But before you accuse me of writing a gloom and doom post, hear me out.

Any time there is a crisis, there is an opportunity.  I’ve written before about the Chinese character for crisis.  It’s made up of two characters: danger and opportunity.  These are dangerous times.  But only a fool would say there’s no opportunity.

The problem is, you have to be able to see the opportunities.  Often that means thinking outside the box.  It’s like playing baseball.  If they say you have to hit the ball into the outfield to have a legitimate hit, that’s what you do.  You don’t complain that you used to be able to get on base by hitting a grounder to the infield.  Complaining accomplishes nothing.  You adapt to the new rules and figure out the best way to flourish in the new environment.  You don’t pine away after things that are no more (and probably never will be again.)

And even if the rules were to change every time you showed up at the field, so what?  There will still be a game.  There will still be a winner and a loser.  There will still be those who come out on top, and those who don’t.   Or even considering the next worse case, what if the competition doesn’t have to play by the same rules you do?  What if they can hit grounders and you have to hit into the outfield?  Well, you have two choices: adapt or quit playing baseball.  Just because someone’s making it difficult for you doesn’t mean you still can’t be a winner!

As the wise saying goes, “We learn from the past.  We live in the present.  We prepare for the future.”  There’s no value in thinking about how easy, how great, how wonderful, etc., etc. the past was.  Learn from it and move on.  If the present in difficult, make whatever adjustments you need to so you can continue to grow and succeed.  Make as many preparations as you can for the future, with the understanding that by the time you get to the future it may not even resemble what you have prepared for and you may have to start over.  Big deal.  Prepare anyway.

The bottom line in it all is, YOU HAVE TO ADAPT.  Either you do that, or you die.  Going back is not an option.  Wishing won’t make it so.  As my buddy’s mom used to say, “Wish in one hand and spit in the other.  See which one gets full first.”  All the wishing in the world won’t accomplish a single thing.

I predict that the future belongs to those who can adapt — those who can change on a dime and give you nine cents change.  You can teach yourself to adapt, of course.  It’s not that hard.  Yes, it can be uncomfortable, but it’s not that hard.  Start now to teach yourself how to adapt (it’s part of that preparing for the future thing.)   Once you get onto it, you will find you have much more confidence to succeed in a chaotic economy (a chaotic environment.)  And not just confidence.  You will succeed much more readily and much more quickly than those around you.

They say there are three kinds of people in the world.  Those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened.  Which are you?  The adapters are those who make things happen. They lead the way.  Others watch and marvel and wonder how they did that.  All the while the adapters are changing the game and making the world turn again — new rules and all.

So there’s your recipe for success for the future — easy to say, hard to do.  But it’s certainly reachable.  You just have to want it.  Do you want it?

While I’m 100% behind self sufficiency, I have to wonder about a dairy.  There’s not a single career I’m aware of where one is more “married” to the job than dairymen are.  And even worse than that, when the price of milk rises and you can feed your kids.   When it drops, you starve to death until the next time it rises (which hopefully occurs before you starve all the way out of the business.)

I told my friend that I would be more interested in buying the creamery.  Not that having a herd of milk cows would be such a bad idea (if you owned the creamery,) but the focus for me would be on adding value.  The creamery makes money regardless of the price of milk.  They buy milk at whatever the prevailing price is, make it into butter, cheese, ice cream, etc. and charge whatever the market will bear.

Selling milk to a creamery puts you at the whim of the market.  You have no control whatsoever over the price of your product.  The creamery, on the other hand, can choose to be the BMW of butter or the yugo of yogurt.  They are only limited by the effectiveness of their marketing.

Look at Hagen Daas for example.  Do you think they’re worried about the price dairymen are receiving for milk?  Of course not.  They’re Hagen Daas.  They can price their product at whatever they choose and people will line up to pay it.  They’ve taken the milk, added some value, done some outrageously effective marketing, and they make money.  Never mind that dairies are dropping like flies.

This is true with any commodity.  You make a lot more as a furniture manufacturer than a lumber yard owner.  Why?  Because you take the wood and add value — value that can’t be regulated, pre-priced, or whatever.   The value is whatever you can convince people it is.  Hagen Daas is no better than any other high-fat product.  But they’ve convinced the public — through great marketing — that it’s somehow worth more.

So when you start your next business, ask yourself if you’re adding value or if you’re too close to the source to make the real money.  When you add value, you give your marketing department something to work with.  If you’re not currently adding value, see if there’s not some way to begin doing so.  Adding value separates you from the crowd and gives you the opportunity to be different (read in worth more.)

