The 80/20 rule applies to everything in business. As owners we need to learn to focus on the 20% of our activities that will generate 80% of the return on our investment of time, energy and financial resources. We need to learn to set goals around that essential 20%.

Interview Transcription

My name’s Gary Furr and I own a business called Gary Furr Consulting, which is a business consulting firm. My background is I started my career in an industry and I helped grow that company as operations officer from 3 – 5 million and then I quit that company and started my own company and did that for 6 years and grew that company to be a million dollars in business and then I sold that and went to work for another organization as operations officer and we grew that company from 16 – 40 million at the time I was there. I left that company in November of 2012, reasons of too much international travel and I just wanted to be home and stay around. I left that company and started The Growth Coach because I wanted to help business owners to gain greater success in their businesses.

There’s issues whether you’re small or you’re big. The disadvantage that a small business has is they don’t often have the personnel or the resources to overcome those issues and they’re not proactive and they don’t take steps to correct right away, they can be very costly. Whereas a larger organization, you have resources you can put on a particular issue. You have money to back you up so they don’t have such a dramatic effect but small businesses have issues just like large businesses. There’s really no difference. It doesn’t really matter the industry, all businesses have issues.

Cash flow is the number one problem for any business and even small businesses and a lot of businesses gone bankrupt with a lot of account receivables on their books but no cash. Managing cash flow is a critical issue for small business. The other issue that I tend to run into a lot is a business owner wearing so many hats and they can’t get everything done so they’re wearing all the hats, they’re trying to do everything themselves and things fall through the cracks and they can’t get it all done. That’s a pretty common issue. Probably the third issue that I would have seen most common is too much clutter in their lives. They’re not focusing on that 20% of their activities that will generate 80% of their revenue. They know, everybody knows the 80/20 rule but very few people practice it.

The 80/20 rule is that 80% of the return on your investment of time, energy and money comes from 20% of your activities. If you can learn to focus on those 20%, that 20% that generates the greatest return of investment of time, energy and money, you’re going to be much more effective in your business and many people, like I say know that, but very few people practice it. As a coach, I try to help people to understand “what is that 20% that’s going to bring you the greatest return? Let’s focus on that. Let’s set goals and action plans in relation to that 20% because that’s going to bring the greatest return.”

People are resistant to change. They get into doing the status quo and they get comfortable with that. It’s hard for people to get out of their comfort zone and you really need to get out of your comfort zone to make a difference in your business and be willing to be open to other ideas because in this environment, in this business world, if we think that we can be successful in business based on talent alone, it’s not going to happen. You can’t just survive in business based on talent alone anymore. You have to have these other business skills that are necessary for success. That’s why 95% of small businesses go bankrupt, is because often times a person is very talented, they are very technically confident, they do their job but they don’t have the other skillsets to be successful.

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In order to be successful we need to develop clarity on where it is we want the business to go. We need to develop goals and action plans in order to achieve those goals. We need to learn to set priorities among competing demands in order to achieve our goals. Being held accountable by a business coach can help you to achieve your goals.

Interview Transcription

In order to be successful and to achieve the results that you want, the goals that you want to achieve, you have to, one: you have to know where you want to go and that’s important to gain clarity and what is it that you want to achieve but then you want to create priorities and how you’re going to get there because if you’re just going to go about it and say “oh this is where I want to go and I’m going to go there” you probably not going to reach it unless you set some goals and some action plans. So you have to prioritize your work.

One of the things that I teach my clients is what I call the STOP process. It’s a strategic time out process and what it is, is you take 15 minutes every day. Particularly in the morning to take 15 minutes of your time and think about what you could do that day that’s going to have the greatest impact on your business and the results that you want, to think about it, to plan it out and then to execute that because if you can step back from your business and say “okay, what can I do today? What can I prioritize that’s going to have the greatest return of my investment, time, energy and money?” and then you execute on that. You’re going to be much more effective, but that’s about setting priorities. That’s about deciding “what do I need to do today that’s going to have the greatest impact and then the focus, because what happens is things happen and you get distracted. You get distracted over here and you get distracted over here and if you lose sight of you priorities or you haven’t even set priorities, you’re not going to achieve that. It’s critical to set what is the goal for today and how am I going to achieve that and then set priorities on how you’re going to get there.

