Zane Safrit

Radio Show Guest: Mark W. Johnson, author of Seizing the White Space: Business Model Innovation for Growth and Renewal

Mark W. Johnson shares an hour of his time to discuss his new book: Seizing the White Space: Business Model Innovation for Growth and Renewal.

If ever there was a need for a book like Mark's, now may be it. Our economy lags from the lack of...growth and renewal in businesses, large and small, and in almost* every industry. And the knowledge, tools and profiles he shares in his book take a great big step in delivering actionable steps any business, any size can take to...create seize that white space, create new business models that allow for growth and renewal.

Here's what Reed Hastings, founder and CEO of NetFlix, wrote about Seizing the White Space:

..Johnson gives businesses the critical tools they need to develop new ways of bringing value to customers - and to make those opportunities a reality.

Here's what A.G. Lafley, Chairman of the Board, Procter & Gamble, wrote in the book's foreward:

Johnson's architecture fits the real world strategies Procter & Gamble is working to create. His model reveals in a practical fashion those elements that we have learned through practice are essential to discontinuous innovation. Seizing the White Space is the the playbook you would want to take with you...

Mark W. Johnson is Chairman of Innosight, a strategic innovation consulting and investing company with offices in Massachusetts, Singapore, and India, which he cofounded with Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen. He has consulted to the Global 1000 and start-up companies in a wide range of industries—including health care, aerospace/defense, enterprise IT, energy, automotive, and consumer packaged goods—and has advised Singapore’s government on innovation and entrepreneurship.

Singapore is rated # 1 on the 2009 Global Innovation Index and is rated 7th in 2010 by INSead. Regardless, both organizations rank Singapore higher than the U.S. I hope we can find out what Singapore's doing right and if that can be done here.

The show starts at the usual time, 9:30 AM, Central. Here are your standard listening options:

LIVE:

1). Listen in streaming on-demand.

2). Call in live during the show, 9:30 AM - 10:30 AM Central, at 646-915-9212.

LATER:

1). Listen in streaming on-demand.

* I say almost just in case there's one industry not needing growth and renewal. Oh wait, it's healthcare.

Great idea! But do they care?

A few weeks ago a few micro-events in social media converged in real-time around one idea. ( In social media time, a few weeks ago is equivalent to almost two lifetimes or a complete migration from v2.0 to v6.0. Still, the idea remains relevant.)

The first was a tweet from Scott, aka Nametagscott. Here’s what he wrote (tweeted):

LET ME ASK YA THIS: Is your style of communication blocking the listener’s ability to hear it?

Ouch. Ever stopped listening when the speaker’s style succeeded only in closing your ears and your mind? Yeah, annoying.

Ever seen an audience close their ears and minds to your ideas? Yeah, big ouch.

The second was Kevin Eikenberry. Kevin Eikenberry shared a quote while he was a recent guest on my radio show. The quote was:

No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.

Scott tweeted the challenge: a communication style that blocks the listener’s ability to hear your idea.

Kevin shared a solution: deciding we care more about our audience and their world than we do about our world and our ideas.

Hold the kumbayahs. That remains a big gap. That gap has existed for eternity and only in rare cases has it ever been bridged. That is the gap between knowing what to do and being able to do it.

I don’t have solutions. However, I have some steps that have helped me. Maybe, they'll help you.

Listen, listen, listen.

Ask questions of, about, those around me.

Turn the computer off.

Always be curious.

But, others are much farther along this path than I. Here are a few experts who can help:

Kevin Eikenberry: Chief Potential Officer of The Kevin Eikenberry Group, author of Remarkable Leadership,

Dr. Nick Morgan: founder and CEO of Public Works and author of Trust Me: 4 Steps to Authenticity and Charisma

Steve Farber: Best-selling author, much sought-after speaker and consultant, author of Greater than Yourself.

Their names are linked to their Twitter profile. (It all begins and ends on Twitter...)

I hope this helps. Let me know, either way.

4 Resources to Increase Employee Engagement

During my last conversation with David Zinger, founder and manager of the open and free Employee Engagement community, I asked what were his favorite books on Employee Engagement.

He answered:

Peter Block’s book on Community. Henry Mintzberg just wrote a new book about Managing.

And he added this perspective, too:

I am not sure if we should be reading just engagement books. I do tend to take sources from very different elements and take them to engagement.

For those of you looking to find more ways, more resources, more community to help create engagement...wherever you are, whatever you're doing, consider these listed here:

* David Zinger

* Employee Engagement community, founded by David and now with 1600+ members.

* Community: The Structure of Belonging, by Peter Block

* Managing, by Henry Mintzberg

And consider David's advice: ...take sources from very different elements and take them to engagement.

Here are more links:

Peter Block:

Website

A Small Group

Henry Mintzberg

Website (Fascinating content. I plan to spend some time there.)

David Zinger

You can listen to David's recent conversation with me as we talk about his work in Employee Engagement.

You can read highlights from our conversation here.

Healthcare Reform Benefit: Unlocking Job-Lock

 One, of the many, strangleholds on our economy from our current healthcare system, has been job-lock. Job-lock describes the inability of of an employee to freely leave a job because doing so will result in the loss of employee benefits.

Employer provided health insurance has grown to become the greatest, most coveted employee benefit as its monthly premium amounts continue to soar annually by 7-9% and as healthcare costs consume 16% of our wallets today and projected to reach 20+% in our near future.

Job-lock locks talented, enterprising, passionate, visionary employees in their current jobs. No one is locked in a job where they:

• are recognized for their accomplishments.
• have a path for career and personal growth.
• have the resources and mandate and support to pursue an idea or work with others already doing so. No one is locked in a job where their company continually invests in their education and training.

Think job-lock is a phantom issue?

Eric Brody on his blog, Healthy Conversations shared some recent research on employee engagement:

In a recent article on MarketingProfs, Gallup research of 300,000 businesses indicated that 75-80% of employees are achieving much less and feeling far less enthusiastic about their work than they could be.

How many employees would leave their job if their family’s health was not put at risk?

How many employees would leave their job if their family’s health was not put at risk AND they were able to find or create an opportunity where they were able to achieve more and generate more enthusiasm for their efforts?

How many companies have seen their growth stifled because they were unable to attract the talent they needed?

How many ideas remain dormant in the minds of employees locked in their jobs with companies uninterested.

How many jobs and opportunities have not been created as a result?

We’ll find out. We will all find out.

Highlights From My Conversation with Michele Miller, author of The Soccer Mom Myth

Michele Miller, author of Wonderbranding blog, dropped by my radio show this week. Michelle is the author of The Soccer Mom Myth (Wizard Academy Press), a Top 20 marketing books list seller on Amazon.com, and The Natural Advantages of Women, the audio book that has been hailed for its concepts, principles, and new scientific information that explains how the female brain is “hardwired” for personal greatness.”

She’s won awards from Marketing Sherpa and Forbes.com, and was featured in Seth Godin’s ebook, “Bull Marketing.” Michele is the marketing columnist for Inc.com, the web companion to Inc. business magazine.

Welcome to the show!

You co-authored a book titled The Soccer Mom Myth: Today’s Female Customer, Who She Is,Why She Really Buys. That was in 2007, before the elections and all the campaign drivel about the term Soccer Mom and exploiting.

My friend, Erika Andersen, coined the phrase reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future in her book Being Strategic. What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future back then, ahead of your time, I think, when you wrote this book?

I am a big believer in baby steps. I was giving a presentation in Sweden last week and I said when I was younger my aspirations were very big; I was going to change the world.

As I get older that aspiration gets more realistic. I realize it takes many small steps to change the world.

