Lessons From 2021 Business Coaching - Part Two

More lockdowns, more clients, more fantastic conversations.
Here are some more themes that have repeatedly emerged over the past six weeks…

Revenue vs Respect
When setting goals for the rest of the year, an interesting trend has emerged.
Most entrepreneurs seem focused on the level of respect they can bring to their business, rather than focusing on a level of revenue.
e.g. “I want to open a store in the nice part of town” or “I want to form a partnership with X other brand”.
I don’t mind it.
What I am opposed to are “vanity metrics”, the numbers that sound cool but don’t translate into meaningful results.
Respect is not necessarily a vanity metric, but we need a clarifying question:
Whose respect are you looking for, and how will you know when you have it?
This is where it gets murky, because it’s hard to measure long term goals like “become a household name”.
By all means, it’s great to boost the credibility and respectability of your business, so long as you have a way of determining how far you’ve come and how far you still have to go.
It’s great in conjunction with other goals.

Building The First Iterations In Secret
There is a false link between “I will launch a new thing” and “I will start working on a new thing” and “I will be good at a new thing”.
There might be quite a lag between them, and that can cause perfectionists to freeze up.
For example, if your goal is to launch a new website in six months’ time, you don’t actually have to wait six months before building the first version.
A better strategy might be to build a bad website in a month, test and edit it in the next two months, send the link to a few customers in the fourth month, and then make more adjustments ahead of the launch.
You get the benefits of iteration without the pressure of the public eye.

This has been popular in a range of settings:
·      Designing new products and services
·      Creating new distribution channels
·      Writing training manuals and instructions
·      Validating prices and packages with customers       

You’ll still be starting before you feel ready, you’ll still be embarrassed by the early versions, but now the stakes are lower.

Social Media Marketing – Powerful And Misunderstood
Every business owner I talk to is either running ads on social media, or they’re thinking about running ads on social media.
There’s often a funny blend of intrigue and skepticism, as if they know they should be doing it but can’t seem to get over the first few hurdles.

It’s hard to get started, because it feels like magic: with TV you get to see your ad run, you can drive past your billboard, but you probably won’t see your posts pop up on other people’s newsfeeds.
There are some key strengths though:
1.     It’s measurable, so you’ll know what messages are getting the best responses
2.     You control the spend, and only keep a campaign running if it’s getting good results
3.     By targeting your ads, they go mostly to the type of people who are likely to appreciate your message, rather than blindly advertising to the entire market.

Here are a few tips to nudge you towards a decision:

·      Would it work for your competitors?

·      Can you talk to someone who is currently using it effectively?

·      What is the next best option if you don’t try it?

·      Is there a minimum starting spend you’d consider?

Administrative Tasks vs Emotional Labour
Your to-do list might look like 50 bullet points, each with a job to be done.
Not all bullet points are equal, and not all jobs take the same toll.
We can broadly split the list into two categories: administrative tasks, which take time and effort, and emotional labour, which takes vulnerability, bravery and creativity.
e.g. setting up a bank account for your business is an administrative task, whereas writing your About Us web page is emotional labour.

Both lists are good, but there are a few considerations:
Firstly, emotional labour is the scarcest of the two, the thing that very few people are willing to bring to their work.
Secondly, emotional labour becomes fatiguing much faster – you might only have a few hours a week.
Thirdly, emotional labour is harder to outsource to contractors and team members.

My suggestion is to divide your to-dos into these categories, then assess which list needs more attention.
Can you structure your time differently to allow for more emotional labour?
What changes to your mindset, workspace or calendar would enable you to double the amount of time you spend in this zone?

Setting Your Copycat Policy
Copying is a sensitive subject in business.
Some people will deny they do it, some will boast that they do it, almost everyone hates it happening to them.
Copying takes many forms – some with positive associations, some negative.
For example, terms like trendsetter, best practice, pioneer and thought leader can be aspirational, but they all lead to people copying and adapting your formerly unique strengths.
On the other hand, we have patents, trademarks and copyright laws designed to prevent imitation and wholesale copying, and offer some legal protection for innovators.

If you’re successful in business, it will happen to you.
The question is, how will you respond to it?
This is why you want to decide on a policy in advance, rather than have a confused and angry response when copying surprises you.
I’d suggest thinking about the different types of copying:

·      Imitation – someone else pretending to be your company, which you’ll need to stamp out as fast as possible.

