She offered an hour of her time to talk with me about her book. You can listen here.
What’s so fine about her latest book? Let’s start with the foundations of a good book.
Cover Design. See? Simple, clear design.
Testimonials. Look at ‘em. Whoa. Kare Anderson, Stephen Denning, Hunter Lovins to name a few.
Organization. It’s clear, logical, easy-to-get at a glance. Crisp, too.
Mission. VERY clear
Research and Case Studies/Stories. A perfect balance between the two.
Writing. Whew! She’s a very good writer. Very good. It’s always a pleasure to read good writing, regardless of the topic. Good writing is a treat, one you savor like an ice cream cone. But if you add an inspired writer and a topic near and dear to your heart well then you have that rare treat, one you want to share. Here we are.
There’s something more to Carol’s writing that makes her book and the experience reading it to be so satisfying. I’m not as articulate as Carol so my effort to explain here may fail miserably. But here goes. Her writing is so crisp and clear, her sentences are so well-organized and her ideas are such a step further in conception and clarity and impact that, well, ... reading it was like a mental yoga session, stretching - stretching - stretching and energizing-energizing-energizing me. Her writing made me stretch and learn and reach and at the same time come away inspired and excited about the challenges at these crucibles I face, we face, and the different primary archetypes we all possess within us that will help us find the solutions to these challenges.
I have the book resting on the arm of this lazy-boy chair where I write. It’s tempting me to go back through and savor what she’s written, what vistas open up when I read her words, what possibilities await with each of these archetypes. Chills.
Bottomline It? Sure. Read it.
Okay, you don't have the time. I understand. So, how about this plan.
When 3:00 PM rolls around and you're drive and willpower have fled the scene and you're reaching for backup in the form of coffee or a pastry, try reading her book instead. Sure, take it outside for some fresh urge but read her book. Let her writing and the possibilities she describes revive you with hope and ideas for that afternoon, that week.
Disclaimer: I was pitched to read the book. No promises asked or delivered except a copy of the book would be sent to me. After that it was up to me and Carol's book. Her book did all the work. I'm just sharing the experience.
PS: Oh yeah. She offers an online self-assessment test to determine your primary archetype as a responsible entrepreneur. I highly recommend it.
The CFO asked: What if we invest in our people and they leave? To which the CEO responded: What if we don’t and they stay?
You’ve read that before.
I started wondering about the answer to the title of this post after I researched Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, for a post. His page on Wikipedia showed this:
In 1995, he graduated from Harvard University with a degree in computer science.[5] ...After college, Hsieh worked for Oracle Corporation.[7] After five months, Hsieh found himself dissatisfied with the corporate environment and quit to found LinkExchange.
Yeah, so what?
Here’s the kicker.
Hsieh co-founded and sold the internet advertising network LinkExchange to Microsoft in 1999 for $265 million.[3]
That was before he founded Zappos and sold it to Amazon for, ahem, $928 million give or take $80 million in 2009.
So, he graduates from Harvard with a degree in Computer Science and joins the hot, hot company Oracle. Works there five months and leaves. Starts his own company and four years later sells it for $265 million. That’s $65 million per year in value he created.
Do you wonder if anyone at Oracle noticed? Did Tony’s manager revisit with anyone those policies that inspired him to leave and take his value creating genius...elsewhere?
Ok, maybe he didn’t notice this news about the sale of Link Exchange.
However, who didn’t see the news about Amazon and Zappos? $928 million for a shoe company who invested their advertising dollars in creating outstanding experiences for their employees and customers?
Now, when Tony left Oracle he took his box of belongings and created $1.25 billion in corporate value...elsewhere.
Granted Oracle’s done just fine without Tony. Their stock split a couple of times since Tony left.
On the other hand, did anyone at Oracle ask:
Hey, ‘member that guy...Tony Hsieh...’member him? [No]. Yeah, he worked here and left because we were too bureaucratic, too cumbersome in our decision-making processes. And, uh, he built two companies from scratch and sold them for, I don’t know, ‘bout $1.2 Billion as in B...illlyuns.
What if someone had listened to Tony?
It’s hard to imagine anyone not listening to him now. But, what if someone had listened to Tony?
Asked him what he wanted to do and figured out how they could do it?
Or what if someone had asked him:
What’s holding you back, Tony? Let’s say we tasked you with adding $1 billion in value to our market cap. And you have 10 years to do it. How would you do it and what do you need from us?
You might say that’s crazy talk. I understand. Businesses have rules. Employees are supposed to follow your rules and politics policies and process flows and meeting agendas. Otherwise...who knows? You might have an employee create $1 billion in market cap within 10 years. Huh?
Not every employee is a Tony Hsieh. But, you don’t know that do you?
What if you sat down with your employees, one by one or even in a group, and asked them:
How fast do you want to grow this company? What do we need to do that? What are you willing to do that? What policies can we change, must we change to do that? What are you willing to do, to learn and change and grow...here’s what I’m willing to do.
You might find a Tony Hsieh, you might not. Maybe, you find a bunch of mini-Tony's...each of them with a good idea by themselves that upon hearing the others combine and refine themselves...into one half-sized Tony Hsieh worth $500 million in market cap for your company.
You might find a lot of good ideas that keep your employees with you.
You might find a list of politics policies and rules and meetings that at best interfere with making their company the kind of company that inspires them not only to stay but to bring some excitement and emotion and enthusiasm. A more clinical term is discretionary effort. You might find ideas that inspire a great...discretionary effort.
You might find a new core of leaders, waiting for the chance to be asked to offer an idea and lead its execution.
You might find a lot of ideas that kick everyone’s excitement and engagement back to what it was that first day, like Tony’s first day at the cool company...gonna put his Harvard degree to use like they promised.
The biggest urge I had while reading his book and preparing this review is just to cut and paste whole sections of it, pasting it here and standing back and going...'Nice, huh?' The whole book's like that. Here's another sample:
I think businesses should grow up...I don’t mean “it would be nice if it happened.” I mean we should all, everyone of us, expect our businesses to grow up and start giving back to us and to the world around us. We should assume that at some point our business would move from survival right through success to significance.
BOOM! As I read that portion here again, I had to ask myself:
What part is not clear?
What part do we see being implemented in the majority of companies?
Not too many, right?
Nobody would argue with me that we should intend for our children to grow up, leave home, and become grownups we could enjoy for decades, but when was the last time we had a similar conversation about our businesses? It’s normal for children to grow up, so why isn’t it normal for businesses to do the same thing? Frankly, we’re in charge of both of them at birth, and if you’ve had kids, you’ll know that you’ve got more control over the maturity of your business than the maturity of your kids
I'll say it again: boom!
And, see? That’s a paradigm shift using an excellent metaphor. Raising children to be adults you can enjoy is like growing a business to maturity, one you can step back and enjoy. Children come home to share their excitements and achievements and sure, a few setbacks - it’s life we’re talking about. Your business should do the same.
Chuck does more than offer a simple paradigm shift before kicking you out from this reading nest to either fly or die. He shows how to move your daily meter from the Tyranny of the Urgentto the Priority of the Important. Simple, yes. Crucial, very. That’s how you move off the Treadmill of Making Moneyand through the 7 stages of a business from Concept& Start-Up through Survival and Subsistence to Success by Walking Around, Significance and arriving at Succession. He shares examples of clients who walked that walk with him, through all 7 steps and others who...didn’t. Real crisp, concise examples too including the client’s words. Oh, and actionable steps that you can do...today. Consider the Three Life-Changing Steps and the 3to5 Club...no, you’ll have to read it.
Naturally there are potholes and places to get waylaid and he helps you avoid those and keep walking through those 7 stages until your ‘baby’ is ready to walk and live on its own. And you have a life again and your business is something to enjoy, like your kids when they grow up.
All in all it’s sort of a Dr. Spock and The Common Sense Book of Baby and Childcare but for business owners and their businesses; and this one works. In its first fifty-two years Dr. Spock's book sold more copies than every other book except for...The Bible. I’m thinking that given the clarity of writing and the proven, doable steps that Chuck shares in Why Making Money is Killing Your Business ... that he deserves sales second to...what Good to Great by Jim Collins? That would put sales for Chuck's book at around 3-4 million. That sounds right.
Virgin Rebel: Richard Branson In His Own Words is excellent. Why? Cause its his own words. No biography, no childhood pals, no dates or girlfriends or controversies, no cheap pop psychology pablum applied by a first time biographer explaining his childhood favorite color led to his fixation with rock n’ roll...whatever.
It’s Richard Branson’s words categorized nicely by the editor Danielle McLimore:
Entrepreneurship (11 pages)
Entrepreneurial business favors the open mind. It favors people whose optimism drives them to prepare for many possible futures, pretty much for the joy of doing so.
Business and Investment (10 pages)
I try to keep bureaucracy to a minimum, and remind my teams that business, as well as life, should be fun.
Branding and Marketing (9 pages)
Over the years the Virgin brand has earned the reputation of being bold and unafraid. Isn’t it extraordinary how few brands communicate fearlessness?
Leadership and Management (12 pages)
The willingness to listen, and the willingness to stick your neck out and ask the obvious question, are criminally underrated business essentials.
Innovation (9 pages)
The best most solid way out of a crisis is through experiment and adaptation.
Air and Space (9 pages)
Regarding galactic travel: If you’ve got a mother-in-law we can sort out one-way tickets.
Personal (10 pages)
The idea of board meetings horrifies me.
Social Responsibility (10 pages)
The war on drugs has caused so much misery in the world, [and] it’s been going on for 40 years; if we’d had a business that had failed for one year we would have changed tack or we would have closed it down.
Every page is filled with excellent quotes. I shared these because I liked them and they were short. Check it out. It’s a book I’ll keep close by for choice quotes on a variety of topics.
Jennifer Shin is founder and principal at 8 Path Solutions LLC. She shared her thoughts on what are important traits of successful entrepreneurs and the fatal flaws that kill the dreams of every entrepreneur.
Q: What are the three most important traits of a successful entrepreneur?
1. Tolerance for Discomfort
The reality of entrepreneurship is that there is no guarantee that your efforts will pay off in the end. The probability of those efforts working out are often small and, at the end of the day, the money probably won't be equivalent to how much the experience will demand of you both professionally and personally. The experience can and will likely be grueling,uncertain, and uncomfortable. The ability to see the value in being an entrepreneur is essential for getting through these tough times. It is important to stay focused on the reason you ventured out on your own in the first place (i.e. for professional autonomy, to realize a personal vision, etc.) and use it as motivation. On the other end of the spectrum, there will be many times where there will be the temptation to jump on deals pre-maturely or pursue opportunities that can be more risk than reward. Successful entrepreneurs are adept at riding out hard times and making good choices in pivotal moments to yield the highest returns.
The 5th Annual Hiscox DNA of an Entrepreneur Survey offers real-time insights about both entrepreneurs’ business performance and plans as well as their attitudes and lifestyles which their peers may find interesting.
2. Adaptive Persistence
Persistence, if too rigid or stubborn, can be detrimental to an entrepreneur. While entrepreneurs are often portrayed as exemplifying perseverance, their ability to interpret and adapt to changes in the market generally receives less attention. It’s unlikely that ignoring negative feedback from consumers will lead to success, but this leaves entrepreneurs with some tough decisions. Does it make sense to cut their losses despite the time and effort already invested? Successful entrepreneurs often choose to forge ahead, but do so by adapting the idea based on this feedback. Through refinement, an entrepreneur can stay true to their original goals and motivations while producing a product that is profitable and desirable by VCs. Refinement can include rewording your pitch, redesigning your product, reassessing your target audience, refocusing your marketing initiatives, or any other aspect of your business that may be limiting your success.
3. Knowing What You Don't Know
Most of the smartest people I've met, both in industry and academia, seem to be well aware that they don't know everything. More importantly, they don't try to learn things that are outside of the scope of their ability or interest. This can be a waste of time when you're on a deadline or if other priorities need to take precedence. In business, there is always room to hire people who know about the things you don't know and being able to hire the right people to take on these roles is essential. This applies to skill sets as well.
Q: Name an entrepreneur who best exemplifies one of these traits in their life and business.
I had the pleasure of hearing Shark Tank's Barbara Corcoran speak at this year's IBM Smart Camp at the Waldorf Astoria. During her presentation she identified one of the keys to her success: a business partner who was talented in all the ways she wasn't (See a clip here: ).
She calls herself an expander, someone who will go grow and expand the business, whereas her partner is a container, someone who can manage the day to day operations in the office, such as paperwork. Finding a container or expander to complement your personal business skill is a strategy she recommends to every entrepreneur and there are countless other entrepreneurs who have demonstrated the importance of similar partnerships with people who have different skills.
Q: What are the three most dominant traits among failed entrepreneurs?
1. Valuing Image Over Substance
Believing in the image of entrepreneurship over the product or service you provide can change your perception about your success and keep you from seeing the bigger picture.
The image of entrepreneurship is often glamorized by the media and peers on their social media and personal websites. Many new entrepreneurs I know had financial backing that they leveraged to promote their ventures, rented office space, and participated in popular events, such as conferences and expos. In contrast, I worked from home and tried to generate business, constantly nervous about how long I could stay operational, but used the downtime to cultivate my technical skills, learn new technologies and refine my services. Over the past year, my business has grown while many of the other entrepreneurs I know either have reentered the workforce or their businesses have stopped growing. Their initial efforts were more focused on capitalizing, marketing and establishing their company image rather than developing their core product. Foregoing developing skill sets and learning new techniques to keep product/service-lines current and exciting can jeopardize your relationship with existing clients or harm your company’s competitive edge.
2. Belief in a "Right Way"
There is no rulebook for entrepreneurship or for becoming a successful entrepreneur. If there were, there would be perfect information, no chance of arbitrage, or quite simply, there would be no need for entrepreneurship. Starting out as an entrepreneur with preconceived notions, such as how many hours you'll work or how long it takes to become successful will be (in most cases) shattered. Only doing things that have been predetermined as successful can result in your business failing because your business may be unique or innovative and thus, in need of a new approach in order to be marketable. There is no way to know if your doing the right thing in life and similarly there is no guarantee that doing it the "right way" will make you successful.
3. Focusing on Failure
Failure plays a different role in entrepreneurship than it does in other contexts, such as school and work. For one thing, there is no one above you who can penalize you for your mistakes, but entrepreneurs can still feel tempted to cast blame on anyone other than himself or herself rather than face it. Focusing on the failure itself, rather than learning from it, will only limit your ability to move on from it. Many entrepreneurs even learn to use failure to drive their success. Failure can be used as an opportunity to investigate your internal structure. A potentially larger problem could be hiding in your business and determining the cause of a minor setback can save you from a devastating situation in the future.
Q: If we can overcome them, how?
I think it is important to start with a clear image of your product, your company and yourself. Once you have established that, it will be much easier to move your company image and products forward. This will also help you stay true to yourself when times get tough or you run into failures along the way.
Try reading the biographies, speeches or interviews of a variety of different entrepreneurs, take note of different approaches that can be attributed to their success and see if you can apply those to yourself. Also, reading about other entrepreneur’s personal experiences dealing with failure may change your own perspective on how to view your shortcomings.
For example, a business that fails to meet the year’s sales goals might discover the drop in sales resulted from losing dissatisfied clients and may benefit from creating a customer service department as a result.
If you find yourself constantly comparing yourself to other entrepreneurs who you follow, try limiting the number of times you log into your account and focus on your business instead. By making progress in your venture, you will feel more confident about your work by the next time you log in.
Q: Share the story of an entrepreneur who overcame this trait in order to be successful.
There are also benefits to failure as well as lessons we can learn from it. Take the experience of Steve Jobs, one of many entrepreneurs who have learned from failure. In his commencement address at Stanford University in 2005 he explained,
I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
Failure has the amazing benefit of giving us a clean slate to either walk away from a draining endeavor or, more importantly, help us find a renewed love for the things that we've chosen to pursue. And the more times we fail at the things we love, we feel stronger each time we decide to take it on again and each time we do so having grown a bit wiser, a bit more likely to succeed the next time. Had Steve jobs chosen to only see the negative and humiliating aspects of his failure, he might not be known as the entrepreneur he is today.
*************
These are excellent, thoughtful, answers.
What do you think about her answers or your own traits that have contributed towards your successes or failures?
I found a fascinating website while trolling around the Internet recently. It’s called Statistic Brain and it has data and rankings on all kinds of topics, from hair loss to consumer spending.
The numbers that caught my eye had to do with start-up business failures. Did you know:
25 percent of start-ups strike out within the first year
Thirty-six go down in the second, and 44 percent in the third
Nearly three-quarters of businesses that start in one year will be shuttered 10 years later.
Why?
“Incompetence” is the No. 1 reason, according to Statistic Brain. My fun new website cites specific pitfalls including “living too high for the business,” “lack of planning” and – this one’s a doozy – “non-payment of taxes!”
All those numbers made me want to pat myself on the back. My company is in its 23rd year, which sounds ancient by Statistic Brain’s standards. It hasn’t always been smooth sailing; there was one terrifying year in the wake of 9/11 that we very nearly went belly-up. But I changed course, pulled out of the storm, and emerged much wiser.
Reading the alarming stats on Statistic Brain made me think about what I’ve learned in my two-plus decades of starting and growing a small business. Much of what I know now came from painful experience; something I wouldn’t wish on anyone. So, in the hope of preventing others from learning the hard way, I thought I’d share some of the lessons that have proved most valuable to me.
• Be flexible when building your team. You hired Person A to do Job A, but as you get to know him, you find he has talents and skills better suited to another job – possibly even a job you haven’t identified! Be open to switching things up. Your business will benefit from having the right people in the right jobs, and your employees will be happier and more productive when they’re doing what they’re really good at doing. No one I know enjoys work they find too easy – boring! – or too challenging. You’ll have a great, loyal team if you play to individuals’ strengths.
• Don’t spend more than you make. It may sound like a no-brainer, but based on Statistic Brain’s numbers, far too many people make that deadly mistake. If your product or service isn’t earning enough to pay the bills, it may be time to re-evaluate what you’re offering. Is there a demand for it? Is it a quality product or service? Do you need to cut expenses – even forego taking a salary – to balance the budget while you build up the business? If you make the mistake of relying on credit or investors to pay for your daily expenses, it’s going to be difficult to evaluate whether or not your business model is working.
• If you borrow, invest it in the company. If you’re going to draw a salary from that money, don’t be tempted to take more than you absolutely need to survive. If your lifestyle is a little uncomfortable, you will be far more motivated to do whatever it takes to make your business thrive.
• Don’t allow marketing to fall by the wayside. One of the most important components of any business plan is its marketing strategy. Too often, people don’t think that through with the same rigor they tackle concerns like projected cash flow and long-term goals. Or, they do put thought and effort into planning for market research, promotion and positioning – and then never follow through.
Marketing is the engine that drives your business; it’s what generates the leads that become the sales, which sets the rest of your company’s machinery in motion. Without it, you can’t sustain and grow your customer base. Marketing is multi-pronged. It includes branding and positioning your business to distinguish it from your competitors. When things are going well, don’t make the mistake of deciding, “I don’t need to market any more!”
Those are a just a few of the many lessons I’ve learned starting a business from scratch. While it can be very rewarding, it can also be frightening! I’ve often said the No. 1 virtue any entrepreneur needs is courage.
Finally, surround yourself with great people and treat them, and your customers, with genuine caring. You’ll be surprised by the number of problems that can solve.
About Marsha Friedman
Marsha Friedman is a 23-year veteran of the public relations industry. She is the CEO of EMSI Public Relations, a national firm that provides PR strategy and publicity services to businesses, professional firms, entertainers and authors. Marsha is the author of Celebritize Yourself and she can also be heard weekly on her Blog Talk Radio Show, EMSI’s PR Insider every Thursday at 3:00 PM EST. Follow Marsha Friedman on Twitter.
