Are You A Control Freak In Your Business?

It seems like most of my life I've expended a great deal of energy and attention on trying to control others and everything around me.

I kept a diary growing up. One entry read, "My mom got mad at me today. I'm going to promise to be a better person so she won't get mad at me next time. This is what I'm going to do: I'm going to do my chores around the house without being asked, do my homework and I'm going to be really nice to everyone in my family."

I somehow thought that keeping my mother happy was the secret to success as a child (don't get me wrong, I had a great mother!).

Fast-forward 30 years, after starting my own business I realized that I was still attempting to control everything that occurred in my business.

Every action was motivated by trying to achieve a particular result. I talked to prospects in a way that I thought would "get" them to hire me. I wrote articles and sales copy in the way that others were writing to "get" people to buy my products and services. My internal mantra and modus operandi was, "Just tell me what I need to DO to make more money and get more clients and I'll do it!"

I had a breakthrough when I realized that all my attempts to control and manipulate prospects and clients to make more money was leaving me mentally exhausted and drained.

And besides that, it plain just didn't work. Ironically, when I gave up trying to run my business from a place of egoic control I experienced a phenomenal breakthrough. I more than doubled the highest amount I had ever grossed in a single month.

Today's Reminder...

* Here's a gentle reminder that you can tell yourself to support you in integrating this powerful concept in your business today.

It's hard for me to let go of trying to control the outcomes in my business. And yet I realize at some level I am completely powerless over whether prospects hire me or if my marketing and efforts to attract clients is successful. Today I am willing to release running my business from my ego.

Even though I may need the money and might be worried about how I am going to pay the monthly bills this - or next month's bills for that matter, I am willing to surrender and trust that I will be guided in the moment to the next best course of action.

The Advantages of Staying Focused on Building From Initial Business Model Advantages

Let's explore why you will benefit from focus on building on your initial business model advantages over competitors. Here are the reasons:

1. Building from initial business model advantages adds to knowledge of what customers need and how to provide better solutions. Without such focus, competitors can gradually catch up with an improved business model as happened briefly to American Woodmark.

2. Having provided superior solutions for a long time also increases customer loyalty and stability. From such longer-term relationships, even more can be learned. At the same time, your reputation grows with these customers in ways that makes them more willing to try your new products and services when you create them.

3. Most interestingly, building on the advantages of your initial business model can also help you create such better costs and service options for customers that you can see any advantage to buying from your most significant competitors. The premium price that they demand is easily justified by the value-added that your improved business model brings to their operations. Clearly, Iron Mountain understands this lesson, and is using its business model development expertise to build what will someday be an enormous company with very high market share.

4. Can this process of constantly improving business models ever stop? No. TriQuint's approach to constantly seeking more specialization by focusing its divisions into smaller and smaller sets of problems is a good model here. Even that fine approach will probably require reworking in the future. For example, at some point, the company will probably have to address how to take its customer knowledge and apply it to designing components using other semiconductor technologies. Plus, extreme narrowing of focus may eventually mean that optimization across the customer's total systems needs will be lost into fragmentation unless divisions become very good at teaming up with one another.

5. This challenge is exciting because greater opportunities for creativity and success are constantly being opened, like doors along a never-ending hallway of success. Unlike many areas in life where more can be less (like eating too much), building these business models, building on them, and rebuilding them seems more like designing and filling an expandable museum of new wonders. Each new attraction draws your attention, and the mass appeal of them all keeps you in close touch.

Simple Bookkeeping for Small Business

There are many reasons to closely monitor everyday transactions. Hiring the right bookkeeping professional to monitor your books and teach you how to properly keep track of the business's finances will help your small business thrive.

Hiring a professional to handle daily transactions is especially important if the business has many transactions recorded on a daily basis. Before becoming overwhelmed, do the research in order to hire a professional that is qualified to suit the business's needs. It is important to check the history and certification of the person you plan to hire. Any certified bookkeeper will gladly tell you how they obtained their certification and provide a list of references to check. The more you know about the bookkeeper, the more comfortable you will feel about them handling your everyday transactions and breaking them down into simple and easy to understand terms. A bookkeeper should be able to help you understand what they are talking about when discussing bookkeeping transactions with them.

