ORIGINAL OPENING to Grow Regardless:
Let him that would move the world, first move himself.
– Socrates
We Americans may not agree on much – our opinions are as varied as our population is diverse, and our politics are as deeply divided as the Grand Canyon. But whenever we’re faced with a major test of our collective mettle, we somehow manage to pull ourselves up and set aside our differences long enough to get the job done. Whether it was the challenge of putting a man on the moon, ending the Cold War, eradicating killer diseases, working to stamp out despotism, terrorism, racism, sexism and all the other evil –isms, it seems as if there’s nothing that American ingenuity, perseverance, optimism and elbow grease haven’t been able to overcome. Despite our differences, we’ve shown the world time and again that we’re a confident crew of innovators… leaders… survivors.
But lately, an unshakable sense of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) has crept into our national psyche, even into the hearts and minds of that most notoriously courageous troupe of all – and the intended audience for this book – 21st Century business owners, especially those running small to medium-sized businesses. Even though some pundits say the economy is on the rebound, the majority of entrepreneurs don’t seem to be buying it. According to a summary of a July 2011 Wells Fargo – Gallup poll :
• The percentage of [small business] owners anticipating that their revenues would increase over the next 12 months fell to 42% in July , down from 54% in January. At the same time, 18% expect their revenues to decrease.
• The percentage of small-business owners expecting the overall number of jobs at their company to increase over the next 12 months also fell in July, to 16% from 23% in January. Simultaneously, 12% of owners expect a decrease in the number of jobs at their companies over the next 12 months.
• The Wells Fargo-Gallup Small Business Index was zero in July. This suggests that small-business owners continue to be essentially neutral on the U.S. economy.
Clearly, business owners still perceive the economic climate to be unfavorable for growth. The same is true for job seekers. Another Gallup poll came back with the most pessimistic numbers the organization has ever recorded on the question of people’s perception of the job market – a whopping nine in ten Americans said November 2011 was a “bad time” to find a good job.
Who can blame us for our negative attitudes? For the past several years, we’ve been bombarded with one discouraging business story after another, followed by a never-ending parade of dismal financial statistics all tied up with a giant red bow of grim economic predictions. Headlines about debt ceilings, credit ratings, and budget plans are dominating the news. Families are trying to figure out how to enjoy life to the fullest without running up their credit card debt. Banks are failing. Companies are being shuttered. Unprecedented numbers of workers are losing their jobs and becoming chronically unemployed. Gas prices keep going up. Incomes keep going down. Wild fluctuations in the global market are giving investors the willies. Governments around the world are fighting to avoid debt defaults and prevent shutdowns, while other countries, mostly in Asia and South America, are jockeying to become new 21st Century superpowers.
And to top it all off, our political leaders seem unable to figure out what to do about any of it. It doesn’t matter whether we are Democrat or Republican, Libertarian or Independent, Green Party or Tea Party – more and more of us across the country are beginning to view Washington’s problems as our own. Whether you’re in favor of tax increases, staunchly anti-tax, or an advocate of something in between… there’s no denying that the government is not our friend right now. There is probably not a single American who thinks our elected officials are decent role models for us these days. Year after year they’ve called upon us to tighten our belts, but they’re unwilling to make any sacrifices of their own. If ordinary people like you and I followed their example and went home without doing our jobs more than once or twice, we’d be toast. Not so for the folks in Washington. The double standard is sickening.
Rather than having faith in our leaders to find common ground and take action to stimulate the economy, we sense that they’re concerned only with self-preservation. There’s a short-term focus among our political leaders, and that focus is squarely upon themselves. What they’re doing – or actually, not doing – is the antithesis of leadership.
In a nutshell, nobody in Washington wants to take responsibility, and We, the People are becoming increasingly cynical about our ailing economy and its chances of a full recovery.
But a gridlocked government isn’t the only thing holding us back. There’s another obstacle to America’s economic revitalization – big business. When I say big business, I’m talking about it as defined by the U.S. Small Business Administration: companies with more than five hundred employees. These are the so-called job creators in our economy. They create jobs, all right… just not here in America. Here in America they’re job killers. If they’re not moving positions overseas, they’re firing people outright. Case in point: Goldman Sachs. In mid-2011, this Wall Street financial firm announced that, in an effort to save an annual $1.2 billion, it would be laying off around one thousand employees. On a conference call with analysts at the time of the announcement, CFO David Viniar is quoted as saying, "I mentioned the dollars first because we're much more focused on the dollars that the savings will create, than the number of heads.”
