kbgardens.com Blog

Take a little imaginary journey with me for a few moments. Let’s say that you are a hotdog vendor with a hot spot on the corner of Main and Third in Anytown. The hotdog business is booming and you are making enough cash to support your family with 2 beautiful children. You are not a huge corporation but a simple entrepreneur that invested your savings in a business. You don’t have any financing because you don’t need it, hotdog sales are paying your bills.

Then along comes a big marketer and sees that the hotdog business is booming and wants a piece of that action. Mr. Sleezy is his name. So Mr. Sleezy goes into work the next morning and reports at the morning meeting that hotdogs sales are booming. Over coffee and donuts, the execs at Middleman Corporation hammer out a plan to get a cut of the hotdog business without having to buy a cart. They decide to pay a beautiful swimsuit model to stand around the corner from the hotdog vendor at Main and Third in Anytown (that’s you, in case you forgot) and sell hotdogs for 50 cents more than the price of yours. As Ms. Curves (that is the swimsuit models’ name) is selling the hotdogs, Mr. Sleezy is taking the money and running over to you and buying a hotdog for your price, bringing it back to their customer, and pocketing the 50 cents extra.

Time lapse of 3 months…..

You find that you are selling hotdogs like crazy but only have one customer now. Yep, Mr. Sleezy. At first you don’t mind because afterall, your price is the same and you are selling more than you ever did to any of your previous direct customers. You know that Mr. Sleezy is making 50 cents per hotdog but his marketing has created a huge demand for hotdogs! Sounds good, huh?

Time lapse of 6 more months…..

Mr. Sleezy realizes that he is your only customer and starts to feel the power. He goes to the morning meeting at Middleman Corporation and announces that he has figured out a way to make more money in the hotdog business. So here is what he does. He comes to you and explains that the only way he will continue to buy your hotdogs is if you pay him a monthly membership fee to continue to receive his business. You are irritated but if you don’t do it then you will surely be out of business because you no longer have direct customers, your only customer is Mr. Sleezy. So you agree.

Time lapse of one year…..

Your profit margins have shrunk and since now Mr. Sleezy wants to only pay you every 45 days, your cash flow has virtually stopped flowing. Your vendors for hotdogs want paid and you are still making payments on your cart. You tell them that as soon as Mr. Sleezy pays you, you will pay them. So the envelope comes in the mail which is suppose to be your check. But what you find is a statement that says you owe Mr. Sleezy $100! The statement says that your membership fee went up, there is now a marketing fee, a quality fee, a sales transmission fee, and a fee for the new paper napkins that you are required to put under every hotdog.

Now, what do you do? Looks like you will have to either stop selling to Mr. Sleezy and try to get your customers back or close up your hotdog vendor business. So you tell Mr. Sleezy that you are not going to sell to him anymore. But Mr. Sleezy doesn’t care because there is a hotdog vendor a block away that opened up that he can buy from. You already know the fate of that vendor, the same fate as you. You lost all your customers, ended up far in debt, and can barely survive.

What is worse, your customers are now paying 50 cents more for a hotdog and praising Middleman Corporation for such good hotdogs and prices.

Cast of characters:
Hotdog: Flowers
Hotdog Vendor: Real Local Florist
Middleman Corporation: FTD, 1800FLOWERS, TELEFLORA
Swimsuit Model, Ms. Curves: The Internet, TV, and Radio
Mr. Sleezy: All flower order gathering companies like justflowers.com, florist.com, etc.

Moral: Cut out the middleman and buy direct from real local florists for the best quality, best price, best service, best delivery, best design.

My first word that must be in my mission statement has been established to be “integrity.” As I think about other important and meaningful words, I was thinking about what a flower order must mean to a consumer. When they order flowers there is an important implied message with the flowers. These messages can be for many different occasions, sympathy, birthday, apologies, weddings, etc. In addition to the simple natural beauty of flowers, they deliver a message and an “expression”. I think that word, expression, needs to be a part of my mission statement as well.

I received an order from one of my favorite customers that knows how to “express” with flowers. She fought and won a war with cancer. She completely understands the importance of  “expression” probably better than most. Her order was an “expression” for a friend’s birthday. She requested that I deliver an ugly, almost dead arrangement with an over-the-hill balloon at a specific time on Friday morning. I agreed to do this for her. It seems that there is a group of women that get together faithfully every Friday morning for coffee at one of their homes. Yes, every Friday morning! She couldn’t stop giggling as she was talking about how much fun it would be when they were all there and a delivery was made of ugly, dead flowers, and a balloon. It seems practical jokes are common in this fun group of women. Her expressions? She is expressing love and fun for her friend.

Yes, I think “expression” is a must in my mission statement.

I am reading a book about the Emerson Corporation. The copy is at home. I am at work eating a p&j sandwich and thinking. I will post later about the title and author. (Here’s Later: Performance Without Compromise, by Charles Knight and Davis Dyer).  In Chapter One there is a few paragraphs about “integrity.” The passage says, and I am paraphrasing from memory, that operational excellence is achieved by first apply “integrity” to EVERY aspect of their operations. By doing so, the book says, you create a business environment of trust. Trust with your peers, your employees, your vendors, your customers, and your investors. This environment is necessary not only because it is ethically the right way to do things but also that this environment of trust saves time and creates more efficiency because the issue never has to be an issue.

My previous employer actually used words that are peppered throughout the Emerson book in it’s mission statement. This mission statement is no longer on their website so  maybe they have decided it is not representative of their position in the market. They use the words in context as “we are striving for operational excellence through continuous improvement” instead. As I was reading the book and reflecting on my experience with this company, I realized that the CEO at this previous employer must have read parts of the book also. I recall many of the concepts being mentioned and even attempts at applications of many of the concepts in this particular book at his company. I believe that he may have not put enough emphasis on the “integrity” part. Had that part been applied, I really believe his other approaches would have been successful. He is not a dummie and it might have all worked. Instead he found himself in embroiled in a lawsuit questioning his and other “key” executives’ “integrity.” The suit was settled but the environment of trust is still missing, rumor has it.

An environment of trust means that employees, vendors, customers, investors, and management is all on the same page with the same goals. Everyone involved can see that the met goals benefits them personally in some way. I think the author is right, wouldn’t that save a lot of time and create more efficiency and therefore reduce costs, increase quality, and blossom in good PR as a by-product of that environment? In my previous work place, there was suspicion and mistrust between management and employees, employees and employees, and investors and management. Many ideas come to mind as to the reasons this was true, but the biggest offender was the lack of  “integrity” as a part of daily decisions. Decisions were based on concepts and not people.

I am not bitter about having to leave that position. I left because an environment of mistrust was not going to contribute to my growth and was actually affecting me in negative ways. I have faith that it all happened for the right reasons. The lessons I learned from that job are referenced many times a week when I make decisions about my own business. For that I am thankful. Although I believe I have always operated my business with integrity, it has now become the first word I will use in my mission statement. Now onto thinking about the rest of the words to include.

I am an owner of a floral shop in Waynesfield, OH and have been on this journey since November, 2003. 

I encourage comments and feedback on this blog.