Giving is Receiving

Like most of you, I recall fondly the Christmases and holiday times of my childhood.  I guess I'm getting old and can say it was a lot better and more fun when Christmas wasn't so commercialized and every time you settled down to watch Frosty the Snowman or the Little Drummer Boy on television you weren't accosted by holiday ads from retailers trying to "out sale" their competitors.  I must say, however, I am amused by some of the creative names that companies have come up with to call their sales during this time of year - not!

Over the last few years of definitely the most significant economic crisis of my lifetime I have learned first hand how to budget my time, money and resources in such a way where I can honestly say there are very few things that I don't already have that I really need.  Health?  Check.  Beautiful and wonderful wife?  Check.  Three great kids?  Check.  A business that I love with all of my heart and can't wait to get to every morning (even though it might have been more fun when we were making more money)?  Check!  People that I love to work with and that challenge me to be a better person?  Check.  I could go on but you get the point.  So what was it I was saying I really needed?  How about you?

I don't mean to be ignorant or irresponsible.  I definitely recognize that many people this Holiday are out of work and there is great need all around us that is waiting to be met by those of us who are blessed with so much.  I can never do enough but I must do my part - and so must you.  The holidays are a great time to count our blessings and share our blessings with others and a lot of people do just that.  It's easy to donate time and money to wonderful organizations that help people enjoy the holidays a little bit more.

A couple of years ago my wife and I took our kids on Christmas morning to help feed homeless people a hot prepared meal and to pass out some coats, socks and other daily necessities.  Without the generosity of the church and the volunteers that Christmas morning the people we served would have had no other means to enjoy the food and necessities that were provided that day.  Christmas to them would have been just another day like every other day. 

As we helped to serve the hundreds of people that came through the doors that chilly morning I was struck by the fact that we were practically tripping over the other volunteers that came out that morning.  What a wonderful thing that so many people would give up a few hours of their Christmas morning and early afternoon to help those less fortunate.  I also couldn't help but think as I looked out over the throng of volunteers, I wonder how many of these people will be back here on January 25th, February 25th and every other month of the year?

Like I said, if we allow ourselves to consider how much need there is around us we can easily become overwhelmed and feel as though our minute contributions don't matter.  I'm sure if we're honest a lot of us would have to admit that's what holds us back.  What if, however everyone had that attitude and there was no one to lend a hand?  Thank goodness, that's not the case.  So my challenge to all of you is to do something - anything!  Don't worry about the outcome and don't look for or expect any rewards.  I can't tell you what to do or how to do it but I can promise you this from my own experiences.  When you get outside of yourself in this way it's a little scary - and totally invigorating!

Once you take the first step the ones following get easier as you move along.  By the time you're finished you will be filled with a feeling that I cannot explain but can only recommend.  Along the way, you will see things that will inspire you and things that will break your heart.  Most importantly, you will see that we are all created alike and each of us has a lot more in common than we have things that separate us.  Most importantly, you'll find the greatest gift you can receive on this earth.  The gift of giving.  May you be blessed with a renewed spirit of giving both now in the Holiday Season and throughout the New Year 2012.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Giving Thanks

It's too bad the holidays only come around once a year, although the older I get the less time there is every year between packing up the Christmas decorations to digging out the platter and electric knife to carve up the Thanksgiving turkey.  I love Christmas for all of the nostalgia and memories of my childhood and now living vicariously through my children, although the days of being overjoyed by the magic of all that the Holiday means has waned a bit as they have become teenagers.  I can more clearly see the days when I will be looking forward to welcoming my kids home for Christmas than the times we have shared with them as little ones, which is a little sad I suppose but it certainly makes me value each and every holiday season that much more.

