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Author: Jeffrey Hayzlett

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Entrepreneurship Personal Development

From Game Maker to Game Changer – What Pictionary Can Teach Us About Business

You’ve probably heard that there’s an inner artist inside us all. Whether that’s true or not is debatable.

I’m a businessman, not an artist, but I have been known to play a bit of Pictionary from time to time. Recently, Rob Angel, who invented Pictionary, joined me for an episode of All Business with Jeffrey Hayzlett. Even Rob admits he can’t draw, but he knows why millions are drawn to the game.

“The thing about Pictionary is the brand isn’t the drawing. It isn’t the name. The brand really is the excitement and the fun that you have,” he said. “If you can’t draw or you can’t sketch, it doesn’t matter. It’s like a rock concert. You know everybody’s engaged. You remember those moments.”

He added, “All your senses are alive, so drawing is not paramount to winning or playing, you’re having a good time.”

What impresses me the most about the game is the premise is very simple. At its core, it’s a piece of paper and a pencil. Things we all have lying around our house right now! However, none of us invented a product that sold more than 30 million units in 60 countries. So how did Rob do it?

In 1982, he graduated from college and moved in with some friends. One of the roommates introduced him to a game called Trades on Paper. At the time, board games like Trivial Pursuit and Risk were popular ways to pass the time. Rob and his friends would talk about making Trades on Paper into a board game, but the idea never got off the ground.

“I got inside my head,” he recalled. “I can’t do it. I’m just a waiter. All this negative self-talk and limiting beliefs totally took over for two years. I had to stop. I had to stop doing that.”

So, Rob and his buddies set off to make a game.

“We had no business being in the game business,” Rob said. “I didn’t have a plan. Why ruin a good business with a plan?”

While he couldn’t wrap his head around creating a business plan, Robert knew he had to come up with something. He went to the back yard, opened up the dictionary, and started building a word list.

“I opened (the dictionary) up and wrote down the first word that made sense, aardvark,” Rob said. “That’s why I called the whole thing, finding your aardvark. That changed everything. That changed my mindset from ‘I’m a waiter’ to ‘I’m a game inventor. It took two years to write aardvark. It took 30 seconds to write the second word. It just got faster. By the time I was done, I was a game inventor.”

Soon Rob had a yellow legal pad filled with more than 5,000 words. About half made it into the first version of Pictionary. By the way, Robert still has that legal pad today.

By now, they had come up with a straightforward business plan.

“Our business plan was written, I swear, on the back of a cocktail napkin that my partner took from under my beer,” Robert remembers. “He writes down: make games, sell games. That’s it.”

The original plan was to produce 1,000 games, by hand, at their apartment.

Robert said their ambition was matched by their inexperience in business. He doesn’t think they would have been as successful if they actually understood the game business.

“If we had known what we’re doing. I wouldn’t be sitting here,” Rob said. “We did everything by intuition, by gut. There was no internet to say, ‘How do you market a game?’ Without question, too much information would have stymied us because we just had to make choices. Right, wrong or indifferent and live with them.”

Rob said they came up with the name Pictionary right away, but there was a slight hiccup. There was a game already on the market called Fictionary, so their original trademark application was denied. Instead of getting lawyers involved, Robert called the trademark owners and got the OK to move ahead with Pictionary.

“Our intention was always to create a game that people would love. The graphics were important, the rules were important, but the ultimate deal of the game was to have fun,” Rob said.

With that in mind, Rob said the company began listening to consumers early on. It helped shape some of the game’s rules. Doing this allowed the founders to realize they didn’t know everything and stayed true to the game’s vision and purpose.

That lesson came in handy a few years later when game giant, Milton Bradley, came knocking on their door, offering millions for Pictionary’s rights. Rob said they turned it down after Milton Bradley refused to commit to keeping Pictionary’s rules, graphics, or packaging intact. Rob said he didn’t want his financial future tied up with Milton Bradley’s vision of Pictionary.

“We had no plan B. We were willing to go back to waiting tables and stay waiting tables than compromise our vision and our dream,” he recalls. “We stayed with it for 16 more years, we weren’t going to walk away…There was a lot of money to be made. I called (Pictionary) my 17-year start-up.”

Rob said they could walk away from the Milton Bradley deal and remain friends with his partners to this day because of one key thing: shared values.

“We all have integrity. That’s what’s important to me,” Rob said. “When the chips were down, and they were, we had each other’s back. We could trust each other.”

He added that they learned that lesson early on, during one of their first runs. A manufacturing glitch had Rob and his partners sorting through a half-million game cards. It tested his fear of failure.

“But guess what? When we were done, my two partners and I did it together. We bonded,” he remembered. “We understood we had each other’s back. It created this connection that we didn’t have because we had this shared enemy to fight against. That set up on the path of the next 15 years of this beautiful friendship and connection.”

In 2001, Rob and his crew found the perfect partner in toy giant Mattel. While everyone is happy with the deal, Rob did confess something during the interview.

“I would have gotten out earlier,” Rob said. “The last five years, it was a job. I’d lost my passion.”

Since selling Pictionary, Rob did non-profit work and wrote a book. Now he’s getting his creative juices flowing again, working on ideas for new games, a possible TV show, and other endeavors.

He said a lot about the game industry has changed since his buddies came up with Pictionary in the 1980s. For one, the barrier to enter the business is a lot lower because of the internet and crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, but he does offer a word of warning.

“What’s your intention for this,” Rob said. “if their idea is, they’re going to make a lot of money, it’s really difficult because there’s so many (games). You better rethink that.”

I had a great time talking to Rob. So many business lessons to learn from and I felt like we just hit the tip of the iceberg.

We covered much more during our episode about the business of Pictionary and Rob’s advice to young entrepreneurs. You can listen to the full episode here.

Categories
Best Practices Growth Leadership Personal Development

Why are People so Difficult to Understand? Interview with New York Times Best-Selling Author, Robert Greene

Robert Greene

I recently had the immense pleasure of interviewing 6-time international best-selling author, Robert Greene. Greene is the author of the New York Times best-sellers The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, The 50th Law (in collaboration with rapper 50 Cent), and Mastery.

I caught up with Robert to learn insights from his highly anticipated sixth book, The Laws of Human Nature, covering one of the most important subject of all;  understanding people’s drives and motivations, even when they are unconscious of them themselves.

