Change Management

I was unable to write and update my blog for a few days since I have asked my partner to redesign and customize my blog. We have agreed that my blog should be easy for the viewers to use and view the articles I have written and at the same time, be personalized to reflect my own identity. She is still in the process of redesigning my blog.

There also comes a point in every company where we need to change and shake-up things. Most employees want the status quo. Unfortunately, no one thrives by being in the same environment for so long. Major changes have to be made so that companies will prosper and reach higher levels.

Life on earth wouldn't be possible if there were no major cataclysmic changes that happened. The earth would be all rocks and gases if no meteorites hit our planet. Recent studies say that the water in our planet may have come from meteors and comets.

Why and when do we need to shake-up things? Is it really even important?

image from http://www.genetologisch-onderzoek.nl/

When you are working, you want to have a routine. Routine helps you in making schedules and meeting deadlines. Unfortunately, routine can also hinder your growth. When you get comfortable with the routine, you don't look for ways to do your job more creatively. You get stuck and stumped when certain issues arrive that you haven't handled before.

Encountering change and being placed in a new environment can help you see clearly and offers you more perspectives. You begin to see your paradigm shift and you begin to solve problems more creatively. When change happens, we get uncomfortable at first but we adjust. During the adjustment phase, we are open to ideas that will help us address our concerns more creatively.

When we stay and stick to the routine for so long, we begin to stagnate. We get bored and we often find ourselves on automatic-pilot. Our performance doesn't go up but may eventually go down - a plateauing of sorts. This is what we want to avoid.

A good indicator of how we can avoid this trap is by continually challenging ourselves and our company. In GreenRides, we have been so used to cleaning cars that my partner and I will be expanding our services soon enough. This will force our employees to learn more and get out of their comfort zones. But before you implement changes here are some of the things you must consider:

1. Have you reached your peak performance? You must ensure that you have learned everything you must before you can move on to higher levels. You must be able to master walking before you can start running. When you jump or skip levels, you are bound to fail and fall hard. Make sure that you learn master one task before you advance to another task.
2. Learn new things but build on present knowledge. When you want to improve things, you must make that you build on what you currently know. There is no use in learning calculus if you don't know how to add and subtract first. The knowledge that you currently poses will be used to move to a higher level. This is why I ask you to learn to master and be expert first before you move on.
3. Accept other ideas. There are people who have done the same things as you are doing. Some may have failed miserably and others have succeeded quite well. Learn from them. Learn why they failed and understand why they succeeded. Use this to your advantage. There is no use making the same twice.

Will You Be My Partner?

People think that one of the main issues with entrepreneurs is that they love to do things on their own. They believe that these mottoes apply to entrepreneurs:

• If you want something done right, you do it yourself, and
• Too many cooks spoil the broth

 This is why our idea of an entrepreneur is someone who has graying or thinning hair, always stressed out and always on the go. To some extent that is true. Entrepreneurs love to take charge. Entrepreneurs always point the direction where they want the company to go. They create the vision.

However, we seldom see that entrepreneurs also have partners whom they can rely on and trust. Entrepreneurs know their weaknesses and their limitations. They seek people who can back them up. They seek individuals who can provide the expertise that they don't have.

How do they do this? An entrepreneur's mind works differently. In my previous blog, I mentioned that entrepreneurs are people or persons who add value to something. It is natural for them to seek out people who can strengthen them and provide them the needed lift to get to their vision.

Thanks to http://www.vibrationalenergyhealingcenter.com/

You can see this at work in newly built corporations and partnerships. Two or more people get together, form a company and achieve its goals collectively. One is handling sales, another handles marketing, one person handling finance and so on and so forth. There are no two partners doing the same thing, otherwise chaos would ensue. There will be a clash of ideas and egos.

In GreenRides, my partner and I have agreed to take on certain roles. She is primarily handling the admin and finance side and I am handling business development and product expansion. Although we both handle marketing, we have agreed to debate, consult and support one another. There may be shouting matches at times regarding some ideas we want to try and implement, in the end, we always know and have agreed that we just want the company to expand and grow.

