Doing Business With Giants- Og, the King of Bashan

Have you heard of Og?

I know, right.

What was his mother thinking when she named him that?

However, Og didn't take guff on the playground because, you see, Og was a giant. A real, live, true giant.

You might be surprised to learn this about Entrepreneur Chick- but I read the Old Testament almost every day.

I'll give you the loosely translated, Readers Digest version of the Hebrew's dilemma.

(Though I only read The King James Version, which is classically beautiful and conveys a thought with fewer words; therefore making it easier to both understand and remember.)

God: Look guys. I'm giving you this land so-

Hebrews: Great! Well, you know, we'll send some spies over first and check out the place.

God: Um...

Later that day-

Hebrews: Gosh, God. It doesn't look so good. Did you KNOW that there's giants over there? Seriously. Giants. We're not so sure that we can beat them.

God: So, you're not sure I can help you out, huh? Does, oh, I don't know- the whole bringing you up out of Egypt with all those nasty plagues visited on Pharaoh and his peeps, and not on you, mean anything?

Parting of The Red Sea ring a bell?

Hebrews: But we like camping! And the manna thing- it's not so bad once you get used to it. We don't want to repeat the whole eat a pheasant and the earth swallows you up, drama.

God: No, see. That's not the deal. Don't think I can't hear you running your pie holes in your tents- you say, "HE brought us out here in the desert so he can kill us and give our children to our enemies for a prey." You're half right! You are going to die out here, those of you who don't believe me. Yep, you're gonners. However, TWO of you will not die, TWO of you will go into the land, and that's... (drum roll please- wait- I'll use thunder) Joshua and Caleb.

Two men out of literally millions went into the land because they had:

FAITH

They had this faith- not blind, stupid faith- but faith based upon historical evidence which denoted that God had been faithful in the past, therefore, HE could most assuredly be counted on to be faithful in the future.

What does this mean to the entrepreneur- if anything?

A Giant's Definition:

Giant: A multimillion dollar company that employs over 3,000- give or take.

You: A small business.

Should you, as a small business, dare to get involved and do business for, a giant?

Yes! If you are:

Aware, But Not Afraid: Be aware of, but not afaird of- how a giant pays.

Do you know how big corporations pay?

They pay on a net thirty, to net fourty five.

It will take you thirty to fourty five days to see your money. Uh oh. Now what? That's going to leave you scrambling to come up with enough cash flow to pay your labor and your materials. What do you do?

Do The Three B's, Babies!

Budget: This is how I manage to beat a whole bunch of odds. I told someone last night, "You won't believe how much money I won't spend!"

I carefully make sure that expenses are kept low and my employees are paid. By doing this, I am buying myself time until the gaint's cash starts rollling in.

Barrow: against accounts receivable. You don't have to- but it's an option.

This is called, "factoring".

Factoring is "a financial transaction whereby a business sells its accounts receivable (i.e., invoices) to a third party (called a factor) at a discount in exchange for immediate money with which to finance continued business. Factoring differs from a bank loan in three main ways. First, the emphasis is on the value of the receivables (essentially a financial asset)[1], not the firm’s credit worthiness. Secondly, factoring is not a loan – it is the purchase of a financial asset (the receivable). Finally, a bank loan involves two parties whereas factoring involves three."

Build: Get your sales staff out there, or you get out there, and build up smaller accounts.

You'll want to do that because they pay quicky, therefore, giving you the necessary cash to keep funding your business and make a profit, rendering the giant a whole lot more pleasant to do business with.

I share this with you today because one of my clients is, in fact, a giant-  a national name you'd all be familiar, if I were to share it with you.

Though I am happy as Charlie Sheen at Betty Ford to have acquired this giant, I now have a much better understanding of how one operates- and should you run across of few giants of your own- so will you!

HO, HO, HO~

(I'm quoting the Green Giant now, not Snoop Dogg.)

"For only Og, the king of Basham remained as remnant of giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron: is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man."

                                                             Deuteronomy 3:11

You've Got to Toughen Up- Holla!

See this fierce looking fellow right here? That's my Yorkie, Eliot, barking at me furiously because I told him, falsely, I think I saw a "kitty cat"!

You're real tough, Eliot, with your Trick R Treat Halloween t-shirt on there, buddy.

I hate to tell you, but the cat would first laugh you to death.

And then he'd claw your eyes out.

But you see, we can all learn something from Eliot.

In his mind's eye, this is how he sees himself, no lie:

You've heard it said that people look like their dogs?

I'm not sure about that, but in attitude, Eliot and I are two peas in a pod.

I'm going to shoot damn straight with you today. Business is tough. Life is tough. People aren't always going to like you.

What are you going to do about that?

I'll tell you what you're going to do about that.

Realize most people have a strong desire to be liked.

Now that you know that, you have an advantage. You drop that strong desire to be liked right away.

Seriously, get the hell over it. Pandering to what other people want you to do, think you should do, tell you to do- will never get you anywhere of consequence. And besides all that, who respects a Milk Toast?

Many of my friends are elected officials in the community where I live.

One told me recently, "It's like this- no one owns me. I vote according to my beliefs. I say, if you don't like it, then don't vote for me- so what?"

And you know something? That guy is the most respected leader out there.

