Archives for April 2014

Check Your Modesty At The Door

 

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When a lot of people are envisioning their future and that of their company, they often downplay their potential successes to avoid coming off as conceited or pompous.

I am not one of those people.  Nor should you be.  However, to be clear, I keep my ego in check when describing my Vivid Vision (formally Painted Picture) too.

When I put together my Vivid Vision, I see myself as very successful. My speaking calendar is full, my roster of clients has grown and includes really awesome start ups, as well as large companies.  Companies beg me to sit on their boards, heck, even my home life is balanced and amazing.

If you know me personally, you know I am not a cocky, arrogant braggart—so why all the sudden bravado?

Because having big dreams means setting lofty goals. And lofty goals ensure success, even if you don’t quite achieve them. Before you laugh, let me explain.

If you picture yourself in a sparkling, modern new office, or see your image on the cover of Fast Company, you’ve set the bar pretty high. You’ll need to work hard to get there. You might even fall short, but undoubtedly the effort you put in trying to make these visions a reality will have you moving in a positive direction.

What’s the benefit of picture your company growing by a steady 10% a year? Or envisioning a future where you’ve hired 10 new employees? You can achieve these ‘goals’ with just a small bit of effort.

Some might call grand visions of success as egotistical. I call it confident optimism. If I had suggested three years ago that I would be where I am now (a thriving speaking businesses, an impressive stable of clients, phenomenal digital content sales) I would have come off as conceited to a lot of people.

I’ll admit this has been a hard sell to clients in the past. When I try to get them to write down some of these lofty goals in their Vivid Vision, be it appearing on a TV commercial or landing Fortune 50 clients, they balk. “People who read this will think I’m delusional,” they say.

“Let them!” I reply. History is littered with doubters who scoffed at big dreamers. It never stopped visionaries like Henry Ford or Sam Walton. In fact, I bet it motivated them.

Do you think Steve Jobs lets modesty temper the vision he sets out for Apple? He’s famous for sharing his far out visions, and then creating an environment where achieving them is the only option. Engineers or managers that think his ideas are unattainable simply don’t last.

So forget the humility, you need to pump yourself up in your own Vivid Vision. If you aren’t going to do it, who will?  And again, you aren’t conceited, you’re simply describing the future state of yourself and your company, 3 years out…

Vision without execution is hallucination, once it’s written, here are some tools to make it happen (available digitally or as DVDs)…

The Glengarry Glen Ross Guide to PR

In the now famous scene from the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, Blake, a high- performing salesman played by actor Alec Baldwin, dresses down a team of under-performing salesmen complaining about their leads.16b

 

Towards the end of the profanity-laced lecture, Blake says, “These are the new leads. These are the Glengarry leads. And to you, they’re gold. And you don’t get them. Why? Because to give them to you is just throwing them away. They’re for closers. I’d wish you good luck but you wouldn’t know what to do with it if you got it.”

Blake’s point is that sales is a mindset. And if you don’t have the right mindset, all the leads in the world won’t help you.

While you might not run your PR team like a boiler room, there’s something to be learned here. When it comes to making contact with members of the media, nothing is worse than not knowing what to do with it.

The cure? Being prepared.

Have more than one plan

Everybody has objections. That means reporters will too. Sometimes a reporter will say your story isn’t a good fit for the publication. Other times he or she might not find the angle you’re presenting to be compelling.

This is where it’s key to think of PR as a sales function rather than a marketing function. Your and your team’s job is to overcome these objections and persuade the reporter to pick up the story.

The best way to overcome objections when you’re pitching your content to a writer is to plan ahead and have at least two to three potential story angles to sell.

That way, if the reporter doesn’t like the first angle, or you can’t make that first angle fit the medium’s particular needs, you can sell the writer on a second story angle while you’ve got him or her on the phone.

Get their attention

Once you’ve piqued a reporter’s curiosity with the right angle, you want to capture his or her attention. This means helping the reporter imagine what could be when it comes to your story.

