Go West young Man, Go West.

Horace Greeley is believed to have given this advice to the men of America in an editorial written in 1865, you can read more about it here. Greeley favored westward expansion. He saw the fertile farmland of the west as an ideal place for people willing to work hard for the opportunity to succeed. So do I.

Go West Young Man, Go West!

Those of you who know me, know how important it is for me to be a passionate advocate for the company and product I work for. I have been fortunate to have been in this position over the many years I have worked in the SMB space. The great news is I get to be in that position again.


I am pleased to announce that I have accepted a position with Axcient. For those of you who do not know them, Axcient is one of the leading providers of Data Backup, Business Continuity, and Disaster Recovery hardware and software. In my role there I will be assisting Axcient and their partners grow their businesses.

Axcient

My position with Axcient may not be a big surprise to those of you who saw I was supporting them at the Autotask Community Live event this June in Orlando. One of the great things about being with the Axcient team in Orlando was getting to see so many people who were my partners with Autotask, are now my partners with Axcient. I expect those relationships to just continue to get better and better.


I am honored and excited to be working with Agent Less and the rest of the team at Axcient, and I’m looking forward to seeing and talking to all of you about them soon. So if you are a current Axcient Partner, please contact me and let me know why you love Axcient. Or if you are someone who should be an Axcient Partner because you need a Backup/ Business Continuity/ Disaster Recovery solution for your clients, please contact me and let me help you understand how Axcient can meet both your, and your client’s needs. 

Business Dog Training

Most of you who read my blog know I have a 3 month old puppy, Ben. His blog is here. Both my wife Janet and I have had dogs, and I have taken dogs through group obedience classes before. I watch Cesar. I knew the basics, I thought. I may have been able to take Ben to 50% of what he could be, but I doubt he would have been that responsive to everyone, even me all the time. Ben deserves better than 50%. Don’t all dogs? I mean we brought them into our homes out of their natural order, we should at least make their lives with their human pack as “natural” as possible. That means we need to be strong leaders and 50% isn’t good enough. The same is true of your business.

Not everyone is a strong business pack leader. So if you find yourself in this position, what can you do? One, you can get training, and there are lots of good trainers out there. Two, you can hire a strong pack leader. Most small business people opt to do nothing. Thereby relegating their business to less than it could be. Some will bring on a partner to help run the business, but very few and generally only if they are against the wall. Let’s talk about getting a coach to help train you and your staff.

So once you find a trainer, however you find them, and that is another blog for another day. Once you have a trainer, they will need to train different people. Your staff, yourself, and maybe your investors. Much like training a dog, your trainer can teach your staff new tricks, but if you don’t support and reinforce their training, they will start jumping on people and messing in the house.

Almost without exception, if you show me a dog misbehaving, I’ll show you an owner who didn’t follow through with their training. As a dog owner, I have some bad habits I have “picked up” over the years. The worse is inconsistency. So our dog trainer not only has to train the dog, he has to break my bad habits as well so we are training the dog in a consistent manor. As a business owner, I’m sure you also have some “bad habits”. If you don’t correct them, it doesn't matter what else the trainer does.

If you are not committed to learning new tricks that YOU have you do, save your money and don’t pay for a trainer. Both the dog and owner need training, and the same is true for businesses. Staff and Owner.

Primary Sales

Do you sell like a politician? How about someone running for the job? I have been watching the Republican Presidential candidates fight for the chance to run for the office and I wondered what would happen if you tried to sell that way?

If we were instructing the candidates to sell themselves, we would never allow them to do what they do while campaigning, and isn’t it the same? I prefer to sell using a consultative sales process. I don’t think there is any way you could call what they do, consultative.

They bluster, they exaggerate, they hide, they obscure, they misrepresent, they lie, then they start talking about their opponents. OK, maybe I’m exaggerating a little, and this is not a party politics thing either, all of them do it.

So there are obvious differences between a sale and an election, but there is a lot the same.

You need people to:

• Like you
• Agree with you
• Understand you
• Want you
• Believe you
• Trust you
• Vote for you

So you should be selling like you are campaigning, just without the mudslinging.

The State of Your Business

Tonight the President will give the State of the Union Speech. Well, to be accurate he will give the State of the Union as he sees it Speech. Which begs the question, do you do the same with your business?

Objectivity is a hard thing to have when looking at yourself. For most of us, our business is us. So looking at our business is just as hard as looking at ourselves objectively. So hard in fact we spend lots and lots of money to join peer groups or hire consultants to be honest for us.

Believe me, I’m not saying not to do those things, in fact I encourage it. But before you spend a dime to get someone else’s honest opinion, give your own honest opinion.

