Business leaders need to clarify their values to enable their teams to achieve success. While there are many things that make Gordon Ramsey unique and successful, his keys to helping businesses succeed have a few key principles. Gordon Ramsey is back in the saddle, taking nightmare kitchens and working his magic to help them down the road to success. This newest version is called 24 Hours to Hell and Back, Wednesday nights at 9 PM on FOX. They say cleanliness is next to godliness, but many people don’t care about godliness anymore so cleanliness must be rapidly approaching the top spot. It is not coincidence that the first principle of success, and antithetically to failure, is that of the simple commitment to cleanliness. If you have rats in your kitchen, you may have given up. How much skill and effort does it take to keep rats, cockroaches, ants and other rodents out of a commercial kitchen? While there may be a cute Disney movie about the potential skills of certain rodents, the restrauntuers that Gordon works with have not discovered Remy. “Disgusting.” In episode 1 of 24 Hours to Hell and Back, the kitchen staff are caught on tape cracking jokes about the rats running through the kitchen. Success, like cleanliness, requires elbow grease. You have to be willing to see what is wrong and consistently work to keep the commitment to a sanitary kitchen on lock. If your cold storage is full of rotten meat, you may have given up. Whomever does the scouting for the businesses for Chef Ramsey to transform must make the walk-in one of their first stops. Prior to this undercover version, Gordon would arrive at a restaurant and order nearly everything on the menu. It was surprising how many business owners didn’t shut down their own operation and just start clearing out their gross cold-storage. Perhaps the only thing more surprising than the disgusting kitchen is just how many people are oblivious of these conditions or that it’s a problem. If your team doesn’t follow basic sanitary principles, you may have given up. If you are new to the Gordon Ramsey Kitchen Nightmare scenario, you will soon learn that no one is safe from Gordon’s ire. As he burrows into the issues he demonstrates a skill for sniffing out the issues that are often obvious but that those in a position of leadership have been unwilling to address. Regardless of the pile up, Chef Ramsey will get around to the owner and remind them that if this transformation is going to last they have to get their will and their skill back into their business. The culture and results of the restaurant are measures of the applied influence of the owner. When the owner has given up that standard filters through all operations. There is a great video of a speech by Navy Seal Admiral William McRaven who remarks, “If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.” He elaborates that by making your bed every day you build discipline while starting your day off with a simple accomplishment to set the tone. Build your pursuit of success one habit at a time. Growth is often the result of several small steps rather than giant leaps. Similarly, Gordon Ramsey brings a giant spotlight into failing businesses and points to aspects such as cleanliness that should be very obvious. Whether your train has fallen off the rails and you need to right your course or you building your team towards the goal of consistently making progress, the simple discipline of cleanliness should not be lost. These principles are keys for leading yourself as well as leading others and building teams. IZ Ventures - more than business coaching and consulting, we help you connect, collaborate and conquer.
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Some of the best business promotional tools are the simplest, ensure you are making the best use of these key items. So, you want to start a business... Oh, wait. You started a business... Ok. Assuming you chose the right business structure, have secured the appropriate licenses and are operating in a field you feel you can have some success in, what do you do in order to get your business off the ground? We have written previously on breaking into a new market and the first steps in getting the word out about your new business. A few key recommendations for getting your business out there:
Some of the biggest barriers to being an entrepreneur are all in your head. The greatest obstacles to becoming an entrepreneur is simply becoming an entrepreneur. If you have overcome this hurdle, congrats, you are making progress. The next issue we frequently experience are individuals who are caught up solving problems that they don't have. If you have decided to start a business, the most immediate need is to find customers and generate revenue. Too many entrepreneurs are wrapped up in complicating their business and get lost in the weeds of creating solutions to issues that their business does not yet even have to face. Recent examples include a service business that was attempting to establish complicated pricing structures that they thought would appeal to their customers. When we sat down with this business owner we asked, "How many doors have you knocked on? How many business cards have you handed out in the last week? Why are you solving imaginary problems for customers that you don't have? Go get some customers." We were discussing something similar with a internet based business that was spending too much time attempting to figure out the right pricing structure when they had yet to approach or interact with an interested customer. We will discuss price point metrics and how to have some meaningful conversations with your clients to determine the right valuation at another time. But if you are like the clients we mentioned above, get the customers and then figure out the pricing. A few tips for initiating a successful business launch: 1. Keep things simple, don't over complicate your most important tasks. Prioritize. 