Author: Ethan Theo

Abe WalkingBear Sanchez is an International Speaker / Trainer / Consultant on the subject of cash flow / sales enhancement and business knowledge organization and use. Founder and President of www.armg-usa.com, WalkingBear has authored hundreds of business articles, has worked with numerous companies in a wide range of industries since 1982 and has spoken at many venues including the Shakespeare Globe Theater in London.

Success Attitude

It Is Not What We Expect, But What We Are Willing To Accept In Life That Matters

Post author By Ethan Theo
Post date February 22, 2008
1 Comment on It Is Not What We Expect, But What We Are Willing To Accept In Life That Matters

All of us have got dreams we aspire to attain in our lives. These dreams come from people who inspire us.

We may dream of making $20,000 a month, owning a luxury-y car and living in a million dollar mansion. At the same time, based on our beliefs, we also have what I call a ‘level of acceptance’.

This ‘level of acceptance’ means that though you may aspire to earn $20,000 a month, you are willing to accept earning $3000 a month.

Although you would love to live in a million dollar house, you are quite willing to settle for a small apartment, Although you would love to be at an ideal weight of 65kg, you are willing to live life at 75kg.

You may set a goal to earn $20,000 but if you are willing to accept earning $3000, then $3000 is what you are going to end up getting. Why? Because the $3000 level of acceptance is what we make a ‘must’ for ourselves.

We will not allow ourselves to earn below that level of what we believe is our minimum. This is our tolerance level. The moment we think we are going to go below our acceptance level, our mind hits panic mode and we will do whatever it takes to get above that. Again, when we are committed to do whatever it takes, we will get it.

People who make $20,000 a month do so because to them, that is their level of acceptance That is what they believe they are worth. They will not accept anything less. They will never accept $5000 or even $10,000 a month. They will do whatever it takes to get the level they believe they deserve.

You Must Raise your Acceptance Levels.

Unless we raise our acceptance levels, we will never do what is necessary to achieve our goals. So if you want to make more money, you have to raise your standards of what you are willing to accept. You have to raise your standards of what you are willing to accept.

Be very honest with yourself, what is your current level of expectation and level of acceptance in the different areas of your life? Invest the time to reflect and to write down your thoughts.

If you want success to become your reality, make it so that you will never settle for anything less. Raise your level of acceptance to the level of your goals and you can’t help but become successful.

Franchise

Top 10 Franchise Food Trends for 2008

Post author By Ethan Theo
Post date February 19, 2008
1 Comment on Top 10 Franchise Food Trends for 2008

