"You are what you repeatedly do. Excellence is not an event --
it is a habit."
Aristotle
Coker Tire
This week’s story is from Dan Miller’s 48 Days Newsletter. It makes my point really well that a person has to be
able to adapt to change.
Coker’s Tires was a traditional service center in Chattanooga when it was launched back in 1958. But over the
years the competition from the big-box retailers eroded their tire sales. In 1974 the owner’s son, Corky, took
over the small division that produced vintage tires – and added about 5% of the company’s revenues. Today that
vintage division makes up over 95% of the company’s business. Now the world’s largest supplier of vintage tires,
Coker Tires distributes in 40 countries and has made period tires and wheels for countless movies, including
recently The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Here’s a business that is growing at over 20% a year while other traditional tire stores are closing for lack of
business.
How many examples have you seen where this principle has been played out? If you sell washing machines and WalMart
moves in next door, they will put you out of business – or will they? What if you recognized that they sell
thousands of washing machines but don’t provide any repair service? Could that be a lucrative opportunity?
New housing construction has come to a screeching halt. If you are a home builder, you probably are ready to
throw in the towel – or should you? With more people keeping their homes and perhaps traveling less, remodeling
and addition work is skyrocketing. Can you realign your business to take advantage of the new trends?
If you have a Chrysler dealership and you lose your franchise are you out of business? Or are you released from
being controlled by an inefficient bureaucracy and can now take advantage of the fact that many people are looking
for a reliable used car rather than an untested new one off the assembly line. Will your profits disappear or grow
in moving from tiny predictable margins on new cars to the open possibilities or carefully selected used cars?
In the old classic book, Think and Grow Rich, author Napoleon Hill stated: "Every adversity, every failure,
every heartache carries with it the seed on an equal or greater benefit."
Do you believe that?
Comment here
Making Today's Advertising Work For The Future
Clay Campbell is bringing to this area Wizard of Ads Partner Michael
Keesee from Wichita Falls Texas. Michael makes The Pendulum
presentation that predicts trends and cycles. He will show what the
future of advertising will be like.
Michael Keesee will show this dramatic presentation on:
Monday, June 1st - Murray Chamber of Commerce, from 12 noon - 1:15pm
Tuesday, June 2nd - Marshall County breakfast at Ponderosa in Draffenville, 7:30 - 8:45am
Tuesday, June 2nd - Almost Free Seminar at the Pasta House in Paducah, KY, 12 noon - 1:15pm
*It's Almost Free because you have to buy your own lunch or breakfast!
Perhaps now would be a good time to have a complimentary meeting with a Wizard of Ads Partner. Links to their websites and blogs are listed down the right side of The Wizard Times. Hundreds of their articles with free insightful advice can been seen at www.americansmallbusiness.com 2009 would be a great year to attend a class at the Wizard Academy 21st Century Business School in Austin Texas. What is the Wizard Academy?
See you next week.
Clay Campbell
Wizard of Ads
PS. Need help to attract more customers and grow your business?
