42tude

We learn most from mistakes and tough times, the bruising our memory banks don’t care to repeat. How to gain from bumpy economic times is a business owner’s worthiest cause right now.

In uncertain times we all re-evaluate what, how and where we’re spending. It’s an opportunity to relish not fear. Minds are open to change. It’s a rare and fresh chance to persuade new customers and allies why you, over your competitors.

How do you want your company to look on the sunny side of this rollercoaster?
When employees, suppliers and stakeholders understand your vision that roadmap helps them see their place in your future. The pessimism before us becomes a mere phase to pass through. It’s a touchstone to buy into the big picture on the other side.

If you can’t see it opportunists will. Lead, follow, or get out of the way. You can always admit honourable defeat, save resources and start planning for an enterprise you do believe in. In many sectors selling out now may return a better result than in a year’s time.

That said, change will never be easier to implement than in coming months. We’re conditioned for it, provided strategic planning, authenticity and communication skills shine through. We will all take risks to back winners we believe in, those leaders who can shift our comfort zone by acting outside their own.

Some recession-busting ideals for a start:
1) Show a more human face.
From the first contact point through to your after sales service. You’ll gain more traction from that than mindless technological efficiency.

2) A boss says go. A leader says let’s go.
Pushing staff too hard or blaming the market is for losers, nothing changes. Challenge the status quo. Commit to a new vision. But make sure you connect your followers together for the ride. Inspire them with passion, candour and faith – provided you have belief in your follow through.

3) Think retro.
Something your customers can touch and smile about, that stirs memories of the good old days. Conceptually original, personally addressed, direct mail campaigns are ready for a comeback. Relief from the avalanche of bland and often unread email drops polluting our inboxes. Impact and the old-fashioned personal approach beat cheap-to-deliver.

4) Inverse your thinking.
Flip your views on suppliers, possible joint ventures and alliances. Explore where it takes you, while everyone is searching for solutions. How you can be an indispensable ally and save them money doing business with you, rather than just screwing on price. Have fun, throw a party for them, instead of going to theirs, where most time is spent lying to competitors anyway.

Flawed perception, fear of failure, and the inability to persuade others are said to be the greatest inhibitors to success. With so many unknowns on where the economy is heading, it’s best to downplay the first two for now. Your credibility as a decisive leader is one key to your powers of persuasion.

How have the crises in the world’s financial capitals affected you, your enterprise and your customers? Do you or should you even care?

The downside effects of gung-ho lending and spending affects every business with customers still leveraged against better times. Whether you’re someone who hopes for the best, or plans for the worst, this remains a wake-up call, a catalyst to re-evaluate the principles behind your business strategies.

But let’s start with a short-term tactical advice list:

• Be fiscally cautious but conceptually brave.
• Dare to think different on every business level.
• Cash flow is king, address debts and debtors.
• Only worry about what you’re able to influence.
• There will be winners too. Is that going to be¬†you?

But In terms of your longer term planning these crises will redefining consumer attitudes for the next generation. It may not be in the league of the Great Depression but it will have more downstream impact than any economic event since.

It would pay to take heed and act on groundswell changes in consumer psychology and attitudes. They’ve been bubbling away in the niches but are infecting the mainstream.

A trend best described as a movement to Keep It Real – the principles of honesty, trust and transparency – are being expounded as a more noble currencies of future success than financial excess and overt consumerism. Living within your means is fashionable again.

We’re also talking about moral leadership, the confidence customers and employees have in the business practices underlying your value proposition. The authenticity of actions over glib brand ideals.

Think of concepts like saving the planet, a chicken or pig’s pre-table happiness and distaste at overt profiteering as just scratching the surface of what’s to come. Forget about advertising your business as environmentally friendly – be it or prepare for a backlash.

An era of ethical righteousness, of being¬†better business and private citizens is upon us. Act real, be sincere, do what you say you’re going to do, or be judged and punished by consumers as never before. That is the message.

Consumers are now cynical about slick advertising and overpromising salespeople of all ilks who don’t keep it real be they politicians, financial¬†advisors or tradesmen.With the losses on savings and assets has gone confidence and most critically the trust memories take the longest to recover from.

It’s the same for business owners tired of debtors using them as a bank when their cash flows are squeezed. Stories abound of slower payment and debtors lying and denying money is actually owed. Credit, seen as right, has returned to being the hard-earned privilege it once was.

We’re starting to think local again even though the internet has widened our horizons. A trend to support small, caring enterprises over the big, corporate and impersonal is gaining more traction. That’s promising chunks of market share up for grabs, if you have a genuine and transparent people-first philosophies.

Depending on your point of view these are exciting, challenging or scary times. Getting real and keeping it real may seem a rather basic principle. But looking back we see the pre-crisis world really was too far out of kilter.

