Did you make a New Year’s Resolution this year?

If you did, well done!

Question – Did you believe you will achieve it?

Now, I’m not knocking Resolutions – far from it. The dictionary defines Resolution as a ‘Firm decision to do something’ and I’m all for decisions and implementation of those decisions.

If you didn’t make a resolution this year the chances are it’s because you’re fed up setting yourself up to fail even before you get to the end of January.
If you did make a resolution many of you will have done it ‘tongue-in-cheek’ knowing that it’ll never last.

We are now in the 4th day 2012, how many of us still even recall our New Year’s resolution?

However some of you will have made your resolution with good intentions and seriously want to make them happen. Even so, to the question ‘Do you believe you can achieve it?’ Many of you will have answered with a faltering ‘I hope so…’

The thing is that this experience starts at a pretty early age with our mums and dads asking us on New Year’s Day to make a New Years Resolution. For most of us we are then left to our own devices to achieve them. No Support, no encouragement – nothing – until next New Year when they ask you to make another.

Think about that… Every year from when we were kids we experienced our ‘decisions to do something’ failing.

Its little wonder then, that a firm commitment to taking action happens so rarely in Small to Medium sized businesses. We’ve learned from repeated experience from an early age that they don’t get results.
Yet we all know that in business it’s absolutely critical to on-going success to build in time to review past performance and plan future activity for improvement and then to act on the plan.

So how do we break that pattern?

How can we turn our Resolutions, both business and personal into results that we can be proud of, regardless of what time of year we make them?

Here are some tips and ideas which have helped ‘break the pattern’ for the clients we work with.

• Avoid self-blame, which is a prime predictor of failure.
• Expect slip-ups but avoid falls. You know what I mean, missing one exercise session should not put an end to the entire exercise regimen. Use slip-ups to strengthen resolve. Not an excuse to quit.
• Make realistic, attainable goals along with a plan based on real activity and tasksn. Make sure you share your plan and your resolve to carry it out with others who have a vested interest. (That’s doesn’t mean tell your Gran , you’ll be a millionaire next year!!)
• Cultivate a support network or a buddy system. Getting other people to hold you accountable to your Resolutions massively improves your chances of success.
• Track progress. Always measure progress, this strengthens resolve.
• Reward success with a reward established in advance.

Remember, your resolution, your activity plan, is a marathon, not a 100-yard sprint. It will take three to six months before a change becomes routine. The first month is usually not the problem for most people.

One last reminder, its about activity planning, NOT good thoughts and intentions. To paraphrase a saying, regardless of how much positivity I put out there, the only way I’m getting a Pizza for dinner is either cook it myself or pick up the phone and get someone else to do the work for me…

As we like to say here at Templeton Green, The only constant is change; what change will you choose today?

I’ve had one of those weird weeks, lots of positives, like my daughter’s parents meeting and a good friend becoming a mother for the first time, but also experiencing the uglier side of the nation as well.

 English football may me making the headlines due to a myriad of race abuse allegations, I note that all of the views expressed that we don’t have a race issue in English football, have one thing in common, they were all said by those who aren’t members of an ethnic minority.

 Now you may ask, social commentary aside, what does this have to do with a business blog. Well quite a lot really. I visited two banks this week, Santander and the other The Bank of Scotland. Both branches were in the leafy suburb of Newton Mearns in Glasgow. Here goes the story…

 My wife, decided to set-up two children saver accounts for the twins, as you do. HBOS was offering a great deal, so after I submitted the online application, she popped into branch with their proof of id and that was that. No big deal. Then… after 2 months, the standing orders started being returned after being processed without incident previously.

So like any consumer, off she toddled to the Bank of Scotland to ask why? She was summarily dismissed, saying its Santander’s fault. Not knowing any better, off she popped to Santander who confirm everything appears to be in order from their side. Undeterred as my wife is no wall flower, and off she goes banks to Bank of Scotland and speaks with a supervisor and gets brushed out the door in a Teflon shoulders action…

 It was enough for my wife to actually believe she must have done something wrong. I was adamant, nothing was wrong with the way the account was set-up and the fault lay with the Bank of Scotland. So as I had a few hours on Thursday, I accompanied my good lady to the bank.