Goal setting is interesting because a lot of people set goals and very few people reach their goals and a lot of times the goals are unattainable. I think the key to setting goals is the old SMART tool – specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. By setting goals in those parameters and then having a matrix to measure what the goals you set, so how are you doing. You set a goal January 1st to do something specific in your business or your personal life, either one. Okay let’s measure it on February 1st and see how you’ve progressed. Sometimes, maybe you didn’t achieve your goal but that’s okay, as long as you’re moving in the direction. Gaining clarify at what you want to achieve and then facing reality that this is where I’m at. And how do I bridge that gap between those two? The way I bridge the gap is to set goals to get there. There’s usually tension between where you want to be and where you’re at and the only way to relieve that tension is to lower the goal, which isn’t very effective, or you move towards the goal. So the most important aspect of goal setting is progress, moving towards the goal and really successful people keep raising the bar. Yeah, they get closer to the goal but as they get closer to the goal, they raise the bar a little further and they keep raising the bar. It’s a matter of progression. It’s more about the journey than the destination and goal setting is about the journey, about making improvements, continuous improvement in your business, in your personal life on a regular basis.

I think probably one of the most difficult things to do for anybody, including business owners, is that you can set goals and action plans that you want to achieve but then they get set aside or you get busy doing other things and you forget about what were those goals that was going to get accomplished and action plans. The beauty of having a coach is that they can hold you accountable and a coach is not emotionally

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The keys to success in any business is to continually be looking for ways to improve not only the business but ownership as well. We as business professionals need to be working to continually improve emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually in order to find balance in our lives. Success in business is not guaranteed, so we need to avail ourselves of every opportunity to learn, grow and improve. A business coach can help the owner with goal setting in these areas.

Interview Transcription

Yeah in holding people accountable and clients accountable, what I found is that they’re very appreciative that I’m checking in on them, that I’m holding them accountable. Often times I hear “yeah, you know what, I haven’t done that yet but I thank you for calling me” or “thank you for checking in. I’m going to get on it.” I find that people are appreciative that I am holding them accountable and because it’s easy to get off track. It’s just so easy to do because there are a lot of distractions. It’s interesting in that I have not one individual that isn’t pleased that I’ve checked in on them and I actually ask them questions on how they’re going progressing towards their goals and their action plans – are they making progress? What can I do to help you? They’re all very appreciative and they’re being held accountable. They know from past experience that they haven’t achieved their goals and their action plans and part of the key piece of that is no one’s holding them accountable.

I think very successful people have some key things that they do. One, they’re very good at focusing and they believe in continuous improvement, not only in their business but their personal life as well. They’re working on not only being emotionally fit but physically fit, mentality fit and for some people spiritually fit as well. They’re working on finding balance in those 4 areas and where you do this continually improve. Very successful people read quite often. They tend to exercise regularly and they tend to focus on those things that bring not only good health and good physical health and mental health as well. So they’re physically fit and mentally fit to be able to handle the challenges that come at them at a daily basis, because every business has challenges and has issues and you have to be physically and mentally fit in order to handle those challenges so I think I firmly believe in continuous improvement in all four areas and in order to find balance in my life is that I have to continually work in those 4 areas in my life and continually trying to improve them. So I read ferociously. I love to read. I exercise every day and I work on those aspects of my life to keep myself physically and mentally fit because I can’t impart something to somebody else that I don’t have. I have to have those attributes and those traits. I have to continually be learning about my own profession but other professions as well so that I can impart knowledge and wisdom to other people. I can’t give something I don’t have.

I don’t think anybody starts out in business to fail. Failure is certainly a part of life and we have to learn from our failures, pick our self up and keep going. The most important thing is not so much what happens to us, it’s our actions and what we do in result of what happens to us that has the greatest impact of ourselves and those around us. We have to keep moving, we have to pick ourselves up and we have to keep moving forward. I think very successful people work at continually moving forward towards their goal and realizing that I got into business because not so like I fail but I wanted to be successful, everybody does. To realize that maybe I don’t have all the skill sets necessarily to be successful, so in order to ensure my success, why wouldn’t I want to learn some of the other skills that I need to be successful? Why would I want to inhibit myself? Why would I want to tie an anchor around my ankle and keep dragging myself? Why wouldn’t I want to take advantage of the opportunity to learn from others on how to be successful?