The one thing that I don't like about Christmas is the (over) commercialization and bombardment by retailers trying to eek out their end of year sales on a high note.  As someone directly tied to the retail industry I completely understand it but wish it wasn't so "in your face."  The over development of retail space and retail stores, brick and mortar, or more increasingly online, is another subject for another day.  The other thing I don't like about Christmas is that it seems like Thanksgiving has become almost an afterthought.  Well, I hope I can change your way of thinking here, as I have changed mine in recent years.

There is nothing better than Thanksgiving day and Thanksgiving weekend.  The food, the family, the friends and the day for us all to create a little space to disengage from our hectic schedules.  If there is anything better than a Thanksgiving nap after lunch or dinner in this world, I haven't found it yet.  Those who know me well know my passion for football and Thanksgiving Day my whole life has meant Dallas Cowboys football.  I cannot imagine a last Thursday in November without a Cowboys game.  Each of us have our own things that make the day, the weekend and the season special.  Whatever those things are, I say we embrace them for all their worth this year. 

Life is a funny and precious thing.  We never know what lies around the next corner or stage of life and all we have is right now.  So instead of worrying about yesterday and fretting about tomorrow I say we give enormously grateful thanks for TODAY - which is all any of us are guaranteed.  I am only two years removed from spending Thanksgiving week and the week after in the hospital, unable to eat or drink anything.  It was amongst the lowest points in my life but out of that difficulty was born my intense gratitude for what I am about to enjoy this week.

I am thankful for way too many things to even attempt to list them within this post.  I tell my friends all the time and it is really true - I am the luckiest guy in the world.  My hope for all of us is that we will relish every moment of the day tomorrow - and no, I'm not talking about more cranberry sauce!  Really live in each and every moment and take time to reflect and review how blessed and how fortunate we are to be able to be alive in exciting and challenging times like these.  To be able to create our futures and determine the paths we will follow.  I could go on and on but you get the point.

I could close this post in so many ways but I have chosen to recite a couple of quotes that I think say what I am feeling more eloquently than I ever could.  One is a German philosopher who lived several centuries ago and one is one of the most well known U.S. presidents of the 20th century.

"If the only prayer you said in your whole life was 'Thank You,' that would suffice." -Meister Eckhardt

"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them." - John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Happy Thanksgiving - and "Thank You" for following my posts.

Up and Down

It's easy to focus on all of the negativity around us right now.  In case you feel slighted just turn on the television, pick up a newspaper or surf the Internet.  Apparently you can make a lot of money by telling everyone how terrible they should feel and how horrible the world around them is.  Being a realist I can say that I understand these people have had plenty of ammunition the last few years from which they could load their weapons.  The optimistic side of me hopes to get out of the mire and the muck and to rise above it all and find ways to make myself and everyone around me feel fabulous each and every day.  It may take a little more work these days to stay up than it does to keep the status quo but it also makes you in to a person that more people will want to associate with, be friends with and most importantly do business with. 

I have a friend that I don't do business with directly but whom I get to see and talk with on a fairly regular basis.  I'll call her Mary.  Mary is the type of person that everyone loves to be around.  Ask Mary a rote question such as "how are you," "how are things" or "what's going on" and you're going to get back a list of (very enthusiastic) adjectives such as "FANTASTIC!"  "AMAZING!" "INCREDIBLE!" or "AWESOME!"  I can be in the midst of a downer of a day and have a 2 minute chat with Mary and walk away with a smile on my face and a determination and dedication to, as Zig Ziglar says, be a "Good Finder."  Don't you just love people like Mary? 

So, I wonder, has Mary always acted this way, no matter what?  More importantly, how does she stay up even when everyone and everything else seems to be down?  Finally, what things can I learn and emulate from her?  So in a recent conversation I asked.  In a nutshell she told me "I just decided to be light in a world of darkness."  Sure, she has bad days.  Sure, she gets disappointed, let down and all the other bad stuff we all deal with.  She just has a way of responding to life and not reacting to it.  She also told me "it takes no more effort to be up than it does to stay down and so my focus is on helping others stay up no matter what is going on around them."  I love that. 

