Life Lessons from an Entrepreneur: Can American Retailer Target Be Saved?

Today giant Wal-Mart competitor Target is expected to release their first quarter results – and they aren’t expected to be all that great.

The American retail chain’s sales are down across the board, and they are even worse since they opened about 100 stores across Canada.

Their new Canadian customers have been complaining that their prices are substantially higher in Canada, and they lack the selection that you’d find in their American stores.

Yesterday, they fired their Canadian CEO, replacing him with an American, because their Canadian operations have posted a loss of $941 million in their first year, resulting in a drop of $1.13 per share.

This isn’t about Canadian versus American leadership, which appears to be how Target is handling it.

What it boils down to is a simple life lesson any entrepreneur needs to learn, if they are to run a successful business: listen to your customers.

Always listen to your customers.

If your customers are complaining about high prices and lack of selection – as is the case with Target’s Canadian customers – do something about it.

Although rotating the leadership deck will appease stock holders in the short-run, because it appears to them that action is being taken to resolve the problem, that’s more of a perceptive change than a practical one.

Perception is everything in business. Tell any shareholder their stock just tanked, and the first thing they want to do is find out who’s to blame, and have that person sacked.

That’s the perceptive change which Target has enacted – they fired their Canadian CEO, and appointed a bunch of American executives to the Canadian team to make it look like this new team can turn things around.

But that’s not the practical action, because it fails to address the real problem.

What’s the real problem?

Just ask Target’s customers.

They are the one’s NOT going into the stores and NOT spending money.

Target’s customers have complained loud and clear that they don’t like the higher prices and lack of selection when compared to the American stores of the same name.

So the practical solution is to lower prices and increase selection in the Canadian stores, to be more similar to the Target stores which Canadians have visited in the States.

That doesn’t take a leadership change, anyone can do that. It just takes common sense – listen to your customers. Give them what they want. Make them happy.

Within Reason of course – if your customers are telling you to jump off a cliff, don’t listen to them.

However, when your customers are complaining about something that is realistic, and even makes sense – do it.

Like when your customers complain that your American stores have better prices and selection than your Canadian ones.

That’s an easy fix.

Will Target’s new leaders make it?

Or will they try to cover it up with slick advertisements that don’t solve the problem?

One of the biggest mistakes big companies make is not admitting their mistakes.

Another American retailer, JCPenney changed that. In 2012, their new executive decided to eliminate all sales, and make all prices even, instead of end with their traditional 99 cents.

Customers complained they missed the sales, and thought prices went up, because they were no longer just under the next dollar.

JCPenney listened to their customers. They admitted their mistake, fired the CEO that made those changes, and brought back their sales and their traditional pricing model, ending in 99 cents.

It wasn’t rocket science – it never really is. You don’t need some young MBA graduate to spend months creating reports to tell you what the problem is. You just have to listen to and act on your customers concerns.

Target can learn a lot from JCPenney.

Looking for a Job? Any Job? I’ll Never Hire You

I do a lot of networking, it’s key for entrepreneurs – or really anyone – these days. From social meetups to professional ones, to just bumping into strangers at a ballgame, or while out for a bite to eat, you really never know who you may meet, or more importantly, how you may help each other.

Lots of the fine folks I meet are either underemployed or unemployed. Kudos to them for being brave, and when I ask what they do, they tell me directly that they are looking for work.

When I was – well – younger – looking for work was almost shameful.

“I’m in between jobs,” many would say, as they were ashamed, even embarrassed to be looking for a job.

Everyone had a job, and if you didn’t, others would wonder: “what’s wrong with you?”

Looking back, that’s probably not the right attitude, but that was the prevailing way we thought of ourselves, our work, and our lives back then.

There isn’t anything wrong with being out of work. It happens, people outgrow companies, and companies outgrow people. It’s the nature of our human-driven social structure.

These days, more people are looking for work than ever before. Not because there is this sudden influx of jobs. No. Sadly, it’s quite the opposite. The economy has shifted across our global working world, tossing more than a quarter of the planet’s population out of work.

So, looking for a job is no longer a shameful thing, and it certainly is a lot more of the commonality people have at many networking functions.

Being underemployed or unemployed is so common, the immediate standard response to someone looking for work has become: “so, what are you looking for?”

Or at least, being an entrepreneur that may hire someone, or know others that may be looking to hire people, I always ask that.

“Anything,” or “I don’t know,” or “something better, anything better, than I’m doing now,” are the worst possible answers.

Looking for a job? Any job? I won’t hire you.

I don’t have just any job at my company, and I bet most business owners would agree with me on this.