MY NOTES
Brain Statistics is not a client of EMSI. I double-checked on that.
I liked that:
a successful PR firm embraces new media so well with this guest post offering helpful tips for small business owners.
the CEO is leading the charge with this effort and with her active Twitter account.
Marsha and her firm, EMSI Public Relations, is a pioneer in the pay-for-performance model of PR. Pioneer ranks just 2-3 steps behind world-class and 4-5 steps behind think outside the box for website marketing...what, empty cliche'. But, with Marsha and her firm, EMSI Public Relations, I think it's honest and accurate.
their blog offers well-written advice for social media's use as well as tips for traditional PR and the pieces include real-world, contemporary, examples.
Thank you Marsha for sharing this with me and my readers.
I had the opportunity to ask a few questions of Brian Moran founder of Small Business Edge where he is leveraging his 20+ years of experience in publishing magazines for business owners to assist entrepreneurs with everything from social media to accessing growth capital to expanding into the global marketplace.
In August, 2012, Brian was given the prestigious Lou Campanelli award at SCORE’s national conference in recognition for his years of service in the small business market. In October, 2012 Brian was named one of the top 100 SMB Influencers in the country by Small Business Trends & Small Biz Technology.
Before that he was Executive Director of Sales Development at the Wall Street Journal.
SUCCESSFUL TRAITS
Q: What are the three most important traits of a successful entrepreneur?
A: Entrepreneurs are a rare breed. They all find success through different channels and by different means. What works for one entrepreneur may be kryptonite to another entrepreneur. That said, I did some research to see if there were some common threads in the more successful entrepreneurs. Here are three traits I found:
1) X-Ray Vision: The most successful entrepreneurs see what normal business owners cannot see. Clayton Christensen often talks about disruptive innovation. Well, it’s not disruptive nor is it innovative before an entrepreneur takes a chance on executing his or her idea. Michael Dell’s decision to sell his computers directly to customers was completely disruptive. He saw what few others were able to see—that all of the other computer companies were married to big box retail or their internal sales force. It would take years before they could free themselves from their commitments to sell directly to the end user. Dell saw what others did not see.
2) High Tolerance for Risk & Pain: Successful entrepreneurs understand that what they are doing is akin to “walking through the fire.” Fire is HOT! It will hurt. Theseentrepreneurs commit their time, money, resources—and their tolerance for pain-to building extraordinary businesses. I remember listening to RedBox Co-Founder Michael DeLazzer tell the story about his presentation to McDonald's which was a last ditch effort to save his company. I can feel his pain as he tells the story of pleading for 24 more hours in order to prove that his product worked.
3) Great Leaders: Most of the really successful entrepreneurs inspire the people who work for them to share in their success by giving more than they normally would to a job. They lead by example and are not afraid to get their hands dirty if it means moving the company towards its goal. Norm Brodsky, serial entrepreneur, author and columnist at Inc. magazine, often writes about the culture of his company. He gave his employees the freedom to express themselves and their ideas and they thanked him by helping him create a company (CitiStorage) that he would later sellfor over $100 million.
FATAL FLAWS
Q: What are the three most dominant traits of failed entrepreneurs?
A: The road to success for entrepreneurs is littered with the broken dreams of failed business people who weren’t able to realize their visions for various reasons. Three of the most common reasons are:
1)They didn’t pay attention to the financials. It’s the life blood of any business. You can’t let the chasm between A/P and A/R get too wide, you have to be mindful of your banking relationships and you have to watch expenses. Basically, you can’t sleep much as an aspiring entrepreneur. Traps are all around you. Step in one of them and it can mean the end of your business. Need an example? If your largest customer represents at least 30% of your revenue and typically pays you net 90 days, what would happen if that company filed for bankruptcy and took all your receivables with them? That scenario might cause a few sleepless nights.
2) They didn’t have a secure plan or a contingency plan. If the Great Recession taught us anything it’s that even the best laid plans get thrown out the window when our economy gets blasted by a crippling recession. The companies that survived did so because they had a disaster plan in place. The companies that failed weren’t as fortunate. They had no plan and no contingency plan in place. Their demise was set the day the recession hit.
3) They weren’t leaders; just bad bosses. The entrepreneurs that fail did so, in part, because they didn’t extract greatness from their employees. Rather they made life miserable. They treated their employees in a dictatorial manner or worse, they were indifferent to the needs of their workers. No one wants to follow a bad boss and no one jumps out of bed on a cold, wintery morning because they get to work for a bad boss.
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What do you think of Brian’s answer? What are your virtues and vanities of entrepreneurs? Which one’s the toughest?
I like his answers. I like his writing, too. It’s clear and concise.
I’m glad I discovered Brian and can point you towards him. Check out Brian's Blog. Besides sharing his business savvy, he shares quotes and perspective from Plato, Socrates, the poet Robert Frost and the Bible in his post A Better Way to Live. Someone who can do that is someone we should read.
In his book, Richard compiled what principles, steps, tip and practices brought him this success over 40 years. His book shows the reader how to think and use "SIMPLIFIED STRATEGIC BUSINESS PLANNING" to generate ever increasing income, profits and wealth in the world of small business.
I very much enjoyed this book for its real world, do-it-now, approach to achieving success in the world of small business. That world, he reminds, is the world that creates new jobs. That world seems a bit dismal given our current economy. And this book can turn that around and our economy around.
Mr. Sanford. Thank you for being on the show.
You’re welcome, Zane. And, please call me ‘Dick’. I answer to that better than Mr.
Thank you for writing a great book.
Oh, you’re welcome. It was a pleasure to write.
I found it well-organized, well-written and eminently doable. You know it’s really more of a manual which is what I think small business needs.
I tend to call it a ‘handbook’.
Now who were you writing this book for? Describe the person that needs to read your book, where do they sit in an organization, what are their fears?
There are two audiences. First audience would be for a budding entrepreneur who is considering a startup small business and they have a dream in their head. And they really haven’t had any training or experience to guide them to come up with a good strategic plan for creating and building the business.
The 2nd audience are for those entrepreneurs who have survived the 1-3 year obstacle course you have to go through to become a success. Now, they’re looking to grow and expand their business. And here again, lacking strategic planning tools that’s not taught in high schools for small business and not taught in MBA programs...they’re all aimed at big business.
The tools needed in big business aren’t available to small business people - meaning a large staff of researchers and strategic planners and data banks and consumer analysis reports. Strategic planning in small business is done in the head of the entrepreneur with very limited resources and no real plan to guide them in doing so.
Somewhere in the back of my mind is a question, for probably another whole show, about the lack of strategic planning skills taught in high schools. I always think of strategic planning in many respects as the ability to organize an idea and lay out a plan and then be able to communicate it. That skill is not taught in our high schools says a lot of what our future holds for us.
Right on. Depending on who you listen to, 70-80% of all new business startups fail by the end of the first year. What a waste of resource and capital and energy!
Again, the purpose of my book is to increase the chance of success of those startup rates.
Now let’s talk a bit more about the purpose of your writing this book. As I was preparing for this show, I looked at your background and what stood out was 40 years in business, 11 successful startups. And I’m thinking you’ve probably got grandkids, you’re probably living somewhere warm and sunny in a relaxed setting. And here you are writing a book and a very good one.
You’re right on all of it and I even have my first great grandchild.
Yeah, you’re right. I’m in Arizona this morning, got up early, did my homework and prepared my mind for this show. I’ve been looking forward to it.
I watch so many people. I came out of a very poor family from an industrial workforce. And I watch so many of them lust for age 65 so they could drink all the beer they could drink and sit in front of a TV and die. That was not my idea of a rewarding retirement.
It’s fun to read, to think. It’s fun to create. It keeps you alive and vital. So, numbers of associates have told me:
“You can't fade out of this life and leave behind this model that you’ve pushed on to us and forced us to comply with to create successes. And you’ve gotta share it.”
In some respects, this book is a startup. What is your strategy for reaching that goal?
Very simple. I use the same model I use with all my businesses. I take it step by step and I’m underway.
Right now, I’ve identified the markets I want to reach and I’ve identified the methods in which I need to brand myself in the public domain before I start selling to those markets. So, it’s working. And evidenced by your wonderful invitation to talk about my book and my model on your radio blog. It’s a compliment.
I turn the compliment back to you. Thank you for being on the show. I‘ve looked forward to talking with you ever since I read your book.
And most small businesses start with a business plan. But you write that a strategic business plan is better than a business plan. What's the difference between the two and why's the former better than the latter?
Well, when I left big business and became an entrepreneur I’ve got some assets. I had some savings and some capital. So, I went to the bank and said I’d like some capital to start a business. And they said:
“Well, you need a business plan.”
And I said:
“ Oh, ok. What’s that look like?”
And they said:
“ Well, talk to your accountant.”
And what happened in retrospect was I had this dream in my mind about the business I wanted to create and launch. I told this dream, I described this dream, to my accountant and he replicated it with numbers. So, in other words, he took my dreams which were imaginations and he converted it into numbers and a business plan and the bank said:
“Oh, great! Great business plan. And we’ll loan you some capital.”
That is not a strategic plan. I hadn’t done research and analysis of the market - the products and markets I would provide - the space I would need and the business values I would applkly to a startup and running a business.
And as I progressed, I said:
“Gee. I need a strategic plan. I’m flopping all over the place, running around, do this do that.”
So, I went to the library, to the college. And said:
“Ok. Where are the books on strategic planning?”
And discovered that all of them, all of them, were written for big business. And all of the said:
“Here’s what you do. Do this. Do that. Do this. Do that.”
And none of them told me how to do it.
And that is true today. I search in libraries and I search in libraries and anything to do with strategic planning, without exception, they say “here’s what you do” and they never tell you how to do it.
So, I said to myself:
"How do I modify strategic planning for big business scale, modify this and simplify this for entrepreneurs?"
And over the years I developed my model called Success by Design.
That’s excellent.
The first step in creating a strategic business planning is defining the mission of the business. You write that there's only one mission for every business. You advise the reader to bookmark that chapter until he understands this. What is that central mission for all businesses?
First of all, I would invest if possible in American corporations and buy stock and look at their annual reports. They used to all have a mission. Today they disguise it.
And the mission was wonderful. They were flowery and told what they were going to do to change the world, benefit humanity.
Pretty soon, I got to thinking:
" That is not the purpose of a profit-making business."
There is only one mission that meets my definition. And that is for every profit-making business is to create ever increasing income and profit and wealth. Failure to do that, the business self-destructs. And big ones, big businesses are doing it every day. They lose their focus about why they were created and to whom they are accountable for their performance.
And all the good things that happen in business and our economy are a result of a profit-making business. And profit-making comes from ever-increasing income. Just for the purposes of inflation, if you don’t increase your business income 3-5% then you’re falling behind!
So, their missions...they don’t understand, apparently that that is their obligation to their shareholders, to their employees. What kind of employment is it in a business that is losing money. They’re heading for the failure circle, not the winner’s circle.
That’s the only legitimate mission I use.
Now, in my book I describe some reasons that businesses don’t want to lay that out because there’s a certain element in our society that has demonized profit-making which is kind of ridiculous. Because all of the good things in our economy, in the life of consumers comes from companies who create profit and invest it back in their employees, invest it back in their communities.
We’re the greatest charity giving entity in the world. I wonder where people think that comes from. You think that comes from a business that loses money? Not so.
That’s the mission that I use. But I give them some latitude. As you mention, I ask them to book-mark in my book and if they can come up with a better one, then use that mission.
Has anyone come up with a better one that they’ve shared with you?
Never have, Zane. When they start to think about it....that’s like saying
“Gee, I’m going to make society better by losing money. That’s my mission.”
When they speak it out, it’s very obvious what it should be.
Hand in hand or should I say step by step, comes this next step. And that’s the step of creating your purpose. What's the difference between a company's purpose and its mission?
The company’s purpose is what you will do to be beneficial to society and to customers and clients. It’s what you will do that will generate profit. That becomes specific as to the profit, the product, the markets, etc. And what business are you going to be in and how are you going to conduct that business.
So, that’s the description about how to think about creating a purpose. That’s chapter two in my book.
Listening to you, you’re so clear, you’re so crisp, it makes me wonder if there’s not some sorta mental malaise in our business leaders that they are not able to differentiate between the two or are afraid to differentiate between the two.
True. I discussed that in the purposes as well. Businesses today are demonized for making a profit which is ridiculous because all good things come from making profits. They don’t come from loss or failure.
So, they hide it. They use generally a purpose as a substitute for a mission. I don’t have any problem with that. If you want to hide the mission, that’s ok. I did when I created descriptive promotional and sales material for my business I did not lay my mission out for that to attract the detractors. So, I put the purpose out - how we’re going to benefit society and consumers, our clients.
I did the same thing as big business. When you’re being demonized for your mission no sense in adding fuel to the fires so you publish your purpose.
But, if I were sitting on the board of directors for a major corporation I could tell ya the first thing I would say is:
" Is this company making a profit? Or are you heading for the loser’s circle. And exactly what are you doing about it. From income comes profit, so what are you doing to control expenses and not waste our income. Convert it into profit and from profit creates wealth."
We share it with our investors. We share it with our communities. If you go out and just walk around the community and look at all the good things that happen from just the profit-making companies, it’s incredible.
As I’m thinking, and I didn’t have this question as part of the list we’re going to go over, and this might be a personal observation. I think people have no problems with companies making tons of profit, take Apple, when they’re bringing value to their lives, solving a problem, making their lives better.
All you have to do is to talk with your friends and ask them what kind of computer do you use. Is it ok? Should I buy it? And they’ll say yeah! Is it ok for Dell to make profit? Well, what isn’t ok to make profits?
These detractors...well, they’re never asked the question:
Do you like the jeans you’re wearing?
Is that a good product?
Is it ok for them to make a profit and stay in business?
And they’ll say:
"Oh, it’s those other giant big corporations, mystical...they’re terrible, they’re attitude."
It’s a lack of education from grade school on. We don’t teach enterprise. We don’t teach free enterprise. We don’t teach strategic planning.
**********
Part Two of this conversation will be published Monday, November 21.
Part Three of this conversation will be published Tuesday, November 22.
I'm an avid reader. I read 1 or 2 business books a week. And I found this book one of the best written, most useful, best-organized, most entertaining, imminently doable books I've read in a long time.
How good is it? I haven't finished it yet. Almost every paragraph inspires, ignites, aggravates me to keep writing notes, scribbling them in a notepad or typing them in Evernote.
If you're in a startup, a small company, a mid-sized company, if you're in a department within a big company getting ready to launch something new...you should read this. And make sure you have a notepad handy. Seriously. Even if you just like good writing...you should read this.
You talk about the different types of reasoning and its role in your decision-making process. Two types of reasoning, I’m kind of familiar with, inductive and deductive, I use occasionally in my business. You describe a 3rd. Abductive. And I looked it up on Wikipedia and it describes it as guessing. But I think it’s a bit more than that.
Both: Laughing.
Eric: Awesome. I never looked it up in Wikipedia.
Adam: What counts is that we’re smarter than guessing.
Eric: You blew my entire cover of what everybody thinks I do around here. I have a vision, inspire what can be versus what is...and it turns out all the time I was guessing.
Yeah, this comes from bringing together great business thinking and great design thinking. My career was I grew up working with creatives. And a lot of it rubbed off on me over time and it’s about most people look at something and they’ll explain to you what is. And they’ll have a really hard time what can be. And that is the core skill of a designer or a creative is creating something that hasn’t been. I would argue it’s also the core skill of an entrepreneur who has the ability to like we did, in a wall of sameness in cleaning products and be able to imagine what possibly could be in that place that was there today.
Adam: Otherwise known as guessing.
To be honest, I just looked it up as we were talking and I’d ever heard of it and I thought:
Wait a minute. That is a form of reasoning. And the first sentence in Wikipedia is that sentence.
Why is it so rare, why are you guys so fortunate to have such an active skillset with abductive reasoning. Or why is it so rare in other businesses?
Eric: Because most businesses as they mature and grow, people who naturally get promoted to the top tend to be the best managers who have a really rigorous approach. They’re analytical. They have the ability to create predictability, right - the person who ultimately can deliver predictable results time and time again.
Who gets squeezed out, ultimately, are the individuals who are much more the creators. They’re not going to be the managers. And so, what we try to do is balance that at a leadership team level, that design thinking and business thinking where we have an industrial designer who sits there as a peer to a CFO.
And, it’s rare. But it’s getting much less rare. Apple’s probably the best example where a designer or a creative sits there at the same level as the operations.
We talked a little bit before the show about failure. You guys have failed a number of times. In fact, you devote a section at the end of each chapter to a failure and what you learned from it.
I say this with a big smile...but given the number of your failures, big and small, you guys should be consider big failures. I say that with the utmost respect. But you kept right on failing until you were successful and you had the guts to share many of those failures in your book.
Adam: Well, it starts off with the belief, and I mentioned it before, Eric and I we’re not really into trite things like “striving for perfection” or “striving for excellence” sorta vacuous statements like that.
Instead of focusing on being the best, we’re focused on being the best at getting better. It’s interesting that we’ve learned from stories like the space shuttle disaster. You know that classic NASA story about the fear of bringing the O-ring forward to superiors within that organization and the disaster that occurred there in that organization.
What’s really important is not that you come up with the perfect strategy that can’t fail. It’s much more important to have a strategy that’s just ok and execute it really well. And then learn what didn’t work. And adjust that strategy and execute well again. If you do that, in a couple of iterations you’re going to be by far the best. And that will get you there much more quickly than trying to sit around and think about the perfect solution.
We’d rather get towards doing, learn what works and what doesn’t, and then just keep doing. And it’s sorta painfully simple. But it works.
And what it does is that it means you got to have a company culture that says:
“It’s ok to fail but we gotta learn from it.”
Now that you’re over 10 years old and your quarterly revenues are meaningful, how do you keep that willingness to fail and that openness to it alive and well in your culture?
Adam: I think it’s important to note we’re still a tiny company in the grand scheme of our competitive set. We have competitors that are a 1000 times our size. We’re still really little, even though we’re bigger. But we do believe that small is a state of mind. And it’s about a way of doing things where people remain scrappy and resourceful and focused around making the best of the resources we have.
Eric: Yeah, I think that fear of failure starts at the top and setting examples. When Adam and I screw up, we admit those mistakes. It’s modeling that behavior that’s probably the most important thing you can do as a leader.
You list 3 mistakes, 3 learning experiences with your Bloq product line. Which one proved the most valuable?
Eric: That line taught us a lot of mistakes that we were able to carry forward. I would argue probably the one that is:
“Lack of Alignment”
There were some really simple decisions we made really late in the game that if we had not done that we would be ultimately...none of this would have happened. So, it’s something we push really really hard on...we’ve got complete alignment before we move forward on new decisions.
Early on in our conversation we talked about your principle to aim small and over serve. That sounds so clear for a small startup company. But your muse, Andy, also reminds you that the bigger you get, the smaller you need to act. Now, you're a big company. A bigger company. When did you catch yourself acting like a big company?
Eric: I think probably one of the best examples was when we launched the brand. If you read the copy on the back of the label, you probably would have just laughed out loud. We would go on to make ridiculous claims, like our cucumber dish soap claim, we would say:
“We own the right to the cucumber in all countries except Guam.”
Things would just come out of left field. And couldn’t really be explained but it would be very entertaining. And it would also bring a little bit of fun to the dish soap. I was amazed at the all the letters we would get, some of them arguing with us:
“Guam is not a country, it’s a territory.”
And wanting to keep dialogue going.
