Archives for December 2009

Step 1 To Landing Free PR

December 16, 2009 by admin

How do you get free PR?

Here is the first step:

Step 1: Know Your Angle

There are some important questions to ask yourself in order to determine your angle: What is your story idea, and how will you pitch it to writers?

When you started your business and tried to explainit to your spouse, your banker, or your parents, you probably told them a story about how your great idea came about. Those stories–whatever you were saying to them to convince them about your great idea–consisted of three or four angles that make your business stand out.

· “I’m going to be successful because I’m a female entrepreneur.”

· “I’m married and I run this company with my spouse.”

· “I’m going to become successful because I quit my job to do this.”

· “I dropped out of school to pursue this business idea.”

Any of those explanations is a potential story. When you read through newspapers and magazines from now on, be certain to read with two different “lenses”: one that reads for enjoyment, and one that identifies potential angles that reporters use to create interesting stories. By engaging yourself in this way, you’ll start to see potential angles everywhere.

Potential angles could include:

· Your sales approach or strategy

· Your advertising and marketing methods

· The systems you use to run your business

· Your product’s features

· How you use IT to run your business

· Your personal entrepreneur story

· Lessons from the edge when you almost lost your company

· Charity projects or efforts to give back to your community

· Stories about how you created your signature corporate culture

· Strategic alliances you’ve established

· Stories about specific employees

I’ll be posting a worksheet with more specifics soon. Subscribe to my RSS feed or follow me on Twitter to get notified when I do.

For more information on this topic, check out: Generating Free PR.

How To Be Successful in 2010

December 11, 2009 by admin

As a business coach, I believe the number one thing that every company can do in 2010 to be successful is focus. Pure and simple focus.

Too many employees and companies are off plan, stuck in email, wasting time in poorly planned meetings, and chasing after big shiny objects instead of getting hyper focused.

It’s about getting the critical few things done, not the important many. It’s not rocket science. Focused effort will beat everything else, hands down, every time. Prove me wrong 😉

I coach & mentor CEOs in 5 countries. And last year I was the top rated lecturer at MIT’s Entrepreneurial Masters Program. I’m certainly not the smartest guy out there but I can get more done than almost anyone due to one thing. Focus. And when I’m not focused I’m pretty useless just like everyone else.

Shortcuts = Greater Productivity

December 10, 2009 by admin

You may not have a deep love for technology, but you better get used to it. CEOs that resist changing will be left in the dust even quicker as we continue integrating tech into our lives. If the rate of change outside your business is greater than the rate of change inside your business, then you’re out of business. Period.

As a business mentor, I recommend you and your employees learn one tech shortcut each week. Here are shortcuts to Outlook, Gmail and Apple, but these are just the beginning. Shortcuts and quick, savvy web navigation have proven to be faster and increase office productivity.

If something tech related feels complicated or expensive, it probably is. Look for simple ‘tech hacks’ via bloggers and Twitter search to help you before you try and figure it out. ‘R&D’ (rip off and duplicate) should be your mantra when finding tech solutions to make your company faster.

This Is How Advertising Goes Viral

December 3, 2009 by admin

The TV ad here created by ReThink is BRILLIANT.

They consistently blow me away with the creative they produce. And this ad is just for Science World in Vancouver. A place where we all take our kids on weekends.

If you want your advertising to pop and get attention. Get outside of the box. Give us something to talk about. Give us something like this to send out on Twitter and put on Digg. This is stuff we’d forward to our friends.

Chris Staples and his team have another award winner with this one. How is your creative ?

For more information on this topic, check out: Building a World Class Culture.

Monkeys Looking Sideways

December 3, 2009 by admin

I threw out the corporate 360 Reviews years ago in favor of something I made up that I call ‘Monkeys Looking Sideways’.

Years ago at a seminar I heard a story about monkeys in a tree. When the monkey at the top looked down all he saw was smiling monkeys looking up. However, the monkeys below had an entirely different view.

It was at this seminar that I thought about doing 360 Reviews live and in front of the rest of the team. I always try to build teams that embrace healthy conflict and that want to build more trust. Well open communication like this takes trust up to an awesome level. I built this exercise so everyone on a team would know what everyone else thought and they’d hear it in person so they could grow together.

The Monkeys Looking Sideways exercise works like this.

Essentially it is a verbal, in person, group 360 feedback. Ideally get everyone out of the office for a half to a full day. It’s a great exercise to do on company or team retreats too.