Think about that for a few minutes.  Really.  What if, instead of reacting every time we got upset, disappointed, lied to, cut off in traffic, whatever we decided to respond in a way that was different than most people react?  How much better and more productive would your day be?  How much better would it be for the people you work with, work for, interact with and (gulp) live with?  I have to think it would be noticeable, to say the least.  I have to think that like Mary people would be positively impacted and that their positive attitudes towards you would be reflected back in a way that would create a feeling of positive momentum inside yourself that would be hard to contain.  Why, it almost sounds easy, doesn't it?!  It sure sounds like more fun than living on the edge and reacting to all the negativity in our world.  Then why don't we (I) do it? 

This is not a question of ability or skill.  It's a question of intentions.  You can decide you don't want to do it and remain status quo like most of the other people around you OR you can decide that you are going to be different in a way that no matter how those around you respond makes you feel better, act better and perform better.  Indeed these are the people that are making things happen and not sitting still just because of what is happening in Washington, Wall Street or Main Street.  You could say they march to a different beat.  And they are having a lot more fun doing it.

So my challenge to myself and to you is to make a decision.  Will you stay up and respond to life from a mindset of making yourself and your world a better place?  Or will you continue to react to the (mostly) negative things going on around you?  I hope after you make your decision I can shake your hand and share your happiness from the top of the hill!

Working on Purpose

I was thinking the other day about when I first graduated from college and began working in the family business. I am a lifelong student of business with a keen interest in how to drive growth and long-term success. From the very beginning I have dreamt of taking our business to even greater heights, which would be an amazing accomplishment based on how successful my parents have been in founding and establishing our company. Not just so I could reap the rewards and benefits for myself but so that we could build something together that everyone with a stake in the business could take pride in.

I remember back in those early days reading and thinking a lot about writing a Corporate Mission Statement. It was the hot management topic of the day in the business world and was being used to foster growth and ingenuity at a time when business and economic growth was practically guaranteed. The exuberance of the developing world economy and companies with newly defined corporate missions fueled a time of impressive growth and fostered the dreams of a young business grad looking to make his mark on his company and the greater marketplace. It was a dream that lived for over a decade and consumed too much of my time. It propelled me to seek and earn an MBA to add even more business acumen seeking to bring my value and worth forward in new and exciting ways.

Fast forward a few years and here we are in 2011. A lot of business fads have come and gone. So have a lot of businesses. It is a cruel world to own any kind of business these days but whether in times of great gains or great losses, great advances in technologies and efficiencies or great setbacks in ability to secure financing or credit one thing has remained the same and will long after I am gone. Human nature.

We all have deep rooted desires. Many are as different as each individual person, however when it comes to work we all have some basic needs: to be recognized and compensated for our efforts, to learn, to be challenged and to have a feeling that what we do matters. As a business owner I walk a fine line between working in the business versus working on the business. While there are many things I enjoy doing and can easily justify spending my entire day get involved in the minutiae of my business it is imperative for the long-term success of my business that I always have an eye on the future.

About a year ago I started working on a project that quickly grabbed my interest. How could we take our 300 plus year old company and revive and reinvigorate ourselves from the inside out? How do we use the successes of our past as a platform to catapult us to new heights that I have been dreaming about for 25 years? Even in a difficult economy! With a fair investment of time and a little money I have found some answers and we are just beginning to implement some of our findings. The tide has turned, the winds have changed and corporately, we are all uniting together around some common language and purposes.

I look forward to sharing specific ideas and results in upcoming posts but for now here are some of the questions we asked ourselves that I think are worthy for consideration by any individual or corporation aspiring to greater things. Why do we exist? What needs and desires drive us towards our intended outcomes? Who and what do we hope to become? What purpose we were created to fulfill that we can uniquely fill in a way that makes a difference for all of our consumers, customers and stakeholders?

Best wishes for some purposeful contemplation!