The food franchise industry is the largest and the most profitable of all the franchise industries. The biggest sub-industry of the food sector is fast-food franchises, such as McDonald’s, KFC, Burger King, 7-Elevin Inc, and many more fast-food franchises. But every year there is always a new departure in the food industry that rivals fast-food eating and dining, and 2008 is no different.
This begs the questions, which way are consumer food trends heading for 2008? Although consumers are constantly bombarded with messages about healthy eating, encouraging them to cut down on fats, sugar and salt, obesity levels are still at an all time high. Convenience foods and takeaways are increasing. Nevertheless, there is a still a huge part of the market that is interested in new, healthier food which is all part of a global campaign for awareness of living a healthy, balanced life.
As a result the food industry is responding to consumer’s demands and changes in the market for fast-food convenience food. I have identified 10 key food trends that are encompassing this new desire for healthier foods, and these trends will be big news in the food franchise industry in 2008.
1. Wellness Foods
In response to government and health organizations warnings for greater awareness of what we take for granted in relation to excessive food habits, food companies are producing more foods with lower salt, less fat, more grains and fibres as well as other types of nutritionally beneficial ingredients.
The combination of nutrition and medicine is offering franchisors the opportunity for unlimited scope for new product developments. Recent examples include green tea drink with ginger that burns calories rather than adding them, vitamin enhanced beer and dark chocolate sold as an antioxidant.
2. New World Foods
There is a burgeoning interest in new foods sourced from “new” or “exotic” places. Superfruits like the purple acai berry from the rain forest, which has already achieved a market place in health food shops could make the transition to mainstream if undertaken effectively by clever business people.
Some have suggested that Peruvian cuisine- a combination of Spanish, Italian, Indian, Japanese and native cookery- could be the next big ethnic food. Coconut is finding new uses such as natural juice while fruit soups have also been encouraged as holding consumer potential.
3. Ethical/Environmental eating
This trend overlaps with wellness since both espouse organic and free range foods. However ethical eating goes beyond natural taste and health and into the realms of green politics and anti-globalization. It includes concepts of “fair-trade” and “sustainable” and also “food miles”, which brings together the related concepts of locality and seasonality. Good farming practices in terms of the treatment of livestock are also part of this trend. Organic or free-range food products will be a top of the food list for food franchises 2008-2012…
4. Ethnicity
Ethnic flavors that draw inspiration from distant cuisines are increasingly popular in the U.S. and across Europe. Vietnamese cuisine is becoming popular and, in cities, sushi is now a mainstream restaurant cuisine, and, in some locations, a mainstream supermarket product.
Spanish cuisines and South American restaurants are identified as trends with consumer potential. Similarly Asian food is also becoming quiet a popular food trend across the U.S., with great tasting low fat cuisines full of flavor becoming the dish of the day!
5. Water
Water is huge and is increasingly becoming a political and social conundrum, with the effects of global warming and the reduction in levels of water both for living and for consumption. The market potential for bottling naturally flavored water is huge and continues to be a highly lucrative industry. For example, there are now water bars, water menus along with some water sommeliers in restaurants to pair water with good food choices.
6. Specialities
Making ordinary food special, such as the way water can now be viewed as having health or other benefits, and can come in a range of product variations, is another growing trend.
An example is salt which has been diversified into gourmet sea salt, Hawaiian Red, Black Lava, Sel Gris, pink salt from the Andes and Tahitian vanilla salt. The variations are endless and any “ordinary” food product can be diversified into numerous “types”.
7. Portion Control
Portion control is one of the keys to attaining a healthy diet and losing weight effectively. This principle is also having a key influence on products and services within the franchise industry, such as “portion-controlled scoops”, or “portion-controlled plates” that help individuals effectively measure what is a good amount or bad amount of the food groups for each meal.
In addition, Spanish tapas, Greek meze, and Japanese izakayas are all types of the “portion-controlled” food an individual can buy in a restaurant. Manufacturers have also developed calorie-controlled mini portions of snacks and confectionary in response to healthy eating trends.
8. Constant Diet
Dieting will always be big franchise industry news, with the rise in products and services that help people diet lose weight and manage their weight. The increased pace in everyday life, the stress and longer working hours has ensured a consumer society that is dependent on quick food products.
But this is not great for the waistlines! Manufacturers have as a result come up with new services and products to encourage healthier eating and dieting. More personalized diets tailored to an individuals needs is becoming the new constant diet trend…
9. Provenance
Consumers are increasingly becoming aware of where their food comes from and its origins for safety. This trend overlaps with both wellness eating and ethical eating, but it is also a food trend and consumer preoccupation in its own right. Consumers no longer accept less than transparency. And this means products and services must display origins of content and structure…
10. Retro eating
Consumers, particularly boomers and generation X, tend to evoke sentiments of traditional food products. For the younger demographics, the concept of retro eating can be fun and exciting. There is an association with foods that are additive-free and pure, which, ostensibly, predate mass production and factory farming. And then there are as many new angles to retro eating as there are hindsight re-interpretations of history.
Appeasing today’s consumer is no small task. Food products need to address health concerns with features such as whole-grains, pro-biotics, omega-3, antioxidants, carotenes, vitamins, sugar-free and low-salt together with a dash of the three E’s- ethnicity, exoticism, and ethics- to top it all of, they need to be packaged in convenient, calorie-friendly portions!

Aine Meade is a Website Editor for Franchise Direct, a leading Internet franchise advertising portal. Aine creates high quality franchise information for its international websites in the U.S., and Europe. Aine has a BA (First) in English and History; MA in Literature & Publishing; Diploma in Media Journalism and a Diploma in Marketing.

Tags fast-food franchises, food franchises, health franchises, organic food, organic food franchises

Success Attitude

Reframe into Postive Experience

Post author By Ethan Theo
Post date February 18, 2008

The process of turning a negative experience into a positive one is called reframing.

The two ways in which you can do this is Content Reframing and Context Reframing.

Content Reframing

Content reframing is the process of changing a negative experience into a positive one by changing the meaning of the experience. Remember, every event has multiple meanings. The meaning we choose to focus on is what becomes real for us.