1) Give everyone 1 pad of Post It Notes and a pen.
2) Do the review of the groups leader or CEO first.
3) Have each person write down the TOP 5 things that the person being reviewed:

a) Should continue
b) Should improve on

4) Then with the person being review staying in their seats, have one person at a time stand up and read out each post it note. Start with all the positives first and then they read the stuff to work on second.
5) The person being reviewed can only say thank you or ask a clarifying question. There is no debate.
6) Have all of the Post It Notes put up on a flip chart and give them to the person being reviewed so they can type them up and refer to them in their one-on-one coaching meetings with their supervisor over the year to keep working on improving.
7) Repeat the process for each person in the room.

This exercise done properly takes about 45 min per person but will be way more effective than the garbage that comes out of any online or 3rd party 360 Review Process.

In addition to using it in your company try it with an EO, YPO Forum or TEC/Vistage group on a retreat too. It’d be awesome…

Zappos Gets Culture

December 1, 2009 by admin

This post is from a guest blog post I wrote last week for McNeill Nakamoto a great Vancouver recruiting firm. Jessica Rozitis kindly let me re-run it here.

In October, I had the opportunity to visit the current cultural buzz factory ‘Zappos’ the billion dollar online shoe store.

I got a unique opportunity to have dinner with their CEO Tony Hsieh & their COO Alfred Lin. The following day which was Saturday they set up a 90 minute exclusive tour for 12 of us followed by an additional 90 minute behind the scenes Q&A session where they really opened up to us.

To start with – I was intrigued and a little bit cynical. Where they REALLY as good as all this press was saying ?

I’d been the Chief Operating Officer for 1-800-GOT-JUNK? during the heyday of the companies growth and cultural buzz. During the midst of my tenure I was lucky to be there when we ranked #1 Company to Work For in BC two years in a row by BC Business Magazine and then ranked #2 in all of Canada to Work For. I knew how the whole culture thing worked. I saw how we cranked it up – and I saw it go up and down at various points during our growth. We were having tours & Q&A’s of our company every Friday during those days too. Were they really this good ? What did they do differently ?

I’d also helped build a couple other companies over the years with awesome cultures. College Pro Painters was where I cut my teeth with culture, and Ubarter.com was where I had fun trying it the dotcom way. 1-800- GOT-JUNK? was where we nailed it.

So with Zappos, I just wanted to see if they were REALLY as good as all their press said (and I’ve had lots of experience getting Free PR too)…..

Here is what I learned at Zappos. I wouldn’t say I was blown away – I wasn’t – but it was damn good and I learned. I was and still am in awe of HOW DEEPLY rooted their CEO & COO both live the core values that eminate throughout the company. I have to go back on a weekday now too – to be fair – in an office that seats 700 people only about 20 were milling about. My bet is the energy is mind blowing when they bring me back.

Key Points I saw and learned:

—First 10 hires are the most important people to ever hire. They hire everyone else and they set the direction of the company culturally.

—Core values first…Make all your decisions based on them. They asked employees what the core values should be and they call each other on them daily.

—They grade employees on how they are living the core values in all roles, two times a year.

—They bring job candidates from the airport in a shuttle. And after they drop off the candidate they ask the driver for his thoughts on the candidates fit culturally – the interview starts at the airport.

—To figure out your company core values they really pushed to have us ask ourselves what are our own personal core values….the company values come out of those.

—Core values should be short phrases not just single words like “passion”

—They tell the employees that they are responsible for care taking the core values.

—Culture is like what makes a flock of birds work with out leaders as they all fly and turn as a group. It’s their cultural DNA.

—As their CEO Tony said – if you don’t fire people for not following core values they become a meaningless plaque on the wall (the values – not the people) 😉

—In 2003 they decided they wanted to be about customer service. So they cut a profitable model of drop shipping to REALLY focus on Customer Experience – and um – it’s working.

—Most important thing they’ve done is exceed expectations.

—Every year they print and give out a Culture Book (I got copies of 2008 & 2009) and it is only edited for grammar and spelling.

—Tony is obsessed with Happiness – and suggests we all read the “Happiness Hypothesis”

—I think their quirky decorating of all workstations is a little bit too cluttered, dusty, and could use a few days of junk removal – but if that’s the only negative I found then even a guy with all my A.D.D. could turn a blind eye.

These guys GET Culture. I only wish I could buy shares in the company. Too bad Amazon bought the whole company for over $900 Million a few months ago.

For more information on this topic, check out: Building a World Class Culture, Generating Free PR and Leadership at 100MPH.

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