Control and Responsibility

Over the past decade, the deep rooted traditional business methods have taken a shift, arguably for the better. In the Information Age where almost anyone can find out what they want to know, it’s much harder for businesses to feign values. People quickly become aware of any inconsistencies between what the businesses say they stand for and what they truly are. The same applies to company culture.

To note one thing in particular, the difference between a business that stands out as genuine versus the alternative comes down to looking at how control and responsibility are at play. A business feigning values will often have a structure of controlling more than they should, while shirking responsibility for mistakes onto those who fall lower on the totem pole. Rather than accepting a lack of sufficient leadership, they often play the blame game in an arrogant attempt to avoid displaying vulnerability or weakness.

Fortunately, in looking at the structure of Talixa, I see quite the contrary. Our business is exceptional at delivering quality through the services we offer, yet I see selflessness from our leadership and the other team members. Rather than trying to micromanage and control every part of the business, we each have lanes suited to our skills and experience as well as having a plethora of opportunities to excel. Since responsibility is shared across the board, team members are not afraid to admit to their flaws and work together to develop and grow. By filling in our gaps and working for the good of the team and the community, we are better equipped to scale as a company.

Hardly anybody likes when people pat themselves on the back, though. As far as I personally am concerned, I can’t take credit for the company culture and the success we have seen. I can, however, speak on behalf of the wonderful people that are also a part of this team and working to bring new industry and growth to our community. The more I get to know them individually, the more I am blown away by their willingness to serve. Where does your business or employer land on this spectrum of control and responsibility? If your business is community driven at its core, we’d love (insert shameless “Happy Valentine’s Day” plug) to develop a relationship with you.

Goal-Oriented Design

When building anything, keep the end goal in mind. Too often, businesses fail to consider the importance of big picture thinking when starting a new project, especially regarding an intentional design process. In designating specific tasks or planning out projects, most would focus on immediate results. However, in looking at a company like Amazon, there is such an emphasis on long-term growth that their team is looking seven years out and planning accordingly.

Jeff Bezos is noted for saying that when people compliment him on current growth, he can’t help but be amused, because the next few quarters of sales were already determined for the most part by the planning and processes designed years ago. Similarly, in looking at the long-term nature of building out a sustainable income on a platform like YouTube, very few businesses want to hop on board, knowing that they would barely make any money initially. The same goes for other Social Media platforms, though I’d contend that a lack of understanding of how to leverage these platforms is a contributing factor as well.

Ironically, the type of work that pays out well in the short term doesn’t scale very well. In addressing goal-oriented design, one of the biggest upsides comes from knowing that the growth ceiling is often much higher despite taking a bit longer to see returns. We’ve all heard it said that slow and steady wins the race, yet too many times businesses take an overly aggressive approach to increasing company revenue. We can’t really blame them, but what we can do is make better choices for ourselves to change the narrative of how success is achieved in business.

Do What You Want*

So many businesses today are doing what they DO NOT want and confusing it as the right thing to do. Maybe they feel like they need employees to follow the 9-5 workday to achieve success. Perhaps they are doing things just to “fit in” with other businesses, and at their own expense. Even still, most businesses that I’ve encountered have some aspect of their work that adds no productivity or value, yet they continue to “go about their business” anyway.

However, I need to be clear… the asterisk in the title is there for a reason. The message conveyed is both good and right in its true nature, not to be confused with or distorted into a message of business driven by greed, hedonism or self-gratification. So long as a business’ goals and core values promote good in an ultimate and absolute sense, it’s hard to go wrong. Simply consider how each decision relates back to the mission and vision of the company.

Personally and vocationally speaking, my efforts are focused on helping other businesses, organizations, and individuals to do exactly what I’ve suggested. If we don’t want to do something, we’re certainly not going to be capable of doing our best work. We can put on a good show and do enough to get by, but the world would be so much better if every business and every person was operating at peak potential for the sake of making the world a better place. Let me know what you’re doing that you shouldn’t be, and I’ll do my best to help you do more of what you want* in any way that I can.

Leverage Networks

Over the last several months, my mission has been to focus on company scalability. As a community minded individual, implementing a business model that would encourage Talixa to grow only when we help others do the same has always been a priority. I would argue that this is the reason we saw so much growth so quickly. In April, Talixa transitioned from a part-time company to a full-time company. By July, we had enough projects to keep us booked full-time through the end of the year.

Initially, those were my goals. My work revolved around doing whatever I could to ensure that the company was an asset to the community. As we’ve brought on more team members, I needed to redefine what specifically I could do to allow Talixa to become an even greater asset to the community. What I’ve realized is that I need to make myself available to the rest of the community so I can see more of our community reaching their potential, through Talixa’s infrastructure.

