A high percentage of businesses fail because of product, market, placement or the relativity of their business. Many businesses start and do well for several years and then lose their edge because they are no longer relevant. This last point is the one I would like to speak to.

If you have ever eaten at a Cracker Barrel restaurant, you will see items all over the walls of companies and products. I would guess that 90 percent of those companies no longer exist.

There’s not a better example of what I am talking about than the automobile industry.   In the early 1900s, it was so captivating that in 1915 in the US alone, there were 632 automobile companies that tried to build and sell cars. Many only lasted a few years before they went bankrupt and went out of business. Some car companies, like Studebaker, Packard, Hudson or Edsel, made cars for many years and still went belly up.

Creating a business is one thing, but keeping a business relevant to the consumer is quite another. Staying with the car company theme, Alan Mulally just retired from Ford Motor Company and was the best CEO that Ford ever had, including people with the last name of “Ford.” Alan was an outsider to the family, but stepped in and saved the car company. See, with Ford it wasn’t enough just to have the last name Ford, they needed a person that could almost reinvent Ford Motor Company and reach the consumer in a new, relevant way. That is exactly what Alan did.

So, you may ask how can a company can remain relevant and remain vibrant through the test of time. Well, I think Ford may offer the best answer to that. Bill Ford, who was Henry Ford’s great grandson, was the CEO of Ford until 2006. Ford Motor Company suffered under Bill Ford’s leadership for several years and had experienced pretty staggering losses. To Bill Ford’s credit, he understood that he lacked the ability to turn the company around and went looking for the person to take his place and found Alan Mulally.

Think about that for a minute. Here your last name is Ford and your great grandfather founded the company, but you accepted that you were not the right leader to run the company. I have a very high regard of Bill Ford for recognizing where he was good, where he was not, and the fortitude to make that decision.

Side note here: no one is good at everything, but smart people will surround themselves with other people that are good in the areas in which they are weak.

So again, you may ask how a company can remain relevant. I believe it starts with leaving ego and arrogance at the door. No one is good enough or smart enough to act that way. I believe the second thing is to realize when your time has passed and have the foresight to replace yourself. Lastly, the first thing Alan Mulally did after becoming the CEO was call every department head into one room and without any fear of job loss, he asked every department head where Ford was failing and how did that department head think it could be fixed. After hearing that there was no wrong answer and no risk of losing their jobs, they began to tell Alan and the rest of the department heads where they were weak and where they were strong. Alan began that day to build his team and recreate Ford Motor Company into what we know today. It is relevant again to its customers.

Whatever your business is or whatever your job is you should ask yourself, are you current and relevant to the times and are you moving toward being better at what you do. The next time your boss talks to you, tell him your ideas on how to improve the company or the work you do. Most people only talk about what is wrong. If you talk about what is right and how to improve it, trust me, he/she will look at you differently and will have a new respect for you. It is my guess that when most layoffs happen, they don’t lay off the ones who try to improve the company and have the right attitude.

There is not a set age where you are no longer relevant. It is an attitude, humility, and sense of being that defines this. In the hotel business, look at Bill Marriott; he is 82 years old and will still stop the conversation in an entire room when he walks in. So, just because you are 50, 60, 70, or 80, don’t think you are no longer relevant just because of your age. That said, know what you are good at and also be honest with yourself on what you are not good at.

Be smart, be active, read, exercise and improve who you are and always have something in life you want to strive toward. KT

Every business has factors and points that are the most important things to know. I was talking to a friend some years ago who managed a large grocery store. I asked him how business was, and he pulled out a small sheet of paper that had three sales factors on it. The sales month to date, year to date and the percentage sales increase/decrease from the same two periods last year. His name was Harry Owens. Harry told me that when his owners called him those were the main numbers they wanted to know. Harry, being a smart guy, updated those sales numbers every morning and put them in his pocket so that when the owners called he would know the numbers.

Pretty smart, right? When Harry’s owners called he didn’t have to say “let me check and get back to you.” He wanted to get out in front of the question and already have the answers.

In every business and every job there are reams and reams of paper and figures and numbers, but almost always there are a few factors and numbers that are the important ones. A good manager, salesperson, admin, painter, preacher, etc. know the real factors that are important and the ones that are not.

