Awake at 2 o'clock?

Can You Build Your Business in Half the Time?

Posted on February 5, 2012 by John F. Dini

I had an unusual coincidence happen last week. Speaking to prospective new members of The Alternative Board (TAB), I wound up with three CPAs in the same meeting. They were from three different smaller firms, and all three identified their current concern as a struggle to develop new business.

The idea of participating in TAB is to set aside time each month to work on, not in the business. When I asked if they might find benefit in doing so starting today, they looked at each other and then at me.

“You don’t understand,” one said. “It’s February. We can’t do anything but tax returns until April 15th.” The others nodded.

I’ve coached and consulted with many accounting firms over the last 15 years. All but a few follow the same pattern. From the first of the year until April they are buried in tax work. April is big for post-deadline decompression and vacations. In May they start looking at the extensions that still need to be done, and catch up on their billing.

In most firms, June begins the partner meetings and planning process. July is when they finalize goals and objectives for the coming year. They work on those initiatives from August (working around the rest of their vacations) to November, with a break for the rush of the October final extension deadline. Then there are the holidays, and in January they begin preparing for tax season again.

But they’re surprised that the business isn’t growing to meet their expectations. After all, they work very hard, and think about business development for almost 1/3 of the year!

Let’s say you made one of those ubiquitous New Year’s resolutions to get into better shape. You exercise diligently from January through April, and then you don’t darken the door of the gym or lace up your running shoes for the rest of the year. What are the odds that you’ll be making the same resolution next January?

It’s easy to pick on CPAs because every business person is familiar with the annual tax cycle, but how many other businesses do the same thing? Retailers for the holiday shopping season, contractors in the spring, health and benefit agents in the fourth quarter.

Do we put planning and development aside in the busy season because we really don’t have any time, or is it because our selective short term memory makes it an easy thing to forget when we are making money?

I work with many firms, including CPAs, whose business grows year in and year out. Their competitors complain that they are lucky, or overly aggressive, or make some other excuse for their success.

The truth is, they build their business development plan on a twelve month cycle. They have time and resources allocated every month of the year. They may not devote the same amount of time during busy season, but they don’t stop working on the business.

Take an honest look at your growth plans for 2012. For many small business owners those plans don’t go much beyond a target number. “We will grow 10% in the coming year.” That’s not a plan, it’s a wish.

If you have outlined something more substantial for your bizdev efforts, what steps have you taken to insure that execution occurs regardless of circumstances? Will that development be put on the back burner in busy season? What if you land a huge order, or a major new customer? What if the employee responsible for the development effort leaves?

If you expect to grow your business year in and year out, the effort for that needs to be consistent. Business development is a twelve month discipline. Starting and stopping produces the results that Aesop described for the hare 2,000 years ago. You lose to the turtle, no matter how much talent you have.

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One Response to Can You Build Your Business in Half the Time?

John Hollier says:

February 9, 2012 at 3:57 pm

John,
Couldn’t agree more on business owners myopic view of their business, where day to day operations is the only thing they are focused on.

I touched on this subject in my own blog post “How much time do you spend ‘working ON your business’?”
http://www.cxcel.com/wpblog/2011/08/how-much-time-do-you-spend-working-on-your-business/

Keep up the good work,

John Hollier,
Chief Collaborator
Collaborative Xceleration

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Tax Deductible- So What?

Posted on January 29, 2012 by John F. Dini

We have done ourselves a disservice as business owners. Too often we have justified an expenditure to non-owner friends as “tax deductible” to show how clever we are.

In doing so, we have confused the public. They see the Federal Government throw billions at favored projects, and they think it is the same money that we are discussing.

Tax credits are not tax deductions. Tax credits are for companies that make a profit, and are then forgiven from paying the taxes on that profit. As many small business owners have painfully realized in the last few years, if you don’t make a profit, a tax credit is useless to you.

The past few years have also seen accelerated depreciation as a regular “tax incentive” (as opposed to a “credit”). Unfortunately, that did nothing to help the struggling companies who weren’t profitable enough to buy new equipment.

Tax deductions are expenses in your business that you pay. They involve real cash outlays. They are merely among the list of things that the IRS says you can include as part of the cost of doing business.

A few months ago I was discussing an event with a politician. He is a local part-time elected official, who has been employed for his entire career. He wanted to hold an event for the town.

I suggested we hire a nearby small business to provide refreshments, in the interest of supporting our own local economy. He said (with a wink), “Tell them to just donate everything. After all, it’s tax deductible!”