Robert has spent a lifetime studying power dynamics and his books have helped lead many to greatness.

We started our discussion with the most basic question, ‘why are people so difficult to understand?’ While the question may sound simple, Robert says the answer is complex and could take hours to answer. However, he quickly targeted our behavior in the office, especially that of the executives and the CEO.

“It’s not easy being human” Robert began.

Human beings are complicated by nature. The way we think, the way we react to things, the constant battle between emotions and rationale can make it even more complex. Let’s add to that external factors, such as COVID-19, economic pressures, and stress at home the situation can become even more volatile.

“(Executives) don’t realize that other people have egos,” Robert said. “Everybody has an ego, but people who are powerful and reach high positions have even bigger egos than anyone else. So, they’re riddled with insecurities. You don’t think that because they try and project an aura of incredible power and confidence, but secretly they’re feeling very insecure.”

Robert’s goal throughout all his books and research is to get everyone to look at the world through the lens of humility. He goes on to say most people don’t understand themselves, so it’s hard for them to understand others.

“So much of our behavior is unconscious. So much of our behavior is secretly motivated by emotions, not by rationality,” Robert concluded. “So that when you make a plan, you think that you’re being very rational and scientific and objective, but in fact, all kinds of desires and wishes are infiltrating themselves into your plan, so you don’t know yourself.”

He continues, “Then you have to admit that you don’t understand other people because your number one tendency is to project your own emotions, your own desires, your own wishes on to the people that you see. You’re not aware of this.”

 

Balancing your ego with empathy can be what Robert calls “a delicate dance.” While executives like us face tough decisions that might rub people the wrong way every day, you don’t want to come off too soft or too harsh with your employees. Robert says if you don’t find that sweet spot of handling emotions and projecting your vision, you will never know how to lead.

He went on to say the CEO doesn’t do it alone. In a world that’s moving so fast, leaders can’t afford the isolation of the c-suite. CEOs need “street-level” reports – coming from frontline customers, clients, and audience through their employees.

But it’s not simple matter keeping your ear to the ground, there is a fundamental generational shift taking place in and outside of the workforce.

“You must know what’s really going on in this world because things are changing so rapidly. We have to understand the younger generations that are coming up,” Robert said. “You have to understand that they don’t have a different way of looking at the world; they have a different spirit. You have to be able to pierce that spirit and understand it on a deep level.”

He added, “You need access to what’s really changing in the world right now so that you’re not just simply reacting according to the strategies that worked a year ago. You’re thinking ahead of where we’re going to be in five years.”

Robert goes on to explain where he learned this shift from his first-hand experience in Hollywood and how people put portray their sensitivity to change but their actions didn’t align with their portrayed value statements.

Becoming a best-selling author on the inner workings of human personalities wasn’t Robert’s professional goal. Before writing his first book, The 48 Laws of Power in 1998, Robert was working as a screenwriter in Hollywood. That’s where he found the inspiration to start probing into what makes us all tick.

“I was really kind of irritated by the way people talk about business and what really goes on in the world because I saw a lot of people being very manipulative being very clever, by always kind of presenting themselves, particularly in Hollywood, as the most liberal, the most ‘woke’ person around,” Robert declared. “Meanwhile, they were very, very nasty to people working for them. They were extremely manipulative. They were all about power.”

The popularity of The 48 Laws of Power persists, 22 years after it was released. To this day, it continues to be one of the most sought-after self-help books and is one of the most requested books in the U.S. prison system. It also caught the eye of a famous rapper, 50 Cent.

Robert’s books have been widely accepted and studied by many hip-hop and rap artists. The reason for this phenomenon as Greene explains best through an example of 50 Cent’s experience in the music industry: 50 Cent was selling drugs on street corners from the very young age of 13.

He went from corner drug dealer to one of the most successful rappers of all time as a self-made street dealer turned entrepreneur. While 50 Cent learned untold lessons overcoming street life struggles (having for example been shot 9 times) to growing a net worth of $30 million through record sales.

Nothing prepared the young artists for the level of Machiavellian power struggle that exists in the cut-throat music label industry. Leading the duo to collaborate on a joint-book project dissecting the struggle for power.

“I was very flattered, and I flew out to New York to meet him,” Robert said. “We met in the backroom of a steak house. It was like something out of “The Godfather.” He was surrounded by all of his team, and here I was just me, my lonely white guy self.”

He continued, “I was a little bit intimidated because you know he’s very imposing; he’s got all this incredible bling. We both got along really well because we both have a similar way of thinking we’re both kind of strategists. He’s actually has a very strategic, interesting mind.”

That meeting lead to the pair penning a book together, The 50th Law in 2009. With intimate stories from 50 Cent’s life on the streets and in the boardroom as he rose to fame after the release of his album Get Rich or Die Tryin, as well as examples of others who have overcome adversity through understanding peoples’ inner motives.

In a time where people have never been more self-obsessed. Robert believes that the source of most people’s pain and the walls they hit personally and professionally boil down in one’s inability to understand other people and what motivates them at a human level. And there is no leader more dangerous than the one that isn’t aware of who they are.

Robert was gracious enough to let us record part of our discussion for an episode of All Business with Jeffrey Hayzlett, which you can listen to here.

I’d like to thank Robert for his time with the C-Suite Network members. The C-Suite Network is a membership organization of executives dedicated to learning from exclusive interviews and making life-long business connection.  Learn more about the C-Suite Network here.

Categories
Growth Personal Development

Simon Says…Purpose & Profit Are Not a Choice

If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ve likely heard me say, “a brand is a promise delivered.” While that adage still rings true, today’s customers are demanding that brands should have a purpose, and the companies behind those brands need to do more than just make money. 

 

Hey, making money is still the name of the game, but profit shouldn’t come at a cost. It’s all about profits AND people.

 

Don’t believe me? 

 

At this time last year, The Business Roundtable, a group of more than 180 top-level CEOs,  redefined the purpose of a corporation as more than just providing dividends to shareholders. In a statement, the companies they lead are committed to not only delivering value to their customers but investing in their employees and the communities they serve.   

 

Nobody understands this intersection between purpose and commerce than Simon Mainwaring. Simon is the founder and CEO of We First, an agency helping brands put purpose first. 