The best way to do a content reframe is to ask the question, ‘What else can this mean?’ ‘How can this benefit or empower me instead of depressing me?’

For example, if the recession hit when you were about to start your business, you could content reframe it by saying, ‘Good! This means that business costs, like rental and salaries, will be lower and allow us to break even faster’.

Or you could say, ‘Good! This means prospective clients will be more open to listening to suppliers who offer better value for money.’ There are multiple reasons why starting a business in a recession will be a positive experience!

What if someone told you, ‘My son does not stop talking’ You could reframe this negative comment by saying ‘Good that means he must be full of ideas’, or, ‘This means he must be very intelligent.’

If the person you love leaves you for someone else, reframe the loss by saying, ‘Good. This means that I can find someone who truly loves me’ or ‘this means I can find someone who is more caring, beautiful and loyal.’

Context Reframing

Another way to reframe an experience is to do a context reframe. A context reframe is the process of changing a negative experience into a positive one by changing the context from which it is perceived.

Have you ever had a negative experience only to look back at it five years later and say, ‘That was a blessing in disguise?’ In a different context (i.e. the future), the meaning of that experience changed from bad to good.

In doing a context reframe, you must ask the question, ‘in a different time or place, how would the meaning be beneficial?’
You see, everything that seems bad now, when put into a different time or place, could appear beneficial.

Going back to the first example of starting a business in a recession, you could use a context reframe by saying, ‘When the economy picks up, the company will be positioned to do very well as it has been tested & strengthened by the recession’.

You could do a context reframe on the boy who talks all the time by saying, ‘When he grows up, he will make a good public speaker’ (context of time). Or you could also say, ‘The fact that he talks all the time will certainly earn him a place on the school debating team (context of place). Are you getting the hang of it?

How we represent or (frame) our experiences determine our response and the outcomes we achieve. Therefore we must learn to constantly frame experiences in ways that empower ourselves and the people around us.

When we change the way we represent (frame) something, we totally change the meaning and the emotions associated with that experience. As a result, we change the decisions we make and the actions we take.

You must learn how to create resourceful meanings out of every experience. Successful leaders and entrepreneurs do this to empower themselves and others to reach their goals.

Communication Skills

Eric on Prime Time Morning (Channel News Asia) with more Tips for Public Speaking

Post author By Ethan Theo
Post date February 17, 2008

eric%20channel%20news%20asia.jpg
Eric Feng, one of our Network Experts, together with his two Public Speaking Experts recently appeared on Prime Time Morning (Channel News Asia) to share more about Public Speaking experiences and tips.
Kelvin, Irene and Eric (authors of The FAQ Book on Public Speaking) were invited to share about the book. They ended up dishing tip after tip to the hosts and audience. One of the funnier discussions were about the myth that speakers should imagine their audience naked.
The main rationale behind this myth is to put down your audience so that you feel more powerful than them. There are some who believe that this makeshift power will give them the courage to speak in front of their “naked” audience. However, if you have tried it, you will know how hard it is to imagine your audience naked.
Firstly you will be more distracted. Secondly, it doesn’t serve you. When you intentionally position yourself in power at your audience expense, you are sending out signals to your audience that you disregard them and that doesn’t exactly make you very popular with your audience.
Here’s the short video clip and pay attention to the tips:

For those who want to get the hard copy of The FAQ Book on Public Speaking, you can buy it at any major bookstores in your vincinity like Popular, Kino, Borders, Harris, MPH and Page One.
For those of you who are not from Singapore, you can grab the electronic version of The FAQ Book on Public Speaking here. If you really love to have a hardcopy version, you can drop Eric an email: eric@ericfeng.com. Else, grab the ebook first!

