In times of economic crisis, far too many business owners revert to “safe mode” as panic spreads. A "responsible" course of action typically includes one (or more) of the following:

• Tightening purse strings
• Laying off key employees
• Putting growth plans on the backburner

Doing anything different may be seen as “risky”.

But this conventional wisdom couldn't be more wrong.

An old adage states, "Only dead fish swim with the current," and that philosophy applies to your growing business as well.

Here we highlight the three biggest business mistakes made in tough economic times, and the implications of each:


Mistake #1: Shrinking your marketing budget

When there is less money to go around, budgets get cut. But it's a bad idea to take too many of those dollars away from marketing initiatives.  Actually, if you have the resources, now is the appropriate time to continue (or  expand) your marketing.  Why? Most of your competitors will cut their budgets, out of a “knee-jerk” reaction to the economic downturn -- leaving you a greater window of opportunity to get your message across to your market.  Business owners who “stick it out” during tough times will likely enjoy increased market share once the economy rebounds.


Mistake #2: Laying off key employees

Another, often more challenging decision, is whether to cut staff.  Whatever you do, don’t lay off your top talent. Great people are your most valuable resource -- hold onto them.   In fact, if you’re in a position to hire, now is a great time to hire, because so many other businesses will be shedding their top talent.  


Mistake #3: Putting growth plans on the backburner

Possibly the most damaging long-term effect of a troubled economic climate is when a business chooses to put its growth strategy on hold to "weather the storm."  If you cut back on new product development and innovation today, you will have fewer product offerings when the market bounces back.


Warren Buffet’s recent advice to investors is also great advice for entrepreneurs:

“Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.”


At Growthink, we advise our clients to pursue their growth initiatives despite the downturn. There is no better time to grow than today.

 

If you’ve glanced at newspaper headlines, turned on a television, or read any of our blog posts within the last several weeks, you know that this is a turbulent time for the global market. This brave new world has lead to widespread and palpable effects on small and middle market companies everywhere. The credit crunch, the volatility of the stock market, and the uncertainty of the new political landscape have left many entrepreneurs and small business owners experiencing emotions ranging from mild trepidation, to full-fledged panic.

As scary as the landscape can appear right now, we believe firmly that businesses that look for the opportunities provided by the current climate can position themselves to experience success.  In order to help companies achieve that success, Growthink has launched a new service: Turnaround Strategy Consulting

Simply put, there are numerous steps businesses can take right now to turn the corner. Our decade of experience working with a broad spectrum of firms, from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, has allowed us to develop comprehensive, analytical methodologies that indentify the cause of financial failures as well as realistic solutions that can be quickly implemented to turn businesses around.

Since 1999, Growthink has provided strategic guidance to companies through rapidly changing markets and economic climates, including the wake of huge economic crises, such as the end of the dot-com bubble and the post 9/11 financial landscape. Even in light of the 2008 “Credit Crunch,” Growthink is able to find opportunities within the chaos and create solid strategies for our clients.

Even businesses that have not experienced dramatic shifts, but have felt a recent downward trend can benefit from Growthink’s consulting.  Improving margins, identifying the right customers, and implementing effective management are all areas that can make a significant difference for any firm in this economic environment.

Additionally, as a full-service firm, our turnaround strategy solutions can examine and assist with all aspects of business growth, from branding, public relations, business planning, web development, internet marketing, and investment banking.

If Turnaround Strategy Consulting can be of use to your business, please visit our service description page here or contact us by phone at 1-800-967-6419.

"It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it."  -- Benjamin Franklin.

Fannie Mae.  Freddie Mac.  Bear Stearns.  Countrywide.  IndyMac.  Lehman.  Merrill.  Once strong and even great corporate and financing nameplates now sullied by significant business reverses.

On the flip side: Apple.  Google.  Berkshire Hathaway.  Goldman Sachs.  Firms with gilt-edged reputations and prestige, admired the world over.

And the people that constitute both firms?  Ask any former Enron employee: whether deserved or not, their personal reputations have been sullied by the scandals and collapses suffered by their previous employers. In contrast, employees currently or formerly associated with corporate America's golden children benefit significantly -- even those that have had only a marginal impact on the businesses (like those who joined Google when its shares were at $700).

Whether we like it or not, our reputations, our incomes, our future prospects, all are massively impacted by the organizations with which we are associated.   In small companies especially, ALL employees have a meaningful impact on the company's reputation.  When any of us do great work and the firm is recognized and prospers, all of us benefit: in the short term, as the firm's reputation grows and in the medium and long term,  we enjoy a financial boon as the benefit of a good reputation yields financial results, given that reputation is a core driver of brand equity.

