I just love old sayings.  They seem to have as much application today as they did when someone first coined them.  It is interesting to learn the origin of a saying and the changes that occur in the meaning over ever increasing spans of time.  “A bird in the hand …”, for instance, came from mediaeval times when falconry was a method of hunting.  A falcon was very valuable and was certainly worth more in the hand than two birds that were prey in the bush.  My father used the saying
to impress upon me the need to appreciate what I had possession of and not look longingly at those things I didn’t possess.  He reinforced the say by evoking another, “The grass is always greener on the other side”.  My father is now long gone but the sayings continue to live on.

While sayings helped my father teach me life lessons as I grew from a child to a man, today the same sayings can help business owners teach their employees lessons that will benefit the company’s bottom line.  Think of the value one customer brings to your business.  Now think about how much time and money is spent trying to attract new customers.  Isn’t the one customer you have better than a couple of prospects that might eventually become your customers?  I can think of no better argument for customer service and attention to detail to retaining a current customer.  Certainly a bird in the hand is worth two in
the bush.

Edward Boyle

CEO, Employing Broker

Katchen Company

Katchen Company, founded in 1962, is an integrated real estate company with its corporate headquarters in Lakewood, Colorado.  The company offers real estate development, redevelopment, property management, brokerage, consulting services, construction oversight and maintenance services to individual and institutional real estate investors throughout the greater Denver metropolitan area in Denver with satellite offices in Chicago, Las Vegas and Miami market areas.

There has been a lot of news coverage on invasive species over the last few years in an effort to make the public aware of their detrimental effects.  While in some cases there may be some positive benefits to the introduction of a species into an
area, there is usually also some adverse impact.  An example is the inadvertent introduction of the Zebra Mussel into the Great Lakes.  The Zebra Mussel is a small fresh water mussel native to lakes in southeast Russia.  It is thought that the
mussel was introduced into the Great Lakes when ocean-going ships traversing the St Lawrence Seaway discharged their ballast water.  The Great Lakes have become much cleaner as the mussels filter the water but because there are no predators to control the Zebra Mussel population they are multiplying at an alarming rate and upsetting the natural balance of the lakes and causing an estimated 5 billion dollars in property damage.

Closer to home is the introduction of the Canadian goose into north central Colorado.  Some 60-years ago a biologist working with the Colorado Division of Wildlife introduced one mating pair of Canadian geese.  The idea was to establish a flock of geese that would remain in the area year-around.  The program has been very successful and over 10,000 geese now calling Colorado their home.  Hunters have benefitted from the introduction but recreational, commercial and residential properties have suffered as geese strip lawns clear of grass and leave copious amounts of goose poop behind.  At one shopping center my firm manages, I estimate it costs roughly $10,000 per year just to clean up goose poop.

You’re probably wondering why a writer of a business related blog is writing about invasive species.  I felt that the two examples above illustrate very well how both small unintentional and intentional actions can create expediential costs.  As any business owner knows, controlling costs is essential for the financial success of their organization.  A small decisions carelessly made today can explode into a financial nightmare over time.  While it sometimes frustrates my employees when I delay or don’t make a decision on something seemingly simple, I would prefer that small inconvenience over making a quick decision that will become costly in the future.  If I don’t have the expertise necessary to make an educated decision I hire the resources necessary to help me with obtaining the background necessary to make the proper choice.  Consultants have their place in every businesses tool box.

I encourage you to educate yourself on invasive species; you will be surprised at the number of them that exist in the United States and the economic price we pay because of them.  Closer to home, look at some of the decisions you’ve made on behalf of your business and determine the economic cost of those decisions.  Perhaps, unlike invasive species, a poor decision can be reversed and a cost saving realized.

Edward Boyle

CEO, Employing Broker

Katchen Company

Katchen Company, founded in 1962, is an integrated real estate company with its corporate headquarters in Lakewood, Colorado.  The company offers real estate development, redevelopment, property management, brokerage, consulting services, construction oversight and maintenance services to individual and institutional real estate investors throughout the greater Denver metropolitan area in Denver with satellite offices in Chicago, Las Vegas and Miami market areas.

As a business owner I’m always reluctant to take time off away from my business.  While I know that my employees are well trained and can perform their jobs without me looking over their shoulder I’m still uncomfortable leaving them in charge of day-to-day operations for an extended period of time.  It’s not that I don’t trust them, well maybe it is partially, but mainly it is because I’ve heard plenty of horror stories of an owner taking a vacation to relieve stress only to come back to work and relies that his trusted employees couldn’t really be trusted without some supervision.  It is a case of when the cat’s away that the mice will play.

It has always been difficult for small business owners to get away from their business.  The most acknowledged reason is that business owners just can’t let go because they are afraid something will happen requiring expertise that only they possesses.  This is followed by the lack of organization depth, where there is really no other supervisor other than the owner, which small companies must all deal with.  So there is the lingering fear that when the cats away the mice will play.