 

“(We First) is the tonic, the antidote to the me-first mentality we saw in business for so long. In particular, that led to a lot of the economic meltdown in 2008,” Simon said. 

 

I’ve known Simon for years and recently had the pleasure of having him as a guest on my podcast, All Business with Jeffrey Hayzlett on C-Suite Radio. We had a great conversation about purpose-driven brands and how what a brand says matters.  

 

“Business doesn’t just exist in a vacuum,” Simon said. “Now the consequences of business, which to a large degree include the impact on climate, the environment and so on, is coming back to haunt business because it’s affecting their supply chain. It’s affecting to hire the talent that they want. It’s affecting their ability to sell to consumers. You look at brands now and say, ‘are you part of the problem or are you part of the solution?'” 

 

Let’s be clear, this mindset may not be new, but it has been evolving over the last decade-plus, along with changing consumer habits and tastes. As Simon pointed out during our conversation, consumers are voting with their dollars. Ultimately, they decide the winners and losers. 

 

In the same breath, we all know of companies that are earnest and quick to pivot with a purpose while others seem to use purpose to keep up appearances. According to Simon, if your company wants to grow or survive, you have to pay attention to this sea of change in the market. 

 

 “It’s not as if this shift from business comes at a cost. In fact, when you look at what motivates employees and consumers today, they want to work for or buy from companies doing good. If you actually want to get clear-eyed and look at those market drivers that are really propelling growth today, you’d be a fool to ignore this,” Simon emphasized. “Purpose and profit are not a choice. That’s actually a false separation. It’s actually two sides of the same coin now.”

 

Both Simon and I agree that brands today can have their cake and eat it, too when it comes to purpose and profit. Simon says brands can control how they can use their platform for good. He gave the example of outdoor clothing company Patagonia and their commitment to preserving public lands, ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s stance against white supremacy, and Dick’s Sporting Goods destroying $5 million in assault rifles.   

 

Patagonia recently created quite the Twitter storm after a customer found a colorful political message on a tag. The message was purposeful and intentional from the company’s top brass and entirely on brand. So much so, the shorts with the tag sold out.

 

According to Simon, all of the brands listed above have a clear brand promise and purpose, but those two ideas can be easily confused. He says some key questions can bring them together. 

 

“What is the role you’re going to play in the world? How is the world going to be better off because we’re in it?” Simon said. “What is your promise in terms of the legacy you’re going to lead?”  

 

“As business more broadly, is on the hook for the impact it’s had on the world, employees and consumers are saying collectively ‘remind me exactly why you do exist?’” Simon said. “If you articulate what your role is in the world, the higher-order purpose, why you exist. Then the company and the products and the services and what you do are all social proof of that promise or purpose. As opposed to the other way around where people have been going to market just talking about their product and price all day long and damn the consequences. Now those chickens have come home to roost and we’re in a lot of trouble as we see every day in the news.” 

 

How does a brand become a movement? Simon says companies need to start by looking outside of its walls. 

 

“It’s hard to see the label from inside the jar. It’s hard for a company to see itself on how it wants to be perceived outside of itself,” Simon said. “(ask) questions like: ‘what are you the only of? What is your enemy? When you’re at your best, what are you doing?’ 

 

There’s more to creating purpose than putting inspirational quotes on your company’s walls or a mission statement that nobody reads, “it’s a sling shot that you pull back and release to drive a movement. That movement is driven by the cultural conversation that your brand is uniquely qualified to lead.” 

 

With that in mind, Simon also mentioned one of the best ways brands can figure out what it stands for is by first working out what it stands against. It’s like I always say, you have to pick a side, even if it’s a side not all of your customers agree with. 

 

There’s a lot more to our conversation about branding, purpose, whether or not your company should have an opinion on hot issues in the news and how to handle your customer’s ‘hockey stick of expectation’. To hear it all, click here. 

Categories
Growth Leadership Personal Development

Going Barefoot into the Wine Industry – What We Learned About Running a Business

Sometimes you find the business opportunity, and other times the business finds you. The latter is the case with Bonnie Harvey and Michael Houlihan, the founders of Barefoot Wines. While you may not recognize their names, I’m sure you’ve seen the wine brand they founded on the store shelves.

 

Barefoot Wines is consistently one of the top-selling brands not only in the U.S., but around the world. Bonnie and Michael didn’t head to California’s Napa Valley to launch the next prestigious wine label. In fact, they were complete industry outsiders and knew nothing about running a winery. Why would anyone launch a business they know nothing about? They told their remarkable story to our attendees at a recent C-Suite Network Digital Discussion.

 

“We really didn’t have any knowledge about the wine industry, and we really didn’t have any money,” Bonnie recalls. “What I did have was a client in the industry that was growing grapes, and he wasn’t paid.”

 

“I wasn’t able to get any money out of them, but I was able to get wine and bottling services,” Michael remembers. “I went back to Bonnie and said ‘I think we’ve got this figured out, all we have to do is come up with a name, a marketing program, we have to understand what the supermarkets want, we have to understand the distribution, how hard could that be?'”

 

That was a solid enough start for the newly-minted winery owners.

 

“The bottom line is we took advantage of an opportunity presented to us that was $300,000 that was going to be lost unless we accepted this trade,” Bonnie said.

 

With that, Michael and Bonnie were now in the wine business. Two business consultants who didn’t know much more about wine than it came in bottles found themselves operating a wine label.

 

Michael says they had confidence that they could run a business, despite their lack of experience in this industry. They said they relied on their guiding principles and the business tools they used for years to get Barefoot off the ground. It just took a lot longer than the couple thought.

 

The plan was to sell the business in three or five years. It turns out; it took almost twenty.

 

Prior to that transaction – and since they were such newbies to wine, they had to learn the basics, from production to distribution.

 

“I think the biggest lesson we learned, a real shocker, is if the distributor bought our product that didn’t mean they were going to sell it to the retailer and if they did, it didn’t mean they were going to get the reorder,” Bonnie said. “If it sold quickly and the retailer made a profit on it, it didn’t mean the retailer was going to be reordering it from the distributor.”

 

Bonnie pointed out many wineries think a big-name distributor guarantees success. It doesn’t.

 

“You’ve got work to do,” Bonnie said. “You’ve got to do the distributor’s job, the distributor’s salesperson’s job, and the retailer’s job. Unless you understand that distribution chain, you’re going to have a lot of failures along the way.”