And as we got bigger that voice got squeezed out more and more. We started sounding a bit more serious and taking ourselves a bit more serious.
And that’s a lot of what Andy means. The bigger you get the more real you need to be in order to lot lose your connection with those human emotions.
We worked hard with the more recent things we’ve done. If you look at the bottom of our bottles now we’ve started embossing them with little sayings that, for the consumer to discover. Just those little winks, those little quirks, that you don’t typically get from big brands.
Nice. Nice answer.
You sprinkle your book with quick profiles of your favorite muses. Andy Spade, Tony Hsieh, Dan Germain, and others. Was there one muse you left out?
Eric: Yeah, we had a lot of muses we could have done. I would give a couple for me.
Chip Connelly, who’s the well-known hotelier here in San Francisco. His ability to create experiences and elevate those experiences is amazing.
Blake Mycoskie who founded Tom’s Shoes. His ability to create inspire advocates and his leverage of social media for his one-to-one model is just world-class and somebody who I continue to get inspired by.
Adam: Yeah, there are some people who were inspirational to us that we mentioned in the book, not as muses but who served that role. People like Yvon Chouinard founder of Patagonia who’s created a business model unlike any other as it relates to sustainability. People like Michael Braungart and Bill McDonough behind the cradle-to-cradle model of business which we very much build into things.
Those are great inspirations and muses for us. I think there are some very personal ones for both Eric and I. Both of us look to our parents and grand-parents as great inspirations and the reasons why we’ve ended up doing what we’re doing.
We've reached the imagination moment in our show. Let's imagine that President Obama is calling your assistant right now. In fact, they are waving at you and mouthing the words...President Obama, as we talk. You’re laughing and she drops him into your voicemail. He says:
Guys, love what you're doing. You and your company turned an industry upside down. Right now, we've got an economy that remains upside down. I need to hear your ideas on how we can turn it upside down one more time, bring it right side up and start growing, generating jobs. Would you come to the white house, bring some product to keep me and the first lady happy, and talk about 3 things we can do now to bring this economy right side up.
What would you tell him?
Adam: I’m not politician, but since you gave me the liberty to answer when you brought it up I’ll go ahead and jump into it.
The first is I think we really need to invest in the green economy. I don’t know why in political discourse there’s still this weird belief that if we do something good for the environment it will be bad for the economy. That’s just plainly false. In fact, the reverse is true. By making investments in the green economy we can create, by making investments in green things we can make growth happen.
I’m a big believer in that.
The 2nd is education. Education is always something that is critically important for the development of a nation. I think we need to do that at a lot of different levels.
The last one is a little bit political. I believe the issue of campaign finance reform is a critical issue in the United States. I think it’s an apex issue. One of the reasons it’s so hard to invest in the green economy and one of the reasons the deck is stacked against companies like Method that integrate social and environmental considerations into their business model is that our politicians are really run by the people that fund them. And the the people that fund them are big entrenched businesses whose interests are to keep things the way they are. As long as the big corporations, who don’t want things to change, are funding the politicians then we’re not going to get the level of change we seek.
Eric: I guess I would just tell him, like, stop calling me and continue to let me work, so I can make more soap and hire more people.
Readers are leaders. Jim Rohn says that, I just quote him. What are you reading these days in all your free time?
Eric: You know, I’m a magazine junkie. I find it hard to find the time to get into a new book. I had a flight this morning that left at 5:30 AM and in hand I had the Economist, Business Week and Fast Company. But, I’m also, I spend a lot of time on digital media and blogs but I’m still magazine junkie at heart.
Adam: I’m reading two books right now. One’s called The Ripple Effect by Alex Prudhomme and it’s about fresh water and the fate of fresh water in the world going forward. I read a lot of non-fiction, stuff like that, instead of a lot of business books.
Both great books about different topics. One’s critical if business is going to provide more leadership in the world.
Fantastic.
This has been a fantastic conversation. You start your book talking about the importance of a company's culture. And you end your book talking about culture, too. In this case, it's the personal culture. Share with us your conclusion.
Adam: Um, I’m not sure I understand what you mean.
Well, as I’m reading aloud, I’m not sure the question was very clear. I apologize.
Adam: I’m sure it was at the time.
You start the last chapter with a great conclusion:
Sitting down to write this conclusion, we couldn’t help but think,
Shouldn’t you be drawing your own conclusions from the book?
We’ve spent over two hundred pages giving you all of the wit and wisdom we have to offer, and you want more? ...
Really, if there is one thing we want you to take away from this book it’s...buy our soap. Lots of it!...
Ok, if there are two things you take away from this book, here’s the second: Find your own obsessions.
Eric: Success only comes from really understanding and articulating what drives you. And taking that up to a higher purpose in your career and life. It’s such a cliche’, but it’s a true one. It’s hard for most people. We’re very lucky to find early in our careers what really drove us and to be able to lean into it in a big way.
Adam: I’m glad that Eric remembered what we wrote in the conclusion. I remembered it in more general terms in that when we were sitting down to write the conclusion we thought usually a conclusion ties a bow around the end of the book. For us, the conclusion was another introduction into the next step into the thinking of the reader.
We’ve shared this open-sourced business model with people as a way to say:
“Hey, we’ve had some success; we’ve had some failures. We’re certainly not doing it perfectly. But some of this stuff is working. Why don’t you read this? Why don’t you take it and apply it to whatever you do, hopefully for your own personal success, but more importantly to build on a business model to help us create some really positive effect for the world.”
Beautiful. It’s a beautiful way to end the show. I would love to keep on talking but you guys have a tone of things going on. I appreciate you taking the time out to spend an hour talking about your book and what’s driven you to success and helping others.
I’d say good luck, but it sounds like you have everything under control. And if it’s not under control in the future, you’ll get it. Congrats on your success!
With the flood of business books organized around numbered lists, I find it an overworked publishing theme. That being said...this is an awesome book.
I'm an avid reader. I read 1 or 2 business books a week. And I found this book one of the best written, most useful, best-organized, most entertaining, imminently doable books I've read in a long time.
How good is it? I haven't finished it yet. Almost every paragraph inspires, ignites, aggravates me to keep writing notes, scribbling them in a notepad or typing them in Evernote.
How good is it? I won't write notes in the margin, nor will I turn down a corner of a page to mark something. That would touch on sacrilegious. That's almost over the top, but it's not. This is a great book.
If you're in a startup, a small company, a mid-sized company, if you're in a department within a big company getting ready to launch something new...you should read this. And make sure you have a notepad handy. Seriously. Even if you just like good writing...you should read this.
Guys. Adam and Eric. Thanks for your time and writing a great book.
Adam: Thanks for having us, Zane.
Eric: Glad to be here.
Your book cover includes many testimonials. My two favorites were one from Tony Hsieh, bestselling author of Delivering Happiness and CEO of Zappos, one of my favorite companies. And the other was a joint testimonial from Pam Ryan, Pat Lowry. How did you convince your moms to give you a testimonial for your book, other than the obvious that it's a great book?
Eric: It was not easy, particularly since my mom spent a lot of years probably pestering me to do my grammar homework, so, uh, despite that we finally proved to our moms that we were worthy of their endorsement.
Who were you writing for as you put this together? Describe the reader you had in mind, what do they do, what are they facing, where do they sit in an organization?
Adam: Yeah, Zane, we really wrote this book for anyone who is trying to change the way business is getting done - both as someone running a business or somebody within a business, ie, any entrepreneur or any intrapreneur.
We also wrote it as a way for any business to create positive social change in the world. The book is really, it’s our open-sourced business model, written and provided for people to examine and hopefully use the best of, learn from our mistakes and build something better.
Perfect. What's in it for them, why should they care about these 7 obsessions and your method method?
Eric: What is very unique about our business and it’s pretty typical for an entrepreneur to take on a goliath...we’re basically foolish enough to take on multiple goliaths in our space. The soap industry has been dominated by the same players for the last 100-plus years. And, so, coming into these categories we had to change the game, not just one level but on multiple levels. And the way that we tapped into what we call our obsessions which essentially is our competitive advantages we strongly feel are relevant to any business today because they are all grounded in macro-trends.
Who would MacGyver have written this book for? How would he have organized it? Did you ever get stuck and have to ask yourself "What would MacGyver do?
Adam: Well, Zane, as you read in the book MacGyver is a big value at Method and it’s about being scrappy and resourceful when you need to. We have to do that in order to compete against the big companies we compete against in the household cleaning space.
For us, there were many MacGyver moments in the writing of this book because Eric and I are busy every day with our jobs, our day jobs. We’re not authors by profession. So, there are a lot of times when we were trying to figure out how to get this done and there are a lot of times when we examined:
“What are the ways we’re going to MacGyver this book to be the most useful to those intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs I just mentioned.”
One of the most interesting ways we did that that I think was interesting as well was sharing our mistakes. And, the error-autopsies. And as you read in the book, each chapter ends with an error-autopsy which is an examination, a case-study we made that others can learn from and try to avoid.
What we’re trying to do has never been done before. And if you’re going to do that you’ve got to learn from your mistakes.
I think that’s one of the many reasons I loved your book was you were so forthcoming with your mistakes and their value in helping you grow.
Eric: Absolutely. We really do feel that Richard Dean Anderson would write a killer business book if he would just decide to do so.
My friend, Erika Andersen, wrote a great book titled Being Strategic. She asks the reader to define their reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future. What was yours, what was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future, when you wrote this book?
Adam: For us, it was about making it clear for people that business is the largest and most powerful institution on the planet has the opportunity and we believe the onus to create positive change in the world.
That’s a very lofty aspiration. But the way that you get that done is the everyday tactical things and learning from your mistakes.
And that’s really what we hope people get out of this book. You can take on really big industries and succeed and in the process do something meaningful and purposeful.
Love that answer! Having founded a successful consumer goods company, I know metrics are important to you. But let's talk about the metrics for this book. What metrics are you using to measure your progress towards that hoped-for future with your book?
Adam: Most of them are soft metrics. As I mentioned before, Eric and I are not professional authors. We’re not writing this book to try to maximize the number of copies sold the way an author might.
Really, what we’re trying to do, we’re going to measure this with how effective was this book in changing people’s minds about the role that entrepreneurs play in creating positive change in the world and to a lesser degree how is this book increasing people’s understanding of the real mission behind Method. This business is very deep in its commitment to social change and that might not be something, when you’re shopping grocery store shelves, is immediately obvious to you.
We hope that a lot of people, by reading this book, understand the deeper story behind Method.
We've all heard about the 7 sins and the 7 virtues. You guys, on the other hand, have 7 obsessions. We could spend an hour on each of them, I'm sure, but let's run through them. What are those 7 obsessions?
Eric: Yeah, just to set this up with this is not something we put together to write a book. This is the way we operate our business. And they were part of the business plan from very early on. Writing the book was fairly easy when we were just reporting on what we have done already.
Number one: Create a Culture Club. At Method everything starts with culture. And we really believe in culture as a competitive advantage and this idea that you build a brand from the inside out.
Obsession Two: Inspire Advocates. We just don’t want to have customers. We want to create advocates who help us build a brand.
Three: Be a Green Giant and really personalize sustainability to inspire change on a grand scale as Adam just talked about.
Four: Kick Ass at Fast. If you’re not going to be the biggest, you better be the fastest.
Obsession Five: Relation Retail. Today, it’s no longer enough to have a shallow relationship with a lot of retailers. You need to have deep relationships with fewer.
Six is Win on Product Experience. At Method, we’re very much a product centric organization that is focused on delivering amazing and remarkable product experiences.
Obsession Number 7 is Design Driven and really building design leadership into your DNA.
Fantastic.
I ask the next question with the usual disclaimers and caveats.
Let's say God likes sins and virtues, but not obsessions. Still, he likes you guys, so he’s willing to compromise. You can have one obsession. Consider this an exercise in detachment and pick one obsession and let the others go... Which one do you hold on to? Why?
Eric: For me, I would hold on to Design Driven because I am so passionate about design. Its a big part of why I jump out of bed every morning to use design to make the world a more enjoyable place.
Adam: Yeah, and I’ll not surprisingly pick Be a Green giant. That’s my half of the founding vision.
I think it goes without saying that it is a slightly unfair question that it is a slightly unfair question. I think what Eric and I each brought to this business was multiplied many times by the other. So, individually they are a lot less interesting than they are put together.
Absolutely. You’re right about it being an unfair question. But I wanted to see which one was a personal favorite.
Adam: Yes, And those are the reasons we put the business together.
Of these 7 which is the one most companies lack?
Eric: I would argue that it’s culture. It’s one of those intangible things that is hard for companies to get their arms around. And, it’s about human behavior. It’s how we treat each other. And it’s so hard to name companies that you know that have great cultures.
True. Very true. I don’t know any that come to mind.
Eric: Yeah, and in the book we always pick out a muse. A muse is someone who does something better than us. And our muse for culture is Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos. We definitely consider ourselves to be a very weird, unique, human place. And then I go to Zappos and I go:
“Oh, my god. We are so corporate.”
They do a great job with it.
How can customers or prospects, even employees, tell a company lacks this important obsession? I mean in some respects so few companies have a culture worth championing. We’ve become number to it. Maybe we should ask if a company has good culture?
Adam: I think there’s one easy way to measure our culture. And that’s:
“Is there any different way that people are at work and the way they are at home?”
If people are exactly the way they are at work as they are at home, you’ve pretty much got it right.
That’s an excellent answer. I was not expecting you to describe it like that. It’s a great way.
One of the first ways I knew your list of seven was going to be excellent was when I saw you made Culture your number one obsession. We’ve already spoken about it a few times. But I think it’s so important that we talk a bit more about it. Why is culture so important, especially since it’s ignored so much?
Eric: I think so much of a culture is the emotional aspects of it. Again, we’re dealing with human behaviors. There are absolutely ways to measure in an analytical way, a rational way, to understand a culture whether it’s working or it’s not working.
But, it’s one of those things that it’s really hard for companies to understand and measure because it’s based in emotions.
That’s that squishy stuff that businesses like to avoid.
Eric: Absolutely. You typically see the values of an organization’s mission. It’s usually put on an ugly walnut plaque in the wall. They tend to be such watered-down meaningless words, you can tell their words by committee. You know great cultures are about language and having a point-of-view that is unique and that everybody can rally behind. That’s hard to do as a group It takes a real kind of leadership and vision.
Adam: Yeah, think about the word “culture” outside of business context. It’s really about a shared set of values, a shared set of traditions. Things like that. If you then think about culture in a business context, you realize that there’s very little done in most businesses to actively cultivate culture as a shared set of things, values, that people subscribe to.
Now, is this attitude, this lack of attention to culture a relic of our manufacturing, economies of scale, mass produced business environment?
Adam: You know, I’m not really sure. I think it’s probably a function of not enough attention and recognition that with the right culture as the underpinning of a business and you can actually make a business far more productive and innovative.
Perhaps, it’s a luxury that we’ve had at Method in having to innovate in order to survive. We’ve realized that we can’t innovate unless we have a culture that allows us to collaborate, clash and resolve tension, all in a productive and creative way so that we can produce stuff that’s unique and different.
If we don’t do that, we’re nothing. So, for us, culture is very important, obviously a critical piece of our success.
Maybe, businesses have been around so long and been analyzed so hard that people in the name of efficiency or whatever just decide it’s not that important. I think you lose something really important when you do that.
You wrote and I’m quoting:
You've got Procter & Gamble ..which spent $2.4 billion on advertising in the US alone. Unilever spent another 1.3 billion. It's safe to assume these guys have a toilet-paper budget that's bigger than our entire marketing budget...Method didn't have a dollar to spend at launch.
Right there, coupled with your success, is The Big Shift as you call it. And it' a huge shift, a huge opportunity for small businesses. What is The Big Shift?
Eric: So, what we call The Big Shift is the transition away from interruptive media. The brands in our space, these are the first multinationals, the Lever Brothers, Proctor & Gamble. these companies were built from the rise of mass media. They were the first ones to do a great job of positioning themselves for that entire shift towards interruptive media, which is you’re watching TV and you’re interrupted for a 30-second spot.
And, of course, The Big Shift is getting us away from that because it’s getting easier and easier to avoid these interruptions as we’re shifting towards social media and media that you choose to participate in. And along that shift is an opportunity for a new brand to be born and an old brand to die.
Baseball is a great example of how sports even shifted as the different mediums have changed. Baseball was America’s favorite past-time as the radio was the biggest medium. And it’s a beautiful sport for the radio. And as television took center stage we saw the rise of football.
For entrepreneurs these shifts are wonderful opportunities to exploit to your advantage as all the rules start changing.
Now, if you don’t mind, I want to drill into this Big Shift present such a significant opportunity for startups and disruptors and small businesses? How do these take advantage of this transition away from interruptive media to earned media?
Eric: Well, obviously the rise of online in itself, which is a whole different topic, from Facebook to Twitter, completely... businesses have been born on that rise.
But, if you get away from technology, I think the opportunity for the entrepreneur is that it puts greater emphasis on good content and good products. We now live in a world where a good product can easily get discovered and get shared among peers through social media in ways where you needed that muscle to be able to buy the advertising to interrupt somebody to get that message out there on a mass scale.
For me, that’s the real opportunity is that we can focus on putting a truly better product or service or better content out there and having a better chance of succeeding than somebody who is doing a very efficient but mediocre way.
Julie Steelman’s credits read like a Who’s Who of big-name corporate giants with Apple, Microsoft, Toyota, CBS, Sony Studios and Universal Pictures in her rolodex. She has generated over $100+ million in sales during her 30 year sales career. Julie is known as The Entrepreneur’s Selling Mentor.
Now retired to her personal paradise in Hawaii, living debt-free, Julie developed the easy-to-master “Effortless YES! Selling System”™. She spends her time helping business owners overcome their aversion to selling in an honest, transformational and interactive style.
It made sense to me to ask her how our country could generate more sales. You see, sales are the driver of our economy and the source for new jobs. So, I asked her:
We've reached the imagination moment in our show. Let's imagine President Obama has a few moments. He’s found your book. He picks up his Blackberry and calls you.
Julie, he says because he's the President.
We can't seem to get companies to say, effortlessly or not, to buying into our economy.
And they're not getting customers to say yes, in any way, to buying. What do I need to do to entice you to leave Eden and come to DC, an eden of its own sort, I guess.
We want to hear your thoughts, maybe 3 things that we as a nation can take to find a way to demystify our selling process, find our selling archetype and get the sale we want, we need and grow our economy as fast as we'll ever need.
What do you say to him?
And she generously answered:
Well, there’s no big question there!
I’m actually going to refer to something you said Mr. Obama that was in your inaugural speech. You said:
Our society was founded on the idea that our products and services as businesses would serve the common good.
And what I’m going to tell you Mr. Obama is we have forgotten about that.
The first thing we could do to fix it is to shift from putting profit over purpose. And instead put purpose over profit.
You’re going to make your profit. Don’t worry.
The companies are going to grow. Don’t worry.
But what we’ve done is create a society of overly skeptical consumers and they’re not willing to buy and do business with companies that they don’t trust any more.
That’s the first thing.
The 2nd thing is we need to find a way to have CEOs paid really well, but no longer take salaries and have golden parachutes when companies are not making a profit. That cant be the way it works anymore. Sorry, everybody. Do you trust a CEO that does that? I don’t think so.
The 3rd thing we need to do is invest in putting our workforce back to work. The whole crux around the 3 things I’m going to tell you to do Mr. Obama are instilling trust back in corporate America because there isn’t any. Financially, products or services or customer service. I’d rather buy a Mercedes than Cadillac. You’ve got to get our products back up to snuff.
We need to put, I think we’ve sold off too much of our industrial abilities and we need to bring it back here.
