Small businesses have many advantages. Being highly maneuverable is chief among them. Speed kills competition and wins in the market. Not recklessness. Speed. Not impulsiveness. Speed.

As an operator, my mantra has long been to make sure the company was highly maneuverable and viciously competitive. 

Both involve the factor we all care most about, TIME. 

Frenzy isn’t profitable. Motion doesn’t equal action. Let’s not confuse these things. 

My grandmother had a little wooden sign in her kitchen from Alice In Wonderland that read…

Some business owners operate in a frenzy thinking that speed of motion equals profitable activity. Rarely does that work out. Instead, it most often elevates stress and strain. I’ve never seen panic pay off. It will put you further behind, not further ahead.

Speed is impacted by the mindset behind it. Let me explain. Some entrepreneurs love chaos and frenzy. A hyper approach to everything. These are the folks who have another question before the previous question has had time to be answered. They’re easily distracted. Antsy. Always on the move. 

While it may not be thoughtless speed, they may be the only ones who know the thought behind it. Others are frustrated by it. It looks like zaniness and a lot of squirrel chasing. And maybe mostly it is. It may be an addiction to motion. Speed. Moving, moving, moving. Never stand still. 

Owners who lead with that frantic pace mostly grow increasingly frustrated with the slowness around them. They also grow increasingly impatient. 

Your organization can likely thrive more with a calmer, more deliberate approach. An approach that gives people time to gather their thoughts, express their concerns and ideas and to ask questions required for clarification. None of those activities slow things down. Quite the contrary, they make speed more advantageous. 

Are you an impulsive leader?

Do you give a directive, then completely change directions before that directive ever has a chance to be completed? 

Do you ask a question, only to “on the fly” figure out you’ve got a different question – and one you ask right on top of the first one? And one that has nothing to do with the first question?

Do you issue some edict, then hours later forget all about it, and deem it unimportant – even though a number of your staff members have been working all morning on it?

Impulsive behavior has nothing to do with effective speed. Instead, it has everything to do with a thoughtless lack of self-discipline. No self-restraint. No self-control. An unsettled mind will result in unsettled leadership and unsettled business activity. 

I see it often, which is why I’m talking about it today. Over a year ago I did a video (without audio) that demonstrates the problem of having too many irons in the fire, and not allowing any of them to get hot enough to work with. It’s the “from start to profit” mindset I find myself talking about quite a bit with business owners who find it difficult to focus. 

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Reckless speed is still speed. But it’s dangerous. Thoughtful speed is still speed. But it’s effective, efficient and wins races. 

Sometimes owners benefit by thinking about short-term versus longer-term. Execution of an idea – any idea – is easy to consider. Let’s say you’ve got an idea, some innovation you’d like to implement inside your company. You toss the idea out there, but due to your scattershot approach, you’re like a hummingbird who won’t light. You fidget. That idea is still something you’d like to ge...

Some people think you just sell your way out of every problem. More sales equal more money. More money means less trouble. Fewer problems. It doesn’t always work that way though.

You know if you’re more driven by the top line (revenue) or by the bottom line (profits). You can be top line driven and still care about controlling costs. They’re not mutually exclusive. It’s largely determined by what you believe in most, and what you enjoy doing most. CEOs and business owners who have a gift of selling tend to focus on that. It’s fine. You don’t need me to tell you it’s okay. But I just did. CEOs and business owners who lean more toward details and efficiencies likely pay closer attention to the bottom line. This isn’t about making a judgment on the rightness or wrongness of either focus. 

Balance. Every business needs balance. A proper focus on the revenues or sales while maintaining focus on the bottom line profits, which must take into account all those expenses. Costs. 

In personal finances, you can save your way toward wealth. I’m sitting in an Economics 101 class in my freshman year of college. There are a few hundred kids in this class. Big auditorium, stadium type seating. The professor had teased the class, telling us he would be informing us how we could all become millionaires. Many of us who regularly cut the class attended. How can you cut a class when it’s going to be about how to become a millionaire? 

