Sitting Across A Table

How do you determine with whom you will conduct business?

If you’ve spent any time at all in business-to-business sales, especially if you’ve spent any time as a small business owner, you quickly learn that there are some people out there that you want to do business with, and there are some people out there that you DON’T want to do business with.

The key to discovering which is which is developing a standard operating procedure that you adhere to every time when determining whom you are going to do business with and whose business on which you are going to pass.

You want your screening process to be something you can easily follow every time. You want a process that relies on instinct, is still objective enough to make sure you don’t miss out on a great opportunity, but at the same time, ensures you are not beating your head against the wall in a losing, unprofitable situation. You also want your process to be one that you can apply at any stage in a business relationship.

While all of these requirements may make it seem like there is no simple way to create a process that will work, I have discovered an extremely easy process that works every single time. And all it involves is asking myself a single question.

Am I comfortable sitting across a table from this person?

That’s it. No great formula or massive amount of research. In all the years that I conducted business-to-business sales as a small business owner, this simple process was accurate every single time. Now, as a fallible being, I didn’t always listen to the process, but the process still remains completely accurate every single time.

What I learned over the years was that if I asked myself that question about the person I was about to conduct business with and the answer was yes, I’d proceed with the relationship and the business at hand, and it would always turn out well. Don’t get me wrong, there were bumps in the road at times and sometimes the relationships took a little work, but as long as I still felt comfortable sitting across a table from that person, we continued to do business.

But, when the answer to that question was no, no matter how sweet the deal, no matter how much profit there was to be had, every single time I felt the answer should be no, it turned out to be someone that I didn’t, or shouldn’t have done business with. Again, I didn’t always listen to my own answer, but very quickly realized I should have.

And I didn’t just ask myself this question at the beginning of the relationship. I made sure to ask myself this question throughout the relationship at key points and milestones. When the answer to the question was yes at each of these later points in the relationship, I would keep doing what I was doing and the relationship would remain positive, and most importantly, profitable.

But, when I asked this question at later points in the relationship and the answer was no, I had to ask myself a second question and make an important decision. When the answer was no, I then asked myself if the answer was, for whatever reason, ever going to be yes again.

If I felt that I could change that no into a yes, I then would set out to do everything I knew I needed to do – everything I possibly could to change that no to a yes. Sometimes the customer would be responsive and we would move forward, other times, I’d notice the answer was not changing. 

Once I realized that the answer to my question was never going to be yes again, I’d reach out to the customer and let them know that it was time for us to find a mutually beneficial settlement as to what they had paid, the work that had been delivered, and that it was time for us to part ways.

By following this simple process, which stemmed from me asking the question of whether or not I was comfortable sitting across a table from someone, I always find myself in a position where when I do actually sit across a table from that person, our relationship is square and mutually beneficial.

Photo by HO JJ via Pexels

Hard Work vs. Panhandling

I know in today’s modern, progressive American society where every child gets a trophy and they are all “#1”, we’re not supposed to compare people to each other, but I recently experienced two very different spectrums of humanity over the course of a week that I just had to share.

As many of you know, we have been involuntarily re-piping all of the water pipes in our house thanks to the perfect combination of the bureaucracy that put way too much crap in the water that comes into our house and the regulatory bodies that made it perfectly legal to build my house with only the second highest grade of five possible quality grades of copper pipe. Naturally, corrosive water and cheap pipes resulted in an unbelievable amount of water leaks in our neighborhood, including six in my home over the course of a year.

As part of this re-pipe project, during a walk-through by the construction company overseeing the work crews, I was instructed to cover just about everything in the entire house in plastic tarps to save it from being covered in a very fine, but very difficult to remove layer of drywall dust. We took all the pictures off the walls, boxed up every knick-knack in the house, and then, the evening before the re-pipe was to begin, planned to cover every piece of furniture and anything not in a box in plastic.

Being the frugal individual you all know me to be, I proceeded directly to the closest Walmart to get the plastic tarps I would need to cover all of my earthly possessions from the impending, menacing drywall dust.