I am most proud of with The Soccer Mom Myth is that we were going to break the idea of marketing to women into small doable segments. First you need to understand your market then here are the small things about marketing to women. When something is started with all good intentions there is no follow through because people are so overwhelmed with how big the topic is that they can’t get done what they need to.

I am working on second smaller book, breaking it down even further into some basic things about how to understand the female consumer better. I have also blogged about it and these have been my most popular posts. That was really the aspiration for the book. Our greatest joy comes from the feedback we receive via email.

Do you find that smaller businesses are able to embrace your perspective, your research or ideas in that book, easier or faster than larger companies who have more resources?

I think there is a tradeoff.

When you are a small business, you may not have the financial resources or the manpower to do things, so it is important to do one little bit at a time.

The tradeoff when you have a big corporation is that you are very top heavy and it is hard to achieve anything, almost impossible to achieve anything in its original form. There are many, many cooks in the kitchen. I think that is why I so enjoy working with small businesses.

My greatest joy is going out and working with them in these 2-day seminars and showing theme these little things they can try.

If I had my druthers I’d go small business just because things get done.

Where are you at now in terms of reaching this hoped-for future? Have you reached it? Did your reasonable aspiration change along the way?

I think the success stories we see on a regular basis. When I see people have actually learned something from the book. People make the mistake of thinking all these businesses are owned by women. Not all of these businesses are owned by women and I am delighted that half of the people who attend my classes are men.

We have also had to print more books as well as a soft cover, and have gone international as well, so I know we have been successful. I just got back from Sweden and will return and do a workshop later this year.

What were you doing in Sweden? Tell us about that story, how they found you, how you came to speak at their event.

This just goes to show you I am also a very big champion of social media – tools like Twitter and Facebook. I always advise my clients to start a fan page.

But, I made a conscious decision when I started with Facebook I would just have a personal page...you’re looking at going on in my life because I feel if anyone wants to work with me or hire me, if we don’t have the same perspective or if they don’t’ like me, then it won’t work.

I had received an invitation six months ago from a woman in Sweden and what I didn’t know was that she was responsible for organizing the Prime Minister’s Conference on Economic Growth. They invited me to speak there.

They have a mandate that ½ of all business should be run by women by 2016. They are adamant about gender equality. They want women to understand their leadership strengths. From 2016 there will be 250K businesses in need of new CEOs. They have an aging population. Sweden has a strong campaign going to help women get there.

It is incredible. I was a keynote at this conference.

You mentioned that 50% of your workshop attendees were now men. When did that shift begin?

There really wasn’t a shift. Right from the beginning, in 2003 when I came out a small audio book called The Natural Advantages of Women, and my senior partner, Roy H. Williams who’s a triple best-selling author himself, said to me, that half of your readers will be men.

He was so right.

From the day I started teaching my courses it is always half men, half women, right down the line.

I never tried to make gender as much of an issue as people wanted me to. It is about science, brain wiring and environment and how we are as a culture. The lines are more blurred. It’s not such a big deal to younger people.

Back in the day you wrote, that no more than 30% of advertisers reach female customer. That’s the customer that makes 80% of all purchasing decisions. Right?

If nothing else there’s the reason to focus on women.

There is a fear that if you focus on the female customer, you will be driving away your male customer.

You’ll be driving away 20% of your audience to reach 80%...

¾ of the way through the book we realized that not only are women different from men, but they are different from each other as well. Not all women think the same.

In Chapter 16 we said, “there is no such thing as marketing to women” and what we are really talking about is marketing to the right side of the brain. This is the home of imagination and persuasion and emotional intelligence, sense and pattern, how does this business fit into the pattern of my life, what kind of customer experience is it giving me?

What we say is that Men have right brains too, but we focus on women here because they have four times as many connections into that right side of the brain which means not only do they have purchasing power but they are also plugging into that side of the brain where you point your brand four times faster and four times deeper.

That doesn’t exclude men – they just don’t get there as quickly or deeply. I think that is a fear that companies have and that is why I focus on science and research.

Men and women are different. No surprise to married couples. So, if so many ads fail to reach women can we say too many ad execs remain unmarried?

Once we had our economic meltdown, all of a sudden companies are saying that they have been spending a lot of money and not getting good results. The creative is not persuasive. There are billions of dollars spent on advertising that doesn’t produce results. Now ad agencies are in trouble and are shutting their doors because they don’t know how to deal with the new reality.

26:33

All women to women marketing agencies are run by women- I think you need some male influence in these companies. Women don’t just want female communication language; they want and need a balance.

We can’t bring arranged marriages to the ad industry. That’s funny to even think about. Maybe a reality show...So let’s say you’re talking to the female CEO of a huge ad agency. They’ve given you 10 minutes to tell them the right way to advertise. What would you say?

I think it comes down to some basic ideas.

1.Be real. I think culturally that whatever you do, you need to be authentic. That is a word that is almost overused today, but it is true. Show us who you are. I think the best example of authenticity is the Domino’s Pizza campaign. They did many surveys with their customers and they discovered that people don’t like the taste of their pizza. They listened and wanted to change –they acknowledged that they needed to change. Being real is where it is at.

2. Speak their language; be multi-lingual. Another thing would be to know that you have different messages for different people. One ad is not going to say it all. Not all women speak the same language.

3. Monologue does not work anymore. It is all about conversation now. Customer empowerment has never been stronger because of the Internet.

Same scenario, but the CEO of this ad agency is a guy. What would change in what you say?

1.Speak their language. I would use more male based communication styles: more bullet points, sentences based more on logic and shorter sentences.

2. I'd talk about authenticity.

3. I would need more data and numbers. I would have to make them understand scientifically WHY we need to create the messages that we do about brain wiring.

40:55

You mentioned four different languages.

It falls along the Myers-Briggs. It has to do where a woman gets her energy and what her time horizon is:

1. Competitive

2. Spontaneous

3. Methodical

4. Humanistic

All four require subtle changes in language by using keywords and phrases in a dialect that they understand. It is important to make agencies and businesses aware that one size does not fit all.

You write about two types of advertising: relational and transactional.

This is probably a stupid question, but that’s one skill I have. The question is does either gender prefer one or the other type of advertising?

That’s not a stupid question; it is a good question. I have not found any evidence that one gender prefers one or the other.

In the long term, relational has a stronger affect because you are building a relationship with a customer and this is powerful especially due to social media where you can have a conversation with a brand. Women would probably go more for relational advertising upfront, but there is a time and a place for transactional advertising. Transactional is talking about a specific item that is on sale. It is something to drive people quickly, but you don’t keep people long term but you didn’t provide anything long term. You based your business on price.

The economy also drives advertising - the transactional ad has a little more power right now because of people’s perception about value. Value is more price driven than it was in past several year.

Let's talk about boobs and butts. They still matter in advertising, right? What are three reasons why boobs and butts still matter in advertising?

There has been a new wave in pushing the envelope with racy ads in the past few years. I find some of the ads amusing and creative. There is always an audience who will be upset.

These big companies have deep pockets and they can afford to try these campaigns. If it doesn’t go well, it won’t hurt that much. A smaller company could not do that.

Because of those deep pockets, creativity trumps persuasion. Everyone wants to get people talking. But did it persuade people to buy your product? Most of the time, it did not. I just don’t think creativity is going to go away...people just want an affect.

I think it still shows that men remain the target of the ad and this is why the ads don’t stick. There is no method of persuasion. I think if these ads were part of an overall comprehensive campaign to reach out to women there would have been fewer backlashes.

