The Rebel Rules"Daring to be your self in business"

What does it take to get in touch with your inner rebel and run a business on your terms? Today’s Information Age has spawned a number of rebel business leaders, from Virgin’s Richard Branson to The Body Shop’s Anita Roddick –and to Joie de Vivre Hospitality’s boy wonder – the author himself – people who have the passion, instinct, agility and vision to rewrite the rules of business so it is ethical, respects diversity, and means more to people than simply turning a profit.

So what exactly is a rebel?
1. Rebels get into activities that make them lose track of time and put them in a state of ecstasy.
2. Rebels build a career that is a natural reflection of themselves and follow a natural progression from their most innate childhood skills.
3. Rebels are working at jobs that they put on their list of top ten “favorite future jobs” from their childhood or youth.
4. Rebels are normally not straight A students, they would have been naïve idealists, non-conformists, or artists in their teenage years
5. Rebels are not afraid to fail, quit their jobs, and follow their lifelong passion and true calling.
6. Rebels either become leading experts in their chosen fields, millionaires, or end up in prison.
7. Rebels do not lose their political and social beliefs as they grow older. Their passion for the causes they support will only grow stronger over time.
8. Rebels do not take “No” for an answer. They will always try to find a way or solution.

Rebel Profile

Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group of Companies:
1. Started his first business, a magazine called Student, at the age of 16.2. Began Virgin mail-order record business at age 20.3. Built a net worth of $300 million by age 35 with diverse businesses all under the Virgin brand: travel, entertainment, retail, media, financial services, publishing, bridal service, and soft drinks.
4. Sold his music company for $1billion at age 41.

Rebel thinking: Position yourself as the underdog and you will enjoy a niche market.
Create your own personal mission statement.1. What do you want to be remembered for?2. What habits do you need to cultivate and what will you remove from your present life in order to live out your true purpose/calling?3. What are the most important personal accomplishments you can imagine in your life?4. Take an hour to write your one-page mission statement. Then cut it down to one paragraph. Then simplify it further by saying it all in one sentence. This summarizes your personal mission statement.How can you tell a Successful rebel?
They have a clear vision. They are highly creative. They are quick to spot trends that can be integrated into their business practices. They feel a higher calling or mission. They are very charismatic and create a strong presence when they walk into a room.
Successful rebels have passion. They are able to unite a diverse team made up of people from different backgrounds, rallying together to build a unique business and company culture.
Their passion comes out naturally because they are great storytellers and communicators. They listen to people carefully.
Successful rebels possess high integrity and trustworthiness. They are the epitome of grace under pressure, they stand up for their beliefs despite popular thinking.
Successful rebels are lifelong learners. They are also good teachers.
They are resourceful enough to find solutions and fix situations. They know how to negotiate deals and have all parties to the deal come away satisfied.
Successful rebels are agile enough to spring into action when necessary, and seem to be “Open 24 hours”. They have boundless energy, and like a Quarterback, moves the ball across the field and gets the job done.
Successful rebels are amazing networkers, multi-taskers, andare very driven individuals who do not easily get distracted from their goals.
Successful rebels follow their companies core values, and “walk their talk”.
Successful rebels know how to keep their employees happy. They give them intangible benefits like high self-esteem, rewards for achievements, and a positive working environment.
Successful rebels inspire their employees to think like business owners. Open-book management, popularized by Jack Stack, is a way of sharing financial information in a fun, educational format to make employees understand how their work earns for the business. You can be sure that when you explain clearly how tardiness affects the bottom line, affecting everyone’s mid-year bonus, employees will start showing up earlier for work.

A few ideas on how to make employees think like entrepreneurs:1. Post the critical numbers on a scoreboard in a fun, visual format.2. Conduct basic financial training and develop strategies for making an impact.3. Review the success of those strategies and “best practices”.4. Play a game with a critical number and make it the goal-of-the-month or something.5. Set up a reward bonus system and give recognition as often as possible.6. Communicate the results throughout your organization.7. Ask new employees to comment on the company’s business practices after their first 30 days.8. Have a brainstorming party or game with prizes for the best ideas 9. Have managers visit competitors and gather after a week to compare notes.10. Have regular meetings with frontline staff to wring out all the information they learn.11. Give your managers a free subscription to the industry magazine.12. Study a role model company or a competitor, you could all go on a retreat or buy managers a copy of the role model company’s literature.13. Write a book with funny stories about how your company serves its customers.
Rebels encourage creativity and individuality within their own companies. They allow themselves and their employees enough free time for a life outside of work, for leisure and recreation.

Great Expectations Get Great Results

Remember the Gulf War? Remember "Stormin' Norman" Schwarzkopf, the American general who became a hero? Many interesting things came out of that, not the least of which was stories about some techniques Schwarzkopf used. They are the same techniques you and I can use to get things done.

One of the most succinct examples concerned Stormin' Norman and his experience when taking command of helicopter maintenance early in his career. He'd ask how much of the fleet could fly any given day, taking into account maintenance schedules. "Seventy-five percent" was the reply. Wondering why it wasn't 73% or 74%, but always 75%, he decided to set a NEW standard. "I don't know anything about helicopter maintenance, but I'm establishing a new standard of 85%," he announced. Sure enough, in very quick time, 85% operability became the norm. It's interesting isn't it? People perform to expectations. If you set low expectations that are what you get. Set them high, and it's truly amazing how your new level has a way of becoming reality.

Creating benchmarks - for your people and yourself - has an uncanny way of coming to pass. Let me give you a case in point. John Mitchell is a pharmacist in Stirling, South Australia. John simply set benchmarks for his team. Was it some complicated selling process? He developed a checklist to help his people identify up-selling opportunities. He gave the checklist to his team and then put up a white board where they would "chalk up" every successful up-selling transaction. It became a fun challenge for them to beat the others and achieve the highest tally for the week. His only cost for this incentive was dinner for two for the winner on his team. His reward was (and is) incredible and far-reaching! To his utter amazement, putting a performance standard on cross-selling now accounts for 50% MORE SALES value from every transaction. As he put it, he wouldn't have believed it until he saw it happen. (His profitability increase, of course, will be much, much more.)

Now take the case of Ian Stathie of Wray Owen Funeral Directors. He sent us an article from a US funeral industry magazine. In it is the most comprehensive set of performance benchmarks you can imagine, benchmarks that allow the members to strive for excellence AND measure their commercial prosperity. For example, they carefully monitor such things as the total number and value of "pre-need" insurance sales, total number of deaths that were pre-funded, percentage of embalming to total calls, percentage of casket to total calls and so on. Morbid? No, it's just sound and professional business practice.

They DON'T pay lip service to setting standards and benchmarks. They DO it and then monitor it. As the article says, "These are people who want to excel, people who want to give every family they serve extra value for their dollar - these are people who look at everything with an open mind." The truth is, too, that these people understand this great truth, "What you can measure, you can manage." Again, what you can measure you can manage. Put another way, if you are trying to manage something that you're not measuring, you've got a snowflake's chance - well, you know the rest. You have very little chance of managing it effectively.