Let’s say a small business provides income in to its owner in the 30% tax bracket. That means he gets to pay 100% of the food cost, 100% of the employee’s wages, and 100% of the gas out of his own pocket for his “tax deductible” donation. A year later he can put that cost down as an expense, and get 30% of it taken off his taxes. I’m certain the official had no idea that it costs the businessman $1,000 out-of-pocket and $700 net to “earn” his $300 tax deduction.

Tax credits are a zero-sum game. With a government that borrows daily to meet its obligations, every dollar of tax credits reduces the pie of revenues. While tax deductible expenses might have the same effect, they cost business owners about $3 in expenses for every $1 recouped. That makes them self-limiting.

Spending too much money on tax-deductible expenses will put you out of business just as quickly as any other kind. Tax credits, on the other hand, are dollar for dollar gifts from the government.

So the next time you are going to wink at someone about your trip to a conference or tickets to a sporting event, make sure he understands what you are saying. “This is deductible from my profits, just like rent, salaries, employee benefits, and the hundreds of other expenses that I pay to run my company. Compared to them, it is negligible, and I still have to pay 70% of the cost myself.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged business ownership, entrepreneurship, politics, small business | Leave a comment

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Employees aren’t Partners

Posted on January 22, 2012 by John F. Dini

Many of my clients are recovering from the recession. They are running lean, and have restored their profitability, even if at lower revenues than prior to 2008. Those that had to reduce or freeze employee compensation are seeking ways to share their recovering success.

When cuts were made, whether layoffs, wage reductions, curtailed working hours or just freezing costs, profitability was the universally quoted reason. “We are losing money” or “We have to maintain a safe operating margin” were the battle cries of thousands of difficult conversations with employees.

Usually, those statements came with a future promise. “When things get better, we will (fill in the blank.)” In some cases the promise was simply to go back to full employment or wages. In others it was to “share the wealth” of increased profitability.

Now that the company is profitable again, owners are deciding how much they have to do to live up to these somewhat vague guarantees.

First, employees may need to be educated on the need to restore working capital and retained earnings on the balance sheet. The fact that a company is profitable this year doesn’t make it profitable retroactively. If the last few years decimated liquidity ratios, they must be rebuilt. A strong balance sheet is what carried you through this last downturn, and you have no idea when the next one will happen. Repairing your reserves sooner rather than later is the smartest use of restored profits.

From the same perspective, employees must understand that a return to acceptable profitability does not mean that you are going to pretend the last few years didn’t happen. Employees often expect that you will “make up” any missed raises or lost pay. It is your role to explain that we are going to start acting like a profitable company today, not make it retroactive.

But the biggest danger is the concept of profit sharing. Many employers are telling staff that they will share in the profits. One company I know is earmarking a specific percentage of the profits for distribution. Another is giving every employee a fixed-amount bonus as “profit sharing” for achieving the overall profit goal.

On the surface, it seems to make sense. Employees should understand why profit is a necessary requirement for owning a business. Cutting them in as “partners in profit” on an ongoing basis, however, isn’t necessarily a good idea.

Setting employee expectations of a “right” to profits opens a huge can or worms. What if you decide that the business needs to retain more earnings for future growth? What if a hot market or a big transaction hikes profits disproportionately? Should the bonuses compensate employees far beyond their market value? Is the fact they stuck with you in a single bad business cycle (when there may have been few other choices) a ticket to lifetime largess?

Profit-based compensation should be reserved for those employees who 1) make decisions that directly impact profitability, and 2) are compensated well enough that they can survive if they receive no incentive. Everyone else should have incentives based on their performance, not how the company fared overall.

Sharing profits after lean times is rightly a one-off event. It is a thank you for previous deprivation. Doing it more than once is creating an entitlement that has little effect and big implications.

Posted in Leadership, Management | Tagged business ownership, employee performance, employees, financial, recession | 3 Comments

3 Responses to Employees aren’t Partners

Ted Reynolds says:

February 3, 2012 at 9:32 am

This is an excellent article and I completely agree with the concept that only Exectuive Mgmt should profit share. Incentive based pay for the employees is a good practice, but needs to have flexibility to ebb and flow with the needs of the business being met first and foremost.

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Larry Amon says:

March 3, 2012 at 6:51 am

John, I disagree. I used profit sharing with my employees for 15 years. Each employee in my company contributed to the profits of the company. We were a maufacturing company and everyone contributed, not just the managers. We did set up a system whereby each employee’s share of the profit was based on compensation, years of service, and a performance factor. We met monthly with all employees and reviewed our financials with them. They knew where they could help by controlling expenses and where they could cut costs. they knew the cost of the materials that they were using in the process and could increase the yield and productivity of the operation. When the company was sold the employees were given over $500,000 to be dived up according to the previous criteria. After 25 years they are still there.