At Hotel AG, just like all sales companies, no one cares if you are number one, number three, largest this or that in this region, etc. If you are a Chevy dealer, actually telling someone that you are the largest volume Chevy dealer in the world does not mean anything to a buyer. Telling a buyer that your company sells three Chevrolets every hour gets the buyer’s attention because it is not a sales pitch they have heard before.

At Hotel AG, we find that starting a conversation with sales quotes kind of misses the point. We want to get the conversation to the point when the buyer asks “How many hotels have you sold” or “How many Hilton/Marriott hotels have you sold” because when he asks to hear the pitch, the pitch means a lot more. Our sister company, Pipeline Social Media Solutions, is a social media company. What is most important to Pipeline is the number of social channels they update each day, hour and or week. That tells the potential customer that you know what you are doing.

If you dig ditches, I would think the factors you need to know every day is the length of ditches you dig every day and the percentage of completion of the job each day. You get the idea.

At Hotel AG when we call a client, we never call and ask “Do you want to list your hotel with us?” The answer to that question is a resounding no and will probably turn the guy off. We go at every client as though he is a buyer first. What I mean is we talk about some hotels he may be interested in that are like the hotels he owns; this way, we can gain his trust. A seller of a hotel wants to know that the broker he is hiring knows how to sell hotels, knows how to sell hotels like his, and has sold a lot of hotels like his. What we find is that going to each client as though he was a buyer actually answers his questions before he thinks to ask them. Like the Harry Owens example above, the best way to develop trust is to answer the questions before the client even thinks to ask it.

So, if you handle corporate accounts, sell insurance, pastor a church, manage a Starbucks, know the factors that are the most telling in your line of work and know those answers before you are even asked. When you report to someone above you, it only takes a couple of conversations where you already know the answers to his/her questions before they ask when they start to trust you, respect you, and develop a high regard for your abilities. This usually helps you when promotions are handed out.

So, in summary, know the points and factors of your work and outsmart your competition by knowing the answers before they are asked. KT

Growing a new company, starting a business, starting a church, or taking an idea from thought to reality is perhaps one of the most difficult things you can ever do. There are always “backseat drivers” or “Monday morning quarterbacks” who will tell you everything you did wrong and all the right decisions you should have made. Do not listen to them.

It always makes me laugh when you hear these college professors who write books on business and the proper way to make decisions, yet they have never put themselves at risk or went without a salary. The person I want to hear from is the one who has been in the trenches trying to make something happen.

Our company, Hotel AG, is made up of mostly independent contractors who have put themselves on the line to earn a living for their families; they have taken the risk to be financially independent. I have often said that when you build a house, build a company or start any new idea that it will take twice as long and will cost twice as much as you think it will. In the case of Hotel AG, it took three times as long and cost three times as much… I don’t ever want to start another company. Ha.

It is said that in life you have two graph lines: ability and opportunity. These two graph lines cross in an average adult’s life 2-4 times. When those lines cross, it represents the greatest opportunity for success and for ideas. Like the father that was sitting on his front porch watching his daughter swirl a bicycle tire around her waist and said himself, I can make something like that. He invented the hula hoop. These type stories are endless where average people see an opportunity to do something that is not so average.

Regardless of what you start or build or join, there are a few points I want to share that have helped me through the years.

(1)    Always be truthful.

(2)    Be bold, but never arrogant.

(3)    Have a weekly meeting so everyone knows what everyone is doing. It stops the gossip.

(4)    Do not try to be someone you are not. People can see what is real and what is not.

(5)    Always try to set the example.

(6)    Deal with conflicts immediately.

(7)    Always try to do what is right, whether it is expected or not.

(8)    Treat your people right and with respect and they will protect your business.

(9)    Never gossip and never whisper about someone.

(10) Try to find the good in people. Do not try to find faults instead.

I think these same ideas/rules work regardless of what your job is or where you work. Sometimes in life, it is the simple things that make the most impact on others. KT

I would love to take credit for this, but I can’t. Elaine was reading a book last night and this was a quote in the book that I thought was worth repeating: “It’s about bishops and kings.”

Past failures are great bishops, but very poor kings. Past failures, like bishops, can teach you and you can learn from them, but they make very poor kings of our lives. The point is to learn from them, but not let them control your life.

I have made many mistakes in life and business, but I have also made a few right decisions. I chose to learn from the mistakes and not let them control my life. I want to tell you one of the greatest success stories I know.

The man’s name was Kemmons Wilson from Memphis, Tennessee.