Operations

BestBizWays Are Your Ways

Post author By Ethan Theo
Post date February 16, 2008

Every business operates on knowledge and yet many companies never organize and document that knowledge into useable P&P.
As a result of this failure to organize and document the knowledge it takes to operate a business, many companies operate on a word of mouth basis.
“The new guy learns from the old guy who learned from the dead guy.”
Scott Stratman
Business Friction/Costs
Ronald Coase, of “Coase’s Law”, says that there is friction involved with being in business. The original friction or cost is that that goes with finding customers for a company’s products/services, and of finding vendors/suppliers who can take care of the company’s needs.
Beyond “acquisition” costs there’s the ongoing friction of doing business; transactional costs.
The most expensive cost/friction is that of failure. Regardless of the “industry”, the most expensive work done in a business is the “re-do”.
As Right as Possible, the First Time
Some companies just don’t seem to understand or care that when something goes wrong it drives up their cost of doing business, and it also drives up “cost of doing business” for their customers and vendors. Its like they really think that they don’t have time to do things right the first time. Baloney.
A major source of errors, omissions, miscommunications and screw ups is the lack of written P&P, of operating on a “word of mouth basis”. The cost? A $30 mistake can take $300 in time and effort to correct, and if that company is doing a 5% PTP (pre tax profit) it takes ( 20X$300) $6000 in sales to cover the cost of failure. And if a customer is involved there’s no way of knowing the impact/cost of the mistake on/to that customer. And there’s no way of knowing who that customer might have told about the failure. What’s the cost in lost business from “negative word of mouth advertising”?
” The true cost of errors is unknown and unknowable.” Edwards Deming
The 5 Organizational Ps
Every company needs a plan, a strategy that drives it’s actions. The plan may be to increase market share, to reduce costs, retain existing customers, provide new products/services to old customers or it may be to have the “lowest price, always”. Wait a minute that plan is already taken.
Based on the “plan”, every business function must have a “Purpose” that compliments the “plan” and which answers the question, “Why incur the costs that go with this business function?”. For example, distributors incur the costs of having a warehouse so that they can meet or exceed customer expectations, so that they have an acceptable “fill rate”. A distributor doesn’t have to have 100% of what customers want 100% of the time, but if they don’t have an acceptable “fill rate” the customers will go elsewhere. Purpose is the first of the 5 Ps.
Once the “Purpose” is established`, every business function can be broken down into it’s major components. In our warehouse example those major components might be “receiving”, “shipping”, “truck maintenance ” and “inventory control”. The goal for each major component is the basis for “policies’, for goal driven guidelines. Policies are the second of the 5Ps.
There are 6B people on the world and there are 6B versions of reality. The third of the 5Ps is “Procedures”, and one size does not fit all. Purpose and Policies are determined by managers who, if they’re smart, let the experts (the guys doing the job) tell them how the goals established will be accomplished.
The fourth of the 5 Ps is “People”. Based on the steps needed to achieve established goals hire the right people for the job.
The fifth and most important of the 5Ps is “Process Monitoring/Performance Measurements”. The key steps in the “procedures” need to be monitored to ensure things aren’t falling through cracks, that the process is on track.
In life and in business things will happen for which we haven’t planned. In 1969 I was living in Denver and I was going to drive out to S.F.. My plan was simple enough, I’d drive north to Cheyenne, Wyo. and turn left. Outside of Boulder, Colorado there was a “hippie” and his girlfriend holding up a sign saying “SF”, I picked them up. They had a large bag of soy nuts and of this other stuff which they shared; we missed our turn. Montana was nice and we eventually got to S.F.. It was a trip.
Performance must be measured against goals. If the goals are well thought out and achievable but are not being met its one of two things; either the procedures are wrong or you have the wrong people for the job.
“Employees respect what managers inspect , not what they expect.” Don Rice Tex A&M
It doesn’t matter what you ask for, its what you monitor and measure for that tells employees what you really want from them.
BestBizWays; Powerful in Effect with Little Waste of Effort
Document the knowledge needed to run a business and you’ll do a better job of hiring the right people, you’ll reduce training time with new employees, errors will be minimized, customer service levels will rise and the bottom line will go up.
Organize and document the knowledge needed to operate a company and you increase it’s value by having a “cookbook”.
In Closing
Harvest new knowledge by asking new employees to tell you how things can be done better. Do this in the first two weeks on the job, before a new employee starts thinking like everyone else. P&P are never done, things are always changing. P&P should have a cover sheet that says “Under Construction”. The best information in the world is worthless until you put it to work. Its up to you.
The 5 Organizational Ps
Purpose: Every business function must have a clearly stated purpose which compliments the “Plan” and answers the question, “Why incur the cost ?”.
Policies: Goal driven guidelines for each of the major components within the function.
Procedures: The steps needed to be taken in order to accomplish established goals.
People Requirements: Based on the procedures hire the right people for the job.
Process Monitoring/Performance Measurements: Track key steps in the process and measure against the goals.