So, this is when I found myself leaving the Walmart parking lot, as I so often do, after a full and long day of working, prior to heading home. Plastic tarps...check! Having to go home and spend hours prepping the house for the re-pipe instead of relaxing after having worked all day...check!

Now, if you’ve ever visited the Walmart in Laguna Niguel, California, you also will have noticed that nine times out of ten when you leave the parking lot, there is a member of our not-so-transient homeless community sitting at the exit with a sign, asking you to part with some of your money on your way out of the parking lot.

You can call me heartless and selfish and so many things worse, but you will never see my car stop to hand these folks some of the money that I have earned by working day in and day out for the past 25 years. Call it a personal choice. Do I give to charity? You bet. Do I also part ways with nearly 30% of the money I earn each and every year and send it to the local, state and federal governments, which provide programs that help the less fortunate? Guilty as charged! Do I put icing on that cake by handing more money to the folks asking for it around town? No, I do not. Bless those of you that do, but I’ve made my decision and I’m sticking to it.

But this particular evening, I did slow down a bit as I passed the person manning this corner on which there is always someone with a sign, soliciting donations to their own private cause because he definitely did not fit the mold of the usual types of folks manning that corner. I was in disbelief. There, sitting on an empty milk crate, was a young man, easily older than a high school senior, but definitely not much older than your average college graduate; a good-looking guy, about 6 feet tall, fit and overtly muscular, though he was wearing a loose-fitting jacket.

So, let me get this straight...You are younger than me...you are taller than me...you are definitely in much better shape than me, yet I worked all day, and here you are, not working, asking me to give you some of the money I worked for today.

Now I hear all you voices of reason out there, coming down on me for not knowing this man’s circumstances and all of the reasons that he was on that corner with that sign, but as someone who has worked every type of job from manual labor to sitting at a desk as well as managing teams in both types of jobs, trust me when I tell you I think I am a pretty good judge of character of who is physically and mentally capable of working, and this kid was a Soviet propaganda minister’s dream.

Now that we have established the first point of my comparison, let me flash forward a few days for you. I spent that evening covering everything in plastic and prepping the house, and then spent the next two days working from home, holed up in one of our spare bedrooms while the re-pipe company’s hard working team ripped apart my drywall, pulled out my horrible copper piping and replaced it with brand new non-metal piping that is supposed to still be leak free long after I leave this world. While I had these teams of hard-working, polite and very respectful gentlemen working so hard on my house to fix my plumbing, I could not help but think back to the kid with the sign asking for money on the corner. But, that’s still not even the hard-working counterpoint in my comparison.

The locking doorknob and that leads from the house into the garage has been giving me trouble for some time. It’s original equipment from when they built the house back in 1997, and while I had the innards rebuilt and rekeyed back in 2002, it was very safe to say it was time to replace this lock. I gingerly locked and unlocked it each day, prolonging its life as best I could. You remember that part about me being frugal, right? But, with all of the in and out, opening and closing of that door through the first two days of the re-pipe project, by the time I was closing up shop that second afternoon, my lock was done for. There would be no more ginger-ness - it was time to replace it.

Wanting to keep the same keys, I did a Google search for a locksmith and the top search yielded a small, local operation that had some really great reviews. The reviews all said that the proprietor of this locksmith company was a young guy, but that he really knew his stuff. My Friday afternoon call to this locksmith was promptly answered and I set an appointment for Monday afternoon, following what would be day five of the six-day re-pipe project.

The locksmith did ask that I go ahead and purchase the locks I wanted him to install, but he was able to tell me over the phone the exact replacements I needed because my locks were no longer made. In fact, he was a little surprised I was still using locks that old, but said he could make quick work of rekeying the new locks to my existing key.

So, Saturday sees the first day of drywall repair, Sunday sees a day off from home refurbishment, and Monday sees me working from home in my holed up spot again. Then, Monday afternoon, just as scheduled, there is a knock on the front door, and standing there is a skinny, scrawny little guy that looks like he could still be a college student, with his locksmith license in a lanyard badge around his neck, wearing shorts and a T-shirt that says “Locksmith” on it. If you had seen this kid walking down the street, you’d have thought he was going home to do his homework.

