Lucas G. Irwin

Retail giant Wal-Mart recently announced that they would now be offering free shipping on all online orders, regardless of purchase amount.  When a superpower like Wal-Mart makes this type of move, others better be ready to follow in the near future.  Less than 24 hours before this announcement was made, I read a recent study that showed approximately 55% of online consumers have bailed out on their shopping cart once they saw that shipping would be added.  I couldn’t help but feel a huge shift was upon us. At this point I could have sat back and waited until all of my competitors started to offer free shipping and then follow suit, or I could take a huge step and be the first to do so; reaping some first-mover benefits.  Of course, I moved immediately and had completely shifted within 24 hours (the beauty of being a small business).

Far too often, businesses see an industry shift like this occur and either ignore it, think its a fad or possibly pray that it wont catch on.  Bad Move; get on board.

Developing a true positioning strategy is a combination of art, research and consumer psychology.  What is the best message? What is the ideal price? What is the best distribution and sales method?  These factors, in addition to countless others, all contribute to what will ultimately be the position your company chooses to take in the market.  Ultimately, these choices are going to determine whether or not your products dies, lingers or takes off and for whatever reason, many business owners completely avoid conducting any real research.

It seems to me as though most businesses simply make a positioning choice, as opposed to developing a real strategy.  The difference being that a strategy is based on hard evidence whereas a choice is based more on desired position, gut instinct and maybe a bit of prayer.  A positioning choice usually lands businesses in a large pool of similar competitors, selling similar products/services at similar prices.  Chances are, they will die a similar death.

Ok, so you research the industry until your eyes cross and Google begs you to let it rest; now what do you do with all the data?  What are you looking for?  The answer is simple… holes (creneaus).  You are trying to find a position that is not being occupied or is being occupied by competition that you can effectively move aside (not easy for small timers). There are countless different creneaus that can be occupied, ranging from obvious candidates like price and reliability all the way to corporate values and community involvement.  There is an opportunity to be a niche-category leader in the mind of the consumer on virtually any stance you choose to attack.  The key is finding the void, getting there first and delivering the message strong and consistent.

In short, it is better to be the company that the market percieves as the leader in something specific as opposed to being pretty good at everything but a leader in nothing.  Trying to take a “well-rounded” stance is usualy a very poor decision.

There is obviously a tremendous amount that could be written on the subject of positioning, but this is simply just to get you to think about how it applies to you and your business or company.  If you would like to look in to this a bit more, a great place to start is with a classic book: Positioning, The Battle for Your Mind. By Ries and Trout.

It seems as though those that are the most animated (anti & pro) in regards to Health Care have probably not even seen the bill themselves. It is scary that we live in a world where everyone is so easily spoon fed “their” opinion. A free nation is not simply being able to express “your” feelings. It only works if you research and develop your own stance. Don’t take what someone else is saying as truth, just because they are on the station you choose to watch every night, because they are they same religion as you or because you share the same political opinion on a separate and completely unrelated issue… that is true ignorance. When an issue presents itself, don’t ask how your political party feels about the issue before you ask how YOU feel about the issue.

So here you go….. from now on, please cite specific sections and line numbers when you make an argument and don’t ever use FOX or CNN as a source… they both have a very obvious slant and they are entertainment programs, not news. Practice both of these….. It will keep you from looking like a fool….. if it isn’t too late.

Enjoy: HR3590 – Health Care Bill

One of the most commonly boasted benefits of running your own business is being your own boss and not having anyone tell you what to do; I certainly agree.  However, this can also be a potentially dangerous part of running your own show.  For many, especially e-commerce and at home businesses owners, this means that there is nobody telling you what time to be at work, what time to go home, how short your lunch is or what you should be working on.  This also means that there is nobody telling you how to deal with a problem or tackle a new-to-you task.  For the wrong personality or the wrong individual, this is certain death.  Entrepreneurs must have incredible discipline, determination and intrinsic motivation.  Simply put, there is nobody there to do anything for you and you must force yourself to tackle the tasks that you wish you didn’t have to.

Take a step back and pretend that there was a position higher than yours.  What would that person tell you to do today?  What time would your imaginary boss tell you to start working?  Often times, entrepreneurs are involved in a business that is tied to their interests and have an aspect of the business that they actually enjoy.  Unfortunately, it is easy to spend far too much time on this portion of the business and virtually ignore a great deal of the smaller, but important tasks that actually keep business rolling.  Take a step back and analyze the allocation of your hours if you may be falling into this trap.

In short, occasionally pretend that you are an employee of yourself and determine if you are focusing the proper amount of time on the proper tasks.  If there is any question… there is not question.

At a quick glance, this would seem pretty obvious and taken as a general statement, it is likely true.  However, will the increase be proportionate?  A recent Journal article got me thinking and I don’t believe  that we will see the same employments rates at certain economic strength measures; especially in small to medium sized businesses.  Why?  There is nothing like an economic downturn to force a business owner into optimizing efficiency, learning to do more with much less and efficiently leaning out their given organization.  Now that many of these business owners are seeing slight increases in sales, they is a strong possibility that they are now realizing how unnecessary their previous staff numbers were.  Now pair that with a newly developed appreciation for saving and thrift and we are certain to see a much leaner business world.

