5 Critical Parts to a successful Operations 'STRATEGY'

Do you find yourself getting the same questions or complaints from your customers or NEW employees?

Do you have more work than you can handle? Do you have customers you can't service properly?

#STOP; don't read anymore: SUBCONTRACT all of the following tasks and subsequent research out to a Business STRATEGIST because it's their passion and they love spending their own TIME indulging themselves in this type of work for your benefit. It's amazing magical stuff and until you've studied business as intensively as they have, you're simply only going to be training like a laborer walking onto a construction site on his first day and being told to sweep the floor; they thought they were going to be laying out the rafters and running the framing guns and worm drive skill saws etc, right? NO! Life is not a free online training seminar and we must work for our working CAPITAL and work for the respect we get from our colleagues, associates and even our competitors.

You can avoid spending the next 15-30 minutes reading and understanding what I explain below, or you can start with sending an email to the following three guys below as your NEW favorite consultants, and they're all #WALLstreet guys and they're passionate about TIME and they love to just fn #GETitDONE:

1. NICHOLAS CORRIANO (your NEW CMO consultant ): Probably one of my favorite dudes in the world and number one choice for many reasons, who has experience on NYSE and more. MR. CORRIANO helps you first by compiling a well organized BUSINESS PLAN ($10k) across the three traditional disciplines of business by installing three mootherphoochers immediately: CMO, COO, & CFO IN THAT ORDER with one single phone call to this guy in your number 2 position in your business, and I explain why in another article on marketing and BRAND strategy. Most Business plans are written by people who've never worked with the ELITE and have no clue what a real business plan is supposed to achieve; but in BUSINESS, it's all about relative VALUE and the subsequent action STRATEGY created as a result. His work has obtained Financing and the corresponding TEAM members which help take businesses past that Beta stage of funding and through to ALPHA and more and even IPO (look it up). If you've never heard of the term IPO, go wait tables and study the stock market and options trading, you fn KOOK, and buy a ticket to BALI and go learn how to surf, or eat rice and beans for ten years while stocking the shelves at STOP&SHOP while we all laugh at you....
2. NASH FABREGAS (your NEW CFO consultant): currently working on #WALLstreet at 40 WALL street in the #TRUMP building. He's not a pretender and he's a lot of fun to talk to not just because of his knowledge but because of his interests outside of the CAPITAL MARKETS.
3. ALAN POLO (your NEW COO consultant): with a BACHELOR degree in OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT, he'll install all those critical components every business needs to finally help you discover that exponential growth is proportional to what YOU actually get done and who you hire and who your clients are depend on that specific component of your larger business strategy, which right now is probably less than nothing.

Still not convinced to contact one of these three guys? No problem, i'm happy to see you waste your own TIME learning something you should have learned before starting your own business, but no one ever wanted to show you or teach you for free. Brother; it's all here free, but it's just the words: the action strategy is all going to come down to you! Are you ready? You don't have to #GetREADY if you're #AlreadyREADY.

You've been in business successfully for more than 2 years and remained profitable with perhaps little to no real growth. Congratulations: you don't have a marketing problem, but instead what you have is an operations challenge! Operations challenges can be broken down into 10 categories, which i'll get into further down in the body of this article.

Be excited! Most business challenges can be reduced to fall into one of two categories: Marketing or OPERATIONS. If you don't have enough work, you typically have a marketing problem. While if you can't support the work you have, you have an operations challenge. If you don't have a marketing problem and you bring in plenty of work, then you can demonstrate revolving reliable income and this is the foundation for getting financing. It is precisely at this point where you can use outside financing or put other peoples money at risk to grow your business. Putting this financing to work inside an operations strategy will help improve the overall quality of your operations and ultimately improve the value of your business.