 

Part of that work was figuring out what the market needed. Bonnie and Michael thought they had good wine, with consistent quality at a fair price. That wasn’t enough. So, they asked people at all levels of the distribution chain what the market was missing.

 

What they found was a surprising string of lingo they were missing.

 

“They said ‘Well, we could use a salt and pepper act in a pig and it better be better than Bob and cheaper than Bob. Can you do that?’ I said ‘sure,’ didn’t know what that meant,” Michael recalls. “I found out a salt and pepper act was two varietals under the same brand (like a red and a white). Bob was Robert Mondavi (brand) that dominated the market. Then, a pig was a 1.5-liter bottle. That’s the big fat bottle of wine. That’s why they call it a pig.”

 

Michael said if he had to do it all over again, he would have stayed away from “selling pigs.” Barefoot ended up having a very specific customer in mind.

 

“When we started, we went after the 37-year-old mom, pushing the cart down the grocery store aisle, with 2 ½ kids. What did she want? She wanted a wine that tasted the same from year to year. She wanted big fruit-forward, easy drinking. In other words, she wanted a Tuesday night wine she could depend on at a good price. Many of these women, because they got started on Barefoot, went on to appreciate fine wines,” Michael said.

 

“Barefoot was non-intimidating. You could pronounce everything on the label. You could find it easily. It had a big foot on the label. It jumped out on that pizza of a shelf.” Bonnie said.

 

Here’s a little tidbit, the foot on the label everyone recognizes is actually Bonnie’s.

 

Barefoot also tried to break down the mental barriers customers had about wine.

 

“Barefoot was one of the pioneers that made wine approachable and fun as an adult beverage,” Michael said. “You have to remember when Barefoot hit the market (sales were) 8 to 1 beer over wine. Wine was considered elusive, exclusive. We opened the door to expand the wine aficionado envelope to a whole new generation that might have bypassed wine altogether because of the snobbery and the exclusiveness, and they couldn’t speak French either.”

 

One part of Barefoot Bonnie and Michael were proud of was the brand’s commitment to the communities they served. Early on, the label helped non-profits as part of its marketing strategy because they had no money for a traditional advertising campaign. As the business grew, so did Barefoot’s loyalty to charity.

 

“That became very exciting because we got to know various people and we got to be a part of their following, instead of trying to create our own from scratch, we got to join in on people who were part of non-profits and communities,” Bonnie said.

 

Family also played a big part in the brand’s success. The idea of selling champagne came from Bonnie’s mom. Michael had taken a trip to southern California over the holidays, and he noticed that everyone was buying champagne, not wine. She wondered aloud why Barefoot didn’t make champagne and said they should name it Barefoot Bubbly. Michael took her advice, and she toasted her 80th birthday with the new product.

 

I’d like to thank Michael and Bonnie for their candor and honesty. They may be some of the most transparent business-people I have ever met. They share their mistakes and successes equally to help the next generation of business leaders do the right thing.

 

If you’d like to hear my complete conversation with them along with the question and answer session, listen to this special episode of All Business with Jeffrey Hayzlett.

Categories
Growth Leadership Personal Development

A (COVID) View from the C-Suite – 5 Things CEOs Should Be Doing Right Now

Crises are often temporary and how we handle them determines the impact of the fallout. Companies build crisis communications plans to deal with any type of eventuality – however, those numbers aren’t that high. According to a survey by PRNews and CS&A International, only 62 percent of companies have crisis plans. While the numbers should worry any CEO, the fact remains that no one could’ve properly planned for the current crisis we’re all in – a global pandemic.

 

The COVID pandemic has been a test of unprecedented proportions that has spared no one. Fortune 500 companies had their c-suite, or executive, team come together to implement measures to protect employees and customers. One of those companies was the iconic Walgreens. Their CMO, Patrick McLean, and I talked about the measures they had put in place to keep everyone safe during a recent interview.

 

Smaller businesses continue to bear the brunt of the pandemic. Many have been forced to reduce staff, service, and payroll.

 

However, as CEOs our job is to ensure that we work as hard as possible to maintain a semblance of normalcy when nothing seems to be normal. For us, we made the decision early on to “Drive and Thrive.” We decided to move as fast as humanly possible to become business first responders. We employed measures that kept teams engaged, and became a place where our members could feel supported, empowered, and engaged when everyone else was retreating. I have never worked harder in my life than in the past few months.

 

I wouldn’t change ONE thing about that. Did we receive criticism for it? Sure. But being a c-level executive involves making the best possible decisions with the information we have at hand. With COVID, decision-making has become more precise, but more rushed.

 

What can CEOs do to ensure that businesses thrive during and post COVID? Here are 5 things to consider:

 

 

Mitigate risks

 

Risk isn’t anything new. Crises are non-linear, they never follow a script. Yet COVID has compounded the risks and their repercussions especially with the increase of remote workforces. Recently, I spoke with the CIO of Citrix and she told me about the measures they had put in place in order to mitigate the cybersecurity risk.

Small businesses may not have the same level of resources, but they, too, can take measures to future proof their organizations without spending a lot of money. They can:

  1. Educate employees through e-learning, during the onboarding process or through regular webinars
  2. Use multifactor identification – Even if someone’s password is compromised the multi-factor authentication helps make anyone a more difficult target
  3. Implement strong passwords
  4. Back up data on a regular basis

 

How are you securing your data with a remote workforce? What guidelines can you put in place that will carry on into the future?

 

 

 

Cash is king

 

Cash has always been essential when running a business, but since the pandemic, cash has become crucial to keep our operations thriving. In fact, a PwC survey of CFOs reveals that 75 percent say that financial impact is their top concern during the pandemic when returning to the workplace. A potential global recession, 70 percent, marks a close second.

 

Every organization should have a sound strategy in place that leads to preserving cash, with liquidity being your main focus. Next up, review all of your partners to determine which one’s are essential to your daily operations. What does your financial strategy look like?

 

 

Change the narrative

 

As if a global pandemic wasn’t enough, let’s add of the social unrest happening in cities across the country. There’s no question that we’re currently going through a pivotal point in our history and emotions are running high. What can we as leaders do to alleviate some of those fears within our own teams?

 

Listen to everyone’s fears and concerns. COVID has increased the frequency and intensity of our communication and that transforms a company’s leadership agenda which now includes social issues.

