Larry King is “retiring” – which is code for he has been forced to retire.

The legend of talk television has suffered several years of bad ratings and the powers that be have decided that it’s time for him to hang up his hat.

The big debate amongst media pundits is 1) who will replace him at CNN, and 2) should CNN even bother to replace him.

I mention this story because it is precisely this kind of dilemma that many business owners face.

Here is the gist of the problem.

Larry King’s unbiased, politically neutral, approach to interviewing guests during prime time just does not attract viewership and ratings. And in the media business, no ratings = no revenues.

What’s useful to keep in mind is that Larry King himself has not changed that much. He’s still sharp, witty, charming, etc..

What has changed is the viewing audience.

If you look at prime time talk show ratings, what “sells” are talk shows led by hosts that are extremely liberal or extremely conservative.

Now you could argue that CNN’s core expertise of neutral reporting is better for the American public that say Fox’s right wing slant or MSNBC’s left wing slant.

But the ratings show, viewers during prime time don’t want neutral politics. They want heavily biased politics. It is what the market wants.

As a ceo coach, I constantly reinforce the following message to my clients:

“Your opinion is interesting but not relevant.”

Trust me this is not what many successful, highly accomplished entrepreneurs want to hear from their executive coach.

The only opinion that matters is the opinion of the customer. And in the media business, there are two “customers” – viewers and advertisers.

All else being equal, advertisers only want to advertise on shows with viewers. Prime time viewers just don’t want to watch Larry King (and presumably anyone like him).

The problem is CNN doesn’t know how to be wildly biased to the left or right. They’ve been doing neutral reporting for decades. They are extremely good at it. But it no longer sells.

So what should CNN do in this case?

This is not an easy question to answer.

The short answer is they need to change from their current strategy. It’s very clear its not working.

The wrong answer is to stay the course and watch ratings slide even further.

From a practical standpoint, since CNN is not good at highly partisan programming, they should start small and experiment with a variety of approaches to figure out what’s going to work.

I call this “cracking the code” in the marketplace – the act of finding the right combination of customer and offering that really just clicks.

If it were me, I would have launched several efforts at more partisan programming in low viewership time slots — a place to experiment, take some risks, and find a model that works.

It would have been to have started this process a few years ago. Now the whole world is watching and CNN doesn’t have a proven winner (even in lower profile time slot) to field in Larrry King’s place.

CNN has some catching up to do.

In your business, you need to be brutally honest with yourself. Are you selling something that your customers fundamentally no longer want to buy?

If you are, you’d better stop and find something else to sell instead.

Thriving in a recession is matter of a few simple principles (in this case, sell what customers want to buy). Yet many business owners let pride, ego, security, and fear get in the way of making the tough call.

It’s been a while since my last post as I took some time off to enjoy the birth of our third child over the holidays and to manage a recent doubling of my client base.

In looking at my clients, I’ve made a few observations which I’d like to point out — observations that tie into the current Olympic games as you’ll see in a moment.

Roughly half of my clients grew around 80% – 100% in 2009. I have two clients pacing at 200% – 350% growth in 2010 (from low 7 figures to high 7 figures/low 8 figures).

In looking at my clients growth and the growth in my own business, I’ve noticed a distinct pattern that few people talk about.

The people that achieve this kind of sales and profit growth in this kind of economy are, well, not normal people.

It’s not that they exceptionally talented (though they definitely do have their talents).

Rather, it’s that they are so freakin stubborn!

Seriously.

Yes, in my humble opinion, this one trait is arguable as important, if not more important, than talent, IQ, or EQ.

Here’s why.

The persistently determined will always find a way to win.

I’ve been watching the Olympics these past few days and it has been utterly fascinating to watch the human drama and psychology of what is normally considered an athletic event.

You see it is not the most physically gifted athlete that wins Gold at the Olympics. It is the most mentally tough and determined that does.

When they stakes are high, when you have dreamed for your entire life for the next 30 seconds… it comes down to who is able to relentless focus at the task at hand.

My wife loves, just absolute loves, to watch the figure skating events. I loved how the Chinese pairs skaters FINALLY won Gold after an 18 year career, lots of world championships, but no Olympic medal… heck, they even came out of retirement at the age of 31 and 36 to do it!

And to boot, to win Gold that had to end a 46 year Olympic Gold win streak amongst the Russians… and they did. Amazing!

They wanted gold REALLY BAD. And they got it.  I love it.

In more recent drama, I’ve been watching how in the men’s figure skating event, the Russian skater is totally talking smack to the American skater.