2. Solve your most immediate needs first. Find customers and generate revenue - nothing is more important than this when you are starting out. Marketing, Step One. 3. Set simple and achievable goals - "Today I am going to hand out ___ number of business cards and/or I am going to visit ___ number of potential clients..." Good g0als. 4. Spend your time with value added activities rather than solving problems that you don't yet have. Don't let fear own you. Winning habits aren't always the most complex. Enhance clarity to build consistency and establish accountability through the simple discipline of scheduling. Scheduling is the process of having a plan, or at least attempting to tell you day how you think it should go. Writing down your goals is important to do on the macro level of having a life plan, on the annual level of mapping out your course and on the micro level of having a daily road map. There is something special that happens when we take the time to write things down, there is some connection between the engagement of the brain and the enabling of the will that is connected to committing something to your calendar. Read more on the stories of successful people who are in the habit of writing down their goals, HERE. Scheduling yourself the day prior or early in the morning enables you to be ahead of your day before the chaos hits and the day takes on a mind of it’s own. If you don't schedule ahead, you will always be playing from behind. You never want to get behind, as we all know - that's where the farts are. Whether you schedule in blocks of time or are down to the minute, prioritization (more) starts with having a target. Real Estate mogul and Shark Tank star, Barbara Cocoran, swears by her daily to-do list which she hand writes every night, prioritizes with a simple rating system and emails to her personal assistant for accountability. In an interview with Inc. Magazine Barbara outlines her process, “I rate the items in order of importance: A, B, or C. The A's are where the gold is. These are the things that will move my business ahead and make me money. I find there are really only three to five A items on any given day, and I do those first.” Goal setting is a muscle that must be worked out on the daily, it requires mental strength, it will test your will power and it is enhanced by accountability from others. Setting aside time in your day to prepare yourself can be as simple as the habit of writing down your schedule. Organization in this way becomes a powerful habit that will help you to make gains on the items that are important to you. Like budgeting for your finances, a good plan will assist you to spend your time (which is impossible to recoup) where it is needed rather than be in a vicious cycle of questioning where the time went at the end of your day. Making your schedule visible to yourself and your team members creates a level of accountability as well as demonstrates leadership by example (more). Vince Lombardi has a great saying, “The will to win is not nearly so important as the will to prepare to win.” Who doesn’t want to win? Yet the thing that separates those who achieve success from those who talk about it is found in the preparation that winners put in. Those hours of discipline do not happen by accident, they come with a commitment to schedule in time for the things that are important, to prioritize and to persevere through the pain. Organization can be painful or just plain overlooked by many, but a successful system does not have to be complex to be effective. In terms of property restoration every production manager knows that our schedules have to be constructed with a certain amount of flexibility in them for those inevitable calls for emergency services from water or fire related damages. Drafting a schedule the day prior and making the plan visible for the team (more) are key to communicating that leadership respects the team and is committed to helping them to be prepared for the upcoming needs of our clients. Scheduling is a core communication component that shows our employees we care about them and creates a visible game plan through which we are able to communicate effectively with our clients as well (more). The discipline of scheduling your self should carry into the care of scheduling the team and the courtesy of communicating those schedules to our clients. The will to prepare to win starts with personal habits that translate into organizational systems that guide our core professional services. Being organized forces us to care about and budget our time. Scheduling generates habits that position us to pursue our goals with clarity, consistency and accountability. Simple things can be the difference between long term success (more) and cycles of chaos. Organizational truth: Don’t get behind, that’s where the farts are. References: More from Barbara Cocoran in her interview with Inc. Magazine, including video - https://www.inc.com/magazine/201704/anna-hensel/day-in-the-life-barbara-corcoran.html |
AuthorThoughts on personal and professional development. Jon Isaacson, The Intentional Restorer, is a contractor, author, and host of The DYOJO Podcast. The goal of The DYOJO is to help growth-minded restoration professionals shorten their DANG learning curve for personal and professional development. You can watch The DYOJO Podcast on YouTube on Thursdays or listen on your favorite podcast platform.
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