 Being no wall flower myself, I was prepared to get shirty if someone tried the same tactics they had with my wife. Turns out we were seen by the same clerk as my wife. This time she took my papers and diligently tried to find the answer, which she did. HBOS had stopped these products so we had no option but to close the accounts. Now this is galling point, I simply gave over the same papers my wife had handed over the week previously. The only difference, I speak with a Scots Accent, my wife with an Asian accent.

 Now although my wife was born in Pakistan, she successful passed her UK citizenship test earlier this year, which means her grasp of English, UK politics is probably stronger than the average Brit’s. Her only tell tale that she is an immigrant (her skin colour aside) is she still speaks with an Asian accent.

 I write this blog with the understanding that  it is not racism that is on the rise, but the tolerance of ethnic minorities to being racially abused has lowered. I have been subjected to racial abuse at all levels throughout my life, but have never raised the issue ( got close one time when dealing with a nasty franchise) but the actions of Bank of Scotland have really placed a sour taste in my mouth.

 21^st century… my big brown arse it is….

 Lastly as we say at Templeton Green, in business as in life, we have choices, what will you choose today?

Firstly, Happy Eid to Everyone.

At a time of celebration, it is useful to reflect on our life and our choices, especially those related to business. I came across this excerpt today that I wanted to share. Unfortunately, I am unaware of the author of this thought provoking piece.

“There are two days in every week about which we should not worry, two days which should be kept free from fear and apprehension. One of these days is Yesterday, with its mistakes and cares, its faults and blunders, its aches and pains. Yesterday has passed forever beyond our control. All the money in the world cannot bring back Yesterday. We cannot undo a single act we performed; we cannot erase a single word we said. Yesterday is gone.

The other day we should not worry about is Tomorrow, with its possible adversities, its burdens, its large promise, and poor performance. Tomorrow is also beyond our immediate control. Tomorrow’s sun will rise, either in splendour or behind a mask of clouds; but it will rise. Until it does, we have no stake in tomorrow, for it is as yet unborn.

This leaves only one day: Today. Anyone can fight the battles of just one day. It is only when you and I add the burdens of those two awful eternities -Yesterday and Tomorrow – that we break down. It is not the experience of Today that drives us mad, it is remorse and bitterness for something which happened Yesterday and the dread of what Tomorrow may bring. Let us therefore, live this one full Today.”

There is a quote I recall that states “Procrastination is the grave in which opportunity is buried” that sits well with the above and on a day of family, celebration and reflection, I have a simple question for you today:

Good afternoon all. Just a quick blog today about the weekend. Decided to take the Saturday off and had a lovely relaxing weekend with the family. However it turned into a Busman’s holiday weekend, as I ended up talking to people about business, quite by accident. The theme was the same throughout… price. The inability to get a fair price for their goods and services.

 A blog by the wonderful Seth Godin came into my head. It was the issue he had with Mobile phones. One that I’m sue we can all relate to: The frustration that it doesn’t take a lot before the reception is poor and for the signal to drop. His observation, would you pay a few dollars more a month for a high-definition phone? A phone that always gave crystal clear quality and as long as you weren’t on the underground or a basement, actually worked. I’m sure you like me you would tend to say, if it truly was such a thing as a high def phone, I’d pay for the comfort of knowing it would always work…

 The business owners I met throughout the weekend, worked in very niche business areas where quality over quantity was easier than most to communicate, so what was the problem?

Two things, the last impression they left with their clients was price, so price was in essence all they would be measured upon and secondly, they wrapped their products in mundane “packaging”. If it looks cheap, then I ain’t going to pay a premium for it, am I? For a business owner I met on Sunday, due to the recession, the jars in which he placed his produce, went from these ornate glass sculptures to standard unassuming jars. Guess what it did for sales? The produce looks as if I can get it in my local supermarket, why would I buy it from you?

 Think about it, would you by a Jaguar from a garage that looked liked working man’s armpit? Course not, similarly if you have a 10yr old fiat punto, your not going to take it to Arnold Clark, knowing the cost of an oil change will be more than the car is worth.

