REIB LAW
SHATTERPROOF NEWSLETTER
DECEMBER 2018
WWW.REIBLAW.COM | 940.591.0600
In the end, everything rises and falls on leadership. If an employee doesn’t do something right, ultimately, it’s your fault as the leader of your company. Somewhere down the line, you haven’t clearly communicated what you want or haven’t put the right processes in place. Why get upset first? This was a crucial message on the importance of putting the necessary systems in place that make delegation achievable. Most importantly, figure out where things went wrong. Communication is key. Take the time to dig in and start to figure out where things broke down instead of getting upset. It’s better for your team and your blood pressure. professionals who share my passion for business. The chance to share common challenges, successes, and camaraderie was invaluable. In addition, I got to see behind the scenes of Shaun Buck’s business and even meet the team who handles my newsletter campaign. It was a great experience. If you can do one thing that’s going to take you to the next level in 2019, I encourage you to attend at least one personal or professional workshop that you don’t already have to go to. Do some planning to fit this in. It should be something that’s not required for your professional license but a seminar that interests you and is an opportunity to learn from other business leaders. Trust me — while spending that time away from your business, you’re going to reap so many benefits. Gather with leaders who have been where you’re trying to go and are already successful. So, in the coming year, I encourage you to get fascinated with your business, the ups, the downs, and those opportunities for improvement. Then, take a few days away to refresh your perspective and learn from others. I can tell you from my experience that it’ll be worth it. SPEND TIME AWAY FROM YOUR BUSINESS At the boot camp, I was in a room full of other
DON’T GET FRUSTRATED. GET FASCINATED LESSONS FROM MY TIME AT BUSINESS BOOT CAMP
I n October, I had the pleasure of spending a few days in Boise, Idaho, learning from Fortune 500 entrepreneur Shaun Buck. As an attorney who completes many hours of law-specific continuing education, I was excited for the opportunity to delve into the business side of things. It’s important to me that I stay on the cutting edge of small business because that’s who I work with — my fellow small-business owners. At the same time, I’m also trying to scale my business and grow. Trainings like the one I attended in October are mutually beneficial to my clients and me, and they are awesome opportunities to learn. What I think is so cool is that it’s not necessarily the new information you glean that’s most valuable — it’s the stuff you’ve heard so many times before but haven’t acted on. Stepping outside of your own bubble, getting away from your everyday routine, and meeting other business leaders inspires you to actually take action. Here are some of the great takeaways and good reminders I brought back with me from Idaho. GET FASCINATED, NOT FRUSTRATED One of the biggest challenges we face as we grow our teams is delegation. Often, I ask someone to do something, and I get the opposite of what I wanted. As a business owner, I tend to get frustrated. So when I heard Shaun say, “Instead of getting frustrated, get fascinated,” it really hit home.
–Scott
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THE CHICKEN OR THE EGG? WHY NURTURING EMPLOYEES AND CUSTOMERS IS THE KEY TO RETENTION
Starbucks is a great example. Even with thick competition, they deliver consistent service and quality products to customers, whether in Oregon or London. And they do this by providing competitive wages and benefits to their employees along with training and learning opportunities. Employees who are knowledgeable and excited about what they are offering pass their enthusiasm on to customers. OWN UP TO MISTAKES. Even the best businesses make mistakes. When it happens, own up to it. There’s probably been a time when you put in your order at a restaurant, only to receive the wrong thing. How did the business handle it? Did they admit their mistake and offer you a new meal? How a business treats customers when things don’t go smoothly is a good indication of how they’ll handle adversity in general, and that reaction starts with employees. Set the precedent for employees that a mistake is their opportunity to go above and beyond. A transparent environment will make employees feel more comfortable, which will make customers excited, rather than apprehensive, to engage with your business again.