That was too much. I know I gave you more than 3 things. But, that would be my answer, Mr. Obama.
Thank you. I love all of them. Thank you for the 4th one, too.
This is politics! And you never discuss politics at Thanksgiving Dinners, backyard barbecues and on a business radio show.
I disagree. As long as only politicians can discuss solutions for our country then those solutions and their interested audiences will remain off-limits, political, for those who make this brand, our country, run. And only politicians, these days that's only career politicians, can discuss those ideas and spoon-feed solutions to the public.
I see our times as an all hands-on-deck opportunity and not a crisis. That opportunity is for each of us to lend our hands, our conversations, our ideas to find and share solutions. In our absence those challenges are left to ideologues, vested interests and politicians of all stripes and partisan persuasion. We...are the only ones with vested interests. And now we have, with social media and the urgency of today, the opportunity to reclaim our place at this table and discuss our ideas to solve our challenges. At the very least, we can listen to a discussion until we are ready to speak up.
He recently shared an hour of his time on my radio show. We talked about his book (great book!) and his thoughts on entrepreneurs and startups and the challenges faced for their success. You can listen here.
I asked him, during the show, his thoughts on what steps could be taken to create a more favorable environment for entrepreneurs and startups. I asked him:
Imagination plays a big role with entrepreneurs. And we've reached the imagination moment in the show. President Obama's on line 2 for you now. He's leaving you a message inviting you to the White House. He wants your list of three things he can do right now to create a more favorable environment for entrepreneurs and startups and the jobs they create. What do you tell him?
And, as you'd expect, he offered a great answer:
I think number one is the ability to ramp up not just high growth entrepreneurship exercises but also small business exercises. You know, we talked a lot about building the next billion-dollar business which of course is going to have a tremendous effect if we can move the amount of billion-dollar enterprises in the US from where it is now to 3 to 4 times that....However, when you look at what is creating the most jobs is the top creator is in fact small businesses that hire 1 - 10 employees or 1 - 50 employees. So, we need to incentivize them more.
We need to stop bailing out big business and bailing out small business which unfortunately now is a big cliche, but it’s the truth.
The 2nd thing I’d say is we need to invest more time and resources into backing incubators and other startup accelerator programs. I think it’s time we put government dollars into real innovation and not just simply buzzwords like clean-tech. While clean-tech represents a massive opportunity, it can’t be the only thing just because it’s a hot word. I think you need to always be experimenting with many different pots and putting money into many different areas. I think that it’s time we figure out a way for government to support that level of entrepreneurship acceleration.
The last thing I would say is regardless of what’s going on right now in terms of budget cuts and obviously right now we’re facing deficits that are just insane... but, entrepreneurship education is truly something that I belive should not just be an afterthought. It can’t be just some one-liner in a speech. It has to be something that is real, something that is added to curriculum, something that the Department of Education is not only condoning but is bringing in top experts and figuring out how to replicate successful programs. We need to figure out how to teach people not just how to be employees but to rather teach them how to make a choice. On the college level we need to be sure that people are very much understanding that the paradigm shift we are seeing is here to stay and if we don’t educate properly we don’t begin to support people properly. Even on the kindergarten to grade 12 level we’re in for a long, long, haul that will not be pretty and will not make the US the greatest country in the world when it comes to innovation.
This is politics! And you never discuss politics at Thanksgiving Dinners, backyard barbecues and on a business radio show.
I disagree. As long as only politicians can discuss solutions for our country then those solutions and their interested audiences will remain off-limits, political, for those who make this brand, our country, run. And only politicians, these days that's only career politicians, can discuss those ideas and spoon-feed solutions to the public.
I see our times as an all hands-on-deck opportunity and not a crisis.That opportunity is for each of us to lend our hands, our conversations, our ideas to find and share solutions. In our absence those challenges are left to ideologues, vested interests and politicians of all stripes and partisan persuasion. We...are the only ones with vested interests. And now we have, with social media and the urgency of today, the opportunity to reclaim our place at this table and discuss our ideas to solve our challenges. At the very least, we can listen to a discussion until we are ready to speak up.
Scott Gerber is a syndicated columnist (WSJ, Entrepreneur, Inc.), a serial entrepreneur, author of Never Get a "Real" Job: How to Dump Your Boss, Build a Business and Not Go Broke, and founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council, an advocacy group made up of many of the world’s top young entrepreneurs that works to help young people overcome the devastating effects of youth unemployment and underemployment by teaching them how to build businesses.
He is the founder and CEO of Gerber Enterprises, an entrepreneurial incubator and venture management company that invests capital, management expertise, and marketing services into innovative early and mid-stage companies.
He was a guest on my radio show earlier this year. You can listen to our conversation here.
Being an entrepreneur is much like being on a journey, living a process of discovery. Here, wherever here is, doesn't interest an entrepreneur, so much. Over there...wherever over there is....is much more interesting.
So I asked him:
What are three common lessons young entrepreneurs learn in their journey to success?
And, Scott shared his answer which reflected his own journey and process of discovery to-date.
You know there are many, many, lessons. If I had to sum up what lessons are most important I’d have to say:
Number One is Don’t Reinvent the Wheel, because you’ll be doomed to be run over by it. A lot of people think you have to disrupt an entire industry. They need to build some whole new mortgage sector. Use these different buzzwords to think they are going to be successful.
Most entrepreneurs don’t need to out-innovate everybody in the world. Thats a stupid premise. Not everybody is going to build a Facebook-style business. I would argue that most people ought to accept the fact that they are never going to build that level of company and truly build something that is successful and they can handle.
Number Two: Focus is Obviously Key.
So many people are like:
“Scott. You’re a serial entrepreneur. Why can’t I be?”
And I’m like:
“How many of your businesses are cash-flow positive and making money after more than 5 years?”
Most times you’re going to hear “
Oh well I left that business to do this. This is the real business. ..”
Well, that’s not really serial entrepreneurship. That business wasn’t working. You lost your focus and you moved on.
So, again, Focus is key. Because if one things is not doing it and you’re tying to do 10 things as poorly as a result. Instead of just focusing on that one key thing, you’re screwed. That’s just not the way to build a successful business.
The last thing I would say is Build Organically.
Young people today, I can’t speak for other generations, you think you write a business plan and you go out and get funding.
To that I say, that’s outrageous. 99.999999% of people will never get funding for their startup. Period. That’s it. I hate to be Debbie Downer. But that’s it; that’s a reality.
So, you have to build a business that is capable of generating revenue and that’s capable of being built over time, organically, through smart cash-flow, through strategic direction, through implementation and pristine execution, rather than saying “If I can get a million dollars I can make this work.”
Well great. You’re basically basing your entire future on an uncertain future, an uncertain reality. It doesn’t make any sense to me.
I think a lot of these young entrepreneurs did whatever it took, whether it was sitting on their friends couch, renting it. My friend Maya always tells a great story. She lived on her best friend’s couch for almost a year. And then her company, 2 years or 3 years later was bought out by living social.
So, this is the kind of thing that most people need to hear: the reality check:
All glitz and glam, that social network sexiness, is nothing but a facade. It does take a lot of work, a lot of hard efforts and not a lot of fundraising efforts.
Scott's focus is on young entrepreneurs. That's his people. The worldview, the behaviors, the expectations, are different than say Boomers. On the other hand, so many folks are still very young in the entrepreneurs phase. Regardless if you grew up with digital media or are quickly acquiring its knowledge, or if you grew up being shephered to soccer games with trophies for all or you saw the world as a competitive setting with you against the world...at this stage in this quirky time we're all forced to be entrepreneurs and we're all quite young at it.
Come on in. The water's fine. Our boat's float here and when they sink there are plenty of us around to help each other.
Stefan Swanepoelis a successful businessman, a best-selling author and widely travelled public speaker. He spent the first 35 years of his life in various countries across the globe before immigrating to the USA. Today he is an American citizen and lives in California.
And he’s a prolific writer and speaker with over 19 books, reports and whitepapers, over 1,000 published articles and given more than 700 presentations to over 300,000 people.
I wanted to say greatest book but I have not read his other books. So, I will leave it as great.
We all face our own serengeti journey now with all the changes and turmoil in our communities, our businesses, our economy, in our institutions, in our future.
In his book, Stefan discusses the 7 Skills we need to survive our serengeti. And he illustrates them as he discusses them by using examples from the animal community of the serengeti.
The last of the 7 skills is also the most important one: Endurance. Here's how he discussed that skill when we spoke:
The last one, the main character in the story, the Enduring Wildebeast. It is not as big as the American bison, not as pretty. But it is tenacious. That animal has incredible endurance. Each year it crosses 1000 miles. It has cheetahs running and pulling it down. It has lions stalking it. It has crocodiles eating it. Yet it has become the dominant species in the serengeti. It completely dominates to such an extent that there are 1.5 million animals and when they move each year it completely changes the landscape. All the other species depend on where the wildebeast is at any time.
Sound familiar to your journey?
I asked him:
What are three things we can do to better master that wildebeast, bring out the endurance?
And he shared this answer, an useful bit of takeaway steps we can use today to survie our serengeti:
We have to instinctively know who we are. If we know who we are out of the 7, then by default we can determine what we are weakest at. If we are weakest at endurance then accept it. Don’t fight it. We aren’t all superman; we aren’t all perfect. Identify the skills you are not strong at. Accept that and see how you can improve on that with the skills of the others in your company.
If you want to say that is your weakest skill or your least strongest skill, I don’t care. But then try and see if you can improve on that. Find someone who is good on that skill. If I’m not a risk-taker, but you are then maybe if I befriend you and we work together then maybe we can learn from each other. If I’m averse to risk-taking then I might say no to something before I give it a second thought. But you might look at the same problem, then you’re already looking at how you’re going to solve the problem.
And by knowing that’s how you think then I can learn from you. By learning which animal we are with the What Animal Quiz, a 3-4 minute quiz and as I said before I’m not trying to create a new Strengths-Finder or a Meyers-Brigg. This is a casual, informal, way for you to have fun and learn what skills instinctively drive us.
Want More From Stefan Swanepoel and Surviving Your Serengeti?
Scott Gerber is a syndicated columnist (WSJ, Entrepreneur, Inc.), a serial entrepreneur, author of Never Get a "Real" Job: How to Dump Your Boss, Build a Business and Not Go Broke, and founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council, an advocacy group made up of many of the world’s top young entrepreneurs that works to help young people overcome the devastating effects of youth unemployment and underemployment by teaching them how to build businesses.
He is the founder and CEO of Gerber Enterprises, an entrepreneurial incubator and venture management company that invests capital, management expertise, and marketing services into innovative early and mid-stage companies.
It’s very interesting, Zane. Right now, this book while it has universal content for small business owners, it’s really geared towards young entrepreneurs.
The story goes, basically, that I had been writing a column for Entrepreneur, Inc., and the Wall Street Journal for a number of years. And I’d been getting tons of emails from around the world just basically asking how did you do that and how did you this? I basically, decided to write the book.
Really, what I thought was
"Why now? Exactly. Youth unemployment is a disaster. And because we’re in a paradigm shift that will never allow millenial generation to experience life the same way Gen-Xers and Boomers have experienced it before. It’s just a simple fact. There are fewer jobs, there are fewer industries, because there is more outsourcing, more globalization, more educational systems graduating more students into the working ranks. "
And, so, the reality is for so many young people they need an alternative. They needed to see someone, not 30 years their elder, but rather 2 years their elder or 3 years their elder or in some cases their younger peers who are out there doing this not because it’s a renegade’s choice but because it’s a viable career path.
In writing Never Get a Real Job I wanted to say:
“Listen. This is something that for literally for 20% of you this should become a reality.”
Unemployment is that high. Stats show this year for 2010 only 25% of college grads had jobs upon graduation.
This is the reality. And this is why I wrote the book to help my generation from within, learn how they can take the next step forward in their career on their own time and on their own dime.
Erika Andersen coined a phrase, reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future, in her book Being Strategic. What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future with writing this great book?
I think the main thing is more young entrepreneurs will jump into the entrepreneurial ranks because they will see that it is not all the hype that people think it is. It’s start a small business like junk removal. Do something that is going to take your future into your own hands. My hope for the future is that we really do fill the hype that is surrounding Gen-Y. That is that “We are the most entrepreneurial generation in history.”
The question is though, if we don’t en masse start to move on that career path, become as entrepreneurial as we can, we really face becoming the lost generation. So, I think there’s something to be said hopefully for the young people trying to educate other young people from within.
But the real goal here is to try to tell young people:
"You’ve had it too good for too long. You’re entitled; you’re spoiled. You were told incorrectly, you were taught to be an employee and all that’s been tossed on its head. Now you have to create a world in which you need to create a job in order to keep a job."
Hopefully, this reality, this sorta gut check, and many others like it are going to help fill that need.
Awesome. As I tend to do on this show, when guests start sharing great points, I tend to start scribbling. And I’ve been scribbling furiously since you started answering these questions.
Now, good entrepreneur's have a love, hate relationship with data. Sometimes their vision outstrips the data, or the data lags a bit. On the other hand, data does measure their progress and confirm their dreams and ideas. So, what data do you use to measure your progress?
Well, I think that what came from the book, and just to back up for a second, was that as I was writing it and had been a columnist for many years, I realized really quickly when writing the book that I am obviously not even close to the most successful nor even the only voice out there for the millennial generation trying to pitch entrepreneurship.
So, I wanted to get all these young people and all these top captains from industry, from all these sectors and verticals, to come and really educate with again this peer-to-peer education about how we can become entrepreneurial.
The metrics are based on all the metrics you would expect. Like how many emails we’re getting each week, now we’re getting thousands. With Never Get a Real Job, if you want to look at this as a country, the book has sold consistently, several thousands of copies since it came out.
It’s all based on data and metrics and that sense.
But, truly, I believe that just in looking at the mass media, myself and the council and the book have been featured in everything from the cover of the NY Times to soon we’re going to be on CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. Hundreds of media requests over the past few months. You see this is a hot topic. This is a hot issue.
Getting America back to work is a priority. And getting young people back to work who are highly educated to basically validate their education by being productive members of society and the re-development of our country is a major priority.
And I think that these kinds of things are helping to spearhead the movement and spearhead the thought on how to do those things.
How can we move ourselves forward? Create a job to keep a job mindset. And move away from you know, that whole old world mindset that said work hard, study hard and get a good job.
And, I think now, seeing how many people are frankly pissed off at how they ended up and now they’re seeing this as a viable career track, then I think we’re starting to see this as a big trend not just in the mass media but also on the ground as well.
You cover a lot of material in a few short sentences. We’re going to get to a lot of that.
Sure. We launched it in October. Basically, the way it started was I writing the book and thought:
“Wow! I really want to get other some young people.”
I started with 10 people. 10 became 20. 30 became 50. Publicly now we have 150. By the time we launch our new website, Young Entrepreneur Council, which will be the world’s largest peer-to-peer entrepreneurship education resource at the end of May, we’ll have close to 500.
These are all highly vetted, highly successful people. We have people like Aaron Patser who sold his company Mint.com who sold his company for $176 million. Or people like Scott Backer who sold his company to Google. We also have people who are currently in business like my friends, Nick and Omar, who run a company called College Hunks Hauling Junk which is the most unsexy business in the world. But they turned it sexy with branding and marketing and now makes millions of dollars and is the largest franchiser of junk hauling business.
We have women. We have minorities. We soon will launch a military division. And we’re launching a mentor’s council. That takes the top CEOs in the country that are 36 and older that want to give back to this generation.
So, the whole mission at the end of the day is how do we take the best of the best, the cream of the crop of the entrepreneurial world, especially from Gen-Y and help them re-educate and retrain, especially about how people think about how their careers can be restructured. What businesses can they start? How to do it on a shoe-string. All these different issues. But coming from the people who have done it and not 30 years ago but 3 years ago...or basically 2 years older than our current demo. That’s the goal. Training from within.
And additional to that, we’ll also we’ll be tackling some of the toughest issues that face young entrepreneurs like...healthcare like a variety of different services that are priced out like micro-financing. Money is just so tight, so we’re trying to work on issues like that.
We’re working on creating a tangible support mechanism so young people can go and really start a business and have the resources to do it.
Beautiful, beautiful. I love all that. Now, as you’re describing all the goals and all that’s, I’m looking at 3 examples you gave: College Hunks Hauling Junk. Scott Backer. The guy who sold his company for $176 million. What’s in it for them? Why should they care about the Young Entrepreneur Council? They’ve already accomplished it. Why should they join?
Absolutely. You know, on a personal level, our media we create...we answer questions. You can go to Young Entrepreneur Council and ask your business questions to the council. And we then take those questions, answer them, syndicate those questions and answers to the world’s media. Everybody fro the Journal to Entrepreneur to a variety of others Mashable, Huffington Post, a variety of others. So, there’s a tremendous amount of exposure for these business owners.
But, the real reason we all do it, to be very honest with you is that we have been fortunate. We have been folks who still slog it out today. Even those who’ve made millions of dollars, while the level of comfort has changed, there’s still the bug. You still have to go out and create a business and be successful and make something else. We’re not creatures meant to do nothing.
And a lot of these young people have been effected personally. Some young people couldn’t get a job so they had to create one. There’s a sense of nostalgia.
I think at the end of the day, I can’t speak for all generations... but for Gen-y I really do believe that there’s a camaraderie a sense of community that doesn’t exist necessarily in the other generations. Where we truly do where we have the capability to help others, do want to help others. Specifically, in business.
I don’t mean that other generations don’t volunteer or don’t give back. But I mean currently there is a community unlike anything else where people genuinely want to partner more and want to work with others more. There’s not a lone-wolf mentality; there’s a partner mentality.
I think a lot of that, especially when it comes to giving back, is a big part of this. In creating a community that didn’t exist before then other opportunities will eventually exist, whether that’s finding the next great ideas for business or finding the next great partnership.
So, really, I see a lot of reasons why young people are doing it. At the end of the day while there’s great media exposure and long-term goals it really is just a good will feeling of I’m helping young people today overcome a tremendous difficulty in their lives, whether it’s unemployment or under-employment. And, I’m creating some level of positive value that maybe will help us as a whole. That’s really the goal.
That’s fantastic. Being a Boomer, I tend to bristle a little bit when people say we’re not caring, sharing and being involved in community efforts. On the other hand, it’s a valid point as we grew up in a competitive world with us first and then we’ll take care of everybody else.
We grew up in the soccer mom mentality. Everybody’s on a team; everybody’s a winner. Which has screwed us, mind you. In many ways, and going back to what I said earlier, we’re the most spoiled entitled generation in history. And I say it started with our parents treating us like we had to put us on a pedestal because we’re special in every way and one day we’re going to cure cancer while climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro.
The problem is that at a certain age where we should have bought that line hook, line and sinker anymore, we went from victims to accomplices. And that’s when all of a sudden we started saying:
“Well, we are great. I am special. I don’t need to work hard. I can work hard in just doing school work and I’m guaranteed success because I’m a winner.”
That’s a problem with this generation. We have a lot of great qualities. We’re a close community because of the team spirit, because of the ways we were brought up. And unfortunately there’s a negative impact from that as well.
Now, among your members on the Young Entrepreneur Council, what’s your favorite story of success? What’s the story that really inspired you and said I’m on the right path here.
It’s funny. You just have so many of them. From someone that didn’t have 2 dimes to rub together to creating millions of dollars with really hard work and many years.
My favorite, well I shouldn’t say favorite as they’re all my favorite, but the one who has inspired me the most is Ryan Allis. Ryan is the CEO of a company called iContact which has just raised another $50 million and is valued at $100 million. And he’s a young 20-something. He built that company from the ground up with his partners. And he’s basically lived the life, where most people will never understand what it takes to build a $100 million company from nothing, from a dorm room or a couch. That’s exactly how this guy did this over the past 10 years.