Here was the formula he taught us that day. Don’t get married. Get any job earning any reasonable amount of money. Don’t fret about getting a high paying job. Live in the most austere way possible. Don’t buy stuff. Just have a modest lifestyle, living as bare bones as you can. Save at least $20,000 a year. Earn $40,000, then you save 50%. Earn more, save more. At least that’s what he encouraged us to do. Work 50 years and you’ll have $1,000,000. 

Needless to say, it wasn’t the formula we were looking for. We were sorely disappointed in this wealth building strategy. By the way, we cut his class much more frequently after that lecture. To say we were hacked off would be to mildly understate how angry we were at being dupped into attending class that day. But it stuck with me. You can save your way to wealth in your personal life. 

Makes sense that you should be able to save your way to business prosperity, too. But you can’t. And for good reason. Revenue (the equivalent of personal income) isn’t predictable. If you get a job earning $40,000 a year you know you’ve got $40,000 coming in each year. You can implement the strategy our professor told us about. But in our businesses, we have fluctuating revenue. And we lack the discipline to not let our expenses or costs fluctuate with it. When sales are strong, we spend more readily. When sales are tight, we reach for our belts to tighten things down. 

Discipline is the key to personal wealth building success and to our corporate success. 

Returns. As you man the helm of your business you must focus on generating revenues, cash, and customers. Cash is king. Always has been, always will be. Cash flow is the fuel you need to stay aloft. Run out of cash and you’ll crash. Customers? Well, try getting revenues and cash without them. Sales. Cash. Customers. They’re all tied together.

Some costs have a fairly easy ROI (return on investment) to calculate. Customer acquisition costs, for example. How much does it cost your company to acquire a customer? I know service-based businesses, including trade-type businesses, who have a very low customer acquisition cost.

Is it really daring to innovate? Absolutely. 

Proof was apparent here in Dallas Sunday night during a pre-season NFL game between the Cowboys and the Arizona Cardinals. Late Sunday night Yahoo sports writer Jason Owens wrote a piece entitled, Viewers not impressed with NBC’s ‘green zone’ innovation for ‘Sunday Night Football.’

He wrote…

The yellow line is a Hall of Fame level sports broadcasting innovation.

The digitally imposed first-down marker developed by Sportvision and launched on ESPN in 1998 changed the way fans watch football and has inspired a host of digital enhancements to improve the home viewing experience.

NBC launches redundant technology

In the tradition of the yellow line, NBC launched the “green zone” during its “Sunday Night Football” broadcast featuring the Dallas Cowboys and Arizona Cardinals.

This did not go over well.

The issue here is that the green zone is pointless. NBC digitally alters the field a darker shade of green between the line of scrimmage and first-down marker, showing fans how far the ball needs advanced to achieve a first down.

It’s a cool idea if the yellow line didn’t already do that exact job, only better.

Fans show no mercy for “green zone”

Twitter users were quick to point this out and mocked the “green zone” without mercy. (the article showed many Tweets by critical viewers)

Networks are constantly looking to find new innovations to improve the viewer experience. This attempt seems bound for the trash heap.

And this ladies and gentlemen is why quite a few business owners don’t innovate. Fear they’ll fail. And be mocked. Ridiculed. Embarrassed. 

No, I’ve never had a CEO or business owner (except those in the public relations arena or some other strategic communication’s space) admit it, but we all know it’s true. 

We’re not a major network like NBC. Our small business may lack a reach beyond our local market or region. No matter. We’re all afraid. 

Daring is defined as “adventurous courage.” 

Innovate is defined as “make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products.”

You might think all innovation requires a degree of daring, but I don’t think so. Some industries foster innovation. They’re unabashed in their quest for it. Computer science comes to mind. 

Is there any phrase more trite than “outside the box?” As much as we say it, or hear it, you’d think it’d be easier. 

Years ago I seem to remember a cartoon, maybe a Far Side cartoon. I miss the Far Side! It depicted some cavemen walking on all fours, but one of them stood up, presumably man’s first attempt to walk upright. The others mocked him and told him to stop it, he’d hurt himself. So it goes with innovation. We risk ridicule from our peers. Or in the case of NBC, the viewing audience. The world. 

