I wrote the other day about the benefits of having a professional coach working with you if you are an entrepreneur or business owner. Every day my clients reinforce that message.
Today I was on a coaching call with Nancy, a financial planner for a major brokerage in Denver. Like a lot of financial planners, she has an internal partnership with another planner who joined the firm through a merger about a year ago. One of the big issues she has been wrestling with is the integration of their “books” — their respective accounts. While she and her partner, Russ, get along very well, they haven’t cross-fertilized their accounts so that each can handle the other’s clients. Why is that even important? Well, there’s a lot to be gained by having the crossover of coverage. For one thing, Nancy and Russ have different but very complementary skills. One is a technically-oriented trader who makes investment decisions based on charting stock movements; the other is more intuitive. Also, Nancy wants to be able to slow down a bit in a few years–she’s 59, Russ is 39. They have regularly scheduled calls with clients every month. Nancy told me, “Those calls are a good opportunity for me to have Russ sit in, and then I can introduce him to a few of my clients and then the following call get him to handle my client himself. And vice versa.”
Well, yeah! How did Nancy come to this obvious idea? She told me, “I just had never talked through the problem before. Now it’s so obvious.”
Coaching allows you to get the idea out in the daylight where you can examine it. Rather than sitting and stewing with something long enough to get distracted and then turn to something else, with coaching you can focus with a trained advocate, articulate the idea, and then have a next step. The whole idea of business coaching boils down to that, and it’s very powerful.
Recently, I wrote about the importance of having reserves–that virtual storehouse of tangible and intangible items that no entrepreneur can do without. When you have abundant reserves, you can make decisions more thoughtfully and strategically, as opposed to desperately and irrationally. Tangible reserves are things like money, clothes that fit you, a home you like to be in; intangible reserves include support, love from family, and boundaries of personal integrity. In the last post, I promised to add to the Reserves list, so here are some more items you need to stockpile as you build your entrepreneurial empire.
1. Reserves of Self-Care & Energy: This is very tangible and you can tell instantly if you have enough reserves in this area. Here are some signs that your reserves are lacking: You feel wiped out at the end of a work day with no energy left for fun; you feel like someone has their boot on your chest (or on/in some other place on your person); you crave sugar, fat, caffeine and carbs; you have aches and pains galore; people say, “You look like you been rode hard and put away wet.”
On the other hand, if people are saying to you: “Darling, you look mah-velous“; if you can’t remember the last time you were sick; if your last vacation was less than six months ago; if you get a massage, manicure, pedicure (you too, guys–you have not lived until you have had a pedicure) on a regular basis; if you tolerate nothing negative in your life (that goes for people, your surroundings, everything); then you have lots of reserves of self-care and energy.
This makes complete sense, does it not?
One of my role models of abundant reserves is my daughter, Jane, who is an actress. She doesn’t have reserves of everything yet (like money, for example) but she has most of the intangibles down. She needs to or she can’t do her job. Imagine Jane having a ton of internal conflict, physical pain and anxiety coursing through her body as the curtain goes up on a stage play she is starring in. The audience will see it in a millisecond. The same is true for you in your business and your entrepreneurial life. If you are not where you want to be in your building reserves in this area, sit down and write 10 things you can do–will do–before the week is out to fix the problem.
2. Reserves of Time. Is time tangible or intangible? Don’t know! Don’t care! But you need plenty of reserves of time, and space. How do you know if you’re deficient in this area? Are you the guy 10 feet behind me doing 70 MPH? Are you always late for appointments? Do you have a closet full of clothes you haven’t worn in five years? Do you allow yourself to be interrupted all day rather than staying on task with your agenda? All of these are symptoms that you don’t have the time and space you need to be an effective entrepreneur. How can you be creative, reflective and relaxed when you are scrambling? You can’t!
What can you do to fix the Time/Space Reserve problem? A lot. How about coming up with a daily routine you love to do, and doing it every day. In fact, come up with 10 Delicious Daily Habits that you do, every day! Start with what you eat for breakfast. I eat the same breakfast every morning (banana, organic peanut butter, honey and Grape Nuts in a whole wheat wrap–messy and yummy). It gives me real pleasure and I take my time with it…even though it grosses out my wife. That’s one of my daily rituals that helps me slow down and gives me a sense of abundant time/space reserves. If your breakfast is a Bavarian Cream donut, think of a healthier delicious daily habit to get you started.
Only mothers know what’s it like to have a baby, and only business owners really understand what it’s like to sell their company. I recently coached a business owner for about a year leading up to the eight-figure sale of his company. This was not a dot-com that rocketed to its valuation in a year or two. It look 25 years to get there. Selling a brick and mortar business with trucks, warehouses, hundreds of employees you’ve known for years, and slow but steady growth may not be sexy like Internet buyouts, but there are a lot more of them. They hold some important lessons. Should you or a friend ever be in a position to sell your small business, keep in mind:
- Sell to the right buyer, not necessarily the top bidder. There are lots of owners who sell to anyone who writes a check, particularly if their goal is to get the hell outta Dodge. The highest bidder isn’t always the best buyer, especially if the seller is staying on as a management employee and cares about his reputation. You want, and your customers deserve, a buyer who will invest in the business and make improvements that benefit customers directly. New inventory, better customer service systems, better benefits for employees–those are the kinds of things that matter and will elevate the seller’s reputation. If there isn’t a true upside for customers, they will defect to competitors, fearful that service levels and relationships will deteriorate.
- Have an advisor who has no dog in the race. A small-business owner who is selling may not have a board of directors and investment bankers advising her. If you find yourself if this situation someday, make sure you have someone you can trust and talk to who has no financial stake in the outcome. If you are using a business broker, even if you hired him, remember he is ultimately looking out for himself, not you. If the buyer lowers their offer over something trivial, just to see what your reaction will be, your broker may encourage you to take the worse deal. He gets a commission of a couple of percentage points, so his downside is small as long as a deal–any deal–gets done.
- Eyes on the prize. When you are a seller who has 20+ years into a business, it’s a different experience from being one with a couple of years invested. As a seller, you may not be a twenty- or thirtysomething. You’re likely to be in midlife, with plenty of other pressures on your mind in addition to selling your business. The ups and downs of the selling process are many and incredibly fatiguing. There are times when the the entire experience becomes almost more than you can tolerate. So have a mantra that keeps you positive and keeps your eyes on the prize of a great outcome.
If you have sold your small business, or know someone who has, and have some other “secrets of success,” please share them with your comments.
