Important VS Urgent

In any kind of organization, especially start ups and emerging enterprises, the tectonic plates of what's possible shear up against one another all the time. If you assume a leader's role, a lot of this is going to end up on your desk.

Few things are all or nothing, and I'm surely in the gray area on this one, but I will highly recommend working hard on this angle of your enterprise life.

If you want to keep it sustainable, you'd better have a plan for coming out alive.

Many new enterprisers think the chaos of start ups looks romantic. You've seen it on TV commercials... the entrepreneur harriedly swashbuckling through barking vendors and worriesome computer printouts, replete with jarring close ups of a clock and adoring gazes from customers, followed by a celebratory glass of wine with an ocean view of the perfect sunset. That shtick is wildly over glorified. If you find your enterprise is continuously under siege, afloat in details and rooting under receivables for cash flow, there is nothing romantic about it. In fact, you’re in trouble and it's probably your own damn fault.

Don't wait for your growth phase to get smart. Never think volume will fix problems. Volume magnifies problems, it does not fix them, my friend.

You need to start early and start smart. I talked about it in an early post. You need to build in good bones from the start. Good structures to support the good stuff you can do with your organization: data control, accounting, insurance, legal, shipping.

You don't need to spend a fortune. You can start out cheap and easy, but you absolutely need to build your enterprise around good bones for it to be sustainable. Without executing these areas carefully and early in the process, you’ll forever be sprinting through your enterprise life, never quite catching up.

Seth Godin is a good biz writer. I liked this piece from an article Seth wrote for the April, 2004 issue of Fast Company:

"Urgent is not an excuse. In fact, urgent is often an indictment – a sure sign that you've been putting off the important stuff until it mushrooms out of control."

Seth goes on to compare sprinting for your plane VS doing the harder task of waking up a little earlier. Will you live in drama and chaos, or will you prevent the problem?

This is a nice metaphor for what you need to think about as you approach your start up or grow your emerging enterprise.

Wake up early to the demands that you'll face as an emerging enterprise and a full participant in the global economy. It's not drama and blue sky. It's rights and privileges. Obligations and requirements. Don't grouse. Get smart.

You need to bulletproof your enterprise to the best of your ability as early as you can. Build in good bones. Accounting and insurance and legal and data control are boring as hell, done right.

Boring is good. I promise, you do NOT want to see excitement in any one of these areas of your biz life. Work hard, work early, keep it boring.

Many good people are waiting to help you, people supporting your effort from the vendor side and the customer side. Perhaps you'll involve angel investors or VCs. Out in the world, many people will want to buy your stuff. Many others will want to partner up and build you into their network, and you’ll do it vice versa. There has never been a better time to to create and grow new enterprises of all kinds.

Your ability to execute the details will define your effort.

It's your job to show everybody your enterprise is important. Not urgent.
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• Seth Godin’s article at Fast Company

Shipping. We used to walk uphill in the snow.

Tom Peters talks about how the good folks at Fed Ex should wake up every day and be thankful they have such a great competitor in UPS. Ditto, UPS. Throw in DHL, USPS and others. These organizations have been having at each other for a good long piece now. Service is way up, as is ease of use. You, my enterprise friend, are in a lovely position to reap the benefits.

I'm a guy that builds biz models around shipping. It's just my own take on things, but I believe you can lead a much more sustainable life when you don't have to move your service or your product through your own 3D retail location. You can and should use the retail locations of other partners in your food chain, but I've always liked positioning ourselves far enough upriver that much of our production can just be shipped out.

Many people will love having their own retail exposure. It's just not been my gig. If you have a well executed retail presence in ANY market you will attract many great (and lousy) producers and vendors. Those of us without your value added access to your end users need your distribution and marketing skills. You make the place better by appropriately moving our stuff to those who need it.

However, not all of us want to be in 3D retail. For the rest, I'd suggest you focus on the amazing shipping grid the world has laid at our feet.

Physical shipping will add cost but what's a retail outlet going to cost? What are regional offices going to cost? What will staffing, insurance, rent, heating, cooling, and all the rest cost?