Arguably in the modern, flat world, the most valuable asset for all of us – firms and individuals – are our reputations.   And when any one individual in an organization, a community, a nation – shines, we all glow.  And when anyone of us falters, we all pay the price.   The price can be sometimes small, sometimes insigifnicant, but it is always paid and if it happens often enough, then eventually the law of numbers catch up and all lose.  Big time.  

My suggestion for all (including myself of course) – given our shrinking global village – let's be ever-vigilant to assure that we are consistently touched by "the better angels of our nature" when we get out of bed in the morning.  Each and every day.

During the process of growing a business, entrepreneurs, business owners and managers are often faced with the question of whether to bring in an outside business consultant.  This can be an especially challenging decision for entrepreneurs, who are by definition independent and self-reliant.  However, it’s important to recognize that even the most talented businesspeople can benefit from the support and guidance of an experienced consultant (or consulting firm).

From our perspective, here are some of the key benefits to bringing on an outside business consultant.  

Functional Expertise

Perhaps the most common benefit a consultant brings is his or her experience.  More specifically, the consultant’s experience should directly fill gaps in the entrepreneur’s or management team’s own skillsets.  

For example, a businessperson may be gifted at recruiting employees and partners, and motivating them to achieve the company’s strategic goals.  But that same person may struggle to assemble a detailed financial model, conduct strategic market research, or convey the company’s growth plans in a succinct, marketable written document.  

A skilled consultant or consulting firm often fills these functional gaps, in order to help the company complete a particular task or achieve a milestone.  


Prior Domain Experience

Especially when venturing into new markets or devising a new product or service offering, a client may seek a consultant’s experience in a particular domain.  Experienced consultants and consulting firms can apply past consulting experience to new client engagements.  Aside from simply getting the project done, this familiarity with various markets and business models is a value-add that an entrepreneur or manager would not likely otherwise receive, without conducting months or years of competitive and industry research.


Objectivity

Engaging with a consulting firm provides more than smart, timely advice on crucial business decisions.  Specifically because they are not engaged in the day-to-day operations of their clients' businesses, consultants are able to analyze a business decision from a position of greater objectivity.  By working with an experienced, credible consultant, you receive 3rd party, objective analysis of your situation.  This perspective is critical for gaining organizational consensus around one course of action out of a sea of competing choices, and it helps assure you that you’re following the best business opportunity.


Time (Opportunity Cost)

Aside from the expertise and objectivity that a consultant brings, perhaps the greatest value is the simple fact that another person (or firm) is handling a part of the burden.  Engaging with an outside firm to assist with tactical or strategic responsibilities allows the internal management team to remain focused on the critical day-to-day actions and responsibilities that drive ongoing revenue and sustain the operations of a company.  Each person and company may set a different value on their own time.  However, often times it is economically beneficial to hire a qualified firm to efficiently manage a project, rather than allocating resources internally or hiring additional full-time staff to fulfill the need.


Other Benefits

Aside from the direct value of a consultant’s domain and functional expertise, engaging with a consultant or consulting firm can provide other benefits.  Because of their existing relationships, established consulting firms can introduce and connect clients with a wide array of potential customers, strategic partners, supplies, investors, and board members, etc.

What Do You Think?

What are other reasons why you have hired an outside consultant? What advice would you give regarding the pitfalls and benefits of hiring a consultant?

 

Earlier this month, Walt Disney Co. made an interesting decision regarding their theme park pricing strategy. Faced with slowing sales growth at home in the US, the company decided to raise the price of one-day admission at its largest resort by more than five percent.

While the five percent hike for children and 5.6 percent hike for adults at Walt Disney World only resulted in increases of approximately four dollars, the decision was a controversial one that lead to business pundits both supporting and chastizing the company.

When your company is faced with the effects of a recession, like slowing growth or decreasing sales, what is the real best course of action?

Like with most things in business: It depends.

A good rule of thumb however, is that unless your company is renowned for its low pricing, you're safe to raise your prices. That doesn't mean you can start charging $16 dollars more for your cheeseburgers, but it does mean you have some flexibility. Making an honest assessment of how pricing impacts your clientele will position you to make necessary adjustments.

For Disney, the assessment could have looked as simple as this:

The number of people who will take vacations this seasons will undoubtedly drop a bit when there is so much widespread emphasis on pinching pennies. That said, for those families that do take the initiative to hop a flight, rent a car, and/or put every one up in a hotel for a few nights, the difference between $71 and $75 dollars for admission will not be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

While price is an important factor in purchasing decisions, the vast majority of people don't buy based on price alone. They buy based on value. However, a larger percentage of consumers will buy based on price alone, in the absence of any other value indicators. The key is to effectively communicate your value.

When you start to feel the squeeze of a slowing quarter, don't be afraid to go against the initial instinct that many have to drop prices right away. Sometimes, boosting your price can be just the tool you need to get you over the hump and get back to making money.