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- John F. Dini says:
  
  March 4, 2012 at 9:59 am
  
  That sounds lile a great system, Larry. I note you said “performance” was a key criteria. I have absolutely no problem with using company profitability as a funding scale for incentive programs. My piece criticised companies that distribute profits as an entitlement, without defining what individuals need to do to earn their share.
  
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Another Lost Generation?

Posted on January 15, 2012 by John F. Dini

I had the opportunity to present “Beating the Boomer Bust” twice this week, one of which was recorded for a Texas Public Radio show this weekend. For those who aren’t familiar with the piece, it discusses the massive changes that are unfolding as Boomers retire from their businesses.

As usual, members of the audience said afterwards “I knew all those things, but I never thought through the implications before.”

A quick recap before I get into today’s topic. “Beating the Boomer Bust” is a look at the perfect storm facing retiring owners who plan to sell their businesses. That largest small-business-owning group in history will be selling all at the same time. The number of buyers is about half as large as the number of sellers, and the buyer generation (Gen X) isn’t interested in the type of work that small business entails.

It is that group, the buying generation, that could be facing a demographic squeeze that changes them into a new “lost” generation.

The first Lost Generation is the group born in the decades just before the beginning of the 20th century. The oldest members of that group were in their teens and 20’s during WWI, which decimated the ranks of the young men, although less so in the USA than in Europe. Those who returned were traumatized, and more worried about enjoying life than making their mark on the world.

Enter the Roaring 20’s. The Lost Generation writers, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and T.S Eliot among others, promoted both hedonistic lifestyles and a cynical outlook towards humanity. The 20’s generally bring to mind Flappers, Speakeasies, Gangsters, and a spectacular finish with the Great Depression of 1929.

Many generations have been characterized as wastrels when they are young. The Lost Generation had the added misfortune to reach their productive years, their 30’s and 40’s, just as the economy made it very, very difficult to get ahead. Now, let’s skip forward to Generation X.

What Boomer hasn’t complained about the work ethic of Gen X? Gen X was born and raised in a time of plenty. They have grown up in an economy that was fueled by a giant generation of workaholics, the Baby Boomers. Their values system places a far lower premium on business and financial accomplishment. Self-actualization comes first, accumulating things is secondary.

Disclaimer: Please don’t send comments about “I’m a Boomer and not a workaholic” or “I’m an X’er and work very hard.” No generational generalizations are universally applicable. I get it.

Now they have the added misfortune of being in their 30’s and 40’s when the economy isn’t very receptive to building wealth or rapidly expanding a business.

At first blush, I didn’t think that was a problem. With one X’er for every two retiring Boomers, there should be more than enough opportunity for even the marginally interested to succeed. The more I think about it, the more I begin to wonder whether that will be the case. Two other factors are coming into play, and both are huge.

The Boomers aren’t getting out of the way, and the Millennials are coming on fast.

Boomers haven’t saved enough to retire in comfort. They can’t depend on the government to make it up for them. They are healthier than any previous generation. If 60 is the new 40, why would they (outside of the public sector) suddenly step down at 65? They want to be busy, and they want to be wealthy. Many, if not most, are planning to spend at least a few additional years in that pursuit.

The Millennials (depending on who you ask, roughly the generation born between 1985 and 2005) are coming of age in a difficult environment. Jobs are scarce, finances are lean, and the position of America in the world is changing. All indications are that the Millennials will push harder than the X’ers to get what they want.

Where the X’ers are widely characterized by their sense of entitlement, the Millennials clearly expect their lifestyles to be a direct outcome of their success in work.

So this is what leads me to ask about a Lost Generation.

The Big Picture: 78 million Boomers, still working hard, and delaying their exit from the business arena. 38 million Gen X’ers, with high expectations and lower motivation. 80 million Millennials coming on fast and intent on competing for what they want.

The Small Picture: X’er in his late 40’s who has spent the last 20 years in business telling the employer how he wants his job to fit his lifestyle. He is waiting for a late 60ish Boomer in front of him to get out of the way. When it finally happens, he suddenly finds that there is a Millennial in his late 20’s who earns less and works more waiting to leapfrog him.

If you are a Boomer business owner who can’t find the next generation of leadership among your X’ers (and there are millions of you), start looking at your Millennials while you still have some time to train them.

Painting: Han Wu Shen “Young Worker” at paintinghere )

Posted in Exit Options, Exit Planning, Management, Thoughts and Opinions | Tagged business strategy, employees, entrepreneurship, management | 2 Comments

2 Responses to Another Lost Generation?

Richard pace says:

January 15, 2012 at 7:57 pm

Thought I would use the conventional method and mix it up. Excellent article. Hopefully, the readers will have enough experience to appreciate it. Go Giants.