What I respect the most about Ryan is that at the end of the day, after everything, and this goes back to what we were talking about before with giving back...this guy doesn’t need to do anything. He could just get bought out of his company, make a lot of money and retire and never do another thing again. But he’s gone and funded projects in Africa to try to create not just non-profit efforts but venture backed efforts to try and create sustainable economic development there.
He’s taken iContact into B corporation status which gives a percentage of revenues and gives them towards, guaranteed, to certain community and non-profit efforts.
These are the sorts of things that makes a true leader.
You know it’s great to be a millionaire. Wonderful! But, money can’t buy everything and that’s an old saying. But when you look at these young people and how they truly do want to give back in their own way, Ryan is but one inspiring example and there are many others doing just that.
That’s fantastic. That’s a great story.
What are three common lessons young entrepreneurs learn in their journey to success?
You know there are many, many, lessons. If I had to sum up what lessons are most important I’d have to say Number One is Don’t reinvent the wheel, because you’ll be doomed to be run over by it. A lot of people think you have to disrupt an entire industry. They need to build some whole new mortgage sector. Use these different buzzwords to think they are going to be successful.
Most entrepreneurs don’t need to out-innovate everybody in the world. Thats a stupid premise. Not everybody is going to build a Facebook-style business. I would argue that most people ought to accept the fact that they are never going to build that level of company and truly build something that is successful and they can handle.
Number Two: Focus is obviously key. So many people are like:
“Scott. You’re a serial entrepreneur. Why can’t I be?”
And I’m like:
“How many of your businesses are cash-flow positive and making money after more than 5 years?”
Most times you’re going to hear
“ Oh well I left that business to do this. This is the real business. ..”
Well, that’s not really serial entrepreneurship. That business wasn’t working. You lost your focus and you moved on.
So, again, Focus is key. Because if one things is not doing it and you’re tying to do 10 things as poorly as a result. Instead of just focusing on that one key thing, you’re screwed. That’s just not the way to build a successful business.
The last thing I would say is Build Organically. Young people today, I can’t speak for other generations, you think you write a business plan and you go out and get funding.
To that I say, that’s outrageous. 99.999999% of people will never get funding for their startup. Period. That’s it. I hate to be Debbie Downer. But that’s it; that’s a reality.
So, you have to build a business that is capable of generating revenue and that’s capable of being built over time, organically, through smart cash-flow, through strategic direction, through implementation and pristine execution, rather than saying “If I can get a million dollars I can make this work.”
Well great. You’re basically basing your entire future on an uncertain future, an uncertain reality. It doesn’t make any sense to me.
I think a lot of these young entrepreneurs did whatever it took, whether it was sitting on their friends couch, renting it. My friend Maya always tells a great story. She lived on her best friend’s couch for almost a year. And then her company, 2 years or 3 years later was bought out by living social.
So, this is the kind of thing that most people need to hear: the reality check that that All glitz and glam, that social network sexiness, is nothing but a facade. It does take a lot of work, a lot of hard efforts and not a lot of fundraising efforts.
Beautiful. Another great answer.
In your introduction, you write:
“I've worked alongside both smart partners and idiots. I've made a lot of money - but I've failed more times than I've succeeded.”
Why did you mention your ratio of failing to success in that introduction to your book?
I believe that anyone who simply talks only about their wins is a loser.
Unfortunately, we’ve been hyped up as a society to only see the aftermath of the fruits of our labor. Right? The cribs or the sexy yachts or the gorgeous women. But, again, that’s not what entrepreneurship is about.
Entrepreneurship is a daily lesson, a swift kick in the behind, and figuring out how those two work in tandem to figure out how to work better the next day, how to execute better the next day. That’s the reality.
If you go and talk about "Here’s the home runs I’ve hit in my career..." not only do you do a disservice to everyone who wants to learn what you did to become a success, but you’re also lying to them. You’re telling them flat-out:
"I didn’t fail in my life."
You’re giving a very rosy picture to a grim reality.
Entrepreneurship is not sexy. It’s very difficult. It is life-changing on every level. It has its drawbacks and it also has great moments.
You can tout all the buzzwords. Oh, you’re your own boss. You can set your own hours. I mean that’s all very well and good. No one realizes that when you say ‘Set your own hours’ it just basically means instead of going to someone else’s office for 40 hours, you’re sitting in your own office for 40 hours. In most cases I know more who are working more than 80 hours a week.
The reason I talk about failure is I believe I am more a product of failure than I am of success. I’ve figured out ways without any background in education or finance, any of these areas, to point-blank no-holds barred figure out how to move forward because I didn’t want to work for someone else. And not for any grandiose reason. Not because I couldn’t do it. It just wasn’t for me. It wasn’t my personality. It wasn’t the way I wanted my life to be. I had to figure it out.
Really, I didn’t have a single entrepreneur in my family. I didn’t have anybody in my life to speak to. I went to film school. You talk about an education that was totally off the mark for what I was doing! These are the kinds of things that I fortunately or unfortunately am a product of.
And as such, I believe I should share those failures with others. To me, I could talk all day about how I signed a deal for a couple of hundred thousand dollars and “wow what a feeling that was.” But, if you don’t understand how I came to that conclusion...what am I telling you?
You have some great quotes. You’re very articulate. I’m thoroughly enjoying this.
Let’s talk about Education. You went for an undergrad in making movies. I went for a BA in Art. I use it to dress myself in a color-coordinated manner and my wife loves it. There is a connection between education and success for future jobs and innovation, the ability to keep learning and unlearning, and innovation. On the other hand, I know a high percentage of entrepreneurs have learning disabilities and may be are dyslexic.
You're pretty dismissive of our current education system and its role in creating entrepreneurs and leaders?
What role could our education system play with developing the learning skills, the critical analysis and communication and collaboration skills entrepreneurs need now.
This could be an interview unto itself. I just had a meeting yesterday with a great friend of mine. His private equity firm, basically buys and sells universities, and turns around their educational model.
He talked to me about how over the next 5 years one of their acquisitional schools into the world’s first entrepreneur school. And he says very loudly and very proudly with the goal of turning out entrepreneurs.
Because the problem with education today is you can’t quantify entrepreneurship the way you can job placement. That’s why it’s such an issue for colleges to say:
“Our graduates created Living Social.”
Well, that’s great. What about the other 96%. What did they do?
Just because they might be creating a six-figure income for themselves they can’t quantify that. They can put it in a data-research set.
So, the current entrepreneurship education in this country is failure on every level. I believe that there are certain programs that are outstanding. But on a national level, I think they are a total miss. They don’t graduate entrepreneurs. They graduate people who understand business acumen and skillsets that are just not relatable. They teach the theoretical and the hypothetical and not the executable.
I always joke around and I get in a lot of trouble with a lot of people for saying this but:
“What’s the difference between an MBA and toilet paper in a startup?
Well, one is actually useful.”
Because to me everybody is a student of learning. Everybody can go out into the world and learn and learn. That’s going to happen every day to an entrepreneur. But it doesn’t mean you have to be a perpetual student in the educational system.
That’s really what schools are geared to do. They’re geared to turn you into an employee so you can get a job, post-graduation. And they’re geared towards you continuing your educational track. That’s why they have phd programs. They want to have all these things that are going to keep you in the system. That’s no secret; that’s a reality.
To turn this stuff around we need to find more tangible ways in the high school, or even before, teaching people to understand personal finance. Teach them how to run a lemon-aide stand. Go out into the world and not just do book learning. Put them out with a series of task that’s going to have real tangible value. Real tangible work. It doesn’t matter how much money they make. It matters that they are doing it.
There’s a great program called Lemonade Day with a goal of having 1 million kids by 2013 have a lemonade stand on this particular day. To teach them about entrepreneurship. That to me is brilliant. That’s something that can be mass-produced.
The University of Miami started something called LaunchPad. It’s a very serious entrepreneur program that not only supplements the book learning of entrepreneurship but you’re out in the field. And, we’re going to give you real results from mentors that are going to be from the real world, not just educators.
That’s another problem. We can’t just keep educating our young people based on educators who have no entrepreneurial experience and have them teaching the class!
These are the sorts of failings that are going to keep us in the age-old mantra of if you work hard, get good grades, you’re going to get a good job.
But I simply say there’s going to come a point, and it’s already happening, where that mantra is antiquated it’s now going to be harmful. Those youth unemployment numbers are not going down. And they’re even staying put or going up slightly.
Companies now understand they don’t need the high overhead and staff. They used the recession as a reason to cut the fat. This is a reality. Technological advancement has changed the world!
In closing, I’m very passionate about entrepreneurship education and it’s one of the main goals for YEC for 2011 and 2012, to tackle in various ways. We need to figure out ways to stop pushing entrepreneurship as anything but a social norm. We need to stop putting entrepreneurs, the people who will revive our economy, the risk-takers and innovators who will change the world and provide jobs...we need to stop telling them, we need to stop not helping them rather. And we need to put it out there and say You want real innovation and change? We need to start teaching you what we know at the earliest developmental stages so you can grow into understanding that this is a reality. This is very possible.
It’s interesting that you bring up that we want people to understand that entrepreneurs should be the social norm. Before the Industrial Revolution, entrepreneurs were the social norm; everybody was an entrepreneur.
Now. Talking about the lack of education, what’s the most important skill lacking when graduates emerge from college?
Reality.
It’s an interesting question. It’s also a complex and diverse question. I can’t generalize every single graduate.
But if I was going to do the one that is effecting the most people and it goes back to an article that showed that 25% of recent grads had jobs upon graduation.That shows that young people thought they were going to go through the school system and take their BS and bs and win. They didn’t. That’s a problem.
The fact that that’s a higher number. Last year it was 19%. There comes a point where you have to say to yourself:
Am I stuck in my college bubble and I’m not looking at what’s happening? I’m the exception to the rule?
If you think you’re the exception to the rule, then you’ve learned basically nothing. You still think you’re special. You still think you’re entitled. You still think your degree is going to set you free.
Unfortunately, today’s BS in the average school of which many are failing their students left and right and their selves, is no different than a high school diploma from the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s. When your generation went to school, going to college in many instances was a first time in a generation in a family’s entire history, for anyone to have a higher education. There was a smaller graduation pool. There were more jobs as a result because there was more demand.
Today, you’ve got everything from the University of Phoenix to GED programs to technical schools to actual universities. And, they’re all trying to graduate people into the job force. And to a shrinking job force, none the less.
I think that it’s time that young people start before they even go to select their school...don’t think about that stupid question of:
“What do you want to be when you get older?”...
That to me is the dumbest thing in the entire world. You’ve got a general field that you want to work in and decide for yourself am I going to be an employee or an entrepreneur?
And then base your decisions based on that fact of the field. Then get an education based on what’s good for you. But don’t rely on that education to put you into the real job world.
That’s a reality.
Your banner photo for the Young Entrepreneur's Council shows a gray-haired guy like me, if I had hair. So, are you accepting old folks, folks we call ourselves boomers?
We partnered with a great mentor of mine Donna Fenn of Inc. magazine to create what we call the Mentor’s Council. You need to be 36 or olders. Donna has been selecting the top Gen-X Plus folks, I’ll say lovingly. Again they’re captains of industry whove started several hundred million companies and played a vital role in entrepreneurial education. And these folks will begin the same kind of process with Q & A’s, syndicate to media, create their own programming.
We’re actually launching this month with Huffington Post and AMEX OpenForum to be the first folks that launch the mentor program.
Right now, it’s a closed community. But we might have a call to membership at the Young Entrepreneur Council for consideration.
But, in general, this is a movement regardless of age, an inter-generational movement to help our next generations become the most successful generations they can become.
I do believe there is value in bringing in the older generations, the wiser generations in many respects, to the conversation as much I believe it is important to show from a younger generation’s perspective to show that this is a viable career path because we’re the generation we speak for.
Excellent. I love that term Gen-X Plus.
The age of entrepreneurs is changing, as well. Studies show entrepreneurs are getting older. 40's, 50's, even 60-year olds seem to be the leading groups as far as numbers go. What about starting an old entrepreneur's club or partnering with AARP? I’m believing a little facetious with the phrasing of the question. But, what are your thoughts on starting something in that direction?
Well, I can tell you already, just to give you a sense of how we are already thinking about that even though we’re in the infancy stages of our movement and growth. Just in things like the Mentor Council and in terms of our mission to grow with our constituents while still keeping to our earlier mission based on the formation of the organization is pretty vital.
In terms of helping the older generation, unfortunately I do believe that with any organization you need to stay focused. While my heart goes out to older folks whose reasons to become entrepreneurs are out of desperation and necessity...especially in the older ranks, when you consider longer life expectancies...I just had a meeting with a lot of the top brass of AARP in DC last month to talk about creating a comprehensive youth business health program....but we have to focused on our current constituency. Otherwise we wont’ be helpful. We won’t be able to target the necessary solutions. Right now, we have to maintain our vision.
If you did, what would you do differently? That's a two prong question. What's different in the missions and needs between young and old entrepreneurs? Would you do differently having learned already from creating the YEC?
Again, I think it’s a lot like how we’re setting up the Mentor’s Council. You want to find a lot of the top decisions makers and pace setters in that field in order to provide the most relevant value.
In terms of how we’re going to provide more tangible support and resources, again, it’s hard for me to say this is how to do this or that because I don’t have that life experience. Often I get bunched in because I have in some respects, very contrarian opinions about entrepreneurship. When it comes to things like “Just be passionate”. I want to rip that to shreds.
Yet, at the same time because I get lumped in with general entrepreneur experts I get asked advice like: What would your advice be to a single mother in her 40’s about joining the entrepreneurial ranks. Frankly, I’d say to her...
”Find somebody else who’s a single mother in her 40’s who’s done it before."
Because hardly am I the person to give you one-size fits all advice to make it sound like I know what it’s like to walk in your shoes.
While I also can’t make a statement that I know every single person Gen-Y and know what they’re about , I can speak for the fact that I have a lot of people that can help that generation because we all have various walks of life within our organization.
It really is just finding the right people to lead that generation.
You're a serial entrepreneur a serially successful entrepreneur. What are your strengths that make you a successful entrepreneur?
There are certain traits I call Front-Men. I call business owners, Front-Men or Second-Men. Neither are good or bad on their own. I always say that while I have the ability through my hustler instincts and my lack of traditional education I don’t know 95% of the standard business terms, that’s why I have people like CMOs who decipher that kind of language for me...Front-men are the kinds of people who can sell a can of popsicles to group of Eskimo kids. They’re the people who will knock down the doors, who don’t take ‘no’ for an answer, who find ways around any obstacle to get to the goal and find ways to navigate on a strategic level.
I’d like to think that because I’m an extrovert, I’m out there if you will, quite often trying to knock on doors and beat down different industries with what I need....that’s probably my biggest trait. I have a total need to dominate and to win.
And there are no rules. I play life like a video game.
But, when it comes to second-people, I’ve come to learn, to formulate that’s where my failings and weaknesses are. I’ve learned my strengths because I was willing after, I failed at my first business attempt, to actually learn from that mistake. And most people don’t. Most people will just continue on and say it never worked and never assess and ask ‘why’.
I assessed why and I realized that 80% of what I was doing I was a moron at. I sucked at that. I knew that I needed to fill in that position.
I was always the first person to say...when you want to make a sale, when you want to get to someone, when you want to meet someone who’s a super-connector...I’m your guy. But when it comes to running the day-to-day business, we’d be under 9 times out of 10.
I am probably the worst operator on the planet. But, that’s good. There are operators, they’re front people: CEOs and CFOs who know dollars that the COO’s dont know.
At the end of the day I constantly assess what my problems are. I constantly reassess if I am the best person to do that task or delegate that task. But I also know that in terms of getting things done on a global or higher level, that’s my strengths, that’s what I can do.
One challenge for entrepreneurs is letting go of their baby, pushing either it or themselves out of the nest. You described having learned how to do that. How did you avoid that trap of not letting go of your baby?
Because in my first business, I was so attached to it, it led me to have $700 in my bank account left as a result. When I was in college I had a company that was making a lot of money. I thought I could sell and operate and hire and everything. I tried to keep every dollar myself and do 150 new things instead of keeping focused with the one thing I was doing well. That was creating music videos in the commercial entertainment business.
And I got stupid and I went under. That $700 left to my name at that point when I graduated school. My mother who was a 30-year, Board of Education teacher, real job-loyalist if you will...stability and benefits run her life flat-out said to me: “
“Scott, it’s time to get a real job.”
And that’s when I knew that if I didn’t want to do that I had to figure out how to do things differently.
So the next time I started out with partners around me, basically saying:
"Listen, here’s what I’m good at, here’s what you’re good at. Let’s see if we can kinda share revenues and be free-lancers, if you will, and build a company.”
Today, the company is called SizzleIt. And it produces promotional videos for our clients who are some of the global leaders in business. Proctor and Gamble, we do a lot of work with their brand. Dolby, The Gap and many other Fortune 500 and PR and marketing firms.
It took me to realize I wasn’t God’s gift to the world, I didn’t know everything and in many cases I was a failure at a lot of things. It took me to get to rock bottom.
That’s why I try to teach through failure, going back to what we said earlier. Because most people will go through the same agony and hell that I did. Maybe not to the extent in financial terms. But they will fail. And, that’s fine. It’s how you recover and what you learn from the failure that matters.
If I can help people, whether it’s through Never Get a Real Job or Young Entrepreneur Council, and our young people can help other young people realze what it took to get where they are and what failures and trappings they went through those are the kinds of lessons that will create stronger leaders who at an earlier development stage are the challenges in their business or themselves they need to fix so they don’t face the same catastrophic failure that some of us did.
Now one of your key principles for being a successful entrepreneur is focus. Social media is a great tool which creates lots of opportunities. But it also can be a huge time-sink.
How do you see social media with entrepreneurs? How do they avoid getting lost in the rat-holes of social media?
Well, it’s really funny. The first thing is that I say:
"Social Media" is different for everyone, in terms of what you consider social media.
For me I consider social media means Facebook and Twitter. Whereas for some people it might mean everything lumped in from viral marketing to direct communications to even email now. It really depends on what your definition of the word is now.
To me, I’m the first person to say, and again some people say this is very ignorant, but I don’t believe every business should have a social media presence. I believe you should have an online presence. If you’re going to tell me that you’re going to judge your business based on how many Facebook likes you have, you’re an idiot.
There are certain brands that need that level of exposure and attention. I’ll give you two examples.
Young Entrepreneur Council. Social media is vital to us because that’s where the young generation lives and breathes. So, dissemination of news is through social media. So, therefor it makes sense. And we have to figure out how to engage through sustainable, scalable, methodologies through of course quality content and the delivery of various offerings.
However, take a business like...a pool cleaning company in Minnesota. If you’re going to tell me that people are going to find out about your business because you’ve got a Facebook fan page, I think you’re out of your mind.
The first thing I would say is assess what the needs of your business are before you get into the hype of buzzwords and other such nonsense. I think that there comes a point where you have to say to yourself:
“Is this best for me? Or is this just what a one-size fits all expert told me on Entrepreneur or Inc. magazine told me I should do?”
The 2nd things is social media is a wonderful amplifier. Too many people think it’s a one-size fits all marketing campaign. Too many people think if they’re on Facebook or have a Twitter presence or have a YouTube video that ...that is their campaign. That’s nonsense.
Social media is great for taking your existing messaging, which is the most important thing messaging and content and let’s never forget that. If your messaging and content is off, then it doesn’t matter where you put it it still sucks. Right?