By now, most entrepreneurs have heard the old saying, "Businesses don't fail -- they just run out of money." While that saying often holds the most salience for fledgling ventures, it can and does apply to most small businesses and growing companies as well. The steps you take to deftly allocate your company's capital today can help ensure that you'll still have that company six months, six years, or six decades down the line.

The New York Times and AllBusiness recently provided a list of tips for the best ways to manage cash flow. Most of the solutions that suggest frugality and thriftiness are somewhat intuitive -- limiting spending, avoiding wastefulness, keeping your inventory at practical levels and, for the austerity-minded, foregoing a salary. The most compelling suggestions on the list, however, are those rooted in strategic planning.

A strategic assessment of your business and some clever maneuvering can put your company in line to truly maximize each dollar. Crafting financial projections that anticipate your expenses and revenues for the next 12 months can help you determine if and when you'll need more capital. The formation of contingency plans that account for the worst case scenarios can prepare you for the unexpected.

One mistake many business owners make is purchasing equipment when it can be leased instead. While a cursory look at leasing vs. buying will reveal that leasing is usually more expensive over time, the leasing process prevents you from needing to shell out large sums of upfront capital, which then frees that capital to be allocated towards other important areas.

Lastly, effective cash flow management entails knowing what areas require patience, and which need to be expedited. When it comes to bringing on new employees, try to wait as long as you can. As permanent hires are a serious commitment of resources, it's recommended that you first strive to increase current employee productivity, investigate independent contractors, or even outsource some of the less essential aspects of your enterprise. On the other hand, when it comes to receiving customer payments, it behooves you to make these exchanges happen as soon as possible. Incentivize or reward early/timely payments, and don't shy away from penalizing late payments.

As individuals and businesses alike struggle to deal with a wayward economy, one of the first things we can do is look outward for tools and techniques to help weather the worst of the storm. Fast Company founder Bill Taylor recently examined three companies that seem impervious to market fluctuations and the economic turmoil faced by their respective competitors, and the lessons we can draw from their successes.

Honda, Netflix, and Southwest Airlines are the companies that make up last quarter's victorious triumvirate. While Detroit automakers have been suffering from staggering losses here at home, Honda has reported $1.7 billion in profits. Netflix has reached a subscriber base of 8.4 million households. And as airlines continue to flounder, Southwest Airlines showed a 15% increase over last year, hitting just over 17 years of consecutively profitable quarters.

What are the common threads between these companies that keep them flying high while others scrape by or shutter their doors?


1. Connect with Your Customers

Forging a relationship that goes deeper than the nuts and bolts of the product or service your company provides is a crucial component of success, especially when financial outlooks across the board are bleak. Relationships rooted in identity and emotion help a company tip from useful to essential.

2. Go Big or Go Home:

It used to be really easy for companies to aim for the middle. By being decent at a variety of things, they could hit the widest part of a market's bell curve. While that was a sound technique in the past, it is no longer the case. It is now integral to corporate success to be the best at something. A company must, with no exceptions, determine what they are the best at and execute on it. As Taylor states, "Southwest has always managed to combine low fares with great service--anything else is a distraction." By being the most affordable, having the greatest customer service, or providing the most exclusive product, a company can distinguish itself in the mind of the customer.


3. Be Yourself, Even When Things are Changing:

This rule might be "easier said than done" for many companies, but it holds true. To succeed, a company must stand by what they believe in. While it is important to test and tweak strategies, the overarching approach must be a steadfast attachment to your plan, and the value proposition you've developed in the aforementioned stage of defining your businesses' strengths. While many large companies like Ford appear to be in constant "react" mode, rushing to adapt in light of market conditions, companies like Honda reap the rewards of embracing their long term strategies. Finding consistency in your business will give success an opportunity to find you.

Imagine you are at a job interview. Right before the interviewer offers you a position he states, "Unfortunately, I cannot tell you the details of our project. You will have the opportunity to make mistakes and struggle, but eventually we may do something that we'll remember the rest of our lives." Would you eagerly jump at this project or would you stand up and walk out?

This was the real life scenario created by Scott Forstall, the senior vice president of Apple, who assembled the iPhone development team. He called in a handful of stand-out Apple employees from various departments in the company to speak with him, and only those who quickly leaped at the opportunity were offered positions. Forstall's approach to recruitment was based on the belief that the new project’s success would be dependent on individuals who were more attached to challenging themselves and pushing boundaries than the ego gratification that came from shining where they already were. In a recent New York Times article, such individuals were described as possessing a “growth mind-set.”

This classification was derived from the research of Carol Dweck, a Stanford psychologist and author of “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.” She has carefully studied the ways in which people approach life, and research suggests two main groups: those like the aforementioned Apple employees who believe their own abilities can grow and change, and those who believe that talents and intelligence are intrinsic and unchanging (referred to as a “fixed mind-set”.)

