Rachel Elnaugh's blog. Rachel's blog makes reference to the death of the alpha female and dragons being "thrown off" the Dragons Den show because they are too nice - as she says has happened to Richard Farleigh and Simon Woodruffe.

Some bright spark has subsequently created a website to bring back Richard Farleigh at
http://www.bringbackrichardfarleigh.com/. Much to the amusement of the creator the first petition signer appears to be Richard Farleigh himself. Clear evidence of the need for a double opt-in signature to ensure the veracity of your polls, petitions, surveys, requests for further information.

Double opt in: a process whereby when you sign up on-line (for more information, newsletter, survey etc. etc.) a link is sent to your registered e mail. You must click on the e mailed link to confirm your identity. This prevents your "best friends" prank signing your e mail address and helps to avoid "anonymous" signatories.

Now to something I have learned!

As a marketing test, look down the left hand navigation bar on the http://www.bringbackrichardfarleigh.com/ site to to the latest forum posts and look at those top to bottom and then click on which one attracts your interest.

Amazing what the words nude and an exclamation mark will do! With all due respect to Deborah Meadon I don't believe anyone really wants to see her nude. Deborah nude is a bit like a toothache, you know your tooth is sore, you know is going to hurt, you know it's going to be unpleasant but you press your tongue against it anyway! Sorry Debs!

Did you know that the simple addition of a question mark or exclamation mark at the end of an ad title on Google can increase click throughs by 3-5%. On a £100,000 revenue the addition of one additional character could increase click through by 5% and if click to purchase ratio was 20%. Then adding that extra character and pressing that key will earn you an extra £1,000 per annum. Does this make the question mark the most valuable character? There are two ways you could find this out trial and error (costly and lengthy) or you can learn it from others cleverer than you!

Spend time learning, put time aside every day. Apply what you learn. Remember Einstein's definition of insanity "doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results". Reading that one nugget of information above could increase your actual revenue by £1,000 per annum. The cost of finding it out a few minutes learning.

I don't know if anybody has assessed the increase in clickthrough for the addition of the words nude or naked. I'm sure it's huge but may not be particularly relevant for headlines like "need a hotel nude?", "new garden shed nude?", "want to earn a £1,000 a day nude?".

Winston Churchill - a guiding light for entrepreneurs?

I am very fond of Winston Churchill's quotes and particularly like: "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts" and also "never, never, never give up". I have frequently seen those two quotes combined (probably incorrectly) and attributed to Churchill as "Success is not final, failure is not fatal, the thing is to never, never, never give up".

That statement could not ring truer for the entrepreneur. Keep going. Persistence is the greatest virtue of all budding entreprenuers. I have seen the greatest ideas and business plans fail through a lack of presistance and I have seen many poorly thought out, average products and businesses succeed through dogged, single minded, persistance.

Many of the very best entrpreneurs are so because they are very target orientated. They have a clear vision of their target and they keep hitting that target, or trying to hit that clearly visible target again and again and again. This target driven mentality is a hugely successfull asset in the start up stages of a busness (but may not apply so well at a later stage of a businssses growth - but more on that later).

Obviously it will be easier and better if you are persistent with a good well thought out business and product!

My own family motto is "Percusos Resurgo" translated as "struck down I rise again" (a clue to my identity). If you persist you will be amazed at the number of leads and contacts that you made months or years before that eventually turn into business. Regard every "knock back" as a learning experience - learn from it, dust yourself off, give yourself a shake and move on. Make sure that you use what you learn. Einstein said that the definition of insanity was "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results". So learn from your mistakes move on, apply what you've learned and "never never never give up".

I really like the posts in Rachel Elenaugh's blog. Rachel is famous for the tv show Dragon's Den and the subsequent collapse of her business red letter days - they are well thought out, interesting and informative and Rachel comes across as very likeable. (I have to admit that I don't like the tv personae developed by the Dragons on the current show - perhaps the "Dragons " have had to "sensationalise" their comments for tv. I enjoyed the snippets I have seen from the first series and the dragons input to the entrpreneurs was helpful throughout. In the subsequent series it's all about the big statement - "that idea is ridiculous", "your mad", "your wasting my time" etc. etc.). Rachel has some view on persistence and learning and self analysing on on her website http://www.rachelelnaugh.com/rachel_elnaugh_top_tips.htm

John Bird, founder of the Big Issue, puts it's success down to one thing only persistence: http://www.catfund.com/blog/?p=39

More about persistence can be seen on http://www.originpr.co.uk/2006/07/14/small-business-quote-of-the-day/ whcih also includes the fantastic Chinese quotation that "the temptation to quit will be highest just before you are about to succeed"

The art of "friendly persistence" can be seen here http://actionplan.blogs.com/weblog/2007/04/the_art_of_frie.html

Albert Einstein quotations

Winston Churchill quotations.

Lesson Two: Always put your family first

The second lesson when starting your own business is to keep your priorities straight. Write down on a piece of paper or have it tatooed to your inner eyelids - always keep your family first, keep your business second.

