Home About Media Kit For Business Instructors Contact Consulting
Twitter
RSS
Facebook

  • Post Categoreis

So, Why Did You Write Your Book?

by admin on Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 | 3 Comments

So, why did you write your book?

If you are an author, you have probably been asked that question, or have asked it of yourself.

Why did you bother to write your book?

Writing a book is not easy – and selling a book is even harder.

So, why do it, unless you are an established author with a loyal following?

I wrote my book “Don’t Let Your Dream Business Turn Into a Nightmare” for five reasons:

1) I felt that I had a story that people would find interesting

2) I wanted to challenge myself to take a lot of information and distil it down into a cogent, compelling narrative

3) I wanted to add another dimension to my professional arsenal – as an author

4) I believed that my story could help other entrepeneurs

and

5) I felt that if the book caught on, it could reach a wide audience and make money

Last night, I received an email from a wonderful friend named Tom Berend, a very successful entrepreneur and one of the smartest people I know. This is what he wrote:

Hi Alan:

Just read your book cover-to-cover. It’s been on my desk for weeks, but I had only read the first chapter, and it kinda made me cringe – like that horror movie where you watch Jack Nicholson driving through the forest to accept a job at a hotel, and you KNOW it’s going to end really badly…

I’ve got a small venture running in my basement – it’s a REALLY GREAT IDEA. There’s an angel-finance guy pushing me to accept some investors and build a company. He’s got about $500K lined up for me, ready to go. I drafted and redrafted a business plan 7 times before he was happy enough with it to present it to them – and each time, it got better looking. Of course, we are still figuring out who our market is and what our product is, but that’s OK, everyone does that.

But now that I’ve read your book. Hmmm. I realize that I have a REALLY GREAT IDEA and a really wrong business plan. Add money, and investors looking for fast results, that’s a recipe for disaster. I’ve put the finance on hold, will keep running on a shoestring until I learn the business.

Thanks for a really great book, it probably saved my life.

Tom Berend

So, why did you write your book?

Now, you know why I wrote mine.

You Can’t Say the Wrong Thing to the Right Person

by admin on Friday, August 14th, 2009 | 1 Comment

In my most recent blog post I related an incident in which I was telling a friend about a nutritional program which has the dual effect of eliminating toxins from the body and also achieving weight loss in people who have excess weight – those who do not have weight to lose can actually gain muscle mass as the product contains very high-quality whey protein – but the point of my post was that my friend – who was gulping down a coffee concoction which has over 1000 calories at the time was very skeptical of the product that I was telling him about – a nutritional product which has been endorsed, by the way, by many medical experts, including the former nutritional advisor to the White House. What I wished to bring out by relating this incident was that it can often be very difficult to convince people that a product or service is good for them, but they have no trouble believing that something is bad for them. We seem to expect bad news and be suspicious of good news – why is that? There are many products in life which are good, and many people who wish to do good things – why be skeptical of them?

I received a comment on my blog from Drew Berman, one of the real leaders in the nutritional company which I was writing about, and a really positive, motivational person. A terrific guy to know. He stated the situation in a somewhat different way, but the point was the same: You can’t say the wrong thing to the right person or the right thing to the wrong person.

Drew’s comment resonated with me because on the very day that I wrote my post, I had a meeting with another long-time associate, and I was telling him about my experience in creating one of the first spas in the world for men. In the course of our conversation, I mentioned that when I first opened the spa, I had a burning desire to convert even the most hard-core guys into clients, so that, if a woman told me that her husband or boyfriend was the kind of guy who would never go to a spa, I would say “Just send him to me. I’ll convert him.” This was the kind of challenge I was looking for in the early days.

However, after a while I figured out that trying to convert the guy who was dead set against what I had to offer into a client simply wasn’t worth the effort. I stopped trying to prove something and just focused on attracting perfect customers. And who was my perfect customer – the guy who was looking for the personal care services that we offered at the spa. If someone told me that either they or their husband or boyfriend would never set foot in a spa, I’d say, fine, we’re not looking for that kind of client.

Thanks, Drew. You can’t say the wrong thing to the right person or the right thing to the wrong person. Or, as Johnny Carson used to say about sketch comedy: If you don’t buy the premise, you don’t buy the bit.

If you have a business, stop trying to convert the unconvertible and focus on the people who already get your message.

It’s a lot easier and makes a lot more sense.

What Does "Commitment" Mean In Your Business?

by admin on Saturday, July 25th, 2009 | Comments Off

Readers of my blog, and of my book “Don’t Let Your Dream Business Turn Into a Nightmare” know that I founded one of the first spas in the world for men.

I did that because I had a mission to help men look and feel their best through personal care services, and felt that men were more likely to enjoy these services in a facility designed with their specific needs and tastes in mind.

I believed in the mission of my business and was committed to it.

