I had a dream about an old friend that woke me up after two hours sleep and caused me to write this blog. She came into my life over thirty years ago, and she used to ride my wife (then my fiancee) around with her friends when they were nursing students in college. They used to joke about how another one of my wife's friends who was about six feet tall, Marty, used to put her stockings on in her back seat while they drove at 6AM in the morning to their nursing student clinical at an "old folks" home.
Believe it or not, she wound up with my brother's ex-sister-in-law's ex-husband. We tried to call her "Betsy" but often called her "the shrimp boat" (she really was massive). My life-long best friend and best man at our wedding called her the "deuce and a quAHter" (mimicking my Mom's Boston accent).
My old friend was a 1971 Buick Electra 225 ("deuce and a quarter"), and she was ten years old when I bought her for my wife, who was still my fiancee at the time. The Shrimp Boat was the first car I purchased, for $700.
That Was Then
The world has changed quite a bit since my old friend was a "newborn" in 1971, forty years ago. The Shrimp Boat didn't have a cd player or a GPS, there were no electronics on the dashboard to tell you your tire was flat, and I don't remember calling gas "leaded" back in those days. That was forty years ago. The world, our world - yours and mine, has profoundly changed in the last four years, let alone the last forty.
Are you continuing to change, to grow and adapt, along with the world that surrounds you? People brag that "our family business is forty (or twenty or sixty, or even ten) years old", failing to see that a strength such as longevity can potentially be a weakness. A small business owner can become trapped in the nostalgia of a business that still runs on "leaded" gas, and fail to recognize that no one. . . . else. . . . cares.
This Is Now
In a past life, when I sold radio ads to small business owners, we had an expression that is quite relevant today: A business owner is "inside the bottle". This doesn't mean that small business owners have a drinking problem. It means that the owner was so close to his business, so wrapped up in it and intimately involved, that the owner can't see the business clearly from an outsider's perspective. Hence, the owner is so "inside the bottle" that he can't read the label on the outside of the bottle, the label that accurately describes his business to the public. As such, the small business owner is the last person who should be authoring the radio commercial. Due to the owner's limitations, a business coach or advisor can be genuinely helpful in this situation.
We also challenged the weak and ineffective ways that a small business owner pridefully described his business. Keep in mind that the potential customer or prospect is constantly asking "What's in it for me?" when determining to engage in a business relationship. Owners often make meaningless stand-alone claims such as, "we've been in business for over forty years" (who cares?), "we provide the best service" (compared to what?), "we're better than our competition" (prove it!). The owner's intimate familiarity with his business cause these phrases to have value from his perspective, but these words are meaningless to a prospective customer. Again, external advice can be valuable and effective in such a situation.
My old friend, the 1971 Buick Electra 225, has been gone a long time. Sadly, the old mindset that hampers today's success and limits the future for experienced small business owners is very much alive. Usually, it's never too late for an Old Dog to learn New Tricks. Until it is.
Thanks for sharing 186 seconds of your day,
Smitty
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