And we sometimes wonder why people and companies hesitate to try to grow, improve, transform…or innovate. Those same folks jumping on NBC for trying the “green zone” may likely also Tweet about the importance of creativity and innovation. But hypocrisy is a good topic for another day. 

Daring innovation first requires the daring component. And I intentionally made today’s title incorporate a word – daring – that can be understood as an adjective…as in “daring innovation.” The innovation can be daring,

I’d been thinking about this for a good long while. Many private conversations have been had in recent years about it, too. 

Language and demeanor. 

Retired NFL head coach and current NBC Sports football commentator Tony Dungy was on a local sports talk radio station here in Dallas this past Friday. I’ve read quite a bit about him and I’ve even perused his book, Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices, and Priorities of a Winning Life. He’s written quite a few books, including most recently, some books with his wife, Lauren. 

In this radio interview, Dungy was asked about the HBO’s series, Hard Knocks, which always features coaches hollering, screaming and cussing.  I was rather pleased to hear him respond as I suspected he would. He pointed out how that TV show is about entertainment so they purposefully chase high drama. Tony said he didn’t think it was shocking that the teams featured on Hard Knocks aren’t often playoff teams or serious contenders. He’s worried that future coaches, especially at the high school level, will take their cues from watching shows like Hard Knocks, and think that’s how successful coaches behave. He was quick to point out that success can be achieved without all that nonsense.

On his first day with a team, Tony Dungy said he’d ask the players to raise their hand if they needed him to yell, scream, get foot-stomping mad or cuss in order to have them do what he asked. No hands go up. Admittedly, a few players (but not many) took a few days to get adjusted to it – because they’d experienced so much anger, yelling and cussing in their playing careers. Dungy would speak with them calmly and deliberately with clear feedback and instruction. Of course, that doesn’t make for very entertaining TV. 

And it’s too bad. 

The short answer to our question today – Do you have to be angry, yell and cuss to get improved performance? – is, “No! You don’t.” But let’s give it a bit more consideration. 

It plays well on the Internet, YouTube and wherever else content is consumed. People pay attention to that kind of behavior. It garners far more attention than calm, deliberate, considerate behavior — which seems boring, mundane and low energy. Just like the humble, intentional listener most often gives way to the larger-than-life-hey-look-at-me personality. Some people are driven to draw attention to themselves at every turn. They exhaust me. I wonder if they exhaust others because their behavior sure seems to pay off with people giving them attention. 

Today’s topic transcends leadership, business ownership or entrepreneurship. But in that context, I suspect Tony Dungy is right. I suspect too many people are taking their cues from what they see and hear online. They think if they don’t drop F-bombs and use crude language, then their point of view lacks validity. And if the delivery isn’t animated with an over-the-top delivery, nobody will listen. 

Permit me to focus on that last phrase of our question though, “…to get improved performance.” And let’s broaden that a bit to mean influence. Have an impact. Serve. Help.

Tony Dungy’s question is a great one.

“Who needs me to get angry, yell and cuss in order to help you improve?”

Would you raise your hand if somebody asked you that? I sure wouldn’t. 

I can’t speak for Tony, but I can speak for myself. I’ve been angry before and shown it. I’ve yelled some, too. I’m not a foul-mouth though so that last one has never been much o...

These days scaling is all the rage. And talk. Start-up’s focus on scaling as quickly as possible as they struggle to escape the gravitational pull of business failure. When we’re not trying to scale, then we’re trying to hack, implement something lean, strategize something agile and all the while we’re honing our storytelling chops. 

Earlier this week I had a very brief Twitter exchange with Tom Peters. He mentioned how storytelling could be used for bad and said he gets nervous when he sees storytelling consultants. He hates when the word “agile” is capitalized. And he’d hate the word “storytelling” if he ever saw it capitalized. Poking a bit of fun, I replied, “So Agile Storytelling would (be) anathema (smile) — I’m with you on both counts btw.”