 

Before COVID, very few CEOs were known for being vocal, publicly, about their vision, mission, and values. Now, more c-level executives are changing the public narrative and are chiming in on social issues. For example, soon after the George Floyd protests, we issued a diversity, inclusion, and belonging statement, that clearly stated our position regarding the Black Lives Matter movement. Despite some pushback, it’s critical for companies to speak up and become more representative about the communities they serve.

 

Silence is no longer an option, not in corporate America, not anywhere else either.

 

Create and promote a culture of trust

 

The impact of culture is molded according to the values, mission and vision of the organization. A strong culture is what all the great companies have in common and their main focus is not necessarily the people, but the entire organization and its goals.

 

Culture can be defined as “a blend of the values, beliefs, taboos, symbols, rituals and myths all companies develop over time.” In simpler terms, it’s the organization’s personality. Not only that, it has a direct correlation to employee productivity and happiness – and right now, we need all the happiness we can get.

 

Studies show that happy workers are 12 percent more productive than the average worker; whereas unhappy workers are 10 percent less productive. This is costing business over $300 billion each year.

 

The numbers don’t lie. Here’s something I heard one of our Hero Club members mention recently, ‘if you didn’t have a culture of trust before COVID, you’ll have a hard time catching up now.’ Ain’t that the truth?

 

As leaders, we need to be radically transparent with your team – and not just in good times either. Transparency is what builds trust, because if your employees can’t trust you, why should they follow you? Build that trust, be honest, be authentic and the rest will fall into place.

 

 

Take care of yourself and your people

 

Let’s face it, without people, we don’t have much of a business. In fact, I’ve gone as far as saying that our people (and customers) are our most valuable asset. What are you, as a leader, doing to protect them? Health and hygiene should be the first thing on your list.

 

We launched our C-Suite Supplies venture during the pandemic and provided all our employees with protective gear. We took measures to keep everyone as safe as possible and as engaged as possible. This mentality gave birth to our ‘5 Keeps,’ and one of those is keeping people engaged.

 

Our team increased the frequency of meetings, have full team meetings twice a week to come together and give everyone a sense of normalcy.  I have made it a point to be transparent about the struggles we’ve faced and will continue to do so.

We’re all feeling exorbitant amounts of stress right now, and as CEOs, it can get lonely at the top. However, we can’t let our emotions run amuck. While our teams look up to us for leadership in these turbulent times, we have to be honest enough to know that we don’t have all the answers all the time. No one’s looking for perfection, but we need to provide steady leadership to not let the ship go adrift. Stay the course, pivot when needed, but only to make decisive moves, not have knee-jerk reactions.

Categories
Growth Health and Wellness Management

Unpredictability on Demand – Why Telemedicine is a Hot Commodity

Paul Ricci, the interim CEO of SOC Telemed, used that phrase to describe his company. SOC (which stands for Specialists on Call) is more than just a telemedicine service for when you have a cold or stomach bug. It has teams of psychiatric specialists and neurologists available on-demand to hospitals and health systems across the country.

 

I recently had the pleasure of hosting Paul on All Business with Jeffrey Hayzlett in a fascinating conversation about SOC Telemed’s business, its growth, and where it’s going next.

 

You might be wondering why SOC concentrates on just two areas of medicine. Paul says for many health systems it comes down to filling a need.

 

“If (hospitals) didn’t have access to specialists, they would have to turn stroke patients away to other facilities. It allows (hospitals) to resolve backlogs. One of the chronic problems in healthcare institutions today is the backlog of patients who show up to emergency rooms.”

 

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, over 145 million people go through emergency rooms every year at a cost of over $1,300. Paul adds that having access to these specialists not only helps hospitals it also saves them money.

 

“We have customers of different types. Some customers want to use our platform to optimize the virtualization of their own resources, and some hospitals are looking for the virtualization of our resources where they have unpredictable demand that they can’t afford to staff or can’t find the requisite specialist and are unable to recruit specialists for that facility,” Paul said.

 

SOC Telemed not only helps rural health systems have access to expertise, but it benefits some of the nation’s largest hospitals as well. Over three-quarters of U.S. hospitals currently use telemedicine to connect patients with medical professionals, with states like Alaska, Arkansas, and my own home state of South Dakota having the highest adoption rates of telemedicine.

 

“A large hospital system might use a combination of their own specialists, they might use some third-party specialist group, and they might use some specialists from SOC. They can do it on one platform that lets them optimize the delivery of those specialties on demand in these unpredictable moments,” Paul emphasized.

 

Telemedicine has been around for years and is a hot industry right now, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. Hospitals and doctors are getting used to this care via video model.

 

“There has been a higher demand for telemedicine services during the pandemic, and there’s been an increased interest which has led to a lot of bookings activity for the company this year as hospitals have tried to respond to the shortage of physicians which the pandemic. Has caused.” Paul added.

 

Even patients are beginning to get more comfortable with the idea of a doctor on a screen.

“People tend to be skeptical of new things, and there’s a certain discomfort. We take a great deal in comfort from human touch and interpersonal reaction,” Paul said. “But in the end, this is a very efficient way to get access to higher quality services. The ability to have a stroke neurologist available at that critical moment is a real value for the patient and the hospital.”

 

Not only is the company scaling fast, it recently joined a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) to go public because due to its fast growth. SPACs are publicly traded companies created to make an acquisition; and many times their success has a direct correlation  to faith in the management team.

 

“We’re projecting as we look into 2021, in 2022 (the growth) essentially is in the 40 percent range and that growth is in part and acceleration of utilization driven by COVID as we go through the next year and impart a ramping up of our sales and marketing efforts to serve more completely the demand,” Paul said.

 

Some of that demand could be outside of the United States as well. SOC Telemed is beginning to test its offerings in Canada. With that growth does come some growing pains, like hiring, onboarding, and getting doctors licensed in the states they serve.

 

“(Onboarding) can take quite some time, because you have to recruit the physicians and physicians are in demand,” Paul said. “We have a recruiting organization that is very effective with that. But then you have to get them licensed and privileged, and they may not have that for specific healthcare facilities in other states. Sometimes that process can take six to twelve months or even longer.”

 

SOC Telemed is an interesting company, serving a real niche. It will be exciting to see where it goes.

