To read the papers, blogs and listen to TV news is to get lost in a sea of contradictions. "Now is the time to double down!" some will say as they name the great businesses that were born in past turbulent times.  "Batten down the hatches!" others say as they insist you must cut costs anywhere and everywhere to survive the doom and despair that, almost, every business is fighting through.

Are either a true and pure strategy?  Bet it all or hide in the corner?

For starters, the last thing you want to do at times like these is get stuck while wondering which path to choose.  So, I put it to you, why must you choose one or the other?  Why not double down on the area(s) of your business that you are truly best at and batten down the rest?

Why not take the time (now!) and figure out what the most profitable activities are for your business. Find out what products/services your clients love... by asking them!

Here is a plan to consider:

1) Call as many clients as you can in the next 3 weeks and ask them why they choose to work with you over anyone else. Push them to be specific. This is for them as much as it is for you. At the same time, ask your staff what they think you do best.  Ask them why they think clients like working with them and the company.

Resist the urge to guess the answers in advance and let the clients real words come through.  In my experience, some clear trends will emerge, quickly.  Do not stress if what they say is different from what your competitors are doing or what you had hoped and wished they would say.   In fact, rejoice if that is the case. You already know your "world view" of your business. You want and need theirs. Finding the intersection where what you do best connects with what your clients truly give a shit about is your best target.

2) Write down those key products/services as your "core" offering. That is where you want to double down and innovate, improve and focus.  That is where the time, energy, innovation and money goes. It is the safest bet you can make. Communicate it clearly to everyone inside and outside the business.  Tell them your plans, what new cool tools are coming next. Show them that you listened to them and the specific things you are going to make real.

3) With this focus in place, go through every single expense.  It should now be easy to decide which ones support your core and which ones do not. If it does not, then batten it down (Reduce it to an absolute minimum or eliminate it completely). Do it all at once. Explain the reasoning behind it to everyone and get past it.

If you feel that there is not enough money to invest in your core, try the "$1.00 less" exercise. To be candid, it is as painful as it is effective.  Get your budgets, revenue, expense and any other reports you need all together and figure out how you design your business so that it spends at least $1.00 less than it earns. You may want to do this with a conservative estimate of what you think you will realistically earn in 2010.

Forget growth projections for now. Work with what is real and what you know for sure. When you reset the business to match where you really are it will be much easier to deal with focused growth from there forward. If you cannot get to that $1.00 less than try it again! Many years ago I sat in a lonely conference room late into the night with my CFO and ran through this exercise 8 or 9 times until we got our expenses to $1.00 less.  It's no fun, but I wish I had done it a year or two before. 

Fear persists when control does not exist. When you figure out those things you do best, what your clients care about and have comfort knowing your company will earn more than it spends... control returns.

Be honest with yourself (and everyone else that is in "the battle" with you) and attack the problem.

Batten down AND double down.

Compelling story in the NY Times about the focus Disney places on decreasing the amount of time their theme park customers wait in line (And the better experience they create while they are on line).

For every business that have customers wait on line (or on hold for that matter), this should be your case study on turning that time to your benefit.  Nothing fancy, trendy or social media-ish about it.  These are the moments when your customers are waiting on you. Use it wisely and reap the rewards. 

Article link: Disney Tackles Major Theme Park Problem: Lines

An excerpt:

If Pirates of the Caribbean, the ride that sends people on a spirited voyage through the Spanish Main, suddenly blinks from green to yellow, the center might respond by alerting managers to launch more boats. Another option involves dispatching Captain Jack Sparrow or Goofy or one of their pals to the queue to entertain people as they wait. “It’s about being nimble and quickly noticing that, ‘Hey, let’s make sure there is some relief out there for those people,’ ” said Phil Holmes, vice president of the Magic Kingdom, the flagship Disney World park.

