Archives for February 2010

Entrepreneurial Rollercoaster

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Entrepreneurship puts you on an emotional roller coaster unlike anything else on earth.

You will flip from being convinced you will own the world, to being overwhelmed by doom and ruin, and back again. Over and over. And over.

There is so much uncertainty and risk around everything you are doing. Will the product ship on time? Will anyone use it? Will your competitor beat you to market? Will anyone invest in the company? And on and on and on…

The level of stress you are under as an entrepreneur magnifies those data points into extreme highs and lows at whiplash speed and huge magnitude

Sound like fun?

I have known entrepreneurs that well since I’ve been in this field for years now. I started coaching and mentoring CEOs and I really got to know what an entrepreneur’s traits are.

Most entrepreneurs have at least five of these traits.  Do you?

• Are you filled with energy?
• Does your mind get flooded with ideas?
• Are you driven, restless, and unable to keep still?
• Do you often work on little sleep?
• Can you be euphoric?
• Do you easily get irritated by minor obstacles?
• Can you burnout periodically?
• Do you act out sexually?
• Do you feel persecuted by those who do not accept your vision?

Don’t worry, but the reality is, this is what happens to stable entrepreneurs. This is one of the many areas I regularly coach & mentor entrepreneurs so they learn how to overcome and leverage each stage.

For more information on this topic, check out: The Emotional Roller Coaster of Entrepreneurs.

Make Your Office More Social

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Some of you will balk at the suggestion to make it easier to socialize at your office, but it will quickly help you develop culture. Provide your people with a BBQ that is always kept clean and ready to use with propane so people can cook casually for lunch or dinner. This kind of interaction builds culture in an authentic and relatable way. With even less effort, have your kitchen stocked with free fruit, cereal, various coffees, teas and more. You can even have the food delivered weekly by the grocery store. Whatever you do, make people feel at home and they’ll work longer and harder for you.

One of the businesses that I coach and mentor is a company called  I Love Rewards. Two years in a row they’ve been ranked as one of the top companies to work for in Canada.  They actually create rewards programs to help employers create great cultures – so they get it.

One of the things I love most about I Love Rewards is that they have an employee area called the Red Point Lounge. Every Friday at 3pm, you can go have a drink there.  Their company drink is called the Red Point.  They have these little crystal glasses with Red Point etched into it, and all the employees – I’ve got one too – carry a little card that has the recipe for a Red Point drink on it.  A Red Point is one and a half shots of Crown Royal, one and half shots of Sour Puss Red Raspberry, and 3 shots of Red Bull. You have a couple of those and you’re cranking out some extra work at the end of the day.

In addition, the folks at I Love Rewards don’t take themselves so seriously that they can’t have a little fun. They have white leather sofas in their office. They have a casual dress code that they call “First Date Dress Code.” If you wouldn’t wear it on a first date – don’t wear it to work.  They get culture.  No-one quits I Love Rewards.

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

Make Your Company a People Magnet

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Building a magnetic and infectious culture isn’t accidental; a company has to make a conscious decision to foster and grow it.  Once a company decides to actively cultivate culture, the process required to grow it is sort of like chasing the horizon: you never quite ‘get there‘ since it’s always moving, but the journey is wonderful.

In every industry, there are companies with fantastic cultures and others with terrible ones: Google gets it, Microsoft never has—but both are tech companies.  Both have about the same amount of money and both do roughly the same thing.  However, Google decided that they wanted their culture to differentiate them from the Microsofts out there, and they succeeded.

 

When you walk through Microsoft’s main campus, you can actually feel a cultural void.  Everyone at Microsoft sits in the dark in their private offices cranking out code without anyone around them to engage them in simple human interaction.  Google, on the other hand, has open space and whiteboards everywhere so people can put up ideas when the spirit moves them, and have unstructured discussion time.

As one of my first mentors, Greig Clark, the founder of College Pro Painters said, “Building a great company means creating something that is slightly more than a business and slightly less than a religion.” What Greig was saying was that culture has to be more than a passing trend or some ideal to which you pay lip service—like any aspect of culture outside of the workplace, it has to be lived, experienced, and grown in order to be sustainable. It has to be a cult.  Cult-ure.

Your Vivid Vision (formerly Painted Picture) should include ALL aspects of the type of culture you want so that you attract people who fit your culture and repel those who don’t.

Pic: Tommy Panetta

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

Working Backwards

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In order to make your dreams and objectives a reality, you absolutely have to work backwards. You have to first identify and articulate your goals, and then find the means to achieve those objectives. Instead of flying by the seat of your pants, reverse engineering makes it possible for entrepreneurs to align all of their daily tasks and operations around achieving overarching objectives.

Reverse Engineering is something I use all of the time now, but it wouldn’t be what it is today if I hadn’t attended an EO meeting in 1998.  At that lunch meeting, we were introduced to the concept of ‘visualization’ in sports, which is a technique athletes use. It involves imagining what success looks like in your mind, no matter what the sport, and executing based on that. Whether you’re a long distance runner imagining crossing the finish line or a basketball player who envisions taking it to the hoop, visualization helps you make your dreams a reality. This information, presented by an Olympic coach, further reinforced my belief that if you identify what you want the future to look like—whether for yourself or your organization—you’re going to make it a reality as long as you take the steps necessary to reach your goal. In business settings, calling this the ‘Vivid Vision (formerly Painted Picture)’ demonstrates to entrepreneurs that if you commit to sketching your vision for the future, you’re well-equipped to “reverse engineer” your own success.

