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.

A pre-requisite for a course I was involved with is the Kolbe "A" Index test that reveals one's instinctual abilities. From the site...

"What people can do usually has little in common with what they actually end up doing.

The reason? People have been taught to ignore their instincts, or worse yet, to fear or hate their instincts.

Ignoring your instincts and failing to appreciate the instincts of others can be disastrous.

When people act according to instinct, their energy is almost inexhaustible - like water running downhill. But, when people are forced to act against their instinct, their energy is rapidly depleted - like water being pumped uphill"

Obvious? Society seems to think otherwise.

From the very early days of school, to the upper echelons of business, it's always about focusing on improving our weak points. Rarely is it about celebrating that which makes us great.

Yes. I did say "Great." Greatness exists in most of us. And a person who doesn't believe that shouldn't be in business.

If all you care about and work on with your people is their weak spots, you will have a weak company. Forever. Lucky you.

Great companies are filled with great people. The more great the group, the more great the company.

Unlocking that greatness requires a focus on finding out where each persons uniqueness lies and matching their roles to it. The more that happens the greater the power your organization will generate.

And so the same thing applies again: Unique companies are filled with unique people. The more unique the group, the more unique the company.

Many clients I talk to are apprehensive about how to approach 2012. I have two words of advice: Here. Forward.

It’s only natural: how we view our past experiences shapes how we tackle future opportunities. We can’t help being informed by the past. However, the trick - the secret - is not to get paralyzed. You have a choice. You can let the economic pains of the past two years rule you. Or you can regain control, and get back to ruling the future of your business. Decide.

The problem we face is that the sting, stress, and strain we endured these past years have stayed with us too long to remember any other way. We don't approach our clients the same way. We scale back our wildest hopes and dreams. We now know that the bottom of the economy can drop out. A steady stream of news, tweets, and posts remind us the future is uncertain. Each reminder puts our minds back to those times of uncertainty and pain. And so we make every decision based on that place of worry.

That pain was real. The worry turned out to be correct. However, Then is not Now. And what Now requires is two basic things: Here. Forward.

Challenge yourself. Come out from hiding under your desk. Shrug off the weight of the recent painful past. Recognize when your thinking is hindered by the pain of the past few years. Try this: Everything now starts from here and moves forward. Every decision, action, conversation, and the stories you tell (yourself, your clients, and your market) need to be about what is next, not about what has been.

What do you want your business to look like at the end of 2012? Don’t form your vision based on the news or on how you are feeling coming out of the business meat grinder of the past few years. Give me your vision from where you are standing right now and looking forward. Are there big dreams and goals you had for your business (and for yourself) that have been lost or abandoned along the way? How can you give yourself the time and space to reclaim them? How can you re-imagine them? How can you re-launch them?

The answer is elegantly simple, so say it with me (And keep saying it to yourself):
Here. Forward.

While up in Portland Maine not too long ago I had dinner at The Flatbread Company. In addition to truly amazing pizza, I noticed a great sign hanging over the bar:

Flatbread Company is growing. Are more restaurants bad? Not if we follow our purpose.

Groups in nature have a purpose...
100 apples in a tree
100 geese flying in formation
1000 fish in a school
10,000 bees in a colony

Our purpose is who we are. It gives us direction and makes the many of us one.

Click here to read their purpose and values.

Do you remember when flying on a big airliner (and with a major airline) was exciting?

Only 10 years ago I was a very loyal United fan.  I told everyone how much I enjoyed flying them, my frequent flier points often bumped me to business class and I generally felt that I was part of a club when flying United vs anyone else. Most importantly, I would not fly with anyone else regardless of price (as long as United was flying there). By treating me as a valued guest they created a raving fan.

Oh how times have changed.  I now avoid flying United at all costs. My latest attempt to try to use up old miles bought me a first class seat to LA that had me enter the gate across a dirty red mat (Calling it a carpet would be insulting to all carpets), sitting in a seat that was falling apart, a choice of food that was not actually available on the plane and a portable DVD player that had me tangled up in wires across both sides of my seat. Not the experience First Class should be.

