Are you feeling that your business idea maybe not such a great idea after all?

Have you started down one path only but now you wish you had chosen a different direction?

It’s not too late.

If you think your idea is a bit less-than, throw it out.

It’s not a waste. Everything you have learned pursuing that idea will make the next idea profoundly better.

In fact the world’s best innovations start as one idea and morph into unrecognizable businesses.

The original idea behind Sony was to bring rice cookers to the masses. That idea failed, but look what took its place.

If in doubt, chuck it out. Or recycle

Here is an audio interview I did with ABN - the Australian Businesswomens Network. In the interview I talk about the Basic Business Recipe, how to manage (not cut!) costs and some thoughts about getting your business to work better. Much of what I say is covered in the book. So if you've not bought the book yet, listen as a taster. If you have bought it you might like to hear this short snappy version.

Likelihood is tomorrow is going to be as crazy as today, and the day after even crazier.

You will never really find the right moment to take time out and make great plans to change your businesses (or life for that matter).

So if you really want to change your business – improve it a little -  and maybe  be a little less crazy do this:

Ask yourself  “What am I willing to change now?”

And I mean right now. Not ‘in three months’, not ‘when I get quieter’, not ‘next year’.

Right now.

Make a (little) list and commit to making the change in the next two weeks.

If you haven’t started in two weeks, dump it. It’s not important enough to bother with.

Daily Juice: what are you going to change?

Can you get to Coogee on 8 July? I will be speaking at a Business Booster event with a fabulous line up. More details here. The event is being hosted by Carolyn Stafford of Connect Marketing - she also features in "How to Bake a Business"

You don’t have to have a big business to have a great business.

What would make you happier? Enticing people to become new customers or loving and nurturing the ones that you’ve got?

Which is better? 100 customers who pay their bills, keep coming back and love what you do or 1000 customers who are hard to manage and ambivalent because you are so busy loving everyone else?

Sam's cupcakes are the best because Samantha making them for you, not 2000 others

Sharon's yoga is the best because she's working on your pose, not filling 100 classes

Are you happy being small? Tell us about your business

The simple example usually trotted out to illustrate the brutality of seasonality is the ice cream business. Frenetic in summer; struggle city for the rest of the year.

But at Max & Mina’s Ice Cream, in New York sales were up 40% over the winter, more employees were hired and the owner was working the longest hours he had done in 12 years.

Why?

Because, according to the owner, Mr Becker, in tough economic times ice cream “is an affordable comfort food”

It’s no accident that Max& Mina’s ice cream is doing well during the cold of winter and the freezing of our wallet. Mr Becker made it happen. He tells people they deserve ice cream, he tells them it’s a little treat, he tells them it’s affordable.

And while he’s doing that he is also telling a tale to the grumps who say that you can’t sell ice cream in winter.

Daily juice: Lot’s of folk make assumptions about what can and can’t be done. Do a Max & Mina’s, prove them wrong.

You might remember Symbiosis from Biology lessons; it’s where two different species live intertwined lives for mutual benefit.

Think of Nemo (the clownfish) who lives in the sea anemone. Nemo looks after the sea anemone by scaring off unwanted guests and the sea anemone protects Nemo by poisoning intruders.

Symbiosis works for businesses too; but in a find-a-guest way, not by killing them.

Bread Euphoria, an organic artisan bakery shared building space with Quient, a Pottery business. Originally the pottery business had the street front and the bakery was at the back.  But because the bakery business was going rather well they needed larger premises.

What did they do?

The bakery moved to the front of the building and the potter to the back.

You may think that this spelled doom for the pottery. But actually it was quite the opposite

As Andrew Quient, the owner of the pottery, said "what's important for sales is not the amount of display space, but the number of eyeballs going past the pottery."

Yep, the bakery drummed up business for the pottery.

Daily juice: what would be a good symbiotic relationship for your business?

Years ago a guy called Gerald Ratner got into terrible trouble for bagging his own products.  At the time he headed up the enormously successful (and self titled) Ratner jewellery chain of shops. At a dinner where he was the keynote speaker he famously - and amusingly - said that some of his earrings were "cheaper than an M&S prawn sandwich but probably wouldn't last as long". Customers were insulted, the press had a field day and the Ratner group went down the tubes.  

Last week I was reading about Myer opening a champagne bar in Melbourne. Apparently (per the SMH) head honcho of Myer, Bernie Brookes said that it would be located in women’s designer wear to “make sure they buy $5000 dresses”. Fair enough. Sounds fun.

Then he went on to say “Our cosmetics and fragrances has been a shining star, as has women’s wear. It just shows you how selfish they (women) are.”

No Bernie, we are not selfish. Wasn't that the idea....that we should do our bit for the country and spend our way out of the financial crisis?

Don’t insult your customers. Girls, let’s go to David Jones….

So Christian Lacroix, the French massively-expensive-haute-couture fashion house, last week declared insolvency. The official story being that it fell foul of the global recession.

Well yes, those that could are spending a little less on luxury goods. But Chanel, Dior, Hermes…. still seem to be making money: so it can’t just be down to the customers. Maybe it’s because Christian Lacroix was a struggling stand-alone business competing against couture cohorts – no, it was itself owned by the Falic group.

The reason seems to be that, like many struggling businesses, Christian Lacroix simply hadn’t actually worked out how to make money. The business has never been a financial success, it had never turned a profit and last year it reported a €10 million loss.
It has been said, diplomatically, of Lacroix that his brilliance was unquestionable, but his grip on reality a little less certain.
Daily Juice:  It isn’t enough to have a brilliant idea or brilliant product, You have to work out how, brilliantly, to make money out of it.

PS: I met two kitchen table tycoon businesses yesterday both of whom, sadly, hadn’t worked out how they were going to make money. And these weren’t new businesses, they were over 3 years old …..

Tennis legend Martina Navratilova, when asked about her winning ways, said "it doesn't really matter how well you are playing when you are playing well, what matters is how you are playing when you are playing badly”

I liked this.

Keeping up enthusiasm, fabulous customer service, being nice to employees, getting through the daily dross. We can’t be on fire all the time.

I think the difference between a good business and a less-than business is not about our moments of brilliance but in keeping up our (high) standards when morale is low.