Buzzwords and buzz activities abound. I’d apologize, but I’m not sorry for getting tickled at it all. People love it because it makes them sound smarter. And some people need all the help they can get to sound smarter. 

Meanwhile, we’re busy trying to make payroll, put out fires and increase sales. “Agility? I’ve got your agility. I go to the gym and workout every day. And I’m old, but I’m still agile. I do need to improve on that lean business though.”

Okay, we can’t possibly make all the right assumptions, but we can improve making our assumptions serve us better. For today’s show we could use “expectations” and “assumptions” interchangeably. 

I’d sum it up like this: be convinced you can instead of being convinced you can’t. 

 It’s another one of those dreaded formulas. You can’t grow great – or accomplishment anything truly valuable – without hard work. But, you can work hard and still not grow great or accomplish much of anything. So let’s start there. Don’t make the assumption that just because you’re busting your butt, you’ll grow great. 

Your leadership, your business, your life — they won’t grow or improve simply because you’re putting in work. It matters what kind of work you’re doing. 

Many years ago David Letterman was interviewing somebody who brought up the subject of boxers versus briefs. I remember the guest saying to Dave that those openings on the front of the briefs don’t work so well. To which Dave replied, “It depends on what kind of work you’re doing!”

Everybody gets stuck every now and again. For some, it’s a chronic condition they may not even be aware of. It happens often when we’re entrenched in our industry and our business. Nobody understands our industry like we do, and those of us in the space. The opportunities and challenges we face are ideally going to be managed based on our industry expertise. So we can quickly discount what others are doing with a dismissal, “You don’t understand our industry.”

Back in June, Dr. Diane Hamilton had entrepreneur Jeff Hoffman on her show. We interviewed Jeff last year on our Year Of The Peer podcast. He was one of the founders of Priceline.com. I’m citing Jeff in case you discount what I or anybody who isn’t a business rockstar may say. Jeff shares my passion and enthusiasm for leadership, entrepreneurship and collaboration. In fact, he even operates his own 2-day mastermind groups. The man knows the value of surrounding yourself with people outside your lane of expertise or knowledge.

I’m going to play 4 clips from Diane’s interview with Jeff and I encourage you to go over there and listen to the entire thing. You should subscribe to her podcast, too. Go here. 

Did you hear what you look and sound like in that clip? Many entrepreneurs, if they’re honest, do. Nobody can understand my problems. Nobody can help me unless they completely understand my business and my industry.

Then Jeff talks about Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber.

Disruption isn’t the only outcome of looking at things through a different lens. Innovation happens, too. 

 What if you intentionally and purposefully surrounded yourself with other entrepreneurs who didn’t work inside your business, or even inside your space? What if you were surrounded by other business owners who might not even operate from the same city or state that you do? Can you imagine the value and benefit of a viewpoint that isn’t stuck with all the assumptions you think are advantages? 

I’m completely devoted to the cause. The purpose. The why of it all.

Serving entrepreneurs with a safe, confidential space where they’re surrounded by other entrepreneurs courageous enough to embrace openness and vulnerability so they can innovate, which means they can grow, improve and transform. That’s the point of it. It’s an environment that simply isn’t easily found for small business owners. But the value of putting yourself in that environment is without equal in terms of ROI. 

Here’s the last clip from Jeff’s interview with Diane. 

Let me add onto Jeff’s point of surrounding yourself with people smarter than you. I encourage you to consider surrounding yourself with people capable of serving you. Other business owners who understand what you’re going through because they’re going through it, too. People who can instantly relate to each other. People who can forge a bond of connection so they can comfortably help each other think through whatever issues they face. 

I know it’s a bold notion. I know it’s exclusive, too. I invite you to complete the application form so we can talk about your business and whether or not this opportunity is right for you. So be bold. Be brave. Click the APPLY NOW button.

