Leveraging The Talents Of Moms (Part III)

The last two days, on this site, I've introduced you to Leveraging the Talents of Moms with parts I and II, An Untapped Marketing Resource and Win-Win for All Concerned, respectively.

Today, it's time to talk about A Balancing Act / Releasing the Guilt - Managing home responsibilities with commitments to business.

Understanding how to leverage the talents of Moms requires a keen understanding of Moms - (ladies feel free to chime in on this one - remember, I am a guy, so I don't want to go too far here with out your approval - or you correcting me).

*** Note: I say understanding of Moms, not women. There is a difference - there is a change that takes place - whether it is physiological, psychological or both doesn't matter - it's important that neither men or (non-Mom) women really understand.

Truth is, up until the day women become pregnant, they are much more like men - but when that day arrives, when the "rabbit dies" (as the saying goes), everything in their life changes. And those changes aren't for nine months, ten years, or even eighteen years - becoming a Mom is a permanent life changing experience. Sure, we Dads are changed as well, when we have a kid - but don't kid yourself Men, we can't hold a candle to the ladies on this one.

Before pregnancy, we are all "mostly" self-centered. Sure, we might love others, and give a lot of ourselves to our spouses and other relatives - but on the whole, that "giving" is nothing like becoming a Mom.

Why this is important to understand is that Mom's have a tough struggle - trying to figure out how to give all they want to give to their children (and their spouses), while still having an identity and even a professional life. It's a balancing act, trying to find an equilibrium between their own needs and the needs of the family they love so dearly.

For Business Owners:

So if you, as a business owner, want to leverage the talents of Moms, you need to understand this balancing act - understand that there is still amazing talent that is within the heart and soul of Moms, its just that their NUMBER ONE COMMITMENT will always be to their children - its instinctual. It is going to happen. You are going to come up number two (at best) in their mind - overall.

The reason I bring up this "balancing act" and commitment to children, is because you can't win this battle - you can not change the way a Mom thinks. When the kids get the sniffles, she is going to stay home. When snow falls and the kids stay home from school, most of the time, its Mom that is going to stay home - not Dad. Get over it and stop resisting it.

So when the Eight Week point comes after the baby is born, and maternity leave is over, understand that the employee you are getting back in not the same one that left. If you didn't see the change before she left, you are definitely see one now. The key is learning what to do and how to work with it, instead of against it. Because believe it or not, even though you have dropped a peg or two in the priority level in her mind, as long as you respect and understand her new "situation", her dedication to you overall has most likely gone up immensely.

The root key to it all is helping them satisfy their number one commitment as easily and smoothly as possible, so that they have more time and energy for you when they are working for you.

If you want to understand how best to not just make the best of this situation, but actually turn it into a windfall for you, check out tomorrow's Blog, Flexibility and Support - The key to working with Moms is understanding their situation and working with them / not against them - No short-term Deadlines.

For Moms:

Ladies, this balancing act is real - or should I call it a juggling act. You have gone from trying to juggling three (plus) balls - your personal needs, your professional needs, and the needs of your spouse - to juggling six or more (yeah, I think caring for a child is a three ball juggling act all by itself). Throw in a second baby, and YEOW, we're talking ready for Ringling Brothers.

So what are you to do? How do you juggle six balls (or more) with only two hands.

Well to be honest, you don't. Sounds crazy . . . I know. But the answer is that simple.

You see, most Moms try to juggle six or more balls at once and usually end up dropping at least one or two every cycle. Who suffers, usually YOU first, hubby second, and then work third.

So rather than juggling six at once, put two on the floor gently or hand them to someone else for a short period and then juggle four.

How do you do this, without pissing off the two balls laying on the floor? Well, you rotate the two balls on the floor. Yep. You commit yourself to juggling what you can, right now, successfully, and let the other two just stand-by, until you are ready for them. Until you can successfully put one or two of the others balls down and pick them up.

Ok, now that I have completely confused you, let me drop the juggling idea and jump right into reality.

You are NOT going to have time to give to yourself, your husband, your job and your child(ren) everyday. Something has to give. Or you will burn yourself out and lose one or all of them along the way. So rather than trying to being everything to everyone EVERY DAY, plan time to be everything to each one, at specific times during the week.

If you are a stay-at-home Mom, that might mean that work only gets your attention 2-3 days a week (when you can give it your full attention), but on those days your Husband doesn't get much more than a hug and kiss in the morning and evening. Then maybe your own growth gets one day's worth of full attention. And you set up special time for your husband on the other days - when you can be with him completely.

The key here is to stop trying to give a little bit all the time to everyone, and start giving your best to each of them periodically, based on priority in your life.

The reason this idea works, is that it helps you release the guilt of not giving completely to things that matter. Each moment you spend with someone or doing something important, you give yourself to them / it completely - whether its your job, your husband, your kids, or even YOU.

You can give yourself without guilt of who is getting left out, because you know you have given to them completely - and you will again. One of my clients recently shared with me how this idea works for her:

The reason I love this process so much is because it helps you to BALANCE your life so that you are doing what matters to you in your family life and other relationships as well as accomplishing your business goals at the same time. On those days where I am doing more in one area, I know that I can balance it out the next day and not feel guilty.

