Before reading their account of the situation, here's a bit of background from my perspective.

A Perfect Storm of Business Problems

They were caught in a trap that was made from three serious, business-threatening problems

1. Their major lead source was dying (teletext on Analogue TV) and lead volumes were down by 50%
2. The recession had damaged their market badly – luxury holiday sales were badly hit by the economy
3. The weak position of the Pound to the currencies around the world, especially the Euro, weakened demand for international holidays even further.

They were members of the Chris Cardell marketing club and had tried a whole bunch of strategies out.  None had made any impact and they were concerned that they could not just sit and watch the situation get worse – they had to act and so decided to invest in my Double Your Business Coaching Programme…

I've worked with over 150 businesses, but never a travel company before Airworld Tours.  Fortunately, Double Your Business Coaching works in any business, as you'll see when you read about how we doubled their business within a year.

That's an increase of hundreds of thousands – every month — in sales.

If they can do it, with the dreadful combination of circumstances that faced them, what's possible for your business?

In Their Own Words…

Now read the story as told by Jamal Shahid, one of the directors of Airworld Tours…

"In December 2008 we made contact with Lee because the recession was hurting us.  This affected the travel business generally, and we knew we had to make some changes.  On top of this, our major source of leads was Teletext from analogue TV.  With the switchover to digital TV, this was a lot less effective and we had found it difficult to replace the volume of leads effectively.  We had tried Google Adwords and other sources of advertising, but all of them cost more than the business they produced.

We knew there were some better ways of working, but despite the information we got from our membership with Chris Cardell, we found it difficult to apply it effectively for our own business.  That's why we decided to get in contact with Lee.  He came in to see us for a free coaching consultation and explained how he could help us.  We shook hands on the day and started working together in January 2009.

Progress was slow at first – reading some of the testimonials I think we had hoped for a miraculously quick turnaround.  With hindsight I think it was because we were in very tough market conditions and had such a lot that we needed to change.  If you want to increase your turnover when your business is in the millions you need a clear strategy and a bit of patience!

With Lee's guidance and support we were able to build new lead sources and better processes to get the most out of our enquiries.  This involved a better marketing strategy, faster responses, changes to telephone systems, better email follow-up and a host of other changes.

The results speak for themselves.  In January 2010 we did double the business that we did in January 2009.  Working with Lee through 2010, we think this year is going to be a great success for Airworld Tours.  We now understand how to keep growing the business, even in a downturn.

It's not rocket science, but step by step changes that each improve your business by a small amount.  Added together, these make a big difference.  Clearly we have turned things around and are increasing turnover again, which is a great position to be in despite the recession.

We can now look to the future with real confidence and are working with Lee to build a new niche market that we believe we can use to more than double the size of the business again.  We'll then repeat this with other niches to take our business up to a whole new level.

If you think your business could do with a bit of help, I strongly recommend you pick up the phone and talk to Lee.  We're certainly glad that we did"

Are you ready to take your business to the next level?

Call now on 01480 370142 to book your free, no obligation first session.

Fast-forward to this week and there's a great book that describes exactly why this happens.  Once you get over the rather strange name – it's called The New Psycho-Cybernetics – you realise that it's written by a successful plastic surgeon called Maxwell Maltz, who died some time ago.  However, it's been edited and brought bang up to date by Dan Kennedy, probably the biggest name in training for direct marketing for small businesses and somebody who Chris Cardell brought to the UK for his London seminar a couple of years ago.

What distinguishes this from so many "self help" books is that it's based on his observations of people before and after plastic surgery.

Maltz noticed that when talking to his clients before and after their operations, there was often a transformation in self-confidence, self-esteem and their whole approach to life.  Many became more successful after getting rid of ugly scars from accidents and similar physical issues with their appearance.

But sometimes after surgery had transformed them from ugly duckling to beautiful swan, his patient would still complain about being ugly, despite the evidence to the contrary.