What if Fantasyland is swamped with people but adjacent Tomorrowland has plenty of elbow room? The operations center can route a miniparade called “Move it! Shake it! Celebrate It!” into the less-populated pocket to siphon guests in that direction. Other technicians in the command center monitor restaurants, perhaps spotting that additional registers need to be opened or dispatching greeters to hand out menus to people waiting to order. “These moments add up until they collectively help the entire park,” Mr. Holmes said.

In recent years, according to Disney research, the average Magic Kingdom visitor has had time for only nine rides — out of more than 40 — because of lengthy waits and crowded walkways and restaurants. In the last few months, however, the operations center has managed to make enough nips and tucks to lift that average to 10.

Related post from a few years back: Innovating around your customers waiting time

To celebrate its 10th year of e-commerce success, Ralph Lauren is launching a 4D light show at their flagship stores in London and New York. All produced by Netherlands based projection wizards, NuFormer. Here is a behind the scenes video of how it was produced. (via mashable). 

And here are some more videos of their work. 

Lesson: Attention and wonder comes from doing what others will not try.

Update: Here is the footage of the actual Ralph Lauren show on November 20, 2010

This was the first post I ever wrote for this blog back in 2005.  Given all that is going on in the economy and in your business world I thought it was appropriate to publish it again.  Now is the time to challenge your thinking, embrace a different approach and get back to the basics that give you and your business purpose and passion. Find your basics.... and rock them!

In a former life, I was running my own logistics company. It nearly killed me. Tears, fear and stress.

“Business is tough,” they say. “You were expecting it to be fun and rewarding? What planet were you on?”

I had lost the plot.  I was always working for “what will be” instead of enjoying “what was”.

Railing against my dumb competitors and how their cheap prices and poor service was ruining a once proud industry. Surely my clients would see that choosing a giant competitor was a mistake.  I knew why we were better…  My sales staff would tell people how we were the best of all worlds.  Why weren’t they flooding through the door?

But I wasn’t alone.  Scores of business owners wake up at, the proverbial, 2am wondering why they lost a customer to the supposed “poor service competitor”, wondering why their latest branding message or marketing blast isn’t making the phones ring off the hook and stressed at forces that seem outside of their control.

Looking back, experience tells me if your main purpose is keeping up with the competition, then you’re already halfway in the business morgue.

The competition is not the problem, YOU are the problem. Unless you are the CEO of Wal-Mart or of the same lowest-price-wins ilk, I would love to know why your competitors truly matter.

Why would you want your competition to dictate your actions?

If you knew what your ideal clients really wanted (what was truly meaningful), nothing more, and you delivered that to them perfectly… then suddenly…

Suddenly, there is no competition. Other people’s prices, other people’s products.  They’re not real. Like Bhudda would say, “just an illusion.”

What IS real is the people you care about and finding out a way to look after them better.

Keeping up with the Jones’ is never fulfilling in your home life, so why should it work in business? Critical point.

You don’t need to be the next Microsoft. You don’t need to find a cure for cancer. You don’t need to borrow millions of venture capital dollars with the hope to pay it back once you hit 1,000,000 members, visitors,etc... Every business has a meaningful reason for being. It doesn't have to be connected to what you sell but it IS important that you connect to it. This connection makes all the marketing and sales really work... Without it, not so much.

Growing a solid, strong and sustainable business that takes care of the owners, the staff, their community and their clients is a superior result. Anything more is just vanity and needless suffering.

The journey of owning your business should be just as fun and exciting as the end game.

Believe. Innovate. Be Unique. Don't spend forever on the dreaming part,  just start doing it. Make it fill up your cash account.  Enjoy the whole experience. The way to get there is not necessarily to "fight like hell" ...rather to get the business to a place where you can be passionate about it and enjoy the 10-20 hours a day you will spend doing it.

When you arrive at this place it will no longer feel like a fight... just a great part of your life.

Found this great gem buried in the back of "Buzzmarketing:Get People to Talk About Your Stuff" by Mark Hughes.

