Entrepreneurial News®

What Did We Learn in 2022?

Actually, probably not very much.

It seems to us that most of my small business clients spent the year going pell mell trying to keep up with demand and not alienating customers.

So, as a rule, small business didn’t have a lot of time for reflection on what to do differently. Our business, being countercyclical, just kinda went along.

We wrote about a lot of different topics, looking at our category list in our posts to Entrepreneurial News, which increased its circulation again.

I had a couple of clients who introduced new product lines and followed our advice and did well with them.

But, by and large, everyone was keepin’ on.

My associate in San Diego, Peter Bellanova, found a segment of business that isn’t doing as well, the businesses from just above zero sales to about $1 million per year, so we’re going to see what we can do to help. Peter started his Solutions Forum group and individual consulting in this segment in late 2022, and we’re going to start in early 2023. If anyone wants to emulate us, call me at 480-200-5678 and we’ll tell you what the program is in broad general terms. We won’t get specific until you become one of our licensees.

So, we wish you a prosperous 2023, and we’ll be here if you need us, as we’ve been since 2003.

 

How Not To Run A Credit Card Company

Back in the day, I was a controller of six small divisions of Ford Credit, one of which was Consumer Loans.

Our philosophy was lend money to support the sales of Ford cars, trucks and even tractors and farm implements.

And we made very good money doing it: rates were high in the states in which we operated, such as Arizona, and even with higher losses because of aggressive lending policies, we had the highest returns on equity in Ford.

So, here’s Synchrony, a credit card company operating out of Florida and favored by dentists and doctors for lending for procedures.

I wanted to reopen my Synchrony account to pay for some dental work I recently had done. Submitted all the paperwork digitally, answered all the questions, and they just couldn’t bring themselves to reopen my closed account. And I have a mid-700 credit score.

The Synchrony policy strikes me as nutso. Their simple answer would be to update my account and provide the credit. That’s what my other three credit card companies would probably do.

But no go with Synchrony, so they lose $700 in earning balances, and wind up with a blog criticizing their lending practices. One wonders how many other profit making opportunities they’ve forgone.

Ah well, can’t cure stupid.

NFIB Iffy on Recession

Chad Heinrich (no relation) the Arizona state director of NFIB (National Federation of Independent Business), said today in a public relations release from National NFIB that the chances of a recession are iffy nationally.

As we sit in our little paradise down here in Arizona, we seem to be doing better than the average NFIB state.

None of our Solutions Forum clients has laid off anyone but they have replaced some subpar performers.

The personnel shuffling can’t have been too bad, because no one has said anything about being hauled in front of the state Labor Commission.

And we have been vocal in advising our members on how to counterract the recession by outmanueversing the competiton. It’s a strategy that’s time proven, although sometimes it takes a strong stomach to go against the grain. You might not get invited to the Chamber bash, but then you might be speaking at it. Oddly enough, or maybe not, no one has asked us to speak at their Christmas bash, but that’s ok.

So, it’s still head down for the balance of this year!

Hire and Promote Right

A couple of posts ago, we wrote that the ‘Quiet Quitters’ should be weeded out before year end, which is now.

We see from all sorts of layoffs among big companies that they’re taking the message to heart.

And many of the larger companies are concerned about a recession.

Frankly, down here in our little paradise of Arizona, we don’t see it. But that’s a topic for another blog.

Having slimmed down your workforce, how should you hire new people?

First, don’t be in a rush to hire. Get the right people. Even though the labor market is tight, and you might have to pay a little more, get your hiring right the first time.

Second, use Indeed and Zip Recruiter to provide a supply of candidates. We did a hiring project for one of our clients earlier this year, listed the positions on both sites, offered another $1 per hour and got all of the people we needed, and then some.

I advised my client to ask a certain set of questions over and above what I and Z do, to further refine the search. He did, it was slower, but as far as I know, all the people are still working for him, 9 months later in a tight job market in a hot economy.

Firing people is expensive: you’ve got severance costs in pay and benefits, possible lawyer costs if they go to the labor commission lost money invested in training costs,  and you’ve got to spend time and a little money to replace the people, if you think you need to, and train them.

So, get hiring right the first time! Don’t be in a rush to hire the first warm body that answers the ad!

Tim Cook’s Oops

Fox News has been playing Hilary Vaughn’s attempt to get a short comment from Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple.

IMHO, Cook’s refusal to talk to her is a major public relations OOP.

Tim resolutely ignores her, which is his first mistake. As a favored rep for Fox News, she’s highly influential, and asks good, not ‘gotcha’ questions. So, talk to her.

Hilary probably wanted to ask about the cessation of the Air Drop program in China, which is a highly effective method for the Chinese rioters to communicate. Second mistake. There are probably a lot of Apple customers among the rioters, who want to use Air Drop.

Apple probably stopped Air Drop in China to avoid angering the Chinese government, who might toss Apple out of China.

But, Tim, if that happens, you say, ‘We’re with the people of China and we’re turning Air Drop back on.’ There are lot more customers beyond the Chinese government. The government isn’t too popular with the people at the moment. So, the turn on is a calculated risk worth taking.

If the Chinese government threatens to ban the sale of Apple products, you say ‘We’ll find a way to get Apple products into the hands of our loyal customers.’ Can you spell ‘black market’?

The moral of this story is put and keep your customers first.

Tim blew the chance to score a major public relations victory for Apple. No guts, no air medal, Tim.