It’s not the thinking; it’s how we’re thinking.

A mantra, a manifesto, call it what you will. It’s a roadmap to the future, a window on your values, ideals and direction. Whether it’s etched into your brain, or hung up under lights, it needs meaning that’s going to move you.

Unlike once-fashionably bland company mission statements, a mantra is about people – you and your team – the inner tribe around you. A distillation of experience, mistakes, wins, intuition and expectations.

Let’s face it, some business and self-help books are but headline concepts with anecdotes to pad the spine. Yet even two fresh ideas or perspectives gleaned from anywhere make the cover price worthwhile.

Here are the chapter headings to the updated Tude mantra for companies, entrepreneurs and business start-ups. It’s one of our basic consultation checklists, a starting point before thinking about prescriptions in any enterprise review. It could also be a draft blueprint on which to base your own.

1) Be Visionary
Think big or think best. Project your enterprise into the future, to where you believe it can go. Return to current reality, then move forward, always with that ultimate vision in mind.

2) Culture is everything
Forge a team culture which befits your vision and values. Once people believe in your authenticity and ideals they’ll need managing on far fewer details.

3) Resist convention
Dare to be different, not a follower of fashion or tradition. Think laterally. Fresh ideas invigorate and capture attention. Half-measures delay inevitable change.

4) Encourage risk taking
Give your team every bit of information then the freedom to go for it. Encourage risk taking by celebrating earnest mistakes before learning from them.

5) Understand your weaknesses
Attract wise heads around you – even geniuses have blind spots others will overcome. Always share the kudos.

6) Patience and persistence are virtues
Never stop believing you and your enterprise is, or will be, extraordinary. If you’re lacking such conviction ask yourself: Why, how and where to from here?

7) Make the hard calls
Deal with issues and discontent early and quickly. If in doubt follow your gut instincts, usually they’ll be right.

8) Be goal free
Concentrate on generating momentum. Set targets and timeframes, but understand defined goals can be self-limiting. While impractical for many sales teams, it’s a key to visionary thinking for leaders and entrepreneurs.

9) Action speaks louder than words
Exceed others’ expectations – under promise and over deliver. It may be your business but never forget customers are the custodians of your brand.

10) Z five revolving steps of effective leadership
Analyze. Strategize. Verbalize. Mobilize. Energize.

Computers in their various incarnations do now rule the world. Not by artificial intelligence as once feared, but we have succumbed on mass as their robots. Have your tools of freedom also become chains of bondage?

This revolution of interaction is opening new paths for us to find or be found each day. Yet every new connection, application and portable device challenges those most precious commodities – free time and headspace.

Power for humans is intoxicating be it of knowledge, curiosity, love or self- fulfilment. Internet icons such Google, Microsoft and TradeMe came up services we clearly needed. Facebook, smart phones and their apps are clearly more personal in making ourselves the centre of our own universe and self-perception.

Now this is aimed at being more questioning than crititical but reflect on your time-in-motion in recent years. How many human beings have increased their share of your undivided attention since your first got that smart phone?

Yes, TV, newspapers and other traditional media have lost share of our headspace, including advertising as we knew it. We communicate with expanded networks of friends but do you have more coffees with your laptop or mates these days?

Born as a work tool, it now impacts on our lives as much as business days. Marketers pushing blurred boundaries, mixing business with pleasure and our genetic need to be social. There are so many ways to say ‘look at me’ now.  

Sure, every connection is an opportunity. Websites and smart phones build tribes, franchises, brands, fame, empires. So many online start-ups after new searchers who may stop be looking to be found.

The internet is the biggest pot of money the world has ever seen. Global trade and free services paid for by cyber bloodhounds sniffing our clicks. But doesn’t every market have a bell curve that rolls over, that point of diminishing returns?

Everyone’s time is finite and the online competition for our attention will keep growing. What’s the line where your in-box turns from expectation to dread?We have the power to change it for ourselves – if we dare. Unsubscribe. Delete or don’t reply or connection-free day.

In the end, curiosity and the necessity of earning a living will keep us wedded to our gadgets for as long as we can poke our fingers at them.

But every once in a while we all need to ask: Am I a slave to my computer, or is my computer a slave to me?

PS:¬How about going and seeing an old friend you haven’t talked to for a while? How nice it is to see and hear them laugh.

These words are itching to be shared -whether you’re taking on the world, a local business owner, or an employee. Ten points of inspiration from marketing guru Seth Godin. How to stand out and make a real difference:

1. Understand the urgency of the situation. Half-measures simply won’t do. The only way to grow is to abandon your strategy of doing what you did yesterday, only better. Commit.