It was from watching and documenting similar cases that led Maltz to the conclusion that what really controls us is our self image, which is imagined in our heads, rather than the real world.  This is best summed up by a quote from the book,

Human beings always act and feel and perform in accordance with what they imagine to be true about themselves and their environment.

Did you notice that the always and imagine are underlined in that sentence, because we do not act completely out of character – we always act consistent with the way we think we are.

So the person who has a self-image of being reserved will be shy at parties, until the alcohol kicks in and lets the hidden extrovert see the light of day.  The person who was told they're a slow reader as a child will read slowly as an adult, even though they've got the same reading apparatus as the rest of us.  The person who thinks advertising never works won't spend the time to understand the art of sales copywriting, because it goes against what they believe, and so on.

The truth is that all of us have some beliefs that limit our potential in one way or another.  Many people feel they're not good enough.  Others feel they don't deserve success.  Another may think that earning more money would be immoral.  All these things are just concepts inside our heads.  If you believe, then in your world, it's true.

A few years ago I ran a 2 day workshop to help  therapists make more money.  It was called The Profitable Therapist and the single biggest thing it exposed was the reason that most of the people didn't make more money was simply what they believed about themselves, their services or money.

One therapist in particular I remember clearly saying that it would be immoral to charge more for what he does.  Others felt it was key that they should always have time to give to the needy.  When asked "how much time do you want to devote to the needy?", he replied, "as much as it takes".

That's not a business, that's a charity.  Yet he had paid good money to learn how to become more profitable.  Despite this, his beliefs about money meant that he spent the whole event doing one of two things – (1) defending his right to treat poor people for free and (2) justifying why it was immoral to charge more than £40 for a session.  This was despite his desire to double his income without increasing his hours.

He became quite angry when I pointed out the flaw in his logic, that to earn more without increasing his hours would require him to charge more.  The crazy thing was that he was working flat out and most of his customers would have gladly paid an extra £5 or £10 per session.  But that's the power of a limiting belief.

This is not something that's limited to just one or two people.  Most of us have some form of limited beliefs, we just don't know what they are.

If you think you may be holding back your business with limiting beliefs, get yourself a copy of Maxwell Maltz's New Psycho-Cybernetics book, a snip for under £10 at Amazon.

On the other hand, if it's time to really get things moving, why not call now for a chat about my business coaching services.

First, The Riverside Restaurant in Barnard Castle have now officially grown to twice their original sales, with profits to match!  When I said to Andrew what had made the biggest impact, he said no single thing, but a combination of lots of changes each building on the other to create a whole new level of business.

Secondly, I spent the day yesterday with a new client, Gill's Cruises in Baker Street, London.  A Cardiff based holiday sales company that specialises in cruises, they have grown at an astonishing rate, doubling their total sales revenues over the last 12 months (yes, that's right, a travel agent that's doubled in a recession).  What makes this extra special is their size – they've added 70 or more staff in just 18 months, all in sales.

So what can we learn from this mix of a small restaurant that's doubled and a big holiday company that's doubled?  Here's my take…

1. Vision, confidence and self-belief.  The owners of both businesses (Andrew Rowbotham and Alistair Gill respectively) have a phenomenal level of self belief and the conviction that they will succeed.
2. Taking decisive action.  Both have put into practice the key things they know about business and thrived as a result.  Ideas and innovation are no good unless you put them into practice.
3. Build A Strong Marketing Funnel.  Both businesses generate lots of enquiries via a range of different marketing methods.  This source of new leads is the lifeblood of the business.
4. Keep a database of customers.  While in completely different lines of work, they have both built a database of customers and keep in touch with them regularly.
5. Attentive customer service.  Without looking after your customers, you can't keep them.  Both these firms experience high levels of customer satisfaction and therefore have lots of repeat sales.
6. Great staff.  Hire slow, fire fast and don't tolerate incompetence or poor quality staff.  Demand the best from your people every day – the best people enjoy working to the highest standards and will produce top quality service for your customers.
7. Control.  Great financial control and metrics to cover every aspect of your business are crucial to success.  Which sales people are making you money, who is losing you money, which marketing strategies are working, which are just a cash sump?
8. Stretch yourself.  No matter what you've already achieved and what you already know, if you don't push yourself out of your comfort zone you'll keep repeating the same levels of success forever.  Have the courage to face your fears head on and do it anyway.