Even with my earliest business ventures with College Pro Painters it was all about starting with the profit goal and working it all backwards to figure out what needed to be done to get there.  This is a core concept I use in all the CEO Mentoring I do today.

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Meetings Suck: Turning One Of The Most Loathed Elements Of Business Into One Of The Most Valuable

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We all know that meetings suck, right?

You hear it all the time. It’s the one thing that almost everyone in business can agree on.

Except it’s not actually true… 

Meetings don’t suck.

We just suck at running meetings.   

When done right, meetings not only work, they make people and companies better.

In Meetings Suck, world renowned business expert and growth guru Cameron Herold teaches you how to use focused, time effective meetings to help you and your company soar.

This book shows you immediately actionable, step-by-step systems that ensure that you and everyone in your organization improves your meetings, right away.

In the process, you’ll turn meetings that suck into meetings that work. 

In life, we always hear about people who’ve made huge decisions from their gut – without data.Today, I want you to make a decision, not only from your gut, but also from some data.  A decision that is only $12 per employee but will be priceless for your business.

Right now, your gut is telling you something is wrong with your company’s meetings.  You KNOW everyone complains about meetings.

People HATE going to them, they HATE running them, and they really have NO idea which meetings are truly necessary but they hold meetings simply because they think that is what they SHOULD do.

Even some of the smartest CEOs in the world complain about meetings – Elon Musk publicly told employees at Tesla & SpaceX to walk out of meetings if they weren’t being run properly.

I sent Elon a message saying that wasn’t going to fix anything – the key is to fix the root of the problem – NOT continue to ignore why meetings suck.

A Meeting is – Any phone call, video call or occasion where 2 or more people meet to discuss or work-through office topics.

Most employees on average spend 1-2 hours per day in meetings.

And likely, none of those employees – front-line staff or leaders – have had any training on how to attend meetings or participate in them, LET ALONE How to RUN THEM.

Consider this…

If the Average employee spends just 1 Hour per day in meetings – that’s 1/8th of their time.

If the Average employee earns $50,000 per year.

And they’re spending 1/8th of their time in meetings, that means you’re paying $6,250 dollars per year for just ONE employee to attend meetings.

The reality is, employees spend 1/8th of their time – and 1/8th of your company’s payroll – doing something they have literally NO idea how to do.

The Reality is…

95% of employees are booking & leading meetings – and they have NEVER been trained on how to run them.

95% of employees have had NO training on how to show up and participate in the meetings they attend daily.

And 95% of employees and companies have no idea what meetings are even necessary to hold.

Meetings CAN be hugely effective – IF you know how to run them

Meetings don’t SUCK, we just SUCK at running meetings. 

Investing $15 per employee – to help ensure the $50,000 a year you spend on them is an obvious and easy choice.

This could be the most impactful $15 you’ll ever spend and will save the company’s money, time and resources instantly.

Buying a copy of Meetings Suck for 100% of your employees and having them read it this month will have a huge impact on your company’s success.

book-5

Free PR: How To Get Chased By The Press Without Hiring A PR Firm

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Public relations has always been an essential part of doing business which is probably why you’re shelling out big money to an outside PR firm. But the truth is that you don’t need them. You already have all the necessary tools in-house to do as good a job as the so-called experts. 

Cameron Herold and Adrian Salamunovic have taught thousands of company execs how to exploit free media coverage and ditch these expensive, often ineffective outsiders. 

Cameron & Adrian have also built in-house PR teams, spent decades learning how to generate Free PR and how to leverage public relations to complement their sales and marketing strategy. 

In Free PR, you’ll learn how the media world operates while you gain invaluable insider knowledge and actionable advice on how to: 

  • Build your own in-house PR team
  • Provide effective interviews
  • Score great media coverage for free with just a few easy steps 

Landing public relations coverage for yourself and your company is a powerful tool to help elevate your personal brand. PR is easier to generate than marketing, PR is easier to leverage than marketing and PR is more cost effective than marketing. In other words, Public Relations is more critical than ever in growing your brand and your business. 

You’ve got more passion, commitment, a larger stake, and a deeper understanding of your business than any outside PR firm could ever have. So stop wasting money and take the reins yourself.  Learn the secrets to landing TONS of Free PR for your company.

What they’re saying:

“I think PR is the core for promoting any business. Public relations acquires customers! That’s what’s cool about this book.”

– Kevin O’Leary,  Shark on ABC’s Shark Tank

“The ultimate guidebook for those looking to get press, grow their brand, and get in front of the masses. Free PR is the roadmap you’ve been looking for.”

– Peter Shankman, Founder, Help a Reporter Out (HARO)

“Adrian and Cameron will show you the secrets of getting massive exposure for your business. This book is packed with actionable insights from two guys that actually know how to to do it.”