2. Remarkable doesn’t mean remarkable to you. It means remarkable to me. Am I going to make a remark about it? If not, then you’re average, and average is for losers.

3. Being noticed is not the same as being remarkable. Running down the street naked will get you noticed, but it won’t accomplish much. It’s easy to pull off a stunt, but not useful.

4. Extremism in the pursuit of remarkability is no sin. In fact, it’s practically a requirement. People in first place, those considered the best in the world; these are the folks that get what they want. Rock stars have groupies because they’re stars, not because they’re good looking.

5. Remarkability lies in the edges. The biggest, fastest, slowest, richest, easiest, most difficult. It doesn’t always matter which edge, more that you’re at (or beyond) the edge.

6. Not everyone appreciates your efforts to be remarkable. In fact, most people don’t. So what? Most people are ostriches, heads in the sand, unable to help you anyway. Your goal isn’t to please everyone. Your goal is to please those that actually speak up, spread the word, buy new things or hire the talented.

7. If it’s in a manual, if it’s the accepted wisdom, if you can find it in a Dummies book, then guess what? It’s boring, not remarkable. Part of what it takes to do something remarkable is to do something first and best. Roger Bannister was remarkable. The next guy, the second guy to break the four minute mile barrier¬†wasn’t. He was just faster … but it doesn’t matter.

8. It’s not really as frightening as it seems. They keep the masses in line by threatening them (us) with all manner of horrible outcomes if we dare to step out of line. But who loses their jobs at the mass layoffs? Who has trouble finding a new gig? Not the remarkable minority, that’s for sure.

9. If you put it on a T-shirt, would people wear it? No use being remarkable at something that people don’t care about. Not ALL people, mind you, just a few. A few people insanely focused on what you do is far far better than thousands of people who might be mildly interested, right?

10. What’s fashionable soon becomes unfashionable. While you might be remarkable for a time, if you don’t reinvest and reinvent, you won’t be for long. Instead of resting on your laurels, you must commit to being remarkable again.

Are you thinking about it? Are doing it? Or will you think about starting again tomorrow?

Capturing the attention and imagination of your audience are fundamental to effective advertising. If the leading idea doesn’t grab you the underlying message drowns in our media-cluttered head space.

Advertising doesn’t sell a sausage. It’s the temptress of why or where to buy one. The quality of experience at point-of-sale decides where the most money changes hands.

When business is a dog – yes, it is tougher out there – where are you focusing your resources to make-up the difference?

Above all else, brand leaders are defined by peerless customer care and marketing savvy. Customer experiences are your foundation and advertising is the gloss. Are you stuffing up the order of priority? Cynical consumers, like all of us, only give their habits second chances.

Why alert in-house deficiencies to more new prospects than you have to? That’s an advert for the competition you paid for – a double whammy waste – a bit like putting lipstick on a dog.

What warm fuzzies delighted you into telling friends where you shopped today? It’s the unexpected – not what¬†an advert promised – those special touches that exceed our expectations when we’re there. Being better at being different should always be in our thinking.

That begs these questions: Are your ads grabbing enough attention?  Is your message good enough to shout about? How do you promise enough to be a prospect, then over deliver to become a habit?

Take an outsider’s look in your mirror, at how enchanting your brand is to deal with. What new feel good factors to entrench customer loyalty? Add some to your next marketing campaign but don’t fire every shot up front. The appreciation bonus after purchase and promises is the most telling of all.

Great ads flow from a good story told well. Attention-seeking angles mean more leads for less spend as long as it doesn’t insult sensibilities. Energised customers commit, and word-of-mouth praise is your free foundation. Simplistic maybe, but the basics get lost in the rush.

Traditional media effectiveness diminishes as ours eyes divert more to the internet. That means upping your spend to compensate, or honing the quality and impact all communication. How best to use new media is a subject for another day

This column will be remembered for a headline and graphic with a twist. The message isn’t new but it has an unconventional slant. On the internet you’re competing with millions for attention and it takes time to build credibility.

Many see advertising as visual pollution tolerated only for what it pays for in it’s midst. But it’s still possible to be a highlight in peoples’ day. Think graphic, creative, humour,surprise or revelation as the armoury. Original and simple is best.

When the next advertising sales rep calls, remember this: Radio sells fresh air, print blank space and the rest rectangular voids. The message you fill the gaps with counts for more than the media you spend all that money on.

When you’re spun the ‚’latest greatest deal’, ask yourself this: Is my business ready for this right now? Will my offering leap out from the rest? Just because your last campaign didn’t work, don’t say they work for a dog. Your message was just as likely the wrong shade of lipstick.

It’s not the thinking; it’s how we’re thinking. Change that and your world will change with you.