 Another simpler analogy. A coffee/tea from a greasy spoon café vs. a trendy coffee house. Is the thing your drinking THAT different? So why does one cost you 90 pence and the other £2-£3?

 So ask yourself, do you end your conversation on price, or quality and reliability (of both the product and you)? Do you “package” your product to reflect its quality.

Last I looked, other than the east end of Glasgow, not many greasy spoon café’s are left in Glasgow. So do you have a high-def product but sell and package it as something less? All through fear?

 Lastly as we say at Templeton Green, in business as in life, we have choices, what will you choose today?

I’m going to start with a statement that seems counter productive to my profession;

Business Training is largely a waste of time and money.

The easiest way to explain this would be to recall a quote from one of our previous clients, Francis:

 Training in any form largely concerns itself with the transfer of knowledge. Unfortunately many of us will know the things we ought to be doing more of but we fail to understand the importance of key tasks.

This is where coaching comes into play and in particular Business Coaching. However we are dealing with an unregulated industry, so we as a company dropped the term “Business Coach” two years ago. Why? Because ask your self, every time you go to a networking event, how many coaches do you meet. As many as Graphic/Web Designers I would wager. Most of these coaches are life/NLP or confidence coaches, or worse still Accountants who claim to offer a coaching service, but in fact offer a business advisory service, which again deals with a transfer of knowledge.

So in all this murky water, what is a Business Coach and why on Earth would you need one?

Simple really. A Business Coach is a professional that has the necessary understanding of what works commercially and has the skill set to communicate that knowledge in such a way that, simply put, you ‘get it’ enough to take affirmative action which leads to results, both commercially and personally.

I’II give you another example, a client of mine, was sent on a 4 day management development course that is part and parcel with large corporate enterprises. 3 months down the line, she was still grappling with line management delegation. Having the good sense to pick up the phone we had a coffee and to quote her:

Now I won’t lie, I was very flattered and because she ‘got it’ perhaps in her enthusiasm she exaggerated a little. I simply helped her translate knowledge she had picked up from the course into a level of understanding she could use.

So we made a decision last month, we are reclaiming the title and setting a new bar that all “business coaches” must adhere to give themselves credibility.

If you are working with a Business Coach, then they ought to be able to agree to the following:
1. Inspiring the need to develop both yourself AND the business
2. Motivating you to take/find the internal resolve that leads to affirmative actions that drive the business forwards.
3. Lay business processes in place that move the enterprise away from an owner operated model to one that operates with a strong management board
4. Lastly and most importantly, is prepared to guarantee if they fail to educate, inspire and transform your business, then they will return their programme fees.

So ask yourself, ‘How big is the well of your business knowledge?’ And then ask, ’How much of this do you actually use day to day?’ If you actually did all of the things you ought to do, what would be the result?
The excuses of time, money, the economy are I’m sorry to say just statements of denial. Just look at our results http://www.templetongreen.com/our-results/ and you’ll see that we cut thru the quagmire of denial and excuses and help you gain the necessary understanding to move your business forwards.

With our new Programs Launching this month, we offer a money back guarantee, if it does not deliver a strong commercial result in line with the results we have shown above, we will give you a full refund at the end of the course. So finally I ask you, does the benefit of working with a Templeton Green Business Coach out weight the risk of staying with the status quo.

Get in touch for a needs analysis to find out which of our new programs are best for you and with training grants available, the investment becomes extremely attractive for you to push forwards the business and gain the commercial success you deserve.

Lastly as we say at Templeton Green, in business as in life, we have choices, what will you choose today?

There is a famous story by Napoleon Hill. It goes something like this:

There was a cat who liked to sit on the stove. One day he accidently sat on the hot stove. That cat never sat on the hot stove again. In fact he never sat on the stove when cold either. He simply got out of the business of sitting on stoves… He ‘over-learned’ from experience…

So why recap this story? Last week, I was treated to lunch by two successful business owners who both appeared to share traits with the cat in our story and herein lies the truth of the past few years.

