I doubt you consciously think about design as you go through your day.

Reading Michael Pink’s book “Rainforest Strategy” I became aware how important design is to one’s business. Michael states, “We have a design, and design speaks of purpose…”

Imagine with me, as you look at the things that are currently around you. Everything is made of the same parts: cells, molecules, and atoms. The building materials for the trees and plants you see in the forest, as well as everything in your current environment are all the same. The only difference is how each is designed, arranged, or structured. As Pink states, “The value of everything in nature is defined not by what it is made of, but by how its parts are arranged – again, its formation or design.”

Design is the combination of function or utility and significance.  Its function is enhanced by significance. 

Take coffee for example.  You pour hot water over ground coffee beans.  Not hard or complicated and relatively inexpensive to make.  Millions of people go to Starbucks and pay top dollar to let them make their coffee.   Why Starbucks over McDonalds? 

They both serve coffee.  Starbucks serves up ambience, experience, story and passion making it emotionally compelling. Starbucks has designed the entire purchase experience to be memorable, to attract certain types of people.  It’s the same for McDonalds. They designed the eating experience for primarily families with small children, to be quick, relatively inexpensive and with clean surroundings. For each their design is different, however their individual success and profit as well as their value is created by their individualized design. Let me repeat that: value, from the customer’s perspective, is created by design, which leads to profit.

Therefore, at all levels of your business, design should be a focus to deeply connect with the customer experience.  Does the design of your business, the physical experience, the products and services create the right emotional message about your business and answer the question, “Do You Matter?”

In the very technological, rapid paced world we find ourselves in today, with a focus on convenience, efficiencies, and return on investment, it is easy to miss the aesthetic value of design. The human psyche needs and responds to beauty, harmony and upliftment and it is easy to overlook these more right-brained elements when considering the design of your business, for you and your employees as well as your customers. One of the keys to success today, in this world of abundance we have in the US, is that products and services must not only provide utility or function but it must also provide significance or meaning.    

Is it important to carefully consider each aspect of your business’s perception? You bet it is. This involves the design of your product, the structure of your business, the design of your business location, facility, the perception of your product or service, the design of your website and so much more.  Spending time carefully thinking all of this through will determine your ultimate success.

How you can grow your business by leaps and bounds using unconventional ideas is how my business is designed to help you.

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The Lone Ranger was a fictional character made famous by popular radio and television shows who exemplified upstanding character and righteous purpose as well as noble effort in the cause of fighting injustice and rescuing people in their distress. The Lone Ranger, a masked man of unknown identity to most of the people he met, rode throughout the American West with his Indian companion, Tonto, to right injustices and help the downtrodden. The Lone Ranger wore a white cowboy hat, rode his faithful horse, Silver, and lived a life that adhered to his own creed. The creed was a guide for the Lone Ranger’s young fans on how to live a life of goodness, fairness and decency.

In 2009 I created The Loan-A-Ranger, due to the global financial crisis, not rescue people, as did the Lone Ranger, but empower and help business owners in their quest for the capital they needed. A creed for the Loan-A-Ranger was written to promote goodness, fairness and understanding between business owners and lenders.

Take every step you can to receive a ” YES” on your loan request …contact the Loan-A-Ranger.

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I believe business first and foremost is relational.  Think or imagine what you do daily – everything in business touches a person, a relationship.  

There is a silent thief running free and loose in many businesses today.  He doesn’t make much noise – but sure steals a lot from you.  All that is needed to help perpetuate this silent thief is to do nothing.  Who is this silent thief?  Neglect!  Neglect of important relationships in your business – employees and customers primarily.  What you don’t take care of, you may very well lose. Neglect is very damaging in your important relationships. Your business may be like a spinning gerbil wheel, but the thief doesn’t care. The longer you let relationships go, the harder it’s going to be to fix.

Let me ask you a question, “What’s important to you about Valentine’s Day? I ask that question at times when I speak and usually the majority of the responses I get are “romance.”  What is important about romance to you? Of course romance means different things to different people but to some of the groups I speak to it means: attention, time spent being fully present, respect, thoughtfulness, interest, listening with the intent to hear, understanding, significance, acceptance and love.

Make an emotional investment by romancing each and every employee, customer, prospect, supplier, person who calls or drops into your location, etc. Treat and have each employee treat every person they speak to or see as if it were Valentine’s Day each day and the other person was the most important person in their life. The fruit of a Valentine’s Day mindset daily in business is: heightened productivity, greater efficiency, increased sales, greater understanding, improved morale, less stress, less absenteeism, less sickness, more joy and cooperation in the workplace. Your business will create greater value causing sales to soar.

Are there times in business where you feel you and others you are communicating with are speaking different dialects?   I believe the universal dialect is ‘LOVE’.  Everyone is, regardless of their language, able to understand love.  Go and speak to them in this dialect. 

Put in a different context, many problems experienced in business today, I believe, are the result of an orphan spirit in the workplace as well as the lack of a true godly, supernatural fathering spirit. Where the orphan spirit exists and the fathering spirit is absent relationships disintegrate.

This fathering spirit is characterized by unconditional love, exhibited by our Heavenly Father Himself, as He gave freely His son, Jesus, to redeem and accept fully mankind.  This highly desired spirit needed and wanted in the workplace is contrasted by what is mostly seen and exhibited today – a heart that is self centered, self-absorbed, self-serving and puts itself above all others. The fatherless spirit exists when business owners, executives, supervisors and managers “abandon” those under their charge in the workplace by focusing and centering themselves on their own needs and desires at the expense of others.