Ill start with a quick BFM, Inc. history lesson….   We opened the doors of Brickhouse Fitness Miami, inc. in Feb of 2008; not exactly an ideal economic environment for opening a business that most wrongfully view as a luxury item.  However, with a great deal of struggle and challenges we survived while everyone around us vanished.  The end of 2009 was rough for the gym but great for Unbreakable Gear; which ultimately saved us (God bless e-commerce and global business).  However, this put us in a position where one branch of the business was sucking up the success of another.  We played with the idea of closing shop or selling, but decided to give it one last shot.  We needed to find a way that the gym would at a very minimum cover itself and not take up more than a few hours of our time per day (Unbreakable takes up a great deal of our time).  So I sat down, developed a program, a schedule, a marketing plan and a pricing strategy that would save the gym if an enrollment minimum could be met.  I needed this to happen by the end of March, 2010!

As I am sure you have guessed, today we passed that minimum!  The strategy has worked beautifully and the gym is no longer a burden.  As a matter of fact, the numbers are climbing nicely and the program has actually become profitable far ahead of schedule with no signs of slowing.  The gym now serves a very different role than it did when we launched 2 years ago, but its new role and projected growth open a number of financial doors for our brands, Unbreakable Gear  & (her)cules.

I have a problem with business “leaders” and managers who seem to focus all of their time on trying to beat their competition and one-upping their every move.  Now before you get your panties in a bunch, this is not the same as trying to be better than the competition.  The problem lies in the danger of becoming a reactive being or entity; continuously monitoring your closest competitors and re-directing your path as a result.  While there may be potential for marginal success in this type of management; I strongly doubt any company or business can truly maximize their own potential this way. 

The first problem I see is that you are now making decisions and allocating your resources based upon the strengths and strategic direction of another business. Bad Move!  First off, you are assuming that it is a good move; maybe their idea is going to end up in the toilet 6 months from now.  If your primary competitor starts offering product X Version 2.0; they may be doing so because of a special partnership they have with a manufacturer, access to a specific resource or possibly as an effort to try and save a discreetly failing company.  Either way, a knee-jerk reaction forcing you to jump on board is not the proper response. 

What is the proper response?  In most cases, it is to stick to the plan.  Hopefully those at the top have both long and short-term plans, budgeted allocation of resources and a strategy that they believe is going to optimize the strengths of THEIR specific company.  Stick to the plan!  When does sticking to the plan not work? Well, when your plan sucks.  Is the plan based on fact and reality or is it just an adult version of a holiday wish list?  I am guessing that competitive moves and announcements probably put your plan’s strength into perspective. If you put a great deal of time into determining your company direction and feel very confident in your decisions; there is very little the competition can do that will make you blink.  However, if your plan is just a bunch of garbage on paper; bring some extra shirts and pit stick  to work to account for the additional perspiration. 

Compete with yourself.  Aim to break your own records, push to meet benchmarks and constantly try to improve your own numbers.  This is just as true in business as it is in athletics.  These are the most accurate numbers in your life and the only ones you can be certain are true and can actually do something about.  Look at individuals like Buffett or companies like Apple, inc.; they are constantly looking to improve themselves with little to no reaction to their competitive environment.  It is Me v. Me and I v. I, day in and day out.  Yes, industries as whole will make major shifts from time to time and you will shift as well; but within those shifts it is just you.

Now eliminate the stress of over-examining the competition and go out and beat your own ass.

From now on you can find all of my training posts on the Unbreakable Athlete Blog.  This blog will now be dedicated to my business posts and other, non-training thoughts.

Click here for training blog

I had a high-carb day today and my body is absolutely destroying everything that I eat!  I cycle between a low, medium and high-carb day throughout the week and it looks like I may have to increase my numbers on all of the days until my body adjusts a bit; I don’t want to burn and drop too fast at this point.  I start 16 weeks out so that I can take a much more controlled and paced approach in hopes of maintaining as much muscle mass as possible.  At this point I can eat an 8oz sweet potato, 10oz of chicken and a whole mess of green beans and my stomach feels empty within 30 minutes.  This is a good thing, so long as I adjust and dont let it eat me away.

Weight: 240 pounds

Here we go!!!  I got up and hit up my morning cardio today at Tess Lobon’s Miami Strength and Fitness Club in the Falls area.  I am going to be doing my AM cardio there as opposed to my gym to eliminate any early morning distractions.  When I come to Brickhouse it is virtually impossible for me to walk in and start training without doing some kind of work or worrying about something; training at a different gym allows my to get in that AM cardio with a clear and focused mind.  I will however be training my quads at Brickhouse today; I really cant see myself training my quads anywhere else.

I am hoping to compete at about 200 pounds in May, which will put me at 7 pounds heavier that when I placed 2nd at the WNSO World Championships last year in Montreal.  I am a natrual athlete, so everything has to be absolutely perfect and on point; I have no room for error.  However, with every competition I learn a little bit more about my body and how I react to certain types of training and diets… I am really excited to see how the contest prep is going to work out for me.