National Clothesline

Happy holidays to all of you. May you all have a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year for 2010.

John Wooden, a basketball coaching legend in his own time, celebrated 99 years of age in October. About that same time, I received a phone call from someone regarding business planning.

The call prompted a Wooden quote to come to mind. “Don’t give up on your dreams, or your dreams will give up on you.”

Read that sentence again. Those are very powerful words. Do those words apply to you and your business aspirations?

What dreams do you have, or did you have, for your company? Have you given up on those dreams or are you still dreaming? Do you want to make your dreams come true? Do you know how to make those dreams come true?

Those questions lead to the question that was posed to me two months ago.

The question of the month: “I am stuck in a rut, and I cannot get out of the cleaning department. When I bought my business five years ago, I thought I would grow it and move out of hands-on production. I dreamt of having a chain of plants and stores, but I am still in my original location without any changes or acquisitions.”

This plant owner “dreamt” of growing his company but it never happened. Does that sound like you? Are you doing the cleaning and spotting? Have you asked yourself, “Why don’t I hire a cleaner/spotter?”

You are the business owner and you dictate where you work in the plant. This plant owner had a young family with children too young to be in school. His wife is a stay-at-home mom.

He has a couple of people working the counter. Is the owner hiding from his customers in the back of the plant?

I have met plant owners who do not have the personality or charisma to deal with the public. In most cases, fear is their greatest enemy.

One way they can improve their communication skills is by accepting the fact they are not Mr. or Mrs. Personality and work on talking to people.

Are you aware that sales in a drycleaning business will improve by 20 percent if the owner is at the counter? This company was doing $10,000 per week in sales. By moving himself to the counter, he can eliminate one of the counter staff. That savings will contribute to the salary of the newly hired cleaner/spotter.

In addition to the savings, his sales should increase from $10,000 to about $12,000 per week. Now he is no longer doing the cleaning and spotting. The problem he had was he felt it was less expensive to hire a counter person than a cleaner/spotter.

Now he can develop relationships with his customers. He can learn who his customers are. He will also recognize some of the problem garments he has handled in the past, and be able to explain why they are a problem, far better than any counter person could.

His next step is to stop dreaming and start doing. He has to put pen to paper and create an action plan. Goal-setting is the name of this game.

It is time for another John Wooden quote, “Ability is a poor man’s wealth.”

This plant owner had ability to accumulate some wealth so that he could buy a business. He has the ability to run the business in a profitable fashion. The only thing he lacked was someone to kick him in the rear and tell him to get out of the cleaning department.

Bob Clarke, owner of the Clothes Doctor in Foothill Ranch, CA, loves to say, “Work on your business, not in your business.”

The plant owner then told me, “Please come to my cleaners and help me create some goals and plans to grow my company.” He is ready to make changes.

What is the worst-case scenario in this situation? Failure of the changes might happen, but that is highly unlikely.

Another John Wooden quote, “Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.”

If this plant owner does what he has always done, his dreams will die. He will remain in the back of his plant cleaning clothes and taking out spots. Failure for him to change will be fatal to any long-term goals.

When I visited the company, the first thing we did was a SWOT analysis. For those of you who are not familiar with a SWOT analysis, the letters are an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. When you do this analysis, it forces you to think about your company.

The next order of business was to create a business plan that included short-term and long-term goals, and a marketing plan. Like most small businesspersons, his business plan was in his head, the same as his dreams.

We went over his P & L Statement. Unfortunately, his operating costs were not listed as percentages of sales. His CPA was given instructions to make that change.

Furthermore, instead of a bi-annual statement, he will now get monthly statements. By the way, his company was totally 100-percent declared income. That was great because the financials would have validity.

We then went to work on his marketing. I could not believe his POS system would not provide date ranges for sending “Miss You” postcards or letters. I was able to delineate date parameters 20 years ago with my first computer system.

All I could say is “wow”. Now he is on the phone with the computer software company to put in a fix so we can do a complete in-house marketing program. If they do not put the fix in, I will be writing about that particular computer company in a future column.

It is my opinion that a complete in-house marketing program should include, but not be limited to, the following: Thank You; Miss You; and Welcome to the Neighborhood communications.

Last, but not the least of his marketing program, was his web site. He had a small do-it-yourself site that needed to be upgraded and optimized. I did not verbally abuse him on this situation because he was still ahead of most companies of his size. He promised to have a professional work on the web site within the next six months.

Finally, we went to work on his dreams. The business plan that we created included ways to achieve the dreams, and make them come true. Instead of simply keeping the dreams in his head, they are now on paper. They are in full color, and description, with time lines for completion.

We are now following The Yellow Brick Road. We are off to Oz. This man’s dreams will come true. It might not happen overnight, particularly with this economy, but he can now visualize how to make things happen. Besides goals, he now has better tools to run his company. He will have cost percentages that are easy to compare with the prior month’s business. He has a marketing calendar, and he will have a computer system that will allow him to have a great in-house marketing system.

These are my last words today about John Wooden. It is amazing that a basketball coach from Martinsville, IN, can come up with such a wonderful retinue of quotes that can apply to business or sports. Google “Coach Wooden” and learn about his Pyramid of Success. The foundation of the pyramid is made up of five bricks. The words on those five bricks are Industriousness, Friendship, Loyalty, Cooperation, and Enthusiasm. Put those words into your life and live a lot better.