Who comes first: employees or customers? When posed this classic business question, Southwest Airlines co-founder Herb Kelleher had an easy answer: employees. “If employees are treated right, they treat the outside world right,” Kelleher explained. As Kelleher knows well, employee-customer relations are a cycle — one that fuels recurring business. Engaged employees deliver service that converts to sales, a fact backed up by a Gallup report. Gallup cited a 20 percent increase in sales as a result of this process. Even as you’re courting leads, you can’t ignore your existing customers. Likewise, even (and especially) as you grow, you have to nurture your employees. The cost of losing either is too high. In the holiday rush, it’s important to not lose sight of your priorities. GET THEM HOOKED ON YOUR SERVICE. Have you ever asked a client why they return to your business? Do you think it’s because they can’t find your product or service anywhere else? Probably not. Think about the last time you returned to a restaurant. Was it because it’s the only place in town that makes amazing Thai food? Maybe, but it’s more likely that you enjoyed the welcoming host, attentive waiter, and positive experience you had there.
WHAT I LEARNED FROM MY NEWSLETTER CAMPAIGN THE 3 STEPS TO EFFECTIVE GOAL SETTING
all had to be on board and identify the newsletter as a priority to materialize it.
written down motivated us to create the infrastructure to act on it. From there, we put the internal systems in place to make our newsletter happen. 2. MAKE IT A PRIORITY Why is this project at the top of the list? It starts with team buy-in and defining a compelling reason why the goal should be achieved. Until we identified our newsletter campaign as a priority, we weren’t going to take the time to develop a plan and execute it. After writing our goal down, I finally decided I needed to delegate the project and identified the person on our team who would be able to accomplish it best. Of course, it helped that our team had grown and we had more capacity to take on this kind of project. Even with delegating, though, it was a team effort, and we
Did you know that when people write down their goals, they are 42 percent more likely to achieve them? Isn’t that an incredible number? I found this to be true when we set out to mail 12 newsletters in 2018. We talked about doing a newsletter campaign for years but had never made it happen — until this year. I’m happy to share that we reached our goal this month, and in the process, I learned three steps that are crucial for creating effective goals. 1. WRITE IT DOWN Our talk of doing a newsletter was just that until we wrote it down. That action turned our fleeting idea into a solid goal. Writing down our ambition once wouldn’t do the trick, either. We continued to identify the newsletter as a goal on meeting agendas, spreadsheets, and lists. Seeing it
3. MAKE IT SPECIFIC AND EASY TO MEASURE Sending out 12 newsletters was a big enough undertaking that we had to put a plan in place to achieve it, but the project wasn’t so daunting that we couldn’t succeed. We achieved it by making this goal specific and easy to measure: to procure and send out 12 newsletters over the course of 2018. Each newsletter mailed brought us one step closer to reaching our goal. Getting to number 12 feels great! As you discuss strategy and goal- setting for 2019, I encourage you to use this list as a guideline for creating goals that are effective. I wish you the best in your endeavors!
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5 QUICK BIZ TASKS
THAT YOU CAN CHECK OFF YOUR LIST BEFORE THE YEAR ENDS
Y our time is valuable — no one knows that better than a small-business owner. Make the most of it with these five- minute tasks that will leave you feeling organized and ready to step into the new year. 1. ASK A CLIENT FOR A TESTIMONIAL. Jeff had a great experience with your services. You know that because he told you so himself. Make the most of clients like Jeff who are enthusiastic about your business and ask them for a testimonial. Add these to your social media pages and website to attract new clients. 2. CREATE A FILE FOR DOCUMENTS AND CORRESPONDENCE FROM YOUR CLIENTS AND VENDORS. Do you know the saying, “If it’s not written down, it didn’t happen”? These words are especially applicable to business owners. Any service-related interactions you have should be documented. Spend five minutes creating space for these documents and getting them in order from the past year. You won’t be able to finish everything, but it’s a start. 3. DELEGATE A TASK YOU HAVEN’T GOTTEN TO. You’ve been putting off recording that email list for months. Could someone else tackle it? Use someone on your team or a
contractor, but it’s better to get it done than to let it sit in pending status any longer, right? Something like scanning documents you need to file might be just the task. 4. UNSUBSCRIBE FROM EMAILS THAT YOU DON’T WANT TO RECEIVE. This is the perfect five-minute task when you’re waiting at the doctor’s office. Prime your inbox to be a place of clarity, home to only correspondence that’s important. Breathe a sigh of relief (and maybe high- five someone) when you get your inbox to zero unread messages. 5. REACH OUT TO A BUSINESS LEADER YOU ADMIRE TO SET UP A MEETING. Being an entrepreneur can be a lonely journey. Hearing from another successful business owner is inspiring, motivating, and sometimes sparks ideas you hadn’t thought of. This may be just what you need to jumpstart your business in the new year. As you’re getting these tasks checked off, Reib Law has the templates and documents to make the legal side of managing your business easy. Our team of experienced attorneys led by founder Scott Reib is here for you. Learn more about our services at ReibLaw.com.