The lack of a true, godly supernatural fathering spirit promotes the orphan spirit in the workplace. Several characteristics of the orphan spirit usually witnessed in the workplace are:

• Obsession with self
• Inaccurate perception of the value of both themselves and others
• Compulsive drive to succeed at all costs
• Insecurity accompanied by the need to control others
• Inability to handle rejection properly, feeling they are most always rejected by others and they will be rejected by others and they deserve to be rejected
• Critical, judgmental spirit
• Uncontrollable anger  

Several root words describing the fathering spirit are: a nourisher, protector, upholder, comforter, exhorter, one called to another’s side, aid, and advocate.

Question: what is the most valuable asset in each business?

 It is my opinion that for many years the most valuable asset in any organization – the employees – have been reappraised downward or devalued by fatherless owners, executive management, supervisors and managers. I believe God is telling us that one of the ways to improve the economy and individual businesses is to unleash the “fathering spirit” in each business as well as to romance all relationships in the business. This is truly the stimulus package each individual, business and the economy needs.   

business, business relationships, recession, relationships, stimulus package, Valentine's Day

As a business owner you may be in a pickle at this moment. Your lender may not be in the position to provide you with the capital or business loan you need to fuel your business, acquire that physical asset you need or the short term working capital loan to take advantage of that special opportunity.  Another side to the business loan question is your business might not be in the position to qualify for a loan or possibly a renewal based on terms and conditions you desire.

In my role as a business coach I visit with many unhappy business owners. They are not receiving, in general, the help from their lenders they feel they should be receiving. Most really don’t know what to do or where to turn. 

As a former commercial lender and now a coach, I use my past experience to help frustrated business owners build or restore the bridge to a satisfactory relationship with their lender. Much of my coaching consists in helping the business owner understand what the lender is going through, thinking and needing from them at this point. This type of coaching seems at times harsh and counterproductive to the frustrated business owner.

My objective is to help the business owner become an ally or asset to the loan officer and lending institution.  Most banks and lending officers are frustrated and don’t know what to do with all the negative issues they have to deal with.  Why not be part of the solution rather than part of the problem?

According to a survey I heard recently based on information from the bank regulatory agencies, the following are the major issues banks are being cited for by these regulatory agencies which places the bank on the hot seat:

• Insufficient Board governance
• Insufficient Treasury management
• Compliance with regulations
• Credit quality

 You may not be able to help your bank with the first two points.  But here are several things you can do, if you currently have a loan relationship, to gain favor in eyes of your lender and possibly help repair and restore the bridge to a more satisfying, productive relationship:

• Call your lender and ask if you have any outstanding loan exceptions or credit quality issues with them.
• React quickly by supplying or correcting any outstanding loan exceptions you have.
• Seek to understand their position first, not have them understand your possible excuses.
• Don’t fight them or their paper work requests and needs.  Your goal is to have the bank erase your name off any delinquent list they have whether it is a compliance issue or credit quality issue. 
• If your loan is substandard according to the bank regarding credit quality, give the bank whatever you can provide in writing to help them understand your position and what you are doing to correct your situation.
• Take initiative monthly with at least a phone call to offer help to resolve any situation regarding your loan and to keep them abreast of what is happening in your business.
• If you don’t know what to do, get professional help, like from me.

Taking proactive steps to resolve any issues your lender has with you will go a long way to build a better relationship with the lender in the future.  The goal is to help solve their problems by becoming less of a problem to them.

business loan, business loans, business owners, lending, romance the loan

Since mid 2008 a dramatic shift has occurred in the approval process of business lending; meaning you cannot approach lenders in the same way you have done in the past. As a former business lender, and now a coach/consultant to business owners to help build a bridge between themselves and their lenders, I know business owners can have success with lenders today.    

Business is primarily about relationships. Andrew Carnegie started in poverty and built one of the world’s greatest business empires in steel. Someone asked him what he believed about the future of his businesses. He said, “You can take from me all my plants. You can take from me all my money. You can take from me all my equipment. But if you leave me my men, I will build it all again.” Carnegie’s genius was that he knew an organization is not finances or techniques or equipment. It is people.

In general, to have a stronger, more efficient and productive business, your business relationships must become stronger. Little is accomplished in business without people.  People are all created with legitimate emotional needs (significance, authority, honor, peace of mind, security, love and acceptance, the need to be understood) that, if not met, will suffer. Since you spend at least 70% of your waking hours involved with your work or business, would you agree many of your emotional needs should be met in and through your work experiences?

It may be time to build a new relationship with your lender!

 If you want the lender to pay more attention to you, your focus must primarily be on the relationship (meeting their emotional needs), and secondarily on your wants and needs. How do you convey this?  It starts with words you use in talking with the lender. Are you talking about them or you?  If you want the lender to value you, find out about the lender and show genuine interest in getting to know him/her. This may be hard to do at first.  When you first show the lender honor and respect, this can set the tone for receptivity to hear about you, your business and your needs (in that order).

business loan, business loans, business owners, lending, romance the loan

A dramatic shift has occured in the approval process of business lending; meaning a business owner cannot approach lenders in the same way they have in the past.  There is a new combination to the loan vault!  How do business owners get the new combination to the loan vault?   Einstein said, “The significant problems we face cannot be resolved at the level of thinking that created them.”  First, changes must be made.

Second, business is relational.  Nothing happens without first a contact or a connection with a person and then, hopefully, a relationship develops.  My advice to busines owners is to look at the process of obtaining a loan like developing a highly favored relationship, a romantic relationship.  Recall the ways and means you courted and romanced your spouse and dust off those skills as well as change your mindset about your relationship with your lender(s).

I will be presenting some of my principles on how business owners can better develop and maintain their relationship with lenders from my book, “Romancing the Loan” today on Blog Talk radio at  6:00, PM, ET, www.blogtalkradio.com/bdsinstitute.  The interview will be archived in case one cannot make it to the live broadcast.

business loans, business owners, lending, romance the loan