Come up with a catchy title like, “An Entrepreneurial Resource You Keep in Your Back Pocket.” Exercise caution, though. You’re not writing the actual title for the writer; you’re coming up with a headline that’s creative and compelling enough to catch the writer’s attention so you can pitch your angle about the story you want him or her to write.

For each angle or title, list four to five key bullets to help the writer craft a story. Some examples that correspond to the sample title I just used include:

  • Entrepreneurs and their teams have scheduled access to Cameron Herold monthly.
  • They get access to his skills at one-tenth the cost of hiring someone with his skills full-time.
  • They get access to him whenever they need him for a quick call or email. Just like having him in their back pocket.

Once on the phone, share these points with the reporter to help him or her visualize the story flow and see why it would be useful to write about. In this way you present a compelling “product” for the reporter to buy—and closing shouldn’t be hard, after all the price is right, free.

Leverage their interest 


While it’s nice to get your story out there, it can be a wasted opportunity if you don’t leverage the opportunity. In the end, PR is simply a way for you to get the word out about your company and product. 
The media won’t know what you want them to say. You need to guide them. List five key bullets about your company that you will mention to the media every time you interact, regardless of the story angle you’re pitching. For example, here’s what I have for me:

  • Cameron Herold has clients on 4 continents.
  • He’s done speaking events in 28 countries, on five continents.
  • He coaches 14 entrepreneurs monthly.
  • He was the COO for 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, growing the company from $2 million to $106 million in six years.

By constantly pounding home these points, you’ll ensure consistency of message for your brand every time you get a story out there. Essentially, it’s free advertising. And who doesn’t love that?

A Tale of Two Companies

 

If Google’s motto is “Don’t Be Evil”, Microsoft’s must be “Only Be Boring.” They’re two of the biggest companies in the world, compete in basically the same space but couldn’t be any different.

Long ago, Google made a conscious decision to be defined by an amazing corporate culture, while (seemingly by default) Microsoft adopted a stogy, top-­‐down hierarchy that emphasized stockholder value over innovation.

And now, both companies seem to be reaping the rewards of those decisions. Google attracts the world’s best engineers, computer scientists, marketers and innovative thinkers while Microsoft sadly continually plays catch-­‐up and spends oodles of cash fighting the public’s perception  of its old-­‐school, law firm‐esque culture. Remember, I’m only talking about culture here. Microsoft still makes some great tools and products, and Google still fails in spots.

One need just walk through their respective offices though, to see the difference. Google’s offices are world renowned for their innovation. Open spaces, sleep pods, random meeting areas to foster collaboration and informal discussion, heck, they even have coffee bars that put Starbucks to shame.

A walk through Microsoft’s main campus is like looking in on a photo shoot for Boring Office Monthly magazine. Grey or beige walls, terrible dark lighting, private offices everywhere. You can actually feel the cultural void.

And it’s not just funky furniture or color pale,e that defines Google’s culture. Senior managers have gone out of their way to make the entire company one big R&D department. Their offices boast white boards everywhere, lest an employee not have somewhere to jot down an idea when it occurs to them.

They also allot a he:y amount of paid time for employees to work on pet projects. Some employers might recoil in horror at this idea, but Google has seen nearly half of its highly profitable products come out of this practice, including Google Earth. Heck, the company sponsors a foundation that’s stated mission is to bring about radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. Who doesn’t want to work at a place like that? And all this is on top of amazing stock options, day care, ample vacation time and other goodies.

Meanwhile, Microsoft employees sit in dark offices pounding out code for the latest Band-­‐Aid patch to its spreadsheet so:ware. Company executives might argue that undertaking the important work of maintaining the so:ware the runs the world doesn’t leave a lot of room for frivolous extras, but that sounds like the defensive mantra of a dying breed.

The company has grown so large and layered, its culture of bureaucracy and aversion to innovation so ingrained, I really fear for its long-­‐term survival.

One of my mentors, Greig Clark (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.” Simply put, Google understands that, and Microsoft doesn’t. Which course are you on?

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

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.

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

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)

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

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

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.

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.