Basically, the Russian guy (currently first place) is apparently famous for landing quad jumps – 4 rotations in the air or something along those lines.

The American (currently 2nd place) has opted to not include any quads in his program – he has difficulty hitting them consistently and last time he did one he broke his foot. So he’s aiming to hit everything else perfectly.

So the Russian is totally trying to psych the American out… in as polite a way as possible (it is figure skating after all) he’s basically calling the American a wuss for not throwing a quad.

We’ll see who’s mentally tougher, but I gotta say the Russian as annoying as he is I think has the edge. We’ll see who wants it more tomorrow.

If you’re watching the Olympics, I definitely encourage you to pay attention to the whole psychological aspect of the games. It really is quite instructive and can be applied to your business.

I was in Baltimore last week speaking to members of the CEO Club of Baltimore. I noticed several people in the room were have great sales and profits in 2009. Today’s video explains what these companies had in common and how they were successful in deciding to NOT participate in the Great Recession.

I’ve had an incredibly busy month these past few weeks. Tis is the season that many new clients of mine are making their strategic and operating plans for 2010.

I am doing the same for my business – thinking through what went right this year vs. what went wrong. What I liked vs. what I disliked. The two are not always the same.

Yesterday, I finished up an offsite meeting with a new client where I brought up the subject of “The Ugly Win”.

An ugly win is one where you reached your goal, but the process was neither pretty, nor elegant, and definitely not stress free or effortless.

While more than half of my clients are having their best year ever – revenue and profit growth of 40% – 85%. Others are working like crazy to just eke out flat growth vs 2008 — these are what I call ugly wins.

Ugly wins are certainly are definitely better than the “ugly loss” – where you failed and you looked like a bozo in the process (been there, done that… though fortunately not this year).

The reason I bring up the ugly win is because even though its a win, it implied an underlying problem that could get worse if ignored.

My new client summed it up best. We’ll increase sales and profits this year, but it was absurdly difficult, nothing we wanted to go right went right, and we were just reacting the whole time.

As a business coach, my advice was simple.

First, take the win however ugly it might have been.

Second, recognize the ugly part of the win for what it was… strategically the business was somehow focused on the wrong opportunities which made life very difficult.

If you’re having a year that’s shaping up to be an ugly win year (and especially if it’s going to end up an ugly loss year), it’s terribly important to step back, consider what happened, and take a better, more effective approach next year.

If you’ve had an ugly year (whether it was a win or a loss), whatever you do, don’t just blindly repeat what you did this year in 2010. Find the flaws and fix them.

More details on how, coming soon. Stay tuned…

I received the following comment from reader David Oliver the other day. He made a really important point that I totally agree with.

“You know what I was thinking one day is how so many people need to develop their capacity to find the good/opportunity in situations. It’s really like developing a muscle. It takes practice, work and time.

People who don’t do well, always see the bad and the lack of opportunity (regardless of the economy).

People who do well, see the good and the opportunity.”

In the nearly 30 speeches I’ve given this year on profiting from this recession, there’s always a key moment where people in the audience get their “ah ha” moment.

This moment occurs when I help them notice the opportunities in their business that were “hiding” in plain sight.

Here is one example I use to make this point:

In an economy that is shrinking, where there are fewer customers who are spending less money, there is only ONE mathematically possible way to GROW your business. What is this approach?

Simple. Take business away from your competitors.

When you’re hungry, but the size of the pie is shrinking. You eat more by getting a bigger slice of the pie. It is the only way to grow in a shrinking economy.

Think about it. Most of your competitors have pulled back and are expecting to lose business. I say you don’t disappoint them!

They are doing less advertising, less marketing, and less selling.

They are cutting back on customer service to save money.

It costs less and less money to market your business as advertising rates have dropped like a rock. Your competitor’s best customers that used to be impossible to lure away, are getting more dissatisfied with each passing month (e.g,, who has been really happy with their stock broker the past 12 months?)

This make is a lot easier to “steal” your competitor’s best customers.

Sometimes it takes a business coach to point out the obvious that everyone seems to be overlooking.

Yet if you talk to most entrepreneurs and their salespeople, they spend all their time focusing on the severity of the recession — and virtually no time on finding and exploiting their competitor’s weaknesses.

They are ignoring this opportunity that is sitting in front of them “hiding” in plain sight.

My question to you is are you doing the same?

In a given week, how much time do spend thinking about how bad the economy is?

How much time do you spend on researching what customers want right now and what your competitors aren’t doing right?

