C-Suite Network™

Menu
Search
Close this search box.

Category: Personal Development

Categories
Personal Development Sales

4 Ways to Prevent Sinking in Startup Expenses

You’ve probably never heard of Worcester Polytechnic Institute near Boston. But, a lot of big-name engineers and tech companies regularly recruit WPI graduates. They welcome the students’ well-rounded education, and the fact that many of them take classes in management, business, and entrepreneurship.

Recently, we participated in their executive speakers series. We spoke about the three central proficiencies of entrepreneurship: Cash Flow Management, Personnel Management, and Distribution Management. We shared lessons we learned while building the Barefoot Wine brand—lessons that we think all business must master to be able to endure and prosper.

A lot of entrepreneur wannabes fear loss of control or failure of their business due to lack of money. They’re aware that many startup businesses collapse because they’ve committed too much before seeing positive cash flow.

But what they actually need is sales! Sales earn investments in equipment, personnel, and real estate—not the other way around.

When we spoke about Cash Flow Management, we offered this advice to avoid preventable costs, and further the runway until sales take off.

Keep Minimum Inventory. Aim for at-the-moment production. Even though you’ll be tempted to reduce cost through buying in bulk, holding onto unsold inventory can be expensive, and can eventually get your company in trouble. Quantity purchases must be justified by sales volume. So, find suppliers who will keep goods in the warehouse until you need them. And offer quantity discounts to buyers for cash to boost positive cash flow. We’ve learned that buyers sell big when they buy big—and they reorder quickly!

Utilize Hidden Assets. Do you have an unused room or garage you could use as an office to get started? For our first two years, we used the laundry room. Maybe your family members can help out here and there. Bonnie’s nephew and mother lived and worked with us. How can you reorganize and optimize your workspace? Our desk was an old door on two sawhorses. This gave us a cushion for the surprising cost of sales needed to get our company off the ground, as you will discover very soon.

Extend Your Terms and Credit. Think of your vendors as strategic partners. Benefit from each other’s growth. Gain the trust of your suppliers through consistent meetings where you share opportunities, challenges, and goals. Be empathetic if you’ll be late paying your bill by giving vendors advance notice and a payment plan to make it up to them. Develop a long-term agreement so they plainly see your loyalty. Just be patient. Over time, your positive performance will earn you the better terms and higher credit limits you’ll need to save your cash flow.

Outsource to Local Service Providers and Producers. There are companies right in your region that can help out with many goods and services you’ll need. And you can pay as you go, removing the need to tie up capital in office space, manufacturing, or hardware. If you create your contracts the right way, you don’t even need to accept delivery of any product that doesn’t match your quality control guidelines. We found success without ever owning a vineyard, a winery, or an office.

There are so many ways to accomplish positive cash flow in your early days. These are just a few that worked excellently for us. And, if you’re fortunate enough to have investors, they’ll be at ease when you display resourcefulness by reducing the need for cash.

For more, read on: http://c-suitenetworkadvisors.com/advisor/michael-houlihan-and-bonnie-harvey/

 

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

8 Tips to Clear Out the Leadership Clutter Before 2019

As we wind down the year, we’re told as executive leaders to start thinking about goals and resolutions for the New Year. But before you rush off willy-nilly into what new projects and initiatives you’re going to tackle in the next twelve months, you might need to think about what you’ll let go of so that you can make room for the new stuff.

For instance, I was in a Sunrise Yoga class the day after Thanksgiving, sweating my you-know-what off, and our instructor encouraged us to check our thoughts about the past and our worries about the future at the door.  “Because, you see,” he went on, “you need to get rid of all of the toxins and all of that ‘crap’ to make space for what’s possible right now.”

I began to think about how true this is, not only in yoga class, but in life in general. Now don’t get me wrong, we all have days when we feel like the “hot mess express,” and I’ve certainly had my share of those days. Please don’t hit delete and move on to your next email or pressing item, but hang with me for a moment. I promise I won’t get all soft and new agey on you.

My family can tell you I love to do some purging of stuff around the house and office. I’m like the anti-hoarder (I think that at times my kids have been afraid that I was going to haul them out to the curb, too!). But I just love the clean, light feeling of making space in my physical environment. My mantra has long been “outer clutter = inner chaos.”

This runs true in organizations as well. We all have to clear out the clutter in our leadership practices, as well, so that we can have room for new, improved, and exciting ways of doing things.

