Change

Is change always good? Barack Obama would have us believe so. Is he right?

I was in Borders the other day having a cup of Earl Grey and a wedge of chocolate cake when I noticed that there was a stack of books from the person who had been sitting at the table before me. I absentmindedly started to poke through the mountainous pile: The Bitch Switch by Omarosa Maningault-Stallworth; Inc Magazine; Who moved my cheese by Spencer Johnson; The Hip Chick’s Guide to Macrobiotics by Jessica Porter; and The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. An eclectic mix to be sure. But an intriguing combination. I felt inspiration coming on.

I began with Maningault-Stallworth’s The Bitch Switch. What could this self-proclaimed “bitch” and former Trump Apprentice tell me about running a small business which I could in turn share with my readers on smallbizsociety.blogspot.com?

It turns out quite a lot. Here’s a woman from humble beginnings who went on to earn a PHD, work for the Bill Clinton administration, and who has become the most recognizable apprentice from Trump’s reality TV franchise. How did she do it? First of all, she was a Purple Cow . There is no other like Omarosa. Apres Omarosa, c'est la deluge. Second of all, she knows how to capitalize on opportunities and trends. Third, she knows how to build and expand a brand. Then of course, she knows how to use the media and different mediums to sell her brand. And she is bold and innovative for writing this book and doing all the other things she does, including her philanthropic work. What I admire most about her is how she embraced the changes that came about in her life after the Apprentice, and how she exploited the market place and how she has made herself into a big reality TV star. She is the ultimate "small business person" that became big cheese. Her change has been "macrobiotic." Change has been big for her. Change has been good for her.

As I started to browse through Inc Magazine looking for more inspiration (with the word CHANGE on my mind), I stumbled across an article called, The Beer Crisis of 2008. Again, I noticed a theme of change. According to the Beer article, change has been good for the beer industry. Thanks to the bad economy (btw another article in the same issue blames the economy and Sarbane Oxley for the fact that IPO’s are at a 30 year low and this opens up other applications of the concept of “change” which I won't get into with this particular blog entry) but when the price of hops started to go through the roof after major producers like the Czech Republic and Slovenia were hit by bad weather and a reduction in supply, small U.S. breweries became desperate for supply and became competitive with one another. But instead of trying to run each other out of business, they created these lottery systems to distribute the hops supply in a fair and democratic way so that small breweries across the country could stay afloat. A change in circumstances called for them to find new ways to operate within their industry so that they could all remain profitable. And they did. They began to use collaboration and cooperation as strategies to deal with the changed circumstances.

The theme of change also ran through Who moved my cheese, by Spencer Johnson. In the book which is a Wall Street Journal Best Seller, the author espoused the idea of adaptation, preparation, foresight and innovation. The theme was: forget about who moved the cheese. The point is [small businesses] should anticipate that the cheese will get moved and they need to have contingencies and strategies in place (or adapt quickly) to cope with inevitable changes in the market place. Spencer definitely saw change as being a good thing – a thing that can expand an individual's life. I thought to myself that change can also be quite good for small businesses that can anticipate what's coming and adapt quickly to the change.

I did not get a chance to really delve into The Hip Chicks’ Guide to Macrobiotics by Jessica Porter. The security guy came around and said the store would be closed in 30 minutes. So I quickly skimmed the introduction. Knowing nothing about a macrobiotic diet, except in so far as I read that Gwyneth Paltrow was into it before she wasn't into it anymore I wanted to find out what the diet entailed, and whether there was anything useful I could learn about "change" by reading about it.

It turns out that the art of macrobiotics is about the “art of creating a big life.” It’s a whole "philosophy" about "change coming from within," that we "change the world by changing ourselves," that we change ourselves by what we choose to eat (this includes a lot of brown rice,) and how we choose to eat it and how we choose to live. I thought to myself, that a macrobiotic diet could be applied to a small business owner. In taking a macro-biotic approach to his or her business, a small business owner would be looking for ways to big up his or her business. They would also be looking for ways to change their business practices to make it more compatible with the environment – in other words, they would probably be going “green” and trying some other trendy ideas which eventually could become a part of their DNA.

Shel Silverstein’s classic children’s story, The Giving Tree was probably the most fascinating of all. Here was a character who spent a lifetime changing. He was first a young boy, innocent, with very few needs. He loved the tree simply and unconditionally and the tree loved him in return. As time went on, his life changed, even though the tree remained contant. His needs got bigger and more complex and he had less and less time for the tree. In the end, the tree was like his sacrificial lamb. He sacrificed the tree to achieve his goals and objectives, to get what he "wanted." He took everything the tree had to offer in order to get what he wanted and needed. The tree was demolished, changing from a beautiful, full, rich character, to a mere stomp by the time the boy (who was now a grown man) had taken all the tree had to give. The only thing that did not change was the love the tree felt for the boy as he grew into a man who wanted more and more things: a house, a wife, kids, a boat, everything his mind could conceive. And he got it all by exploiting the tree. But in the end, after taking it all from the tree, the boy (who was now a man) was right back where he started: alone with the tree, sitting on the stomp he had reduced the tree to, being too tired to want anything more - and even if he wanted more, the tree had nothing else to give.