So in the past year, with all the depressing talk of recession, that's two great businesses that have doubled in size.

What else do you think makes the difference for businesses that grow so successfully?

So, what's the issue with griping about the state of the economy and your business?  It's simple – you tend to achieve whatever you focus on.  There's a function of your brain that's called your Reticular Activating System, or RAS, for short.  Whatever you concentrate upon, the RAS will help you find it.

The best example I've heard about this is when you get a new car.  You choose a car that you don't often see on the road, in a colour that's a bit different to all the others.  Then, when it finally arrives you go and pick it up from the showroom and as you drive home, you see three others on the road!  They were there all along, but until you'd got one, you didn't notice them.  That's your Reticular Activitating System at work.

On top of this, your subconscious will try to make sense of the world through whatever filters you decide to give it.  So if you spend a lot of time thinking about the recession, watching the doom and gloom on the news and thinking about how customers might leave you, that's precisely what you'll find will happen.  Which brings me to the 3 people I've met in the past couple of weeks who've demonstrated this principle in action.

1. The first was an independent consultant who said his business is doing roughly half what it was a couple of years ago.  He said he's so depressed by the economy that he only works from 10 am to 2pm, because it's hopeless.  Looking on as a third party, I asked him how many hours he used to work.  Of course, he was doing twice as many hours a day.  So now he's working half as much and earning half the amount.  Hmm.
2. The second was a client who's winning more sales at higher prices and has figured out how to do even more – he texted me at weekends now with the results of his latest actions.  His energy is buzzing because of his successes.
3. The third is a potential client who, when talking about his business, put a fair bit of focus onto the problems he's experienced because of the government.  In fact, every discussion we had generally ended with a comment about problems with the council, or the tax man, or central government.  Hmmm.

So the lessons we can all take from this?  When we look for problems, we can be sure we'll find them.  When we focus on success, we'll have the energy to chase after more success.  When we think it's all somebody else's fault, we'll find somebody to blame.

The problems won't fix themselves just by complaining about them, the actions of government are beyond quick influence.  So surround yourself with positive people and focus on what you can change.  It reminds me, in fact, of a favourite quote…

"God give me the strength to change the things I can
The courage to accept the things I cannot.
And the wisdom to know the difference."

Now go focus on something positive for your business, remind yourself of this positive goal every day, work hard to achieve it, then savour the results…

One business coaching client has a restaurant and since August we've worked on increasing sales, with great results – a solid 30% increase now.  This has been by a combination of different tactics and we're really pleased with the results.  Now he wants to fill the restaurant over Christmas lunchtimes (he's normally closed at lunch).  So how can he do it?

Well, he's short of time because they're a small business.  So here's what we're doing.  He noticed that he gets quite a few customers referred by a local hairdresser. 

Obviously when the stylists are chopping they're chatting too.  His restaurant serves really high quality food in a great atmosphere for a fair price, probably making it the best restaurant around for a good 20 miles.

So, thinking laterally, if one hairdresser likes to talk about it, maybe others would too?  He's going to invite them in for a free meal, which will cost very little because the raw food costs are relatively small. 

Hopefully after they've experienced this great food for free, they'll want to talk about it none-stop to their customers too.  He'll also put leaflets into the salons to remind them and for customers to take away.

What better way to drum up business than feeding the word-of-mouth community – quite literally in this case!