PASSION is one of the most important things I look for in bringing anyone aboard my team. 

PASSION is falling in love with a specific job, industry or career path. Studies show that those who are passionate about what they do, will do it far better than those who aren’t.

Though PASSION is important for many other reasons too.

In creating the perfect workplace, I want to only hire people that WANT to be there. I don’t want people working for me that dread getting up in the morning, because they have to go to work. I want people that leap out of their lover’s arms, because they just can’t wait to get to work.

Well, okay, maybe not that passionate. But close.

People that hate their jobs, bring down the entire workplace. Negative attitudes about the company, the management, the work, or even the furniture are more easily contagious than positive ones. Even to those that don’t agree – because when someone lacks passion for their work, they usually have an abundance of passion against their work.

Negative colleagues spread rumors, talk behind other’s back, mock management, don’t arrive on time, and may even slack-off at their tasks.

And worse, negative colleagues can turn positive, passionate ones into negative ones, so even those that love what they do and where they do it could become slackers spreading stories.

So if we ever meet and you’re looking for work, and I ask you what you are looking for, you’d better have any answer other than: “anything.”

Because if you tell me “anything” you’ll never work for me – nor be recommended by me to others.

We’re not children, I’m not asking you what you want to be when you grow-up. This isn’t recess – it’s life.

And if you really don’t know what you are passionate about, and what you want out of life, you’d better find it – fast.

Beware Anyone Doing Business Completely Sans Paper

Live and learn. Or so the saying goes, but sometimes we never just learn, despite our inner voice warning us away.

Recently, I had that experience, as I had stumbled on what I thought would be a fruitful business relationship. We both had something mutually of interest to offer the other professionally, and had initially agreed upon the terms of service over the phone.

Then came time to do the deal – or so I thought. Turns out, our brief phone call was the deal, at least in the mind of the other party to this “business” relationship.

I’ve always been weary of those that won’t put things down in writing. We hear time and again how flimsy verbal agreements are, how they don’t really hold up in court because they depend on a judges’ interpretations of what each person claims the other said.

Even in our modern era of emails, instant messages and SMS text messages, I get cold feet when someone sends me the terms of a deal only via one of these digital forms of communications.

Not that I expect the worst, but anytime someone tells you "let’s just shake on it" – walk away.

I should have run away prior to latching onto one of these “business” people. Any legitimate business person wouldn’t even THINK of doing any business deal on the basis of nothing more than a smile.

That smile sure didn’t last long with this “business” person.

I got suckered in by the passion for what I do, and the opportunity to share that passion with the world. The business looked legit – they had a website.

"Hey Jordan, my five-year-old kid can create a website."

Now you tell me . . .

At first everything was great, I did my part of the deal, they did theirs. 

Then, a couple of months in, they started to change. They weren’t living up to the terms of our verbal “agreement.” Sometimes they were early, most of the time they were late.

Then for a while there was a string of early deliverables, which was followed by requests for additional ones on my part.

This wasn’t part of our original verbal “agreement” but they quickly amended our non-existent arrangement via email.

I didn’t mind, so I went along with it, for another few months. Then they asked me to do even more but at a fraction of the price.

I thought about negotiating. But how do you negotiate when you have nothing in writing to back you up? As it was, I wasn’t happy with myself for signing a non-existent agreement.

That little voice in my head kept nagging me, calling me a fool. Telling me "you'll be sorry."

I’ve been burned in the past by verbal agreements when I was young and naive. And part of me was questioning my own intelligence and business savvy, having fallen into another verbal agreement so many years later.

I declined their additional requests, but said I was happy to continue with our current “agreement.”

They obviously took great offense to this, as the pattern of their lateness began again – even increasing to the point where I started wondering how I was ever going to exit this situation gracefully and without harm to my interests.

Then they decided to give me “notice” via email to amend our non-existent agreement cutting both their and my deliverables down by half.

"How can you give me notice for a contract that doesn’t exist?" I scoffed.

Then it dawned on me, you can’t. There’s nothing binding between us. They have nothing to give “notice” on, for or with, according to my legal team. In fact, if you don’t have anything in writing, there is no binding agreement. The word "notice" has to refer to something already defined in writing, usually (but not exclusively -- my lawyers point out) another word: "term."

A verbal contract is no more binding than the air it is “written” on.

“You might as well have signed it with invisible ink,” said one legal expert.

So you’re free to leave it at anytime, and without any notice he tells me.

And that’s what I did.

Though I did let them know via email.

I wanted to send a letter. 

You know, one of those old fashioned documents printed on paper. 

I like things in writing. I’m funny that way.