Think of the global shipping grid as a big slow motion internet. It's readily accessible without much training. You can get stuff to and from almost anywhere. Its utility for small enterprise has grown from almost negative value to ubiquitous through the economic evolution of the last few decades. You can and should take full advantage of it with relative ease. You can grow your own sustainable enterprise on the back of a knowledge and logistics grid the likes of which the planet has never seen. This tool, like the internet, is just laying out there essentially free, until you need it.

Back in the day, 20 - 25 years ago, trying to work the global shipping grid as a small enterprise was one gnarly ass task. It was set up for high volume shippers. Little guys got chewed up and spit out. Overnight and expedited shipping was proportionally much more expensive. Shipping out of the country was close to brain surgery. If something needed tracing, you'd spend hours on the phone. If something got lost, good luck.

Now the smallest enterprise can order a single pickup and delivery from their computer, know the cost in advance, predict accurate delivery dates, see and capture a record of who signed for it, what time they signed, and get instant traceability on a mess of other metrics. This is available to you from multiple vendors who are all killing themselves to make it easier to do business with them. The capabilities built into the shipping grid now are pretty amazing. And they keep getting better.

One of my favorite writers, John McPhee, wrote a great article about UPS in the New Yorker, April 18,2005. Get this... "Every night around the network UPS has something like thirteen airplanes and thirty-two crewmen ready but unassigned. They sit and wait for trouble to arise, like pilots in the Swiss Air Force, whose planes are hidden inside the Alps, always ready to emerge, in times of need, through camouflaged doors in the sides of the mountains. The UPS term for this is "hot spares". In Louisville or elsewhere, the light lights up, a siren goes off, and a loudspeaker says, "Activate the hot spare!" Hot-spare crews report to work each evening and go out to the ramp to pre-trip their plane. Then they wait. They arrive at seven and go home at three in the morning. If they are triggered by a call to "replace a mechanical" or "rescue that volume!", they have thirty minutes to get their plane off the ground. When the hot-spare light is red, mechanicals are the most common cause. In all its years of flying, UPS has never lost an airplane."

As you're reading this, this kind of evolution of the shipping grid is growing quietly all over the world. It's not costing you a single penny right now. You'll only need to pay when you use the tool, and then, you'll have a bunch of great providers working hard for your business.

Start ups and emerging enterprises don't typically get this treatment.

Take advantage of it.

John McPhee

UPS

FedEx

DHL

USPS US Postal Service

Tom Peters
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Be polite and blurt it out

When your enterprise is up and running, you'll get a question most biz trainers don't typically prepare people for.

All kinds of people will ask you what you do.

You need a short, sweet drive-by answer.

Potential customers, bankers, possible investors, community development folks, and neighbors will all ask at some time or another. That's just the start.

As a start up or emerging enterprise, you know damn well what you do is as varied as the weather and twice as unpredictable. My advice: don't use that for your answer.

What do you do? Your drive by answer needs to be about 5 to 10 really great words. The fewer the better.

Yes, you need a story, which I talked about in an earlier post. But you also need the movie trailer to your story. You need to explain your story and your enterprise like your enterprise depended on it. It just might.

What no one wants is an answer that provides the mission statement delivered with your self deprecating angst thrown in.

The ones who you really want to understand your answer are potential customers. Read the next sentence slowly, please. To interest most potential customers, you've got 3 or 4 seconds, probably only once. I recommend smart, fast, accurate.

Others will need to hear your short answer so they can ask more intelligent questions from their perspectives. These might be bankers, potential investors, and community development orgs. They don't want to hear your full story up front. They have their own stories they're busy working on. If you want their help, you'd better participate by keeping it short, using your drive-by answer to give them the tools to see how your enterprise fits in with theirs.

The last group, your neighbors and friends, are just being polite. They don't really want to know. Don't kill them with your rants. Give them your short answer. They really don't give a damn. Your short answer will give them something vaguely interesting to remember you by when they pass you on the sidewalk, at block parties, or wherever you bump into them.

So, what do you do? The reality is, my friend, everybody needs some part of that answer, and nobody really wants to know more than what's necessary.

Want a little sales tip? Keep your drive-by answer short and smart. Make it enthusiastic and accurate. Everyone in your food chain will be better for it.