I invite him in and after some small talk, he sets to work on rekeying the locks I had purchased. Just as he said he would, he made quick work of it, explaining to me that he installed the new locking doorknob and deadbolt I purchased, but did not swap out the strike plates in the door frame because with the door frame being sheet metal, the strike plates I already had were a much better option than the ones that came with the knob and deadbolt. He showed me how the deadbolt was hitting the strike plate a bit, but said he would modify it as needed so it would be a much better fit.

After modifying the strike plate and reinstalling it, the job was done. It took a little over half an hour, and I was amazed at how well this young tradesman had breezed through the work. I asked him what I owed him, he produced a price list, and then quoted me a price that I thought to be very reasonable and fair for the job he did. I paid him cash, told him to keep the $5 in change I was due, and he then proceeded to tell me that since he had some time to spare before his next call, if I wasn’t too busy, that he would show me something about my front door lock that I should be concerned about.

He then proceeded to show me that my front door lock, being almost 20 years old now, predated a security feature that prevents a thief from making a make-shift key that would unlock my front door with just this key and a quick, carefully placed tap. He demonstrated the maneuver for me on a spare lock he kept just for demonstration purposes as to not do any damage to my lock. And after showing me this extremely easy trick that someone could use to unlock my door, he offered to fix it for me for free since he had the time and I had been such a good customer.

This young tradesman not only put in the security measure necessary to keep my lock from opening with a makeshift key, but also proceeded to tell me that when he was cleaning my front door lock, also free of charge, he noticed the original construction pins were still in the lock. He said that this was a concern because somewhere out there could be a storage facility from the original builder of my house that held a key that would open my front door. He then told me that I no longer needed to worry about that, though, because in addition to adding the new security measure and cleaning my lock for free, he also removed the construction pins as well. He said the chances of the original construction company key surfacing were low, but even if it did happen now, the key would no longer open the door. I had a very experienced commercial locksmith out in 2002 that rekeyed that very same lock for me and never mentioned any of this to me.

With my front door lock cleaned and refurbished, as well as more strongly secured than when he arrived, this young tradesman thanked me for my business and went on to his next call. As I closed the door and began to clean up the house from that day’s re-pipe work, I could not help but think back to the guy with the sign – who was bigger, stronger, taller, and more fit than either me or my new locksmith friend, though the locksmith and the guy with the sign definitely seemed to be about the same age.

Two young Americans – one already an experienced tradesman, knowledgeable and a credit to his profession who was running his own business – and one sitting on an empty crate on the corner of the Walmart parking lot with a sign, begging for money. You say that I am not supposed to compare these two young men to each other, and I say not comparing them does the biggest disservice imaginable to this country, our people, our children, and these two young men.

Photo via Pexels

When Something Remarkable Happens

Two years ago today, something remarkable happened. A job that I held for a little over seven years came to an end. The remarkable part, however, is the blessing that job ending turned out to be.

When we become unemployed, we are naturally faced with the uncertainty of how long it is going to take us to find that next job, and if we’re living paycheck to paycheck, even with a little severance pay and some stored up vacation time pay, it has the potential to be a really nerve-wracking experience.

But like I said, something pretty remarkable happened that day. When I walked out the lobby door of the building I had worked in for over seven years straight, I found myself walking to my car with a smile on my face and a sense of relief. Granted, I had planned financially for just this type of eventuality, so my cushion was there, but money aside, even in that first hour of being officially unemployed, I felt a sense of opportunity and freedom.

That is because every time in life a journey ends, a new journey begins, and it is important for us to remember that. No matter how bad an experience, no matter how shocking (or anticipated) an unexpected event can be, if we’re still breathing, then there is still a chance to turn a potential crisis into an opportunity. And if we play our cards right, we can turn that unexpected event into something really positive.

In my case, this job ending afforded me the opportunity to reflect on the past seven years with ample time to really look into what was positive and what was negative about the experience. The wonderful thing about life’s potential challenges is that they provide us with crystal clear insight into the lessons each of us is supposed to learn.

