The BALD TRUTH: SH!#% or get off the pot!

Are You Using Protection? Part 2

&@%# or get off the pot!

Last month I promised that I would address each of the three major challenges that business leaders fail to protect themselves from and will kill a business.

In part one we talked about the three killers of a business.  Number one is lack of cash flow.  Well by now I hope you have taken this to heart and begun to watch and manage your cash flow a little better.  This month we will talk about the number two killer of a business, POOR LEADERSHIP.

Leadership

“Leadership is the art of getting someone to do something you want done because they want to do it.” Dwight D. Eisenhower

 How can you get others to do what needs to get done and make sure they are doing it gladly and with enthusiasm?  The answer is very simple.  Have a vision and make it part of your culture. A vision and direction is critical to get your business moving and to assure it stays on the right direction.  People will follow a clear vision that is shared and engages them.  Leaders use the vision to inspire the people they lead.

Too often business owners rely on systems or franchise models to assure success.  While these are important, they will not assure that the business will grow, thrive and prosper.  There is only one thing that will assure success.  The people in an organization know and buy into the vision of the organization.  Making sure that the most important asset, the people, are lead, directed and properly motivated will assure that the right things get done.

Leaders come in three types:

1.            Enhancer

Enhancers are confident, respected and responsible. They contribute more to the organization and the people they lead than is expected. They are positive and people are excited to be around them and work with them.

2.            Neutralizers

Typically better at managing things than with leading people. They typically have teams that do what is expected but little more. Most are neutral about them as a leader and have a apathetic workplace.

3.         Diminishers

These leaders lack confidence and the ability to galvanize people. Diminishers take more from the organization than they give.  The people who report to them are on guard and cautious when dealing with the diminisher.  There is usually a morale issue surrounding this leader.

Now that I’ve described the types of leaders, take a hard look at your own leadership style and decide which one you are and which one you want to be. The choice is yours. What behaviors do you want to exhibit to your team?  How about in your organization?  It comes down to choosing to lead from a position of personal power verses rank or title.  Go back to the Eisenhower quote and ask yourself this…Are your people doing what they are doing because they want to do it or because they have to do it?  Your style makes the difference.  Choose your style from today forward.

Coach Rick Kolster, CBC is a certified business/life coach, the author of Roll Up Your Sleeves and Get To Work as well as an expert on developing leaders and personal growth. He can be contacted at 817-748-7425 orwww.CoachRickKolster.com

The BALD TRUTH: Are you using protection?

Are you using protection?

Every day businesses and business owners are susceptible to many attacks and challenges that could devastate their hard work and livelihood.  Are you one of those businesses or owners? A survey by Forbes Magazine showed some interesting facts:  Over 500,000 new businesses are started each month. Almost 40% of these small businesses never make it to their second anniversary. Yet another 55% never make it past 5 years. Only about 1/3^rd make it to 10 years. Why?

Three main killers of a businesses

1.    Lack of cash flow

2.    Poor leadership and customer service

3.    Lack of a strategic plan

Over the next few posts I will address each of these three major challenges that business leaders fail to protect themselves from and will kill a business.

Lack of Cash flow.

Starting a new venture takes a bunch of things, one of which is a basic knowledge of business and how to sell your product or service.  Over the past 11 years I have been working with clients to create sustainable and profitable businesses I have found that this is the thing that will kill a business.  So you are probably asking yourself, how this relates to the 3 killers of a business.

Bottom line, no sales, no cash flow, no cash flow, no business. Simple but true.  So often a client has made the decision to step out, start a business based on their technical expertise and has yet to learn how to sell what they do. They also start without enough capital in reserve.  Result.  FAIL!  It has been said and I believe “that nothing happens until a sale is made”.  If no one is selling, I can guarantee tis, no one is buying. 

 

Ok how does lack of cash flow kill a business?  I have learned that cash flow is king and with a consistent flow of cash into a business there is hope. Now if it is a negative cash flow, there is a challenge for sure. When I opened my first restaurant in 1981 we did everything on a shoestring and were literally taking from Peter to pay Paul. What does that mean? What it means is we used cash flow to pay immediate critical bills (electric and staff) while others  (beer and food vendors) we used float time to let our cash reserves replenish to take care of other these less critical expenses. My partner and I became known as the kings of the float.

We would pack the bar out on Thursday Friday and Saturday with happy hour and late night biz.   What that means is we would always write checks late on Friday to the beer and food vendors knowing they would wait until Monday to deposit, giving us three days to use the cash flow and float to keep us going.  Now this just was used as a strategy as we started, once we established the business and we began to see positive cash flow, things smoothed out.  Still I learned that cash flow is king.

So to protect your business, focus first on your cash flow and protect it like a chastity belt protects a virgin. But that's something for another time.  Until next month protect your business and remember cash flow is king.

