Kevin Cullis: How to Start a Business Mac Version

Entrepreneurs look for results and using a Mac can increase the results you want. Why? Because it takes less time to get things done than other ways.

Process and Results Defined. There are two components of each result:

1. Process – the steps needed to accomplish as task or achieve a goal.
2. Result – the goal, ends, or the final means of your endeavor.

Results Defined. You need to define the results you want to achieve, i.e. in most cases it’s what your customer needs or wants. While you may have the idea to satisfy your customer, it’s not about you, it’s about them. They have the money and are willing to pay you for your product or service.

Process Defined. There are four ways to looking at getting results.

• Effective is getting the job done per your and your customer’s expectations. It’s achieving the goal or task.
• Efficient is getting things done at the least cost in both in your time and money. The Mac saves time, therefore it saves money.

Giving these definitions, here’s how you look at things from a business perspective. There are four phases to getting results:

1. Not Effective, Not Efficient - Neither satisfying your customer and potentially losing money, but consider your ROI (Return on Investment). This may mean that you maybe investing both time and money in getting a new product/service to market. Edison spent time on 10,000 experiments to design the light bulb. In the book “Napoleon Hill’s A Year of Growing Rich” on Week 45 Edison was asked if he did not uncover the secret to the light bulb when he did, what would he be doing. With a twinkle in his eye Edison said, “I’d be in my laboratory working right now instead of wasting my time talking with you.”
2. Effective, not Efficient – Satisfying your customer, but not optimal with your costs. You are making sales to customers and they are buying your product/service. You’re making money, but you need to reduce your costs.
3. Effective and Efficient – Satisfying your customer and being optimal in your costs. Here you can’t go any lower as this will cost you sales and customer satisfaction. Here’s your MONEY MAKER. “A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.” Henry Ford
4. Not Effective, Efficient – Not satisfying your customer, but keeping your costs low. A typical business bounces between #3 above and #4 here to maximize their profit. In some cases businesses even go further “below this line” and become immoral, unethical, and even illegal in their activities and actions. Taking a customer’s money and not delivering on their promise or outright theft. They not only lose their customers, they lose their integrity and reputation. “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.” Henry Ford

As #1 above, you’re investing time and money in coming up with something new. The question is not how much money are you spending, but how committed you are toward your goal. Notice that Edison was NOT persistent in doing the SAME experiment over and over. He was persistent in his goal, creating a light bulb, but he changed the process to achieve the results that he was looking for. Over 10,000 times the process changed!

While PC users like their computers, in “Mac vs. Windows: Tracking the customer satisfaction gap” Mac users have the highest satisfaction rate of any computer user. Why? Because of the aspects above. Macs are both efficient and effective from the USER’S experience.

In my book How to Start a Business: Mac Version I go into this idea and concept in more detail on page 199-200 and give examples. Using a Mac for your business is a no brainer.

Pick up a Mac and my book today, they’re a winning combination.

I just gave this morning a very short Keynote presentation to Creative Connections about how to differentiate your business from others. In fact, of what I’m about to tell you only three people had heard about what I had talked about:

A Document to Differentiate Your Business.

How this came about was I was in a discussion with a number of vendors such as graphic artists, editors, etc about my upcoming books about using Mac in business and we all kept going back over and over what both sides were trying to say and accomplish. Each of us, both me as the customer and them as the vendors has responsibilities as well as inputs and requirements to get whatever job was needed to be done. My frustration was in dealing with understanding what each vendor needed from me, what I would receive from them, and the results that I would get back.

So here’s the answer for you as an entrepreneur.

Create a document on how you work!

Here are the elements that you’ll need:

• Define your ideal customer – not the one that is anyone that comes to you, but specifically the type of customer that you want to work with.
• Define the process – here is where things can get muddy for creative types, the process nearly always does not change, the various inputs and outputs do. Define each step from the time the customer contacts you until you finally get paid.
• Define what the customer wants – here is where you’ll go back and forth over what the customer wants and may require multiple iterations to get the final idea down.
• Define what you need – what do you specifically need from your customer in order to get their job done
• Define the scope or time – here you need to set a time frame for each step as well as the complete project time needed to do the project. If your customer balks about the time, do a “FEDEX” on them saying it’ll cost more to get it done quicker to do a quality job. Keep in mind that it’s the value you bring to the hour, not necessarily the hours you put in.

There are more details, but you get the idea, so how can a Mac help out?

iLife and iWork ’09, using audio, video, and desktop publishing you can create any number of types of documents that will give your customer the education they’ll need of you and your business.

Watch for my up coming book that will go into more details on why this document can reduce your workload getting new customers and getting only those customers that you want to work with.

Hi all,

If you’d like to meet me I’ll be attend the Meetup group Creative Connections tomorrow at 9 AM and give a short talk about improving your marketing for entrepreneurs and start ups. As the marketing for this meeting says:

“The #1 priority for nearly all small businesses is getting new customers. But do you know that by changing the way you market and handle your customer you can make more money? We’ll be working as a group on creating a small marketing piece that will be sure to get better qualified and educated customers, create better communications with your customers about your business, reduce your workload to concentrate on what you do best, and to set the stage for more marketing results. So come prepared to walk out with an Action Plan of increasing your business going forward.”

I look forward to meeting you, we’ll have fun for sure.

As one who is working on getting my own business up and going in this down time you hear a lot about goals that we’re to set. However, having worked for a number of organizations in my life I always come across both managers (who don’t get it), leaders (who are the ones that get it), and others that have a misunderstanding of what each of the above terms in the title mean.

When you look at trying to accomplish something there is always the basic assumption that a certain process is to be followed in order do accomplish something. So here are some basic definitions

Outcomes: a goal to be achieved
Output: that amount that is defined by a process that is clearly defined
Capability: that step by step process to achieve a certain result, regardless of any outside influence

How can we understand this principle, by way of a math formula

1 + 1 + 1+ 1 = 4

The output, or result, is “4″ and the process capability is the “1 + 1 + 1+ 1″ and here’s where it gets dicey. Our outcomes is to be “10″ and that’s what we want.

Most technicians look at only the “1 + 1 + 1+ 1″ while only managers look at the “4″ and needing to get to “10″ with neither of them seeing both the process and the results at the same time.

Where managers and technicians, versus leaders and leader technicians, miss out is not seeing HOW things get done and don’t see the complete picture of both parts. This normally involves understanding how much time and money is needed to get the job done. Out of touch managers only see the results, out of touch technicians only see the process, and since managers define the process that technicians are to follow, fail to change the process to achieve the outcome of the amount of “10,” in essence, handcuffing technicians to only producing the same amount of “4″ until it changes.

Outcomes, or goals, are where the delta, or difference, is between what you can achieve and where you want to be. Because of the formula you’ll either need to change the process, i.e. personally growing yourself or how the process is designed, or change the goals or outcomes that you want to achieve.

As an example, it was never thought that man could break the four minute mile run, but break it we did. We also thought we’d never break the sound barrier, but we did. However, I don’t think man will ever break the sound barrier running, the process capability of a human without the aid of a machine makes it impossible.

Good employees and leaders see both at the same time and BOTH work to achieve the desired results.

Redefine the process and you can redefine the output to achieve new and improved results. Have a Happy New Year and see what you can change in order to achieve new results.