Then, when someone asks what you do, be polite and blurt it out.
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Keep it weird.That means you.

Many people in the good city of Austin, TX promote a great phrase... "Keep Austin weird". Many other areas are also adopting the phrase.

The words are meant to promote trade with locally based enterprises as much as possible. The radical precept behind this is that it's nice to support your neighbor's enterprises whenever possible. Big boxes have their place but for goodness sake, we need to keep it a little weird, or we'll all be welcoming guests to Wal-Mart.

If you want to get involved in starting up an enterprise, exhale and look slowly and carefully at the ground you're entering.

If you are proposing a new economic entity to the world, you'll have to learn to deal with a reality of your new commercial life nobody talks about much.

You're position is that you have a solution to a problem no one has figured out before. You need people to pay you to execute that solution. With new stuff, both sides typically have very little to go on.

I'm sure you're a nice person but you're going to look, well, a little bit weird.

Good. Recognize you're running on a bit of a different track and be thankful we have society that enables you to be weird.

However, if you get the right to participate in free enterprise, I believe you also have the responsibility to support the weird environment in which you hope to live and thrive. You need to shop weird. You need to talk to new people who are talking about new stuff. Spend a little money with the better ones. Do your bit to keep the system afloat or there won't be much water for you to paddle in.

This is certainly important for consumer spending, but it's vital for business spending. If businesses do not get a good, continuous supply of new tools, we've got no future in business. Businesses need to support emerging enterprises as much as individuals do, maybe more so.

If you want to be a success as an independent enterprise you need to support the system of independent, start up, unusual restaurant, better mousetrap, healthier widget economies that are struggling to take hold all around you, largely unnoticed in the glare of big box logos.

Even if you're just thinking about your own enterprise, but not ready, go out there and participate. Drive past the big boxes. Think about what the people out there in those edgy or oddball or just plain lovely enterprises you've heard about and wanted to interact with. Do it. Go say hi. Support the ones where you can find some value. Ask them how they like being an entrepreneur. You'll learn a lot from the answers.

That wonderful radio icon Paul Harvey once said, 'You don't believe it unless you do it.'

Learn to look for what's weird. Learn to find the enterprises that are finding better solutions to problems. That's what you'll be peddling so get out there and help them out. Vote with your feet and get off the beaten path.

I think this enterprise stuff is getting to you.

You're looking a little weird.
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Killer Innovations

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I've wanted to recommend a great podcast specific to the subject of innovation. It's presented by Phil McKinney at a site called Killer Innovations (linked below). I like Phil's site very much. A no BS style from someone who's done it. Phil works for a global top tier tech firm but presents his approach in a way that start ups and early stagers can readily feel comfortable learning from.

In fact, Phil's job is so cool, we've all got to stay away from talking about it. You can get his bio in PDF as well as his Google links from the KI site. Go there. You'll learn something, I promise.

I was getting so many good ideas from Phil's podcasts I started to feel a bit like the person on their 5th trip through the buffet line, not that I have any experience...

I asked Phil why a guy in his position would be so free with his advice and wisdom.

Interesting. He didn't promote himself or any of his projects. He answered with a pretty cool perspective we're all capable of. "...we all have day jobs but at the same time, if each of us can give a little back - the world will be a better place."

Damn. Not more of that building up the commons stuff.

Phil's busy. But he's making time to give something back.

You're busy. But you can also give something back. You can innovate. You can change the way something gets done for the better.

You can start up your own enterprise. You can design it to support yourself and to give something back at the same time. There's nothing incompatible about that. You just need to plan it right.

Phil is a good teacher and an honest presenter. Go get smart about innovation from someone who has clearly been through it.

Visit Killer Innovations.

Don't forget to say thanks.
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So what are you looking at

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In the world of enterprise there are not a lot of answers.

The only one I can put on my list with any certainty is this: When something REALLY works, keep doing it. Then keep doing it better every day. When something doesn't work, well, you get the idea.

Unfortunately, all the rest seems to fall in between. Things work and you push them. You find limits. You work the limits to the best of your ability and finances. When you beat those limits down to a manageable size, you're getting within reach of REALLY works territory.

