Less is More in the Garden and the Office

One of the great myths of business is that you have to always give your customers more than your competition or that you have to expand that you offer to provide more in order to look successful...what customers want is certainty. If you grow the number of things you sell, be sure that it carries the same value as what you have been selling. Grow slowly.  Another myth is that money will help you grow faster.  I learned long ago from the Paul Hawken books, it is better to use your ideas and hard work than to use borrowed or investor money. 

What I leaned in the master gardener training and in business is that starting with good soil will make anything grow. Too often people go out and buy plants at a nursery and then do not get the soil ready for them. They are disappointed at the results in their garden and blame their nursery, the lack of a green thumb or other factors, when the real problem is so simple - rich well drained soil will support 99.9% of the plants in the world. Too often people add more and more fertilizer, or plants that are all wrong for the soil - yes nurseries will sell anything to the customer, even things designed for planting in another state, but not where you live. Do you see where certainty plays a role in this story? 

"Having you as a coach has made all the difference... More projects, more work per client and increased cash flow; plus I've been named to the top 100 video producers in America." Joel Miller

Too often people hire sales people, customer service people or administrative people and do not have the proper environment for them or a training program to bring them into the company culture.  Then they blame the employee for not doing the job or not fitting into the culture. I had a customer opened a new office in a new city, they hired 12 people in less than 18 months, for an office staff of 4.  They used rules in the new city that they used in the home office.  The cost of turn over was huge.  We devised a test for new applicants and the next four people are still on the staff 2 years later.  What we did was find how to have the right content type of people instead of the right kind of people. As the owner said when we started, " I have been hiring people with great resumes and not one has worked as well as people here (in his home office), so what should I be doing different?" We actually cut the time we took to hire and the payroll cost, because we found people that wanted to work in the culture they wanted to create. Less is more. Preparation is the key to growing a business. I am an advocate of warm puppy closes, when we interviewed the new people we had a variation on this idea as the way to find out if they had a real desire to be part of the culture. Every company has a different test, but it always works, once designed. 

Let me say something to you about Content vs. Kind. what do you think this means? To me it can be summed up by the types of companies that are successful as a less is more company, and that finding what is missing results in building content that creates value and certainty. Here are some examples of content vs. kind companies for you to consider: 

	An Ipod vs. a Walkman
	Southwest Airlines vs. American, Delta, Eastern, Pan Am etc. etc.
	Starbucks vs. Maxwell House or Folgers

Now ask yourself another question, why did the content companies build their product and get mega successful when a strong brand or two already existed? Do you think you are a content or a kind of person? There is a Secret to becoming a content person or a content company. Follow the advice of Scott Cook at Intuit - get a coach.

All coaching or training programs are done either on the phone, online or in person. You choose what works for you.