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It’s All About the Expenses, Not the Income
/in Nuggets and Encouragement Regarding Strategy and Focus/by Tom DoescherNot long ago, I thought I should read The Millionaire Next Door, by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko. To my surprise, it wasn’t what I expected. It offered very practical, common-sense financial advice. Then I read Rich Habits, written by Thomas C. Corley — a CPA who watched a lot of clients squander millions of dollars, and worked with a few who became financially independent. Finally, I read The Behavior Gap, by Carl Richards.
It seems to me that many people are looking for the shortcut to everything. For example, they spend millions of dollars on diet products and elaborate exercise equipment that produce limited or no results, rather than making a concerted effort to change bad habits and make actual lifestyle changes.
It wasn’t until I arrived in my “seasoned” years that I realized the financial habits my dad taught me were quite profound. One day I was meeting with a very successful senior executive who was about my age. In the course of our conversation, he said, “Well, I’m not financially independent like you.” I was shocked by his comment. He was a very accomplished executive and still going strong. Later, as I thought about his comment, I realized that although his income was — and is — very high, his standard of living was — and is — probably higher.
So, what’s the point? No matter how much you make, if you spend more than what you bring in, you’ll never get there. I remember hearing my mentor, Frank Moran, suggesting to us recent college graduates: “Spend less than you make and invest the difference wisely.”
It sounds easy, but few achieve it. The Millionaire Next Door, Rich Habits, and The Behavior Gap provide some very simple, useful guidance.
(By the way, I think the same principles apply to businesses, too.)
Where Was Erin Back Then?
/in Nuggets and Encouragement Regarding Strategy and Focus/by Tom DoescherBarbara and I have had the privilege of traveling to more than 30 countries on six continents for business and humanitarian trips. Speaking for myself, I have made many mistakes attempting to build relationships in other places, ranging from the Rift Valley of Kenya to the Highlands in Papua New Guinea to the fast pace of Pudong, Shanghai. Hopefully I’ve learned from my faux pas, but they were usually painful experiences, nonetheless.
This past year, I had the pleasure of hearing Erin Meyer, professor at INSEAD, speak and then read from her book, The Culture Map — Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business. Erin could have saved me a lot of wasted time, energy, and blunders. She provides a field-tested model for decoding how cultural differences impact international business, and she combines a smart analytical framework with practical, actionable advice for succeeding in a global world.
If you have team members from different countries (Barbara and I worked with a team in Brazil that included people from more than 10 different countries including the Netherlands, Korea, Malaysia and, of course, Brazil), offices/plants located in other countries, or if you’re pursuing business cross-culturally for the first time, I would highly recommend Erin’s book. In addition, if you go to the Tools section of her website, erinmeyer.com, she provides a Self Assessment Cultural Profile and a tool you can use to compare how two (or more) cultures build trust, give negative feedback, and make decisions.
If your company has cross-cultural dealings, how are you doing with your associates, customers, and vendors from other cultures? My guess is Erin has a few practical tips that you’ll find valuable.
Footnote: I could share hundreds of stories, but this one comes to mind. One of my Japanese partners asked me to attend a seminar where he was the presenter. He wanted to introduce me to several Japanese business executives, and was excited that I would be sitting through his presentation (even though was all in Japanese). Although I knew no Japanese words, my partner had a clock built into his presentation and I could tell, as time went on, that he was significantly over the allotted time — probably by 25 percent. After the presentation, he asked for feedback, so I courageously offered my observation of his running over the scheduled time (a fatal mistake in U.S. business). He thanked me for my feedback and then went on to say, “In the Japanese culture, the participants’ reaction to the speaker who exceeds the allotted time is to be happy that they received more than they paid for.” All I could say was, “Really?”
All Lives Have Equal Value
/in Extraordinary Customer/Client Service/by Tom DoescherIn the past year, I had the good fortune of watching an interview with Melinda Gates. WOW!!! The title of this blog is her and Bill’s mantra, and it’s what drives the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Melinda, who refers to herself as an introvert, is making an enormous impact worldwide. (By the way, she grew up in a strong, faith-based middle class home in Dallas, attended an all-girls Catholic high school, and then went to Duke and received a bachelor’s degree in computer science and an MBA.) She left Duke to join Microsoft, where she was leading a large team, but elected to leave after 10 years to be home with the couple’s three children. She was very refreshing to listen to.
In addition to caring for the children, she runs the foundation, which employs 1,400 people. Another Wow. What they do all over the world is amazing, and I’m sure overseeing such a large enterprise creates a lot of pressure and stress. However, if I were her, my biggest stress would be caused by the responsibility of appropriately utilizing Warren Buffet’s fortune, most of which has been pledged to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. That’s a Wow, Wow, Wow.
I’m sorry, I just needed to get her story out there.
So now to the business idea. When Melinda and Bill got involved with various causes, she said they were surprised to find out that very little accurate data — or even the measurement of important issues — was available. She then went on to recite a list of the data that she receives regularly and uses to determine the impact of their philanthropic investment; one example is that she gets a monthly report on the status of polio outbreaks around the world (one of Bill’s passions is to eradicate polio from the earth).
As I was listening to her, I thought of many companies whose leaders make decisions without good data. Money is spent based on anecdotal information, personal opinions, what a couple of customers said, and a myriad of other subjective sources.
If Melinda can get data on polio from some remote African village, I’m sure companies can retrieve useful data. It’s not easy, but it is possible.
Are you collecting the key data and metrics that will enable you to give your clients/customers what they “really” want, and then providing it in a profitable way?