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Derek DeYoung is passionate about two things: painting and fishing. And with this brochure from PFL, he was able to capture his love of those two things with a printed piece that not only gives people something visual to enjoy, but a true take-away to keep them interested.
The use of rich blacks, vibrant colors and the glossy, almost liquid-like appearance and feel of the UV coating really does justice to his art. Be sure to check out his work here, and see angling art in a whole new way.
Almost every small to medium sized has focused a great deal of energy lately on just staying in business. Recessions, layoffs and health care seem to dominate every discussion. However, things are changing. Smart companies are rebuilding and upgrading their work forces with the wealth of talent that is currently available. So how do you get your share? No matter what the size, every company in America claims that it hires only the best. Unfortunately, most don’t.
Our company has attracted over 140 technology employees to Livingston, Montana by focusing on three key things:
Key 1: Enforce a top down philosophy of recruiting, hiring and retaining only the best. In today’s world most goods and services are viewed as commodities. All levels of your organization must understand that having the best employees is what separates you from your competition. If any manager in your organization thinks that just any warm body will do you have a problem.
Key 2: Create organizational alignment with regard to hiring criteria. If you don’t know what you are looking for, how can you find it? Get your key people together and make sure you all identify and agree upon hiring criteria. You will be amazed what a difference it can make when everyone agrees what qualities make a great employee for your company.
Key 3: Develop and adhere to processes to ensure that only the best are hired. You can’t just hire from the gut – no one is that good. Develop and adhere to a process from the first contact through the offer letter and beyond to make sure you get only the best, every time.
Big or small, three steps are all it takes to get the employees you need to succeed in hiring the best in any economic environment.
I had the pleasure recently of participating in the annual retreat for one of Printingforless.com’s customers, the Assisting Hands Franchise system. Each year franchisees from all over the country come together to discuss their business, share strategies, introduce new initiatives, and enjoy each other’s company. What struck me about this retreat and the organization itself was two things:
First, how incredibly important it is to take time out of the busy life of running a business and spend time focusing on how to make the business better. Throughout the retreat, franchisees came together to discuss important strategies for growing their business and shared best practices to help each other succeed.
The second point was the overwhelming sense of family that was shared among the participants. Sharing activities from horseback riding to whitewater rafting, they worked together as one big team and treated me, a vendor to their organization, as if I was a part of that team. I was reminded by their generosity and fun-loving spirit that business doesn’t always have to be about business to be beneficial at an event like this.
Thanks to Assisting Hands for inviting me to be part of the experience and the reminder of the real meaning of running a business—the people.
I work in a small town in Montana that has struggled for years to solve the problem of “economic development.” It seems like everyone wants to talk about the issue as if it is something you can magically solve with more meetings, focus groups or quasi-governmental agencies. I disagree. It is the jobs, stupid. Create more jobs and the concept of “economic development” goes away. Jobs give people money, money gives people economic freedom. That is what economic development looks like to me.
Throughout the history of the United States job creation in mass has come from a few key areas. One solution has been to go to war. During World War II for example, 17 million jobs were created (it effectively ended the great depression). However, I’m doubtful I can convince our small town to invade the next town over as a job creation tactic.
Another solution has been to spend money on infrastructure. Our federal government is currently spending boatloads of money to stimulate the economy and job growth. I hate to be a downer but the last major study of Federal Highway funding (2004) showed that the equivalent of 34,000 jobs were created by a $9 billion expenditure (about $264,000 per job). Not a great return on an investment in my book and I am doubtful our town wants to borrow $26.4 million to create 100 jobs.
The best solution to job creation has historically been small businesses. Small businesses have created 60 – 80% of all the new jobs in this country over the past 30 years. If that is still the case (I have no evidence to the contrary), why don’t we focus on creating an environment that encourages small business job growth? That environment to me would include lower taxes, less regulation of business and better access to capital for people who want to start or expand businesses. While not revolutionary ideas, they certainly seem out of favor now.