8 tips for clearing out your leadership and organizational clutter:

1. Kick the status quo to the curb. Similar to cleaning out your closets, just because it’s familiar, doesn’t mean it’s your best look. Get out of your comfort zone. Often we hold onto shoes, habits, and ways of doing things because they’re familiar, and “that’s the way we’ve always done it.” (Or those are the shoes we usually wear with those pants/that dress.) Shake things up a bit.

2. Reassess and ditch processes and systems that have become inefficient. Tom Peters said “Over time, even a beautiful system tends to get elaborated and elaborated. We end up serving the system instead of having the system serve us.”

3. Sweep out those snarky thoughts about people. “Assume the best, and confirm the rest.” Assume positive intent.

4. Stop spending time with those soul-sucking people who drain the life out of you. This will create space for you to be able to invest in the people who add value to your life.

5. Clear your calendar of meaningless meetings. Or find a way to make them meaningful. Ask yourself if each meeting is a productive use of your time. If it’s not, could the information be shared via email? Save the meetings for the things that need to be batted around, cussed, and discussed, eyeball to eyeball.

6. Get rid of those habits that aren’t serving you. Addicted to your phone? (BTW, NO one ever admits this.) Try setting some boundaries for yourself. Put them away during more of your interactions so that you can really be present to your team.

7. Banish bureaucracy. Organization expert Cynthia Kyriazis said, “Clutter is symptomatic of delayed decision making.” Same is true in organizations. When “the boss” has to make each and every little cotton-pickin’ decision, he or she usually become the bottleneck. Bureaucracy is the clutter of many organizations today, and it slows everything down and creates resentment and frustration.

8. Dispose of the stuff and focus on creating experiences.  For the past few years, my husband and I decided that instead of buying a bunch of stuff for our kids for Christmas, we instead wanted to create experiences and make memories with them. We invested in family vacations, gone to Jazz Fest, and spent a lot of time fishing and beaching together. How could you replicate this in your work? Could you be more intentional about how you want people to experience you?

Of course I’m not telling you to be a neat freak, nor do I want to insinuate that I am a neat freak, because I most definitely am not! But, just like we need to clear out the physical clutter in our homes and offices, we need to regularly clean up and clear out the metaphorical clutter in our leadership and organizations.

CHIME IN:

  • How will you make this “purging” a regular practice going forward?
  • What habits or practices will you get rid of to make space for new and improved ways of doing things?

To receive solutions to your people problems in your inbox every month, and to receive our report: “7 of Your Biggest People Problems…Solved,” click here.

You might also like:

Leadership Team Accelerated Results Program

Why Your Employees Should Stop Thinking Like Employees

Stay Home From Your Next Leadership Conference

Jennifer Ledet, CSP, is a leadership consultant and professional speaker (with a hint of Cajun flavor) who equips leaders from the boardroom to the mailroom to improve employee engagement, teamwork, and communication.  In her customized programs, leadership retreats, keynote presentations, and breakout sessions, she cuts through the BS and talks through the tough stuff to solve your people problems

Photo

 

 

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Investing Management Marketing Negotiations Sales Skills Women In Business

Do You Suffer from the Illusion of Success?

“Success has many suitors. Are you prepared to be embraced by success?” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

Exactly what is a success? You hear people talking about success but seldom do they speak about what it means to be successful. Some people may see what they consider to be a bum laying on a grate and deem him as lacking success. Is that true? Might that individual be so happy with where he is in life that he would consider himself to be successful?

The meaning of success can only be determined by you! And, it’s very important that you define what that means. Its meaning will shift throughout your life but unless you define it at every stage of its change, you’ll miss the opportunity to define its meaning for your future.

When you define what success means to you, you’re defining your future. You’re setting psychological neurons into motion within your own brain to acquire the goals that will determine the degree of success you’ve achieved at some point in the future. That will determine the actions you engage in, the friends you associate with, the job or business activities you indulge in, etc. When you define what success means for you, you set a road map of how you’ll reach the weigh stations along the path to success.

So, don’t create the illusion of success by a lack of its definition. Instead, determine what it’s related to as it relates to the person you wish to be in the future. The better you define what success is to you, the greater the chance you’ll have at creating a plan to become successful. There will be illusions along success’ path but they won’t create the distraction that they would have produced had you not defined its meaning. Plus, you’ll be in a better mental place to banish any illusions that would present themselves as a ghostly harbinger to distract you from your path. That will reduce the angst and stress that you would have placed upon yourself.