What’s the number one thing most people miss in their Word-of-Mouth marketing?

That they can’t buy it. It comes from the customer experience and it is not just about the great experience they have with you, but how you “fix” the negative experience. If you don’t fix it bad WOM spreads even faster than positive conversation. You can build your business on WOM without advertising.

Let’s talk reading. Leaders are readers.* You’re a leader. What are you reading?

• Daniel Pink’s new book: Drive.

• The other is written by my partner Tom Wanek. Tom writes the blog, Beyond Advertising. His newest book is: Currencies that Buy Credibility.

• Being a big fiction reader, Allison Rowe's newest book: Too Much Happiness

Where are you speaking next?

I'm speaking at BlogPaws 2010, April 9-10 in Columbus, OH.

And then at a workshop in Guatemala, end of April.

Where can we follow you?

• Blog: Wonderbranding

• Twitter: Michele Miller

Thanks, Michele!

* Jim Rohn

[One More Idea] to Stimulate Experimentation in Your Organization

Art Petty offers 7 Ideas to Stimulate Experimentation in Your Organization.

Read this post. Read this great post. It is important if you recognize that innovation, experimentation, are the keys to the long-life you hope for your organization. A process that allows constant renewal...is the process that lets us stay in front of our competitors.

Read his post for another reason. Read it if you intuitively know a process of constant renewal, disruption, experimentation, innovation...is vital to your survival, but you haven’t yet articulated a better reason than a strong gut feeling. His post explains:

Why Experimentation is Healthy for Your Business

* Great strategies don’t spontaneously generate, take root and grow on their own, based on the magical beans provided through a consultant’s input. Value creating ideas and approaches are most often the output of enlightened trial and error…and sometimes unenlightened trial or just plain fortunate errors.

* If your firm and your teams are not experimenting, your firm is slowly choking off the supply of future innovation. Most often, the deteriorating quality of ideas that turn into valuable offerings is met with what Jim Collins describes as the “Undisciplined Pursuit of More.” This flailing about is an attempt to rapidly make up for the dearth of good ideas created by a rigid culture and leadership. Instead of a pipeline of ideas, firms grasp at straws and all ideas can be rationalized as potentially good...There's more. Read it.

One more idea came to mind as I read, and re-read his post. Hence, the title of this post. That idea is:

8). Align meaningful incentives with experimentation’s success. These should include individual incentives, group and company incentives.

By success, I mean one that yields a solution that either adds revenues or lowers costs.

By meaningful I mean those who receive these incentives individual or group or corporate, find them meaningful.

The incentives should be weighted towards those closest to the experiment and its success: Individual, group/team/department, and company.

Why group? When the experimenter is experimenting someone continues to manage the routines, insure current processes continue to run efficiently. Without them, their success, there’s no resources to experiment; you’re all too busy putting out fires or scrambling to catchup. This insures everyone’s contribution is recognized and rewarded.

Why company? For the same reason. Not every group will deliver a successful experiment. But they deliver successes, positive results, which help support the company overall.

We all want three questions answered:

What's in it for me?

Why should I care?

Why should I believe?

Incentives that are aligned from entry-level individual through teams/departments/groups...to corporate level visions, strategies and purpose statements.

This is a simple idea explained in a few paragraphs. This explanation was made easy as Art wrote the hard part, the long part, in his blog post.

The step of aligning incentives from the individual to the corporate level is simple, but not easy. A lot of listening is involved. A lot more than you can imagine.

The larger the organization the more complicated will be the discussions on aligning incentives. A key to that process is openness and transparency. A sniff of anything but these two and the whole process and results will stink. The sweet smell of exciting experiments, their success and the possible results of those successes becomes the stench of hidden agendas, petty grievances, jealousies.

An extra benefit from this process of aligning incentives is...aligning everyone in the organization toward shared goals with shared successes and shared rewards. That’s how you build a powerful brand.

3-Step Social Media Policy

There remains a large ongoing discussion about whether to allow employees to use social media. The allow, tone and verb, in those discussion always makes me cringe. It's patronizing and inappropriate. An inherent lack of respect is shown with its use.  A tremendous amount of fear is reflected, fear of what they could say if we let them say it.  A bit ironic as in this cases they are the ones who spend their day building that brand. It's not their brand.

Here's my 3-Step Social Media Policy in response:

Step One: Gather Adults.

You’ve gathered adults around you, right? Go no further until you do. If you have any doubts, confirm or dispel them. But, go no further until you do. It's important for the next step.

Step Two: Make the Brand their Brand.

This insures what's said is about what's been decided and what's being done. This insures the same people are talking about what they decided and what they did to carry out their decisions.

Step Three: Allow, ok, Encourage Everyone To Use Social Media

They are adults. Adults can prioritize their time, take responsibility/be accountable for their decisions, understand the impact of their decisions, learn and grow from their decisions, play well and support others. And let others play well with them and their ideas, too. Adults, contrary to egregious examples in the news and the impressions of their kids, really do listen.

The brand is their brand. Everyone works to create it, own it, grow it, celebrate it. Nothing is gained from bashing what they have created or allowed to be created. Incentives, mostly inexpensive ones of recognition and participation and growth, are in place, correctly aligned with their goals for the brand.

Now, social media can be used properly: to accelerate the spread of the story of and by adults who have together created a brand they want to...celebrate with the friends they choose, where and their friends hang out.

What do you think?

What are your three favorite customer service myths?

Barry Moltz, author of BAM! Bust-A-Myth: Delivering Customer Service in a Self-Service World, answered that question while a guest on my radio show recently.

Who better than Barry to answer this? His book, a great book, lists 19 customer service myths. Oh. And he discusses how to overcome them to make your customer service serve the customer. Really.

I asked him:

You list 19 customer service myths in your book. What are your favorite three myths? ( With emphasis on your...)

Here's what he said:

1. The customer is always right. This was started in the 1900s by a French hotelier. Guess what, they are not always right and it is not good for business if we treat the customer like they are always right.

2. Customer service is just plain common sense. That is just plain ludicrous. Just like any other skill, it needs to be trained and developed. I think this is why Zappos does so well. They train their people.

3. Under promise and over deliver.

My Thoughts

Customer service remains a passion, a fascination, for me. I have had a few months to look at these three. I've looked at them often.

Here's some follow-up thoughts of mine.

1. The customer is always right.

That first one may sound like heresy to some. These days every customer is precious. And many of us know it.

However, one of the quickest and smoothest paths to business failure is to believe this myth with all your heart. AND...try to implement that myth in your business operations.

No business can make every customer happy with their services. That would you mean your business is all things to all people. Never works.

All things to all people means nothing to no one.

Operationally, it's impossible to finance. Branding-wise...what are you? What do you stand for? If you want to be all things to all people, look at Congress. Look at their ratings, too.

2. Customer service is just plain common sense.

For me...it is. I came up through the ranks of customer service. Customer service seemed...natural and obvious to me.

What really was natural was acquiring the skills to deliver, communicate, what appeared obvious to me. Sometimes I thought I was...smooth on the phone. Then I would go to a training class and see...I could be so much better.

Recently I saw a series of Tweets about this:

I liked this. Customer service is about caring. It's about heart. However, those qualities are built-in from childhood, at home, with the guidance of parents and the knocks and love of their siblings.

A business can only build on that foundation of caring and heart an employee brings. If you have a heart, if you care about others, then customer service can be seen as common sense. A business can offer training and skills. But without the attitude...the heart, the caring, the desire to serve others, to make others happy....those skills will never be learned.

