Focus on Impact

The 10-Step Map to Reach Millions, Make Millions and Love Your Life Along the Way

Wendy Lipton-Dibner

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781630473327
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Entrepreneurship
• Index: Business

Never in the history of capitalism has there been a greater need for a shift in business focus. Consumers are cynical, skeptical and cautious, opening a new opportunity for difference-makers. We need to move away from the traditional money-driven business focus and focus all product design, marketing and delivery on making an immediate and lasting impact on people's lives. This how-to manual provides proven strategies to build and grow any retail or service business that's focused on impact with step-by-step, proven formulas to make it happen.

Chapter One

There are two types of businesses: those that focus on making money and those that focus on making a measurable impact in people’s lives. Guess which type makes more money.

When I was a senior in high school, I took an economics class that forever changed my perspective on business. The entire semester was devoted to helping us understand business from the inside out through field research. Each student was assigned four businesses in our local area ranging from family-owned restaurants and franchise owners to publicly held multi-national corporations and healthcare practices.

Our assignment was clear: Explain how each business makes money.

Over the course of that semester I interviewed owners, executives, employees and customers while observing day-to-day operations in every aspect of each business, all in search of the secret path to the money.

While my four subjects vastly differed in products and services, they all shared a primary goal: to maximize profitability. They accomplished their goal by making sure everything they did, from product development to customer service, minimized expenses and maximized sales.

Every aspect of their business was focused on money.

Not one of those businesses increased revenues in the time I studied them, nor do they exist today. In fact, my career has shown focusing on money is the worst thing you can do if your goal is to make a significant difference in the world and reap substantial rewards as a result.

Don’t get me wrong. I love money. Money is security. Money is luxury. Money is power. Money is freedom. Money is fun!

But is it smart business to focus on money? My high school economics teacher would have said, YES! And with all respect to him and all who hold traditional business mindsets, I’m here to tell you,

When you focus on money, you have to invest significantly more money to make up for the problems you caused by focusing on money.

I’ve conducted hundreds of organizational research and evaluation studies, consulted for and trained well-over one thousand corporate, healthcare, small business and non-profit organizations and surveyed well-over 500,000 experts, executives and entrepreneurs who sat in my audiences around the globe. Without exception, the results have consistently shown:

Traditional business models don’t work for difference-makers.

Okay, so the question you might be asking is,

What is a difference-maker?

A difference-maker is someone who has a message, product or service that can help others live happier, healthier, easier, more productive, safer, longer, more fulfilling, less stressful, more exciting, less boring, more loving, more vibrant, more functional, less lonely, more satisfying, or more joyful lives.

Difference-makers are found in multi-national corporations, hospitals, private practices, non-profit organizations and small businesses around the globe. They’re sitting in the bleachers at high school soccer games and in cars waiting for fast-food burgers. They are the thinkers, dreamers, creators, speakers, authors, bloggers, engineers, teachers, leaders, influencers, entertainers, clergy, first-responders, hospice workers and the person who bags your groceries with a smile.

I’ve had the privilege of helping difference-makers recover from the downward spiral that occurs when you focus your business on money. At times when they could least afford to stop thinking about money, they had the clarity to see what it was doing to their businesses and the courage to shift their focus.

Here are some examples of what I saw working with organizations whose mission was to make a difference with their products and services, but whose execution was all about money:

Manufacturing and retail organizations set a full-time focus on money. They loaded their sales teams with known “closers” and incented them for high conversion. The more they sold, the better leads they received, the more money they made and the more perks they got.

The data:

•All recognition and rewards throughout the organizations were connected to sales.

•From the customer service department to the c-suite, all personnel based their success on the size of their paychecks.

•When asked about their mission, they rarely remembered the impact-driven language of the vision and mission statements that hung framed on their walls.

•Top performing sales professionals lost momentum soon after they reached maximum commissions. They were unaware of the difference they were making as a result of their sales. They saw customers as “prospects” and while they made their sales by building relationships, most had no interest in sustaining those relationships unless they were seeking referrals or repeat business.

•Sales managers encouraged competition over cooperation, leading to diminished teamwork, disjointed teams, pervasive back-biting, “lead stealing” and ongoing conflict.

In organizations with in-house marketing teams, we saw a strong push to generate campaigns that drove home value-for-the-money, money-saving discounts and fast-action sales. As they quickly discovered, these campaigns inadvertently diminished their companies’ brands and led consumers to get distracted from the impact of the brands’ products and services, turning all focus to price points and “deals.”

The data:

•In an effort to recover from the price wars they’d created, executives passed on the pressure to all departments with instructions to cut costs, further lowering the quality and impact of their products and services.

•Purchasing departments cut costs by ordering lower quality supplies, forcing production departments to have no choice but to lower the quality of the products they produced.