So I think I will stop engaging in the endless loop of discussion about “economic development” and start trying to convince my small corner of the world to create an environment favorable to job creation. To me, it’s the jobs (stupid).
Last week we installed the single biggest and most complex systems change in the history of PrintingForLess.com, revamping some of the very core of our internal systems. The change represented well over 10,000 hours of work from a number of team members and the change went very smoothly, thankfully.
But that success wasn’t luck. It was thanks to a concerted effort. One focused on a Deming cycle (www.pfl.com/PDCA) like approach – Plan, Do, Check, Act.
As small business people, we all know that the majority of business fail, with only 66% making it past their two year anniversary. But do we all know and understand the reasons why small businesses fail? It is commonly published that there are six core reasons businesses fail and many of these can be linked to two things: planning (e.g. understanding and managing your capital needs) and execution.
In this way, small business failure is like project failure, where no matter how hard people work on a project, it is doomed to failure if not adequately planned (e.g. poorly understood user requirements) or poorly executed (e.g. unclear communications).
But why is this? I’d like to argue that it is because small business is like a project. Why? Well, one popular definition of a project is that it is a temporary endeavor to bring about beneficial change for a unique opportunity. It is contrasted with business operations which are repetitive and permanent processes that deliver a product or service. See more at www.pfl.com/Project
Which of these sounds like your business? I’m guessing it is the one where things are changing fast and not quite defined. This is why it is so important to have a plan and execute on it, while maintaining flexibility to react to opportunities (just like a project is forced to react to unforeseen circumstances).
Want your business to get better? Start focusing on your projects as a mini-version of your business. As your “little things” start to get better, your “big things” will too.
How many of you fell in love and asked your future spouse to marry you all in the span of 45 minutes? I would venture to guess not many. For those who have, congratulations–you are rare. So my question is why you consider interviewing a prospective employee to be any different? I have spoken to many companies out there that interview a candidate for about 45 minutes and maybe check a couple of references, hire and then they wonder why they are disappointed that the person wasn’t who they thought they were.
It is important to spend the time to get to know your future employee. You have to dig in and bypass the nice suit and the canned interview answers to see the real person. Here are a few things to watch out for when looking for that perfect hire:
1) Are you desperate to fill your position or is the person desperate to get a job? Either one is fraught with peril, not to mention very unattractive. Both parties will usually see and hear what they want to and ignore any potential warning signs that it is not a good match.
2) Does the candidate bad mouth their former employer? Even if it might be warranted this is a big red flag for many reasons. One being if their former employer was so bad and they were so good why did they stay there? Two, you may as well sign yourself up to be the next in line for the bad mouth train.
3) Don’t hire with your gut. You hear employers say “I went with my gut on this one”. Well you may as well throw a dart at a wall full of resumes and hire that person. Your gut may give you some inkling about someone, BUT you have to follow that with doing your due diligence to prove or disprove what your gut told you.
So when you interview the next “A player” for your company, remember to start off with the goal of really getting to know that person and determining if there is a long term match there, not just filling the empty chair in your company. Everyone will benefit from it.
How many of you fell in love and asked your future spouse to marry you all in the span of 45 minutes? I would venture to guess not many. For those who have, congratulations–you are rare. So my question is why you consider interviewing a prospective employee to be any different? I have spoken to many companies out there that interview a candidate for about 45 minutes and maybe check a couple of references, hire and then they wonder why they are disappointed that the person wasn’t who they thought they were.
It is important to spend the time to get to know your future employee. You have to dig in and bypass the nice suit and the canned interview answers to see the real person. Here are a few things to watch out for when looking for that perfect hire:
1) Are you desperate to fill your position or is the person desperate to get a job? Either one is fraught with peril, not to mention very unattractive. Both parties will usually see and hear what they want to and ignore any potential warning signs that it is not a good match.
