For years and years we were this little company most nobody knew about, selling some at-risk youth materials, promoting this new process called Professional Learning Communities and putting on a few conferences.  We weren’t on anyone’s radar, and to be honest, we really didn’t give a rip about what the ‘big guys’ were doing. I don’t mean Pearson and McGraw Hill, I mean ASCD, NSDC and Corwin Press type companies.  They were the big guys to us.

My opinion was if we were going to survive we needed to prove to the authors we were working for them, and that we were going to help them succeed and reach their potential and their dreams.  Every day we needed to prove ourselves to them.  Obviously we watched trade magazine and journals to learn the business, but we didn’t really track competition or try to emulate anyone.  We didn’t set our sites to be the next XYZ, and we really didn’t focus on what any of our so-called peers were doing.  We were just too dang busy paddling to keep the boat a float to pretend we were going to be better than someone else at their game.

As the years have passed we got better and better at what we do, and we decided who we really wanted to be by defining our mission, vision, values and goals.  We had proven success in building the Solution Tree model, and we used our successes to gain the respect of new as well as established authors.  But don’t get me wrong, I’m like a depression era baby.  I worry daily that we are vulnerable to our own weaknesses, that we may be luckier than good, and it can all end tomorrow. But I don’t worry a bit about what anyone else is doing.

I know this isn’t a quote blog, but here is one I like that clearly parallels our approach to business.

I don’t try to dance better than anyone else.  I only try to dance better than myself.

Mikhail Baryshnikov

Now I was a swimmer in high school.  A really good swimmer for La Porte High School.  But let’s be honest, it was La Porte, Indiana and we swam at the YMCA.  Our coach was a former football player who couldn’t swim.  But one thing Coach Tonsoni taught each of us was that we needed to swim faster than ourselves each week.  Set a new PR each race.  What a great life lesson taught by one of my heroes.

Today our peers seem to be attempting to emulate us.  Business plans are called “The Solution Tree Model’.  A major ‘true publishing’ company just announced their ‘new’ approach to helping schools improve by selling books, PD and events. Hmmm that sounds familiar.  Two others are using Solutions in their catalog titles.  Hmm haven’t we been calling our catalog Solutions since 2003.  Our color palate and typeface is now being duplicated, almost identically, by one of the major non-profits in their print ads.  A software company is starting a publishing division and offering PD, and has hired a former employee of Solution Tree to head their efforts.  Another PD company has just hired two of our former staff to lead their sales team and recruit our Authors and Associates away from just working with Solution Tree.  And the list goes on.

We are HONORED. Seriously HONORED.  We really don’t care what they do, who they hire, or how they look.  They can all try to be like us or anyone else.  In fact I will tell anyone and everyone exactly what we have done to get to where we are today.  Doesn’t mean I am going to tell them what we are going to do…and I don’t care what they have done, because it has been done.

Solution Tree doesn’t have an exclusive with a single Author or Associate, and we never will.  We will prove ourselves each and every day, and we will advance our authors work, so that their work helps educators.  Heck, that is why we do it…but you knew that.

When we bought the company in 1998 it had the same three basic revenue streams we have today:

1. Shipable items:  Books, DVDs, Pin #s, etc.
2. Contract work:  Professional Development dates, be it one day, long-term or video
3. Registration events:  Workshops, Institutes, Summits

Obviously the company looks drastically different from what it did fifteen years ago, but maybe the single greatest change we implemented was our Mission Statement.  When we started we didn’t have a viable mission statement, vision statement, set of core values, common goals, guiding principles or focused strategies for the company.  It wasn’t until 2004 that we actually figured out who we really were, wanted to be, and were able to articulate and embed throughout the entire company.

A vision statement to me is ‘why’ we do what we do.  A mission statement is ‘how’ we do it.  And the resources we create and produce are ‘what’ we do.  I will write about the Vision next week, but today is all about the ‘How’.

To advance the work of our authors.

That is it. That is our mission statement.  I know your first thought was probably.  “Wow, that took you 6 years to figure out.  Phew…slow on the uptake there Jeff.”  And you maybe right, but this Mission Statement is a bit deeper than at first blush.  Let me dissect this simple statement.

To Advance:  We create and use whatever ‘means’ possible to get the Intellectual Property (IP) of our authors into the hands of those educators who are looking for solutions to a particular problem or need.

the Work:  Our job is to get the work, the resources, into the hands of those educators.  This is not about making rock stars, though that has been an unintended consequence for many of the authors, but our focus is on their ‘work’.

of Our Authors:  We do not promote the work of an author we do not publish.  If we publish an author’s work, we do not promote the work he/she has produced earlier with another publisher. We do not hire consultants whom we have not been the publisher of their work.  We do not contract presenter at our events unless they are our author, or that they are an Associate of our Author who will be representing our author’s work.

We are loyal and committed to our authors.  We take great pride in the experts we have published and are quick to sing their praises, but again, it is not about them it is about their work.  And we give their work our undivided attention.

As my good friend Bill Ferriter, author of some outstanding books through Solution Tree and a GREAT Blog, Tempered Radical, summarized to me after a dinner in Australia where we were discussing Solution Tree, blogs, tech tools, and raising kids,

“So your primary goal is to identify people whose ideas hold the potential to improve schools on behalf of kids, so ‘advancing their work’ means ‘improving schools by giving a platform to the ideas that matter the most’. Not advancing ideas that you hope are going to make you some cash.” 

BINGO!  I hope someday that I can write half as well as he does.  Cash is good, in fact I plan to write about Cash Flow in a couple of weeks in a ‘Quotes Blog’, but it is not about cash.  It really isn’t.  Sure I want to live a nice life and provide for my family, and I want to offer a good secure job and fair salary to all the people at Solution Tree, but it can never be about profits, it has to be about people.  The people are educators, authors, staff, etc.  If you focus on the profits you will lose the people, if you focus on the people the profits will follow.  I’ll blog more about that someday soon.

To advance the work of our authors.  That is ‘how’ we do what we do.