Friday, February 5, 2010

BIGGBY COFFEE and Focus Magazine -- SBAM

Positive Energy Should be Your "PE" Ratio

By Bob Fish, CEO and Founder of BIGGBY Coffee. He is also sits on the SBAM Board of Directors. From SBAM’s member-only Focus on Small Business magazine.

Click here for original article

WARNING, WARNING, WARNING! This is an essay…it may be too serious for some, so I want to stop you right here if you’re not in the right frame of mind. But if you want to know my thoughts on PE ratio…here they are ( at your own risk!).

PE Ratio...the definition?

”The P/E ratio (price-to-earnings ratio) of a stock (also called its “earnings multiple,” or simply “multiple,” “P/E,” or “PE”) is a measure of the price paid for a share relative to the annual income or profit earned by the firm per share.” – Lifted from the wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PE_ratio.

What???? Fine and dandy if you’re a publicly traded company and what you are doing is serving Wall Street, but where in this definition is the word ‘people,’ whether it be ‘customers,’ ‘employees,’ or your ‘local community’? Where is the word ‘service’ or ‘quality’? These words are blatantly missing. Oh yeah, I understand that all these things are built into the numbers and should be a reflected in the final results.

But this is where I think things get lost. Are profits important? Absolutely! It is a measuring stick of success in a capitalistic society. In any good company – profit is reward for performance.

So if profit is the reward for performance, then profit itself cannot be performance, only its reflection. I think some companies out there have lost their way because they have become focused on profits and not on the performance that produces profits.

So what is the performance that produces profits? Well in my opinion, it begins with people and the investment into those people. This investment is evenly distributed between employees, customers, and the community you live and work in. If a company does not put a hyper conscious effort into each of these areas it will fail. It will be a charlatan, it won’t be believed or respected, or returned to.

In the end, it takes a person to sell and it takes a person to buy, and if a company does not invest in both sides of that equation then simply put, there will be no buyers and no sellers for that business.

Is the product important? Yes, but I think that almost goes without saying. Whether the product be a service or a widget or some combination of both, without a person nothing will happen. People or even a single person is what makes the difference. Think about it. Think about the last time you went out to eat, or went to the mall, or were in any retail transaction. Think about one that you can remember, one that you can remember that was a good experience. I bet you can pin that good experience directly to an interaction with a person – with a personality, and I bet you considered that a ‘positive’ experience.

We absolutely crave positive experiences, but generally they are very hard to find. But when we do, they impact everybody and it becomes contagious. The ‘giver’ feels good, the ‘recipient’ feels good, and they in turn spread that positive energy.

This then leads me to what I actually think PE ratio should be. PE ratio should be the Positive Energy ratio. I know, I know – it sounds a little ‘new age’ and ‘spiritual.’ But I come to this conclusion from honest experience. I have asked myself, “why does one business grow when others falter?” I can see similar products and services, I can even see that there is an investment in people, but what is the ‘x-factor,’ what is the variable that really sets one business apart from another. I’m telling you – it’s the Positive Energy. Even within our own system, those operators that have a higher P/E ratio inherently do better by leaps and bounds.

You can have all the tools, all the mechanisms, and all the people and it simply won’t be enough. Have you ever heard the words ‘smile, it’s contagious?’’ It’s true, and that’s what I am getting at here. Positive Energy output begets positive results, conversely Negative Energy output begets negative results. Think about it this way – think of Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion:

Third Law… Whenever particle A exerts a force on another particle B, B simultaneously exerts a force on A with the same magnitude in the opposite direction.

This law is often simplified into the sentence, “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.”

Let me say it again this way…”Every positive action has an equal and opposite positive reaction.” That’s right, your Positive Energy will come right back to you and if one uses that positive energy on employees, and customers, and community, it will all come back. And when it does, that’s when you will find a profitable company – with a good PE Ratio!

Click here for original article

3 comments:

Mike Killin said...

Could'nt Agree with you more!
I've been a sucessful sales person selling Grand format digital printing for 20 years now... I've always said to the new guys coming in..."focus on doing the best you can for your clients, Quality, Service, Price.., if you do that -the money will take care of itself!"

halfbakedmusings said...

I believe someone said all this rather simply. "Do unto others as you wish others do unto you."

Now, we need a lot of words in this day and age to convey simple, fundamental points. We can talk about equally strong opposite reactions and tell ourselves that scientific principles make it so. But the greatest truths can be said in very few words.

If you want to succeed in business, you need a lot of things going for you. But it is impossible if you do not treat those around you with positive energy.

Anonymous said...

So very true.