Turn on the evening news, open the newspaper, read a recent magazine article, listen to CNBC…all sources seem to be laying out a scary picture of you and your neighbor losing your home in foreclosure while the economy of our country falls apart.  Set that thought aside for a minute and read on.

Do you remember ever being home sick from school or work?  You lay on the couch for a day or two, feeling sick and not seeming to be improving a bit.  You may have thought to yourself…”am I ever going to feel better?”  Finally, sick of being sick, you get off of the couch and start acting healthy, even though you still feel a little sick, and almost pretend to be healthy because you are tired of being sick.  Within an hour or so of acting healthy, you suddenly feel healthy.  What happened there?  Your glass changed from being half-empty to half-full, that’s what.

Sure, it isn’t the easiest time to get ahead.  But as soon as we start acting like it isn’t so bad, it will soon start feeling like it isn’t so bad.  Our global economy is ever-changing.  It’s time to deal with that and make adjustments to allow for these changes. 

You can’t go and refinance your home to pay for “junk” that you could live without as easily as you could a year or two ago.  Now is the time to figure out how you can pay for it or live without it.  Stop focussing on what you don’t have and start appreciating what you do have.

Back to the news, it is true that many people are experiencing a very difficult time in their lives.  They will lose their homes and/or businesses to foreclosure.  From my experience being “sick at home on the couch”, the sooner they brush the dust off and start acting like it isn’t so bad, the sooner it won’t be so bad anymore. 

Take time to appreciate what you can’t buy at any store or in any real estate market…it is something that nobody can ever take away from you.

I just started reading a book last night, “The One Minute Manager” by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson.  I feel pretty smart too because I’m over halfway done with it already!  Actually, in keeping with the title, it is set up to be a quick read.

Anyway, it brings some interesting points up about goal setting and management of people.  One key point that stuck with me is the one minute praise.  Nearly all managers of people feel that in order to justify their position of authority, they are obligated to point out when somebody they supervise is wrong or has made a mistake.  How often do they make a conscious effort to look for something that person did well or did right?  My experience has been that managers rarely, if ever, do so.

 This simple idea can set “leaders” out from among “managers”.  As I’ve said before, and will say again, there is a difference between being a leader and being a manager.  A leader empowers people to outperform themselves.

A quote from the book: “People who feel good about themselves produce good results”

I am currently working toward earning my real estate broker’s license.  This will open up a number of options for my career and I am extremely excited about continuing to grow.  I have completed the training portion of the requirements.  The class enhanced what I bring to the table working on both my own investments as well as transactions for which I am working as a client’s agent.

Stay tuned for updates.  I expect to be a licensed broker sometime in February of 2008.

It has been a while since my last post, sorry.  I wanted to make a few comments regarding the “real estate bubble” that is all over the news.  You know how the saying goes, “what goes up must come down”.  What’s cool about the market that I work in, Western New York, it doesn’t go up!  At least not enough to really say so.  Sure we gain a modest bit of value annually, but we don’t have rocket-ship annual appreciation.

Picture it like this: Rochester real estate value jumps are like that little wooden ramp you made when you were a kid to jump over on your bicycle.  Kind of fun, but no big thrill.  The headline markets that make spectacular news stories are more like the freestyle motocross jumps where you fly 80′ into the air with no hands and upside down in front of 80,000 live viewers and millions on television.  Sure, that gets your adrenaline pumping.  Now think back to the time you crashed on your little wooden ramp.  Remember: you scraped your elbows, you cried, you got a band-aid, then went back outside and did it again.  Imagine crashing after the 80′ jump, upside down, with no hands…you break both your arms, pass out, and get a free ride in the meat wagon to the hospital.  After being released 2 days later, heal for a few months, spend a few months in physical therapy, and slowly rebuild your body, you are finally ready to get back on and take a few smaller jumps in hopes of working your way back up to the one that hurt so much.

Do you see the comparison?  I love investing in this kind of market.  I started investing in real estate with nothing…and nothing to lose.  Sure you can lose your shirt picking a bad investing decision and lose big time, but you can do that in any market.  What is great about this market is that while you are working an investment, there is little chance that the bottom is going to fall out underneath you.  There are enough other things to worry about while working an investment and it is nice to not have this big monster looking over your shoulder at the same time. 