How does a small business owner deal with this dilemma and get the much needed reprieve from the stresses of owning a business?  Over the years I’ve personally employed many different strategies to create a level of comfort for myself prior to taking a trip.  For some time I would enlist the aid of a relative or friend to keep a casual watch on the business by  placing calls to the business during the day or dropping by at key hours such as the start of the business day, directly after
lunch or just prior to closing time.  While this strategy did work it created an inconvenience for the person I’d asked.  When I finally started feeling guilty about asking friends and family for help I started to hire a temporary supervisor to “baby sit” the business while I was away.  This was only moderately successful as the employees resented the intrusion of a temporary person.  It was after I realized this that I got the idea of designating a lead person from my staff to be supervisor for the time I was away.  With each trip I’d taker there would be a different individual selected to “be in charge”.  The staff seemed to be empowered by this and gained a better appreciation for me in my role as boss.  Today, I’m fortunate that my business has grown enough that I now have a supervisor in charge of operations.  While I do have difficulty letting go it is easier since I know that my company is resilient enough to withstand any disruptions that occur while I’m gone.  Even
the mice playing.

Edward Boyle

CEO, Employing Broker

Katchen Company

Katchen Company, founded in 1962, is an integrated real estate company with its corporate headquarters in Lakewood, Colorado.  The company offers real estate development, redevelopment, property management, brokerage, consulting services, construction oversight and maintenance services to individual and institutional real estate investors throughout the greater Denver metropolitan area in Denver with satellite offices in Chicago, Las Vegas and Miami market areas.

I was watching one of the early episode of Saturday Night Live this weekend, that was hosted by George Carlin, and thought about how George Carlin and Lenny Bruce both pushed the boundaries of their profession.  For Lenny Bruce telling
jokes that were on the fringe of being unacceptable led him down a dark path that ended in his destruction.  However for George Carlin, who told a similar variety of jokes, the ending was much different as he received both fame and a comfortable living from his career in the entertainment industry.

Why was there such a different ending for Bruce and Carlin?  The only true difference that I saw was that Bruce came onto the comedic scene in the 1950s and Carlin the 1960s.  However, the span of 10 years did make a big difference in the attitudes of law enforcement and the audiences attending these performances.  The conservative atmosphere of the 50s was displaced by a more rebellious atmosphere of the 60s as the result of the Hippy Movement and the Vietnam War.  While police departments were very aggressive in their enforcement of what they felt were vulgar language and irreverence towards the government establishment in Bruce’s routine they were more hesitant to react to Carlin’s similar repertory of jokes leaving Carlin the opportunity to explore the full power of the First Amendment’s free speech clause.

So the real difference between Bruce and Carlin was timing.  Ironic, since the difference between a good and bad comedian is all in the timing of their jokes.  Giving the punch line a second too soon or too late changes the impact of the joke.
In business we are also told that timing is everything.  In a perfect world businesses would like their marketing message to reach the consumer at the exact moment that the consumer realizes they have a need for the product.  Absent the vacuum of a perfect world business bombards their customer prospects with mailings, newspaper inserts, radio and television advertising and in some cases even SPAM emails in the hopes of having the message arrive at that magical moment.  Over time these forms of marketing have proven to be less effective as the consumer is inundated with so much material that they’ve began to filter it out by throwing bulk mailing pieces away unopened, pulling all insets out of the newspaper prior to reading, surfing the channels during commercials and purchasing spam filter to block unwanted emails.  If consumers have become so savvy what are a business marketing options today?

I believe a business must become more like Bruce and Carlin and push the boundaries by creating marketing that will make their audience sit up and take notice and perhaps make them even feel a little uncomfortable.  If you don’t think this approach works consider the marketing tactic of the weight loss industry which is estimated to be worth 60.9 billion dollars in the US.  Their approach is pretty simple … you’re fat; you’re unhappy, you’re unhealthy and if you don’t lose weight might get diabetes and die.  Not a pretty message but it certainly has produced tremendous results.

I recognize that some business owners will feel the weight loss industries marketing approach isn’t appropriate for them.  I can appreciate that, however, there are many less aggressive ways to push your customer into action.  For example, part of my company’s business comes from Real Estate Brokerage and I didn’t feel we were getting our share of the market.  I knew we worked harder and had a better success rate than our competitors but they seemed to always have more business than us.  This knowledge made me angry and I decided to let it be known.  I sent out a mass mailing letter wanting to know what these consumers were thinking when they bypasses my hardworking organization and hired these
underperforming agencies to provide them with brokerage services.  The results of the mailing was an overwhelming number of calls from new prospects that felt compelled to at least call and talk to me to see if I could make a difference.  By pushing the boundaries of what some people might feel is an acceptable business practice I created a call for action.  While I can’t tell you that this exact approach will work for your business I can tell you if you put a little thought into
determining the boundaries of your business and push beyond them you will see success.

Edward Boyle

CEO, Employing Broker

Katchen Company

Katchen Company, founded in 1962, is an integrated real estate company with its corporate headquarters in Lakewood, Colorado. The company offers real estate development, redevelopment, property management, brokerage, consulting services, construction oversight and maintenance services to individual and institutional real estate investors throughout the greater Denver metropolitan area in Denver with satellite offices in Chicago, Las Vegas and Miami market areas.