Tom never needed me to help him grow his company. I firmly believe that. However, in looking at what happened as a result of my decision to be a part of the company’s growth, I realized that the element of collaboration, transparency and accountability could explain the rapid growth. When other people can see what we’re working on, we can get the necessary feedback to make the right decisions to position ourselves for sustained growth.

With all that said, Talixa Software & Service, LLC is offering a brand new service… one that I’m particularly excited to share. As far as social media is concerned, our community overall does a fantastic job of utilizing facebook to spread the word and market the products and services that are locally available. However, I have seen very few people utilizing twitter to its fullest potential. People like Elon Musk (Tesla, Space X, Boring Company) are utilizing twitter to accomplish unbelievable things and reach the masses, despite claiming that it is the most difficult platform to conquer.

I have been in the process of tearing the platform apart, breaking down every bit of information I can understand, in order to come up with a process to leverage our local networks and scale our community, catering to our strengths and capitalizing on them. Our business model has worked incredibly thus far, so I don’t intend to change it at its core. Talixa will only scale by helping our entire community do the same. For this reason, we have created twitter business packages to deliver exceptional value, and the reason we can offer the service at the most competitive price is because we’ve created a win-win scenario… a blue ocean.

If your business is on twitter, send us your twitter handle (e.g. @TalixaSoftware) and we’d be happy to give you some extra exposure through our twitter, even if you aren’t actively tweeting content. If your business isn’t on twitter, make an account right now! Otherwise, you’ll miss out on the huge potential to accomplish immeasurably more than you’d expect. If you’d like to learn more about our service, check out this link: bit.ly/2MuMPoF

If you have any questions or feedback about what we’ve ventured into, please reach out! We’d love for you to be a part of what we’re doing and reap the benefits alongside us.

Know Your Numbers

As a US based tech company, if someone were to ask which language we would use to be able to communicate with the most people around the world, “English” would probably be the expected answer. While English is second only to Mandarin Chinese (the most spoken language in the world), communicating nonverbally through science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) would serve as a more universally effective method. Regardless of whether the person on the other end of the conversation can speak the same language, anyone can relate through numbers.

In business, numbers are considerably more important. From margins to revenue and analytics, companies live and die by their numbers. Some of my favorite businesses have closed, not due to a lack of quality in their product or service, but because they failed to understand how to properly manage and utilize numbers. Sadly enough, companies with millions of dollars in revenue can still have little to no profit. Likewise, companies can often easily fail to deliver on the value proposition of their product or service.

As I continue to help Talixa develop and grow through refining our business processes and my own social media processes (specifically twitter for the time being), I constantly am looking to see what the numbers can tell me. Experimenting is one of the best ways to learn, because it leads to a wider range of experience. Individuals, businesses, and organizations can develop and grow simply by taking action upon an understanding that numbers are a priority.

Looking for advice based on anything I’ve said? I’m happy to give it, free of charge. Reach out using any of these methods:

DM Talixa on Twitter: twitter.com/TalixaSoftware
Message Nick on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nick-gordon
Email Nick: nick@talixa.com

Contagious Generosity

Social experiments are rather interesting. Looking back at my high school senior project from a number of years ago, I had almost finished preparing a research presentation about how collaboration, gratitude, and generosity are integral to the success of individuals, businesses, and organizations. As I stared at my screen, however, I felt as though something was missing. While the research was both accurate and interesting to me, I had my doubts that anybody else would care. Why would they? After finding out that I would be one of the first presenters, I quickly devised a plan that involved some scheming and a trip to the store.

From the start of my presentation, the other students could see that I brought a few shopping bags full of something, and it caught their attention. When the time came I unveiled the great mystery and passed around several different bags of candy to different groups of students. To go along with the candy were some very specific instructions. I not only gave each group the option to do with their candy as they pleased but also informed them that groups would go one at a time.

The first and last groups were the most interesting to watch, because the first group had the opportunity to set the trend of sharing their candy, while the last group had complete freedom to keep their own candy in addition to what was shared with them. Everyone willingly shared, and they ended up with a better variety of candies than they started with. As others presented in the following weeks, quite a number of them brought in more candy as well. I was pleased that a simple activity caused my presentation to become more memorable and effective.

In applying these principles to helping businesses develop and grow, I can’t help but relate this experience to what I see with Talixa. We hire people who offer something unique in certain areas and constantly fill in our gaps. The company has grown by focusing on serving others to the best of our ability, while delivering maximum value and doing the job the right way the first time. Our team has proven time and time again that our services greatly exceed the minimum requirements. I urge you to start implementing new ways to reach more people with your generosity, and prepare to watch your business grow.

New Year New Me?