 

If you’d like to hear my complete conversation with Paul, click here.

Categories
Growth Leadership Personal Development

How to Survive a Product Launch — From The Man Who Launched the XBOX

 

I’ve said many times, having started small businesses and working as the CMO for a fortune 100 company, the problems facing every business are all the same. They all involve people, communication, transparency, alignment to the mission, stress management to name a few.

During a recent C-Suite Network Digital Discussion, I interviewed Robbie Bach, a former marketing executive at Microsoft who for 22 years, was pivotal in the development of Microsoft Office, and then went on to launch the creation of the famous Xbox gaming console serving as the Chief Xbox Officer.

Launching any business endeavor is stressful enough, and one would think launching anything inside of one of the largest most successful companies with access to ample funding should be easy right? Absolutely not.

As Robbie said during the interview, the entire process was “painful.” He offered a candid assessment of the blood, sweat, and tears it took to bring the product to fruition, the obstacles faced along the way, and the arduous process that almost made him quit his job.

“Birthing a business like that is difficult. And oh, by the way, we’re competing with Sony and Nintendo, who had probably an 18 month to two-year head start on us in that generation of video games,” Robbie said. “When I reflect on the early parts of that, I feel a lot of personal pain. It was the most difficult 18 months of my professional career.

No question about it.” Not only was he up against an engineering deadline to build the never before done product, it was the first hardware launch for the giant software company and not every division was rooting for the controversial start up team of 20.

Controversial due to the nature of video game content and the risk to their stock valuation on Wall Street should the product not be immediately successful. All of which is to point out, his team had their share of pushback.

Not only was that time difficult for Robbie professionally, but it cost him personally as well.

“My work was tearing apart my personal life. I was working probably 18 hours a day. I was rarely at home. I was traveling like crazy. The project was not going well. It (the Xbox) was literally going to be held together by duct tape at the end if it was going to work,” Robbie added.

 

On top of the already covered obstacles, the original Xbox launch lost $5 billion dollars for the company. $5 BILLION DOLLARS. Imagine those meetings. Most people don’t realize, the launch of any hardware product is going to be a big expense as it takes time to grow sales and iterate the final product and advertise to grow market share.

This initial market reaction would shake any executive to the core of uncertainty but Robbie knew he had some of the most powerful names at Microsoft at the time, Founder Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer, who stood behind him at every turn providing the leadership and support he needed to keep moving forward. Without their support, Robbie’s team would not have been able to pull off the unbelievable success about to come.

They were his sponsors, they enabled him to keep his team moving ahead when not everyone else agreed. Without their support, Xbox would never had survived the internal pressure to push the abort button. In fact, the original Xbox would likely have gone away if it were not from the early success of only one critical game. HALO. The company brilliantly acquired the game development firm Bungie, who went on to produce some of the most successful game sales in the history of the planet.

After the first Xbox launched, Robbie sat down with his team to work on what would become the Xbox 360. They re-grouped, retooled and re-launched. During this time, he created the “3P Framework,” a 3-page document outlining a project’s purpose, principles, and set of priorities in order to keep his team focused on the priorities of the launch. This framework is meant to force organizations to keep it simple.

“(3P framework) is a powerful, yet simple tool to force organizations dealing with lots of complexity to say, ‘Okay. No, No, No, No,’” Robbie said. “What are the five things you got to get done? Establish your north star goal…then pick the five things that matter. And then drive like hell.”

After surviving the original launch of the original Xbox. Robbie’s team went on to sell well over 150 million gaming units worldwide.

The importance of culture and sponsorship is vital in large organizations. I experienced it during my time as CMO of Eastman Kodak; if you’re trying to innovate inside a large company, you need to make sure you have people backing you from above and providing you with the “air cover” you need to survive some of the doubters and obstructionists.  You can’t run the gauntlet and fight the “Captains of No” without it.

Many times, we get caught up in the day-to-day of running a business instead of working on the business. As an executive, it’s sometimes harder to delegate and pause because you think you have all the answers. You don’t.

From that time in his career, Robbie’s “uber takeaway” was he wished he had taken the time to pause, step back from his keyboard and think before diving into the depths of the challenges before his team did. It’s a situation many talented, driven leaders find themselves in. When faced with a massive project, our temptation is to jump in and GO.

“I want to take action. I want to do things. I like to execute. I want to go make things change,” Robbie expressed. “It’s the leader’s job to be above the trees and above the forest and looking out over the landscape. And for me, an Xbox. I was down in and out of the forest level, not at the tree level. I was down planting bushes.”

Much like at the C-Suite Network, our job is not to make you the most intelligent person in the room – our job is to make you the most strategic person in the room. We need to lead, work the strategy, and trust in our teams to take us where we need to go.

Robbie offered key insights to our C-Suite Network executive leaders, saying, when you need help, get help. You don’t always have all the answers. You need time off and time away to recharge to keep fighting the good fight.

Everyone appreciated his transparency and vulnerability. Big thanks to Robbie for being my guest and providing motivation and inspiration to our community.

Categories
Entrepreneurship Personal Development

Capitalizing on The Power of the Network

You’ve undoubtedly heard the saying, ‘everything old is new again.’ In this era of big-tech and bigger solutions to problems, it seems to be more accurate than ever.

 

Recently, I interviewed Christian Cotichini, the co-founder and CEO of HeroX, a crowdsourcing platform on my show, “All Business with Jeffrey Hayzlett.”

 

One of the first topics we discuss was learning the difference between crowdsourcing and crowdfunding. What’s the difference, you ask?

 

I think Christian said it best:

 

“Crowdsourcing is your (using people’s) brain, their talent, their ingenuity, their ideas, their experiences. We’re really about talent, genius, and people,” he said. “Crowdsourcing is just an extension of what we’ve been doing for thousands of years, which is relying on our network of people are trying to support us, help us, and we’re just using technology to extend that further.”

 

We live in a hyper-connected world. We used to say there were five degrees of separation between all of us. Christian says these days we’re closer than you think, and you can measure our connection in a completely different way.

 

“We are all two clicks away from each other. So, if you’re an organization and you need innovation, you have a problem that you know you haven’t gotten the best answer inside the building. It’s crazy to just sit there and try to call another board meeting, buy some post-it notes or some beanbag chairs, and get creative. Right?”