For those things that we don't know anything about, we have agreed that it would be best to outsource certain tasks. Once we decided to do this, we can focus on what we are good at.

For those who want to venture on their own, I suggest you seek a partner that will complement and complete your skills. If you decide to make on your own, the probability of failure is much larger. Even Donald Trump had some help in constructing his famous buildings!

Let Us All Have A Prosperous New Year

Thanks to www.thedesignmag.com

In a few days, we will be celebrating the new year. During the same time last year, we were planning how we will go about promoting and marketing GreenRides. We were thinking if there was a market. We were writing down possible business models that we would have.

Time flies so fast. We currently have four shops; two are company-owned and the other two franchised. There are a lot of challenges. There were also triumphs. We were able to get a lot of good people. We also let go of a few bad eggs. We are glad we made so many clients happy.

But we should not rest on our laurels. We need to strive for continuous improvement. We need to maintain our leadership position. As such, here are some of the New Year's resolution that I have written down (this list is my own, my partners have their own resolutions.):


1. Strive for excellent customer service. During our company general assemblies we always say that we want our customers to leave with a smile on their faces. We know that our company offers premium services, as such, we want our customers to feel that they are special. We want them to feel good after they have gotten their GreenRides service.


2. Create more value-added services that will benefit the employees, shareholders and franchisees. We are became the pioneer in the waterless car wash and wax in the Philippines. People see us as somewhat of an authority. We want to change that. We want them to perceive that we are THE AUTHORITY when it comes to waterless car cleaning. We are and will be constantly on the look-out for value-added services that we can offer our customers.


3. Expand and bring the service to more people. As more and more people look for our service, we are looking for more ways of bringing the service closer to them. We are going to strengthen our brand and expand our presence through continuous partnerships with like minded-people and organizations.

4. Provide assistance to entrepreneurs who are actively seeking new opportunities in green technology. We are at the tipping of climate change. We have seen and personally experienced the effects of global warming. Because of this, we are looking to work hand in hand with entrepreneurs, students and other businesses who are doing something to mitigate the effects of climate change or even improve the environment.

What are your New Year's Resolutions?

PS.
I will continue writing about my experiences and the lessons I have learned after all the holiday celebrations. Thank you very much for following my blog. If you have any suggestions or questions you want me to answer, please feel free to contact me anytime.

Family Business or Family in Business

Have you heard the saying 'you should never go into business with your family?' I learned that it is true. And I learned it the hard way.

Getting into a business is one of the hardest and difficult things an individual can do. A lot of capital is used to ensure that the business is running smoothly. Sleep time is replaced by time thinking on how to develop systems and procedures. Leisure is spent on writing PR campaigns and partnership proposals. Quality time with people you car about is spent pitching your ideas.

Entrepreneurs are a different breed. It takes a lot of effort, courage, sacrifice and sometimes sanity - or the lack of it, to get a start-up business successful. A good support system and a healthy dose of craziness is a must.

The author with one of the franchisees of NoWet Australia.

When we started GreenRides, my family lent me their savings to be able to go to Australia to train and get the exclusive distributorship of the NoWet Waterless Car Clean products and system. I truly appreciate what they did.

Once I came back, I started working on the company. We developed systems, procedures and processes to ensure that GreenRides will be a big company. We wanted to expand to different areas in the Philippines and be a well-known national company in the next two years. We must make sure that every thing we did is properly documented and followed by us, by our car clean technicians and our future partners or franchisees.

The issue started when my dad wanted to give a branch to my sister. He wanted my sister to have her business, too. My dad wanted to help me expand my business by letting my sister have her own branch. It seemed a good idea at first, until they wanted to operate independently from the main company - which is headed by me.