I can’t afford to go backwards.  Neither can most of my investor clients.  Who wants to anyway?  It sure is nice having this extra bit of security.

If you are interested in learning more about investing in real estate in Rochester, New York, Monroe County, or any of the surrounding counties, let’s chat.  It is a great place to make an excellent return that is much safer than many other markets.

Learn more about my business at www.bluetopmanagement.com.

I’ve been a little relaxed on posting here lately.  I have been spending a tremendous amount of time seeking direction for my own  business.  I recently earned my real estate salesperson license.  This will allow me to better serve existing customers/investors and allow me to expand my network. 

The training available is quite extensive and having access to so much more information is invaluable.  As I continue to develop my business, I will try to post more information here.

Now that I have defined the direction of my business much more clearly, I expect it’s growth to become very organic.  It is so much easier to grow when you have a clearly defined direction to grow in.  With the addition of the license, I can now offer much more valuable services to my customers.

I read an article in the June 12, 2006 edition of Fortune magazine titled “Pack Mentality”.  The article centered around how competing cyclists work together as they compete.  It also described the unwritten rules of etiquette which essentially punishes those cyclists that decide not to work with their competitors.

 Just as every business is different and has certain areas of strength, so do cyclists.  The toughest force cyclists fight is not gravity, but wind.  They work together as they compete by taking turns drafting each other.  Depending on the changing conditions, the person cutting the wind for others may be a leader, hill specialist, sprinter, or domestique.  Without rewriting the article word for word, the basic point was to make the reader think about how working together, even with your competitors, can help all of the cyclists accomplish their goals more easily.

Stop and think for a second about your particular industry.  Most likely, you have at least one friendly competitor that you refer work to when you are too busy or unable to help a good customer.  They likely do the same for you.  It is also very likely that you have one competitor that continually bad-mouths your business, and you likely have your own retaliatory methods of dealing with them too.

Comparing these two types of competitors, which one is helping you to accomplish your goal of making a fair profit as well as being a great service provider to anybody that asks for your help?  Which one continually wastes your time and takes your attention away from your goals?

I almost skipped over this article because cycling didn’t seem much like business to me.  I’m glad that I took the time to look further into the article.  It definitely made a great point.

Company culture is something that rarely gets the attention it deserves from the people that create it, the leaders.  Why is that?  I often try to “feel” the culture as I meet with clients, even if the problem they are requesting help with is seemingly unrelated.  Culture is the basis of many of the problems and issues that businesses face.  I believe the reason most leaders don’t want to look at their company culture is because it is a direct reflection of both their strengths and their weaknesses.  It is a mirror of their personality.  Looking too closely at their culture forces them to look too closely at themselves.

Failing to focus on the culture of your business leaves unlimited potential untapped.  This is the root of much of the water cooler gossip, the whispering behind your back, and the reason for average or higher turnover rates.  Think about it this way, if you were the employee, and you had to report to work in a cold, uninviting environment every day, how long would you stay, and how hard would you work while you were there?  That cold feeling they may experience is your culture.  You can’t put your hands on it, but it exists in every company.

Let me share an example.  Not too long ago, I worked as an employee for a company.  I was making better money than I ever had made before.  I was using a lot of my experience to run multi-million dollar projects.  I was doing the work of a project manager, except I didn’t have enough authority to act on my own.  I like to think quickly and move fast, but I had to explain and justify mundane details of each and every day.  I had the ability to do a lot more work than I was doing, but when I asked for more to do I was ignored.  I watched the owner struggling to keep up with his workload.  I knew I could help and offered to do so, and I was ignored.  The whole time I worked there, I kept pushing to do more, was not given more to do, and I was subjected on a daily basis to an owner that complained about how everything would fall apart without him.  He would say that nobody worked as hard as he did while he worked 100-hour weeks.  He rarely delegated tasks.  When he did, the tasks that were delegated were extremely simple and unchallenging, to the point, at times, of being insulting to those that were on the receiving end.  It was almost as if he were saying, this is all I think you are capable of.  The running joke at the company is “having the surgery done”, the lobotomy, so you would stop thinking and just do what you were told.  My “surgery” didn’t work, so I left the company, feeling as though my talent had been wasted.  A lot of other talent exists within that company that is wasted on a daily basis.