By taking the time necessary to reflect, analyze and gain an understanding of this remarkable event, I was able to truly know what I wanted my next move to be, and what I needed to do to accomplish it. I also was able to analyze and understand exactly what it was going to take to ensure I re-experienced the positives of this seven-year stint as well as ensure I did not re-experience the negatives. This reflection allowed me to conduct a job search over the next two months that put my career and so many other aspects of my life on an even better trajectory than it already had been.

So, when faced with a change, it is important that we stay calm, not only look at the positive, but also gain a true understanding of the negative, so we can learn from both, and above all, remember that just because one of life’s journeys has come to an end, a far better journey may be just around the corner.

A Guide To Constantly Working

Are you the member of your family, group of friends and league of associates that is constantly working, and constantly deflecting the notion that working too much is unhealthy for your body, mind and relationships? While I have been fortunate enough to not run into this too much in my life, I know a lot of you so-called "workaholics" may run into a lot of flack for "working too much". So, to help you out, I've created a guide based on some principles that have allowed me to keep constantly working while maintaining my health, sanity and personal relationships, and also, still live a happy, balanced life.

Click here to read A Guide to Constantly Working.

Photo by Ruslan Burlaka via Pexels

Upon Constantly Working's 11th Anniversary

Today, Constantly Working quietly celebrates its 11th anniversary. It was 11 years ago today that I made the decision that in the coming three months, I was either going to start a business or leave my job at the time for a new job.

As fate would have it, I ended up going down the road of starting a business with a business partner and would be relying on that business as my sole source of income in just seven short months. Then, in just another 5 years and 9 months, I would determine that it was time to go back to working for someone else. That was not an easy decision to make, and quite frankly, I put it off for about two years longer than I should have. Today, I can say, however, without any doubt, it was the right decision to make.

Constantly Working, after a name change, a couple of address changes, and a pretty significant officer change that I can only equate to something along the lines of an extremely amicable divorce, still exists, and while it’s a very tiny amount, is set to turn a profit for 2011, the first time in eight years. While I am only serving two customers in my spare time at night and on weekends, this small, profitable year has been very therapeutic. I own a very (very, very) small business with my wife that has an 11 year history, somehow (miraculously – no thanks to a good volume of personal funding by me) has a perfect, albeit small, credit history, and as long as I can make a solid $900 a year, will be profitable.

Needless to say, my actual income earner, my job, remains my complete and total focus for about 50 to 55 hours a week, and Teresa continues to put in more hours at her job than I do, but as I sit today, our bills getting paid, the business being a pretty sizable debtee, as opposed to the pretty sizable debtor it was 4 ½ years ago, I am looking to the future with great promise. Naturally, we, like all of you, worry about the state of the U.S. economy, politics, and how long it will take to see economic prosperity again, but when I look back at how things could have gone for us over the past eight years, I think we are still sitting pretty, regardless.

While I could probably fill an entire book with the lessons I have learned on this 11 year journey (and maybe I will someday), there are a few quick points that I can make.

First, never tie yourself financially on a personal level to your business or to anyone that you go into business with. I imagine you can see the reasons why. Secondly, while you may have always done everything yourself in the past, when you start a business, you cannot continue to do everything yourself. You need to rely on experts and you need to rely on expert staff to help you build and grow. My job has definitely helped to drive home that message. You cannot start a business with the intent of it being your sole source of income and then try to do everything (sales, marketing, accounting, management, delivery) with just two people. And most importantly, whatever the cost, no matter what, handle yourself in a manner by which at any given point you could sit down across the table from any given person and be able to know that you did the right thing.

So, as I look to the future, I am honestly quite happy. Happy to be constantly working, earning a good living, and happy that this very, very, very small business is once again a positive source of joy in my life as opposed to the burden it was when it was what put food on the table; happy to have such a wonderful wife, wonderful family, and wonderful friends; happy to know that today, in every capacity, my deals are square, my cards are on the table, and my deck of cards is cut every time; happy to have my two wonderful customers that have, without knowing it, renewed my faith in this small, little business; and above all, happy to report to you that tomorrow’s dawn will be even brighter than was today’s.