Now that you've found me, you will no longer have a finance problem, but instead what you have is an operations challenge. With a Bachelor or Science in Mechanical Engineering, i'm trained to take an analytical problem solving approach to every set of circumstances and troubleshoot the challenge one step at a TIME. I can show you how to convert on any of these types of problems listed below, or really... simple challenges! You can't get a return on an investment you don't make. The first step is deciding to make an INVESTMENT. Once you're committed to making that INVESTMENT in your business, the question is where to invest. If you want to grow your business quickly, hire me along with my team of investors at PMF, and before you know it, within 3 months or less: you'll be ringing in the NEW year or enjoying your summer on a beach telling your NEW friends that you don't have business problems. This means you've joined a whole NEW group of companies who don't experience CAPITAL problems. Again; congratulations! where will you be taking your next vacation? I like FIJI, Bali, Sri Lanka, and ITALY; and hope to visit Bangladesh for my NEW jeans project soon; along with Brazil, and Tahiti!

Do you have challenges in aggregate planning in Inventory, Personnel, product quality, Customer satisfaction, Production rates, production Lead times, MRP (Material Requirements Planning) or 'demand', ERP (Enterprise Resource planning) or 'capacity', or other OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT challenges? My suspicion is that it's because you haven't taken the TIME to really clearly summarize your OPERATIONS so that other people can be on the same page rather than just you. The good news is that most 1-5 person businesses are just like you, and operated by someone who is simply missing a few pieces in basic operations management. If you're profitable, and you've been in business for more than 2 years, chances are you just need investors and a desire to take your company to the next level. The other part of this is that there are consultants, like myself, who make this kind of stuff their career. I'm passionate about OPERATIONS improvements and helping people just like you.

If you're the only person that knows everything in your business, it's hard for anyone else to perform at your level, and the only way to change that is to communicate that information verbally or through documentation. I'm passionate about food and as part of that passion, I took a summer off to go work in a 5 star restaurant (summer house on nantucket), and had the privilege of working with CHEF BRENDAN, a very professional chef who was probably one of the best i've ever worked with when it comes to food and kitchen/restaurant management. His work is dialed! I've never seen him yell at anyone. His processes and all his recipes are documented. If the salad section needs hummus, he tells someone in the back: "hummus; I need hummus, ASAP - 2 pints", and everything he could ever call for is in a binder, and the processes are clear enough for a 5 year old to follow. I don't think he'd ever run out of anything, because he's that organized. Lobster roll, you name it; it's documented. BRENDAN is a superior CHEF. That dude knows about Fish, Bread, baking, and anything you want to know about when it comes to food, and was using terms i'd never heard of to talk about how the bread was not up to par that he was subcontracting, because the company didn't understand rise TIME profile.

i'm going to discuss the 10 sections to a successful OPERATIONS plan with all of these included as common challenges, but the answer to the single governing question is Documentation; because as any business owner or CEO will agree: it's hard to leverage TIME you don't have if you're always repeating yourself to the next guy walking through your door who just wants a 9-5 job and gives you traffic as his excuse for being late, and family as his excuse for deficiencies in their productivity or the quality of their listening skills. Put it on Paper! really it's just improving your communication, which is a major key to a business' success. put it on paper. You might say it's difficult to put certain things on paper. Do your best! That also can become part of your contract with your customers and your employees. This also helps you have the inner beginnings of a business plan that can be sold as well as the beginnings of a marketing plan. Do you use certain equipment or tools you prefer for very specific reasons? put it on paper. do you have a very specific tolerance for a certain process? put it on paper. Most companies that have operations challenges don't put things on paper for their employees and that is why they have these challenges repeatedly more than just 3 times. Bottom line point is this: they're stupid QUOONT american standard kook fn douche, pussy-A$$, BABY BITCH motherfucking losers!

Whether you're having problems with:

1. Management quality (your first group of personnel should include a CFO with attention to RISK mitigation and Legal questions, along with a CMO, and finally a COO)
2. Human Resources ( should be included in your Management section)
3. Layout and efficient process flow design (How you do what you do)
4. Process strategy (carefully evaluate failure points and opportunities for improvement)
5. Product/service design
6. Location strategy
7. Supply chain management
8. Inventory
9. Scheduling
10. Maintenance

You officially have an operations challenge and it's TIME for an OPERATIONS PLAN to be compiled in an official Document, which is only one of three sections of a real business plan; the other being a MARKETING plan and a FINANCIAL plan, which I discuss in other articles. If you haven't noticed, I could talk all day on these subjects because of how passionate I am about this type of stuff. There's a lot that goes into each of these three primary sections of any business plan, and most companies don't take the TIME to really evaluate each of these sections in their business, never mind evaluate their business plan and amend it or update it. When asked what percentage of his TIME one business owner spends on his marketing in his business, he replied, "none". I informed him, "right there, i'm confident that I could at least double your gross revenue". I'm confident that if you've got one sale and you're not doing marketing, then there is at least one customer who would buy from you instead of your competition if you gave them a good reason, or if they even knew about you.