As a small business owner, you will change. Change is good. You will get bigger and you will expand over time if success comes your way. But the thing with change seems to be taking it with a grain of salt. And in making change, always pay attention to the trade offs.

Flexibility

So you’ve got your small business and the one thing you know for sure is that “failure is not an option.” That’s nice. But saying it and doing it are two different things. In the Ten Commandments of Business Failure, Donald R. Keough, former President of the Coca Cola Company, writes that “inflexibility is a terrible disease.”

Some small business owners have a rigid, set in stone vision of what they want to do and how they are going to get it done. Confidence is good and you almost can’t have too much of it. But hubris has a negative connotation. It is important to be confident but not so certain that you are right about everything, that you can’t listen to other ideas, explore other options, or change. Just because something is the status quo does not mean it’s the best and only way. Small business owners have to think outside the box. Otherwise, they may find themselves out of business when innovation and competition and new trends steals their show.

Competition

Who are those imitators trying to muscle you out of the game? They are called competitors. Just like large conglomerates and corporations, small businesses are going to have competitors. If you don’t have competitors, maybe you are not really in business?

But how to deal with idea-stealing imitators who try to one up you at every juncture? Well, you start by protecting your intellectual property by seeking copyright, patent and trademark protection where you can. But to some extent, you are not going to be able to eliminate your competitors completely. They will muscle you out of business with price wars, aggressive advertising and marketing, and bigger budgets and balance sheets.

Entrepreneurs understand that competition drives innovation and invention. Innovation and invention drives fiscal success. So competition is good. Healthy competition is good. The trick is not to let your competitors run you out of business with superior products and services in the market place. The way to avoid that is to constantly look at trends, nurture your own and others’ creativity, adapt and change when needed, and have a true passion for whatever it is you do.

Study the competition also. Maybe there is something they do that is better than what you do, and by studying them you can improve your own game. It is probably error to be an imitator only, however. A successful business person, to some extent must be able to blaze their own path, stand out. Be a Seth Godin “Purple Cow.” And ultimately, the aim is to better the competition at each juncture, while, contemporaneously, being the best that you can be.

Momentum

It is all about the build up, and sustaining rhythm. As a small business owner, you have to build your company up from nothing, in a sytematic, logical way. As the visionary for your firm, you have got to get a certain rhythm going that leads to the ultimate fulfillment of your vision for your company.

Stop go, hot cold approaches don't seem to work as well as really sitting down from the get go and drawing the blue prints, creating the architecture for your vision, and then going out and taking steps and action that compliment that vision and those goals so that you can construct the building.

Momentum is about the rate of action, speed, motion, force, proportion, mass, rhythm and change of a person or object. So as a small business owner, its about how you do what you do to make your business work, to achieve that breakthrough, no matter how brutal the process and path. It is almost always a mistake to start off too fast, or too big. A gradual build up is best. Then crescendo, then plateau, then build up again...it's almost like surfing, riding the wave. It is the thrill of the thing.

"Sustainable transformation follow a predictable pattern of build up and breakthrough. Like pushing on a giant heavy wheel, it takes a lot of effort to get the thing moving at all, but with persistent pushing in a consistent direction over a long period of time, teh wheel builds momentum eventually hitting a point of breakthrough."
-Unknown source

Patience

If patience is a virtue, impatience is a vice.

The small business owner is probably someone whose personality is already formed. He or she would describe themselves as either "I am a patient person," or, "I am very impatient."

The former is more likely to reach success than the latter. Why? Because starting, growing and sustaining a business is hard work and takes diligence, focus, drive and nerves of steel. It is not for the person who wants quick fixes and quick riches.

Achieving success in your small business is hard. It takes time to reach a breakthrough. There is a bestselling book on the market right now, From Good to Great by Jim Collins that talks about how certain personality types are more inclined to lead companies to greatness. He never comes right out and uses the word "Patience." But if you think about what he is saying, he's saying that the way companies go from "good to great" is they are lead there by CEO's who are, among other things, patient; these men (he only identified men in these positions) by making adjustments, changes and innovations, finally reached a breakthrough that changed the direction, scope and reputation of their companies.

As a small business owner, it is a critical trait - Patience. A small business owner needs stick-to-it-ness, grit, determination. The one thing Collins says in his book that is interesting is that these companies did not go from good to great by making big, loud splashes and calling a lot of attention to themselves. They did it quietly, and patiently.

Donald Trump seems to be a very patient man. Sure, he runs the Trump Organization. That is not a small business. But the scale of his business is not the point. He has revealed in some of his books that he is a very patient man. He has waited years sometimes in order to purchase a piece of real estate for the right price and under the right terms. If he was rash and impatient, it could have cost him not just his reputation, but probably a few of his billions.

Are you patient? Or impatient?