The Art of the Ask

I've written in previous posts about the importance of staying in touch with customers, constituents and contacts.  In the age of e-mail, instant messaging and social media I think people are actually delighted to have face to face or person to person conversations today.  At least all of those over the age of 21.

So it occurs to me and I've been reading up a lot lately, how do you get people to slow down and find out what is really going inside and around the people you're meeting and talking with?  It is my experience, especially in a situation where you may be trying to get someone to think differently and to take on your way of thinking that both parties will try to do whatever they can to begin and end the conversation as quickly as possible.  If you get people to say "yes" enough times then the thinking goes they will say "yes" when you ask them to agree with your line of thinking or buying what you're trying to sell them.  This model is as outdated as command and control corporations where the marching orders are read every morning and the soldiers fall in line or they get replaced. 

In another attempt to verify the old adage of my father is absolutely 100% correct I can say again if it was easy anybody could do it.  Most people don't, though.  What's that you ask?  My answer is yes!  If you're not totally confused yet hang in for another sentence or so.  To answer your question with another question (one of the techniques that shows you are mastering the skill) my question to you is "How good are you at asking questions?"  It seems obvious but just in case I don't mean innocuous yes or no or mindless questions such as:

• How are you today?
• What's new with you?
• How's business?
• Can you believe the weather we're having?

You have just asked questions that require slightly less thought to answer than you put in to asking them.  In fact if you're asking them of people who have limited time to talk to you anyway you're wasting both of your times and on some level outright looking stupid in their mind's eye.

The quality of your questions gives you a leg up on 95% of the population (and your competitors) for several reasons.  Here is a list of a few and I assure you there are more:

• It shows people you care
• It causes people to open up and be more honest about their feelings and motivations
• It demands that you become a better listener
• It takes the pressure off of your meeting, especially if it is with someone you just met or are trying to sell to or persuade to think differently about a product, service, or point of view
• It puts you in a position of leading the conversation while the other person feels like they are the ones doing all the speaking and thereby in control
• It produces results

Try it out for a week and see if you don't get different (better) results in your personal, professional and social conversations.  Need a few suggestions?  Let me get you started:

Instead of....
How's business?
Give this a try...
What are your business goals for this month?  Quarter? Year?
Followed by....
What are you focusing on to help deliver these results?
Further enhanced by...
How are you partnering with your vendors and involving your employees to ensure the results you need?

One more...
Instead of...
How are you today?
Try...
Tell me the most fun (insert any other adjective, i.e. exciting) thing that happened to you today?
Drop the...
What's up?
Instead say...
What are you planning for fun this upcoming weekend?  Next week?  This month?

You get the idea and you can come up with better ones than I did.  The key is to practice - every day.  The goal is to get people to talking about themselves, to tell you what has their attention, what they are interested in and what motivates and moves them.  All of this from a simple question?  I'll close again by answering a question with a question:

How do you expect to get different and better results in all areas of your life if you're not willing to try something new?  I'm just askin'.....

How to WOW!

I had the pleasure of attending and exhibiting at the FN Platform show which runs alongside the MAGIC Show in Las Vegas last week.  It is one of my favorite weeks of the year not just because Las Vegas is my personal grown up Disneyland but because for one of only two times during the year all of my friends, customers and acquaintances from within the shoe industry come together under on roof to renew old relationships, meet new people and commiserate on the future of our industry and the economy as a whole. 

The show itself is almost anti-climatic just like the wedding ceremony or the prom dance.  What I mean is that there is so much preparation, planning and work that goes in to what gets done once the actual event rolls around that it's actually a relief to just get to the opening day of the show and to be able to put all those weeks of meetings and hours of work in to action.  While I suspect that everyone puts the same amount of work into preparing for the show as we do it is interesting to watch and see how people do things differently and how our expectations vary.  There are three very distinct approaches with not very surprising results:

The Show Up Hopers: These well meaning folks just can't understand why business is so slow and are happy to proclaim to anyone who will listen what a bust the show is.  The funny thing is these folks seemingly do little or nothing to prepare to make a great first impression on their customers and prospects and they even more inexplicably assume that "if they build it, they will come."  What's more their preparation weeks and months ahead of the show seems to match their first impression and they do very little to intentionally drive traffic to their booth.  That's a hard way to make a living in today's world.  And a long three days to sit in an empty booth and watch all the business go somewhere else.