Growing up I used to always get dressed up when I would fly.  If people stopped to think about what it took to "jump" from New York to Los Angeles perhaps they would realize the remarkable treat it actually is.  What if the airlines did a better job reminding you of that story?

Now more than ever, we long for simpler times.  Don't get me wrong, the live TV and wi-fi at 38,000 feet is great, but the romance that delivered such a memorable experience has been lost along the way.  An airline that can capture that would set it itself apart.  Simple elegance in flight,etc...  There are no costs involved here.  This is about the culture of an organization.  At its most basic, it is about the love of flight.

The old guard airlines have to find a way to deliver that experience and romance again if they want the loyalty and word of mouth that will sustain them through these tough times.  A big and fun challenge for an Airline ready to think beyond checked bag fees.  The kind of purpose an entire company can rally around.

The imagery is great but the copy is incredible:

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify and vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as crazy, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

This is not a post about or for "Apple Fanboys."  This is about the power an ad like this had because it inspired those inside of Apple as much as those outside of Apple. To sell by inspiring instead of pressuring. It is about the power writing and storytelling can have to attract a specific type of people to your company while showing everyone in your company why they get up every morning.   

Having a strong sense of purpose is a powerful thing for a business. Maybe the most powerful thing it can have. But it will matter little if you do not find compelling ways to spread the word, live it and prove it.

If you want to start a movement, you need a rallying cry, a megaphone and persistence.

When people talk about the lifecycle of a business, they typically draw a simple bell curve. A steady rise that ultimately leads to a moment where it all begins to fall.  But that moment isn't a moment at all. Instead of a descent, the business enters a period of many years that I call “the bumpy plateau.”

Every business starts off with passion and purpose.  Deals are made on the fly, systems are cobbled together as needed, and there is a limitless can-do attitude. As the business scales, it keeps structures loose and grows by simply adding bodies to keep up with new business (add a client, add an employee, etc.).  After a certain time, the structure that has worked for so long of can now only sustain a certain volume of business and so it levels out to a plateau.  And here is where so much of the frustration business owners deal with begins.  This is when the passion starts to bleed away because this is when you begin to spend most of your time in your business instead of on it. This is when you are dealing with increasing customer complaints, staffing issues, cash flow hiccups, and so on. What is tricky about the plateau is it never feels flat because you push ahead with a new sales focus and start to land a few new clients, but then you lose a few because the structure of the business cannot support the growth. Business grows organically in good economic times and then falls as the economy naturally dips.  So you ride and fight along that plateau for months and years, growing a little and slipping back. Bouncing along until this existence becomes all you can remember about what it is like to run your business. Each day a new battle. Some days some good news, and some days some bad news. The fun is gone and grind is all that your business becomes for you. 

Most business owners are blind to the problem.  It is like the frog, coming gently to boil, that never jumps out of the pot. The bumpy plateau does not feel painful.  But it is frustrating. You feel close to growing again and yet you never do.  Like a big tease, opportunity for the next level of your business seems just a few steps away. So you keep at it.  You bring in a marketing company, you change your branding, and you hire the sales person that is going to change your future.  They all fail.  

“So,” you think as you drive home after another stressful day, “I must not know what I am doing anymore.  I have lost my touch. This doesn't feel like it used to.  Why do I feel like we are not getting anywhere when I am working so hard?”

What to do? Let's get tactical:

1. Get back to basics: Figure out what your business does better than anyone else. Cut away all of the bloat and complexity that has piled up over the years. Of course it is overwhelming - akin to battling a 10-headed dragon! You did not add it all to the business in a day. Don't expect it to all get resolved quickly. Map out everything that needs to get done, prioritize it, and then start with the first effort and get it done. I wrote an entire book on the need to get back to basics for the sole purpose of making your business fun to run. What I am describing here is the phenomenon that takes place for so many businesses.  (If you sign up for my newsletter, you will get the entire book as a PDF absolutely free – end of commercial).