3. Under promise and over deliver.

You'll hear Barry's thoughts if you listen to the show. ( This is not a tease to listen.) You have to hear him say...What!? Why not over promise and over deliver.

I've used the under-promise and over-deliver wisdom often. And I bought it. My audience bought it.

It's about building expectations. Under-promising is about lowering expectations. It arises from a fear-based mindset. Maybe that mindset is developed in cultures where failure is punished, where humanity is squashed, where honesty is something to rarely shown...

But if you want to wow your customer...over-promise and over-deliver. Look at Zappos. That could be said to be their whole brand message.

You can read more highlights from my conversation with Barry Moltz.

You can listen to our show.

You can follow Barry Moltz on Twitter.

You can, should, buy his book.

Tomorrow's Radio Guest: Michele Miller, author of The Soccer Mom Myth

Michele Miller is the author of The Soccer Mom Myth (Wizard Academy Press), a Top 20 marketing books list seller on Amazon.com, and The Natural Advantages of Women, the audio book that has been hailed for its concepts, principles, and new scientific information that explains how the female brain is “hardwired” for personal greatness.”

She’s won awards from Marketing Sherpa and Forbes.com, and was featured in Seth Godin’s ebook, “Bull Marketing.” Michele is the marketing columnist for Inc.com, the web companion to Inc. business magazine.

Michele once said to me We can talk about anything. I believed her; still do. The we was really, Michele. I believed she could listen to anything, embrace ideas not her own or maybe differed from hers, and she could hear what that person needed to hear to help them be not just a better marketer, but a better person. And she could do that in a way that was fun, funny, useful, respectful.

Come join us tomorrow at 10:00 AM, Central:

LIVE:

1) Listen here in streaming on-demand.

2). Call 646-915-9212 during the show hour, 10:00 AM, Central to 11:00 AM, Central

LATER:

1) Listen here in streaming on-demand.

3 Ways a Business Can Rise Above the Turbulence

 Steven S. Little was a recent guest on my radio show. Steven is the author of Duck and (Re)Cover: The Embattled Business Owners Guide to Survival and Growth

We talked about this turbulent economy and how do businesses survive? I asked him:

What are three ways a business leader can get on top of this turbulence?

Here's what he answered:

1. Get the facts straight first. The most important that a business leader or more importantly, a business owner can do right now is to be sure that their decision-making is based upon logic and fact because that is not always the case when in a crisis. They can’t go with their guts and then rationalize their decision.

2. They have to get up and do what needs to be done.

3. Whatever it is that you don’t normally do, get out and do it. It is those voids that need to be filled.

I like them all.

Gather your data and supporting logic. They should compliment. You cannot take the next step with them.

Do what needs to be done. Tough choices face us all. But the right choices become visible with good date and supporting logic.

Doing the same thing and expecting different results is insane. We're not in Kansas anymore with this economy. Nor will we ever be again. So, doing what worked in Kansas and expecting it to work today is...insane.

You can listen to our conversation here.

You can read highlights from our conversation here.

You can read my review of his book here.

Cars or people: Which is important enough to insure?

Which is more important insure? Cars or people?

 Judging from mandatory auto insurance laws you’d have to say cars were more important. Otherwise, why would their insurance be mandatory? There’s even pools created for policy owners whose driving records makes their insurance too expensive. These laws and high-risk pools have been around for decades.

Obviously, not so with health insurance. It’s been neither affordable nor mandatory. Until last night’s historic vote, that is.

Yet, some states want to insure that cars remain more important than the people that drive and pay for them. Take Idaho for instance. Idaho Bans Federal Health Care Reform. Their governor signed a measure that mandates their Attorney General sue the federal government against the provision that health insurance be mandatory.

No word on their thoughts about their long-standing laws that auto insurance be mandatory for car owners in Idaho.

Florida has mandatory car insurance, too. Florida's Attorney General thinks their cars are more important than their people, too: Florida AG McCollum threatens over mandatory health insurance.

35 other states are planning the same step. mandatory insurance for cars? YES! Mandatory health insurance for people...NO!

Cars or people: Which is important enough to insure? You insure what’s important...if you can afford it.

The positive side of this is that...well, at least residents know what's important, cars, and what's not, their healthcare. That's a start to making informed decisions.

100 Best Small Business Podcasts

Scheduling changes meant I had an open week on my radio show. Rather than let a Sunday go by without a highlight post I'll share with you a list of 100 Best Small Business Podcasts that was compiled by our friends, colleagues and yes, inspirations at SmallBiz Trends.

Scanning through the list I see some of my favorite shows including:

March 23, 2010 - ADDENDUM:

* Managing the Edge: 

My friends Andy Brudtkuhl, 48web Consulting and Doug Mitchell, CreateWoWMedia, produce a great show on technology and small business. They're experts in both. And their respective businesses reflect their success. And...and...they stream their show live in video. You can watch here.

I created this addendum because I completely overlooked their listing when I published this original post. Their show is great, they're great, they've hosted me on the show before and it was a great experience.

**********************************

* Duct Tape Marketing — By John Jantsch. John provides interviews with influential marketing professionals and those who demonstrate advanced marketing tactics. John's been hosting this show for...4-5 years, John help me remember. He's a great host. Very affable, comfortable, open and always interested in new resources, new tips, new tools and all the time staying focused on his audience and their needs.

* The Engaging Brand – With Anna Farmery. A podcast to motivate, inspire and engage people at work. Exactly. I've listened to many of her shows and found them exactly as described here.

* Entrepreneur People – With Sherry Borzo. Real Stories about real people that teach lessons in business and in life. A neighbor, well, fellow Iowan, anyway. She's a great host, her shows are well-organized and focused and her guests offer real lessons.

* Small Business Trends Radio — Our very own show with Anita Campbell and Steve Rucinski, featuring interviews with today’s professionals on a wide variety of business topics. Anita and Steve have been producing their show for..4-5 years, help me guys, and it's always focused, bringing helpful guests on the show who can help you be successful.

* Business Insanity Talk Radio – By Barry Moltz. This is a business radio show where we talk about all the craziness of small business. Barry's been a great guest on my radio show. While he talks about the all the craziness of small business, he offers sane, rational, useful, doable therapies and some fun stories.

* Blog Business Success – With Wayne Hurlbert. Podcast about business blogging, search engine optimization SEO, marketing, public relations, and entrepreneurship topics that will help your business grow. I'll share with you what I told Wayne privately. Wayne's a big reason why I began my radio show. Each week I'd see he had another guest, another great guest. The conversation was easy, or Wayne's style put the guests at ease, great content was shared. And the same thing would happen next week. I kept thinking...that sounds like such fun for Wayne, I've got to do that somehow.

One thing they all share in common is their uniqueness. Each of them:

• reflects the personality and passions of the hosts.

• reflects the challenges and solutions for small business through their personalities.

• are produced outside the confines of a great big studio.

• as a result are more personal, with a message customized in delivery and content personally for their audience needs and convenience.

• in their own way have served to inspire me. Thank you all!

This list is a good reminder, inspiration to somehow bring them back into my daily schedule. I don't have long commutes or travel as much. Good. But that's when I listened to their shows in the past. I don't wear headphones when I run...So, I'll figure something out.

Disclaimer: I've been a guest on some of these shows. Some have been a guest on mine. And I write a guest blog or column at others. Oh. I'm on this list of shows, too. Thank you!

Failing Fast with Social Media

Social media makes failures of us all.