Bottom line is you have to find balance - stop trying to be everything to everyone, every day. Give yourself completely and "guiltlessly" one at a time to the things that matter most to you and you will find yourself happier and 10x more productive than you ever thought possible.

------

If you are a small business owner and / or a Mom that wants to understand how best to maintain Balance and release the guilt that so often stifles growth, please feel free to contact me, at coach.jj@impossiblefutures.com.

Who are YOU up against and what are THEY saying in the marketplace?

Time to get down to brass tacks and put the “who” into it.

That WHO that I speak of is YOUR COMPETITION. It's time to figure out who you are competing with to gain the loyalty of both existing customers and future customers. It's time to list everyone that you are competing with and do your best to figure out what they are doing to steal your business away from you.

Look at it from the perspective of an athletic competition – say a football game. In order for you to win the game, a football team doesn't have to perform its best – it has to be better than the team that it is competing with. The coaches and players have to know what the rules of the game are, their own strengths and weaknesses, and as we will find out in this section, what the strengths and weaknesses are of their opponent(s). In football, the short term goal is scoring points and preventing the other team from scoring them. The long term is winning. In your case, the short term is gaining market share, getting customers to choose your product and / or services over the competition. In the long term, your goal – winning the loyalty of customers is not a matter of being the best you can be, you must understand what your customers are loyal to and do a better job of delivering on what your customer really wants than your competition.

The first step is to find the specific brands that are direct, often called “first level”, competitors to your product or service, in your geographic locality – your trading zone. Your trading zone is the geographic perimeter within which your customers mainly live (or if you have a new business, in which you expect them to live). Whether that is a radius around your business, a entire county or state, or a region of the entire globe (for an internet sales company) – you need to clearly understand your trading zone.

In many cases, these first level competitors offer a product or service that is interchangeable with yours in the eyes of the consumer (although of course you hope you hold the advantage with better quality, more convenient distribution, and other special features). For example, if you operate a local garden center, you may compete against the other garden centers within a 10-mile radius trading zone.

The next group of competitors, are “second level” competitors. These would be competitors who offer similar products in a different business category or who are more geographically remote. Using the example of the garden center, a discount chain that sells garden supplies and plants in season is also your competitor, as is a landscaping contractor who will provide and install the plants, and a mail-order house who sells garden tools and plants in seed or bulb form. None of these competitors provides exactly the same mix of products and services as you, but they may be picking off the most lucrative parts of your business.

The final group of competitors, or “third level” competitors are companies who compete for the "same-occasion" dollars. Inasmuch as gardening is a hobby, third-level competitors might be companies that provide other types of entertainment or hobby equipment; inasmuch as gardening is a type of home-improvement, competitors might be providers of other home-improvement supplies and services. Depending on your business, this could make you crazy thinking about it. For example, a gift shop, you not only are competing with other gift shops locally, and globally on the internet, but you are also competing for “gift” dollars, which literally are spent in nearly every retail outlet in the world. Bottom line is that you shouldn't as much go crazy thinking about third level competitors as much as you should understand the impact they have on your marketing and sales efforts.

Now is when the task becomes a bit more tedious – not difficult, just tedious. We have listed all of our competitors, focusing on our direct first level competition, next in the process is finding out about each of these companies. It's time to figure out how much business each of you competitors are actually doing, what their position is (even though they may not understand it themselves) and how well they are delivering on their promises to the customer. This is tedious, because you may or may not, at this stage, even have a good idea how well your company is doing, so to find out about your competition can be even more difficult. But do your best because you must know whether you are competing with world class competition or just a bunch of “mom & pop” start-up companies.

Describe all of the heavy hitters and answer the following questions:

• What are their product's strengths and weaknesses?

• What are their strengths and weaknesses as a company (financial strength, reputation, etc.)?

• Are there weaknesses you can exploit?

• What are the differences between your product features and theirs?

• What were their sales for last year?

• What is their pricing structure?

• In what media vehicles do they promote their products?

• What is their advertising message?

• Where else do they promote their products?

• What were their total advertising expenditures for last year?

• What is their overall goal (profitability, market share, leadership)?

• How are they trying to meet their goals (low prices, better quality, lower overhead)?

• What were their responses to changes you made in your product pricing or promotions?

Information is often the key to a strong competitive advantage. If you've had difficulty digging up information about your competitors, try your suppliers. They can be good sources of information. Visit your competitors' locations, Web sites, exhibit booths; sample their products. You can also gather a wealth of media and advertising information about your competitors on the Internet through companies like “Competitive Media Reporting” and USAData, and InfoUSA.

Stimulus Bill: What's In It For The Entrepreneur?

Reading what is directly spelled out in the Stimulus package is great. US News at the following link will tell you all about what is specifically offered in the Bill. But the more important questions is "What does it mean to Joe Average Small Business Owner?"

So let's take a look at some of the basic numbers in the small business world. It is estimated in an average year, nearly 1,000,000 small businesses will open. And even in a good year, 400,000 of them will close before their first anniversary. Additionally, another 400,000 will close within the following four years. How much wealth will be lost from all of this failure? And how much will this or any other "stimulus package" actually help these small businesses?