Please start to reread the last paragraph.  Did you notice how quickly it turned negative?  That is how powerful culture is.  By the time you finished the first half of the paragraph, I would bet that you forgot that I was making better money than I ever had made before.  In fact, that really didn’t matter at all, because I was obviously unhappy with the environment in which I was working.  This particular owner was very secure financially and pays all of his employees very well.  If I had said I was unhappy and asked for more money, I probably would have received it.  Instead, I told him I was unhappy and I asked for more responsibility, and didn’t receive it.  This owner failed to recognize the needs of an employee (me) that presented those needs bluntly.  He has never had a problem with throwing money at a problem, but that will not fix culture.

In the example above, even the owner is unhappy.  He continues to nurture a culture that is absolutely dependent on him.  At the same time, he is burdened by the amount of things he has to get done to keep things moving.  Meanwhile, his employees are miserable because they are not allowed to think or act on their own.  If they do, they are second-guessed and soon made to regret taking any initiative at all.

As a business owner, or manager, you are faced with a lot of daily tasks that make it easy to postpone attention to your culture.  In actuality, it is emotionally easier not to face it too, because that would force you to look at your own weaknesses very hard and possibly lead you to try to change who you are and how you act.  But not facing the problem is only amplifying it. 

More than likely, you will need outside help.  This is because when you look around you within your company, they are all trapped inside the very box that you have built.  It is possible that there will be one or two people with the guts to tell you (their boss) what they think is wrong and how they suggest your team fixes it.  In most cases, that is the equivalent of throwing rocks inside a glass house.  Many employees will dodge the real issues because they don’t want to upset their balance or their income source.  They would rather wait until they can’t stand it anymore, then find another job and hope they are happier there.  But if they do speak up, be careful, because your culture may be such that you hear them, but don’t listen.  It is imperative that you allow yourself to be criticized.  Only then can you start to break the problem down into manageable pieces in order to put things back together again.

Don’t take the criticism personally.  By allowing your employees to open up and share their opinions and contribute to the success of your company, you empower them and make them feel needed.  It also helps your business to gain a life of its own that can inspire everybody to do more.  Synergy is defined in Webster’s dictionary as “the combined action of 2 or more [people] to achieve an effect greater than that which is individually capable”.  Which would you rather be, an individual working and struggling to succeed, or the leader of a synergistic organization with a life all it’s own that carries it’s members to a satisfying and rewarding life?

Many people do not stop to think about the difference between leaders and managers.  They assume that they are actually one and the same.  Possibly the worst offenders are managers themselves.  In their haste to get the job done, they fail to stop and think how to get it done most effectively and efficiently.  Most importantly, they fail to instill passion into the goal they are trying to accomplish along with the people under their charge.