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Ask Yourself the Question:  Are You Great at Time Management – or Priority Management?

When a recent college grad puts together his or her first resume for the real world, it can be tough. For most people, it means finding ways to fill a page with relevant work and school experience coupled with those all-important skills lists. If you take a look at any resume – fresh out of college or not – you’ll likely find some sort of reference to proficiency in time management. Everyone wants to believe they can manage their time effectively, and being able to stay on task certainly makes you an attractive job candidate.

But honestly, what does great time management even mean? Are you saying that you can tackle tasks quickly and still have time to check your Twitter feed? Can you squeeze your work into 35 hours and take leisurely lunches? Are you able to step out to that doctor’s appointment without an issue?

Why it’s time to change the way we think about time management.

Whether you’re seeking new employment – or running your own business – it’s time to change the way we think about time management. What if, instead, we said we were great at priority management? Having excellent priority management skills likely says what you actually mean anyway: When you are charged with a certain list of needs, you can prioritize the most important tasks, accomplish those first and then manage the following priorities.

If you are a business owner or leader, having a priority management mindset also will help you to find the time to work ON your business instead of just IN your business.

• Once you’re able to manage your priorities and put them in the order you need to, you’ll easily be able to identify those low level tasks that probably don’t need your direct attention.
• Rather than trying to take care of everything on your own, try delegating those lower level tasks to your staff or find a way to systematize the business so those tasks don’t come to you in the first place.

Essentially practicing excellent priority management can help you better manage the hours you work each day, find ways to remove lower level tasks from your plate and free up time to work on developing your business! If you had even five extra hours per week, what could you do to make your business stronger? We bet you could find ways to improve your systems, beef up your marketing efforts, learn new business trends and more.

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“The best plans are straightforward documents that spell out the who, what, where, why and how much.”-Paula Nelson

Be an Effective Leader

To be an effective CEO and leader, we must adopt a big-picture perspective. As a leader it’s important that we don’t over complicate our businesses. Keep it simple and straightforward. Simplicity allows for clarity of focus and focus allows for superior performance.

Unnecessary Complexity

I have seen many businesses that built in unnecessary complexity. The longer they are in business the more complexity gets built into the organization, slowing down processes and having a negative affect on productivity.

Leadership Process

As owner or CEO, we are solely responsible for the company’s leadership process (direction, strategy, focus, goals, accountability) and the business development process (building a systems-based business that is self-managing, self-improving, and nearly runs itself). As such, there are only a handful of additional major processes we need to ensure are in place, well documented, and working smoothly and optimally: marketing, selling, operations (customer fulfillment), customer service, and back-office functions.

Remember to think long term, see the bigger picture and then be proactive. Adopt a big-picture perspective.

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DON’T BE SCARED OF YOUR BUSINESS THIS HALLOWEEN: 5 TRICKS FOR ELIMINATING FEAR

Have you noticed that when Halloween arrives, we tend to look for scarier moments the older we get? When we’re little Halloween means putting on that princess or ghost costume, going door-to-door and getting candy. When we’re a teenager, it’s about pulling pranks as a zombie or vampire. Then, when we get older, we look for a good fright with haunted houses and scary movies.

Just remember, no matter your age, fear should never work its way into your business. Fear will cripple your ability to take action, make improvements and be successful. So if your business is the scariest thing in your life this Halloween, here’s a plan for success to help you conquer your fears:

1. Set Goals

Setting challenging but achievable and realistic goals is a great way to get your business moving in the right direction. Decide what benchmarks you want to meet next quarter – and next year – and determine how you’re going to measure whether or not you’ve met those goals.

2. Take Action

Look at the goals you’ve set for yourself or your business. What needs to happen in order for you to meet those goals? Do you need to prospect and network more? Do you need to create a new marketing plan? Do you need to build new business systems? Create an action plan to meet whatever goals you’ve set.