Once you acquire the insight to determine what success means for you, you’ll be more mindful of the actions that lead to greater success … and everything will be right with the world.

What does this have to do with negotiations? 

You should never enter a negotiation without having defined what a successful outcome is. You should also define what a less than stellar outcome will look like. Even if you must exit a negotiation prior to its end, you can still view it as a success. It could be viewed as such when considering the time you might have wasted in an endless loop that was going nowhere.

During your strategy planning stage of your negotiation, highlight what a successful outcome will look like and mean to you. Make sure you assess what you think it will mean and look like for your negotiation counterpart too. With a picture of the meaning of success for both of you, you’ll have a greater understanding of how he’s feeling if it starts to slip from him. That, in turn, will allow you to use the illusion of success to keep him on that path or reward him by giving the presence of success back to him. Regardless of your choice, you’ll be in a stronger negotiation position, and that’s something that every negotiator seeks.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

To receive Greg’s free “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

#Illusion, #Success #Emotion #Business #Progress #SmallBusiness #Negotiation #NegotiatingWithABully #Power #Perception #emotionalcontrol #relationships #liars #HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #ControlEmotions

 

Categories
Best Practices Growth Skills

How to Avoid the Trap of the Treacherous Homophone

 

A homophone is a word that sounds the same as another word but has a different meaning.

Join me in the homophone sand trap. Please note that some of the word pairs aren’t pure homophones, such as the first one: accept/except, and the second: affect/effect. For the purposes of language skills, I believe that they sound close enough to get easily confused.

Accept/except

 To accept is to receive with the subtler meaning of “allow.”

I accepted the invitation with gratitude. To except means to exclude.

He excepted the corporation from his ruling.

Affect/effect

A simple rule for understanding the difference between these two words is to remember that “affect” is a verb mean to influence something. “Effect,” a noun, is the thing that was influenced.

Her reputation affected the results of the sales department.

Her reputation had the effect of changing the closed sales ratio. 

Advice/Advise

“Advice” and “advise” are closely related in meaning.  They both refer to opinions and recommendations. The difference is that advice is a noun and advise is a verb.

I advise you to closely study the P&L statements.

She paid close attention to key performance indicators for the marketing department. 

Bare/bear

People rarely get confused when “bear” refers to the large animal that may chase you.  Confusion occurs with the verb forms of bare/bear.

“Bare” means to expose, whether body or emotions are involved.

He was afraid to bare his feelings.

 “Bear” means carrying, as in water bearer. It may also refer to carrying emotional or other burdens.

He was able to bear the burden of responsibility for his company.

Complementary/complimentary

Vocabulary alert: These two words are notoriously misused.

Both “compliment” and “complement” can be used either as nouns or verbs. That adds to the confusion.

“Compliment” means to praise or flatter. When used as “complimentary,” it means free. Think of the word “gift” which has an “I” in it like the “I” In complimentary.

She treasured the compliment: “Your department exceeded Its goals for the quarter. Great job!”

They were surprised that their purchase entitled them to complimentary financial assessments.

“Complement” means to complete. Complementary colors like red-green, blue-orange, and yellow-purple are opposite each other on the color wheel. When combined in the correct proportions, they complete each other to form white light. If you think of “complete” or “completion,” you will use complement correctly.

The marketing and sales departments work in complementary ways.

Correct use of homophones shows your skill with the English language. Accept my advice so that at a bare minimum you will enjoy the effects of compliments on your writing skills.

Pat Iyer Is a ghostwriter, editor, and one of the original 100 C Suite Network Advisors. Contact her through her website EditingMyBook.com.

 

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Leadership Marketing Skills

DIY Personal Branding

It was great to be in New York last week and meet so many in the C-Suite Network and other Advisors!

It’s hard to cover everything in such a short amount of time, so I want to write down some tips that you can all use in your personal branding efforts.

I’ve done a lot of work in my own personal branding as I mentioned up on the stage. It’s really been a learning experience figuring out what works, what doesn’t, and what really fits my personal brand. I am always evolving in that sense of what I will add, change, etc. Also, I am constantly balancing what to put under the company brand, what is under the Mari Anne Vanella brand, and what is part of both.