The Steady Eddies: Nothing really wrong with these folks at all.  They are consistent, reliable, loyal and (dare I say) predictable.  They pretty much do the same thing every time and their same customers come to see them just like they do every show.  They are happy with the status quo and as long as they see all the "regulars" it's a good show.  This is where the majority of us live not just at shows but in our day to day roles and jobs.  Do enough to be successful but skirt the extra degree or two of effort it takes to really make things happen.

Those Who WOW!: Sadly, I can count the number of these folks that I saw last week on one hand.  Sure, they had great looking products but so do a lot of their competitors.  These guys went above and beyond to stand out.  They had a great strategy for how to generate interest, attract new customers and WOW everyone that walked in the booth.  They had a well executed theme and strategy and from what I could tell it paid off - BIG TIME.  Not only were customers talking about it but so were competitors. 

Admittedly, we fell way too much in to the steady Eddy category and didn't do nearly enough to WOW! last week.  It's not easy because it means every day you have to push yourself and not let up.  You have to not accept good from yourself or anyone else - you demand greatness!  There are always plenty of reasons why things don't turn out quite the way we wish - and we are experts at justifying the reasons why.  Steady as she goes.....

I would rather push myself to keep searching "How to WOW."  It's hard work, it's uncomfortable, it tests your patience and sticktoitiveness but it seems to me the results are all worth it.  I hope next time they are all talking about me!

What I did on my summer vacation, Part 2

Well, I never intended to leave a 6 week gap between posts but life has a funny way of getting in the way while we're busy making plans!

It seems that while I was busy thinking about creating value I wasn't spending enough time making it happen!  So in the last several weeks several of my colleagues and I have rolled up our sleeves and tried to connect more intimately with our customers as well as our coworkers to learn more about what's happening and specifically what their needs are.  The results?  Some of the most exciting ideas, plans and strategies that we have done for with our customers and especially end consumers in mind in the history of our business.  But I'm not ready to let that cat out of the bag quite yet!

Here's what I can say... looking at yourself honestly, being critical and analytical about who you are, what you do and why you exist in this world and ultimately why you and your business matters is hard work.  But like my dad always said, "if it was easy, anybody could do it."  I hate it when he's right and the fact that the older I get the wiser my dad is and the more sense he makes!  Unfortunately, most people never take or make the time for such an investigative approach to business and life. 

So here's some thoughts and some questions for you to ponder this week: why do you exist?  What unique qualities were you created with that can best be used for the benefit of others?  What is your vision for where you will ultimately wind up?  What plans do you need to put in place to get there?  Intentions are just ideas that never go much farther than the idea itself.  ACTIONS move you towards the directions you need to go which will lead you to the destinations you have set for yourself to reach. 

In conclusion, which destinations are you shooting for?  What ACTIONS do you need to start taking to lead you in the right direction?  Just as importantly, what do you need to STOP doing so that you can more effectively work on what you need to START doing?
I used to have a college professor who I thought was one of the smartest guys I ever met.  He used to tell our class all the time "it's not the destination, it's the journey!"  At the time I thought there was a lot of wisdom behind that but the only problem is I have wasted a lot of years enjoying the journey only to wake up and realize I don't know where the heck I'm going and while I had fun getting nowhere there are some places I really would like to end up before I get to the end of the road.

Thank goodness, thanks to some hard work, personal sould searching and encouragement from friends and colleagues I have stopped wandering and started working on a road map.  What direction are you heading in?