These simple classifications can have a remarkable impact on all aspects of one’s life and likelihood to succeed. In her work, Dweck has found that a growth mind-set almost always trumps a fixed mind-set, due in part to the fact that many with a fixed mind-set are overly invested in the reputation of their talents, resulting in a fear of making mistakes and an attachment to looking smart. Dweck has said that those with a growth mind-set, “are the ones who really push, stretch, confront their own mistakes and learn from them.”

Case studies on many top executives from the ranks of General Electric, IBM, Xerox, and others show that a growth mind-set can not only lead to personal successes, but can revolutionize a work-force as well.

Which mind-set do you lead with?

 

Before the ink has dried on newspapers reporting the impending close of 600 Starbucks locations nationwide, news has surfaced that clothing retailer Steve & Barry's is preparing to file for bankruptcy. For many years, both the coffee giant and the clothing chain have been two of the most-discussed, high-growth companies. So what has gone wrong?

In the case of Starbucks, the general consensus among the business blogosphere is that the company, eager to appease investors, embarked on a path of overly-ambitious expansion. Shifting their focus away from the customer and toward the bottom line, Starbucks abandoned their thorough location-finding talents to map out several hundred new stores.

A new Starbucks cafe can have a tremendous impact on a local real estate market. The arrival of the white-green-and-brick facade in a neighborhood represents a "stamp-of-approval" for the neighborhood, and has nearly become synonymous with modern gentrification. This being the case, landlords began to make attractive deals with new storefronts, sometimes offering several months in free rent to a Starbucks willing to open its doors on their property.

Rushing quickly to fill these locations with baristas and customers alike, Starbucks began to take advantage of such real-estate perks. It appears such perks started to motivate location selections more than the high-quality demographic research the company is known for, as over 70% of the proposed store closings will be locations opened within the last two years.

As the markets suffer uneasy fluctuations, it also becomes difficult for landlords to continue such “sweetening” efforts for the coffee juggernaut, as well as for other large retailers.

Another such company is Steve & Barry’s. Though the retailer has experienced annual sales over $1 billion and solid performance in their newest stores, it still suffers from small margins due to their discounted pricing strategies. Their rapid expansion became dependent upon such real estate perks, which have all but frozen in the current market.

There are numerous ways out of the frying pan for Steve & Barry’s, including possible acquisitions. And Starbucks is only predicted to take a short-term media and investor relations hit from the news of the store closings. But still, the question remains: Is it possible to grow too fast? And when is aggressive expansion a bad idea?

Expansion is a bad idea when it is more opportunistic than strategic. That’s not to say that companies shouldn’t take advantage of opportunities they spot, as that would be counter to the nature of entrepreneurial business growth. What it does mean, however, is that they should approach any expansion with a careful and well-mapped out plan. Once the business has documented their vision, it should ask if it is pursuing growth in the best interest of the company, or whether it is growth only for the sake of growing.

Both Starbucks and Steve & Barry’s took advantage of market conditions to fuel expansions that were ultimately unsustainable.

From the entrepreneur’s perspective, growing “too fast” would seem like a great problem to have. But if the growth is more opportunitistic than strategic, it can be unsustainable and carry unforeseen risk.

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Has your business experience rapid growth?

What were the pitfalls, if any, that you encountered in the process?

Imagine reaching all of the goals you’ve set out to achieve within the confines of a four-day work week. Sounds pretty nice, doesn’t it? Now imagine hiring significantly fewer employees than your competitors and developing products that are dramatically scaled back in comparison to what those same competitors are building down the street….and then watching your venture reach milestone after promising milestone! That’s a reality for Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the entrepreneurs behind the company 37Signals.

With an iconoclastic view of what is needed to succeed in the fast-paced, whiz-bang world of web-based product development, 37Signals takes the old mantra “less is more” to a new level. In a recent interview with Bill Taylor, the founders shared their view that “less is less- because more is not better!” Their approach, which focuses on solving only the problem at hand by avoiding superfluous add-ons and unnecessary tweaks has not only resonated with their customers, but has created a large number of 37Signals evangelists.

Jason and David, while they are best known for their project-management software Basecamp and contact-management software Highrise, have also authored a book on the subject of success through simplicity, titled Getting Real. Inside, they tell entrepreneurs to add only the ingredients of the utmost importance when it comes to staffing, operations, and product development. They also passionately implore business owners to resist the urge to scale up, just because the opportunity to do so presents itself.

Though 37Signals is known for its frugality and prowess in the world of programming, there are strategic lessons for businesses of all types here; whether it’s scaling back the development of unessential functionality for your Web 2.0 company or modifying the operations at your coffee shop so that you don’t need to hire that extra barista. What can you do to simplify your business?