Regardless of industry, the overwhelming majority of us have had to adapt to how we do business. We’ve seen our markets move, the strength of business relationships tested and the need to be less cavalier about spending.

The danger of over-learning from our experience is we begin to see everything we do as a prelude to disaster and walk the cautious path. We all know this path, the prudent and careful one, forgetting that it was the opposite of such behaviour that lead to our entrepreneurial desire and success. So we willingly move from one extreme to the other under the justification that we’re in tough times.

So what’s the result? We create a business that is starved of success, creativity and most importantly joy. With the green shoots of recovery becoming evident (go on, I dare you to take off those pessimistic specs and take a REAL look), we are all in danger of being the cat that tentatively goes back into the market place, that slows growth and confirms our worst fears, we’re not ready. We’ve forgotten what a calculated risk is. We just see the problem in things.

So how to improve? How to find a balance between caution and the cavalier? Here are three tips:

1. Write down your optimistic and pessimistic expectations for the task ahead.
2. Clearly write down the risks to success. Now this can be hard to see. We can be in denial about the real risks, so explain it someone who is not directly related to you business. Someone’s whose opinion you trust. If you can explain to them the task without using jargon, then you are more than half way there.
3. Look at both the Profitability and the cashflow requirements of the task. These are different. If a new venture/product/service has a high gross profit but the customer payments are delayed, you could find yourself out of business.

 Lastly as we say at Templeton Green, in business as in life, we have choices, what will you choose today?

The problem with woolly systems and processes

As we say at Templeton Green, in business as in life, we have choices, what will you choose today? ]]> http://www.templetongreen.com/2011/02/the-art-of-communication/feed/ 2 http://www.templetongreen.com/2011/01/can-a-tamagotchi-save-start-up-businesses/ http://www.templetongreen.com/2011/01/can-a-tamagotchi-save-start-up-businesses/#comments Mon, 24 Jan 2011 14:15:10 +0000 admin http://www.templetongreen.com/?p=101 by M Asim Afzal

Starting a business is hard. But keeping one going is even harder.Scotlandhas an unenviable business failure rate compared to the rest of theUK, with 60% of start-up companies failing within the first three years of business, and an alarming 80% going under within five. There are, of course, many reasons why a business fails, but more can be done to ensure new business owners are fully prepared for the hard work and the 24/7 attention required to keep a new venture afloat.

 Starting a business, in my eyes, is similar to owning a pet for the first time. We create this ideology of how much fun it’ll be and the benefits we will receive from having one. But it’s not until you actually get the pet or start the business that you realise there’s a lot of clearing up, hard work and dedication required to get the most out of it.

 For example, looking after a dog is more than simply enjoying long summer walks with man’s best friend – whether you like it or not, your dog needs feeding, regular exercise (regardless of the torrential rain outside), bathing and taken to the vet when it isn’t well – a costly exercise in itself – not to mention endless amounts of attention and cleaning up after it.

 Do it right and your dog will be your best friend. Do it wrong and it’ll take its appreciation elsewhere – leave the gate open and it’ll be gone.

 When my niece, aged six, asked for a pet, she was given a Tamagotchi – a virtual pet which needs to be fed and cared for just like a real one. If she could keep it alive for two weeks then a real pet would be considered. She was the perfect owner for a couple of days but she soon became bored asking her parents to look after the pet. Within a week, two virtual pets were on their way to digital heaven.

 If potential business owners were forced to successfully run a Tamagotchi-style virtual business before they received funding from banks and business start-up agencies, how many would actually be granted the cash?

 Funding bodies might be more inclined to say yes if people can prove they can cope with everything a business can throw at them – they might even invest a little more.

 The internet hosts an array of virtual games where virtual beings make friends, earn money and eat, so I see no reason why we can’t create a similar environment for trialling businesses and their owners.  Real business issues could easily replace fighting and car racing challenges on the web.

 If you own a business, and particularly if you don’t employ anyone, you are responsible for everything – cleaning, tax returns, facing the public, ordering stock – and when you’re relying on yourself to do all these things on top of what you perceive as your job, it sometimes becomes more than you can manage.