More focused on the dollars than the numbers of heads. Goldman’s corporate decapitation of one thousand people is bad enough, but it becomes downright outrageous when you consider this caveat: just six months earlier, Goldman’s CEO and four other top executives (including CFO Viniar!) were given raises, bringing their combined salaries – not counting other common forms of compensation such as bonuses and stock options – to nearly $1 billion.
But Goldman isn’t the only big business bad guy in our economic melodrama. Check out these job killing Fortune 500 companies, along with the number of “heads” each announced it would roll by way of layoffs in 2011 alone:
• Cisco – 6,500
• Lockheed Martin – 3,300
• Merck & Co. – 13,000
• Boston Scientific – 1,400
• Pfizer – 5,530
Contrary to popular belief (and most media coverage), small and mid-sized businesses are the REAL job creators and main employers in America. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, companies with fewer than five hundred employees created 64% of net new jobs from 1992 to 2010. Clearly, the business landscape has changed from the days when large corporations were the generators of growth. We all acknowledge that big business has done great things for America in the past; namely giving birth to a thriving middle class in the 1950’s and 1960’s. In fact, approximately twenty percent of the workforce was employed by Fortune 500 companies back then. These companies made it possible for workers to have job security and make enough money to buy homes, pay college tuition for their kids and save for retirement. But things started changing in the 1980’s. Manufacturers began outsourcing and cutting their workforces, forcing the workers that remained to work twice as hard for less. In 2009 alone, the Fortune 500 dropped 821,000 jobs while watching their own earnings go up by 335%. Impressive revenues, to be sure… but at everyone else's expense.
And how about Bank of America’s alleged shakedown of some of its small business revolving credit customers? The LA Times reported in January, 2012 that the banking giant sent letters to an untold number of small business owners notifying them that their credit lines would soon be terminated. The unsuspecting entrepreneurs – many of whom were long time Bank of America customers who had never missed a payment – were required to either pay off their account in full or refinance their balance at a higher interest rate. Some owed tens of thousands of dollars and said the move would put them out of business. In fairness, Bank of America is not the only financial institution to sever the credit lifeline for small businesses since the 2008 meltdown. It’s just the most recent one.
But still, even in the midst of this sort of hostile business environment, some companies have managed to grow regardless. These companies were hiring when others were firing. They were ramping up their strategies while most others were shutting down parts of their operations. They were up-selling their offerings while many big businesses were downsizing their divisions. Today, after years of doing business in a severe economic slump, they are stronger than ever before. I’m not talking about the usual big business suspects like Apple, Starbucks, Google or Southwest Airlines. I’m talking about small to mid-sized organizations like yours and mine; organizations that have managed to do more than just keep their heads above water during these stormy times. They’ve sailed right through.
It’s hard to believe that this sort of growth was (and is) possible, given the bleak economic landscape. But I know it was (and is) really happening because I’ve spent the entire recession watching it with my own eyes. As president and co-founder of entreQuest (eQ), a Baltimore-based management consulting firm that helps increase revenue for small- to mid-sized organizations, my team and I have spent the last eleven years guiding over four hundred businesses toward improving their performance during some of the most difficult economic times ever. And I’m here to tell you that there is a better exit strategy from the recession than remaining in a hiring freeze or cutting benefits or slashing R&D spending, especially when conditions are warming up for a brighter business outlook.
Over the years, the eQ team has developed and helped our client companies implement a simple growth methodology that works even in the worst of times – a philosophy backed by sensible processes and practical tactics that, when applied consistently, will bring about positive change and spur progress. Some of these concepts have been used by the big guys for years, but smaller enterprises can really rock by putting them into practice. We call this method – you guessed it – The eQ Growth Methodology. This method is not just a one hit wonder. I didn’t win the lottery and then decide to write a book about business growth. I didn’t cash out with one big company or multiple companies because I am some crazy genius. I didn’t get an MBA from an Ivy League school. I didn’t read over four hundred books and just regurgitate them here. I co-founded eQ at the age of twenty-three, which led to a multi-million dollar practice just five years later.