Kemmons passed some years ago, but I do most of the hotel work for the Kemmons children and have been doing so for 20 years.

Kemmons grew up dirt poor, and he was a home builder in Memphis. He was a young father with five children. In the early ’50s, they took a family vacation trip to Washington, DC. Along the trip, they stayed at various hotels, and every hotel charged a different price; there was an extra cost for each child. It made Kemmons so mad that when he got back to Memphis, he decided to start his own hotel company that would let kids stay free with their parents as well as have a swimming pool and restaurant on site. It would cater to business travelers looking for consistency and families that needed a clean hotel when traveling.

He founded the chain Holiday Inn of America, and he opened the first Holiday Inn in 1953.

As you can imagine, the idea took off and Kemmons was transformed into a wealthy man as he led Holiday Inns of America through development, franchising, and going public with the company.

Something a lot of people don’t know about Kemmons was that he failed a lot. Kemmons would invest in just about anything if he thought someone had a good idea. In the office of Kemmons Wilson Companies, when Kemmons was still alive, there was a wall that the staff referred to as the “Wall of Shame.” Kemmons would invest in hundreds of companies and the vast majority of those failed. I would guess that of the companies that Kemmons invested in, he may have had limited success with 15%-20%, but the most important point is that he had huge success with maybe 1%. So, the “Wall of Shame” had pictures of all the businesses he had invested in that failed.

See, Kemmons knew that he would not be successful in everything he did, rather all he needed was a couple of successes to outweigh the failures. He never stopped investing in other people and their ideas until he was almost 90. He believed you must keep going forward rather than looking back.

Kemmons learned to let his failures be a bishop in his life, but he never let it become the king.

That’s pretty good advice for all us, whether it is on a personal level, business level or spiritual level. We have all failed many times, but the objective is to not let the past failures control our future. KT

Play-Doh was invented in the 1930s to clean coal residue off wallpaper. Of course, it wasn’t called Play-Doh because it was a non-toxic, non-staining reusable compound. Back in those days, most houses had wallpaper versus paint, and the main source of heat was coal. The black coal residue would float in the air (real safe!) and attach to furniture, chairs and also, wallpaper.

It was invented by Noah McVicker of Cincinnati, Ohio. His nephew, Joe McVicker, was taught the business by his uncle.

Pause here. Have you ever had a company or a job that you thought would last forever or a product that would always increase in sales? Have you ever pinned your future on it?

Back to the story. After World War II, coal was used less and less because of the invention called natural gas, which burns clean with no residue. At that time, they also invented vinyl wallpaper that you could wash without destroying it. Result… the product, now known as Play-Doh, was being sold less and less; the family company was at the point of bankruptcy.

The nephew, Joe, was convinced he could save the company from bankruptcy. One day, he was in a nursery school and noticed that the children were using Play-Doh to make Christmas ornaments. He said himself “would you look at that.” The rest of the story is very simple. He took the product to an educational convention and then every major retailer in the country wanted to buy the product. They came up with a way to color the compound so it would be fun for children. The result is the nephew changed the name to Play-Doh and changed his and his family’s economic future with the invention or rather the re-invention.

There are more stories like this (Post-It notes, hula-hoop, computer chip, etc.) than the page will allow. All the stories are about looking at something that seems to have failed only to realize that it was meant to be something else.

Ok, one last short, but true story. In Antwerp, Belgium, in the mid 1800s, there was man who wanted to go digging for diamonds and left his family, home, and all his fortune chasing the dream. He came back home as a failure and his family had a friend over that night that was a diamond expert. The friend wanted to hear about his trip looking for a diamond mine. After dinner, the men were in the living room talking and the diamond expert was standing by the fireplace and noticed a rock the homeowner had found on his property. The diamond expert picked up the old rock and asked the man where it came from. Well, the man said, it came from his field while he was plowing one day.

Do you already know how the story ends? Yes, the rock was a huge diamond and under that farmer’s farm was the largest diamond mine to ever be discovered.

What am I saying here? Sometimes the greatest thing you can do is stay where you are and stay with what you are doing and sometimes God’s shows you something really tremendous. I have always said that one idea from God can change your life in such a way that you cannot even keep your total calculated.

Nearly every major discovery was right in front of the person that discovered it and they couldn’t even see it for a while.

Is everyone going to discover something great and be wealthy? No. But, God can pick up the pieces of your life and mold them together in a way you can’t even imagine. KT