·      Insincere inspiration – someone replicating what you’ve done, with a different business name, like what Aldi does with their own label of products.

·      Sincere inspiration – someone admiring and implementing what you’ve done, possibly crediting your brand as a role model.

·      Staff competitors – someone re-creating your business having worked in it, knowing your processes, financials and target customers.

They probably require different responses, both privately and publicly.
You probably want these responses to be well thought out, not impulsive or emotional in case you say something you later regret.
I can’t offer generic advice here, my recommendation is to talk to other people in your field who have gone through this before and ask how they decide on when and how to protect their assets.

Costs And Benefits Of The Community Of Practice
There is a strong community of practice amongst social entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs in the South Pacific in particular.
You see the same thing in country towns – everyone knows each other, so it’s easy to follow everything that’s going on.
It’s the same people at all of the events, and you want your collective industry/town to succeed, so it makes sense to play nice.

This comes with a tradeoff.
There are a lot of benefits from working as a collective, such as advice, inspiration, practical support and referred customers.
There might not be a financial cost to join, but membership has an annual price: two or three times a year, your toes are going to get stepped on.
It might be the feeling of exclusion, being overlooked for the spotlight, people copying your successful tactics, someone launching a direct or indirect competitor, gossip and hearsay.
You’re able to minimise these toe-steppings, but you’re unlikely to avoid them altogether, this is the reality of communities.
Working for a large corporate or government department is the same but twice as frequent, and with an HR department monitoring your actions.

I mention this for a few reasons:
1. It can help name and describe the feelings you’re experiencing
2. It de-personalised some incidents that feel like pointed attacks
3. It’s a chance to reflect on the price and value of your participation in the community of practice; is the balance in your favour?
4. It’s a chance to reflect on whose toes you’ve been stepping on, accidentally or otherwise, and reconsider how you treat your peers

The Halo Effect
Donnie Yen once said “People ask what you do for a living so they can calculate the level of respect to give you”.
I don’t like that it’s true, but it rings true.
When encountering something new, our brains struggle to know where it fits amidst the things we already understand.
We look for frames of reference that are immediately visible, like looking at the brand of shoes someone wears, the number of followers on an Instagram page, or their mutual connections on LinkedIn.
There’s a term called “The Halo Effect” that describes how people with obvious strengths are given more respect or the benefit of the doubt than their unremarkable peers.
e.g. good looking people seem like they’re smarter or funnier than their average counterparts, or people who went to prestigious universities are assumed to therefore be more skilled than others, even without knowing how well they did on their exams.

Your business can use these halo effects to your advantage.
It might be by partnering with or stocking well regarded brands in your stores.
It might be using an “As Seen On TV” or “As Seen On ____ News Outlets” tag.
It might be by creating a logo grid of famous companies you’ve served.
It might be using well-liked people as your ambassadors.

“But these are shallow tricks!” I hear you cry, and I agree with you.
What they do is help prospective customers assign a high level of respect before doing their own research, so they’re more likely to give your claims the benefit of the doubt.
Halo effects can’t disguise low quality, but they can boost the odds of people trying you out, or mentioning your brand in the same sentence as other well-regarded peers.
It helps people assign you or your brand into a certain bracket, for better or worse.
Also remember that this goes both ways, and that it’s wise to be skeptical of this bias whenever you hear about someone for the first time – am I assessing them fairly?

Other People’s Opinion Of Me Are None Of My Business
As a business leader, all you can do is “control the controllables” – the things that you can influence.
For example, you can’t control if a flight gets delayed, but you can control which flight you book, which travel agent you use and how quickly you can change your plans at your destination.
Here’s where it gets tricky: other people’s opinion of you is not one of the controllables.
You cannot make people like you.
You can’t.
Nope.
You can be nice to them, charm them, bribe them, but you can’t make them.
And some people will be determined not to like you – I bet you feel this way about a lot of people you see in the media and in your industry, that person can’t make you like them.

Their opinions are their business, not yours.
And for that reason, it shouldn’t be in your goals or KPIs.
Your job is to do what you know is right – in what you work on, what you prioritise and how you treat people.
You know when it’s the right thing to do even before you experience the consequences.
For example, awarding yourself brownie points for posting social media content, rather than awarding them based on amounts of likes and comments.
Some of your best posts might not be recognised in the immediate moment, and so likes don’t correlate with value.
The same goes for people – your worth is not dependent on every single person liking you.