The money in this economy is not being made by watching CNN.

It is being made by getting closer to the customer in your marketplace and figuring out how to crush your competitors.

I received the following comment from reader David Oliver the other day. He made a really important point that I totally agree with.

“You know what I was thinking one day is how so many people need to develop their capacity to find the good/opportunity in situations. It’s really like developing a muscle. It takes practice, work and time.

People who don’t do well, always see the bad and the lack of opportunity (regardless of the economy).

People who do well, see the good and the opportunity.”

In the nearly 30 speeches I’ve given this year on profiting from this recession, there’s always a key moment where people in the audience get their “ah ha” moment.

This moment occurs when I help them notice the opportunities in their business that were “hiding” in plain sight.

Here is one example I use to make this point:

In an economy that is shrinking, where there are fewer customers who are spending less money, there is only ONE mathematically possible way to GROW your business. What is this approach?

Simple. Take business away from your competitors.

When you’re hungry, but the size of the pie is shrinking. You eat more by getting a bigger slice of the pie. It is the only way to grow in a shrinking economy.

Think about it. Most of your competitors have pulled back and are expecting to lose business. I say you don’t disappoint them!

They are doing less advertising, less marketing, and less selling.

They are cutting back on customer service to save money.

It costs less and less money to market your business as advertising rates have dropped like a rock.

Your competitor’s best customers that used to be impossible to lure away, are getting more dissatisfied with each passing month (e.g,, who has been really happy with their stock broker the past 12 months?)

This make is a lot easier to “steal” your competitor’s best customers.

Yet if you talk to most entrepreneurs and their salespeople, they spend all their time focusing on the severity of the recession — and virtually no time on finding and exploiting their competitor’s weaknesses.

They are ignoring this opportunity that is sitting in front of them “hiding” in plain sight.

My question to you is are you doing the same?

In a given week, how much time do spend thinking about how bad the economy is?

How much time do you spend on researching what customers want right now and what your competitors aren’t doing right?

The money in this economy is not being made by watching CNN.

It is being made by getting closer to the customer in your marketplace and figuring out how to crush your competitors.

In my last post, I talked about the importance of mental toughness as a key to profiting from this recession.

I guess I struck a cord as many of you emailed me your comments. Thanks Danielle, Brandy (Portland, OR), and Gustavo (Buenos Aires, Argentina), for your comments.

Given the interest in this topic, I thought I’d elaborate further on this topic.

Being absurdly persistent in the face of adversity and change is essential to surviving and even thriving in the face of adversity.

However, it’s equally important to realize there’s a very thin line between being absurdly persistent and being absurdly stupid.

Let me explain.

Absurdly persistent is about never giving up on your goal.

Absurdly stupid is about never giving up on HOW you achieve your goal.

The right balance is simple. Never quit on your goals, but be willing to be flexible on how you reach your goal.

This may seem like a subtle distinction (and it is), but it’s a profound distinction.

If you are determined to have your business survive and grow in this recession, that’s persistence.

But if HOW you run your business is clearly NOT working, it’s frankly a bit stupid to stick with an approach that clearly isn’t working.

If you have the wrong approach, it’s an incredible waste of precious resources (time, money, energy) to be persistent. It’s smarter to conserve resources, re-group, and take a different tack instead.

As one famous American General said in World War II, we aren’t retreating. We’re charging ahead in a different direction.

What makes this difficult for many people is the emotion turmoil that comes from the harsh realization that what you’re doing is not working. It takes being brutally honest with yourself to come to that realization.

Let me share a personal story.

The very first company I started in 1998 failed.

It was the middle of the dot com boom, and I had this idea to create what today would be known as a social network website.

It would allow people to connect with old classmates, family members, and friends. You could meet new people, automatically identify common interests, share updates, photos and more.

If this sounds a lot like Facebook, that’s because it was virtually identical to facebook except I started the company 11 years ago.

In the first 90 days, the site grew like crazy with 0 users on Day 1, and 60,000 people using the system on Day 90.

One of my competitors, a company called eGroups had just gotten bought by Yahoo — and would become what is now known as Yahoo Groups.

All the other big Internet sites bought up my competitors, with one exception – a company called About.com.

They had noticed our rapid growth and we started conversations about having them buy out me and my partner. We were probably 24 years old, and neither of us had ever cut an 8 figure deal.

So we brought on a professional negotiator to negotiate for us. He used to negotiate trade deals for 4 different US Presidential administrations (Nixon, Carter, Ford, and Reagan). He was also the former CEO of a billion dollar company.