Bravo, Shell!

Saw an ad for Shell, the big Anglo-Dutch energy producer, announcing that they were going to be building electric vehicle charging stations in their US gas stations, which I’m sure will be welcome news to the folks who drive electric vehicles.

They don’t have many locations yet; the example shown is in Fulham Road, which I believe is in the Atlanta, Georgia suburbs. The chargers are located where Shell has fast food operations, so the pitch is that you can get your car at least partially charged while having a burger.

Shell has plans to put at least one charger in each of its gas stations. A classic case of serving the customer in whatever he/she wants to buy.

Note to Shell: I have a former client who owns five Shell stations in Arizona, so if I can help with the rollout in Arizona, I’d be pleased to do it.

So, Bravo Shell for thinking of all its customer energy needs.

People, People, People

Some wags have said that businesses would run better without people to gum up the works.

Many techies have spent many hours on projects to either eliminate people or reduce them.

However, businesses who have top quality people and treat them well perform better.

We have some courses on people in our revised curriculum of the American School of Entrepreneurship, and we expect them to sell well. As soon as we get the website done, we’ll post them. The content is done, but not in all cases recorded.

But, in the short run, there are some steps you as the owner can take to improve effectiveness:

  1. If you have ‘quiet quitters’ somewhere in your organization, have your supervisors or you pull them aside and find out why they’re not motivated.
  2. Go through all your personnel and decide who’s cutting it and who isn’t. You should have standards (Key Personnel Indicators) for each of your positions. Talk to the subpar performers to see if you can improve their performance.
  3. Take a look at the training you give supervisory personnel, by talking to the people they supervise. Maybe you don’t have any formal supervisory training. We have this in the works. It’s mostly common sense, but you’d be surprised at how much this is ignored.
  4. While you’re reviewing personnel, do a 360 anonymous survey of what they think of the company, where it’s going, and even you. You might be surprised.
  5. Do some ‘Ask Me Anything’ Friday afternoon roundtables. Again, useful information should be gleaned.
  6. Pass out some awards for superior performance. Don’t just dwell on the negative.

As I review what I’ve written, I like it. So, we’ll probably record it for the School.

Maintaining Your Company Culture Through Tough Times

This was the title of an op-ed that appeared in the October 21-27 issue of the Phoenix Business Journal, and written by Greg Wells, Chief People Officer of Blue Cross Blue Shield Arizona.

Greg’s article is good, but it missed a couple of salient points in maintaining your company culture through tough times.

  1. If your company culture is strong, it will be fine through tough times, although the CEO might have to do more work to reassure the people. As Greg says, there is more emphasis on transparency.
  2. If you had to go to a hybrid remote/in office work environment during COVID, that might have permanently altered your company culture, because there wasn’t as much social interaction between employees. On the flip side, one of our clients actually found their culture improved by the split of the workforce, because there was less social interaction. Another client found that, after COVID was supposedly over, they got all their people together on a Friday afternoon, only to have some of them come down with COVID.
  3. Tough times are probably a good time for you, as the President or CEO, to take a look at your culture and assess what’s good and bad about it.  For example, you might want to weed out your Quiet Quitters.

Sort Out Your Quiet Quitters

Mike Rowe was just on Stuart Varney’s show on Fox, talking about the Quiet Quitters, and it was his opinion that they should be fired, because your staff wants to work more hours, and could absorb the workload of the Quiet Quitters.

I don’t disagree with Mike, but he overlooked one key factor to be considered before firing them: your investment in hiring and training them.

So, we’d say have a quiet conversation with the people you think are Quiet Quitters and see if there’s something to you can do to motivate them to do either more work or better work. Remember, it’s not necessarily money that they want, but instead might be something like different working hours, working from home, freedom to set one’s schedule, etc.

An interesting sidebar to this question is another point Mike brought up: the decline in the national labor participation rate, caused by people who just don’t want to work. In fairness, maybe they’re working on their entrepreneurial dream, in which case they should call us, because we’ll give them a free hour of consulting to see if their dream makes sense.

Dumb Customer Service Number 27

We haven’t written anyone up recently for dumb customer service, but that just changed.

I was concerned about my IPhone 7 giving out, since it’s 5 years old, so I went down to my local T-Mobile store to buy an IPhone SE, which has longer battery life, my major complaint with the 7.

Nice young lady named Angie cleaned out the charging port of the 7, which fixed the charging problems and inputted my order for the SE for $220 cash.

(My wife bought an SE from ATT for $200 a couple of months ago)

Angie said you’ll get the contract tomorrow electronically, and if it’s as we agreed, electronically sign it and email it back.

I’m not sure what happened to the old practice of writing the contract up in the shop, printing it out and signing it on the spot. Maybe some high pressure sales types got in the way of customer service.

Been known to happen.

So I gave Angie a good faith deposit on the phone.

This morning, the contract arrives and it’s for $400, with the $180 amortized as a promotional discount over 24 months. No mention of cash.

When I called TMobile, to fix the misunderstanding, they tried to walk away from the deal I’d verbally committed to, giving me the gobbledegook arrangement outlined above. And said that the $400 price was in line with competition. I bet.

I was born at 3 pm, but not yesterday.

So I unwound the deal and checked with my credit card, and T-Mobile hadn’t even put the charge through.

So, T-Mobile, you’re dumb and dumber. And you’ve probably lost a loyal customer over this nonsense when I get ready to replace my trusty IPhone.