Are you being an entrepreneur or a post turtle?

Lessons learned during a pandemic

Since we were last together for an in-person Global Pet Expo, a lot has changed. If you are like the majority of the industry your business has been booming. The two biggest challenges faced have been finding employees (forget about finding good employees – just finding any employees) and the availability of product.

You are not alone; other industries that are experiencing this boom include bicycles, sewing machines and fabrics, motorcycles, boats and watercraft, liquor stores, garden centers and landscaping businesses.

Many people think that when sales are booming that everything is great. They think that if sales are great that profits must follow likewise. If sales are great, they must be a sign of an owner doing an exceptional job of operating their business
If only all of that were true.

The reality is that when sales are booming we have a greater concern for not only the success but for the continuance of the business. When we are concentrating on having staff and merchandise, owners very frequently fail to pay close attention to the details of controlling the expenses.

With booming sales, a business usually has a bigger challenge with managing cashflow. Producing more sales means the inventory has to first be there on hand; so does the necessary staff to produce the sales. Growth in a business requires the cash to be there in advance of the growth. Otherwise, a business can easily fail because they do not have the cash on hand to sustain the growth. This growth can be a monster to control.

Other expenses also increase; not only in dollar amount but frequently they increase as a percentage of revenue which leads to an imbalance on the financial statement and less profit as a percentage of revenue.

That is the negative side of the last 24 months as compared to how many businesses in the industry operated before the pandemic.

There is another concern we can uniquely be a great opportunity for our businesses. There cannot be a single person whose life has not been impacted by the pandemic. While not disassociating ourselves from what has been a giant medical tragedy, because lives have been affected there is an opportunity for change.

There are more people doing business with you whether you are a service business, an online business or a brick and mortar business; more calls for service, and more visits to your website or business. What are you doing to take advantage of this?
People are not getting out as much as they used to. There are many people who are now satisfied to do their grocery shopping online instead of going to the store. All of the delivery services, USPS, FedEx and UPS, are experiencing delays because of the increase in home delivery.

What are you doing to make it easier for people to do business with you? Are you still only accepting Visa, MasterCard and Discover? Can your customer use Apple pay or any of the other forms of payment? Any business can offer curbside pickup, but what are you doing differently when customers are not coming into your store to see your many product offerings?

Are you selling the same items you were selling two years ago? Are there product categories that should be expanded? What about items you did not carry because the grocery store had them and perhaps you can now capture that business?
Your customer wants assistance. Your customer wants convenience. While restaurants like Outback, Applebees and others are becoming more and more impersonal by telling customers to use the QR code to see a menu instead of giving customer service, what are you doing to show an increased interest in your customers?

With self-checkout increasing, what about the person at your register? Cold and impersonal? Not making conversation with the customer? Not making any suggestions to your customers? Not giving them something to look at to tell about what you have added to your offerings?

What other products and services could you add, along with increased customer service, could you offer to give your customer the personal attention they deserve?
We see too many businesses that are resting on their laurels. We see too many businesses that think they are responsible for the growth that has occurred in their business which is just not true. They are just riding along with what the pandemic has added to their business. We see too many businesses that are thrilled with increased sales and profits without realizing that as a percentage of sales their profits have decreased.

And we see businesses that have greatly changed the whole of their business so that they are all the more important to their customers by expanding their offerings of products and services.

The big plus of the pandemic is that people are used to businesses experimenting with changes to the business. And customers have learned by way of the many changes in their lives that businesses are continually making changes because of the shifts caused by the pandemic.

Our bottom line question is to ask if you are trying to be the same business you were two years ago. Or are you paying close attention to your financials and the opportunities to change your business for increased sales and profits? Sales and profits that you created as compared to those created by the pandemic for you.
Hence the title of this article; Are you being an entrepreneur or a post turtle?

Never heard of a post turtle? It is an old story that while frequently told about an elected official that the storyteller does not like, it is appropriate to business.
When you drive down a country road you are passing many fence posts. And suddenly on a fence post you see a turtle balanced on top. That is a post turtle.
We all know the turtle did not get up there on top of the post by himself. The turtle does not belong there on top of the post. You wonder who put him there.

The turtle cannot get anything done while he's up there on top of the post. And you just want to help the poor turtle down so he can go about his usual routine. That is a post turtle.

We need entrepreneurs to emerge. The opportunities are many.

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This article is copyrighted by Tom Shay and Profits Plus Solutions, who can be reached at: PO Box 128, Dardanelle, AR. 72834. Phone 727-823-7205. It may be printed for an individual to read, but not duplicated or distributed without expressed written consent of the copyright owner.