 

Don’t confuse crowdsourcing with crowdfunding, made famous by websites like go fund me. On HeroX, companies pay people for their ideas.

 

“There’s so much talent in the world. There are so many amazing people who are desperate to add more purpose and meaning to their lives. A lot of them are underemployed. A lot of them are bored. They’re tired of watching cat videos on Facebook,” Christian said. He added, “The internet allows us to create a structured, brand-safe way to post a challenge.”

 

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to contribute; however, you may end up helping rocket scientists. One of the platform’s most well-known partners is NASA.

 

“NASA is one of our big partners, we’ve done dozens of projects for them, and they’re a great example of crowdsourcing because they literally have rocket scientists they can ask,” Christian said. “Even they know when they’re taking tackling these tough problems, that there’s value in going to the power of the crowd. When they get stuck, when they feel insufficient, they go to crowdsourcing.”

 

A recent project NASA put forward is being called the “Lunar Loo” project. When trips to the moon return in 2024, they need to figure out what to do when astronauts need to use the loo. While the project may make for a good headline; the idea behind it is serious business. Engineers have to deal with the waste, different types of gravity (or no gravity), and how it reacts in those environments. Through HeroX, NASA has seen more than 20,000 ideas, many looking at the problem in ways its scientists haven’t even considered.

 

HeroX does more than government work. Many private companies like Lululemon have come to rely on the platform as well.

 

“(Lululemon) is an amazing brand that’s really focused on neighborhood engagement through its retail outlets. Crowdsourcing for them was really brand-friendly,” Christian said. “They reach out to their tribe and asks them, ‘Hey, how can we transform and revolutionize the retail experience? What is the future?’ (Crowdsourcing) is unbelievably cost-effective for an organization like that.”

 

Christian says most organizations are hesitant to go outside their walls and ask for help. When they do, it can be a real eye-opener.

 

“We have about a 90% success rate. (companies) have to remember that if there is no failure, there is no innovation. That’s one of the reasons it’s hard to innovate internally. Most organizations (are) failure adverse, and it’s hard to generate those crazy ideas where one out of 100 ends up being a brilliant idea.”

 

In just a few years, HeroX has gone from just an idea to a reality, and while its mission is to help people, it also wants to be an example for other businesses by leading with values.

 

“We balance off seeking profits…with the social impact that we have,” Christian said. “I believe that the way we’re going to create a sustainable and vibrant economy is by balancing the positive impact with entrepreneurship and business. Doing good by being good.”

 

HeroX was also ahead of the COVID curve as the company never had a physical office. When we spoke, Christian was sailing near the Strait of Georgia off the southwestern coast of British Columbia, Canada. They definitely proving the old adage that you really can work from anywhere.

 

“Crowdsourcing is inherently an online process, so we decided to start as a distributed company,” Christian said. “I’m a big believer in the power of a strong culture and creating a company culture grounded on some shared core values. I’m proud of how we’ve created an amazing team and high-performance culture doing a great job remotely having never had an office.”

 

Christian admits, there are some pros and cons to not having a physical office, but one of the most significant advantages is the labor pool. In theory, anyone can work for HeroX, helping the company attract top talent from around the globe.

 

HeroX is a great idea, and it really should get us all thinking about the problems our businesses need help solving and if some outside voices can help.

 

If you’d like to hear my complete conversation with Christian, press play on the player below.

Categories
Leadership Marketing Operations Personal Development

Party City Creating Joy Despite COVID: CMO Interview

 

Change is inevitable – it’s a part of life and if there’s one thing I’ve learned during the COVID-19 pandemic is that change accelerates everything. As I like to say, “Days are weeks, weeks are months, months are years.” Your actions today have major impacts on the weeks to come.

 

I spoke to someone who knows all about change. Julie Roehm is the Chief Marketing and Experience Officer at Party City and she joined the C-Suite Network during our High Stakes Leadership Forum recently. But, let’s rewind back to March, and though it may seem like it was ages ago, it really wasn’t. Julie said she was still settling into her new job at Party City when the pandemic hit.

 

“I had just gotten (my laptop) and the next day we shut down stores due to COVID. It was a mess,” Julie recalled. “But, it’s actually been really great because the team has had the vision for transformation since I got there.”

 

During her short tenure at Party City, almost the entire c-suite leadership team was relatively new; therefore, changing the company’s mission.

 

“We had this vision from the get go, to move us from the seller of party goods to the provider of a party experience because we’re so much more than selling stuff,” Julie said. “That’s what hooked me. I’m a sucker for a transformation project.”

 

“The beautiful thing about this group of executives, probably because more than half of us are brand new is that we were all in it to win it. We were working together. There’s no pride of ownership,” Julie said. “We’ve just got a huge amount of passion for what this business can be.”

 

With the pandemic literally changing the world, leadership at Party City decided to not just try to survive the shutdown, but to thrive in spite of it!

 

Julie reached out to her network and in a matter of days, struck a delivery deal with Hertz to bring the party to customers across the country. In fact, the CEO addressed the leadership’s teams entire plan to bring the party to customers in the post COVID response plan in the following letter addressed on the company’s website:

Party City’s promise has always been to help people create joy by making it easy to create unforgettable memories. And during this pandemic, we had to innovate and adapt quickly. Here are a few examples:

 

 

Curbside Pickup/Same-Day Delivery:

By the end of this week, we will have introduced our curbside pickup and/or delivery offerings to nearly 600 stores nationwide. We’ll make this service available permanently.

Adventure in a Box: In response to quarantine requirements, we created themed “survival kits” for families, to provide a convenient and safe solution to social distancing fatigue and boredom – from movie night to family game night. We’ve continued to expand these kits to include virtual birthdays, graduation, Mother’s Day, and more.

 


Drive-by Birthday Celebrations:

Even in this unconventional time, parents are finding innovative ways to celebrate their children’s birthdays virtually. To make this easy, we’ve created an assortment of “driveway drop party kits” that make it easy for parents to host virtual birthday celebrations for their kids and friends while respecting social distancing guidelines. And we have kits for the adults who celebrate, too!

 

“What I think people didn’t necessarily appreciate about a pandemic is every company was trying to figure out what the hell to do,” Julie said. “Companies were much more willing to let their guard down and not be as precious about whatever they might have been precious about previously. Was it perfect? 100% no. Was it the right thing to do? 1000% yes.”