• 1 bone-in prime rib (6–7 pounds) • 8 cloves garlic, thinly sliced • 2 cups red wine • 4 cups beef stock • 1 tablespoon fresh thyme, chopped • Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste HOLIDAY ROAST PRIME RIB INGREDIENTS
TAKE A BREAK
DIRECTIONS
1. 30 minutes before cooking, remove roast from fridge and let sit until it reaches room temperature.
5. To make au jus, place roasting pan with drippings from roast over 2 burners on high. Add wine and scrape pan as liquid reduces. Add beef stock and cook until reduced by half. Finally, sprinkle in thyme.
2. Heat oven to 350 F.
3. Make small slits in prime rib and stuff with slices of garlic. Liberally season with salt and pepper. 4. Place a rack inside a roasting pan and roast prime rib for 2 hours, until medium-rare.
6. Slice roast and serve topped with au jus.
Inspired by foodnetwork.com
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REIB LAW
WWW.REIBLAW.COM | 940.591.0600
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Insights From Business Boot Camp INSIDE THIS ISSUE 1 2 2 3 3 4 3 Steps to Effective Goal Setting Get a Jumpstart on 2019 Holiday Roast Prime Rib A Guide to Making Ideas Stick
Don’t Let Retention Slide in the Holiday Rush
CHIP AND DAN HEATH’S ‘MADE TO STICK’ UNCOVERS WHAT MAKES IDEAS MATTER
H ave you ever wondered why certain stories that have no basis in fact get passed around like wildfire? Whether they’re rumors, urban legends, or conspiracy theories, these tales can often gain more traction than important ideas and facts. In their book “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die,” Chip and Dan Heath explore the qualities that give ideas relevance and pass-around value. “An accurate but useless idea is still useless,” they write. This point is key to understanding why people get excited about certain ideas and ignore others. The Heaths argue that the presentation of ideas can have just as much of an impact on their “stickiness” as the content of the ideas. After analyzing hundreds of examples, they note, “We began to see the same themes, the same attributes, reflected in a wide range of successful ideas.” “Made to Stick” explains those attributes using myriad examples to illustrate how stickiness works in the real world. Early in the book, the Heaths share six key principles, demonstrating how good ideas are made valuable and exciting by their simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, and credibility; are capable of rousing emotions; and are often presented in the form of stories. While these
principles are relatively straightforward, they are often subverted in an effort to use business jargon and other neutered forms of language. The Heaths deploy John F. Kennedy’s famous speech about putting a man on the moon as an example of a compellingly relayed idea. “Had John F. Kennedy been a CEO, he would have said, ‘Our mission is to become the international leader in the space industry through maximum team-centered innovation and strategically targeted aerospace initiatives,’” they explain. Nobody would have been excited about that. If you’ve ever thought that you had a great idea but couldn’t get your employees to buy into it, a lack of stickiness may be the cause. Understanding how to present your ideas in an inspiring way could unlock the key to increased productivity and growth like you've never achieved before. The next time you present an idea to your team, a group of conference attendees, or any other audience, ask yourself if that idea will stick. If it won’t, you’re just wasting your time. If you need a little guidance on how to make your ideas punch a little harder, “Made to Stick” should be on your holiday book list.
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