If you are unfamiliar with simple bookkeeping it is not always easy to properly record transactions each day. This is why so many small business owners seek the help of a professional bookkeeper. Your bookkeeper should do everything they can to ensure you are properly versed in simple bookkeeping so you can stay on the same page with them and there is minimal confusion. Bookkeeping professionals might be able to make the process of recording daily transactions look simple but they should also understand that there is nothing simple about your business because it is your money and your livelihood. When seeking to hire a bookkeeping professional make sure you are comfortable with their knowledge and respect for your business. Although it may seem simple to them they should understand the fact that it might not be so simple for you.

Relying on computers can be a big mistake. Many people who run small businesses may try to save time when managing their finances and day to day transactions by using accounting software. There are many programs that are very reliable but there is always room for human error and one incorrect data entry can throw off all of the financial records. If you are not familiar with simple bookkeeping you could let a discrepancy go unnoticed, and when it comes time to give your books to your accountant they could have questions you might not be able to answer. A professional bookkeeper can show you how to properly use most bookkeeping software and can spot a discrepancy before it goes to your accountant. You can rely on bookkeeping software for some aspects of your record keeping if you understand the consequences of entering the wrong data and know that the software assumes that the figures you enter are the correct figures.

Have a Core Business Model Insight

Many people will tell you that it is all but impossible to move a company from focusing on one technology to another. How much harder must it be to do so when you also have to shift business models at the same time?

Undaunted, those are the kinds of challenges that today's business model innovators are taking on in switching both technologies and business models. Having a profound understanding of what needs to be done provides a core insight to guide those rapid shifts of focus.

When Tony L. White joined Perkin-Elmer (a so-so instrument maker) in 1995, he quickly shifted the company into a highly focused enterprise working on DNA sequencing. Even the corporate name was sold, along with most of the company's operations. By 1999, the company was comprised of two units with public stocks, one that made DNA sequencing machines (PE Biosystems) and the other its biggest customer (Celera Genomics), which led the race to finish decoding the human genome.

Pushed by Celera's progress, others bought more sequencing equipment. PE Biosystems' sales, profits, and value soared. Celera would sell its research to other companies to provide its on-going source of profitability.

With the human genome decoded and available for free from the U.S. government, how could Celera now earn a profit? The company quickly pivoted into taking the newly available genetic data and turning it into useful information for developing gene-based medicines. Under genetic problem-solving pioneer Craig Venter, Celera simulated how relevant genes and proteins will interact with potential drugs to predict effectiveness and side effects.

Similar to the race to decode the human genome, Celera was aided by protein-analyzing machines from Applied Biosystems. The new process operated much faster than the old technology, and offered the potential to locate many disease-causing proteins that would not be uncovered solely by looking at genes.

To gain a base of potential products to develop, the company acquired existing biotechnology firms at a time when the values of such stocks were often low and alternative funding was limited. The company aimed to improve the success odds in expensive clinical trials from 1 in 10 to as much as 1 in 3.

The switch to the next business model occurred with very little delay, which indicates that advanced thinking must have been focusing on this opportunity for some time. "We plan to be one of the major health care companies in the world in not too many years. We're going to give it our best shot."* Interestingly, it soon became clear that new leadership skills were needed for Celera's new business model, and Venter was replaced in early 2002.

The underlying core concept of each of Applera's (the parent company's new name) business models is faster and cheaper ways of finding new information about what causes and prevents disease. The company uses improved mathematical models, new equipment development, and the interaction of biological factors (including genes and proteins -- and probably including enzymes at some point) to constantly find faster and better ways to prevent and treat disease.

Genetically Engineer Breakthrough Business Models

Most people try to improve what they do by working on one element at a time. When it comes to creating more benefits for stakeholders, a better approach is to combine many complementary improvements by building on what other highly successful organizations have done in other fields. Let's consider three cases:

1. Some Hawaiian resorts keep fish pools that attract tourists, provide a place to entertain diners, allow children to learn to fish, and are kept stocked by feeding fish with stale bread sent back from diners' tables.

2. Earthwatch helps scientists perform experiments by asking volunteers to give of their time and money. When a scientist makes the tasks interesting and puts them in an attractive location, volunteers stand in line to help.

3. The Grameen Bank in Bangladesh has helped eliminate a lot of poverty by providing low-cost, small-value loans and teaching its savers and borrowers how to live more fruitful lives and to start businesses.