In short, he was a heavy hitter.

We floated the price tag of $10 million in front of About.com and they didn’t blink.

We got so excited by all the zero’s involved in that deal. Keep in mind, this was before I learned the lesson that a deal ain’t done until the check clears the bank (and you can guess when I learned that lesson).

The deal ultimately fell through and boy were we depressed. It was naive of us to get excited, so when the let down came, it came hard.

When the dust settled, I took a brutally honest look at our business (which was a pretty generous term for it).

Without About.com out of the picture, and all the other big Internet portals having already bought up our competitors, there was nobody we could sell our fledgling business to. So, we had to make some tough decisions.

Internet advertising was in its infancy and not a very viable revenue stream for a small company. We had no revenue (this was back when no revenue didn’t seem to bother anyone… LOL).

There was no obvious buyer in sight.

We didn’t have the funding to continue forever… certainly not for another 10 years until Social Media would become the rage.

And after several sleepless nights, I realized this this particular approach to achieve my goals was not going to work.

I remember my thoughts, feelings, and emotions in making that decision.

The first emotion was complete and utter DENIAL.

How could our “business” be worth potentially $10 million dollars one day, and the next day not be worth anything?

While the facts were pretty clear, I remember not being able to see the obvious objectively. I was massively and overly emotionally involved. I had given up a six figure job as a 23 year old to start this business.

I worked until 5am in the morning every day for over a year.

My wife and I cut way back on our living expenses. We were so frugal that we didn’t buy fresh vegetables at the grocery store, we bought canned ones.

But, we couldn’t even afford to buy Del Monte canned vegetables and bought the store brands instead to save that extra 5 cents per can.

In short, we sacrificed a lot to make this business work. And I have to tell you, it was not easy coming to terms with the fact that the business was not going to work.

Once I realized this, it took me over a week to tell my wife the bad news. I was too chicken to tell her that after all her sacrifices, I had let her down. That wasn’t a good week for me.

But despite the emotional turmoil, eventually logic kicked in and I realized it was irresponsible and stupid to continue down a path that wasn’t going to work. And I shut down the company and ultimately moved on.

Looking back on that experience, I realized that going through the entire emotional cycle of denial, anger, feelings of failure, and finally acceptance would become useful later in my career.

I now recognize the emotional signs that invariable come about when one hits a major setback in business.

Not many people have the opportunity to go through this process, and having gone through it early in my career has allowed me to handle “near death” business setbacks in my own business and those of my clients in stride.

I remember two years after that experience, I was running a $20 million division of $100 million a year public company. I remember when the company hit one of these unexpected “death blow” caliber setbacks. The CEO at the time was pretty much shell shocked by the setback.

Rather than taking immediate action, he spent nearly 6 months in denial… before realizing serious action was required. Once he took action, he took meek action, rather than the bold action the setback required to deal with it effectively.

In hindsight, I realized this otherwise very successful executive had never dealt with and mastered the emotional turmoil that comes from such a traumatic and unexpected set back.

This is a mistake that I hope you won’t make in your business. In the face of major problem in your business, the solution required is often equally dramatic.

If the recession has delivered a near death blow to your business (or parts of it), I can tell you right now that doing more of the same probably isn’t going to cut it.

Dramatic problems, often require dramatic solutions.

The key is to realize that your emotions WILL creep into the decision making process. And to be aware enough of this trend, so that you can keep your emotions from negatively influencing or delaying making the right decision for your business.

There’s a thin line between being persistent and being stupid. Just make sure your emotions don’t push you to being on the “stupid” side of that line.

In a recession, most business owners obsess about what’s wrong with their market, customers, company, and life. The natural inclination is to focus on your problems and how to make them go away.

While this is certainly one approach, it must be balanced with the exact opposite — focusing on what’s still working.

What part of your business is gliding along effortlessly despite you ignoring it?

What type of customer is as loyal as ever?

Which product keeps selling no matter what you do (or don’t do)?

In short, what segments of your business are still working well. And what can you do to focus on that and do what’s working more deliberately.

In a declining market, with limited resources, the only way to win (and not just survive) is through very carefully chosen focus. Pick and choose your battles very wisely because you can’t find too many of them at the same time.

This is a very insightful 20 minute talk given by Tony Robbins at TED (the big conference of the brightest, most insightful minds that get together and share ideas).

The talk is titled:
Why we do what we do, and how we can do it better.

Watch for the funny moment with Al Gore in the first row of the audience.

And take notes (trust me on this one).