This was not my brainchild, I read about in being used by Toyota. They have suggestion cards in every area of the plant. Whenever an employee submitted an idea or suggestion, he received a coupon for a free Whopper at Burger King. If the idea saved the company money or made the company money, they received some monetary compensation based on a predetermined formula. Questions would be presented to the employees to target a current problem. In an experiment at another company, the lowest paid level employees were assembled and a problem was presented to them. They were encouraged to voice suggestions, all suggestions were recorded and evaluated by management. Stupid and crazy ideas were encouraged. They found that this level employee had a better insight to the problems than management. The bottom line is that we all need a different set of eyes to help us see the trees for the forest.

Always being a one-man operation, I was aware of the value of outside directors that larger companies have. I have always had doubts about the value of a consultant (guru from afar). How to find a good one even if I could afford one. Therefore, what I did was get 4-5 friends that were also small businessmen in different areas and formed a "board". We did not do a legal situation, but an informal board of directors for each other's business. We met once a month. Since in most small businesses the wife is an owner too, they were also part of the meeting. This did two things, made them feel more of a part and kept the meeting off girls and booze. We started the meeting by going around the table telling of our successes that month. We then went around the table one at a time and told of a problem that we had. We would then have a round table discussion looking for a solution. As each of us saw things from different points of view, many solutions were given to the member. It was up to him to use what he thought best. Another benefit was that when any member traveled he was looking for ideas in five different industries instead of just his industry. Over the years we solved many problems and all of the members were more successful than if they had been on their own.

In Portland looking at Automatics, I met a man that with 9 other businessmen were having trouble borrowing money. They started putting $50 each per month into a account. The idea was to loan it to each other at a low interest. Soon they upped the amount to $100 per month and slowly started loaning it to friends at a higher interest. They also invested the unused in securities. In a 10 year period they had amassed $400K. They then decided they needed to get a legal enity together, I'd suggesst you start with the legal enity.

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