I mentioned LinkedIn a number of times, and that’s because that is a digital office workspace that YOU control. Think of years back, you would go into someone’s office and look around and get a feel for who they are, today that happens on calls many times….so that physical office that told you so much about prospects has moved online in many cases. Is your online office saying what you want people to know? Even other thought leaders that have pretty robust websites, blogs, etc. still have a healthy LinkedIn profile. That’s because LinkedIn has SEO value, it will be one of the first things (if not the first) that come up when people search for you… And they WILL search for you if they are considering working with you.

When I first started my company, the idea of personal branding was still pretty unheard of. But with the physical office space moving to the digital office space it’s opened a lot of opportunities for professionals to get their name out there. In 2000, working remotely and having a distributed team was an odd business model, but over the years I have closed millions of dollars of business with organizations I have not met in person. What they discover about The Vanella Group, Inc. and me personally helps them make those decisions.

I realize there are people that are reluctant to do a lot on LinkedIn, or they think it’s not important. I can say with a lot of confidence that if you invest the time in creating a solid profile on there it will get the message out that YOU want out there. If there is a lot of white space when prospects are looking for what you do, they mentally fill in the blanks with things they assume, i.e. you are not on top of modern trends, you are not knowledgeable of common digital practices, etc.  Part of the training I do for teams include using LinkedIn to get up to speed quickly on who you are about to have a meeting with. It will accelerate your prospects feeling good about you when they can get to know you online.

If there is nothing to see online, they might think that you’re a late adopter and you haven’t gotten on the digital wagon of maintaining an online presence. If they are really pushing an online presence, you may get ruled-out without ever knowing it because they think it isn’t an area you work in. In today’s digital world, that’s not that great of a message to send out.

If you are online but don’t update your digital presence, what do people discover? Do you still have your last job on there as your current job, that also sends a weird message. If you are a consultant promoting a business and your last job is what they see when they look you up, your consulting business looks more like “unemployed.”

I also see LinkedIn as a place to show some generosity. I tend to find it strange to see people working at a company in a leadership role for a number of years, and no one took the time to write a solid endorsement for them….or visa versa. It puts out a message that could be construed as not having a lot of loyalty or influence. That may not always be the case, but when I see people that freely give praise to their team and their team and other colleagues taking time to share their positive experiences, it says something about them. I have never met anyone that has or has given a lot of recommendations to be a cold person.  It is a great way to give back to people that helped you get where you are. Is there anyone you can do that for?

What are some things that you can do right now?

Think of what your brand is. Is it modern? Is it edgy? What is unique? What do you do that no one else does? What part of the solution you bring is special? Put it on paper so you can mentally organize it. Name it something even….productize your solution.

Do you have a unique process you bring? I mentioned on the stage that I know no one does what my company does, and I built out a strong methodology around it. I own the Telesales 2.0® mark. I designed it to be different.

The value of doing this is twofold because it’s a methodology that is unique to my company and differentiates our solution, and it’s also something that I created that adds to my personal brand.

What have YOU created that you can package into something unique that YOU own?

A challenge I see with services related companies is trying to be all things to all people and having a cloudy message. It’s a good exercise to distill those top areas that you are solving into a 1-3 areas and those other auxiliary types of things that you do save for live conversations. That may not always apply, but if you can narrow it to something very concise, it is worth considering.

Another important thing is to stay current and educate yourself. I mentioned on the stage how I keep Google alerts for myself, my company, but I also do that for topics and industry trends. I put the Internet to work for me so is delivering to me the content that I want to consume. I run across a lot of great content that I wouldn’t have discovered through the regular channels, so it’s a great way to identify sources as well. I can also see where others are using dated methods, are running into obstacles, and it helps me better define my deliverables.

Keeping your accomplishments current is also another important factor in how you brand yourself.  I’ve seen people that put minor accomplishments from 20 years ago in their bio that could be weakening their brand. What you did in 1992 is likely not super relevant to what is happening in 2019.  If you go too far back without a solid recent list of output, you run the risk of looking stale. I believe a lot of people that complain of ageism also put out aging messaging about themselves…not that it doesn’t exist, but why put something out there that causes more harm that good?