2) Does the candidate bad mouth their former employer? Even if it might be warranted this is a big red flag for many reasons. One being if their former employer was so bad and they were so good why did they stay there? Two, you may as well sign yourself up to be the next in line for the bad mouth train.
3) Don’t hire with your gut. You hear employers say “I went with my gut on this one”. Well you may as well throw a dart at a wall full of resumes and hire that person. Your gut may give you some inkling about someone, BUT you have to follow that with doing your due diligence to prove or disprove what your gut told you.
So when you interview the next “A player” for your company, remember to start off with the goal of really getting to know that person and determining if there is a long term match there, not just filling the empty chair in your company. Everyone will benefit from it.
As an online print provider you would think we wouldn’t have a ton of interaction with our customers, but we do—countless phone calls and emails are the norm here. PrintingForLess.com started out basically as a vending machine for printing. As time went on we realized that something was missing—to truly satisfy customers, we needed to interact with them, get to know them and their businesses, and help them. And with that, being easy to do business and making our customers successful as they define it was born as a way to guide our business.
While the old saying that “the customer is always right” may be true, there are times we need to step in and do what we do best: make them and their print job more successful. Have you ever tried to tri fold a book mark, tab and mail it to your self-made mailing list? These are situations that we guide our customers through on a daily basis, with a high success rate.
But one of the best parts of my job during the last eight years is getting to know our customers, and finding out that they do a ton of cool stuff! I have worked with:
Hunting Guides and Outfitters
Alpaca Breeders
Glass Blowers
Ski Resorts
Funky Artists (stone, glass, paper, steel, copper)
Wind Farms
Ear Candle Makers (if you don’t know, Google it)
So always keep your customers top of mind, and don’t forget that they are the core of your business. And take the time to get to really know them and their business. You might be surprised at what you find out, and earn a customer for life in the process.
As an online print provider you would think we wouldn’t have a ton of interaction with our customers, but we do—countless phone calls and emails are the norm here. PrintingForLess.com started out basically as a vending machine for printing. As time went on we realized that something was missing—to truly satisfy customers, we needed to interact with them, get to know them and their businesses, and help them. And with that, being easy to do business and making our customers successful as they define it was born as a way to guide our business.
While the old saying that “the customer is always right” may be true, there are times we need to step in and do what we do best: make them and their print job more successful. Have you ever tried to tri fold a book mark, tab and mail it to your self-made mailing list? These are situations that we guide our customers through on a daily basis, with a high success rate.
But one of the best parts of my job during the last eight years is getting to know our customers, and finding out that they do a ton of cool stuff! I have worked with:
Hunting Guides and Outfitters
Alpaca Breeders
Glass Blowers
Ski Resorts
Funky Artists (stone, glass, paper, steel, copper)
Wind Farms
Ear Candle Makers (if you don’t know, Google it)
So always keep your customers top of mind, and don’t forget that they are the core of your business. And take the time to get to really know them and their business. You might be surprised at what you find out, and earn a customer for life in the process.
How many times have you heard someone say “this job would be so easy if it weren’t for the people”? How many times have you said or thought it yourself? One thing I’ve found during my career is that if your team isn’t giving you what you want, its probably because you’re not giving them what they need.
Of all the leadership training / studying I’ve done (and with too many degrees, and nearly 8 years at some of the best leader developing companies in the world, I’ve done more than I probably should have) my favorite is still situational leadership. Simple concept, yet fiendishly difficult to apply consistently.
The upside, if you can do it well, most of your “people problems” will magically go away. About two years ago we rolled out the model and supporting training to the managers and team leads within PrintingForLess.com. To start understanding the model, Wiki has a good overview, and for great training, see this site.
It was eye opening for many, and so helpful that we continue to provide training and support to almost every new team lead in the building so they can learn to flex their style and get the high level of performance from the team that everyone wants to give. Give it a shot and see what kind of leadership you can cultivate in your workplace.