I was at the gym last night riding a spinning bike and rocking out to music on my IPod when the shuffle brought up Janis Joplin and her version of “Me and Bobby Magee”.  As I listened to the song with Janis belting out each line, “Freedom is just another word for nothing else to lose”, struck a chord with me.  I had two thoughts actually, the first was that if the government continues along its current path we will all be broke but free; and, the second was that when you don’t have to worry about losing personal possession you do have more freedom to choose.

As a kid I learned this lesson the hard way on my eighteen birthday when I came home to find all my personal possession out on the street curb.  I went into my home to find out what was going on and was told by my mother that I was an adult and must now find my own way in the world.  Confused, I gathered my things and set up my new home, a tent, along the banks of the Wapsi River.  The next few months were tough, with cold nights and long days.  I made it through that time of my life and always held a grudge against my parents for having done that to me.  They never explained and never apologized until last year when my mother final spoke about it.  She said that her and my father felt that if I learned at an early age that I could survive having lost everything I would be more likely to take risks in life.  They were right, I took risks both in my business and personal life and achieved things I never thought imaginable.

While I don’t believe in all the politics of the United States I do appreciate the freedom we have in this country to take an idea and make it a reality.  This concept is really the backbone of the US economy with entrepreneurs creating a majority of the job producing businesses.  Entrepreneurs are people who are willing to lose it all while taking a risk on an idea.  While most of these ideas are destine to failure there are always a few that survive, slowly grow and become the miracle written about in the pages of Inc. Magazine.

Today’s economic problems are an invitation to all the entrepreneurs out there.  You’ve now lost it all, your house to foreclosure, your retirement nest egg in the collapse of the stock market and your job to outsourcing.  You now have the freedom to take an idea and try to make it a reality because you do have nothing left to lose. Today could be the day that economic growth will occur, one start-up business at a time. Fortunately there are more resources today then ever to
help entrepreneurs be successful.  By utilizing the services of attorneys, accountants and consultants they can overcome the pitfalls blocking the path to success.  Entrepreneurs, I encourage you to make use of those services as the cost of not using them exceeds the cost of using them and are the difference between failure and success.

Edward Boyle

CEO, Employing Broker

Katchen Company

Katchen Company, founded in 1962, is an integrated real estate company with its corporate headquarters in Lakewood, Colorado.  The company offers real estate development, redevelopment, property management, brokerage, consulting services, construction oversight and maintenance services to individual and institutional real estate investors throughout the greater Denver metropolitan area in Denver with satellite offices in Chicago, Las Vegas and Miami market areas.

A few years back a friend of mine who owns a marketing company told me about an upstart web site that was similar to MySpace but for business.  He encouraged me to sign up and then invited me to Connect with him.  I didn’t think much about it at the time and for almost a year didn’t even look at the site but as time went by more and more people were telling me about the benefits of LinkedIn.  I decided to take the next step and completed my profile and ran my list of contacts to see who I knew that was using the site.  I requested connections and was approved by most but ignored by some.  Those that ignored me were competitors so I assumed they just didn’t want me view their customer base.   I fiddled with the site off and on and then completely ignored it as I couldn’t figure out how to make it work for me.

With changes in the economy and business culture in general I saw a major shift in how people were conducting business and knew if my company was going to survive it must adapt to these changes.  The most major change I saw was social
networking to obtain business leads and new business.  I decided to firmly commit a full year trying to make LinkedIn work for me.  I purchased LinkedIn’s upgrade and schedule myself a full day each Monday to see if I could get LinkedIn to work its magic.  I scoured profiles and sent out invitations and was surprised that a majority would accept, but there were still those who ignored the invitation and a few that marked me with the LinkedIn kiss of death “I Don’t Know”.  Too many “I don’t Knows” on your account and LinkedIn will penalize your account requiring you to know the person email address in order to invite them to connect.

This Monday while working my LinkedIn I got the dreaded notice that I was approaching my quota of “I Don’t Knows”.  How is that possible, I thought, while I didn’t personally know a lot of the people I was inviting to connect they were people I wanted to have a connection with because there was a common business thread.  I’m in the real estate business and they sold services that would be used by my firm, my vendors and even my customers.  It seemed strange to me, but I started to look a people’s profiles closer and I saw something I hadn’t noticed before.  There were a lot of people who make their living selling a product who didn’t put a phone number or an email address so that a prospective customer could contact them.  That like lease a retail space, putting your sign up and then never unlocking the door and opening for business.

Are you LinkedIn?  If you are, take a look at your profile as other will view it and determine if you are sending the message you’d like to be sending.

Edward Boyle

CEO, Employing Broker

Katchen Company

Katchen Company, founded in 1962, is an integrated real estate company with its corporate headquarters in Lakewood, Colorado.  The company offers real estate development, redevelopment, property management, brokerage, consulting services, construction oversight and maintenance services to individual and institutional real estate investors throughout the greater Denver metropolitan area in Denver with satellite offices in Chicago, Las Vegas and Miami market areas.