Something I see from time to time is a company with a pretty good website, but they don’t put their management team on it and we don’t really know who’s behind the curtain. Today’s buyers are astute, especially in executive-level services, and they want to know who you are and what you do. I would even recommend working with a content consultant or somebody that can help you to have a consistency across your website, your bio, your LinkedIn profile, Twitter, etc. Me personally, I spend zero time promoting anything professional on Facebook because my prospects just aren’t there, that goes with Instagram too.

I tend to avoid heated topics outside of my industry because it only would serve to alienate prospects. I do however engage in discussions about related topics that are flat out against what I know to be true. When I see people promoting the “cold calling is dead” message, I will gladly jump into that discussion. People do take calls, they don’t take bad calls…99% of the calls they get are bad calls. So that is another thing to think of, how will you engage in topics where there are differing opinions. Or will you step outside of your industry space and engage in other discussions too?

Another thing to consider is what you want to be discovered vs. what you don’t. I don’t want to impact my SEO results with things that are unrelated. I have an equestrian site that I don’t put my name on because I don’t want to have all this stuff come up that impacts my main business results.  People that know me know I adore my animals, I share photos on Twitter, etc. But one thing I don’t want is to have my potential clients of The Vanella Group, Inc. searching for B2B telemarketing and finding dressage and costume demo content.

There’s much more I could comment on, it’s a big topic and one you have to periodically stop and assess what needs to be changed. Please connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, or feel free to email or call me.

Have an excellent week!

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Investing Management Marketing Negotiations Sales Skills Women In Business

How to Use One Secret Trick of Good Negotiators

“To obtain more, ask for more. And, know when to ask.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

There’s one secret trick that good negotiators use that allows them to obtain more from every negotiation they’re in. Do you know what it is?

Good negotiators ask for more than they expect to receive. But wait, there’s more! It’s not just that they ask for more, it’s the way they ask, and the timing that allows them to get more.

Characteristics of Questioner:

The way you make a request should be in part, based on the character of the person you’re asking. Some people are brisk (i.e. get to the point), others are more sociable (i.e. let’s take our time). Thus, it would not behoove you to pose the same type of request to the people possessing the characteristics mentioned. If you did, your request might be met by one and not the other, or neither of them, due to the way you posed the question. In either case, you’d be gambling on the outcome. Posing the right question in the manner that’s more receptive to the characteristics of the person to whom you’re asking a question enhances that outcome.

Verbiage Use:

“Can you …”, “Will you …”, “I need …”, “I want …” are forms of openings to a question that will psychologically appeal to different personality types. To maximize the probability of obtaining what you seek, mimic the verbiage used by the person you’re seeking the outcome from. If you observe that she predominantly uses, “can you help me” when requesting assistance, use that phrase on her. It will have an echoing effect on her; that means, the words will sound like something she’s heard before. That’ll be true to her because they will be the words that she uses. That will place her in a mindset to grant your request more readily.

Setup and Timing:

The one main advantage you have over the other person is the fact that you know you’re going to make a request. The timing of when you do will impact the probability of a successful outcome. To enhance that outcome, consider probing by asking questions that aren’t as direct as the one you plan to use (e.g. What do you think about …?). Be careful not to give too much insight about your real intent. If you do, you might be weakening your efforts.

Another tactic you can utilize is to make a request that’s significantly more than what you’re seeking. Then, by comparison, the smaller request won’t appear to be as large.

Situational and Positional Power:

Along with timing, consider when you have situational or positional power. You have situational power when you’re in a situation where you’re perceived by others as being powerful (i.e. police officer with red lights flashing). Positional power stems from the position you hold at the time when you’re perceived as being in control (i.e. boss over subordinate).

During such times, you’ll be able to make requests with an enhanced probability of having them granted.

Asking for more in any negotiation will always enhance the probability that you’ll obtain more. But you must know how to properly execute your requests to enhance that probability. Using the insights above will do just that for you … and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

To receive Greg’s free “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.TheMasterNegotiator.com/greg-williams/

#Trick #Negotiator #Business #Management #SmallBusiness #Money #Negotiating #combat #negotiatingwithabully #bully #bullies #bullying #Negotiations #PersonalDevelopment #HandlingObjections #HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #psychology #NegotiationPsychology

Categories
Best Practices Body Language Culture Health and Wellness Management

Elevate Your Success with Five Simple Steps

People often convince themselves that highly successful individuals who possess a special gift set themselves apart from everyone else. However, the reality is that your ability to have success, however you define it, can be accomplished with a few simple steps.