3. Monitor Results

Every few weeks you need to sit down and look at how your action plan is helping you meet your goals. What’s working? What’s not working? If you are able to meet your goals early, celebrate the success and set a new goal. If you’re not able to meet your goals this time, evaluate what you could be doing differently and make changes.

4. Make Adjustments

No great plan is set in stone from Day One. If you find that the action plan you’ve created to meet your goals just isn’t getting you any closer to those benchmarks, it’s time to make adjustments! For starters, look at your schedule and see where you’re spending your time. If you are able to free up more time by delegating lower level tasks, you can dedicate more time to meeting your goals.

5. Take Additional Action

Whether it’s reorganizing your schedule and priorities to focus more on your goals or finding ways to set-up additional meetings with potential clients, sometimes meeting your goals successfully requires taking additional action – or different actions – along the way. Look at what adjustments you decided needed to be made and then take additional action.

Repeat

Maybe you’ve been successful at meeting your goals and conquering your fears or maybe you still have some work to do. Either way, setting new goals, taking action, monitoring results, making adjustments and then taking additional action will always help you make improvements.

If you’re having trouble with any or all of these steps, consider giving me a call.

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Adopt the Mindset of Optimization

As CEO’s and owners of our companies, we need to elevate our mindset and obsess about getting more from our current resources and efforts. We must ask others and ourselves better questions. We must start to ask ourselves, “How can our businesses get greater results from every action we take, every expenditure we make, every effort we expend, every relationship we have”? We need to avoid the status quo like a deadly virus. We must embrace fully the philosophies that, “good enough never is” and “we can always do better”.

Adopting a Mindset of Optimization is about Leverage

Optimization (also known as leverage) is a mindset of maximizing our results while simultaneously minimizing the amount of time, effort, risk, money, and energy we expend. It’s all about getting greater productivity, performance, profitability and payback from our ideas, assets, knowledge, systems, processes, practices, people and opportunities. Overlook nothing; leverage opportunities are everywhere.

Optimization is about using our minds

Optimization is all about using our minds and limited business resources in new and better ways. It’s about using our creative intelligence as an incredible force to increase our sales, customer satisfaction, profits, quality, etc. Optimization is about freeing ourselves and our organizations from limiting beliefs, the “we’ve always done it this way” attitudes, and established best industry practices. Optimization is searching for opportunities within and without our companies where the application of focus or force will yield substantially multiplied results. For example, if we start using telephone calls to follow-up our direct mail campaigns, we may multiply our sales results by staggering amounts.

Just as a tire jack can lift the tremendous weight of a car for a tire change, so too can the strategy of optimization help us significantly lift our company’s revenues, improve operations, and lighten our daily load. A lever, fulcrum and slight force can lift significant weight if we know how to use these tools. We should learn about leverage so we can begin to elevate and optimize our business results.

Master the Art of Optimization

To master the art of optimization, we need to adopt an opportunity mindset. To leave the status quo behind, we need to ask continually the following types of questions:

What is the best and highest use of our time, talent, and treasures?

What resources are we underutilizing?

How can we maximize our returns/output and minimize our input?

How can we work smarter, not harder?

Which strategies will give us super-sized results?

What processes or departments within our business are under-performing?

What past or current relationships could we more fully leverage (i.e. customers, employees, vendors, suppliers, advisers, etc.)?

What other industries could provide us with some innovative best practices?

Where are the hidden opportunities within our business, our employees, our suppliers/vendors, our business partners, our customer base, our competitors, and our business processes?

How can we get a greater return/payoff using the least amount of money, time, risk, etc.?

How can we be more effective, more productive?

How can we get better every day in every way?

What suggestions from our customers should we pursue first?

If we expand our mind and our leadership potential, our business potential and opportunities expand exponentially. The more we grow as a leader, the more our business grows as a market leader. Think optimization, not status quo.

If you would like to achieve greater freedom, fulfillment and financial returns from your business, please give me a call. I can dramatically improve your individual and organizational effectiveness.