Today is as good a day as any to simplify the name of the podcast. The focus is still aimed at helping leaders, particularly small business owners, but let’s just go by “Daily Brief” shall we? It’s easier to say. And to remember. The Grow Great Daily Brief. Proof that I’m embracing minimalism and simplicity in my own life. I’m not just preaching at you.

There’s a little documentary on Netflix called, “Long Shot.” Here’s how Sports Illustrated teased the release of the documentary.

The case dates back to August 2003. Los Angeles Dodgers fan Juan Catalan was arrested for the murder of 16-year-old Martha Puebla, who was fatally shot outside her home in Sun Valley, California. It was believed that she was killed due to her testimony in a gang murder case, where Catalan’s brother, Mario, was a co-defendant. Juan Catalan was arrested and awaited his trial for murder.

Catalan said that he was at a Los Angeles Dodgers game at the time of the drive-by shooting. Although he presented ticket stubs, it wasn’t enough. Catalan refused to take a lie detector test and a description of the shooter by an eyewitness didn’t really match. He needed to find a way to prove he was at the game.

Enter Larry David. Curb Your Enthusiasm was filming an episode at Dodger Stadium for the fourth season of the HBO show. Catalan remembered that he was caught on camera in the background while they were filming. The Dodgers helped put Catalan’s attorney in contact with the producers and they reviewed footage from the show. Catalan was caught on camera eating a hot dog and watching the game with his six-year-old daughter.

So many things had to go right. But one person, Catalan’s attorney, Todd Melnik, is pivotal. He had to pursue finding out about some camera crew that his client remembered seeing at the game. Catalan had no idea who they were, or what they were shooting. Melnik went to the Dodgers to find out. Then went to the Curb Your Enthusiasm folks to continue the pursuit. Relentless. Tenacious. 

What if he hadn’t been so dogged? Catalan may have been executed for a crime he didn’t commit. 

In episode 51, dated August 1, 2018, we asked the question, “What are you willing to do to survive or to grow great?” It’s the power of not quitting. 

I started thinking of accomplishments, and I don’t just mean notable accomplishments. Any achievement. Any success. 

Go ahead. Think of all of yours. Or somebody else’s. Anybody else’s. 

Could they have been done if you, or the people who got them done, had quit? 

While we’re often looking for brilliance or genius, success mostly boils down to the effort – doing the work – and refusing to stop until or unless we’re completely defeated. 

Street signs warn drivers that there’s no outlet, meaning this street isn’t a through street. In other words, it’s a dead end. That just means you can’t get there from here. You’ll have to find another way.

More often than we’d like to admit, we journey down streets that are “No Outlet.” In our life and our business, there are no signs. We have to travel down the path to find out. 

We set out to pursue something, we get one week in, or one year before we find out it’s a dead end. That doesn’t mean we quit. It just means this isn’t the path to get us there – “there” being success, or achieving the thing we’re chasing. 

Our pursuits are filled with dead ends. It’s fine. It helps us figure out the navigation to the success. Like rats in the maze, the cheese is still there somewhere. We just have to stay alive long enough to find it. 

Persistence. Determination. Resolve. 

Those are the traits that free wrongly imprisoned people.

On Monday Today.com posted an article entitled, “How to avoid life’s biggest regrets, enjoy the best years: Advice from 90-year-olds.” A 34-year-old United Methodist minister, Lydia Sohn, not a researcher, wanted to know what older people regretted most. She wondered if people in their 90’s regretted not achieving more. What she discovered was their regrets had nothing to do with their careers, accomplishments or achievements. 

“The biggest regrets of the 90-somethings Sohn interviewed had very little to do with their careers, work or what they hadn’t achieved. Instead, the most pain came from failures in their relationships, particularly with their children.

They deeply regretted not having closer ties to their kids, seeing that their kids didn’t get along with each other as adults or feeling that they didn’t put them on the right path in life.”

Today is my son’s birthday. He’s our firstborn, making us parents in 1980. This is his family. He’s father to 3 of our grandkids, two boys, and a daughter. We also have a daughter who is not quite 2 years younger than him. But today isn’t her birthday.