That's when you get to switch from working hard and smart to working harder and smarter. However, you get to do it on your terms, not those dictated by the problem.

There are certainly guidelines, if not answers, to how good sustainable enterprises get welded together and stay afloat. That's what I've been trying to talk about in these posts. My general point is, if you want answers, you'd better like the looking.

That's the temperament I'd recommend in approaching any start up or start up type project, even when it's within a big outfit.

Look for answers, but look very carefully at how you look. Think about what you should look at and how you look at what you find. How are you going to measure what you find? If you're smart, you'll be doing this a bit differently, and hopefully, a bit smarter all the time.

Data is key, but picking what you look at, and how you look at it is much more important. Then, my friend, learn to enjoy that process. Because, if you don't control the data, you're not going to enjoy your enterprise very much.

Answers are never readily available. Your role as a start up or a sustainable enterprise is to ask better and better questions all the time.

You can do that by controlling as much of the data as you can regarding your enterprise. Then, as you think of better questions, you can use your ability to get at all your information immediately. The success of your enterprise depends on your ability to reshuffle your data to get increasingly meaningful answers to your increasingly better questions.

If you want to move the blue sky stuff forward, you've got to capture the details. As I've said before, paper and pencil work, but digital databases are easy and much more helpful. You get to set them up any way you want to look at your data. When you think of better questions, you can quickly make newer and better windows into the data.

Before I drift off into database design, I'll stop and get back on point.

I don't know many answers. I just really like the looking for 'em. If you’re looking for sustainable work, you should too.
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Trib follow up

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Right next to the story about our recycling award there was a story that oil had closed above $60 a barrel again on Friday.
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Nice words from the Chicago Tribune

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The Chicago Tribune ran a nice piece about our work today.

I've told most every reporter that's ever asked about our work that throwing away oil seems idiotic when people are dying for the stuff. Jon Van was the first one to ever use it.

I also try to credit my Dad as often as I can but Jon got it just a bit mixed up. My Dad's patents are in ion exchange which is way smarter stuff than I know about. He's a real engineer. I just play one on TV.

Also, if you've read any previous posts, you'd know that my biz partner and co-founder Dave, is not a media friendly kind of guy. However, I was worried that the story focused on me too much and didn't use Dave's name. I was a little nervous calling him. When I started to tell Dave that I'd used his name about a million times in the interviews, he interrupted me right away. Dammit Rick, he said, didn't I tell you not to do that?

Pure Dave. However, he got what he wanted. I want to re-acknowledge out loud that this enterprise began life as a two person start up. Just don’t tell Dave I told you.


Chicago Tribune
JON VAN
Published July 30, 2005


Rick Terrien exudes both humility and enthusiasm when discussing his company's accomplishments.

Terrien, president of Universal Separators Inc. in Streator, Ill., addresses problems of contaminated oil and coolant fluids that are common to the manufacturing process.

"It's a big problem in the dark, back corners of manufacturing plants," said Terrien.

Normal procedure is for plants to shut down equipment, drain contaminated oils and coolant fluids, and pay someone to take them away for disposal. This costs money for new oil and coolant and lost production time, and it is an environmental burden.

Universal Separators makes equipment that skims off the top layer of liquid, transports it to a tank where contaminants settle out of the fluids, and then enables operators to recycle the clean fluids.

"It works by gravity," Terrien said. "It's not really high tech, but it does work like a mechanical kidney outside the fluid tubs."

Using some technology patented by his father, Terrien started the privately held Universal Separators in 1998. He's been spreading the word about recycling fluids ever since.

"A lot of people think that environmental stuff is just a frill, but it's not," said Terrien. "It's a core competency. I use job loss as an argument. A manufacturer needs to be as smart about the details as he can to remain competitive.

"Pollution is really just resources in the wrong place. It doesn't make sense to be throwing oil away--people are dying for that stuff. Recycling is ultimately a bean-counter thing."

Terrien's devotion to recycling was rewarded recently when the National Society of Professional Engineers recognized Universal Separators' technology with an award for small-business product of the year. The honor included acknowledgement from Dieter Zetsche, chief executive of Chrysler Group, of Universal Separators' technology.