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Starting Your Day Off Right: 5 Tips

Whether or not you’re a morning person, waking up on the right side of the bed and getting off to a great start definitely shapes your day. And, with the exception of things like getting a flat tire on the way to work, having a great day often starts with us. There are a slew of articles out there about what successful people do, especially in the morning. I thought I would share a few of my favorite things successful People do.

Wake Up Early

Waking up early is an important thing for successful people. Time is just too precious to spend our mornings in bed hitting the snooze button. If you’re not a morning person, the next item on the list might help…

Get Moving

Before your day starts, get your exercise in. This is really two-fold because it not only gets our blood moving and helps us get moving, but it also frees up that time later in our day. I have found this to be a real get me started and going routine that works. And I don’t have to think about working out after I am done for the day.

If you find yourself unmotivated, try laying out your workout clothes the night before so they’re ready to go. Or look for someone you enjoy more than going to the gym – with all of the variety of exercise videos and games out there, there’s bound to be something you can bring yourself to try. I particularly like P90X as a home workout routine when I miss the gym.

Tackle an Important Task

After you’ve gone to the gym or for that morning run and enjoyed a healthy breakfast, tackle an important task. Whether it’s professional or personal, there’s bound to a pending job that’s been weighing on your mind. Now that you’re awake and ready to take on the world, that task might look a bit less daunting and, if you’re able to finish it, will take some of the stress out of your day.

Connect with Family

Mornings can be hectic, but if you’re able to spend a little time reconnecting with your spouse or eating breakfast with your family, you should. With after-school activities, work meetings, grocery shopping, chores and errands, finding those few moments can be tough some days. Spending that morning time to spend with the people you love can help you start the day with a smile.

Create a Plan

Whether it’s for the day or for the week, creating a strategy, plan or to-do list for how to spend your time can make a real difference in your day. Set goals for the day, the week, or the month. While those goals are important to work toward, it all starts with small, daily or weekly steps. Before you start work tomorrow, sit down and think about what you want to accomplish, what you absolutely need to get done for the day, and what tasks you might be able to delegate or complete on a less busy week. Having a plan will help you stay on task and be more productive.

If you’re having trouble taking on any of these morning tasks, maybe it’s time to have a conversation with me. I can help you to develop the vision and goals needed to be successful. We can help you to win back your days, weeks and months.

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A Comprehensive Approach to Innovation

Conceiving of, developing, and launching new offerings is an inherently risky undertaking. By combining the risk-reduction ideas that innovation thinkers and practitioners have developed over the years, we can map out an end-to-end process that can greatly increase the odds of successfully launching innovative offerings in uncertain markets.

 

This process has four steps:

 GENERATE INSIGHTS

Use questioning, observational, and networking skills to search far and wide for broad insights into problems that may be worth solving.

 IDENTIFY AN IMPORTANT PROBLEM

Through direct observation look for an unsolved problem or an unfilled emotional or social need that enough people have for the opportunity to be worth pursuing.

 DEVELOP THE SOLUTION

Instead of building a complete product, quickly construct a set of simple prototypes of many different solutions. For each, start with theoretical prototype (that is, a verbal description). If that looks promising internally, move to a virtual prototype you can test with customers. This must be a visual representation but could be just a drawing. Move next to testing a minimum viable prototype with customers (the simplest, quickest physical version of the offering you can devise). Finally, pilot test the full-blown solution-the minimum “awesome” product (a refined version that seeks to be awesome on the few features that inspire customers).

 DEVISE THE BUSINESS MODEL

Once you have worked out the offering, apply the same experimental approach to developing and testing the components of the business model, including approaches to pricing and customer acquisition.

For most innovations you need to successfully complete all four steps before devoting resources to scaling. The exceptions are businesses that have network effects, such as PayPal, where the value of the innovation increases with each additional member. Even in those cases, you need to work through these steps judiciously as you scale, or you will most likely end up with a flameout worthy of the dot-com era.

 By Nathan Furr and Jeffrey H. Dyer: Leading Your Team into the Unknown

Harvard Business Review December 2014

Dr. Nathan Furr is my oldest son and Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University, author of The Innovators Method, Bringing the lean Startup into your organization and Nail It, Then Scale It, The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Creating and Managing Breakthrough Innovation.