Maybe that’s a bit hyperbolic. But, consider social media as a perpetual, global, R&D department of near limitless ideas and potential resources and potential voices. It’s a near virtual Lawrence Livermore Labs of ideas, discussion, partnerships, feedback and in that feedback is often the message:

You have failed. You’re a failure. You screwed up. Your product is poop, so’s your company. That’s an incredibly bad execution (Google Buzz), a lame product (ipad), horrific service (airlines in general), um partnering with this person or persons wasn’t a great idea...

Scan through any social media platform and you’ll see a constant flow of ideas and feedback, refinement and development, rejection and dismissal. It’s a veritable and perpetual midwest spring flood of failure, failing, foolishness as it turns out. (Just like our personal conversations. Ideas are offered, considered, pondered, pursued...and the majority are dismissed.)

Some of that failing is a pure internal experience. This social media resource....(insert profane verb)! I’m getting that way with Facebook. On the other hand, I’m not entirely sure it’s not a case of user-error, user-impatience. But, I’m too busy to find out.

All that failing, accomplished very quickly and usually publicly, is worthless in itself. I’ve yet to see anyone gain something from a failure with, from, using social media or anything else for that matter.

( Consider college basketball. It's the best time to do that today. A missed shot in a basketball game is worthless for either team. It is an opportunity to rebound, steal, start over...try again. The team that repeats that process faster is the team that wins. That's failing faster. The coaches that lead that process are the coaches with the biggest salaries, eventually. We reward the outcome of failing fast, not the failings. )

Back to social media and how it makes failures faster and more often and more publicly...for those who choose to get back the conversation goes something like this:

Well that was unpleasant. What would make it pleasant. Or where is there a more pleasant experience?

Or where do I find what I need? What do I need? Who do I need to connect with?

Where are they found? How can they find me, me them?

What tools do I need to connect? How often do we need to connect? Should I use Google docs, groups, basecamp, wetpaint, prwiki...email? Phone?

And it continues.

This idea sounded good in writing. 2 people liked it. But now, I find a whole new perspective from this group and it’s not so great. The timing was off. But that feedback was found in a matter of days, not months. I needed no one’s money, either, to find this.

Or it morphs into a new direction with that feedback. The original idea failed as a standalone product. But it served well as a foundation.

Or partners are attracted and soon they find they’re not suitable to partner together. And they find that in a matter of weeks, not years. And again, no investor’s required.

We’re all failing fast with social media. Failing fast doesn’t mean quitting fast. Failing fast doesn’t mean you guit. Failing fast means you discover quickly why your initial idea, partner, market, strategy is insufficient to succeed. And what you need for it to continue. Or not. And you change it. Or not. If not, you change what you are doing entirely. You redirect your attention and resources away. Fast.

You increase your number of field goal attempts within a constant period of time, with more help from more teammates and less money required from boosters, ie, investors.

And even failing-fast as a concept is being proved a failure...fast.

There’s a well-written, passionate, post titled Does Fail Fast = Giving Up? The author’s integrity is inspiring. You would want him on your team. And his examples are the ones that force everyone’s eyes to roll and think Quitter.

Jason Fried of 37signals has been an early scoffer of failing fast. I read his blog and think absolutely! It's not absolutely right for me. It's absolutely right for him, from him.

That’s why we love his products and his blog and his new book. That’s why we find his ideas inspiring. He shares a vision of possibilities and even a path to reach that destination.

However, that’s why we find him inspiring. I'm not inspired by people who tell me where I live. I'm inspired by people who show me where I could, possibly, live. And how to get there.

We’re not, ok I’m not, as talented. He, and others, give me a glimpse. And repeated glimpses move me along. And what inspires me to glimpse again and again are the failures, my failures...that come faster because I’m given tools and access to knowledge from these and other authors to articulate ideas, share them with others, improve them, trash them, and move me, us, along faster.

These failures remind me...Nope, not quite there. Need some more work. And failing fast speeds up this process.

I’ve been pondering this idea for awhile. I may talk about it more with Deborah Shane on her radio show: The Metropolis. That’s Monday at 2 PM, Eastern.

Social media and the tools and communities and ideas and resources...have stirred up long dormant ideas, dreams, possibilities in me. Very exciting. Very aggravating. Very humbling. I’m failing as fast as I can with the help of these tools and the communities that deliver. And together they are pushing me faster towards the idea that will stick, with the partners where our ideas converge, with I’m sure the new tools that will deliver a great experience.

Social media makes failures of us all. And that’s a great thing.

Notes:

* Near virtual is only my term to address servers and IT departments reside somewhere. Even a cloud has terra firma connections with people making sure it doesn’t rain in that cloud.

* A big difference between Lawrence Livermore and social media is social media’s known more for life and life-giving innovations than...um, research into exotic life-taking innovations. Neither’s exclusive.

* First sentence. True confession: That’s a hyperbole-laden sentence. On the other hand, it’s not that far off. Just hold on, you disciples of Jason Fried and his new book.

Would you take one step, today, for more customer referrals?

Sometimes, some times it seems is almost all the time, we become paralyzed. So many demands, so much urgency, so many changes, new markets, new products, new technologies, did anyone say social media...did anyone say multitasking...new strategies are needed to better communicate our purpose, new tactics are needed, new reporting, new metrics....which one do we choose to juggle with all the others?

These conversations are like those you have to prepare for our 1000 mile journey. We have to have those destinations. And plans, and schedules and budgets too. Maps are handy. So’s a vehicle.We can still take one step today. And tomorrow. And every day. Let’s narrow it down. What’s one step that can move us towards more referrals? What if you:

• answered their calls faster? Answer it on the 3rd ring, not the fourth.
• replied to their emails faster? Reply within 1 hour, not two.
• found a way to give that customer what they wanted, regardless of ‘policy’.
• issued that credit today, not next week.
• listened while they vented for a moment or two. Maybe, they earned that moment. In their mind they had.
• found a solution for a chronic problem. Used it. Presented the results. Ok, that’s three steps.
• arrived a few minutes early
• left a few minutes later
• found a little door through your department’s silo...? Walked through it. Ok, that’s two.
• used spellcheck on all your emails.
• personalized your reply with 2-3 sentences
• subscribed to DuctTape Marketing newsletter for more ideas
• wished the caller a great day
• called the customer back to make sure your promises were reality in their world.
• called back to make sure they received the email.
• asked what else can you do for them?
• sent a bouquet of flowers
• convinced your CEO to join you on a call to an important customer
• were the CEO and called your customers regularly
• what else?

This is not a complete list of single steps you could take. Nor will a referral result from every step, every time it’s taken.

But over time, these steps will take us there, where there are more customer referrals. And more customer referrals mean:Higher revenues

• Lower advertising costs
• Lower customer churn
• More upsells
• More crosssells
• Higher employee loyalty
• Lower employee training and recruiting costs
• Better cash-flows
• More control of your destiny
• What else?

So are these worth taking that first step? Would there be any reason not to take one step from the first list, or one you created, if the result would be on that second list?

The Biggest, Baddest, Social Media Resource?

• Us.

• Us and Our Ideas.

• Us and Our Ideas and How We Express Our Ideas

• Us and Our Ideas and How We Express Our Ideas with Our Choice of Word, Audio, Video, and All the Combinations We Choose.

• And who We choose to express Our ideas with.

• And how We choose to listen to Our audience.

• And if We choose to listen to Our audience.

• And if We choose to express Our ideas.

• And if We choose.

None of this social media stuff works without Us. Those real-time feeds only work if there's something real to feed 'em. And those real thing to feed those real-time feeds is our time spent sharing our ideas.

We are interesting. Widgets only share what’s interesting about us. Widgets won’t make us interesting if we choose to be uninteresting. The choice is only to be uninteresting. All of us are interesting. Left to our own devices and free to share our true nature, we are all vastly more interesting than we’ve discovered yet.