It’s that way in business.  We need to focus on where the ever-moving target is going to be, not where it is now.  And we ought to take just that millisecond to be sure we know where the target is going to be before we jump.  That will help us avoid what are often very expensive mistakes in judgment.

Knee-jerk reactions are almost never your friend  –  especially in business.  There is almost always time to sort it out.  Don’t get in too big a hurry.

The problem was, nobody knew they were open.  They didn’t advertise.  They didn’t do a mailing to let their customers know they had decided to remain open.  They didn’t even hang a huge banner on their building saying, “Open This Winter.”  Nothing.

So what would you predict happened to their winter business?  Of course.  It was in the dumper.  

The risk you run in all this, is that you begin to make judgements based on what just happened.  You start to say, “Well, winter really isn’t  a good season for us.  We just don’t have the traffic to justify staying open.  Summer’s good, but not winter.”  Or maybe you go down this road:  “No, we tried it.  It just didn’t work out.  We were open all winter and hardly did anything.  It just wasn’t worth it.”

While those statements are all true, they ignore the fact that the “trial” period was horribly skewed towards not working.  In other words, “We gave it a half baked effort and it didn’t work.”  That’s certainly a more accurate statement than the first few.  It at least leaves the door open to try again, giving it your best effort.

The moral to this story is that before you say, “That didn’t work,” you need to  be sure you gave it your best effort.  Nothing works if you don’t put anything into it in the first place.    It’s like the old saw, “It’s funny.  The harder I work, the luckier I seem to get.”  ‘Nough said.

Even though the tomatoes are organically grown, and picked red (true vine ripened!) they compete with the Mexican tomatoes that have been fertilized with who knows what (I don’t want to know,) and picked green.  Go figure.

How could that be?

These are the best tomatoes our area has ever seen.  This company has been in business for 35 years.  And yet even though they were doing organic before organic was cool, I’d guess that not one person in 50 could tell you who the company is, what they grow, where they’re located, etc., etc., etc.  This company might as well not exist for all intents and purposes.  And instead of making bank on the incredible story behind their product, they languish on the shelf next to the clearly inferior produce.

What we’re talking about is marketing.  Everyone has a story to tell.  These guys have an incredible story to tell.  And yet they’ve done virtually nothing to get the word out.  They have a very small, loyal following, but nothing like what it could be with a story.

No matter what your business is, you have a story (you really do, don’t you?)  What are you doing to differentiate yourself from the rest of the market by telling your story?  If you’re going to grow and build value into your brand, you’ve got to start telling that story to anyone who will listen and tell it over and over again until the whole world knows it by heart.  Only then will you reach your potential.

What’s your story?

While the response has been good (in terms of numbers,) the ability of the potential candidates to sell themselves has been — well I don’t think it would be too strong to say it has been pathetic.  As I’ve listened in, I have to wonder how many of these people got their last job.  They’re horrible interviewees.

Let me just say this.  If you have to interview for a job, find someone who is knowledgeable in interviewing job applicants and video tape yourself being interviewed.  Then, after watching the video, ask yourself, “Would I hire this person?”  If not, make some adjustments.  Have the interviewer make suggestions on area in which you could improve.  Then get to it.  Perfect your ability to interview, and it will pay big dividends.

The bottom line is this:  We’re talking about what could potentially be hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years.  Why would you go into that opportunity cold — without any preparation?  That’s crazy.  You need to be practiced and polished.  You need to be able to convince the interviewer that out of 100 (or potentially many more) candidates, you are the one with the right stuff.  You need to convince that interviewer that you are the only logical choice for the job.

As the old saying goes, if you can do that, nothing else matters.  If you can’t do that, nothing else matters.  (All of which is true at least until the day you start your new job.)

Those of you who know me know that I’m heavily into experimental aircraft.  I’ve been waiting to build just the right airplane for three years (I’m still waiting on Innodyn so my dream airplane can have just the perfect engine.)  Innodyn said in mid 2004 they would be in full production by the end of the year (2004.)  Well, in the spring of 2005 they said it would be fall of 2005.  No news in the fall of 2005.  Then in the spring of 2006 they said things would be underway by 2007.  In the spring of 2007 they said by late 2007 they’d have all their problems sorted out and be in production.  That was the last news release from the company.  They still have their website, with all the glowing reports, all the dreams for the future, spoken as if it were all reality today.  But no new news.  Hidden at the bottom of one of the pages is a note in the small print that says, “Call if you would like info on our current status.”  Only a die-hard like me would have even found that.  It was intentionally buried.