Personal responsibility for our actions is seldom championed in society these days, and like it or not, we all live with the consequences of the lifestyle choices that we make every day. We can sit in an office staring at a spreadsheet waiting for our situation to improve or make a few changes that will put us on a path to shaping a better future for ourselves and others. The following are five simple steps you can take to elevate your level of success.

1. Challenge Your Habits and Change Your Routine

It is incredibly easy to fall into the comforts offered by habits and routines, those that make our lives feel like a scene from Groundhog Day, in which the alarm wakes us at the same time every day as we hit the snooze button at least once before jumping into the shower. The familiarity of the daily grind, in which grabbing a coffee as you head into the office before performing the same tasks, can be comforting, yet we often wonder why nothing ever changes.

Our education system tends to encourage everyone to learn one correct answer and basically think in the same way. And when it comes to creativity, only a small number of people might be thought of as “creatives,” but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Technology is increasingly replacing laborious and repetitive tasks with automation. Creativity and critical thinking have become essential skills in the 21st century and possess the power to make you stand out from the crowd.

There are countless self-help books that advise you how to create new patterns and habits to help you achieve your goals. However, simply getting off the hamster wheel of life and allowing yourself to mix things up by both thinking and doing things differently is a great place to start, and it will stimulate creative thought.

2. Surround Yourself with People Who Lift You Up

They say that we become like the five people we spend the most time with, and ultimately they have the power to either inspire or drain us, so maybe it’s time to re-evaluate the amount of time that you spend with toxic individuals who only bring you down.

Surround yourself with like-minded souls on a similar journey or, better yet, those who can see the big picture better than you can. They will help you see failure as an opportunity and will certainly increase your odds of achieving your dreams.

Business is 80% people and 20% everything else, and this illustrates the importance of investing your time in getting to know open-minded individuals who enjoy helping turn others’ dreams into reality. What if you surrounded yourself with inspiration?

3. Fuel Your Creativity

If you begin your day reading the news that reminds you of all the negative aspects of our world, followed by looking at social media sites that show snapshots of lives that are edited to look much better than your own, you will never increase your productivity or creativity. I like to start each day thinking of all the things I’m grateful for. It’s hard to have a bad day when you start your day like this. Try it!

Whether they are stuck in a traffic jam or are on a delayed train or airplane, or even doing household chores, highly successful people unleash the power of refueling their creativity during these moments of “dead time” by reading books or listening to podcasts.

Books and podcasts on subjects that stretch your thinking are a fantastic way to stay inspired and learn new tools you can use to resolve problems that are stopping you from reaching your goals. Try having fewer calls with people who pull you down and don’t help you move forward, and instead call people who lift you up, or watch a good TED Talk or listen to podcasts or audiobooks that offer advice and insights from others.

Removing yourself from a routine or familiar surroundings and going for a walk in a direction where you haven’t gone before instead of staring at a screen will help a lot. Highly successful individuals often find that their brains will naturally join the dots when they expose themselves to new ideas, surroundings and experiences.

4. Bring Focus and Clarity to Your Dreams

Bringing focus and clarity to your dreams while working alone in front of a computer in a dimly lit room is good, but is not enough on its own. Do not underestimate the importance of sharing and communicating your vision with others. It will attract the right people to you who will begin to see where you are going and offer ideas to help you get there.

By sharing your passion for a future vision and communicating the message with transparency on how it will be achieved, you will find people who can help you to create a solid path to achieve your goals.

5. Embrace Marginal Gains

When Dave Brailsford became the manager of Great Britain’s professional cycling team, no British cyclist had ever won the Tour de France. However, he had a simple concept known as “aggregation of marginal gains” that would revolutionize the sport and lead to his team members becoming tournament champions and Olympic gold medal winners.

The philosophy involved improving tiny areas that were traditionally overlooked by 99 percent in the belief that a long list of 1% improvements would be the difference between being champions or losers.

Researching for a pillow that offered the best sleep for cyclists to take to hotels, and teaching riders the best way to wash their hands to avoid infection, were just a few of a long list of improvements that, although they looked tiny, ended up making a massive difference.

Whether you want to lose weight, build a business or achieve any other goal in life, it’s clear that heading straight for the moon with only one step will almost certainly result in failure or demotivation.