With all of these ways to cast bread upon the waters and build a better tomorrow, you can see that there exist many opportunities to create hybrid business models from these successes. Consequently, these new business models will ensure even richer and higher quality harvests by expanding the community of those who can imagine better ways to create them.

As an example of what's possible, the Hawaiian-style combination of tourism and scientific research with dolphins described above could be combined and transported to rural parts of underdeveloped and developing countries.

This business model might require a partnership among community leaders, scientists, Earthwatch, lenders willing to help start Grameen-style banks to establish infrastructure, and the local tourism providers.

While in the rural communities, tourists could work on interesting scientific experiments, share their practical knowledge with local people through translators and educators in the community, consider investing in local versions of Grameen banks and projects, and gain useful knowledge to use in creating new markets for local products and services after they leave.

The Outlook for Medical Device Manufacturing in Europe

Europe, being a leader in medical device manufacturing, has recently made revisions to medical device directives in order to improve and strengthen its framework. The revisions are expected to provide uniform level of protection for everyone concerned about public health as well as cater to the new or emerging technologies when it comes to health care and medical equipment.

In the most recent updates, European Health and Consumer Policy Commission is looking into tightening controls, enhancing surveillance and restoring confidence of the patient and the public in medical device and in the manufacture of such. Early this year a company based in France was found to be manufacturing fraudulent breast implants which contain non-medical grade silicone. This medical device manufacturing firm is known to have sold hundreds and thousands of non-medical grade silicone breast implants worldwide of which France, Germany, Spain and United Kingdom are some of the countries were women were implanted with such faulty equipment.

Manufacturing of medical equipment is known to be a profitable and meaningful endeavour. It plays an important role in promoting healthcare not just in Europe but globally. However, in order to make sure that scientific excellence is observed in all stages of production or manufacturing and marketing, the initiatives undertaken by countries like Europe in revising its current directives, laws and policies is of high importance. In addition, creating a third party conformity assessment body which will look further into high risk medical devices such as breast implants before they are placed in different markets for sale is an important step that Europe has undertaken to make sure future health risks are avoided.

Europe's step in checking further on its current legislation pertaining to healthcare, devices and manufacturing and revising it to suit the present and future needs is just the first step. Implementation of revised laws and directives and making sure that they are observed all the time is another step. Manufacturing firms which are found to have violated certain laws and regulations should be made responsible for the ill effects of defective devices.

Energy-Saving Tips For Businesses

Businesses looking to become carbon neutral have a long road to travel: balancing all your energy usage, recycling all waste materials, sourcing eco-friendly materials for your products; it all takes a whole lot of commitment. The good news is that you can start small. Every step you take towards lowering your carbon footprint is a good step.

One business-savvy place to start is by assessing and reducing your energy consumption. Electricity bills are rising everywhere in the world. So everything you do to use less energy helps both the environment and your budget.

LED lighting
Retrofitting your entire business to LED lighting will save significant amount of energy every year. The initial costs of this can mount up but they will pay for themselves in energy saved in the first two years, so that for the rest of the estimated 10 year life-span of an average LED light bulb you are saving money hand over fist! Check out any incentives offered in your area, either by the government or by the electricity providers. You may find that there are rebate schemes to support small or large businesses who commit to reducing their energy consumption.

LED signs
The electricity consumed by signage can vary tremendously. If you have one small neon sign outside a shop, switching to an LED sign may not save more than a few pennies in electricity consumed. But if on the other hand your business uses multiple lightboxes, a raft of lighted signs outside and so on, sourcing LED signs and lightboxes to replace old ones will make a difference. Don't forget to look at your EXIT signs as well. These can easily be replaced with LED versions.

Switching Off
Many energy saving practices cost nothing. Make sure lights are turned off when a room is not in use. Switch off all office equipment outside business hours or when not in use for long periods. Make use of natural daylight when possible to light workspaces. Switch off outside lights during the daytime. There are a host of small measures you can take to save small amounts of energy; lots of small savings add up to larger ones over time.

Upgrade
Most businesses will have their own particular energy guzzlers lurking; perhaps it is an old machine that still works but is less efficient that it could be; or an old fridge in the employees' kitchen that ices up regular and needs de-frosting. Make a note to service machinery and appliances regularly, so that they are not straining and overheating, and replace older models with new energy efficient versions as soon as you have the budget available.