Chances are, you're experiencing a challenge because you haven't started evaluating the challenge by documenting it, and subsequently analyzing it from a critical thinking perspective.

I've worked for Major fortune 500 companies such as GE AIRCRAFT ENGINES, WYMAN GORDON, and Several companies in medical and defense, as an engineer and quality control guy. Why is that important when its comes to OPERATIONS and my OPERATIONS experience and knowledge? I'm familiar with terms like LEAN, Six sigma, Iso-9001, and so much more in OPERATIONS. It's important because these are companies that make it their business to not just make money, but build a strong reputation for Quality, consistency and reliability. Quality is something i'm passionate about, but STRICTLY when it is PRACTICAL. It doesn't make sense to do many things in business just because the process is more refined. If it doesn't really add value, then it's not a valid process. If you CAN skip a process or dial down a process and not lose value in the big picture, then it doesn't make sense to keep the process at that current state. If a pair of jeans doesn't fit, then there is something wrong with the process, and it really is that simple. Where is the process failing? This is RCFMA, or Root cause Failure Mode Analysis.

One of the biggest most important lessons i've learned is that quality is what sells products and services. If the quality is there, the demand will be there and it will come down to Terms and conditions in the contract or BILL of SALE, and your marketing plan won't have to be very complicated and extensive. Most companies don't invest in an OPERATIONS PLAN or STRATEGY. They just say things like, "You just can't find good help these days", "No one speaks english", "people don't listen", "people can't follow simple instructions" and so many other excuses that executives and business owners alike try to use. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the root CAUSE, and the resulting failure. "I don't have the TIME or money to train people", "I want them already skilled when I hire them", yet you're not paying them anything and then you lose them as employees and you blame them and their skill set, rather than your deficient OPERATIONS PLAN. Let me be the first to inform you that it's not your help; it's you and your operations plan; Quite simply put: you don't have one. I know this because I've worked for so many professional companies that have real business plans and REAL OPERATIONS PLANS, and I know what goes into them, and I also know why companies like GE or BOEING get them compiled. That's why your business is failing, or you have more work than you can handle or a multitude of other challenges in operations. I read a book lately about a guy that graduated with an industrial Management degree from MIT, (WILLIAM J. STOLZE) and the general gist was that people misinterpret challenges and miscategorize their challenges. Here's an example he gave:

"....Raising CAPITAL is not a finance or OPERATIONS PROBLEM, it is a 'SELLING' problem..." W. J. STOLZE

Sales is part of Marketing, and if you've studied business as I have, then you already know that. So that means that raising CAPITAL is not an operations problem or Finance problem but instead a Marketing problem. If you don't know much about marketing, read my article on marketing or branding. I have done multiple studies on marketing and written two articles on BRANDING and MARKETING. They're crude articles and simplified to a simple strategy that works. BRANDING is part of a successful Marketing plan. A Harley davidson ROAD KING is not a Kawasaki NINJA, and Thank God. This is MARKETING! Harley davidson is a strong and reliable BRAND, but it is not GE or Coca Cola, and the stock price and corresponding business fluctuation for HOG reflects that. If you're selling a ROAD KING to someone, you're not trying to sell them something that will go the fastest, or be the quietest. These are two different products for two completely different types of people. This is what's referred to by professionals as the niche section of your BRAND. HONDA makes a less expensive GOLDWING, but it will not give you the performance or image that a HARLEY ROAD king or Electraglide will give you. However, a GOLDWING is a Great Cruiser and a different market niche. It's not something I would buy, but I thought about it when I first started looking at bikes for price reasons.