Small changes to your daily routine, such as creating a new email signature or changing those boring, stuffy group meetings by asking better questions, could boost your momentum and enthusiasm. All these changes not only deliver long-term improvements but also improve the overall quality of your life.

Will what got you to where you are be enough to take you to the next level? There are entire chapters on how to act in the future in my latest book The Anticipatory Organization. I’ll buy the book, you pay the shipping cost. Click here to order your copy.
Categories
Personal Development Sales

Mind Your Own Business

Last week, Yitzchok Saflas hosted myself on the Mind Your Business radio show in New York on 77 WABC. Michael was honored to be in such great company—Yitzchok’s show is ideal for anyone who wants to hear from the best business minds of our time. This radio show is also number 5 in the top 10 Nielsen ratings. You can check out my interview online here: http://www.mybradio.com/michael-houlihan/

The show covered many topics when it comes to building a startup business, including “How to get from ideation to monetization,” and one of my absolute favorites, “How to decipher the true cost of sales.”

Many startups already understand cost of goods, or COGS. This is the cost to create, develop, or manufacture whatever it is you’re selling. Your budget will have a COGS line.

Other expenses could be lumped into the general budget, or maybe even “overhead”. We think that is, by far, the biggest mistake that startups can make. It could lead to a ton of misconceptions that can close your doors forever. The cost of doing business depends on the territory. Selling costs, including promos, shipping, tax, representation distribution management, and many more, could vary greatly depending on the market. We see many startups underestimating the true cost of sales in each market—not the cost of goods. This is a fatal mistake!

We knew there would be promotion, advertising, and merchandising costs involved when we started Barefoot Wine. But hotels, meals, car rentals, airfare, taxes, freight, sampling, salaries, and expenses—we definitely weren’t ready for that. We learned about those costs the hard way.

The good news: Since our product sold quickly, it completely sold out. The bad news: After it sold out, it wasn’t reordered. It stayed out of stock because we didn’t have someone in each territory looking for our brand. We were floored!

“So, even when distributors and retailers have a hot product that sells quickly, they won’t reorder it automatically?” we complained. Their behavior said everything we needed to know. We had to pay to have a representative in each territory, or else it could run out and never be reordered. This is a huge cost of sales. We wished we knew this when we started! It wasn’t enough for us to get in the store—we had to pay more to stay in.

There was one big Midwest chain that wanted to put our product on a promotion for $5.99 in 5 states. We were so excited! It would be a slam-dunk, we thought. But, as Bonnie recounts, “It was just a slam!” In order to get the sale price in two out of those five states, we had to lose money on each and every sale. The taxes were higher in those states than the others, and so was shipping and handling. So rather than making a killing, we were killed—completely by the cost of sales.

One of the final questions I was asked in that interview was, “What advice would you give new startups today?” I replied, “Start in a small place, learn from your mistakes locally where you won’t fatally hurt your brand. Learn the cost of sales. Hire a cost accountant to analyze those costs ahead of time for each expansion scenario. Then, ‘All ahead slow’ with your eyes wide open and your notepad at the ready. You might find out it’s cheaper to do business in South Carolina that it is in New York!”

For more, read on: http://c-suitenetworkadvisors.com/advisor/michael-houlihan-and-bonnie-harvey/

Categories
Best Practices Growth Leadership Personal Development

Why Your B2B Content Marketing Isn’t Ready for Personalization

I am blessed to have a number of B2B companies as clients–each one wants me to help them with their content marketing. And I am luckily able to help them all, except there is one thing they all seem to want but don’t know how to deliver–truly personalized B2B content recommendations.

They see Amazon do it. They see other B2C companies do it. But why is it so hard for B2B?

The main reason is that B2C companies don’t personalize content recommendations so much as they personalize product recommendations. They watch what you (and everyone else) buys and they can determine what you are interested in, and which products relate to those interests. Amazon knows that if you buy one book on Civil War History that you will likely buy another. But if your B2B company sells one of your products to a client, its likely they are done. They don’t need another one.

And that sale is excruciating. What happens after the sale isn’t your concern. You want to accelerate making that sale in the first place. That’s why you want to recommend content. But how do you do it?

You likely aren’t ready. (I’m sorry.)