There are 35,000 books published every year on topics like sales, leadership, customer service, change management and the like. They all say pretty much the same thing, just packaged in a different way. But there are a few things that make GROW REGARDLESS different from the other 34,999. The first is its focus on mindset. Rather than just handing you a superficial to-do list, this book is going to teach you the mindset fundamentals necessary to grow your business regardless of its size, industry and economy, and also show you how to infuse that growth mentality throughout your entire organization. Getting your whole team to stand shoulder-to-shoulder on the same conceptual platform is critical to your success, and I’m going to show you exactly how to do that.
Another distinction between this book and the others in your library’s business section is the comprehensive way the information is presented. Each component of The eQ Growth Methodology has its own chapter and is explained from the top down using the Three P’s: philosophy for the thinkers and creative types among us, process for the managers and engineers, and practice for all the doers, practitioners, technicians and front-line folks. This philosophy is made up of hundreds of philosophies. The methodology is going to make sense to you – and actually work for you – because it’s intuitive. Again, it all goes back to mindset. Full implementation cannot occur until everyone in your organization understands not only the what and the how of the method, but also the why. By setting out the Three P’s for each component, you’ll be able to absorb it more quickly and communicate it to your team more effectively. I’ve even included practical exercises you can do and resources you can access to more fully immerse yourself and your team in these concepts.
Yet another thing that makes GROW REGARDLESS unique: not only am I going to reference many of the most renowned studies ever done on subjects like change management and growth strategies, I’m also going to tell you some true stories of companies and people, including myself, that illustrate how these concepts are bearing real-world fruit for the folks and organizations that adopt them. This is not just a book about how I have personally done this right. I have chosen to share my experiences with you not to impress, but to press upon you that just as my experiences led me to growth, yours have also led you to a place of potential growth, too. Those who know me understand how painful it was for me to write about myself. Like most of us in the small business world, I’ve been undervalued and under-served, too. When I thought about the purpose of this book – to help small to mid-sized business leaders grow regardless – I realized that my personal stories prove that if I can do this, anyone can.
But this is not just a business book. It is a call to arms and a call to action to every single person in this country. GROW REGARDLESS has a mission beyond helping you grow your company, and it is to realign America by putting 100,000 people back to work in the coming year. Lofty? Yes, but so was putting a man on the moon. Imposing? Absolutely, but so were the challenges faced by countless other folks – ordinary people, just like you and me – who joined together to do something equally grand, like overcoming the Great Depression and two World Wars, or championing civil rights. Stop and think about the possibilities here. There are hundreds of thousands of businesses in this country. What if this little book, with its proven growth method, were to find its way into the hands of 50,000 business leaders? What if only 10,000 of them were to take it seriously and implement the method? Each of those 10,000 leaders would be inspired to hire ten, twenty people or more (depending upon the size of their company). And just like that, this book’s mission would be fulfilled. If enough of us adopt this mindset and employ this method and pass it on, we will reach that goal of putting 100,000 people to work this year. I’m so committed to that end that I pledge to donate a portion of this book’s proceeds to charity when we hit that mark.
Listen, I know it’s scary out there right now. You’re living a horror story with villains on every page. But here’s the thing: there’s a hero in this story too. And that hero is you.
-> You have the power to grow regardless of your company’s size.
-> You have the ability to grow regardless of your company’s industry.
-> You have the potential to grow regardless of the economy – and despite the stranglehold placed upon it by government and big business.
And you don’t have to sell your soul to do it.
You have the capacity to influence others and start a movement that makes life better for everyone in America, and ultimately, the world. It’s time to sidestep our governmental gridlock, link arms, get completely honest with ourselves and one another, and do the right thing – which is to make meaningful sacrifices for and sincere promises to ourselves, our employees, our clients, our neighbors and our families – and then keep our word, no matter what. The time has come to find our voice as a group. We small- to medium-sized business leaders are the main employer in this country, and it’s high time we started acting like it. It’s going to take our combined heart, hustle and humility to break through to the other side, but we can do it – we must do it.
Not only will we come out of the process even better people than we were going in, but we’ll also bootstrap our nation’s recovery. I believe the first-hand stories and simple strategies contained within these pages will move us closer to that worthy goal.
Study this book.
Apply its principles.
Pass it on.
Grow Regardless.