We all know that already (don't we?) but I can tell you that you need to remind yourself of that every minute of every day. Similar to the previous post you only have a set amount of time. Your time is your time there is no more. No matter how successfull your business is you cannot use that success to buy you more time.

It's easy to get diverted away from what's real, what's good in life. You find the business is going well and so you spend more time working on it to make it go even better.

You find the business is going badly so you spend more time working on it to make it go better.

You find that you have average success, the business is going OK so you spend more time working on it to make it go better

Can you see a similarity.

Where do we find this extra time we need to make our businesses go better. Well I found that I tended to look at the easiest place to find that extra time...family time. But the knock on effects of using family time in your business can be catastrophic. Ultimately they lead to huge homelife stresses which will reflect on your business and its success.

Nobody lying on their hospital bed breathing their last ever said "I wish I'd spent more time in the office" but plenty say (or thought) "I wish I'd spent more time at home".

So keep those priorities straight and repeat after me Family First, Business Second.

Lessons learned along the way 1. Start a business because you love it not because you want to make money!

So now I'll start to sermonise and tell you some of the lessons I've learned during my €100,000pa MBA course.

I'd like to say that this is the start of 100 steps to being a success in business, or my 60 tips to solving your business crisis but in fact I don't know how many lessons I've learned and I don't know how many posts it will take. So here it goes in no particular order:

1. Start a business because you love it not because you want to make money!

Crazy right, clearly "if this is his first lesson learned I can clearly see where his business went wrong" I hear you say. Surely we all start business to make money. Yes your business should be established to make money (unless your in the business of charitable philantropy). But this should not be the primary reason that you set up your business. Primarily get involved in a business because you love the business. The secondary reason is the money.

Unfortunately not everything we love doing in life can be a business. If "under-water-basket-weaving" is the great love of your life unfortunately this is unlikely to be a viable long term business and this should be your hobby.

But if you love management then you can set up and run any business. If you love animals try Veterinary medicine, or dog grooming or open a stables. If you love painting (and your good at it) become a painter. If you love money - set up a bank - don't become a painter because you've seen Van Gough's sunflowers sell for 30 million.

Why should we set up businesses we love:

• If you love what you do it will reflect in your business. That will reflect in great service, great products and a great business.
• We have a very limited amount of time. Every minute that ticks past is gone forever. We can't get it back. Our time is our time, that's it, there is no more. But this is not a morose or sad concept. Quite the opposite. It should fill you full of energy to cram every moment of every day with time spent doing valuable things. Don't waste it and do what you love.

Networking Groups

Some Of the More Stupid Things I have done along the way:

So there I was the business losing money, staff turnover through the roof – remember I was still searching for the elusive one in seven successful sales people. So I started to grasp at straws – any straws!:

Networking groups

My experience of networking groups is that they can work quite well for sole traders particularly sole traders in trades. For example in the networking group I participated in there was one sub-group that had done very well for themselves – a plumber, carpenter, interior designer, painter. By definition one or other would be on a site – a new build house, an extension on a house, whatever and at the time they might see that the carpentry was unfinished. Hey presto I can recommend a good carpenter etc. etc.

For me referrals were few and far between and invariably very weak, really they just were one (very small!) step up from coldcalls. Also at the start I fond myself inundated with others within the group selling to me.

Part of the meeting that I was involved in required standing to publicly pass the business referrals at the meeting. After countless stand ups saying I have no referrals today and trying to say something nice about the meeting you find yourself buying off others in the group to avoid embarassment.

Then you find others doing the same back to you - so it sort of works! - just not how you want it to.

There are lots and lots of business networking groups out there. Remember these are money making activities and the organiser / umbrella group. Depending on the size of the network they can make lots of money in membership fees from the members. However, this might work for your business and may be worth a look.

So if you can stand getting out of bed early, being sold to by other members, returning regularly depressed then this could be the thing for you. However, if you are a sole trader in the trades then I actually have seen this type of networking group working quite well.


Some of the business meeting groups out there are

BNI, Business Over Breakfast, Small Business Referral Network, Business Referral Exchange but just google and you'll find lots.

The "Business"

So off I went into the big bad world of B 2 B sales with my hands behind my back and leading with my chin.

An office was located, a handful of computers purchased. The attempt to hire sales staff began. The blind were leading the blind and having been told that the ideal sales methodology was telesales and I could expect a conversion rate of 10% what could go wrong?

After three months my erstwhile sales staff had made no sales. We followed everything the experts in head office told us with religious fervor but to no avail! There was no holy grail, no light at the end of the tunnel.

My pleas to the franchise head office were met with “to find a good sales person you need to keep trying as your success rate will only be about one in seven”. One in seven! What about all the expertise the expert sales training? I recruited from websites, I advertised, I used recruitment companies. I employed staff who could sell other procucts couldn't sell this!