 All too often, I see business owners struggling because they hadn’t thought about who would look after the business when they’re on holiday or didn’t really like doing the finances, so constantly pushed them aside. You might have a great product or service to offer the market but if the back office tasks aren’t completed properly and poor decisions are taken your business won’t survive.

 Maybe it’s time we started urging businesses to prove they can hack it in the digital world before they come a cropper in this one.

 Lastly as we say at Templeton Green, in business as in life, we have choices, what will you choose today?

A warm and Merry Christmas to everyone

During this festive period, we thought we would share the true story for business owners of the classic film “A Miracle on 34th Street”. In particular the 1994 remake with Lord Richard Attenborough

For those who are unfamiliar with the story, we have a classic independant department store, Coles, that is struggling and under threat of being taken over and shut down by a global faceless conglomerate (boo hiss go the pantomine calls). They hire a Santa, calling himself Kris Kringle. The story unfolds over whether or not Santa Claus exists and the truth that miracles can still happen regardless of your age and regardless of what others may tell you otherwise…

However the true meaning for business is the truth of Co-opetition. i.e. co-operation with your competitors.

In the story Coles Santa informs the shoppers of where they can go to obtain the best bargain for the particular present they are looking for. On the face of it, the owners and manages of the department store would be horrified to learn that here is an employee, steering customers away from what they wanted to sell and actively advising shoppers to go elsewhere for business.

What Madness!

The truth is they used this as their USP (Unique Selling Point). If Coles Dept store hasn’t got it , we’ll find it for you. It is an overnight success and Cole’s once more becomes the highlight for every child at Christmas and for the grateful parent who will receive some sound advice this yuletide.

Now given the current climate, we all need help with increasing sales and business, wouldn’t you agree? Instead of working against one another, what would be the result if you worked together with your competitors for mutual benefit?

Of course, you need to be clear on the rules and boundaries and agree on a plan of action, but would the benefit outweigh the risk of going it alone?

So ask yourself, which competitor if you were working alongside, would actually help your business? Just like Cole’s department store, think of how your prospective client will react and not to allow your own fears to get in the way of some powerful business oppurtunities…

We have faciliated these discussions and know that they work, if all parties have the courage and determination to allow business oppurtunities to come their way. As we say at Templeton Green, it is your choice, what will it be?

Enjoy what remains of the year and enjoy the holidays with friends and family

From everyone at Templeton Green, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

 huge thank you to Mark Johnston of Grid Design a client of ours who is the inspired the following story.

Question – What is the function of a catalyst?

Collins Essential English Dictionary has catalyst described the noun as:

1. a substance that speeds up a chemical reaction without itself undergoing any permanent chemical change.

2. a person or thing that causes an important change to take place: e.g. a catalyst for peace

Now, in the majority of businesses, all of the major ingredients necessary to run a thriving commercial enterprise are in place and will have been so for many years, but ask yourself, could the business operate faster and more effectively if you could give it a good shake and get rid of some of the cobwebs?”

Here are some tips and ideas which may help to identify whether a catalyst is necessary within your business:

• Does your marketing yield consistent number of enquiries per month?
• Is there a proven process of review and change to increase sales conversion?
• Is this year’s turonver and profit going to exceed last year’s figures?
• Does the business review its performance and implement improvement changes every 90 days?
• Does everyone in the business pull in the same direction?

Remember, regardless of what the media portrays, there is still business to be found and money to be made.

It is your choice, what environment do you create for yourself and your team, one that gets by or one that flies?

Want to get started immediately?

For a limited time only, we are giving local business owners the opportunity to undertake a full 2.5 hr business review with our compliments.

We’ll review your marketing strategies, your sales process and your cashflow potential within the business. Our guarantee is that we’ll leave you with a minimum of three proven ideas to move your business forwards.

Just ask yourself the question, is the benefit of this complimentary review by experienced business improvement specialists outweigh the risk of keeping with the status quo?

Does that sound like a worthwhile investment of your time?

Our role is to help start the reaction and provide the re-education of business strategy for this new business environment. Just look at our testimonials to see direction and focus we’ve given to so many businesses, both small and large.