Coach Rick Kolster, CBC is a certified business/life coach, the author of Selling for Geniuses and Roll Up Your Sleeves and Get To Work as well as a motivational speaker on personal growth. He can be contacted at 817-748-7425 or Rick@CoachRickKolster.com www.CoachRickKolster.com

THE BALD TRUTH - Personal Responsibilty

Personal Responsibility

“The devil made me do it.” How often do we hear this or a variation of this in today’s society? It may not even this blatant, but instead, may be more subtle. Let’s face it, we all make excuses for ourselves—excuses we would never make for other people. When I cut someone off in traffic, it was an honest mistake, but when someone else cuts me off in traffic, it is an affront to my honor right? Less and less often we are willing to take responsibility for our own actions, and it because easier and easier to blame something else or someone else for the things that we do.

It may have been a few years since you’ve last heard someone blame the devil for a choice they made. But you’ve probably seen those things replaced with other excuses. Remember hearing about the woman that sued McDonalds because she was so overweight from eating their food every day? Somehow, her choice to eat the food had become the restaurant’s fault. Of course, it’s not like McDonalds has any healthy options that she could have chosen, but it was still her choice to go to that restaurant, pick something off the menu, and then eat it. And yet, she blamed the fast food, not herself.

That’s not to say that all people are overweight because they eat fast food or even entirely because of choices that they make for themselves. But assigning blame, either to food or to genetics does not change reality and it does nothing to improve the situation. If you discover that you have a slow metabolism, one choice would be to blame that metabolism for causing you to gain weight. The other choice would be to take personal responsibility for things that you can control and learn to eat foods that will work with your metabolism.

This extends into every faction of society. Parents will blame other children or “the world” for the behavior of their children, when parents who take personal responsibility know full well that how children act is, largely, a result of how they are parented. As a society, we are refusing to act for ourselves, or refusing to acknowledge that the actions that we take have real consequences, especially if those consequences are negative. Instead, we choose to blame external forces for anything that goes wrong.

The good news is that taking personal responsibility is as easy as examining your actions and the consequences. Guess what, if you eat 3000 calories a day and do nothing but watch television, you will gain weight. If you ignore your children, they will probably throw a fit in public just to get some semblance of attention. Once we can take responsibility for the things that happen in our own lives, we can actually begin to change our mindset, our actions, and our entire lives. When we realize that we are in control, we can steer our lives towards something better.

Coach Rick Kolster, CBC is a certified business/life coach,  the author of the upcoming book Roll Up Your Sleeves and Get To Work as well as a public speaker on personal growth.. He can be contacted at 817-748-7425 or Rick@CoachRickKolster.com
www.CoachRickKolster.com

Principles

"In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock." -Thomas Jefferson

Principles are the foundation on which you should stand. A leaders principles (values) are clear and non-negotiable. They know what they stand for and what they will stand from others.

Are your principles clear? Do people know what you stand for? If not... Why not? Make it a priority to define your principle and then let people you lead know what they are.

I have four basic principles I have instilled into my children.

1. Respect for others, show it and give it.    
2. Honesty, be honest in all you do.    
3. Integrity, keep your word    
4. Communication, it must be open and truthful.

My children and the people I lead, know what is important and what I expect. In turn they know what to expect from me. This makes life so much simpler and less stressful.

What are your principles? Define them today!

Coach Rick Kolster is an executive coach who works with executives and business owners to help them gain life balance and learn how they can be the best leader they can be.

Rick@CoachRick.net

www.PeakPerformanceDevelopment.com
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New Years Resolutions-Why they Don't work, or...

Every year we hear why New Years resolutions don't work. They are too vauge, there is no real commitment, they are just dreams, we don't write them down. Blah Blah Blah...

Every year it's the same drivel from the same talking heads. Well I'm here to say that New Years resolutions CAN WORK. The key is do YOU work? Do you work at them to make them attainable? The key is setting realistic, specific and attainable resolutions. This is what I call the Coach Rick SMARTWAY resolution plan. Or for my coaching clients SMARTWAY Goals.

Did you take time to establish exactly what you wanted to accomplish in a SMARTWAY fashion? If not... WHY NOT? Why haven't you? If the answer is, "hey Coach Rick, just what are SMARTWAY goals and how do I set them?" It is time to learn how.

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Time bound
Written
Aligned
Yours

Each of my one on one clients have the chance to learn the Coach Rick SMARTWAY goal process. And until January 15, 2012 so can you. If you call I will provide you with an hour to learn SMARTWAY goal setting. No charge. Free, zippo, zlich, nothing. The only thing you have to invest is one hour and the energy to dial the phone.

So what is stopping you now? Nothing.

Call Coach Rick at 817-748-7425 to get your SMARTWAY goal tools today.