But, if it’s an amplifier, if my core value proposition message to market my business is...”we’re the low cost leader”. Ok? If you position yourself effectively as the low-cost leader and then use each of those channels effectively to amplify that message, well you’re doing great. Then you have something that’s really tangible and very much real real because it’s based on a core philosophy and core value.
If all of a sudden you’re talking about everything under the sun, with all these different channels with mixed messaging with no core competency discussed with all these different variables trying to get more traction...well, you lose. I’m the kind of guy to say:
“A business is likely going to get more business with 10 to 100 loyal Twitter followers than 50,000.”
Right?
It sounds funny but I have friends on The Young Entrepreneur Council that they have 90,000 followers. And they tell me the real hits are coming through to their site with real traction and it’s not that many.
I personally think that social media in many respects is a time drain, and you can’t put a ROI on it which sucks. And the problem is that consumers are demanding it more and more, so you have to figure out how it works.
It’s also like I said it comes down to what kind of business do you have and does it make sense.
You posted 6 Social Networking Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make. Great post. Which is the big one, the one that has the biggest impact?
The biggest thing for Facebook, I would say as an example is this: Social media in general needs to be a focus if you’re going to make it a focus. It can’t be a non-consistent. It needs to be specific, outlined, detailed and planned out just like any other medium all the way from direct mail to a traditional video commercial.
The key to success is to know your business. And just make sure that before you enter the time zone slash time drain it will take to accomplish these things, you pretty much make it clear that you have those objectives in hand. Because if not, and you hear the buzzword of I need to be part of social media then you will fail.
Imagination plays a big role with entrepreneurs. And we've reached the imagination moment in the show. President Obama's on line 2 for you now. He's leaving you a message inviting you to the White House. He wants your list of three things he can do right now to create a more favorable environment for entrepreneurs and startups and the jobs they create. What do you tell him?
I think number one is the ability to ramp up not just high growth entrepreneurship exercises but also small business exercises. You know, we talked a lot about building the next billion-dollar business which of course is going to have a tremendous effect if we can move the amount of billion-dollar enterprises in the US from where it is now to 3 to 4 times that....However, when you look at what is creating the most jobs is the top creator is in fact small businesses that hire 1 - 10 employees or 1 - 50 employees. So, we need to incentivize them more.
We need to stop bailing out big business and bailing out small business which unfortunately now is a big cliche, but it’s the truth.
The 2nd thing I’d say is we need to invest more time and resources into backing incubators and other startup accelerator programs. I think it’s time we put government dollars into real innovation and not just simply buzzwords like clean-tech. While clean-tech represents a massive opportunity, it can’t be the only thing just because it’s a hot word. I think you need to always be experimenting with many different pots and putting money into many different areas. I think that it’s time we figure out a way for government to support that level of entrepreneurship acceleration.
The last thing I would say is regardless of what’s going on right now in terms of budget cuts and obviously right now we’re facing deficits that are just insane... but, entrepreneurship education is truly something that I belive should not just be an afterthought. It can’t be just some one-liner in a speech. It has to be something that is real, something that is added to curriculum, something that the Department of Education is not only condoning but is bringing in top experts and figuring out how to replicate successful programs. We need to figure out how to teach people not just how to be employees but to rather teach them how to make a choice. On the college level we need to be sure that people are very much understanding that the paradigm shift we are seeing is here to stay and if we don’t educate properly we don’t begin to support people properly. Even on the kindergarten to grade 12 level we’re in for a long, long, haul that will not be pretty and will not make the US the greatest country in the world when it comes to innovation.
You're a leader. Leaders are readers. Jim Rohn says that. I just quote him. What are you reading?
I hate to say it, but I’m a big reader of blogs not books. And that’s simply because I just don’t have the time. I have new baby girl, my own businesses, the Young Entrepreneur Council and a million and one things. But, I’m definitely reading a lot.
My favorite blog in the world is Mashable which gives me all the tech news I need which is quite amazing. I often read the trades like INC and Entrepreneur. I read a lot of the general blogs from members of the Young Entrepreneur Council. I did read Ryan Allison’s book recently, Zero to 1 Million, which is a great book.
In general, I’m kinda the person who has a lot of different social bookmarks on my rss feeds and I pretty much when I have some downtime try to take in as much as I can. But these days it’s pretty much face-to-face meetings.
Let's end the show by bringing it back to the beginning. I was going to ask you to leave us with a quote for entrepreneurs. But you did that already with your book in your Conclusion. Your quote is Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.
Why?
Too many times people will read a book about entrepreneurship, get jazzed up and for 3 days they put effort into it and then never again. The trappings of life and everything else involved in what it takes to go through the 9 - 5 pretty much just say Welp, that’s it. I tried. I’m done.
So, what I say with Be afraid, be very afraid is be afraid to fail. And I say NO. Don’t be afraid to fail. Failure is good. Be afraid to never fail. Be afraid to be sitting on the couch 10 years from now and say:
That was my idea.
Be afraid to look back and never having risked anything and be left with tons of regret. Be afraid of going from job to job with no real value created for yourself or others. Those are the kinds of things to be afraid of.
Be afraid to never, ever, get a real job.
This has been a great show. Thanks for reaching out to contact me to be a guest on this show. And you’ve got a baby girl so you’re crazy busy already. And you’ve got your business, the Young Entrepreneur Council, your book.
Recently, I announced a weekly series of posts with 5 tips, tools and resources to help us entrepreneurs*...Keep.Moving.Forward.
Here's Week 9 and its theme:
* Feed The Mind.
Feed it with content that's inspiring, helping, uplifting, motivating, teaching, connecting...you with your goal and those who share it, can help you reach it, can help you help them reach theirs.
* Start each day with a good breakfast.
Remember? Breakfast is the most important meal of the day? Right? Ok, I'm a big fan of breakfasts. And now I start my day with diet of positive news. Doing that sets the tone for the day. By starting my day reading them I noticed my patience for gloom and doom stories has diminished. And m interest, my antennae for good stories has increased. And I find them in more and more places.
I created a Twitter list for Inspiration. I have a feeling my RTs from this list may appear pompous, a tone of lecturing (or hectoring). But I know when I see these quotes they serve as an inspirational roadsign....this way, this way. So, I know there are others who might find them easy.
My cousin, John, sends a daily email with inspirational quotes.
There are more. I may create a separate post to show who feeds my mind the most. (That may explain some things...)
And I start my day reading them.
* Join a mastermind group.
I never joined one.
But, I did join a CEO Peer-to-Peer coaching group from Peersight created by my friend Steve MacGill. This was a wonderful efficient means to create a collaborative teaching environment in private among my peers.
* Read...books.
This habit is easy for me. I have always been an avid reader of books. One of my first disclaimers with my wife, before we married, was never leave me alone in a bookstore. I will drop $100.00 in a heartbeat. She laughed...but only once.
Now, this habit is satisfied with my weekly radio show. People send me books, for free! And I am honored with the chance to speak with many of these authors.
I use a quote from Jim Rohn to ask questions of my guests. That question is:
Leaders are readers. You're a leader. What are you reading?
Remember that leaders are readers. They are constantly learning, constantly feed their minds, new knowledge from new sources. Today, that demand to constantly learn, unlearn in order to relearn is at a premium. And it will only grow.
Read...to lead.
This week's guest on my radio, his book and message, falls right in-line. Today We Are Rich, by Tim Sanders, is a wonderful book that goes into far more detail and offers far more resources on the topic here. Our conversation starts at 9:30 AM, Central. You can listen here.
* Walk Away; Walk THAT Way.
You already know the following, right?
We have a limited number of hours during the day.
During this time, we will be challenged or teased or tempted by moments, experiences and yes, even our friends and family and co-workers to wallow in the mud.
Walk away when that temptation arises. Walk THAT way towards our goals and solutions and those who want to walk that way, too.
I am late to this. Well, maybe I am late to understanding how necessary it is.
At times, I have been the one that needed to be avoided. I am glad that happened. (Yes, at times it was painful.) Otherwise, those bad habits would have been reinforced. And, hopefully, I won't return to that role.
I have found now, as I start my day, set the tone and direction, repeat this practice daily, that this becomes easier. I walk THAT way. And in doing so, I think I help those around me walk with me, THAT way.
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Reminder: We're all entrepreneurs.
Our whole life is a series "of hurdles, challenges, setbacks, disappointments, screaming euphoria, comparable levels of despair, a thrilling ride....” And like business entrepreneurs we’re pushed and pulled to invent and re-invent ourselves each and every day...or suffer the same fate as businesses who close their eyes to the world, refuse to change, and slowly disappear.
And like entrepreneurs in the business world, sometimes we get stuck. Sometimes, we need a tip, a reminder, a flashlight, a life buoy...And in this economy, we all need all the help we can get.
I hope this helps.
Feel free to share your tips, resources or means you have found help you keep.moving.forward.
Disclaimer: I'm a work in process with each of these steps, especially that last one. I'm getting better at the 2nd one. I overlook them all at different times, I handle them or have handled them poorly at others....But I Keep.Moving.Forward. I think you can too, if you take one of them today.
True confession:
Where is the balance between real-world and pragmatic vs discouraged and demoralized? When do we cross from being positive into being pollyannish? And vice versa, when do we cross from being realistic into being cynical and discouraging?
By nature, I have always been drawn to the aberrant behavior. Just fascinating, I thought. But, somewhere things shifted. And like that album, What once were vices are now habits, suggests, aberrant behavior from 'back in the day' has now become...commonplace, routine. What's interesting for me are tales of hope and inspiratin and accomplishment, tools and resources to bring us to our goals, data and research that shows how we can feed our minds in order to replicate that pattern, that result, that world. It seems, we, me, could benefit with more of us feeding our minds...positive food. Imagine a media channel who broadcasts a daily list of World's BEST People or Today's 5 Inspiring stories? It is doable. The tools and resources from digital andsocial media make curating that news a snap...if you want. That is the key. The motivation for these media outlets might be there is a much bigger audience for this news and it would be an easy, inspiring way to differentiate yourselves and generate positive word-of-mouth for your work. Just a thought.
Chris Zane is founder and CEO of Zane's Cycles which has achieved an average annual growth rate of 23% annual since 1980 when it opened.
How?
"Zane credits his success to giving 'extraordinary customer service with the help of an empowered team of employees...The whole thing is about having a good time. Being positive. People have to be happy at work.' "
His book, Reinventing the Wheel: The Science of Creating Lifetime Customers, shares his story, his journey, to reinventing the wheel for his business and along the way creating lifetime customers over 3 or 4 recessions, three wars, 7 presidential elections....and achieved that stunning growth rate selling bicycles.
He shared an hour of his time recently to talk about his journey, his principles in leading his business, some stories from giving 'extraordinary customer service with the help of an empowered team of employees...having a good time.
Chris, thanks for taking the time to be on the show!
My pleasure. And thanks for having me.
Thanks for writing a great book! You shared so many examples of what worked, a few that didn’t, what you’re thinking was in that process and how it connected with you, your customers, your competitors, suppliers. Excellent.
It’s all front-line practitioner kind of stuff that everyone can understand.
As I was reading this, I kept thinking that an entrepreneur with 5-10 employees who is looking for some immediately doable solutions backed with good logic and data ...would be able to open your book and find 5 or 6 things in the first pages of your book. You wrote it in the voice of someone who’s been there, accomplished that.
Tell us about this book. What inspired you to write this book?
For the last 15 years or so, I’ve had tremendous opportunities to go out and speak in front of groups about what it’s like to create a lifetime customers.
You know, we have a very different focus on what we do. We look at the lifetime value of a customer and we base our relationship on multiple transactions rather than a single transaction. So, we have a different way of looking at the relationship with our customers than most businesses have. And, even businesses that say “We’re all about creating lifetime relationship”...there are holes in what they say and what they do and the thought processes behind it.
I wrote the book, basically, it’s share tons of stories...what we did...the thought processes behind it...and then what the outcome is and how it was successful or it wasn’t successful.
You can look at each situation to ok, this is a great opportunity to do something, to try it, see if it works. Let’s see if we can show value to our customers and ultimately have them continue to come to our business.
My inspiration is people who want to become customer-service focused, customer-centric organizations, give them the tools to get there.
Excellent. Excellent.
My friend Erika Andersen coined a great phrase in her book, Being Strategic. The phrase is reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future. What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future for writing this book?
Well, it’s completely unreasonable. But, again, you know when you’re an entrepreneur you’ll never look at limitations; you’ll look at opportunities at what potentially could come from stepping outside your comfort zone and creating some unique offering.
A friend of mine, Jim Issler, wrote an endorsement of the book and how this book is an archetype. That’s a pretty arrogant statement. But, at the end of the day, if the book has the ability to sit on people’s shelves, they learn from it and they move from transactionally-focused business to a customer-service focused business...that’s the goal I would love to see happen.
I’m involved in lots of organizations. I’m involved in Arizona State University’s Center for Services Leadership; I’m on the board there. We’re constantly looking at ways to improve the quality of service here in the United States.
And it’s really something that’s important to have available the tools for people to do the right thing to become a service-oriented business. That’s what I believe the book has the ability to do.
What metrics are you using to track your progress?
The metrics are the success that we’ve had.
You talk about the growth we’ve had, the 23% annual growth. It’s actually we’ve grown 23% a year since 1981. I started the business in 1981, when I was 16 years old and I bought the business from the previous owner.
Right from the start, that was the point of focus. I couldn’t compete on price because the other bike shops were larger. I couldn’t sell things for less than they could. I realized service-offerings were the most important things we had to provide to our customers.
We’ve grown at annual rate of 23% a year since 1981 right up until this year. It’s been consistent growth. It’s not a flash in the pan. Those metrics are recognizing that we can have strong double-digit growth forever is reason enough to stay on the path we’re on.
That’s fantastic!
Who was your audience? Describe the person you wrote this book for when maybe at some point you really wanted to be test-riding one of those new elliptical bikes?
They’re pretty cool bikes. They’re going to be game changers. As popular as the road bike and mountain bike are, I think the new form of elliptical bike which looks like an elliptical bike from the gym which you can use to propel the bike. And we’ve had some interesting success moving. People are really liking.
But, back to the book. The book really had two audiences. We’ve looked to expand our business to multiple locations around the country, understanding that there’s an opportunity out there and we’d love to see our business grow from the location we’re in now to having multiple locations around the country. Things tightened up with the economy and we’ve put that on hold.
But, during the process of writing the book, I wanted it to be a training manual for future employees show what the culture of the business is.
But it’s the entrepreneur, that guy that is struggling with how to be different and understanding what it takes to be different. You know, Zane’s did this but I can do this. I can’t cookie-cutter his ideas but that’s a great idea and how can I find a similar idea in my business to allow me to gain lifetime customers rather than transactional relationship.
Let’s talk a bit about science and lifetime customers. I'm an art major but even I know science is about creating a hypothesis and then testing and experimenting and judging the results to either confirm or deny that hypothesis. Where does that process play out in creating lifetime customers?
The simplest part of this understanding, and really when an ‘aha’ moment came for me and for the rest of my team came when we figured out what a lifetime customer means. Lots of of people are in the business of saying "we’re in the business of capturing 100% share of the wallet, supporting our customers for life and all this stuff. "
And what we did was we started by sitting down and thinking through ok, this bike is at 8 and this bike is at 12 and this bike is when you go to college, and this one is when you get married and then you’re mid-life crisis bike and your retirement bike.
What do all those transactions add up to be? And we looked at all those numbers without referrals, just the individual customer. We said if they’re going to buy all of their bikes from us we’re going to capture $12,500 in business from them. Subsequently, we work on 45% gross margin...so, that works out to $5600 in gross profit.
As soon as we realized what that number was, it changed the game. It became the reason we were in business. Our existence reason was to satisfy our customers so that every time they thought about what they needed associated with what we offer, then they would come to us rather than someone else.
And, if that meant taking it on the chin because there was a service thing that was questionable and he was riding down the road and hit a pothole and bent his rim and had to have it replaced...I could certainly push back on him to pay for that because I wasn’t riding with you that day.
But, at the end of the day I probably have that rim in the back. It costs me about $15.00. We replace the wheel and we send him on his way. He leaves feeling special and the investment in doing business with us was worth it and continues to support our business by fulfilling his needs with us.
So, that $5600 in gross profit is easy to relinquish if you know you’re going to capture that back.
Let's talk about your lifetime guarantee. You offer a lifetime guarantee for parts and labor. You touched on that just now. Walk us through the ROI on that because I think it’s important to understand those numbers.
Awright, so, let’s talk about the nuances of the bike business. And then we’ll talk about the service offering.
When I started in business, my competitors offered a 30-day tuneup. You buy a bike; you bring it back in 30 days; they tweak it to make sure everything is working correctly. And they send you on your way.
And from that point forward, anything the bike needs you have to pay for it at some labor rate which at today’s rates is $100-$150 an hour for labor.
What we did is we looked at it and said ok, we’ll throw in a year’s worth of free service. Because if we build our bikes correctly, they’re not going to need a lot of service for the first year. We can expand our warranties beyond what our competitors are offering from 90-days to a year.
And, then what I found is if you build it correctly, to do things to head off creative obsolescence or the need for paid service, then the bikes can go much longer than a year without needing any real service or any kind of adjustment.
I say that specifically if you tighten some loose spokes on a wheel that comes out of the box the wheel will never go out of true. If you lubricate the housings with a little bit of grease the cables will never rust and you’ll never need to replace them.
There are things you can do to offset the potential liability of service if your business is built on satisfying your customers with an extended service policy. Rather than not doing those things so that at some they’re going to have to come back and pay you to fix those things you could have offset prior to letting that bike go out the door.
So, then we went to 2 years free service when my competitors went to one-year free service. They followed suit because they saw their market-share diminishing. And then at some point we looked at it and said:
“You know what these guys are going to go to 2-years because we’re at 2-years. And we know that there’s not that many bikes coming bike at 2 years unless there’s a legitimate problem...so let’s go to lifetime.”
And we made it retroactive to everything we sold. Everyone knew they could come in and we wouldn’t nickle and dime they about the service.
And, again, it all came about at about the same time we realized our customers were worth so many dollars to us. Why would we ever want them to go somewhere else?
I remember I was at a conference in Sweden. Everybody there was talking about switching costs and how you hate to change your bank accounts and it takes so much time and energy and those are the switching costs that were built-in so you’ll stay with them. And I looked at them and said:
“Well, our switching costs are lifetime service. We don’t charge you to fix your bike. Why would you go somewhere where they charge you? And it allows you stay in front of your customers and continue to offer them the new things that continuously come out. Hopefully move them up the ranks in business. ”
So, that was all the process of lifetime free service.
At the same time we looked at the parts. And we said:
“Well, things break because they’re not manufactured correctly. If I go back to my supplier and say “Hey, here’s a derailleur or here’s a wheel or something that’s damaged that didn’t live up to its life expectancy. I need a credit for it because I’m going to give one to me customer for free.”
They follow suit because they see we’re doing enough volume with the and they say:
“You’re valuable to us. And if you offer this free lifetime parts we’ll back you on it."
So, now I’m not even out of pocket on this for parts that need to be replaced because the manufacturers realize we’re doing all this volume with them and they’re willing to support us.
Chicken and egg question. Which came first your lifetime guarantee for parts and service or your growth rate? Was your growth faster or slower after the lifetime guarantee?
It was definitely the service.
It’s funny. We’ve been doing this for 30 years and I can look over a cliff-of-service decision and jump and never worry about how to figure out how to fly before I hit the bottom.
But, early on, you don’t have that confidence. It takes a tremendous amount of time to be able to grow your understanding of the fact that not every customer takes advantage of every policy. So, that at the end of the day it’s not 100% or 0%. It’s some percentage in the middle that will allow you, some percent of customers will take advantage of the service offerings.