After Christmas each year, many people begin a process of introspection in order to help determine their New Year’s resolution. While resolutions generally aim to improve oneself or a particular aspect of life, few actually survive very long. In my own experience, the promise of change on New Year’s Day was more of a novelty than something that I truly considered and took seriously. In all honesty, thinking about becoming a better person is vastly more fun than actually taking action to make it happen.

Regardless, most people admit that they do, in fact, want to improve in certain areas. My greatest criticism of New Year’s resolutions and phrases like “new year new me” comes out of the premise that in order to effectively develop and grow, people need to constantly focus and reevaluate. Quite frankly, bringing others along into the process to create a feedback loop and accountability serves an essential purpose as well. When change is important enough, it should be implemented immediately rather than wait around for the first of January. Further, if a person needs a holiday to change, then how genuine is that desire?

With that being said, if you have been thinking about how to change going into the new year, might I suggest that you start now, instead of waiting for Tuesday to roll around. Whether you want to make changes to improve your health, family, work, or something else, be mindful of why you really want to change, how you plan to get there, and what consequences will result from your success. Every morning presents a new opportunity to become someone different than you saw in the mirror yesterday. Be encouraged, and feel free to save and return to this article to refocus throughout the year.

Opportunity Awaits

Timing is everything, and managing time properly is extremely important as well. Tim Ferriss might say it best, “If you don’t have time, you don’t have priorities.” Assuming people read the big letters that make up the title of this content, they may be asking “Why all this talk about time and timing instead of opportunity?” The simple answer becomes quite clear by taking a look at the second word: Opportunity AWAITS.

Now take a moment to think of some opportunities that impact life. Whether it’s a first date, a new job, or a college acceptance letter, these opportunities, regardless of magnitude, contribute to the direction of a person’s life. Smaller opportunities can lead to greater opportunities, and over a short period of time, life can radically change. While it’s impossible to anticipate every opportunity, people can prepare to capitalize on any opportunity, good or bad.

As a company, our preparation is critical to the success of both our clients and our business. We know that success does not happen by accident, yet we also do our best to put the needs of others above our own. In reality, we understand that the value of education far outweighs a pushy sales pitch, so we spend our time and money educating ourselves and others who express interest in who we are and what we do. In doing so, we hope that the friends we meet along the way appreciate what we do for them and help spread the word.

If you have interest in learning more about why we continue to work with new businesses to develop and grow, simply click on the “Contact” tab and choose your preferred method. Opportunity awaits!

Limit[ed/less]

Over time, there is an infinitely small likelihood that I would be capable of talking about this blog individually to everyone who will ever be interested and invested in the content. As more content meets more people, time would inevitably run out. Fortunately, with the help of technology, here we are. The limitations of the internet are not the same as the limitations of my mouth, and building upon this foundation brings some game changing ideas.

While the internet provides much better potential to reach more eyes and ears, nobody wants to give up the benefits of using their mouth to speak. Nobody wants to upload their entire life to YouTube either. If humanity would become incapable of speaking, however, the way we think about even the smallest aspects of everyday life would change, similar to how the internet has impacted how we interact with the world. This leads into what we can learn  and apply to tech and business.

Regardless of individual circumstances, people have areas where they are presumably limited more or less than others. For instance, the fact that I am 6’4″ implies that my height is much less limited than most. But how would things change if we alter the conditions? You might be pleasantly surprised at the result if you consider questions like this in a variety of circumstances.

When applying this thinking to finances and business growth, the effect becomes clear. Say a business operates on $200,000 per year. What would be done differently (and why?) if the business had an annual operating budget of $100,000? How about $400,000? Putting businesses into these hypothetical situations will inevitably help foster a mindset of growth by overcoming presumed limitations in a practical way.

Circumstances will certainly change over time, for better or worse. By asking these questions now, you can gain a better understanding of why you might choose to take one course of action over another. Hopefully this entire process will help you more adequately prepare for your next big decision. After all, with preparation and execution people develop and grow.

“Best” Sales Tactic

As someone with a B.S. in Business Administration, I can say with confidence that most people with a considerable level of business education and experience would argue the importance of a top notch sales person. While sales is an incredibly important role to fill, I would suggest a more practical and important focus, particularly for small businesses. Investing available resources into ensuring the highest quality of a relevant product or service often yields far greater returns than overemphasizing hiring for a sales position and shifting the focus from what’s most important, creating value.

Rather than finding the “best” salesperson, why not concentrate on being the best at what you do by a considerable margin? Quality sells, and more importantly, paying attention to the issues that are relevant to clients and consumers will take your business to the next level. Too many times business owners fail to prioritize their endeavors properly, prohibiting optimal growth both short-term and long term.

How can your business implement this advice? Perhaps you were planning to hire too early. Nobody knows your own business better than you. Focusing more intentionally on bringing your best to the table will, in turn, yield a substantially better product or service allowing your business’ competitive advantage to sell itself.