"That really felt good, to have a big corporate executive take time out to recognize a contribution our tiny company makes toward improving the industry," said Terrien. "It's nice to be noticed."

Chicago Tribune. July 30, 2005. This story is now in the Chicago Tribune archives.
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Tom Peters. An honor from the top shelf

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Great stuff unexpectedly drops in over the transom sometimes.

I've wanted to write about enterprise and innovation for a long while. Our current start up has been soaking up its share of waking hours, but this past April I got around to opening up this site for posting some ideas that had been stacking up.

I'm an avid reader of biz related books and mags. Like life, the content quality of what's published is all over the board. Some great, some awful. However, even in the bad ones, I find there is usually one or two small things that are valuable and that can be put to good use.

Tom Peters is another story. When Tom wrote In Search Of Excellence, the business of enterprise changed forever. There are now over 10 million copies in print, in a zillion languages. Tom has written, or had a hand in, a dozen or so other books, nearly all best sellers, and untold articles about business, life, innovation and enterprise.

Every single time I come in contact with Tom Peter's work I come away better. When Tom writes, there aren't one or two good things in each piece. There are one or two good things per page. Typically there's one or two good things per paragraph. Book after book, article after article. Decade after decade. Tom is the best of the best.

Fortune magazine calls Tom Peters the Ur-guru of management and compares him to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman and H.L. Mencken. CBS MarketWatch said "Tom Peters is the most provocative and engaging (as well as annoying and threatening) management guru running loose in America today."

Tom Peters web site is the only permanent outside link I've ever included on this site. It was there from the first day I put the site up.

I just received an unexpected, "over the transom" gift from Tom and friends. We were asked if they could include SustainableWork on their blog roll, their list of recommended reading sites.

My goodness. Thank you!

The subject of start ups, innovation and self enterprise is an area of life that's typically full of the worst kind of hype and hucksterism found anywhere. I've been trying to talk about these subjects with a minimum of noise and as much straight talk as I can muster. That approach usually doesn't stand out amid the tidal forces of popular culture.

The fact that Tom and friends think enough of this approach and this content to include it in their recommended reading is among the coolest gifts I've ever received.

Fortune magazine summed up Tom's impact this way: "We live in a Tom Peters world."

I know I do and I'm very grateful.

Many thanks Tom and friends!
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Betting the farm. One job at a time.

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December 2003. Were you reading those job creation numbers?

It was a rough time. Biz was tanking in every sector. Only 1000 jobs created during that month in the entire United States.

One of them was Bill, the guy I hired to replace myself as chief peddler. We crossed our fingers, ignored the headlines, bet the farm and made one new job. December 2003. It was the one and only month I will probably ever be statistically noticeable in the macro economic numbers. We made 0.001 of the new jobs that month for the whole country.

The economy didn't seem to care, but Bill and I sure did. It was a turning point moment that was clearly saying, "Start your engines".

And that's my point. For start ups and small enterprisers the macro economy will always churn in ways we have no control over. That churning will rain millions of trickle down droplets on to you in perceptible and imperceptible ways. Like the weather, you and I have little or no influence over any of it.

Our opportunities are different and shouldn't be driven by the headlines. Problems are all over the place, even more so during bad times. However, problems equal opportunity, remember? Don't judge your opportunity or your contribution by what everyone says about your chances. They don't have your insight or your heart. They also miss the potential for creating smart, sustainable enterprises because they're driven by yesterday's numbers and their own fears.

Of course enterprise start ups can look scary. Everything can if you couch it in the wrong terms. But when things are dark there is also a great need for light. That's your opportunity, not your barrier.

From the outside looking in it probably appeared dumb to hire Bill. Every biz headline was awful. Storm clouds swirled.

What happened? The next year we had our best year ever. We damn near tripled our sales, with Bill leading the charge. It was a wonderful sight to see.

So, yes. That was me. 0.001 of the job creations for Dec. 2003. Remember? It's funny, but nobody ever called to say thanks.

Except Bill. And that's what really mattered.

It mattered to Bill. It really mattered to me.