2. See your business from the outside in:  My favorite saying from my book, “it is hard to read the label from inside the bottle,” is what is partly to blame here.  You simply lack perspective. You are not only stuck inside of a hurricane, you do not even know you are there. That is a human frailty and not an organizational one. When I begin to work with a client, I often feel that most of my job is to simply be a mirror.  To listen carefully to everything that is going on and then show them the picture they just painted for me. They are shocked every time. They know the dysfunctional picture to be true and yet they never saw it themselves. The same happens to me with my business. Often. Congrats, you are human.

3. Be determined to re-ignite the flame: How you feel about your business when you are stuck is not correct or true. Most people do not realize when they are depressed (not that you are, just stay with me).  The progression to depression is so slow and it lasts so long that it just becomes how a person feels. How they feel is all they know how to feel.  Unless someone comes along and tells them that they never smile like they used to, they would never realize they stopped smiling. Those adrenaline filled days when you were charging up the hill to conquer the world have been replaced and/or buried. Like that was someone else's business. Recognize it.

“Ok, I got some perspective about my business, I am getting back to the basics, and I understand now that I am not having fun anymore.  Now what?”

1. Re-imagine: You need to redesign your business based on what you want it to be instead of where it is now.  For a simple example, let's say you want to grow your business from 50 million in sales to 100 million in the next 5 years.  The company structure that properly manages 50 million simply cannot support a company that is properly managing 100 million.  But there is a structure that can and you have to design it.  You have to architect, in as much detail as possible, what your company looks like when it is managing 100 million in sales. Don’t just plan what it looks like at twice the size, because that just has you adding people to do more of the same. That is the process that keeps you on the plateau. So envision, vividly, what businesses are you in?  How many clients do you have?  How many people do you need to keep them happy, and what type of people did you need to bring in to get you there?  What technology is powering it all? What infrastructure will you need? 

Notice how different this structure, created from a blank canvas, differs from the business you are running today. Once you have painted that picture, then your work becomes clear on how to create the path from where you are today to that clear vision of where you want to be.  Now you can tell that marketing/PR/design firm exactly what you need them to do.  You can inspire your entire company with the new hill you want to conquer with them together.  You are no longer thinking about the type of company you wish you had.  You now have a road map on how to build the type of company you want. 

2. Get back to start-up mode: All the things we think about a start-up cause us to picture three people in a small room or garage getting ready to take the world by storm. But who says that is what a start-up needs to be?  Apple received a lot of press for claiming they act like a start-up. They have chosen to structure the company to stay that way. Some business owners may chuckle because they think a big company cannot possibly act like a start-up. Why not?  Being a start-up is as much a mindset as anything else. It is a mindset where you make decisions without endless meetings and deliberations.  Where you execute relentlessly because you want to win each and every new client.  Reconnect to what it felt like when you were starting out and bring everyone along with you since they will have forgotten as well. Figure out what parts of your day must be automated or delegated so you can spend more and more of your days like you used to.

Again, there is a lot of hard work to do and there is no guarantee of success. Sure the economy, your competition, or the gods may work against you, but all of that would be true bouncing along that plateau as well. 

I will be blogging more about these concepts in the future, as there is a lot to think about and explore. The blocks we face because we are complex beings impact the business we run. There is simply no escaping that fact. We have traits that have created great success and we have traits that hold us back. Welcome to the club.  But you always get to decide where you go from here. 

I challenge you to go find your smile again. Start by recognizing what your businesss actually feels like to you every day. Today.

Ideas pouring in from every direction, internal/external problems to solve, the drive home filled with ideas/plans and a continual burning sensation that you should be doing more things to grow the business.

Every business owner (including me), at some point, has had all or most of these feelings. It always reminds me of the circus act where the guy is spinning plates. He has to give each one just enough attention so they all stay spinning. Not a lot of progress...Just nothing dropping. Hit a nerve?

While there are a lot of ways to help bring order from this chaos, the first one I always remember is one taught to me by my good friend Charlie Bahr.

"Begin by Beginning"

We have some powerful tools we use with our clients to get a focused plan moving forward. But the first thing to do so you can break out of the business tornado is to pick some thing and do it. Then keep going with determination.