But the product was good. We had no direct competitor and it worked. So the product was good but we couldn't sell it. I thought that "a good product would sell itself". I was so wrong mediocre products will sell well with good marketing, sales and advertising whilst the best product in the world won't sell without.

Then about six months into the process we got a list of previous purchasers who had purchased the product previously but had not purhcased again because of the lack of a local agent and poor service.

So could we sell to a group who were in general unhappy with the product?

Yes we could! Unbelieveable, we had lists of cold calls to people who needed our product (in our opinion) and whom we couldn't sell to and we had people who were unhappy with the product and who we could sell!

What was the difference between these groups. Well a number of things:

They had purchased before

They were open to the product

They were "qualified"

They had a need for the product

But the list soon ran out and we were back to where we were before – cold calling with no success.

We tried fax campaigns and had limited success usually bringing in more sales than the campaign cost. But we’ve got better at that – I’ll tell you more later!

We tried advertising and had no appreciable return – but we’ve got better at that too!

And mainly we tried continuing with what we had been told would work – cold calling, cold calling, cold calling. Thousands and thousands of calls and no significant success. But there was an upside we did generate lists of contacts. I didn’t know what to do with them but I do now!

But let me tell you about the misery first.

Month on month the business lost between €5k and €10k. Mainly in staff costs. The majority of your overhead walks out the door every evening at 5:00pm and if they are not selling, well you do the math.

I went through sales people like a bull in a china shop. No sales out, no sales fired, no sales out, no sales fired, the mood was depressing, the staff were depressed, I was depressed, passersby ran past our door in case they contracted the pervasive depression.

One in Seven to find a successful sales person – I think more like One in Seventy.

Then the crowing glory, I was advised by the head office that I should look at outsourcing the sales out to a third party specialist sales company. They had the ideal company which successfully sold the product in another country because they could sell, when clearly through my own ineptitude I couldn’t.

Stop I hear you cry don’t do it! But at this point I was so giddy and delusional with my continuing failure that I did it.

Guess what 3 months later I had a €20k bill and less than €0.5k of sales. So much for the sales experts!

So I needed to restructure everything or walk away.

The Search for a Franchise

And so the search was on - how to find that elusive franchise. My requirements were simple:

An established product

A proven product

An established business model

Easy money (was I asking too much?)

Preferably with little work (yes I know its been drummed into us that hard work pays off in long run, but I prefer the concept of easy work paying off or my ultimate goal very little easy work paying off!)

Surely this wasn't to much to ask given that I had the money to purhcase that elusive exclusive franchise!

So hours and days spent trawling through the usual websites franchisedirect.co.uk, fdsfranchise.com, Franchise Pit-Stop, Franchise UK, Which Franchise The Franchise Magazine, Franchise World, etc etc etc

It does strike me that one of these "purchase a franchise" sites will soon start to franchise its own business model - "buy a business franchise to sell other business' franchises" - the ultimate pyramid scheme?

So long days were spent contemplating cooker cleaning franchises, childrens furniture franchises, dog grooming franchises, sushi franchises, drain cleaning franchises, bin cleaning franchises, golf franchises, online franchises, website building franchises, websearch optimiztion franchises, burger franchises, vegetarian burger franchises, vegan burger franchises................

Eventually I came across a B 2 B franchise long established in Europe but effectively untried in the UK and Ireland. It seemed to tick all those boxes.

Established for 20 years

Successful in many other countries

An established business model

Easy to sell

And so I jumped on a plane and travelled to the head office to meet the chief exectutive.

Lesson 1- I met the chief executive and in a minute had summed him up as someone I could easily steamroll over in a business meeting and get my way. I was right and I thought this was good!!!! - wrong wrong wrong!

I had approached the meeting as a normal business transaction and intended to get as much of their product / service for the least possible price - a "normal business transaction". Buying a franchise is not a "normal business transaction", when you buy a franchise you are not only getting an exclusive distribution area but you are also buying their corporate knowledge, their years of experience. Together that should stop you falling into the pitfalls that they fell into whilst building their business. My first mistake.

Lesson 2 The head office no longer ran a sales office themselves and they focussed purely on running the Franchising aspect of their business. The business founder had recently passed away. Business changes year to year, month to month, day to day, hour to hour - it is essential that the Franchisor runs some hands on offices themseves to keep them abreast of changes in their own business. This is paricularly true in sales and all business is sales

The head office was now divorced from the actual nuts and bolts of running their Franchise and relied on their franchisees to give them feedback as to what works and what doesn't!

Well guess what as a Franchisee if I work my butt off to develop new sales techniques or marketing plan, without help or support from the head office do I really want to share them with my head office. The same head office who charge me a royalty for every product unit I sell - what's in it for me! My second mistake.

Lesson 3 I believed it when they told me that the best method for selling the product was telesales, that conversion rates of 5-10% were possible. My third mistake.

So three significant mistakes when selecting my Franchise and developing my business plan. So now with both arms tied firmly behind my back I set off into the boxing match of B 2 B sales.