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david k waltz says:

January 17, 2012 at 8:59 pm

John,

While it might be true that millenials work longer, is this a manifestation of the the experience curve, learning the ropes, etc. Perhaps the working for less is a case of “you get what you pay for”?

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A Return to the Handshake?

Posted on January 8, 2012 by John F. Dini

There are five words that strike fear into the heart of every business owner. They are “Let me call my lawyer.”

I’m not talking about threats. If I had a nickel for every person who threatens “I’m going to call my lawyer” I’d be very rich. I’ve found that to be a tactic used by those who really don’t understand how to talk through a problem. Something goes wrong in a business deal. Someone has a fixed idea of what the problem is, and what the solution just has to be. When the other side demurs, they pull out the lawyer card.

Like Mattie Ross in both versions of “True Grit,” who wields the off-screen presence of J. Noble Daggett as a first line of offense, people who pull out lawyers at the drop of a hat are usually those who have never actually engaged in serious litigation.

Those of us who have been involved in lawsuits try to avoid them like the plague. We know that they quickly get out of control, as one attorney starts jousting with the other. Accusations fly, trees are made into paper at a horrific rate, and the legal bills mount with breathtaking speed.

Will Rogers once said;

“When you drive through a small town, and it has a lawyer, he is usually a man of pretty modest circumstances. Now when that town has two lawyers, they are both doing very well.”

In our business owner groups of The Alternative Board, “Should I sue?” is a regular topic of discussion. Except in the most egregious cases, the consensus is always “no.” A settlement of the differences, almost without regard to cost, is always less expensive, less time consuming, and less aggravating than going to court. Most of the time you wind up settling anyway.

So when do you really need a lawyer to set out the specifics of a business deal at the outset? First, begin with the end in mind. If the relationship is intended to be long-term, and separation is going to be difficult, costly or unpleasant for either party, you probably need a contract drafted by an attorney. If there is substantial liability to either party of the other doesn’t perform, you need a contract.

Otherwise, you might just need an agreement. When I started consulting, we drafted a service agreement that was pages long. It defined deliverables, payment terms, responsibilities and communication requirements. It said who had to provide what to whom and when, what constituted provision as required, what constituted failure to provide in a timely manner, what the corrective measures were that would be satisfactory, and what the steps were if those measures proved less than satisfactory.

The lawyers had a field day. Because it was so complicated, every prospective client had to present it to their lawyers for review. Their lawyers always wanted changes. Then our lawyers had to review the changes. Not surprisingly, it didn’t lend a real warm and fuzzy atmosphere to the beginning of an engagement.

Either the relationship worked out or it didn’t. We never sued a client if it went south, we just wrapped it up and moved on. Sometimes we did more work than we felt we were paid for. A few times I’m guessing that the client got a bit less than they anticipated. That’s business.

Now I draft my own agreements. They are typically one page. They are solely to make sure both parties understand what we are trying to do. They say “You want this work done. We do that. We can do it in this amount of time. You will pay us this amount for doing it.”

That’s about it. I’ve delivered millions of dollars worth of work with no more than that. All the additional effort of defining what we will do to each other if I don’t do the work or if they don’t pay me, the defining of which court we have to fight in, where the mailing notices have to go, whether electronic notice is acceptable, ad infinitum, is crap that is only useful if you go to court. I figure if I bill someone for services and they don’t pay, a judge can figure that out without me trying to tell him what the definition of payment is.

When a client asks me where all that nifty legal language is, I tell them my viewpoint. I will do my best to make this successful. I assume you will do your best to make this successful. If I determine that I’ve made a mistake in my judgement of you as a client, I will move on. Life is too short to fight over it.

A one page agreement is full of holes. A thirty page contract has 30 times as many holes. Too often we lose the concept of a written agreement as a clarifier, and we try to make it into something that replaces the basic trust that underlies every business relationship. It is a waste of time.

OK, maybe I’m not quite back to the handshake, but I keep edging closer.

Posted in Thoughts and Opinions | Tagged business ownership, entrepreneurship, small business advice | 2 Comments

2 Responses to A Return to the Handshake?

Tim DeBlaey says:

January 9, 2012 at 11:21 am

Well said! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve let people know that my handshake is my contract and my work is my signature.

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Jackie Gernaey says:

January 10, 2012 at 5:20 am

I agree. A clear statement of what we both agree needs to be accomplished is great. I find an hourly rate with a guess as to how many hours works well. It allows you to change the scope without anyone getting concerned. It protects the provider and assuming the consultant does not draw things out, usually the client gets the project cheaper because no fudge factors are added into the price to cover the unexpected.

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