We started with the service and then we saw the growth. We continue to add service offerings and continue to see the growth. It’s become part of our organization, the core, to continue to find things to wow the customer, create customer excitement.
Because, it’s paying huge dividends over the long-term. At the end of the day, that 23% growth, that’s a hard number to keep going at the end of your 29th year.
At some point, it’s real money.
Yeah, it’s real money.
At the end of 1981, my first year sales were $56,000. We just closed our books on over $15 million in sales. It’s just continued to tick up every year, that 23% annual rate. And hopefully, we’ll hit $18 million.
Now, early on, when you began to realize the lifetime value of customers, as they moved through their phases of purchase and you went to your suppliers and said:
Hey, your part was broke, I’m going to replace it for free with the customer. You need to give it to me for free.
What was that initial conversation like? Now, they’d say “Well, of course. We’d be honored.” But in those early days what was the response?
Well, one of my greatest stories is my helmet supplier. You know we had a customer come in who had lost the buckle. There was nothing wrong with the helmet. They just lost the buckle, you know the buckle underneath your chin.
And we took the helmet and threw it in our warranty bin and gave the guy a new helmet. You know, he looked at us kinda strange and said:
“Really?”
And we said
“Yeah, yeah, we’re good. Be safe. Wear your helmet.”
Well, when my supplier came in he looked in the warranty bin and pulled the helmet out and he said:
‘You know there’s nothing wrong with this helmet.”
And I said:
“Yeah, I know it. But I need you to warranty because the guy lost the buckle.”
And he said:
“I can’t warranty a helmet because the guy lost a buckle. There’s nothing wrong with it.”
I said:
“Well, you really should. Because if you don’t, I’m not going to buy any more helmets from you. And, oh by the way, I’m not going to buy any helmets from you and I need $5000 worth of helmets. I can call one of your competitors and say if you’ll give me a $20.00 credit I’ll write you a $5000 order.”
And the supplier looked at me and said:
“I can write you a $20.00 credit for a $5000 order.”
And I said:
“Well, I knew you could.”
I know my customer is worth $5600 in profit. So, I can take a hit if I have to because long-term I’m going collect a lot of profit.
Same thing for my supplier. Right then we realized all we had to do was show and explain what our value was to them so that they could justify satisfying our situation and help us be more successful.
And ever since then, it’s not even a conversation. We just say:
“Here’s the deal. Write the credit. And oh, by the way, thanks for being generous with your credits. But, we’ll be loyal to you because you’re loyal to us.”
And that’s our relationship.
Who was more skeptical of your lifetime guarantee? Customers, suppliers or employees?
The people who were most skeptical were my competitors. It was actually awesome!
When I started with my bike shop there were 17 bike shops in New Haven county, Connecticut. You know, we need to start pushing back. And here’s a 16-year old kid trying to grow a business. And they all laughed and didn’t think we could get any traction.
And as we progressed and figured out the relationship with the customer and started adding these offerings, they just didn’t have any way of competing. They didn’t know what to do in order to compete with us.
One of the things I love is when my competitors offer the same free service policy we offer. But they don’t do it for the lifetime relationship of the customer. They do it to sell the customer standing in the store.
And when the guy walks in and buys a bike and then goes back in for free service ...there’s always a little loophole.
“This is covered but this isn’t covered. This is taken care of, but this isn’t. You’re going to be out of pocket for this, but not this.”
With us, there is no push-back. Lifetime free service is lifetime free service. Lifetime parts warranty is what it is.
We’re not trying to create all these barriers to get the customer frustrated.
Even when we’re on the selling floor I tell people:
“A lifetime free service policy isn’t to sell you this bike. A lifetime free service policy is to sell you your next bike. You’re going to buy this one. I’m going to take care of you; I’m not going to take advantage of you. And when you need something you’re going to come back to me because you trust me and you’re not going to go somewhere else.”
And even in the industry, there’s guys all over the country, when this article was published in INC by Donna Fenn, it explained this whole process of what we do. We had all kinds of dealers writing in to trade journals saying:
“You never give away something you can charge for. This guy’s a knucklehead. He’s going to be out of business.”
Subsequently, we’ve continued to grow. And there’s quite a few of these guys in the bike business who recognized the value of this lifetime free service and are following suit.
But it’s not the norm in the industry. Our profit margins are very high. Our growth is very high. It’s certainly working for us.
Now back in the day, the Big Three carmakers back-in-the-day financed their global multi-billion empires on a business model where a majority of their profits came from car owners buying replacement parts. But, you sell bikes and offer a lifetime guarantee for parts and labor.
What’s in your DNA that helped you see this when all these smart guys, these MBA-types, failed to see it?
Part of it is being front-line, having a one-on-one relationship with them and listening to their needs, fulfilling their needs. There’s a lot to be understood by understanding your customer, feeling the pulse of your customer.
I love the example of the car industry. It’s a great example of what they didn’t do that we did. And had they done it, they’d probably be in much better shape.
GM reorganized. Chrysler was bought by Fiat. Ford kinda gets it.
But, there’s lots of companies like Hundai, Kia and these little ancillary companies that came in with these extended warranties and not out of pocket warranties that the customer could make a single investment and trust that they made a good decision.
And look at the market-share that they’ve gained. And, just the fact that these guys were in the business of selling parts and not lifetime relationship with their customers and these guys have actually gone away and they’re not even being run by the same people who ran the company 25 years ago.
When you shift your thinking from transactions.
“We made a profit on this deal. We made a profit on this deal.”
That diminishes because a customer will switch if they find a better opportunity.
Where if you’re consistently focused on satisfying the needs of your customer and doing what’s best for your customer and trusting that they will be loyal to you...then you can grow your business on good products, good service and good profits for your company.
That’s such a simple value. People will pay for value. People will pay for trust. And when you don’t that’s when they turn the conversation.
My wife and I bought a new car this summer. And everything’s covered. Well, maybe not the tires. But everything in the vehicle is covered.
And, it was an easy decision. What you’re paying you’re paying for 4 years. I know I’m not going to have to pay to change the oil or do anything else. I can go back to the dealer because I don’t feel like I’m being take advantage of with whatever the dealer pricing might be.
And hopefully, over time, after 3 or 4 years I’ll have a trusting relationship with them so I’ll want to continue a relationship with them so when I need to buy something or I’m out of pocket for some of the relationship that needs to be done. At least they’re giving me an opportunity to try to figure out if I should trust them rather than immediately go someplace else.
That’s the attitude of everybody else because they don’t trust their provider. It’s been a bad model for so long that we’re seeing the tide turn a little. That’s the passion that we have. We want to change the tide across lots of businesses because it’s really the right thing.
“Good service not only improves business but it also improves the quality of life.”
You know people who work with me are happier. They’re empowered to do what they have to do. Customers are happier because they know they’re not going to be taken advantage of; they’re going to be taken care of.
What’s the push-back? There no anxiety. You’re going to do what’s right for the customer and that’s that.
Beautiful. Beautiful. It’s a delight hearing that from you.
There’s an exception to every rule. And you touched on it just now. And you have one with your Lifetime Guarantee. What is your one exception to your lifetime guarantee?
Tubes. Flat-tires are an exception. You know, we’re not riding with you. If you get a flat-tire, you basically are going to be out of pocket for it.
But, we started a policy where for a single investment of $20.00 if you get a flat-tire you can bring it back to us and we’ll fix it for free forever. The tube costs a couple of bucks and labor’s pretty quick and easy to do.
So, if somebody wants to make an investment....it costs about $12.00 to change a tube if it’s not one of our bikes and covered by this insurance policy. So, basically, if you buy two flat repairs forever we’ll replace and change your tubes. And then you’re covered.
It’s a profit-center for us. I’m not going to hide behind that. The $20 is based on future liabilities. We know that some people get lots of flats and some people don’t. But at the end of the day, ultimately it’s a quality offering, it’s an investment and they’ve covered for 100%.
Let’s say even if it wasn’t a profit center they have to walk through your store. And you’ve set it up where they have to walk through your store, have a free cup of coffee at your espresso bar. Re-establish the relationship, remind themselves of what a great store you have.
That’s exactly it. We know what we do well and what we don’t do well.
One of our failed service-offerings was telling people who bought bikes that we would pick it up at their home and return it to their home. No charge. We did this for a couple of years and we sold a few thousand bikes that had this pick-up and delivery service.
And what we found was that it was detrimental to our business. Customers weren’t coming in the door. They weren’t smelling the rubber and the coffee. They weren’t getting an emotional connection to the business. They literally had the bike in their garage. They’d call us and we’d pick it up and they never had a chance to buy a power-bar or a new GPS speedometer for their bike.
So, we actually abandoned that service.
But, the thing I like to promote and the the thing I like to talk about with folks is.... we didn’t abandon it to the people we promised it to. We just stopped offering it to the people who came in. So, when someone calls us up and says “Hey can you pick up my bike.” we go into our database and realize they bought it in the window of time where we offered free pickup we go and pick up their bike and delivery it to them. It’s not a big deal.
People after and prior to that offering, they don’t have that luxury because it doesn’t work for us to stay profitable and continue to grow. So, they have to physically come in and visit our business. We will continue to service them for free.
Fantastic. Fantastic.
Let's talk for a minute about partners and customers, vendors and suppliers. There's a lot of talk with some good basis that customers should be brought into the fold, treated more like a partner. I've said it; I’ve championed it.
You write something different. You write, as you speak, directly and candidly, that with your vendors and suppliers you're their customer, not their partner. Why did you choose to draw this line?
Yeah, I’m pretty passionate about it. I promote it to them in our conversations.
You know, when my customer calls me with a need and I recognize that I have the opportunity to profit from the relationship I treat them well and I work to try to entice them to continue to do business with me.
Unfortunately, when the partnership thing comes up that becomes a different situation. Your partner is your wife or your husband. And sometimes you mistreat them. Because they’re your partner and you’re in this commitment, then you forgive them and you move on. But, at the end of the day in a business environment they’re not really partners unless they’re paying your rent or paying a part of your electric bill or paying for your people who work there. That’s what a partner is involved in.
A vendor supplies me goods and I buy them from them because they offer me a reason. They service me; they give me quick delivery; the price is competitive; they stand behind the warranty.
Whatever it might be, they earn my business as a customer or supplier relationship and not a partner relationship. Because, at the end of the day, yes, I value the idea that they bring product to me that people want to buy. But they don’t have, they’re not on the financial hook for the expenses of the business. So, they’re not a partner.
And I want them to treat me like a customer so I can treat them like a customer and not try to convince them that they are my partner and sometimes ask them for forgiveness.
Great answer. It keeps everything simple and clear, out in the open.
One of the many reasons I liked your book was Chapter 4. There you talk about giving back to the community both from a philanthropic point of view as well as from a pragmatic, customer-loyalty view. Can you share with us some of those programs and your plans for Zane's Foundation?
Yeah, we have a Zane Foundation. Zane Foundation is an organization I started 20 years ago. I looked at the opportunity in the marketplace and said:
“There’s not a lot of people, there’s not a lot of businesses, supporting education and the arts.”
You know, we’re in the bike business; we’re not in the arts and education business.
But I felt that in order to drive value to the community, if we consistently supported arts and education offering scholarships to high school students as they graduate and supporting all of the arts programs that go on in the community unrelated to our specific business. We sponsor bike rides and we’re the title sponsor of a couple of different triathlons and we do a kid’s triathlon and we’re engaged at the non-profit level supporting a lot of different things.
But, the Zane Foundation was specifically to make a mark in the community to show that the business cares about the broad scope of the community and not just supporting our own endeavors and not just being connected to the bike side of our business.
Now, it’s well over $100,000 in scholarships for students in the community we’re in, as well as, lots of other stuff that presents itself as requests for contributions.
And in the community, too, we look pretty seriously at over the last 29 or 30 years we paid out over $29 million in payroll to people who live in the community who then shop in the local hardware store and buy groceries and dry-cleaner and coffee shop.
We look at that as part of our community support as well. The money isn’t disappearing. It’s staying in the market as well. The money flows in the community and it’s an important part of what businesses, specifically small businesses do in the community. They drive great revenue in the community.
Employee engagement is a hot topic these days. That's because most companies lack it. And those companies with it are growing and hiring. Coincidentally we're in a jobless recovery. I'm thinking to do what you do must require a lot of employee engagement. New ideas, new roles, new tasks...disruption, some things work, some don't, lots of growth....
I'm thinking in some respects you're hiring entrepreneurs, those who are comfortable with risk and change and failure. What do you look for when you hire?
The thing that I look for specifically is nice people. One of the things that I’ve found over they years in hiring and firing and making good decisions and bad decisions with staffing is when you meet somebody and they look you in the eye and they’re outgoing and they’re confident. You enjoy the interaction right from the start. Those are the people you want to have in your organization.
And if you build an organization with those kinds of people it brings itself to be an even better environment. People are nice; they get along; they enjoy working together.
And then, when you empower your employees to do whatever it takes to satisfy your customer. And that’s a single mantra within our organization is to take care of the customer so that they’ll want to come back.
And, that the customer service starts when the customer experience fails. That’s another thing we talk about pretty openly in our organization: If the customer doesn’t complain it’s because they’re having such a good time and you’re empowered to say yes and do whatever they need to do....then we don’t have to go through the recovery process or the apology process. They just had a good time when they were here and they want to continue to come here.
Those are the types of relationships that we like to create with our employees and giving them the ability to do the right thing for the customers. Once you find people that fit together it’s easy to continue to add people that fit together. Because during the interview process and the interaction with multiple people as they interview....you don’t interview with just one person. You have to get the nod from a couple or three people who appreciate what the person’s bringing to the table as a new employee.
“They’ll fit in. They seem like they’re nice.”
Or they’re a friend of a friend. We tease our summer interns, our summer staff, that when they leave to go back to college they need to give us the names of one of their friends we can hire or they can’t leave. They’re stuck in the store until they find their own replacement.
Typically, they bring in someone who fits, rather than undermining the organization. Because they know they’re going to come back over Christmas or over spring break.
A lot of engagement at that level where you’re part of the family, you’re part of the club, you’re part of the group, let’s make it better.
What percent of your ideas come from your employees?
At this point most of them.
My responsibilities in the way that the business has grown is I’m not required or accountable to the organization on a daily basis. I have a Retail Manager, a National Sales Manager, an Operations Director. These guys are all responsible for running the different divisions of our organization so I can go out and find new opportunities and focus on growth and brand-building.
The ideas that have come about in the last few years have been promoted by the staff saying:
“I saw this. And it looked interesting. Is there a way for us to adapt it to us so that it works.”
When we talk about our 90-day price protection policy...and the lifetime service warranty and the lifetime parts warranty the customer assumes they’re paying a premium. So, in order to get our customer comfortable with the fact that they should make an investment with us we offer 90-day Price Policy. So, if you buy it from us and you see it anywhere in Connecticut for less within 90 days, let us know and we’ll refund the difference plus 10%.
That was a BestBuy policy 15 years ago. We looked at it read it, and realized we could do that. And we, basically, cookie-cuttered that policy and turned it into our policy. They had a 30-day and we turned it into a 90-day because we realized the liability was low.
Now that’s how we move forward now. People just bring stuff in and say:
“This might work. Can we challenge this to see if it’s good idea or not a good idea?”
It’s a collective group of like-minded individuals that want to succeed at this model. And everybody’s open to new ideas and trying to figure out if there’s a value or not.
And another thing. It’s like the bike-delivery thing. You can start things and if they don’t work you can abandon them. Just as long as you live up to the promises of the people you made them to. It’s not that it’s engraved in stone. You can manipulate the offering until it works for your organization. But, you need to try something.
I’ve had people who’ve worked for me. And the ship’s on the dock. They’re trying to manage the course they’re going to take and account for the weather. And they never leave the dock.
My attitude is get the ship out on the seas and let’s figure it out as we go. And, as long as we don’t capsize, we’ll get where we need to go a heck of a lot faster than those who are afraid to let the boat leave the dock.
I have the confidence that I can manipulate or manage the situation while I’m in it in order to be successful.
What happens, if it happens, when they hear your idea and think it stinks? Likewise, with you and their idea?
Well, it happens.
Fortunately, we’re like-minded and we’re also comfortable with one another. We’ve been around one another that none of us have thin skin. And if I come into a meeting to present a concept and I can’t defend wholeheartedly then it does stink. I haven’t done the homework.
I talk about the interview I saw with Marc Zuckerberg where he said if someone comes in with a new idea they have to build it and then they can show it him in real-time.
That’s kind of how we are with the policies and service-offerings. If you haven’t figured out how to make it work and you’re looking for someone else to carry the burden of this great idea, then it’s not a great idea. If you can’t sell it and convince folks that it’s really good, then it should go by the wayside.
One of the policies we just implemented from one of the guys in the organization was at Christmastime was when we get returns. Tom said
“What if we offered a premium to customers if they would take gift card?”
Now, of course we’ll give cash back. Our unconditional return policy says you can return anything to us for forever and we’ll always give you your money back. But how about we give them 10% kicker on their return? So, if they want to buy a bike in the spring or a different piece of spring clothing and the spring clothes haven’t come in, so there’s a benefit to them from just getting cash back.
And there’s a benefit to us. We can keep the cash in the company during the winter when the sales are slow. And the customer gets a premium on their value when they’re ready to make a buying decision. And they remain loyal to us.
We saw a pretty nice offering at the holiday there where we had about $15,000 in returns that came back with customers taking the 10% to continue the relationship with us and to get a better value when they want to make their buying decision.
That’s the kind of thing where Tom presented it. We challenged it. It made a lot of sense. And we started to move on it and everybody’s loved it since. So, it seems like a permanent policy moving forward.
That leads us to our next question. You have a theme or principle in your business called Point North. Now, not every employee, even your brother, has the same zeal for happy customers you do. How do you, not keep them in line but maybe align and re-align their actions and interactions towards your commitment to customers?
The “Point North” model is a pretty interesting one. If you think about...you’re in a room full of people and everybody closes their eyes and points in the direction they believe is north. And if you open your eyes and look around you can assume not everybody in the room is pointing in the same direction.
And, subsequently, our business needs to continue in the same direction with the same attitude.So we use this “Point North” model as basically a simple, slogan, or expression we have in our business to remind us that the only difference we have in our business between us and our competition is the service that we offer.
I’ll say that again:
“The only difference between us and our competition is the service that we offer.”
And what happens is everybody knows that. And actually there’s a little plaque in the building and we call that North. And so, if we see an interaction with an employee that’s becoming heated or we see a customer who for whatever reason is challenging our existence and potentially being unreasonable and the employee starts to get a little uncomfortable with the direction they need to make, the decisions to satisfy the customer...we can walk up to them and without interrupting the conversation, I can say to them “Point North”. And immediately they know it’s the only difference between us and our competition is the service that we offer and that’s what I need to do. And then they’re redirected to do the right thing.
As long as we’re all moving in the single direction, there’s no inconsistency in the relationship with the customer. They can interact with me. They can interact with Tom or Greg. And it doesn’t matter because they’re going to get the same attitude.
And I think that uncertainty in business is why people choose to go somewhere else. You go into the dry cleaner and one guys really nice and one guy has a chip on his shoulder. Or one guy cares you want your collar tabs back and the other guy doesn’t. Eventually, you’ll go:
“Ah, let me find another place that’s better.”
And we’re tying to have this consistent relationship with the customer where again the customer service starts when the customer experience fails. Keep the customer service experience positive and we don’t have to do the hard work.
That’s such a great, simple, mechanism to remind people without making a big production about it: “Point North”.
Yep.
Zane's Cycles is an international company in that you celebrate Bastille Day...
Well, of course! Doesn’t everybody!
Tell us about that decision to celebrate the French Revolution annually.