"Rule number one is, if you want big ideas, be prepared to be uncomfortable. Big ideas will always make you uncomfortable in some respect. If you’re comfortable, it’s too vanilla. It’s too invisible. You need to be a little uncomfortable…. It takes courage to break through the clutter. It takes courage to rub some people the wrong way.

Just remember, if you’re pleasing everybody, your advertising will look like everybody else’s, and you’ll be invisible."

Something to consider if you find yourself moving forward with new ideas only if and when they feel safe and comfortable.

I stumbled on to the web site for Uber designer Paul Rand the other day.  Many amazing articles and I highly recommend the visit (Click here to visit the home page).

I thought this excerpt from an article entitled "Logos, Flags, and Escutcheons" was particularly compelling (But do click through and read the whole piece):

"Here’s what a logo is and does:

A logo is a flag, a signature, an escutcheon.

A logo doesn’t sell (directly), it identifies.

A logo is rarely a description of a business.

A logo derives its meaning from the quality of the thing it symbolizes, not the other way around.

A logo is less important than the product it signifies; what it means is more important that what it looks like....

...A well designed logo, in the end, is a reflection of the business it symbolizes. It connotes a thoughtful and purposeful enterprise, and mirrors the quality of its products and services. It is good public relations-a harbinger of good will.

It says “We care.”

Some good food for thought when thinking about your logo or designing one for others.

I just finished re-reading Tom Kelley's excellent book: "Ten Faces of Innovation." It remains one of my favorite business reads. There is a section towards the end of the book that focuses on "the subject of waiting - an unavoidable element in most customer journeys- and I believe that the way you manage those critical wait times can make all the difference in how your company is perceived."

Too few consider that the entire time your current or potential customer is waiting for you they are interacting with your brand and your company.

Mr. Kelley points out a variety of strategies to keep people informed, as they wait, that mainly center around music/messages on hold and that friendly voice that tells you your expected wait time. These options are certainly better than dead air but they have existed for over 10 years. It's simply old news and really doesn't dramatically change the experience of waiting. If I am waiting for you, I am already inside YOUR customer experience. So... make it an experience! There simply has been too little innovation in customer waiting time.

And there is an opportunity for you to seize.

If you do not know where waiting is occurring within your customer experience then that is the first place to focus on. Find out and write them all down. Figure out what they are doing while they are waiting. Are they on hold? on a line? Are they lost in the dark while waiting for a delivery? You don't need to put together a task force for this or have a bunch of meetings. Grab a pad, call 10 customers and ask them.

What information could you be giving them during this time that would make that time truly valuable and memorable? Implementing innovation in just this area will make an enormous impact. Make it a goal to implement just 1 new tactic In the next 30 days. Repeat as necessary.

A while ago I wrote about the impact an organization can make when they take the time to show the audience how something is made. We often forget all the work and thinking that goes into the products that we take for granted. (Original article is here).

Apple demonstrates this again today as they launch their new line of laptops.  They spent a lot of time discussing how the body of the laptop is made from a single piece of aluminum, why that is important and what it all looks like.  They even made this elaborate video that shows the entire manufacturing process and the design decisions made along the way.

I defy anyone to watch this and not feel that the laptops are worth a little more money than before they watched it.  How armed are you now to explain the inner workings of your laptop to friends?  How much more connected do you feel about the product?  YOU are now the expert.

Compare that to how you feel about reading the specs of a new laptop from Dell, Sony and the rest.They may do exactly the same things or even better.  It simply does not matter if they fail to share the story.

Knowledge is power.  Keeping it a secret adds to the blur.

If you are wondering why people will not pay more for what you make or do, you should start by asking yourself how much they understand the work that goes into it.  I don't care if it is a tax return, a light switch or a $100,000 sports car. You add value when your customers know all the details, all of the expertise and all of the thinking behind it.

So when will you make a video that explains it?   How about a short ebook?  Maybe set up your own keynote and tell your story?