So, here's a thought for you…

What businesses are there around you who serve the same kind of customers that you want?  And what morsel can you offer to make them want to talk about you non-stop?

This came back to my mind this evening while I watched "All Over The Shop", the BBC2 programme featuring business coach Geoff Burch visiting retailers in a selected city (Bristol this time) to give them tips to improve their fortunes.  Of the three shops I saw him visit, one of them did very little, even though the changes suggested were clearly going to improve his sales.

He understands the ideas, but he's just not taking action.  He had four weeks after hearing Geoff's advice to take action.  He did almost nothing.  The results he'll see will be almost nothing.

In the meantime, a coffee shop/cafe with books all around had taken huge action by comparison, becoming far cleaner and a much more inviting and pleasant shop to buy from.  The smell of chips and old cooking oil had gone, replaced with fresh paint and coffee smells.  Fresh panini and salad were on display in a clean, glass-fronted display counter and the feeling was of a transformation clearly under way.

What ideas have you had for your business, but not carried out yet?

Decide on a course of action, then do it.  There's a lot to be said for the Nike way – "Just Do It"…

You can watch All Over The Shop if you missed it, using the BBC iPlayer.  Recommended viewing for retailers, even if Geoff's advice sometimes puts the shop owners on the defensive, he is clearly trying to help them make a difference.  You might pick up a good idea or two for your own business, too.

Since then, that entry has received quite a few comments, but I've also received calls from several clients and emails from other readers telling me that they had decided to stop procrastinating and take that tough action this week.

To their great relief, they found that putting the tough things behind them gave them more energy, more motivation and took away a load of stress too.

So, what's the next thing on your list to get done, so that you can enjoy less stress and a better business?

Here's an idea for you – how about getting into online networking – or social media as the Internet Marketing crowd are calling it?  It works, it's simple enough to do and it's fun.

I came across a great blog entry about not getting overwhelmed by all the choices, but just picking one and going with it, by Marie at the Training Marketer blog.  There's a really neat video explaining why online networking and social media is so powerful for us as small businesses.  I'd love to be able to do a video as cool as that!

Lee

Nigel has too much overhead in his business – too many people, inefficient systems, expensive offices.  But when he needs to cut back, what does he do?  He trims away at the edges and fails to address his key issues.  He never actually fixes the basic problems.  Worse than that, he sees these problems as assets to the business, key things that help him.

Well, to every Nigel out there – what use is a business that never makes money???  If you want to improve it, you have to be harder.  If you don't make money, you may as well pack up because you are running a hobby, not a business!

To Improve Business – Cut Once, Cut Deep…

This is a tough thing to do.  You have to overcome the emotions attached to so much history with people, things, services etc and make the decisions that will make the difference in your business.  It's no use "being loyal" to your staff if they are dragging your business down with costs and lack of performance.

And the thing is this – if you cut deep, you make big changes.  If you make small, tiny cuts, you change nothing significantly and the costs will creep back on.  Big changes get big results.  Little changes get little, if any, results.

The biggest reasons you don't make these big decisions are sentimentality and fear of change. 

If you fear change think about this – if you don't make changes now, you might not have a business to change in a year's time.  Which do you fear the most?

If you feel bad about letting a member of staff go, how bad will you feel if the whole business fails, and you have to tell everybody you employ that they have lost their jobs?

This is the big, hard stuff you have to deal with as a business owner.  Lots of people don't do it until too late – make sure you face up to this stuff early and meet it head on.

Make A Decision To Improve Your Business – It's Better Than Avoiding The Problem

Your business coaching action for today is to take 30 minutes to look at your business and decide what you can do to improve your profits.  It maybe that you don't use your fax anymore and you can cancel the line.  Or perhaps you could get rid of some old stock that's been sitting around for years.  Or, perhaps you have a member of staff who you know, in your heart, has to go.  You just haven't faced up to it yet.

Just take a decision – you'll feel better when the dust has settled.