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Do You Have Enough Grit To Make It As An Entrepreneur?

Forbes; Entrepreneurs December 1, 2014; David K. Williams

Certain words invoke powerful images in the mind—and “grit” is one of those words. When we associate grit with someone, it goes far beyond just being tough. It’s that something extra in the face of adversity.

Through the years we have seen many stories of grit, and it touches us deeply when the human spirit triumphs over situations that seem insurmountable. The Grit dynamic comes from several character traits: Intensity, toughness and a never-give-up, scrappy perseverance.

Grit Trumps Other Factors

Dr. Angela Duckworth, Ph.D. and Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, has developed a way to measure a person’s grit. Her findings show that people who score high on the Grit Scale are usually more successful than their brilliant but less motivated counterparts. Her research also shows that students with high Grit Scale scores get better grades and have more job success after graduation than those with lower scores.

To succeed as an entrepreneur, you need a special quality called Grit.

Our “Gritometer” Quotient

Ask yourself these questions to determine your current level entrepreneurial grit:

1. Passion Quotient: Are you intensely passionate about what you do? Do you give it all you’ve got or clock out dutifully every day at 5pm?

2. Challenge Quotient: When challenges show up in your life, do you cower or do you face them head-on without flinching?

3. Result Quotient: Do you have a results-oriented mindset? Do you consistently create results or make excuses?

4. Production Quotient: Can you handle being defined by what you produce? Have you ever created anything of substance that you will be remembered for?

5. Whining Quotient: Do you create fear, excuses, or roadblocks in the game of work?

6. Phoenix Quotient: Can you fail with dignity and grace and rise again stronger, more humble, and ready for the next play?

Entrepreneurs are defined by performance. Employees get paid a salary whether their company shows a profit or loss—entrepreneurs only make money if they show a profit. Because of this, intensity and toughness are vital tools in the entrepreneur’s toolshed.

Our New York friends, Gary O’Neil and MJ Gottlieb from Hustle Branding, taught us a great deal about grit this year. The best entrepreneurs have tough skin and soft hearts.

“Successful entrepreneurs do things they don’t want to do. A true entrepreneur builds his or her company from the ground up. So he knows how to sweep floors, clean toilets, pack boxes, and do all the things you eventually pay other people to do when you have the money to do it… and even then you have to still be willing to roll up your sleeves and get gritty,” says MJ.

Entrepreneurs also seek out the good in others and go the distance when others clock out at 5pm. MJ recalls an interesting story about Gary that epitomizes grit: “I remember one day Gary took off from Los Angeles to San Francisco to get a celebrity to wear one of our shirts. When he got to San Francisco it turned out the celebrity had flown back to Los Angeles… so he jumped in the car in the middle of the night and drove back.”

Given the challenges that entrepreneurs tackle on a daily basis, grit is vital for success. Let’s face it, entrepreneurs enter a world where there are vastly more failures than successes. In order to succeed, we need to have an unrelenting belief that our business and ideas will defy the statistics and become the success story that we have always strived to achieve.

So, given the odds, what does it take to break through? Grit: the battle of will, and unflinching intensity and toughness to achieve the results that you desire.

In their first business, MJ and Gary drove from Colorado to San Francisco for a 10-minute radio interview. It was their first interview. They didn’t have the money to fly so they drove across the country and got caught in a brutal ice storm in Cheyenne, Wyoming and were stranded between two trucks that had jackknifed in front and in back of them, so they were blocked in. Somehow they made it to the interview. Now that was gritty!

Success is often measured by a person’s grit. Intelligence is helpful when embarking on the entrepreneurial journey, but grit is the defining trait that will allow you to push past failure, disappointment, fatigue, and all the other challenges you confront.

MJ pointed out that you need to have intensity and toughness, but they cannot replace the need to prioritize and work smart. Quality works at a thousand times the pace of quantity, which is something he focuses on his book, How To Ruin A Business Without Really Trying. This is a great guidebook for those interested in “upping their grit game.”

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