Something that makes GE's quality So good that made JACK WELCH famous was Communication, and it was all done through Documentation of procedures and Best practices. This is PRINCIPLE III of 4 wealth principles, which ill list in another article. This principle is what's called Royalties & Residuals or recurring Income. If it's not documented, it's not a process that you practice and what you probably are doing is inconsistent, at least to the extent necessary to be successful as a LEAN and SIX SIGMA Company, or Higher level of quality. Not only that, but you're probably leveraging your own TIME inefficiently. Some people are really bad at managing their TIME, because they don't properly evaluate their processes and the analysis required to do a TIME/COST/BENEFIT analysis. (6S is 99.9% success rate). Is everything you do succeeding at 99.9% success rate from every perspective? Do you WANT to be 99.9% successful at EVERYTHING you're doing and EVERY venture you're pursuing? Chances are, you and your business don't have this kind of success rate. Truth is; most businesses and people don't, because they fail to evaluate their processes. sometimes it's a challenge of awareness, and other times, it's a challenge in Priorities. They fail to do opportunity cost analysis. my recommendation for folks like this is that you either hire an OPERATIONS CONSULTANT, or Follow these 5 simple steps.

1. WHAT do you do? WHY do you do it that way? What are all the basics of tasks that have to be done as part of operating your business from start to finish from lead generation to delivery of service, billing, collections, and follow up? EXAMPLE: I lost a BID on a fairly big job, because of a price based on leveraging my own TIME, when I had planned to leverage other people's TIME at a lower cost, but I had hoped to gain the profit without passing on some of that profit through to my customer. I lost the project by 10%. My overall profit would most likely have been 25-50% more than what I was accustomed to previously because I was convinced that I had to charge that much to make a profit, but I left out the part that I was charging much more than what I was used to making. As a result, unfortunately, this small oversight cost me 20% of a $50k job. I would have made $10k just myself had I got the job, in roughly 2-4 weeks. I was convinced that in order to make money on the job, I needed to bill at the standard market rate. I may have been right, but because I didn't take on a larger risk, I lost the job completely. This is a process problem or challenge. Even at that rate which was less than 1/2 of what I had hoped to make, I still would have made more than 2x my normal rate. Are your processes documented in a binder or in some Form of video? If not, WHY NOT? If you had everything documented and all on paper, then perhaps you would have a better sky view of your business as it really is, and you could start analyzing your business and make changes to it like a real professional. You could perhaps start working ON your business instead of IN your business as an employee. Not only that, but If it was documented on paper, it could actually go into a binder and be part of a real document professional entrepreneurs call a "BUSINESS PLAN". Also, if you had video on youtube, and everything Intellectual property protected, then you could even put that in your marketing plan. Where is it documented to save yourself TIME in automating this process? Which products are you using? Do you own the patents? If not, Hire an OPERATIONS CONSULTANT!
2. HOW do YOU do it? Can you do It in less TIME than your competition? How do you do it that costs you less TIME? How does that convert to more money in your pocket and in the pockets of your customers. Where is it documented to save yourself TIME in automating this process? I guarantee you I can reduce your OPERATIONS COSTS by at least 50% by implementing many concepts you're currently not implementing. Do you implement important concepts like TEAMWORK, and more? If not, Hire a consultant! Can you imagine building a house by yourself? Look, it's not impossible, but why put yourself through all that stress while the TIME your house sits off the market could have converted to cash in your pocket? You realize YOU cost yourself MONEY when you have to carry your mortgage the whole TIME? Your decision styles cost you TIME. That TIME materializes on your income statements and again on your BALANCE SHEET, and again on your RETAINED EARNINGS STATEMENT. Can you list all your CURRENT and FIXED ASSETS? Do you know what they are? can you tell me in less than 1 minute, or will you have a million reasons and excuses why it's everyone else's fault?
3. COMMUNICATION: How do you communicate HOW you do it to your potential help? Where is it documented to save yourself TIME in automating this process?
4. Who can help you do it? What are the basic skills required of the person you would model around yourself? Where is it documented to save yourself TIME in automating this process? Do you hire people to do things below your skill level or that you can contract out at a lower cost than your own TIME?
5. Where and how do you find those people to help you? Where is it documented to save yourself TIME in automating this process? Again, if you can't answer these questions, hire an OPERATIONS CONSULTANT!

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