 

While everyone at Party City were aligned to reach the same path, that hasn’t always been the case throughout Julie’s career. When she was Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications at Walmart, she made waves for painting her office chartreuse (which was not received well) and breaking the norms at one of the country’s largest retailers. Julie says her 11-month stint at Walmart was an eye opener.

 

“Culture eats strategy for lunch,” Julie said. “I think if you think about anybody who is great at what they do (and) you put them in an environment that is sort of the antithesis to who they are as a person, it doesn’t matter how great you are at what you do because there is no “I” in team.”

 

She continued, “The team that was there for me (at Walmart) wasn’t one that was of my culture. You could use the painting of my office a symbolic microcosm of a bigger macro issue, which is culture. I think some people liked it and some people felt violated.”

 

Fifteen years later, Julie learned a lot about culture and is excited to come to work every day.

 

“I don’t know how many people get to look at their daily calendar and you can be upset and look through it and it’s like there’s not a break. I don’t know when I’m going to pee, but you know what? I don’t care because all of my meetings are about balloons or birthdays. I’m excited about that. I’m in the business of creating joy. I have to come in every day and think about how I can make somebody happy,” she exclaimed.

 

Life in the c-suite isn’t all streamers, party favors, and celebrations. Sometimes current events, like the pandemic, unemployment and the Black Lives Matter movement need corporate attention. As a result, Party City set up a diversity committee and temporarily changed the theme of its website to reflect the make-up of its associates and customers.

 

“We’re about joy,” Julie said. “This is a beautiful thing. Let’s celebrate our togetherness. It doesn’t matter what we look like.”

 

Despite the changing business landscape Party City is committed to focus on their mission to create joy and memories and have mobilized a response plan to keep their mission moving forward.

Julie was a great guest as well as a long-time friend and I admire her for being an agent of change, community builder, and for being transparent. I’d like to thank her for her time with the C-Suite Network. Her interview is just a sample of the quality content and connections you receive with your membership. Not a member? Click here to learn more.

Categories
Growth Investing Leadership Personal Development

The One Question I Didn’t Have An Answer For

Throughout my career, I have recorded hundreds of podcast interviews, but seldom have I had guests ask me a question that I couldn’t answer. Well, that recently happened on my C-Suite Radio show, All Business with Jeffrey Hayzlett. I was talking with Ron Carson, the founder and CEO of Carson Group, a company with a mission to help financial advisors build transparent businesses and better serve their clients.

 

The question Ron asked me, “What’s the difference between a broker and a fiduciary?”

 

I had no clue, and I consider myself to be a reasonably sophisticated investor. It turns out; I’m not alone.

 

“Neither does neither does 99.9% of the investing public,” Ron said. “A fiduciary or an RIA (Registered Investment Advisor) is actually regulated by the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission). Brokers are regulated by FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority), which is a self-regulatory organization.”

 

“If I’m a broker, my only duty to a client is suitability,” Ron added. “As a fiduciary, you’re required to put your client’s interests ahead of your own.”

 

With that lesson out of the way, Ron gave out some practical investment advice we can use, including a book recommendation.

 

“The Richest Man in Babylon is a really simple read,” Ron said. “It’s about how you can accumulate real wealth.”

 

Ron says one of the best ways to accomplish that is through real estate. While he’s not the first person on All Business to say that, he may be the first to look at the trends for guidance.

 

“In the next 20 years, we’re not going to have nearly enough affordable housing,” Ron said. “(Rental Property is) something you can put some effort into and it’s going to appreciate, you don’t have to pay the taxes, you get cash flow out of it. If you’re handy at all, go get rental real estate, fix it up, don’t flip it. Hold on to it long term.”

 

Ron said another form of real estate he likes to invest in is farmland. With the turbulence in the ag economy over the last few years, there could be an opportunity for the right investor.

“We’re losing arable farm ground every year by the tune of 20-some million acres through urbanization,” he said. “We have diets improving, moving from rice to protein, that requires more farm ground. We’re only one drought away from having it all turn around, but we could have some real pain in the farm world, which creates some opportunities.”

 

If you’re looking for stock market advice, Ron says technology and biotech companies are hot right now, but warns unless you are really good at evaluating companies look into ETFs (Exchange-Traded Funds) or mutual funds that are tech-heavy.

 

Even if you’re not ready to buy land, rental houses, or play in the stock market, you should keep an eye on your spending or, as Ron calls it, “The Latte Effect.”

 

Besides buying fancy coffee drinks, look at the subscriptions, memberships, and phone apps you pay for but never use. Those all add up quickly.

 

“Pay attention to the pennies, the dimes, and all the stuff that people waste. This is an easy area to make a big improvement in your life,” Ron said.

 

Ron didn’t just offer us all investment advice, we talked a lot about his business — — which helps independent financial advisors better serve their clients. While the company he built in the 1980s continues to move up the Inc. 5000, he has learned a lot about helping people and building a business. However, just don’t call his employees ‘staff.’

 

“We call them internal stakeholders,” Ron said. “Sometimes someone introduces me and says, ‘I work for Ron.’ No one works for me; everybody works with me because words really matter. It’s a cultural mindset. I tell my internal stakeholders every day if you’re not having fun, if you’re not loving what you’re doing most of the time, let’s find (you) another position in the company or let’s help you find a place to go without fear of retribution.”

 

He goes on to add, “Don’t get me wrong, profits are important, but they should be third on the list because we also have a responsibility to stay in business and continue to reinvest back in the business for the benefit of our clients.”

 

Those clients aren’t just relying on Ron for financial advice. They also use his proprietary software and his expertise as well. Over the years, he has evolved into a thought leader, even though that was never on his radar.

 

“Believe me, I was part of the class that made the top 50% possible,” Ron said. “My parents went broke when I was in high school and I’ve been running from scarcity my whole life. That was really my motivating factor.”

Things are a lot different for Ron today.

 

“I have confidence, conviction, and enthusiasm,” Ron said. “I say that I haven’t worked since I was 36 because that’s when I really surrounded myself with good people. I got to do the things I love to do and very little of my day involves anything I have to do, and I’m truly blessed.”

 

Ron exemplifies what hero leadership is all about — people and profits going hand in hand helping people make the world a better place. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and your philosophy of success with our listeners. To listen to the full interview, click here.