There are three things you need to recommend content:

Information about the visitor to your site. You probably don’t have any. Sure, you might offer registration, but how many clients actually register? What incentive do they have? And how many registered clients even sign in each time they come to the site? Do you drop cookies so they automatically sign in when they come back? What information do you ask them for? Do you use any Visitor Identification technology to get information about those who don’t register? If you don’t have good answers to these questions, you aren’t ready.

Information about the content on your site. You probably have even less of this, if that’s possible. You probably have no taxonomies that have standardized tag values for topics, industries, and other critical metadata. Or if you do, it hasn’t been updated in decades. And you are hoping that author manually tag the content correctly–which you know isn’t working. You have no automation applied to any of these problems to standardize the findability of content on the site. And you have no automated process to match content to visitors–whatever you are doing is using manual rules in your CMS or Marketing Automation system. So, either it doesn’t work or it doesn’t scale. You don’t think that is how Amazon is doing it, do you?

Information about what is working. OK, this one is something you have right? For every piece of content, you have bounce rates and exit rates in your web analytics system, where you also know every link that is clicked on every page, and the cookie ID of the visitor who did it. Great work, honestly. But where do you use that data? Do you use it for content recommendation, or does it just lay dormant in your analytics system waiting to be displayed on a dashboard? Information that gains meaning when it hits the analyst’s eyeball isn’t helpful when you are trying to scale. You need information in a form for automated processes to act on.

If you have all of these problems (and maybe even more), you might be tempted to throw away your whole marketing stack and buy everything from one vendor, because, surely, they have integrated all of these pieces together and now it will just work. Well, I haven’t seen it. This isn’t strictly a technology problem. You might have all the technologies you need, but you don’t have the processes to acquire clean data and the automation to put those technologies to work at scale.

If it seems daunting, you can throw in the towel, but you can make this work. You just have to stop believing in magic technologies and start believing in well-engineered processes and experts to make them work. You can do B2B content recommendation at scale without breaking the bank. You just need to be willing to step back and solve these three problems that are getting in the way.

Categories
Growth Personal Development

Boosting Brain Performance When Traveling for Business

This year I have had a heavy load of international travel. Although I look forward to my business engagements in Asia and Indonesia, sixteen to thirty-two hours traveling can knock even the most seasoned travelers.

For those of you who have scheduled meetings soon after arrival at your destination, whether it be interstate or international, it is critical that you follow steps to ensure that your brain performance has not been affected by your travel arrangements. Think of your pre-frontal cortex as the CEO of your brain. It is this area of your brain that needs to be firing at its best in order for you to be able to make sound executive decisions and rock your meetings at your destination.

I can attest from personal experience how easily you can fall victim to brain fog, memory lapses and poor judgement calls when not taking note of the following simple points when traveling long distance for business.

In my previous blog I outlined the importance of sleep in enabling us to form memories and to clear our brains of toxins. If you do not get enough sleep then there will be lower activity in your prefrontal cortex, which will affect your judgement, impulse control and memory. Take this into account when scheduling your time of departure and your first meeting. Make sure that you get seven hours sleep and try not to schedule flights before 10.00am.

If you have a very long flight consider taking a very small dose of melatonin. However, steer clear of doses higher than 3mg or more ( Aim for under 1mg) to prevent any grogginess the following day, when you will need your wits about you. It is important not to sleep for the full duration of a very long international flight, so that you can take time out to hydrate and move your legs, to avoid deep venous thrombosis. (blood clots) As tempting as it may be to drink alcohol to relax, resist this temptation, as it will further dehydrate you. Remember that your brain is 73% water and requires constant hydration to prevent shrinkage. A decrease in water intake, even as much as 4% can cause a number of issues like fatigue, headaches and brain fog.

Glucose is your brain’s other best friend. This is not to be confused with processed sugar(sucrose) in the various complex carbohydrates that are served on planes. These will help you sleep when you need to, but should not be eaten when you are close to your destination if you want to avoid brain fog. Try to indulge in snacks like grapes, raisins and dates on your flights as they are great sources of glucose.

The less you eat the better you will feel on and after a very long flight. Purchase some nuts for the flight and load up on probiotics and yogurts before and during your travel to keep those gut micro-biomes happy. This will not only protect your immunity, but keep your brain healthy.

As in everything else in life, preparation is the key. I have on a few occasions thought that I could buy what I needed at the airport. Not all airports around the United States or in other countries may have what you require, or the queues may be too long. Take the time to observe these simple steps in your travel preparation and your brain will perform well when you get to your destination.