I think what angers us most is when people choose to hoard what’s most precious to us. That’s them. Their ideas.

There’s a saying from a wise man that went something like:

To be given a human body and not reach enlightenment is like being given a diamond and trading it for the price of spinach.

The gift of social media and its possibilities...is almost as infinte. To be given a free platform we can use anytime to develop and share what’s most unique in us with whom we choose and use it to be a stealth blogger or a fake blogger or a spammer...is trading freedom and its possibilities for the price of a free online ap.

As we all obsess over what ap or what widget to add, where, to connect with whom and when...just remember what gives them their power is....us. And our ideas...

Upcoming Guests on My Radio Show

Here are the upcoming guests who have generously agreed to share their time, wit, resources, tips, wisdom and more.

Michele Miller: consultant, speaker, Wizard of Ads partner, author of WonderBranding: News and Views on the Female Customer. - March 24, 10:00 AM, Central. You can listen here.

Michele is a wonderful expert on all things marketing and in particular with news and views on the female customer. That's the customer that decides how 80+% of household budgets are spent. Yes, that customer.

You can listen here to our conversation in November of 2008.

Mark Johnson, Chairman and founder of Innospace, author of Seizing the White Space: Business Model Innovation for Renewal and Growth - Dates Pending

White space and its room for innovation was touched on when Adam Hartung, author of Create Marketplace Disruption: How to Stay Ahead of the Competition joined the show recently.

I wanted to touch on white space during the show with Todd Sattersten author of Fixed to Flexible: 4 Simple Lessons on Costs, Prices, Margins and the Options Available to the 21st Century Business. As I read his book, it seemed the options from Todd's 4 simple lessons were in essence the white space made manifest. That would mean all businesses have the options to innovate, renew and grow...and add jobs.

We'll see.

You can listen here to Adam Hartung's discussion.

You can listen here to Todd Sattersten's discussion.

Lisa Earle McLeod, nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, business consultant and author of the Triangle of Truth: The Surprisingly Simple Secret to Resolving Conflicts Large and Small.

Talk about a growth market! Resolving conflicts...it's a global market, it's a local market, it's a personal market. If ever there was a time where a truly global market of readers awaits a book...this is the time.

I have not begun to read this book, yet. However, I have started reading her blog. It's well-written. Her content is organized, well-presented and immediately useful and the comments from readers are thoughtful and in-depth. That last part is a very good sign.

And there's one more thing about her blog: it's calmness and happiness. This is a happy person who write this blog. And her purpose is...spreading that happiness with more than just happy talk.

Erika Andersen, business consultant and author of Being Strategic. - April 21

Erika Andersen's book, Being Strategic, is never far from my fingertips. I listed it as one of my favorite (useful) 3 business books, ever.

She coined the phrase Reasonable Aspiration or Hoped-For Goal in this book. I regularly ask this question of each guest during their show:

What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for goal for ...[insert their project]?

We'll catch up with how her world has changed and has she reached her hoped-for future since she published her book.

She was a guest on the show March, 2009. You can listen here.

Louis Upkins, entrepreneur, founder of Leadership Sports and author of Treat Me Like a Customer: Using Lessons from Work to Succeed in Life - April 28

Louis reminds us to treat the most important people in our life, our families, with as much care and devotion as we treat our most important customers. His book is excellent: actionable steps, great perspectives, a few profiles to illustrate and already in the first few pages a few ouches of self-recognition to help motivate.

Note: You'll notice that the shows in April, whether a date is confirmed or not, have no links to listen in streaming-mode. That's because BlogTalk Radio, the free and wonderful platform I use, allows me to schedule shows and create their URLs for streaming listening only 30 days in advance.

Where is the ROI of "happy"?

Happy is a squishy term.

Don't think so? Which is easier to answer:

Am I hungry?

Am I happy?

Maybe it's where Hungry and Happy rest on Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Am I hungry?

YES! I'm hungry for dessert! A chocolate almond torte, fresh whipped creme and a cup of coffee, all served as an appetizer.

Am I happy?

Yeah, for the most part. Compared to others...I mean I have these things going on and you know I have no real reason to complain...

Try measuring the ROI of happy for a business. Where does happy show up on a financial statement or balance sheet?

What company even talks about ...happy?

Zappos does. Well, their CEO, Tony Hsieh does. Zappos is that shoe and now apparel company out in ...Las Vegas. Mr. Hsieh talks about it in his new book and its purpose: DELIVERING HAPPINESS: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

The goal of the book is to inspire other companies to think about how to they can use happiness as a guiding principle to make customers happier (by focusing more on customer service) and employees happier (by focusing more on company culture), which ultimately can lead to sustainable profits and long-term financial performance. Tony Hsieh's Update

Zappos is 11 years old. At the end of 2008 they reached $1 billion in sales. At the end of 2009, they reached....$1.2 Billion in sales. 2009 was the darkest year in the Great Recession.

20% annual revenue growth during the peak of a recession, the greatest recession in the last 60+ years? That's a ROI on happy that can make anyone happy.

How else do you measure the ROI of happy, Zappos-style? You own your culture.

Zappos was acquired by Amazon.  Zappos has an unique culture so many, including myself, predicted Tony and his company would lose the power to maintain their culture.

Word of advice: never bet against a guy who's grown a company to $1 billion in 11 years and through 2 recessions and 2 wars.

Here's what Mr. Hsieh wrote about Zappos' culture one year after Amazon bought them:

We've retained our independence and our culture is as strong as before the acquisition. We've been learning a lot from each other and the new partnership has enabled us to move even faster towards the Zappos vision of delivering happiness to the world.

That's power. The power to maintain your corporate culture after being acquired is...power, huge power.

My point(s)?

The ROI of happy come in two forms: intangible and tangible.

• You want power?

• Create happy employees and customers.

• You want results... measured in metrics understood by all of your stakeholders, including your CFO?

• Create happy employees and customers

How do you do happy?

• You could start with understanding what Mr. Hsieh has done with Zappos.

In the meantime, be happy. Whatever definition you use, be happy. It is impossible to make others happy until we're happy

Now, where's that chocolate almond torte? I'm hungry.

Four Actions That Eliminate Small Pie Thinking

Tim Sanders was a recent guest on my radio show. He spoke about small pie thinking. Small pie thinking is a phrase so descriptive I nodded my head and understood. And I remembered some folks who had it. And I remembered that I, too, have it.

He talked about small pie thinking in the context of his book: Saving the World at Work: What Companies and Individuals Can Do to Go Beyond Making A Profit to Making a Difference.

I asked Tim:

What are three things people can do right now to eliminate the small pie thinking?

Here's what he answered:

1. Deal with yourself – feed your mind good stuff. You have to stop absorbing all the negative stuff.

2. Change the conversation at work. Stop gossip; stop talking about lack and the negative.

3. Set an example and give. If you want to create abundance, show and share what you have. Compassion is contagious-give until it hurts.

4. Find a smart strategic way to give and focus on what you have, not on what you lack.

See. These are steps we all can take. Maybe, we can't take the entire step at once. Maybe, we can't take all 4 steps today. But we can take a baby-step today. And another one tomorrow. And the next day.

Step 2 is a big challenge for me. Who doesn't love some good gossip? On the other hand, as I feed myself good stuff and surround myself with good people, the negative and the juicy gossip tidbit become well, less, juicy.

Notice that Tim leads by example. I asked for three things and Tim gave 4.

You can listen to our conversation here.

You can read excerpted highlights from our conversation here.

