Many have already heard that five awesome companies paid to have advertising on my MacBook Pro for 2010. They are already getting great exposure too.
Upon finding that the 5 ad spots were already taken before he could grab one EO member John Ruhlin offered to advertise on the back of my laptop. In exchange for the one year placement John traded me $2,500 worth of awesome, high end, personally engraved Cutco Chefs knives – a wicked set.
These knives are one of the product lines he helps companies use to reward their top clients in unique ways, and also to get into the doors of CEOs they are targeting.
John had me at hello – remember he’s the guy who blew me away two years ago by filling my hotel room with clothes from Brooks Brothers. Now we’re close enough friends that I was invited to his wedding, and that he knew I loved cooking. iPhone Ad for a year in exchange for the best chefs knives. Done…
What are you doing to thank your top clients ? How are you getting creative with your advertising ? Let’s hear from you…
On Saturday I got part way to my dream of speaking at TED. I was able to speak at TEDx Edmonton about something I’m super passionate about.
As a kid in school I was always told I wouldn’t do well because I didn’t fit the system. In high school & university I figured the system out and beat it – graduating while being able to run little companies on the side.
The problem was the school system never say nor nurtured my entrepreneurial traits. They also never showed starting & owning a company as equal to careers like law, medicine, dentistry etc. Amazingly they actually felt working for government was a better career move that starting my own business.
Thankfully my father & grandfather nurtured – or perhaps forced is a better word – me into running my own business. I grew up feeling sick thinking about having a ‘job’. So an entrepreneur I’ve been.
My TEDx talk which I’ll post soon was about “Raising Kids to Be Entrepreneurs Instead of Lawyers Will Change the World”. And my TED Wish if I’m giving the chance to speak at TED (nominations are welcome) is to see Entrepreneurs be viewed as equal to professions that schools push kids into currently: Law, Engineering, Medicine, Dentistry, Teaching, Finance, etc.
Were you raised as an entrepreneur? What’s your story? I’d love to read your comments…
What does your office environment look like when you first walk in? Is it organized? Fun? Stimulating?
People should be able to get an idea for what it’s like to work in your office from the moment they walk through the front door.
If you don’t bother with first impressions, believe me, people notice.
One of the companies I’ve mentored for years is called Nurse Next Door. The very first time I visited their office in British Columbia, paper and boxes were everywhere. It was a disaster, and I told them that.
They listened, and every Wednesday ever since then, they have held “Wasteless Wednesday,” a day where they throw outanything they can to make the office, the walls, and people’s desks look clean and neat.
The difference in their space and the mood of employees has been profound: the energy is different, and they can actually fit more people into the same space without feeling crowded at all. Best of all, just recently, they were named #1 Company to Work for In British Columbia!
Oh and here’s a tip, since it’s 2010 and all: GO PAPERLESS!!
And because this is my blog I felt like doing something really random and a bit manic. I’m posting it here. I laugh my ass off watching these. Google “Fred” and watch a few. My two boys and I literally tear up while watching them.
This one just made me think about how manic I get at times running companies. I’m sure a few other entrepreneurs feel the same. Do you ?
I’d love to say that I was chilling out at Whistler and I came up with this brilliant idea to let you promote your blog here, but I cannot take credit.
Turns out she learned about it a couple of weeks ago, from Toronto HAPPO champion, Danny Brown, invited his blog readers to pimp their blogs in the comments of his blog. You should go check it out – An Invite to Pimp Your Blog
So, you can do the same here. Let’s see what kinds of blogs you have and let’s see if we can find you some new readers.
Please include the following:
1. The blog’s name and link
2. A one sentence description about why someone should read your blog.
3. Your full name
4. Your Twitter handle (if you have one)
As an alternative, if you don’t have a blog, give us one blog post you’d like me to write about in the comments.
The best potential employees aren’t looking for a job because they’ve already got one. That’s why you have to poach them.
In close to thirty years of my professional life, I’ve only had two job interviews. The rest of the time I was poached by one company while working for another.
There are lots of reasons why finding the right people is hard, but if you want your business to be exceptional, your staff must be exceptional people. It takes work but it’s worth the investment of time.
I had to remind someone of this while on a multi-city speaking engagement. At a talk in Sydney, Australia, a member of the audience commented, “What you don’t realize is we have a really tight economy in Sydney right now, and there are just no employees out there. We have the lowest unemployment in forty years.” I replied that I felt her pain—in Vancouver, we were at the lowest in fifty years! But honestly, I asked, what difference does it make? Even in tight job markets the great employees still exist, they’re just working somewhere else.
Poach them! Show them why working for you is WAY better!
Bill Gates had a great idea with getting a computer on every desktop, but he fell short with that goal. Every company should have two to three monitors on every desktop!