These were some of the issues that came up:

1. Refusal to follow the pricing scheme we had implemented. They chose to have their own pricing system.
2. Lack of proper training in the car cleaning system and use of proper documents.
3. Created their own marketing materials without proper consultation from the head office.
4. Refusal to take charge of the branch. 

Things came to a head when my sister asked me to talk to the car clean technicians regarding the proper techniques on how to clean a car. I told her she must take charge and teach the people under her. That was when she cried and told me that she didn't want to do the business any more.

My dad confronted me on that day. And until now, he has refused to talk to me.

These are the hard lessons that I've learned:

1. Be clear on what you want your business to be. We wanted to grow and make GreenRides a national company. One must be develop systems, procedures and processes that will streamline operations and keep the level of customer service at a high quality if one wants to be a large company.

2. Be clear on what you want your family's involvement will be. When we agreed to let them have a branch, there was a clear discussion that the directives and systems of the head office must be followed. Local store marketing or LSM can be initiated by the branch or franchisees with the prior approval of the head office. Unfortunately, this was not followed.

3. Be open to constructive criticism. If there are ways to improve the delivery of the service, listen to them. Listen to customer feedback and listen to the franchisee. But if the franchisee or the branch owner becomes smarter and implements some things which are not approved by the head office, it is time to put your foot down.

A print screen from one of our promotions.

4. Lastly, let the franchisee manage and grow his store. The role of the head office is to make sure that there are customers going to the branches. This is done through different marketing efforts. The head office is also there to make sure that every one follows the protocols and systems set forth by the company; and also to grow the business by introducing new services or products.

A franchisees role is to make sure that 'his' business grows through his own marketing efforts and by constantly adhering to the standards and policies set-up by the company. It is not the franchisees' role to supersede the company.

Being in business with my family is a painful lesson for me. Yet, I appreciate all the things I've learned from this experience. GreenRides is still a growing company and I thank the people who continue to be our loyal customers and believe in our services.

Starting A Green Venture

Whenever I am interviewed, I am inevitably asked this question... How did you choose your business?

It is understandable since a lot of Filipinos would want to put up their own business but don't know where to get into. Sometimes, they just go into franchising a food cart because someone they know is in it. Or they join multi-level marketing companies because of the so-called training and support group.


However, like most people who want to go into business without any passion or technical knowledge, they end up confused and bitter. Quite a handful have even lost their savings because of it.


So why or how did I come up with this business?


I must give credit where credit is due. I was talking to my partner about the possibility of putting up a car wash business that will cater to condominium tenants and village residents. Of course the first hurdle that we thought of was where to get the water needed to clean the cars and how will we transport it.


From that statement alone, you can see that there is a problem that presents itself with a profitable opportunity. If you must know, condominium rules and regulations strongly discourage the washing of cars inside the parking premises because it dirties the area and might become a breeding ground for mosquitoes.


Furthermore, village residents (especially in exclusive villages) need to go out to have their cars washed while they are waiting in an open area, normally beside smoke-filled roads and water being sprayed a few feet away from them. This is the reason why the customers of car washes are guys. The fairer sex would normally go to mobile car washes found inside malls.

Demo with Mr. Joey Lina

She was the one who searched for this new concept in the Internet and found a very viable business opportunity from NoWet Waterless Car Clean in Australia.


Going back, how did I choose my business? Because we, my partner and I, can see that there is a need for it. As for the demand? Well, that will be the subject of my future blogs. But it will be a very practical and real world lesson for budding entrepreneurs and management students.


The first thing to ask yourself when thinking of putting up a new venture, who will be your target market? Or is there a need for your product or service?


In our case, yes we found out that there is a need. And we are happy to note that our venture is slowly being recognized by different organizations. We have been featured in GMA7's Unang Hirit and ANC's Green Living. In the next few days, Manila Bulletin will come out with a magazine wherein there will be a write-up about our company. Solar Sports has also scheduled a taping in our first shop. K4S295AJUMEA


Let me ask you a question; what business do you want to get into? And is there a need for your product or service?