Well, it happened that THE Bastille Day happened a few years ago and Tom my Operations Manager came up to me and said I’m going to close the store a little early. And Bastille Day is July 14th and it’s probably one of the busiest weeks of our year.
He says:
“I’m going to close the story at 3 instead of at 6:30. We’re going to get a bus and we’re going to take everybody up to an Amusement park. We’re burnt. We’ve all been working hard. ”
Our season kicks off the middle of march. And it had been 3 solid months of 10-12 hour days. There was a need for us to refresh our batteries and recharge.
So, he said:
"We’re going to close a little early. And, we’ll put a little sign on the door for the customers and explain we closed a little early. We’ll give them a 10% kicker tomorrow as an inconvenience. Come back tomorrow; tell us you came here today and we’ll give you 10% off your purchase as an apology for us inconveniencing you and not being here."
And I kinda shook my head. You know, I guess, you know it’s probably not in all the business books that you should close your business. But, again, the quality of my people is way more important than anything else that we have. If they’re burnt and we need to refresh then let’s do it.
We did it.
And again, Bastille Day just happened to be on a Wednesday. So, we said on the sign
“In Observance of Bastille Day we closed early”.
It was just kind of a fun thing.
Now, we just typically close early on Bastille Day and go up and do something, whether it’s an outing like paintball or something or we go to the amusement park or whatever. But it’s a refresher day in the middle of our highest season that gives everybody a chance to kickback and remember the fact we’re not just all about the profit we’re making or the business that we’re promoting.
In simplest terms, and it’s a hard thing, we’ve had interactions with customers where they’ve been billigerent or taken advantage of a situation to the point that’s been unreasonable and we’ve canned a customer for being unreasonable. But, at the end of the day, my employees are by far are the most important asset I have. And, at the end of the day if my employees are unhappy and they’re not going to come to work then I have to stand there and do the work. We’re obviously at the point where we’re too busy to do it: one man can’t run the operation.
My focus at this point is to engage the people in the business and see value in them being there. And if we have to close early to do that then that’s the right thing to do. It’s not a hard decision.
You've created very high expectations with your customers. You've beautifully fulfilled them as you continue to grow. But life's not perfect and neither is everyone at Zane's. Though, it seems might close. But your expectations leave little room for error. One little one and the tide turns into a tsunami of...customers going around say Yeah, we knew it couldn't be true...How do you deal with the inevitable screwup? People forget something, forget a promise to an important customer. How do you deal with that?
Let me tell you, it happens. It’s unfortunate that it happens; but it happens. Nothing is perfect all the time.
How you handle that is what challenges all the other things that you do. You can recover a customer after a mistake. You can apologize and do what it takes to make them feel valuable and understand that you truly made a mistake. And have them want to continue to do business with you. That’s the relationship that drives all the other things that happen.
We have this great story about a customer who’s Valentine Day, we call it The Valentine Day Massacre. We had a customer who came into the store who put a bike on layaway because she couldn’t afford to buy the whole thing for her husband for Valentine’s Day.
So, she put down some money and said:
“I want to bring my husband by after you’re closed and show him the bike I’m buying for him. And next week, when I get my paycheck I’ll come by and pay the balance of it.
If I put balloons and a message and a card on the bike, will you put in the window of the store. So, when I come by tonight with him, I can show him the bike.”
Great idea.
At the end of the day the goal was to take the bike put in the window of the store, lock up and go. So, when she comes by it’s in the window.
Well, of course we forgot.
The next morning I get a voicemail from her and, you know, she’s upset. Actually, she’s really upset. She’s really ticked. She’s like:
"You wasted my time. You wasted my valentine’s day night. I went to the store, I wanted to show him the bike. I sent him out of the car to look into the window thinking the bike was going to be there with my note and there was nothing there. And oh by the way some of my co-workers actually showed up in the parking lot to see his response him seeing the bike he was going to get. I was embarrassed because they were standing there looking and wondering what’s happening."
We were embarrased. We killed two cupids. It was a long voice mail. And I called Tom and I said:
"What’s the deal with the bike?”
And he says:
“I know. I got into work this morning and it wasn’t in the window. Greg was supposed to put it in the window cause he was the one that worked with her. And it just didn’t happen. And I got a voicemail from her, too.”
And I said:
What are we going to do? We gotta make this right. Let’s sit down and think through this and figure it out.
She owes half the price of the bike. We can certainly forgive the balance and get the bike to the husband tonight to make up for it and so he can have the bike.
I’m like:
Yeah, that’s easy to do. But, what else can we do to make her feel special? We screwed up and we want her to know that we’re really apologetic for the situation.
Well, why don’t we re-create the Valentine’s Day Dinner? We’ll call up Quattro’s and let ‘em know we have a customer coming in and let ‘em get a bottle of wine, nice dinner. We’ll cover the cost of the dinner. By the way, we should probably cater lunch for all the people who came to see this. They don’t like this either because we wasted their time, too.
And he said:
Yeah, that’s a good idea, too.
Ultimately we went through the whole process and got the gift certificates and told her we were going to come over and drop the bike off and he apologized over the phone. And she seemed to calm down a bit.
And we went to the house and gave the bike to the husband and gave her the certificates for the dinner and for the lunch. I should have saved the voice mail. But he called me and left a voice mail after he left their house and said:
“Dude. She kissed me.”
So, we went from the morning where she hated us, despised our existence and hated our time because she went through this thoughtful process to something nice for her husband and we were the reason it didn’t come about. So, the fact is she’s kissing my manager because we stepped up and did what was the right thing to do.
It could have been easier to say:
“Hey man. We made a mistake. Mistakes happen.”
But that’s not what we do; that’s not what we’re about. When we make a mistake, we apologize and we’re willing to do whatever it takes to satisfy the relationship so that it becomes a great story for us. And the customer knows it’s a great story for them because we really do care about them.
The best part of the story was 3 days later I get an envelope with a letter from my employee, Greg. He was the employee who worked with this woman and in there was this really nice letter saying:
“ I apologize for making a mistake and I potentially cost us a lifetime customer. And oh, by the way, here’s a check for $400 to cover the costs of all the stuff we did for this woman to satisfy her as a customer.”
Now, of course I didn’t cash the check because we all make mistakes. And Zanes can afford to pay to fix the mistakes our employees make. I want my employees to feel that they can do whatever it is they need to do. But, to have an employee take a week’s pay out of his existence, to write a check, to cover the cost of his mistake...that’s an employee I want working for me.
Actually, he’s still here. Greg’s going to be a lifer. He gets what we’re about and he wants to make this a greater organization.
I just looked up and we’ve come to the end of our hour. The time has just raced by. I thoroughly enjoyed talking with you. I know you’re crazy busy and a million things waiting for you.
You're a leader. Leaders are readers. Jim Rohn says that; I just quote him. On your website, you have a page where you have a recommended reading list. One of them caught my eye. The Offshore Nation. How do you offshore or outsource your customer experiences? Where do you draw the line in that dynamic?
I certainly believe that readers are leaders. One of the reasons I promote this book on my website is because we all need to know what is out there and what’s changing.
There are a lot of books out there that are talking about looking at the global economy. When you look at the US economy as whole, we’re not in the manufacturing business, we’re in the service business. IBM is spending time promoting that you’re going to get an academic degree in service management or service science like you can get a degree in service science.
People need to read books on potentially what’s happening out in the marketplace, or the world, that will challenge our existence to be successful.
And The Offshore Nation is a great book to know what is potentially coming down the line.
Where can we find you on the web?
We’re at Zanes and I’m at Chris Zane. Those are the two main places we have to visit and give us feedback. Good or bad. I’m a customer service guy, so it doesn’t matter.
Scott Gerber is a syndicated columnist (WSJ, Entrepreneur, Inc.), a serial entrepreneur, author of Never Get a "Real" Job: How to Dump Your Boss, Build a Business and Not Go Broke, and founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council, an advocacy group made up of many of the world’s top young entrepreneurs that works to help young people overcome the devastating effects of youth unemployment and underemployment by teaching them how to build businesses.
He is the founder and CEO of Gerber Enterprises, an entrepreneurial incubator and venture management company that invests capital, management expertise, and marketing services into innovative early and mid-stage companies.
He joins the show at 9:30 AM, Central, tomorrow. Listening options are listed below.
We're going to talk about entrepreneurs and jobs and innovation and how you can bring them both into your life, your business, your community. And we'll talk ways Scott shares in his book to live that calling and how Young Entrepreneur Council can help and others join the community of entrepreneurs and build businesses and create jobs and grow this economy.
LISTENING OPTIONS
Live
1. Call 646-915-9212 during the show's live hour, 9:30 AM - 10:30 AM, Central.
What do you use? What technology do you use to move you along towards your goal?
I'm always curious. One big area of curiosity is how people reach their goals, end up doing this or living there. Technology plays such a huge role in these decisions now. So...that makes me very curious what technology resources people use.
I started blogging with Typepad back in....2005. Spending A Day with Seth Godin, I discovered why blogging would work for a small company competing in a commoditized industry against global brands whose ad budgets were bigger than our total revenues.
I came home with my brain on fire for this thing called blogging. And the Seth said...Typepad. I did.
And we did. Our blog was the platform for our brand to stand out in the clutter and commodity-hellish market we called ours.
Typepad's great. Their support is stellar and stellarly patient. It's affordable. It's easy. And it's another resource whose potential I have barely scratched the surface. But I've scratched enough to know it and recommend it...even now, 6 years, or 3 lifetimes in social media, later.
Hootsuite's a Twitter ap. Like Evernote, it has a freemium model. That works fine for me. I am able to better manage the fire-hose of tweets from followers and followings and better manage my time using Twitter to connect with all the fabulaous folks I've met on twitter. And not connect with all the unfabulous people you bump into on...Twitter. That last part is handled quickly now so it's not even a cost of entry.
I love Twitter. I find great content, great people...every single day. It's fast; it's easy; it's crazy fun. It's a powerful tool to stay in contact and engage on topics of interest. And learn at the same time.
I use Evernote for rough drafts, a diary, news clippings, to-do's, a library, business receipts, a camera...I'm sure there's more ways to use it.
It's easy. It's well-organized, incredibly stable and dependable. Oh. And it's free. They have a premium plan. But I haven't found more ways to use it, yet. But, I will (and maybe that's the point of their freemium model. Back in the day we used to call it the puppy-dog close. Let the customer take the puppy home...for free. Fall in love with it and all the ways it brings joy to them. They'll keep it and pay for it. Do it with a smile.)
I host a weekly radio show; sometimes it's twice weekly. It's all about experts with solutions for small business sharing their solutions and their journey.
BlogTalk Radio is an awesome resource. I say it every show. Awesome, inspiring.
It's easy to create an account.
Scheduling a show is very easy, as easy as writing a blog post.
They amaze me with each show with how quickly they convert our conversation into a syndicated MP3 for RSS feeds and iTunes and streaming listening. Sound quality is always, always, stellar.
Co-promotion is excellent.
Their online host switchboard is easy to use to manage the call with mute/unmute, host callout, and I can even remove a caller (Once in 250 shows.)
I love Posterous. I love Typepad, more. But if you're considering starting blogging or testing an idea or just want to share snippets of content (images and a few lines of text), Posterous is excellent.
I have used and loved Basecamp since...2006-7? I forget when I started using it. But it was such an obvious solution for:
* Moving project management from email.
* Saving time.
* Bringing transparency and openness.
* Bringing accountability to a new level; mine, too.
* Improving communication. Not only just managing the content but organizing it into ideas, projects, to-do's, timelines....and connecting with all the stakeholders.
Facebook. (Reluctantly, any more. Sometimes less information is better. I'm sure many say that about me, too. )
Bit.ly is a URL shortener and you can see who has linked or clicked on the shortened URL they create for you. They say it better: Offers URL redirection service with real-time link tracking.
What does that mean?
Twitter limits us to 140 characters. If you include a link with say 40-50 characters or more...you have less room to tweet a personal comment.
But with Bit.ly, a URL shortener, you take the same long URL and convert it into a shorter URL which then redirects to the article. And that shorter URL leaves you more room in your tweet.
But, wait. There's more.
Bit.ly creates the same shortened URL each time, regardless of user. So, you can use their shortened URL to search on Twitter. Find like souls. Introduce yourself. Connect. Cool.
No cellphone.
Note I didn't include my cellphone. For some, that's a vital tool. For me...not so much. Between my email and Twitter/Hootsuite, I'm able to stay connected without distracting nor being distracted. That leaves my cellphone silent, which offers no distractions. Then its calls are ones I look forward to receiving and have the time for them.
What do you use?
What do you use? What technology do you use to move you along towards your goal?
Mind-mapping
Do you have any recommendations for mind-mapping software? I'm circling around that resource. I can't seem to find one that jumps out and says You, Zane, must use me...now in Darth Vader, aka James Earl Jones, voice. That expectation might be the problem, too.
Recently, I announced a weekly series of posts with 5 tips, tools and resources to help us entrepreneurs*...Keep.Moving.Forward. Here's week 3.
The theme this week is connect. Reach out and touch someone or call them or connect with them. And in some cases…don’t.
Use Social Media.
Look. One of the best ways to Keep.Moving.Forward is to stay connected with others. One of the easiest, most convenient, scalable, near-limitless tools to grow connections and stay connected is…social media. My favorite is Twitter. Others love Facebook. I also love Posterous. Find the one you love. Use the one you love. Connect with the ones you love. Find more connections to love. Keep.Moving.Forward
Connect In-Person.
Look, again. It’s easy when times are tough to hunker down in our caves and huddle around our electronic campfires. Go ahead and do it. But do it briefly. Do it long enough to heal the bruises. Then go out and network in person at Chamber events and meetups organized on social media, go to conferences. I’m planning on going to one next week: EntreFest.
Ask For Help.
Sure, it's tough. It's humbling. It's scary. There are control issues. Who wants to openly admit we have failed or need help lest we fail again....
But we all need someone's help, each other's help. Remember, contrary to press releases gushing claims...there are no 'self-made' successes; everyone’s needed help.
Ask your friends or a professional or a coach. They have been there, done that. And it's flattering to be asked.
Help Someone with Their Goals.
First, listen. That’s the biggest help. Be there to listen. Then ask if you can help. Then help. Find out what connects the two of you. Offer them help. Offer them a shoulder to lean on. Share your experts, your ideas, your questions.
Sever the ties that bind.
Keep.Moving.Forward means Keep.Leaving the Past….Behind. Way behind. Or one step behind. Sever the the ties that bind us to what and who may stand in our way. Bad habits, toxic attitudes, unproductive patterns ...they all serve as the foundation for your ongoing failures. They attract an audience of supporters who support you remaining on that foundation.
This is tough. It’s painful, sometimes. But, a relief when it’s done.
Being an entrepreneur, being alive, means pursuing our dreams. It means leaving the safe confines of home, work, routine. It is disruptive whether we lead or watch someone else.
And some prefer the absence of this confrontation. That is the confrontation of pursuing a life worth living vs....layering our lives with denials and distractions.
This point deserves a longer discussion. I’ll do that in a future post.
Happy Valentine’s Day. Keep.Moving.Forward.
**********
* Just a reminder: we're all entrepreneurs.
Our whole life is a series "of hurdles, challenges, setbacks, disappointments, screaming euphoria, comparable levels of despair, a thrilling ride....” And like business entrepreneurs we’re pushed and pulled to invent and re-invent ourselves each and every day...or suffer the same fate as businesses who refuse to change: close our eyes to the world.
And like entrepreneurs in the business world, sometimes we get stuck. Sometimes, we need a tip, a reminder, a flashlight, a life buoy...And in this economy, we all need all the help we can get.
I hope this helps.
Feel free to share your tips, resources or means you have found help you keep.moving.forward.
Disclaimer: I'm a work in process with each of these steps, especially that last one. I'm getting better at the 2nd one. I overlook them all at different times, I handle them or have handled them poorly at others....But I Keep.Moving.Forward. I think you can too, if you take one of them today.
Jackie Huba: Monster Loyalty: How Lady Gaga Turns Followers into Fanatics a bigger challenge than I predicted. It’s not what to say that challenged me. It’s what NOT to say. I start reading and within 3-4 paragraphs, I’m nodding my head and saying Yes, yes, exactly. Bam. Bam, baby. Yeah, come on. Can I get a witness. Then I want to share verbatim Jackie’s translation of Gaga’s strategy. Here’s why. It’s a strategy with 7 steps that any, ANY, business can execute under its own terms and under its own budget no matter how small or large. Granted, I enjoy reading this strategy as it’s applied to Gaga. And Jackie's a good writer. But, what's really inspiring is understanding how even a car wash could apply this strategy with these 7 steps and find success. You could build a global empire selling gardening mulch if you followed these 7 steps. And you could lower your advertising and marketing budgets, to boot.
Kevin Allen: The Case of the Missing Cutlery: A Leadership Course for the Rising Star Yes! Finally a leadership book and author who bring empathy, caring and listening to the front of the leadership room instead of insisting it sit in the back, laughed at or ignored with no champion and certainly no budget to help spotlight its role in creating engaged leaders.
He had me as a reader and fan on the first page of his introduction. Here’s what he wrote:
Years later, when I was made Executive Vice President at McCann Erickson Worldwide ... I came to realize that the gift of human empathy, which had guided me through those early days at Marriott, would allow me to steer literally thousands of people to row in the direction of McCann Erickson’s future.
I’ve learned things the hard way, through trial and error, mostly error. Through it all, I came to realize people follow you because of who you are; because you have come to understand the deep desires and hopes of your people; and because, by connecting with them, you have created a culture and a common cause they believe in.
Chuck Blakeman: Why Employees Are Always a Bad Idea I love this book. It's true that I say this about every book I review here. And why shouldn't I? Why waste time reviewing a book I don't love.
That being said...Why Employees Are Always a Bad Idea: (and other business diseases of the industrial age) is one of my favorite business books for a long time.
It starts with the title. It's eye-catching, provocative, right? Mentally, it's a head-slap, positing a theorem inside your head then pounding it home with AlwayandBad to let you know you're not getting away; you're going to have your mind changed. Right now.
As I kept looking at the title, tilting my head like a dog - one side to the other - I began to smile. I read a kindred spirit. Here's a rebel, a true disruptor, someone who's willing speak up, take a stand; I like that. I might not agree with what I'm about to read, but his title made me smile without being cloying or clever so I knew I was in for a good ride.
Stephen Lynch: Business Execution for RESULTS: A practical guide for leaders of small to mid-sized firms I'm an avid reader, always have been. I've read a lot of business books and I’ve led a small business. I recommend you read Business Execution for Results: A Practical Guide for Leaders of Small to Mid-Sized Firms. It is a very, very good book, among the best, most usable business books I’ve read.
As a writer, he does things that make the reading very pleasant, very inspiring, very engaging. Very good.
He offers personal stories, anecdotes, little clips. They’re genuine, sincere, well-organized to capture your attention, engage you in the story that illustrates the next lesson. I found myself thinking...I can relate...I am relating....I see, feel, remember this personally. And Stephen’s writing is very crisp, very concise in taking you from these stories to the principle with each chapter...and as important to the steps you’re going to take to generate the results you want to see. No hitch in the reading flow. VERY nice.
Kerry Patterson: Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High I came with low expectations. I was severely disappointed. It's a great book. This is a well-written, timely, book with tips and reminders and steps to take with each page you read. Real-world examples, real-world steps, to create real, meaningful conversations when the stakes are high. (*****)
Gregg Fraley: Jack's Notebook: A business novel about creative problem solving I read this book completel, too. That should say enough. Even more, I plan to read it again this month. It's a great story whose purpose is to share useful, practical, tips and steps you can take to more effectively and more creatively solve challenges. (*****)