•From administrative assistants to the c-suite, personnel lost respect for the products/services they represented leading to poor work ethic, poor productivity, poor teamwork, poor customer service and heated water-cooler discussions about why year-end bonuses were being cut and layoffs were coming.

•Turnover, absenteeism and conflict increased while revenues fell way below their potential.

Again, all of this happened in organizations whose missions specifically stated their primary goal was to make an impact in the lives of the people they served.

I expected this in sales organizations, but nothing prepared me for what I discovered when the restructuring of health insurance in the United States, coupled with ever-shifting economic trends, moved even the most dedicated wellness professionals to turn their focus to money.⁸

I’ve had the privilege of serving doctors in a wide range of specialties from neurosurgeons to primary care physicians, from cosmetic dentists to plastic surgeons, from optometrists to podiatrists and from naturopaths to chiropractors. In private practices, hospitals and educational institutions I watched as impact-driven men and women responded to the ever-increasing pressure to focus on money.

The data:

•Doctors who had once prided themselves on the time and care they’d always given each patient, now rushed from one to the next, averaging six minutes per patient, seeing upwards of 60 patients per day and bringing in significantly lower revenues. Where they’d once enjoyed comfortable lifestyles, now the money they brought into their practices barely covered expenses. They spent weekends and nights moonlighting at emergency rooms to make money to pay their children’s college tuition. Many were forced to leave private practice to become hospital employees or partner with other doctors. Little by little, the stress they experienced separated them from the compassion that once defined their days.

•Where once there were plenty of staff to handle patient care, now nurses sat in cubicles filing insurance claims, whispering complaints about how their doctors were grumpy and counting the hours until they had to pick up their kids at childcare. Practice managers hid behind closed doors, trying desperately to keep up with ever-changing insurance codes, and listening to patient complaints about sitting in waiting rooms for hours on end.

•While many under-privileged people were finally able to receive healthcare that was previously out of reach, the increasing strain on understaffed hospitals and private practices added fuel to an already burning wildfire of problems for doctors, staff and patients. This led to a catastrophic increase in conflict among staff and doctors and increased stress and illness among the people who were there to help the ill.

•Where partner meetings had once been about patient review and expansion for more comprehensive patient services, now these meetings were about spreadsheet review, and typically included heated discussions about salary cuts, decreased bonuses, increased call time and lost vacations.

•As cutbacks became the norm and patients lost connections with their doctors, malpractice claims increased, causing serious problems, not only for patients and families who were maltreated, but for doctors who were wrongly accused in frivolous suits by people who sought to capitalize on difficult times. This caused insurance companies to raise malpractice premiums, adding to the strain of a system that was already in deep trouble.

•Some doctors opted out of accepting insurance so they could stop focusing on money and get back to giving patients the care they deserved. But turning away patients who couldn’t pay out-of-pocket fees carried a heavy price, for the patients who lost their trusted doctors and for the doctors who had to find a way to manage the guilt (and shame) they experienced by going against their deep desires to heal everyone who needed their care.

When difference-makers turn their focus to money, everyone loses.

I wish I could tell you I only found this data in organizations I was hired to study and serve, but the truth is I discovered this lesson the hard way.

By the time I was 31, I had developed and tested hundreds of sales and leadership formulas and found the unique combination that brought dramatic results in multiple industries and settings. I then used these formulas to build my first three businesses and to help local, national and international businesses grow theirs.

My results were consistently powerful, so I decided to open two more businesses—an international training and consulting company specializing in sales and leadership development and a franchise I’d purchased that enabled me to offer motivational products as follow-up to the training services I provided.

My first major contract was for a leading telecom company in the U.S. I loved this company. Not once did they ask for a referral or even for proof that I could do what I was promising. They believed I could deliver because I had launched our relationship by providing complimentary consulting that created impact for them before we ever got to the contractual stage. Most importantly, they were completely open to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Note from Wendy: The Power of Impact
• Preface: Now is the Time
• Introduction: How to Get the Most From This Book
• Chapter 1: The Multimillion-Dollar Mindset
• Chapter 2: The Focus On Impact Business Map
• Chapter 3: Define Your Impact Action Formula
• Chapter 4: Discover Your Unique Gift
• Chapter 5: Design Your Ideal Lifestyle
• Chapter 6: Determine Your Perfect Market
• Chapter 7: Develop One-Of-A-Kind Products and Services
• Chapter 8: Differentiate with Impact-Driven Marketing
• Chapter 9: Deliver Your Impact and Move People to Action
• Chapter 10: Diversify With Impact-Driven Collaboration
• Chapter 11: Decide Which Advice is Best for You
• Chapter 12: Dare to Go Bigger
• Chapter 13: Action!
• Chapter 14: More Focus On Impact Success Stories
• Lessons, Gifts and Gratitude
• More Praise for Focus On Impact
• Meet Wendy
• Join Wendy Live and Online