The best window of opportunity in years awaits the enterprising who seize the coming months while the media spotlight dazzles on gloom. Are you energised or anaesthetised by the financial pain of a relative few screaming from the headlines?

It’s no fun out there for the highly geared in retail, property or its fringe financiers. Let’s not forget the previous five years were the best those sectors ever had. They’ve simply crunched to levels of relative normality where good business models win over sentiment.

Recessions can be exciting – especially after such a sustained boom – because the majority are scared into rethinking their habits. We humans don’t change ingrained ways without a good reason. Fear, hope and love are our main motivators. Which emotion is your enterprise tugging at?

Good marketers like to think their strategies win over every new customer. It’s as much about buyers being ready for change. This recession is the sort of free shock therapy even great marketing¬†campaigns can’t buy.

Millions of people are open minded to new products and services they’ve never considered before.

The essence of winning market share is the right message connecting at the right time or place. Retaining those customers is about being good enough to become the next habit.

People aren’t necessarily thinking cheaper. They still want value, uplifting experiences, to be treated as special – not just offered them. Many aren’t suddenly poorer than last year. They just they feel that way because their homes and investments stopped appreciating. Perception becomes reality.

A winter of discontent and price rises muddies intentions for business owners too.  When cash flow or credit is squeezed the mind focuses on quick fixes more than the bottom line. Has your company got a strategy to be a white knight or a dark horse in the prevailing uncertainty?

A recession is a lightning rod for the entrepreneurs who see opportunity rather than fear being burned. Competitors who spurned a buyout six months ago may see an offer now as a blessing. Market share whether bought or won is cheaper to procure when moods swivel with the headlines.

The media thrives on rolling stories of woe and will magnify the titbits for months to come. Today’s economic stats will be news in three redundant month’s time. Business failures reported tomorrow were likely set in motion two years ago. Fear and morbid celebrity attract bigger audiences but don’t necessarily reflect the real picture.

More habits are in review than in the living memory of the majority even though this recession will likely be relatively mild. It just comes after the most sustained growth in two generations. The property boom touched so many and helped create a rump of red line lenders and debtors who believed it wouldn’t end.

History shows more fortunes built off the back of recessions and even depression. Brave timing and picking the underlying changes in market segments is the key – before competitors click on and change their habits too. Being cashed up when others are indebted is obviously an advantage.

Your fortunes in the next economic cycle may be determined by when your recessive genes turned positive this time. An incisive decision tomorrow could become the good news story the media uses as proof of economic recovery in two years time.

It’s not the thinking; it’s how we’re thinking. Will you be a leader of optimism or a follower of angst?

Fortitude is the backbone of achievement and the heart of disappointment in most walks of life. In business it’s the defining attribute in getting every venture going.

Fortitude is perseverance personified – for as long as it takes to build momentum and rattle your competitors’ cages. It’s abouttesting yourself for real, be your name Obama or Bob, the spec builder.

Fear and its subconscious partner procrastination are our natural inhibitors. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the truth. Fear of failure.Fortitude is that turnkey where fear is overwhelmed by the thrill of the possible.

Fortitude is when thinking turns into action. Sure, it takes some to bet the family’s jewels on an untested idea. Knowing when to give up takes even more. Finance institution soliciting others savings from the edge of their graves shows cruelly how fortitude’s sword cuts both ways.

We think of entrepreneurs as ideas people. It’s fortitude and aptitude in executing the idea that counts most. Overcoming the fear of making mistakes and then the urge to make excuses for them. For every excuse is a another mistake we never learn from.

The global credit crunch was a trial of financial fortitude on a grand scale. Easy credit inflated asset prices then greed, risk, excuses and disappointment . Every market bubble is the same and always in that order. Early birds flying against the winds of opinion often reap bigger rewards because it takes foritude than being a follower.

Entrepreneurship and leadership, in all walks of life, is about the credibility that comes from learning things most people don’t:

• Seeing the big picture.
• Personal honesty.
• Swallowing your pride.
• Taking calculated risks.

All are keys to productive fortitude. Do you have the humility to own up to your weaknesses? Do you see clearly enough to empower those who can help you compensate for them? Do you have the authenticity to share kudos where it’s due?

If so, you’re proving yourself a leader with fortitude. Your collective balls (ideas, reputation and capital) have likely been on the line for some time now, for these are traits usually learned over time.

If you’re still summoning the fortitude: It’s not the thinking, it’s how you’re thinking. This will be a recurring theme.

I have procrastinated about writing this column for a while. I could say I haven’t had time. But that’s an excuse. Words posted from behind the safety of a computer screen are hardly fortitude. But it is a beginning. Fortitude, confidence and the ensuing freedom of choices all grow from the acts of doing.