Stop and think for a moment, then answer the following questions.  Feel free to scratch a couple of notes as you read through this article.  1) Who was the best person you ever worked for?  2) Who is the worst person you ever worked for?  While thinking about the best person, list out a few things why you felt that way.  Now do the same for the worst person.  Everybody will have different reasons for each of the items they list.  Going back to your favorite, look at your notes again, then stop and think for a second:  Did that person recognize any of the items you listed while you were under their charge?  Did they know how to inspire you?  Chances are, they did.  Say, for example, you listed “…they asked how my son was doing after he fell off of his bicycle and skinned up his knee over the weekend…”.  While this has no importance in directly boosting your work productivity, your favorite person took time to recognize you as an individual with needs and concerns other than producing 1,000 widgets per hour.  This person gave you the opportunity to be a human rather than just another cog in the wheel.  There is also a better than average chance that when this person came to you and asked for a little extra effort to meet a deadline, you did not hesitate to put in extra hours, maybe for little or no extra compensation, because you knew how important it was to help them.  This person was likely right beside you with shirtsleeves rolled up working right alongside you.Now take a moment to reflect on the dictatorial jerk that was the worst person you worked for.  Did any of your notes you jotted down about that person describe what they did for you?  Did you ever feel like you were important?  I would bet it was all about them and they rarely, if ever, tried to recognize any of your basic needs.  Your notes might describe how it was always their deadline, their accomplishment, or how they would say that if it weren’t for them, nothing would ever get done.  As for the latter comment, they are correct.  Because they create a world where everything is dependent on them.  Every person in their responsibility is taught to rely on them and not be self-sufficient.  The strengths and weaknesses of the group are a mirror of the strengths and weaknesses of the individual managing the group.  The group of people this person manages is notably weaker than the group of people serving under your favorite leader.  One last thought regarding this person: did you look to see if it was time to go home yet at 4:45 or at 5:15?The best person I ever worked for was Staff Sergeant Jerry Babauta.  I worked for him almost 2 decades ago.  I had just arrived at my first duty station in Germany with no stripes on my arm.  Part of my job was excavation for broken utility lines.  It was late November, about 25 degrees out, and we had to locate a broken water main in the middle of the road that had frozen.  This requires a lot of hand digging to avoid further damage to the pipe, and when a water main leaks, it leaks a lot, so the ground was wet and heavy.  We were all frozen, wet and miserable.  Jerry was our leader, in charge of several jobs.  He drove up in his nice warm pickup in his starched uniform, climbed down into the muddy hole, took my shovel away from me, and ordered me into his truck to warm up.  I returned 5 minutes later, still numb but not wanting to sit for too long, to take my shovel back.  He refused and told me to take another airman’s shovel so he could warm up.  There were about 6 of us there and this continued until everybody had a turn.  By that time, we had exposed the break and started the repair.  He remained outside of his truck, wet and muddy, until the job was done.  He never repeated this action again.  He never had to.  I still believe it was a demonstration with a purpose for my benefit because I was the new guy.  He made his point, though, because now, almost 20 years later, I still remember what happened, and I still think,”What would Jerry do?”  And, for the rest of my service under Jerry’s leadership, I never questioned an order and I always gave 120%.The question “What is the difference between a leader and a manager?” is impossible to answer the same way for everybody.  That is, unless your answer is, “The leader will know.”

A common misconception when people hire contractors is that the lowest bidder should get the job, simply because they are cheaper.  The reality is that when the job is completed, it ends up costing more than if you hired the second or third highest bidder.  In Europe, contractors are hired a little differently.  The customer collects bids, eliminates the highest and lowest bidder, and targets the median or average price to decide who to hire and for how much.

Think of this another way.  Contractors are business people, just like you.  Put yourself in their shoes for a minute.  Let’s say a customer A calls you for a price on your widgets.  The customer tells you they are looking for the best price you can give them.  You give them your best price.  Then they call you to ask if you can take off another 2% so that you are the cheapest bidder.  You do so.  How do you feel?

Now, customer B calls you, tells you they want a price on widgets, then tells you to give them your best price.  You give them your best price.  They call you back to inform you that you were NOT the lowest bidder, but they trust your experience and the quality of your work, so you are hired.  How do you feel?

Now, while building your widgets for both customer A and customer B, you run into an unforeseen problem.  There is a flaw in the design they furnished you with to build them their widgets which will cost you 2% more to produce them.  Both have the same design and the same problem.  Think back to how your customers treated you.  Customer A bullied you into being cheap.  Customer B respected you as a fellow businessperson.  How will you handle the same problem with each customer? 

The job is already halfway done for each customer.  The chances of the customer hiring another widget maker at this point are slim.  You gave 2% back to customer A before the job even started, which may have covered increased production costs.  But since you gave it back already, there is no room for error.  Knowing now that you can’t cover the extra cost, you have to ask for more money from the customer.  But you also know that it will cost them much more than the 2% to start all over with a new widget maker.  So, as a smart businessman, you charge Customer A 5% more to finish the project.  Why not, they didn’t show any respect for you?  Besides, if they started all over, it might cost them 20% more, so you are actually saving them money.  Right?

Customer B will likely be treated differently.  They told you right up front that they respected you and your product.  They also told you that you weren’t the cheapest, so you have some reassurance in knowing you have a fair and reasonable profit margin built in.  You know you could ask for more money, but you risk losing the respect that they showed to you first.  A deal is a deal, and you decide to hold your price.  Sometime during the project, you call Customer B, tell them about the problem, tell them that you absorbed the additional cost, and tell them you hope they are happy with the end result.

Which customer will likely hire you again?  Which one will you want to work for again?

We are constantly barraged with news stories about crooked contractors.  They do exist, no doubt about it.  But when was the last time you read about a crooked customer?

Welcome to Blue Top Management’s website featuring a list of services offered by consultant, Adam Johnson. Please visit our blog frequently as new articles will be posted.