Do you feel a little sick to your stomach hearing what you said? No? Go back and do it again, more honest. Think like your spouse. There, you got it. Now when you pay someone to give their opinion, you have something honest to compare it too.

Be sure to give the opposition their rebuttal as well.  

Anti-Failure

Generally there are two schools of thought when it comes to winning. You won or you failed, or we are all winners. I’ll offer another option. To not try is to fail, to not achieve is to not win. Anti-failure.

So the phrase Anti-failure has meaning to me. Success is never a given. Even with 100% effort, focus and desire, the plan may not succeed. Is this a failure? I say no, I say it is an Anti-failure.

Failure is giving up. Never trying to better yourself. Never striving for more. Being content with what life hands you, now that is failure. So the opposite of that? Pushing, strengthening, striving, driving, that is all Anti-failure.

So I choose an Anti-Failure life where I may fall short, I may skin my knees, I may not win, but I will not concede.  

Inspecting Belly Buttons

The last couple of days my company has been doing our QBR (Quarterly Business Review). This is a great exercise for a company, and specifically a department to show and tell the good and the bad. The successes and failures and most importantly, lessons learned.

Do you do this in your business? No matter how big or how small your business, this should be a cornerstone of what you do. each member of the team should have individual goals that they should be accountable to to their team. The team should be accountable to the department, and the departments to the company as a whole.

Lessons learned is also a key part. Knowledge share in a company is a key way to grow success. Don’t make every department learn their own lessons. Share Failure to grow success.

Iowa Caucuses for Your Sales

What are the Iowa Caucuses anyway? Well if you don’t know, you can check it out here. In short, it is a popularity contest. A small group of people in an insulated area are give an extreme level of decision making power for the rest of the country.

So when you are selling to an account, who needs to vote for you first before you even get started? The CEO, the IT department, end user, management? Whoever it is, it is a personality contest.

It is what you say and how you look, do you pass the smell test, these are the things that get you in the door. By you, I mean your solution too, but generally you can get a meeting without ever showing your product, if they like you.

So go to those picnics, kiss those babies, and don’t be afraid to step in a cow pie or two and you may get “voted” to the next level.

It Only Makes Sense In The Moment

I heard Joe Strummer say this in the documentary about his life. He said when you get an idea, write it down. Even if you have to knock people out of the way, just drop to the floor and write it.

What ideas did you have today that made a lot of sense when you thought them? Can you even remember them now? Of course not. Why? You didn’t write them down or keep track of them in any way.

I make a point to keep track of my ideas. I do this by either emailing myself, or using the voice memo feature on my phone. Some of these ideas even make sense the next day. So while the thought process only makes sense in the moment, the idea itself can live on.

It May be a million Dollar idea, or just an idea in a million. Either way it is something that made sense in and for at least a moment, maybe it is work thinking about again tomorrow.

The Power of Deciding

If the decisions weren’t hard, no one would pay you to make them. Make no mistake, you are paid to make decisions, not to pass the buck, form a committee, make a spreadsheet, hold a meeting, or be paralyzed by too much data.

No matter what your position is in your company, you must make decisions everyday that will determine the success or failure of yourself and the company. In fact, your entire life is a series of decisions. What is the only thing worse than a bad decision? Not making a decision at all.

I tell this to my kids all the time. Some decisions are easy. Should you steal something or not? Easy decision. But sometimes you have 2 or more crappy choices. Now you still have to choose, but there is no perfect choice. Sometimes there isn’t even a good choice, but that is all you have.

So after you make a choice, now what? You live with it and make it the best you can. So what is more important than the decision itself? How you deal with the decisions you have made. Don’t be afraid to make a decision because it might be the wrong one. Understand that any decision you make with any thought at all will be better than a random decision given to you.

Embrace the power of deciding.

Who Do You Look Up To?

We all have heroes. From Superman to Mother Teressa, we have people we look up to, people we want to be like. So what do you do when you find out one of your heroes is less than you thought? Reject everything about them? Deny them? Act like you never liked them? Ignore the bad stuff? Well here is my take.

I try not to idolize anyone. Instead I admire and try to emulate traits and behaviors of people. I can then speak about what I admire about an individual as opposed to speaking about how I admire the person themselves. This fine distinction allows me to pick traits that will help me grow to be the person I want to be, not try and become someone else.

I am also able to continue to admire the traits of someone who may be tainted of flawed. Attila the Hun was not a nice man, hardly someone you would idolize. Yet there are many traits he possessed that could be channeled into positive, productive business practices.

I use the term Role model. To me a role model is not necessarily all or nothing. I highlighted the word role for a reason. Admire things about how a person performs in a specific role. I have had people that I admire their personal behavior, but abhor their business practices. They are still role models to me.