Committed to it – what does that mean?

Does being “commited” to a business mean the same as being”committed” to a marriage?

Does it mean that you will be there through good times and bad?

Isn’t that the meaning of “commitment”?

Commitment doesn’t mean “for now”. It means “forever”.

If there are hard times in a marriage, you hang in there, if you are committed to it.

We all know that people say that they are committed to their marriage, but for whatever reasons, they often fail to live up to the commitment that they made.

Or, to be more accurate, they were never really committed, if the definition of “commitment” implies dedication or devotion over time.

Can we say “I’m committed today, but ask me tomorrow and things may have changed”?

That is not a “commitment” – it may be a pretty strong feeling, but it is not a commitment. Not if it changes tomorrow.

If you think you are committed to your business – what does that mean to you? How much hardship are you willing to endure and for how long?

The ability or willingness to endure hardships is what commitment is all about.

Which is why commitments are so hard to live up to.

What if you have partners or investors in your business, as I did?

What are they committed to?

How much hardship will they endure and for how long?

Just as in a marriage, it is very hard to know – and not knowing can cause a great deal of pain.

I

What are the Three C’s Of Your Business?

by admin on Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 | Comments Off

When I was developing The Men’s PowerSpa – one of the first spas for men in the world – there were three concepts which formed the holy trinity, if you will, of my philosophy and approach: commitment, consistency and continuity.

“Commitment” can mean many things in a business, but in my business I defined it to mean three things: our commitment to our clients, my commitment to my staff, and my staff’s commitment to the business. We could have added other forms of commitment, including the staff members’ commitment to each other, but I like to think in groups of three.

I defined “consistency” in the spa as a reliable and predictable level of quality of the client experience. In other words, I wanted to ensure that our clients could always count on the same quality in their treatments and in customer service. I didn’t want them to have a great experience one time and an inferior experience the next time.

Finally, I defined “continuity” to mean a feeling of progression from one visit to another. Whether a client was coming into the spa for a skin care service, a massage, or a hand or foot care service , we were very careful to make him feel that his service or services would pick up from the point of his last visit – and that the service provider was aware of any issues or special concerns that he might have. There can be no progress from one visit to another in a spa if you are constantly having to start back at the beginning every time.

The Three C’s were more than fancy words and concepts – the were values that informed many if not all of the decisions that I made while I was developing and running the spa. If I hadn’t believed that consistency and continuity were crucial to the success of my business, I would not have worried about hiring and retaining the best full-time staff – all I would have cared about was whether or not I had a service provider to offer a service at any given time. I might have hired a number of part-time people, who might have been cheaper, if all I had cared about was having someone available – I know of a number of businesses that operate that way. You never seem to see the same face twice.

What are “The Three C’s” of your small business? That is, what are the key values that form the cornerstone of your philosophy – and inform the decisions that you make as to how to run your business? They don’t have to start with the letter “c” of course, but they should be important enough for you to feel that you cannot compromise on them without undermining your prospects of success.

Once you have defined these fundamental values, make sure that everyone knows and accepts them – staff, partners, investors.

"This Business Can’t Possibly Fail"

by admin on Monday, July 20th, 2009 | 1 Comment

It was shortly after 1 p.m. on June 10, 2005, when I gathered the staff of my small business – one of the first spas in the world for men – together for a brief meeting. The press had all left by then – about 40 had attended the official press launch between 10 and 12:30 – and the private party for friends, relatives and business associates was called for 6 p.m. – so the timing seemed right for a little motivational speech to the staff – the 7 fresh-faced and eager young gals who had been hired as service providers.

I said a few words, then yielded the floor to the business consultant with whom I had worked in very close tandem from mid-January through to the official launch on June 10, and upon whom I had relied for advice and support throughout the process.

“This business cannot fail”, he assured the staff. “This business cannot fail.”

It was a comforting message, and one which he had repeated many times during the previous six months. “This business cannot fail.”

And why would it? Attractive young professional women providing personal care services designed to help men look and feel their best, in a comfortable, masculine environment.

How could a business like that fail?

If you are thinking of starting your own small business, should you go into it thinking that your business cannot fail?

If you have read anything about the Law of Attraction, then you may believe that thinking that your business is going to fail can attract the energy that will make it fail.

Whereas believing that your business is going to be a great success attracts the energy that will make it a success.

Throughout the process of developing my small business – and for the two and half years that I ran it -I firmly believed that my business could not fail.

The concept, the product, the execution – were all too good for the business to fail.

But I was wrong.

Any business can fail. Whether you wish to believe it or not.

I don’t believe that an awareness that a business can fail necessarily attracts the energy that will make it fail

But I do believe that a refusal to accept that it can fail could lead to decisions that will make it fail.

I shall have more to say about this in future posts.

Stay tuned.

Newer Entries »