This strategy comes from evolution.  When a hungry beast is out hunting for food, it looks for movement to find its next meal.  The trouble is, the car isn't a hunter, it's a modern invention that evolution has not yet caught up with.  By standing still, the rabbit is at a much higher risk of kicking the bucket.

The same is happening in businesses up and down the land.  As a business coach I see it all the time.  People are caught in the fear of the continuing banking turmoil and getting frozen by fear.  If you stand still, you're giving yourself the worst possible chance of survival. 

No News Is Good News

If you read the newspapers or blogs about business and the economy, you can easily become depressed by how awful things are and how bad they could become.  Reading an article about the economy already in recession there's a call for cuts and help from government for small business.  Unfortunately a great big hand is unlikely to reach from the sky and inject £100,000 into your business…

So how exactly is reading the news helping you?  What does it add to your day apart from an unhealthy dose of paranioa, fear and frustration for the economic mis-management wrought large by short term thinking of the banks?

If you find yourself feeling miserable about the economy on a daily basis, here's a prescription to help you.  Stop listening to the news on the radio, tv and cancel your daily newspapers.  Find a good book or audio-book on business and use your time positively with that instead. 

At worst you'll avoid being depressed.  At best, you'll discover something to boost your business and yourself.  And you might even feel good about yourself too…

Get Out Of The Headlights

It's time to behave differently to your competition.  Do something that will make you stand out to your customers and they'll come to you instead.  Fear is nature's way of telling us that there's a potential threat to us.  That's useful – we need to know that some kind of different action to normal is required.  Just don't be caught by your natural response and do nothing, or you'll be another piece of economic road-kill.

Here's a definition of fear you can use to remind you of it's root…

Freeze
Expecting to
Avoid
Risks

This old definition is fine if you're out hunting for dinner and keeping yourself safe from sabre-tooth tigers.  It won't help you to make more sales and drive your business forwards through the slowdown, though.

In his great book about how to achieve multi-million pound wealth from business, Felix Dennis, the multi-millionaire founder of Dennis Publishing, suggests living a day without fear to see how much you can achieve.  So what could you achieve if you did that?  What do you avoid because of rabbit in the headlights syndrome?

The Credit Crunch & Your Business

Here's a different way of thinking about the state of the economy and how it will affect your business…

You don't have a crystal ball.  You cannot predict what's going to happen in six months' time and you can't personally impact the economy in any real way.  And as far as predictions go, you can't reliably predict what will happen even as close as next week.

But the interesting thing is this.  If you keep doing all the right things today to strengthen and improve your business, increase your profits and become more successful than you are now, whatever happens in 6 months or a year will be far easier for you to face if you've done something every day, week and month until then to improve your business.

Meanwhile let your competition stay frozen in the headlights.

They are on track to equal, or even beat, their best ever month in terms of sales.  Not so remarkable, you might think.

Until I tell you they are mortgage brokers.  I've also heard from another broker client this morning that they're having their best month so far this year.  Meanwhile other clients, including a property rentals business and a restaurant, continue their growth unaffected by the bad headlines printed on the front pages of newspapers every day.

Attitude = Altitude

The motivational poster says, "Attitude more than anything else determines your altitude". 

Your attitude now is critical.  Stop buying your daily paper, don't watch the news.  That will save you 15-30 minutes every day.

It will also help you avoid journalist-induced depression.  You can't do anything about the doom on the front pages, but there's lots you can do to improve your business.  You don't have to be brilliant at business, just better than your competition…

Action = Results…

So instead of newspapers and TV news, spend your time asking yourself these questions:

• What's the single biggest obstacle holding your business back?
   
• What's the biggest opportunity you can think of to improve your business profits?
   
• What's the smartest thing you could do, right now, to address either one of these things?

As a business coach, helping you to focus on the things that matter and ignore the things that don't is a key part of my role.

For a confidential chat about growing your business, contact me using this form…