Doctors: Welcome to the World of Word-of-Mouth

It’s been interesting to watch doctors come to terms with competition in their field. Many doctors appear as bothered by the idea of choice for their patients as The Big Three automakers have been since...the ’70’s(?) when imports arrived to ruin the illusion they’d created for us.

The challenge of competitors is an illusion for some doctors. They offer unmatched levels of attention and expertise for their patients.

The tools and resources of social media tools are easily embraced by some doctors to better connect with and serve their customers.

But for other doctors, the idea that their patients' satisfaction with their visits and treatment should be important to them has them shocked, shocked, they say.

News of this rebellion among their customers reaches many now in a way they no longer can ignore: the customer satisfaction survey with a portion of their income tied to the results. And they are even more shocked, shocked, they say to learn now that their income may be tied to the happiness of their customers as reported in these surveys.

Patient-satisfaction Surveys Have Drawbacks, by Dr. Kevin Pho made me chuckle.

If a medically unnecessary test or drug is requested, for instance, an added financial incentive encourages physicians to comply, rather than risk angering the patient.

Yes, we patients get so angry when additional charges are refused us for a medically unnecessary procedure or prescription.

Doctors are constantly under the microscope to give patients what they want, since 'giving people what they want' has been tragically (and falsely) equated with good medicine.

Yes. That confusion is tragic since what we want is...good medicine.

Newsflash 1: These surveys are a godsend to you. And they are but the tip of this iceberg. Your patients tell their friends and family all about you and their experience with you. They say much more, in much more descriptive terms, to many more people when they are unhappy with their experience with you.

Newsflash 2: Your incomes are already tied to your patients' satisfaction. Your income reflects the results of these conversations.

How do we patients choose our doctors?

We ask our friends, our colleagues, our families.

Will we keep coming back?

Let’s say a patient is unhappy with you. Again and again.

And,  you appear uninterested in their opinion.

That’s ok with the patient. A whole community of people will listen to their story. Everyone wants to be warned about a doctor who doesn’t treat their friend/family/colleague well. And everyone wants to help recommend a doctor who does deliver a more satisfying visit. 

And everyone loves to tell a story.

That means that one unhappy patient, the one you sees you as someone who doesn't care about their opinion, will tell their friends and family and colleagues. And their friends and family and colleagues will their...friends and families and colleagues.

Can you picture all those people talking about you as an uncaring physician? If you can't right now, don't worry. Soon, you will have plenty of time and quiet in your office to imagine what they have said.

Newsflash 3: We are your partner in our care. Yes, you are the doctor. But we are the patients. We know our health, or its lack, best Or we could if you spent more than 15 minutes on average with us.

And it’s our health that’s at risk with your decisions, including the ones to communicate.

So, if we’re unhappy and have received the best care in the world...who has the information to eliminate that gap? Have you taken the time to communicate why the best care in the world leaves us unsatisfied? 

It would be tragic to allow that gap to exist if you have the means to eliminate it.

It’s our health and happiness we’re most concerned about, not yours. You are the expert in medicine. We are the experts in our health.  And, if you choose to not communicate with us how your expertise brings us satisfaction you have failed us. 

We want you to answer these three questions:

What’s in it for us?

Why should we care?

Why should we believe?

That last question is important. Faith is often our only option until your recommended treatment confirms your hypothesis.

Back to the points.

1. Patients talk every day about our doctors. We talk with each other, our families, co-workers, friends, public transit riders... Do you want to join that conversation?

2. Patients make decisions based on those conversations. Do you want to join that conversation? (If not, then those conversations play a larger role in our decisions.)

3. Your income already reflects our satisfaction with you. Your income is the net result of those conversations. Even if you are a sole practitioner in a remote area...patients will not visit if they are encouraged to distrust you.

Patient satisfaction surveys are a tepid, arms-length, step to show you care. It's like putting a wall in your examination room and yelling questions over it to the patients.

But, hey, it's a first step.

And if you don't like the what you hear or can't hear us...maybe stop. Take down the wall and listen. You'll be surprised what you hear. And richer, too.

Highlights from My Conversation with Kevin Eikenberry, founder and host of Coach and Be Coached

Kevin Eikenberry, author of Remarkable Leadership: Unleashing Your Remarkable Potential One Skill at a Time, shared an hour of this time and many of his insights and resources on leadership, learning and manifesting all that’s remarkable in each of us.

Who’s Kevin Eikenberry? If you asked me that I’d say...Kevin’s a great guy. Big heart. Very smart. Clients love him. And those in his organization, the Kevin Eikenberry Group, are happy and love working with him.

Kevin’s been writing and telling people for a long time that we can all be leaders and that the exciting fact is that leaders can make a difference in the world. Kevin’s business is about helping all of us find how we can be remarkable leaders.

Remarkable means...a leader who makes a difference in their world, our world. Since 1993, Kevin, as Chief Potential Officer, has been helping organizations, teams and individuals become remarkable, make a difference in their world and lead. And that makes all of them leaders.

I attend his webinars. They’re excellent, well-organized, clear, fun and offer steps I can take as soon as they end. That's high praise from me as I usually get very, bored very fast.

And Tuesday March 16, at 11:00 AM Eastern, Kevin goes live with his Coach and Be Coached Event. He has gathered a top lineup of expert business and leadership coaches including:

• Executive Coach and author Extraordinaire, Marshall
 Goldsmith
• Author of the brand new book Fascinate, Sally Hogshead
• Serial entrepreneur, author and blogger, Raj Setty
• Internationally-known sales coach, Jonathan Farrington
• Coach, entrepreneur and networking expert, Tony Scelzo
 (who will be live on the court at Remarkable House)

And he hints of a few surprise guests including Div-1 basketball coaches whose teams may be in the upcoming March Madness Men’s NCAA Basketball tourney. (The teams for the tourney will be announced after this post was published.)

Kevin, how are you? Thank you for taking the time to join us today.Tell us about this upcoming event, Coach and Be Coached.

We believe people have the potential to be remarkable. They have more potential than they realize and we know as people start to move in the direction of our potential, we can’t do it by ourselves.

As leaders we know that we have to be a coach and need to be coached.

We are big basketball fans, so next week on the 16th at 11 AM EST, we are doing a live streaming video event, hosted at Remarkable TV where we will bring together coaches from a variety of fields of interest and expertise, and I will interview them to share their experiences of being a coach and being coached. People can login, watch, and listen.

In the end, I am excited because the topic is so important to all of us and because of the guests on the show.

Tell us about the all-stars already in the lineup.

I am hoping to have a few Division I college basketball coaches, Marshall Goldsmith, Sally Hogshead, Jack Canfield, a whole number of excellent top-notch authors and coaches in a variety of areas.

I’m a big fan of Sally Hogshead. Her book, Fascinate, is a recent favorite of mine and she was a guest here a month ago. What abut the other all-stars? What made you want them in your lineup?

One of the reasons we can have basketball coaches is because of one of our sponsors, Samaritan's Feet.

Marshall has been an executive coach for many many years. His most recent book is, Mojo How To Get It, How To Keep It, How To Get It Back If You Lose It. Marshall is by trade an executive coach, working with top companies around the world.

What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future from creating this event?

1. We felt like we were in a great position to bring together an awesome cast of characters that could bring people a life altering event and experience to help them build their skills, give new insights and do it for free. We thought it was an important topic to help leaders move forward in the direction of their success and we felt we could put it together.

2. We just want to raise the level of importance about both sides of this equation. I have been in too many training sessions with leaders and they say they know this training session is really great but don’t have time to do it. I want to encourage and remind people that our responsibility and opportunity as leaders is to develop others, is one of the most important and valuable parts of our job.

