Had a very enjoyable coffee with Jim Donovan last week. Luckily for liber8yourbusiness members, Jim has agreed for me to interview him for the liber8yourbusiness online seminar room. Here’s a sneak preview of what makes a successful business according to Jim.
Firstly though, a quick bio on Jim… a long and stellar career I could go on about but most exciting to me was Jim’s success with Deltec. A previously successful manufacturer of radio base-station antennas and related equipment, Deltec suffered a serious downturn and strong competition in its existing markets, leading to significant losses. Jim became a shareholder and CEO instigated a major transformation, with a revitalised organisation (internal retention/promotion and external recruitment), product range rationalisation, and the introduction of smart business processes and “lean thinking” to support global expansion in its new area of focus – advanced antenna systems for mobile phone networks. In 3 years, Deltec trebled turnover and achieved very high profitability, growing to over 200 staff and contractors, with 95% of sales exported to Asia, Australia, the Americas and Europe. At the HiTech2000 Awards, Deltec won the Growth Company of the Year Award, the Award for Investing in People, and the HiTech Company Supreme Award. Deltec was named by Unlimited magazine as one of the best places to work in New Zealand. The following year, Deltec sold its business, brands and intellectual property to NYSE-listed Andrew Corporation (S&P500) for a not insignificant sum.
So you can see why I like Jim’s experience… you know how I love great exit stories, my favourite stories of all!
Here are just a a few of the pearls of wisdom Jim shared with me. I promised him I’d make them accurate, so I hope I can read my own handwriting and here goes…
Jim believes his strength lies in taking a company with a ‘mess’ and fixing it. He says that he can see a mental picture of rightness. He gets such companies to identify their core purpose and offer. What do you offer the world? Who are you offering it to? Why would they buy it? How will you make and fulfil this offer? Then he works out how to transform the mess into a simple clear lattice. A business must have purpose and design… ‘a business must be designed with greatness in mind’ (My favourite quote of the day). Business owners must work on not in the business. The business needs a life and higher purpose of its own. An owner should be asking how can this business create value for them? Why are they investing their life energy in it? What will it do for them?
As business owners, according to Jim, we should “develop a viable designed business that serves a purpose and delivers value for the customers and the owner.” (Many owners forget the last part and focus only on value for customers not for themselves). Get your pricing right – don’t charge fleet hire rates for taxi services. Be disciplined. Hire the right people, train them and trust them. Put the right processes in to support the business. At the end of the day if you have a great team and great processes, it doesn’t matter what the product is. You can re-engineer your product to fit market trends and demands.
My summary… with a clarity of vision, you can build any business to fit market trends and demands. With the right processes and team in place you can take on the world.. and build a business someone wants to pay a lot of money for.
Thanks Jim. Hope I got most of it right, despite my hand writing! I do subscribe to everything Jim talked about… as liber8yourbusiness clients and those who have heard me talk will know.
One of my favourite business mentoring tips is to plan your business as if you were NASA planning to put a man on the moon. This is what I learned to do at the 1991 Accelerated Business School for Entrepreneurs with Robert Kiyosaki in Hawaii. The teacher was Blair Singer and the business planning technique we used was based on PERT (Programme Evaluation and Review) planning technologies, which apparently is what NASA used to plan their attempt to put a man on the moon. I don’t know anything about PERT to be honest and I’m no text book teacher, so if what I’m about to say is completely wrong and not at all how PERT works or what NASA did … never mind… it just works godammit!
The theory is the same. Plan your business like you’d plan a project. Have a very clear picture of what success looks like (a shed or a man on the moon), then work out what you need to do to get there. Plot your key milestones, put timeframes and budgets (income goals/profit goals) on your milestones, then plan what you need to do to reach Milestone 1. This first milestone should be 12 – 18 months out from today and in effect by planning your action steps to reach Milestone 1, you are writing your annual business plan. You can then focus just on these actions steps, execute the plan and review how well you have once agains your Milestone 1 goals when you get there.
I thoroughly enjoyed my day and night in Christchurch this week. As well as being very thankful that I had a lovely night sleep with no after shocks (I had been warned and briefed on what to do by nearly everyone I met), it was rewarding as ever to spend time with smart, passionate business women who invest their time and money in their business education. The topic of my workshop and talk was using technology to decrease your businesses dependence on YOU. I had to confess right up front that I am not a geek by any means and that many people who know me would laugh incredulously to hear me giving a presentation on using technology. I love technology not because I understand it but because of what it can do for my businesses. A bit like the light bulb and electricity… I don’t know how they work but I love the benefit they bring my life.