Safe to say after nearly 5 years of waiting for the miracle around the corner, I’ve decided to go with a piston engine (what other choice to I have at this point?)  But I think there’s a lesson to be learned here.  When you make an announcement of a new product, new service, new whatever, you’d better be ready to go.  You’d better be sure there are no hitches and no glitches.  You’d better hit the ground running for your life and never look back.

I know most of the people who were originally interested in Innodyn were gone when they found out the product wasn’t ready the day they heard about it.  I should have done that.  Some of the more optimistic potential buyers hung on longer.  Perhaps there is someone hungrier for this product (or, some would say, more gullible) than me that are hanging on even yet.  I doubt it.  In the aviation community, this company has no credibility.  In many ways, they are the laughing stock of the aviation industry.  People probably wouldn’t buy from them now even if the product miraculously found it’s way into the market.  Buyers are leery of a company that promised the sun, moon and stars so many times and failed to deliver each and every time.  How can you have confidence in what they say and do, after all?

So a company, with an innovative, spectacular product that potentially completely re-defines the aviation industry is — for all intents and purposes — dead before it has taken it’s first breath of life.  And that because they didn’t have their ducks lined up when they started.  There’s a lesson here.  Hopefully you’ll learn this one from someone else’s mistakes, and not from your own.

In startup businesses, we look for ways to add value to the business, market our products and services, and generally move the business forward in ways that don’t cost money (which we always seem to be short of.)  This is one of those ways.  It’s a simple matter to ask someone’s name when you’ve noticed them in your store a few times, then call them by name when you see them again.  Everyone (except, perhaps, celebrities) wants to be recognized and be called by name.  

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about.  For awhile there I was buying new snowmobiles every year at a local shop.  I was spending nearly $20,000 a year on new sleds.  I bought from the same guy every year for several years in a row and he still didn’t have a clue who I was.  So out of frustration, I went across town to see what his competitor had to offer.  On my first visit to the other shop, the salesman asked my name.  On subsequent visits he called me by name and seemed genuinely happy that I’d come in.  Where do you think I spent my money from then on?  Same product, same price, same atmosphere, same same.  The only difference is one place treated me like family the other like a stranger.  Nobody wants to be a stranger.

You’ll know you’ve arrived when you go out to dinner and see someone from the lumber yard who calls you by name.  It’s easier to remember names in context (meaning when your customer comes into your store,) but change the context and it’s harder.  I was out to dinner awhile back and I saw the salesman I deal with when I buy hardwood lumber.  “Hi, Allan,”  He said.  “What are you guys up to??”  We chatted for a minute and he left to find his party.  The people I was dining with said, “Who is that?”  When I told them it was my contact from the lumber yard, the comment was, “You must buy way too much lumber.”   Of course that’s not the case (as far as you know.)  It’s simply that I choose to buy where people treat me like family.

What’s in a name?  More than you can count.  It’s an absolutely free way to generate more business, make more contacts, and be more successful.  If you’re one of those people who says, “Oh, I’m not good with names.”  I say that’s a crock.  You have chosen not to be good.  If you’re life depended on remembering peoples’ names, you’d remember every one.  In this case, the life of your business may depend on remembering peoples’ names.  Set aside the excuses and get with it.  It’s a small price to pay for the loyalty you’ll generate.

And while the business is just emerging and sales are nil, that might seem like a reasonable response to some people.  But what is that cartoony, clip-art logo going to look like when you're doing $10 million a year in sales?  “Oh,” you say, “We'll re-do it when we get bigger and have more money.”  Wrong.  You will never have more money.  It's not an issue of money.  It's an issue of priority.  If presenting yourself in the best possible light isn't important now, it's not going to be important when you're growing like a week and putting every penny you can scrape together into moving that growth forward.  Not to mention the disruption to your market when you totally re-design yourself after everyone gets used to seeing you as you were.

No.  Now is the time identify yourself.  Decide who you are and then make sure everything the public will see supports that vision you have of your company.    Would you go to a doctor who made TV ads that looked like a used car lot?  No.  You want to go to someone who is “dignified and better educated and more reliable.”  What makes you think she's more dignified, better educated and more reliable?  The “corporate” image.  The used car salesman may well be as educated as the doctor and even more reliable, but the image portrayed doesn't bear that out.  Make sure your corporate identity accurately portrays who you are.