3. We will be introducing and re-releasing some of our services as well.

Who’s your audience for this event? Describe the person you were thinking about as you designed this event.

1. Anyone who is a leader who knows they have a job of coaching others.

2. Someone in an organization, whether you are a team manager, HR, or development and your focus is how do I help the leaders around me be better.

All those folks in the coaching business or would someday like to be a coach.

What will they take away at the end of the day?

It will depend on how long they join us. Our focus is to help people leave with why they need help to be the best they can be and what that help would look like. What are specific ideas, tools and strategies they can use to be a better developer of others, a better trusted advisor or coach.

Your audience is usually adults, business leaders, managers, employees. But you recently spoke with an audience of future leaders, high school freshmen in west central Indiana. Tell us about that experience.

It was great fun. It was for the Hugh O’Brien Youth Leadership Organization.

It was mostly high school sophomores. It was fantastic.

You can watch a video here of this event.

How did they define leadership in 6 words?

It couldn’t just be a list, but something resembling a statement. Here is what I always notice when I do it, whether with adults or 14 year olds. Everyone knows it is always about action, not a role or a job. They mention something about success in support of a goal. Leadership is a verb, not a noun.

How would you define leadership in 6 words?

I have never done it. I believe learning comes from people discovering from themselves. I would ask everyone who is listening to answer that question for themselves.

What will happen to the enthusiasm for leadership and learning among this audience? And what can adults do to reignite their passion for learning, leading?

I hope they got a bigger picture about what leadership could be. I hope it was a catalyst for their future. I hope they realize they are leaders; they have the ability.

Your recent conference call* was about nurturing relationships and how leaders can nurture relationships.There are usually business owners and entrepreneurs listening in. Some may wonder...why do they need to nurture relationships? There’s work to be done, a recession to dig out of, dropping sales to be reversed...etc. So, what’s in it for them, why should they care about nurturing relationships?

Maybe in a perfect world everyone knows their job and relationships don’t matter, but we don’t live in that perfect world. I could give you a whole list of reasons.

As a reason people are looking to you more than you realize. You have a bigger impact in their lives as a business owner or entrepreneur. When you don’t care for those most important things, it is to your great detriment in terms of retention, productivity, work environment and how we treat those we lead will have an impact how they treat their customers.

People want to do business with those they know, like and trust. My spin on that from a leadership perspective is that people will follow that and follow longest those that they know, like and trust. It doesn’t mean we have to become best friends with our employees. It means we may be friendly and that is really important.

* I highly recommend the teleseminar coaching series Kevin offers. And, I say that never having been a patient student.

When you here in September, you offered 10 ways to nurture these relationships. Can we narrow it down to the top three?

1. As a leader you have to make it a priority. You are busy. You are a working leader and have your own work. If you want to build and nurture better working relationships, you have to make it a priority. That means proving it by your calendar. Are you engaging ways that they know that they matter to you?

2. You have to care. People don’t care about how much you know until they know how much you care about them.

3. You have to be authentic about it.

Leaders are confident people. They live it, they exude it, they communicate. Nick Morgan spoke week talked last week about the Paradox of Leadership, the time when maybe the leader’s reserves of energy may lag or an obstacle interferes with their vision. What’s one key to regaining that confidence?

As leaders we may be having a bad day or week, but I think it is important that werecognize that in ourselves and when we are showing that to our team, they will notice.We have to be real. We don’t have to hide it, but get over it as fast as we can. That iswhy we all need help-coaching the coach is such a benefit. We need to learn ways to get our confidence back.

I know as I leader I’ve stumbled ok fell down, when I failed to recognize that gap between a vision of the future and today’s reality. And leaving today’s reality is a bit like swimming away from shore. How does a leader bridge that gap? What are three steps leaders can take to minimize that gap?

1. Recognize it: know that you are outside of your comfort zone. Share and give examples with your team.

2. Ask them when they have been successful about getting out of a comfort zone gap. Translate through past success to future success.

3. Share: The greatest lessons we learn in life are from a mistake or challenge and we can share those with our team as well.

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When it is our turn to be a leader of one, what can we do?

Leadership is about an action, not about a role, and then we can all be leaders at some point. What can we do to be leaders or effective followers?

In order for us to be a better self leader and at the same time, be building our skills or practicing the things that will make us more effective when we are leading; one of those things would be to keep a positive attitude.

A positive attitude is contagious. If want to be on a path to being more successful, we need to think about having a more positive attitude.

We still have to be “other” focused. To lead we have to focus on others. The more selfless I become on serving, the more successful I become.

We can practice that skill and mindset all of the time.

In our first show we talked about the 13 competencies of remarkable leaders. And of those 13, you listed learning as first. Remarkable leaders learn continually. Why is learning so important to being a remarkable leader?

Leadership is a complex thing. It is not something you are going to learn in a day. It is something you will learn day by day. We have to work at it continually. If you are leading that means there is no right answer all of the time. You have to learn the subtleties. It is an ongoing process.

I have never met a leader who felt their team was doing everything perfectly. It is the best way to influence others is to be a model yourself. This is what our upcoming event is all about. All of the other competencies of leadership build upon this fact – learning.

As I listen to you I look at that gap between a leader and those they lead, between the vision of the future and today’s reality. It seems the gap is a learning gap.

How does a leader convey the skills, habits, interests in learning continually to those they lead? Would that close the gap?

Through your actions! You can talk about it all day long. You must live it and give people opportunities and chances. Expect of them that they are in a learning mode as well.

Let’s apply your expertise and perspective to current events. What’s the state of the nation as far as leaders and their development? Are we creating them fast enough? Are we instilling, inspiring and reinforcing the habit of learning in students and in business?

From a demographic perspective with the baby boomers getting older, we have a lot offolks who have been leaders in organizations for a very long time. Eventually those skills and talents will be gone. These people are going to retire. There is a huge need for us to train new people. The state of affairs is that we have work to do. It is an imperative part of your business on how you are going to deal with this. There are many companies who recognize this and the importance of change and development.

Is the habit of learning being reinforced or diminished with all this social media?

I think you can look at any trend and find the good and the bad. If you are on Twitter, follow a search on the hashtag, leadership and see what people are saying. There are so many opportunities to learn from here. SM gives us tremendous opportunities.

Leaders are Readers. I think Jim Rohn said that. Do you agree?

I would say leaders are learners and reading is one of the ways we learn. I think we have to be readers. The amount of information available to us through reading is a critical part of our development.

What are you reading? What’s your daily reading schedule?

I read in a variety of sources and ways. I have the largest library of anyone I know. I ordered three books on Amazon this morning.

Switch, by Chip and Dan Heath

The Little Big Things, Tom Peters

Linchpin, by Seth Godin

Always. My reading schedule puts some pressure on me as I am always reviewing books on my blog. I read about 50-60 books per year and I believe it is a part of my own development.

Let’s revisit the Coach and Be Coached Event on March 16. And for our listening audience the URL is remarkabletv.com What are three reasons people should attend?

1. If people want to have greater results in their life.

2. If they would like to be a more effective coach of others.

3. If they want to be inspired by people who are high performers and great coaches themselves.

4. If they want to learn more about the process of being coached, whether formally or informally.

Leave us with an inspiring quote.

When you think about a task that is in front of you that maybe you are uncomfortable with or a task that you are not sure how successful you will be, think about something successful you have done in the past and say: If I did it then, I can do it again.

Thanks, Kevin.

You can follow Kevin online at these locations:

* Website

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