Be the best YOU can be

Coach Rick

Living Life in the Present

I’ve discovered that I have greater success with living life in the present moment when I remove judgment from what I’m experiencing. Rather than making an event a bad or a good experience, I find myself being in the “isness” of the moment; that is, what I’m feeling is much more helpful than why it isn’t what I think it should be. This is called allowing rather than resisting what is. Even if I wish to change the moment, it’s far more useful to allow it without any judgment and then notice everything I can about it.

The more I stay out of my good-thought/bad-thought routine, the more I’m able to just be with it. I love to observe the instant without any judgment. Birds simply allow whatever comes their way, no matter if the wind picks up or the rain comes, and I work at being like one of those fabulous creatures. The way I do so is to ask myself this question: “What’s happening right here and right now, independent of my opinion about it?” Then I notice all that I can take in—the sky, the wind, the sounds, the light, the insects, the temperature, the people, the judgments…everything. I stay free of opinions and just let myself be. In these moments, I don’t need an excuse or an explanation for anything.

I try to keep in mind that whenever I react against any form that life takes in the present moment, I’m treating the now as some kind of impediment or even as my enemy.
Be without judgment and you’ll never feel the need for some tiresome excuse to use up your precious seconds, such as “I’m too old” or “It will take a long time” or “It will be too difficult.” Instead, you’ll be in the now, welcoming your constant present-moment companion, your Source of being, which knows nothing of excuses and doesn’t know how to be anyplace but here, now. As one of my spiritual predecessors, Dale Carnegie, once wrote: “One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon—instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.”

Become one in the present moment with all of the roses that show up in your life. Stay present: every second, every minute, and every hour. Every day of your life is full of present moments of infinite value. You won’t find God yesterday or tomorrow—your Source is always only here, now.

Reposted from a Positive Thoughts email.

Enjoy and Live well

Coach Rick

Roll Up Your Sleeves and Get To Work!

That's why they call it illegal!

Are we legalizing illegality?


Almost daily I hear something about illegal activity. Illegal immigrants, illegal drugs, illegal business practices, all kinds of illegal activities and the list goes on and on. I don’t know but when I was growing up if it was illegal, it was wrong. Plain and simple, wrong. No don’t get me wrong, I have done my fair share of this wrong, some of them I’m sure even “Illegal”. But what does the word really mean nowadays?


Let’s take a look at Webster’s definition: Not according to, or authorized by, law; contrary to, or in violation of, human law; unlawful; illicit; hence, immoral; as,
An illegal act; illegal trade; illegal love.


Illegal is simply a violation of human law, immoral and or illicit or in other words wrong! I guess my question is why are we trying to legalize illegal activities but still calling them illegal? Case in point we are trying to protect the rights of “Illegal” aliens. WHY? They have circumvented the legal process to arrive here in the good ol’ US of A. If I circumvent a legal process are my rights going to allow me to continue to violate the process. I HOPE NOT! That is why we have put into place specific rule, guidelines and regulations.


So why do some think that the rules don’t apply? Why do they continue to do whatever they please regardless of the agreements they have in place then cry “oh woe is me”. When did we become a nation of spineless weak leaders? The rules seem to only apply to those that abide by them and agree to abide by them. Anyone else gets a pass. I think it is time for people and leaders to stand up and do what they say. Be congruent with your words and actions. If you call it illegal, then don’t do it. If you say you will do it, then do it!


It is time for each of us to do what it takes to make this the society we know it is. Stand up for your rights, give our word and keep our word. Today what can you do to make a change.


I say… Roll Up Your Sleeves and Get to Work



Coach Rick

Selling for Geniuses

Selling is what you have to do to do what you want to do. In other words unless you are selling something to someone, you are just doing charity work. While this can be noble, it doesn't pay the bills. So what are you doing today to sell what you need to so that you can make what you want to?

The biggest challenge I find with new "sales" people is that they need to make a sale. AND IT SHOWS!!! Can you say desperate? The smell of desperation just flows off of these folks like a waterfall. They know they have to make a "sale" and push to get to it no matter what the prospect really needs.

This is painful to watch and leads to buyers remorse almost every time. Since most contracts have a 3 business day out clause, the seller or sales person leaves flying high. "Just closed a sale." Happy, whistling that happy sound and planning their next vacation. Three days later, BOOM! The buyer calls to cancell. They have thought it over, talked to their wife, partner, attorney etc... How can you prevent this from happening to you?

One way. Sell without selling. Yep thats right, you have to sell without selling. You must help the prospect make a good buying decision, not push them to make any decision (as long as they buy something). Your job as the sale professional is to presnt the best option and let the buyer make the right choice. If you have done this right, almost always... the deal will stick. In fact the real trouble is getting the buyer to change anything in the deal. They own it! It is theirs and they are moving forward with the deal.

In this blog I will be sharing ideas, thoughts and tips to help you to sell more and sell better (I know that's poor english, but... I don't care) Subscribe and one thing will happen. You will have more ways to be a better salesperson and the tools to be even more successful.

Learn more and get my book Selling for Geniuses at www.coachrick.biz