If you add it all up, according to that article from US News, there is all totaled $2.850 Billion in grants and loans that is being funneled to Small Businesses. It may sound like a lot when written out in the article above, but the truth of the matter it's a drop in the bucket - providing nealmost arly nothing of any real consequence to any business. Literally, it is only $2,850 for each of the businesses that is going to try to get started this year (not to mention the other tens of millions already opened that are struggling).

Now let's look at it simply in the context of dollars per employee and how much more concerned the Government is in helping the Big Boys of Industry not fail and how little they will actually do for you. It is estimated that 500,000 small businesses (that includes both start-up as mentioned above and existing businesses) will close their doors / go bankrupt this year. Even if they only have one employee for each business (which is a gross under estimate), this stimulus will provide a total of $5,700 per employee. Not much, if you ask me. Now compare that to the $15 Billion that the auto makers were guaranteed (in loans) with only about 250,000 direct employees. That is about $60,000 per employee. And I won't even go into Citibank or Bank of America.

The truth is that even though the numbers that are being thrown around in the bill look enormous to you and me, they will hardly make a dent in helping small business owners survive the recession - or end up on the other side of the recession with any real viability. This "Stimulus Bill" may push some money into the economy - but money doesn't equate to wealth in this sense - and certainly won't really make a difference.

Don't get me wrong, I'm by no means endorsing this package or any other package. In my opinion, they are a mistake. Recessions exist as a backlash of an overly aggressive growth market that became fat with excess. Part of what needs to happen is that businesses and industries must clean up house. Strong, well run businesses will survive - weak, poorly run businesses won't. And that is a healthy thing, even though it will be tough on nearly all of us while we transition. Any Government stimulus will artificially delay the "house cleaning" that must take place in order for the solid growth to occur again, as well as give false hope to hundreds of thousands of small business owners across America.

The Federal Government won't put this in the Stimulus Package. But the truth of the matter is that the only thing that is going to help small businesses survive and thrive during the tough months ahead is focusing on basic business principles and making sure you provide a product / service that customers want and/or need and do it for less than it costs you to produce it.

Help Keep This Blog From Being Mundane

According to a Forbes.com writer in a short article on Small Business Blogs, "too many small business blogs are peddling the same prosaic resources you can get from a simple google search".

I do NOT want this to be just the same old crap that you can find anywhere else on the internet. My intent with this blog is to take it beyond just "what to do" and "how to do it". I want to learn and bring my readers along with me on a journey on why certain things need to be done and get them to devise methods for making those things happen in their business. And lastly, it's my desire for everyone small business owner to WANT to do the things that they know they should do - because they understand the power that they have to make their goals happen.

It is my desire to use this blog to take all the great leadership, self-help, and business ideas in history and actually make them work for everyday people.

All for the single purpose of helping you achieve what you truly want to achieve.

Is this going to be hard? Of course it is - nothing worth doing is ever easy. And besides, if it were easy, everyone would already be doing it.

It is the essentially the difference between consulting and coaching. Consulting being a one way communication, whereas coaching is interactive.

So, I will be seeking out your opinions, your struggles, your attitude with each and every blog - I will be reaching out to develop a conversation with all the readers of this blog to generate a discussion that evokes thought - doesn't dictate procedures.

Join me in the free flow of ideas.

Small Businesses Hurting From Failing Economy

As my first Blog on my new Blog site, I've decided to go right to the heart of the problem for small businesses today - "blame it all on the recession." Every where you turn, that's all you hear, the recession is killing small business. Or "The customers just aren't coming in any more." In fact, the link from the Headline of this blog takes you to a Newsweek article that talks about all the woes of small businesses all around the country and how devastating it is to our economy.

Times are tough, there is no doubt about it. And based on the news media and all the politicians bold enough to speak on the subject, things are NOT getting better anytime soon. But the truth of the matter is this, you can blame your woes on outside circumstance and believe that you have no accountability in your current situation or you can look take control - figure out a solution and move forward.

That sounds crazy I know, but no matter how bad things get, people still need to eat. They need to buy gas, drive their cars, get them fixed, buy new clothes or maybe even take their family to see a movie. And someone has to provide all of those services - why can't it be you.

In any economy, businesses that can't adapt to the changing conditions will go out of business. Unfortunately, in today's world, we seem to believe that the Government should bail them out. But that doesn't fix the fact that they aren't running their business in the manner necessary to succeed in the new economic environment.

Everyday, men and women of all walks of life are spending their money. It may be less than it was 6 months ago, but the are still spending money. How are they spending it? Why are the spending it? And where are they spending it? These are all questions that every business owner needs to ask, if they wish to survive - not just in a bad economy, but in a thriving one as well. And once they find the answer, they need to find a way to get these potential customers to spend it in their store instead of where they currently are - not because your business provides the best product or the fastest service - but because your business provides the product and / or service that the customers want.

That is the essence of business - regardless of the economic conditions. And that is the essence to running a business that is "recession proof".