– Dan Martell,  Serial Entrepreneur & Investor (Intercom.io, Unbounce)

“I told Cameron to write the book on generating free PR. I’m excited to see that he’s finally sharing his secrets with the world. This is a must read for any entrepreneurial company and marketing team.”

– Verne Harnish, Founder of Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) and author of Scaling Up (Rockefeller Habits 2.0)

book-3-1

Vivid Vision: A Remarkable Tool For Aligning Your Business Around a Shared Vision of the Future

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Many corporations have slick, flashy mission statements that ultimately do little to motivate employees and less to impress customers, investors, and partners. 

But there is a way to share your excitement for the future of your company in a clear, compelling, and powerful way and entrepreneur and business growth expert Cameron Herold can show you how. 

Vivid Vision is a revolutionary tool that will help owners, CEOs, and senior managers create inspirational, detailed, and actionable three-year mission statements for their companies. In this easy-to-follow guide, Herold walks organization leaders through the simple steps to creating their own Vivid Vision, from brainstorming to sharing the ideas to using the document to drive progress in the years to come. 

By focusing on mapping out how you see your company looking and feeling in every category of business, without getting bogged down by data and numbers or how it will happen, Vivid Vision creates a holistic road map to success that will get all of your teammates passionate about the big picture. 

Your company is your dream, one that you want to share with your staff, clients, and stakeholders. Vivid Vision is the tool you need to make that dream a reality.

miracle-morning

The Miracle Morning for
Entrepreneurs: Elevate Your SELF to
Elevate Your BUSINESS

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READY FOR EXPLOSIVE GROWTH AS AN ENTREPRENEUR AND ACCELERATED SUCCESS IN THE REST OF YOUR LIFE?

A step-by-step guide to enjoying the roller-coaster ride of growth — while getting the most out of life as an entrepreneur. A growth-focused approach: The book is divided into three sections, which cover planning for fast growth, building a company for fast growth, and leading for fast growth. Each topic the author covers — from creating a vision for the company’s future to learning how to generate free PR for a developing company — is squarely focused on the end goal: doubling the size of the entrepreneur’s company in three years or less. A down-to-earth action plan: Herold’s experienced-based advice never gets bogged down in generalities or theory. Instead, he offers a wealth of practical tips, including: How to design meetings for maximum efficiency; How to hire top-quality talent; How to grow in particularly tough markets; How to put together a board of advisors — even for a smaller company; How even the busy entrepreneur can achieve a work/life balance.

READY FOR EXPLOSIVE GROWTH AS AN ENTREPRENEUR AND ACCELERATED SUCCESS IN THE REST OF YOUR LIFE?

Hal Elrod’sThe Miracle Morning has helped redefine the mornings and the lives of millions of readers since 2012. Since then, careers have been launched, goals have been met, and dreams have been realized, all through the power of the Miracle Morning’s six Life S.A.V.E.R.S.

THESE SIX DAILY PRACTICES WILL FUEL YOUR EFFORTS TO CREATE AND SUSTAIN POSITIVE CHANGE IN YOUR LIFE.

Now The Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs brings you these principles in a whole new light—alongside the Entrepreneurial Elevation Principles and the Entrepreneur’s Elevation Skills. These are essential skills that you need to create a successful business and personal life. Cameron Herold— Bestselling Author and a widely-respected expert on entrepreneurial mindset—brings his wisdom and insight to you using Hal Elrod’s powerful Miracle Morning framework.

DEVELOP A VISION FOR YOUR BUSINESS, AND BECOME THE INFLUENTIAL AND INSPIRING LEADER YOU WERE ALWAYS MEANT TO BE.

The principles and skills you’ll find in this book will help you to channel your passion and achieve balance in a remarkable new way. – Learn why mornings matter more than you think – Learn how to master your own self-leadership and accelerate your personal development – Learn how to manage your energy—physical, mental, and emotional – Learn how to implement Hal Elrod’s invaluable Life S.A.V.E.R.S. in your daily routine – And much more… You’re already an entrepreneur. Now discover how to take your success to the next level by first taking yourself to the next level. The Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs is your roadmap to masterfully building an empire with a powerful vision, utilizing your areas of personal genius, with the right team at your side.

Start giving your business and your life the very best opportunities for success, right now.

double-double

Double Double: How To Double Your Revenue And Profit In 3 Years Or Less​

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A step-by-step guide to enjoying the roller-coaster ride of growth — while getting the most out of life as an entrepreneur. A growth-focused approach: The book is divided into three sections, which cover planning for fast growth, building a company for fast growth, and leading for fast growth. Each topic the author covers — from creating a vision for the company’s future to learning how to generate free PR for a developing company — is squarely focused on the end goal: doubling the size of the entrepreneur’s company in three years or less. A down-to-earth action plan: Herold’s experienced-based advice never gets bogged down in generalities or theory. Instead, he offers a wealth of practical tips, including: How to design meetings for maximum efficiency; How to hire top-quality talent; How to grow in particularly tough markets; How to put together a board of advisors — even for a smaller company; How even the busy entrepreneur can achieve a work/life balance.