Entrepreneur Chick has mananged to be successful in business because I don't care if you like me or not.

If I did, I probably wouldn't have married a black man.

But I won't start something just for the sake of it.

(Tony loves to say, "Don't start none, won't be none.")

However, after I've been all sorts of gracious, and it has not been met in kind;

I will peg you for the ass you apparently are.

You're pegged. And I'm done.

Pretty simple.

Sales, The Bottom Line

If you're going to be in business, you have to learn to sell. I've never seen one business yet that didn't have its heartbeat firmly established in sales.

As my good friend, and fellow business owner, Greg, observed, "You can make an awful lot of mistakes but sales will always keep you afloat."

Most people can not sell. The very thought of selling something shakes them to the core.

When they (finally) get the prospect in front of them they start to get nervous, start to sweat, start to not listen, and go on and on and on. Would you buy something from a person like this? I'd lay odds, you wouldn't.

Why can't they sell?

What's holding them back?

REJECTION

Being told "no" is too scary.

Again, get the hell over it. As George, my father, who was a consummate salesman loved to say, "You won't die."

Are you open minded?

Then I 'd like you to watch something for a little bit. You might not like it, you might not agree with the lifestyle, you might find it offensive.

But I'll tell you- this is the thick skin I'm talking about.

These people came up from nothing. Nothing.

Do you think these men were told no a few times? Do you think they turned tail and ran, or did they slug it out and come right back- only harder?
You be the judge.

The next time you drive up to a sales call, Entrepreneur Chick wants you to imagine pulling up in your Cadillac Snoop Deville!

You take a cue from these gangsta's swagger and develope a little bit o' yo own-
 holla back!

P.S. Both Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent are amazing salesmen and outstanding entrepreneurs. Both of them are so adept, they could sell vodka to Russians.

As I Suspected, I am Happier Than Most

In an article a few days ago on MSN, this caught my eye- "Train to be Your Own Boss" or, are the self employed really happier? Happier even than doctors, lawyers and business executives?

You better believe we are, baby!

"The benefits of being our own boss, The Gallup-Healthway Well-Being Index, the most comprehensive survey to date with 100,826 respondents, found that business owners outranked all other workers in overall happiness and well-being, beating doctors, lawyers and business executives. What's so good about self-employment? Working on your own terms, having control over your fate, doing what you love and not living in fear of the pink slip rank high on the entrepreneur's list of perks. 'Even when things get tough, I'm still in control,' says business owner Roger Peugeot. Business owners also enjoy the satisfaction of focusing their energy on something that matters to them and benefits them directly."

Speaking of, "when things get tough"- um, yeah. Let's not romanticize this point. I am not going to do it. No, I do not like it when things get tough. I was told some years back one "must appreciate the struggle of any business."

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times", reads the famous opening line of "A Tale of Two Cities." Two thousand and nine has proved to be exactly that.

While my companies are going like gangbusters right now, in the first quarter and more than half way through the second, I took a 50% HIT!

Soooooo, I had to laugh when I discovered roll upon roll of toilet paper just sitting in our garage! I had placed them there last year in our cheerful orange and black Halloween tubs, dutifully waiting patiently until Fall.

The game I made up is called, "Wrap Ya Mummy" (or daddy). The idea is that whichever kid(s) wrap up their significant guardian most completely by the end of the song, wins!

But I was like, DAMN! I could have used this stuff when our money was so tight! Listen, I can be more ghetto than Snoop Dogg. If I can do anything to boost up my er.. bottom line, you bet I will. Unabashedly.

The Three "C"s I Look 4 When Building Any Business

This is so important, that if a venture has one but not all three, two but not one- I'll drop it like it's hot- almost. Even Snoop Dogg would say that's still sexy and cool.

The three "C"s are:

(1) Consistency

(2) Creative

(3) Can Someone Else Do it? (Or can you leverage it?)

All my businesses have all the three "C"s going for them, to one degree or another. Let's address consistency first. Tomorrow we will break down "Creative" and Wednesday we will address 'Can Someone Else Do It?"

Consistency

There's nothing I hate more in a business than feast or famine. I loathe it. However, in the building stage of a lot of ventures, there's normal peak times followed by slower times.

Some businesses that characterize this ebb and flow are companies that are seasonal.

Party City, though they sell party products all the time, has most of its gross profit occurring during the Halloween season. Have you ever been in Party City during Halloween? Nightmare. Hahahaha.

One of my business' strongest seasons run from May until December. It is quite the whirlwind. But, predictably, when January arrives we have gone from zero to sixty and back to zero again.

While I enjoy the break from the non-stop action, there's a large part of me, the greater part of me, that gets nervous and riddled with anxiety- which I don't enjoy.

Entrepreneur Chick is here to be honest with you. In everything I write I use this plumb line- Is it true?

Truthfully, I do not like a seasonal business. Therefore, I added another business to make up for the deferential.

So, let business number one drop off in January. No problem- business number two, like a booster rocket to the moon, will simply kick in (and has kicked in the whole time) to make life more predictable.

Ambiguity does characterize an entrepreneur- many people find they can't hack a life in which they are not sure what's going to happen.

My answer is not to scrap business altogether, but simply build a more reliable one.

Ah, the sweet smell of consistency in the morning. I love it!