Think about how many seconds each hour that you wait for windows or a browser to open and close. Add all of that open and close time together and you waste minutes each day. Those wasted minutes would be completely obliterated by having multiple screens open at the same time. And additional monitors don’t cost very much anymore – only around $150. The time saved and additional productivity gains well off-set that small investment.
Use your additional monitors by having your web browser open on one at all times, and keep Google as your homepage (you likely use it more than anything else). I keep Twitter as my homepage and I have a little Google Search bar in Firefox so I get the best of both worlds. On your second monitor, keep your email open, but keep it open in draft mode. I also set up my mail client to only sync and find new mail manually. I don’t want it reloading new messages as they arrive. I find that it makes it easier to only check a couple times a day when I don’t see new messages arriving. On my laptop (the third monitor) I’d be using whatever application I’m working on (which happens to be Word, since I’m typing this right now). Also, in using a Mac, I’ve set up ‘Spaces’ so I can have nine application windows open and very quickly shift between them.
Do whatever it takes to shave off ANY downtime so that you can perform even better.
Many extremely successful entrepreneurs are even clinically diagnosed Manic Depressive or Bi-Polar (Bi-Polar Disorder is nicknamed, “The CEO Disease”).
Francis Ford Coppola has it. So does Ted Turner. Jim Clark, cofounder of Netscape, was described in Business Week by Netscape’s other cofounder, Jim Barksdale, as someone “who has his mania only partly under control. He’s a perpetual motion machine with a short attention span, forever hurtling at unsafe speeds. When his forward motion is impeded, Clark becomes irritable and bored. In his search for the stimulation of the ‘new, new thing,’ he quickly loses interest in the companies and ideas he starts and tosses them into the laps of his bewildered employees.”
Bill Gross, CEO of Idealab, was written up by aFortuneeditor who apologized and said, “I believed him because I was dazzled by him. He had an infectious boyish enthusiasm that was charming and irresistible. He spoke so rapidly—jumping from topic to topic as if he were hyper-linking. It was hard to keep up with him. He had so much energy he seemed constantly on the verge of jumping out of his skin. He bubbled over with optimism.”
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been described as “hypomanic” and “unable to think outside the box – because he doesn’t even see the box. He’s also been described as quick to fly off the handle emotionally.
Here’s a note from a CEO’s blog:
“Today is Wednesday, and I haven’t been able to accomplish anything so far this week. It’s not that I don’t have plenty to do – I just can’t shake this depression long enough to do it. Last week I was a whirlwind – this week I’m a slug. My insomnia has been bad the past week or so, and it’s only when my body can’t go on any longer that I sleep. This lack of sleep makes my mind sluggish too…and it takes a great deal of time and effort to accomplish even the simplest of tasks. Intellectually I know what needs to be done…but emotionally I just don’t have what it takes to get a move on….
I’m trying to take things one day at a time, but it’s so hard to keep from thinking of what the future holds in store for me. I’m sad that I didn’t do more to keep in touch with friends I have known for years. I guess I could attempt to re-connect with some of these folks, but the embarrassment of my current situationis just toomuch right now…. sigh.
Something needs tochange pretty soon or I’m afraid I won’tbe able to crawl out from undermy rock and I’ll end up in a home, or worse. This is not a good day at all. Perhaps tomorrow will be better.“
It’s not about what’s in your head, it’s about what’s in your gut.
How will you use what you’re feeling to help you become really successful??
I hope you are seeking the answer. This is one of the many areas I mentor the CEOs I do in our bi-weekly coaching sessions too.
When writing this post I was sitting in a quiet room with a fireplace up at a Whistler, BC lodge. No people, music, phones or email. Just me sitting beside a window watching the snow fall = perfect environment for me to focus and get some real quality work done.
Find an environment to focus and productivity improves. So will the quality of your work.
Strict Focus Days are helpful. Slowing down every month or quarter long enough to sit quietly and obsess about the future helps fuel more thoughtful decisions about the present and future of your business.
During these times, it’s good to think about the following:
Where in your business could you be focusing more?
Who could you be building better relationships with?
Who are your biggest clients? How could you get more business from them?
Are you taking time to really focus without the trappings of day to day life distracting you (laptop, email, phone)? If not, I strongly urge you to think about taking a Focus Day (or a few) to disconnect from the rest of the world and be alone with yourself and your thoughts.
I’ve looked at my companies metrics or KPIs every week. Back in my College Pro Painters days, we called it the “Weekly RAG” (Results At A Glance) and it was critical to the goal-setting and planning we did weekly to drive the business. If you’re not looking at a dashboard for your business weekly already, how’s that working for you?
To assist me in keeping teams and individuals focused, I’ve had one-on-one meetings each week with all my direct-reports. And I’ve ensured that they had these same one-on-one meetings with those who reported to them. At College Pro Painters, we called it GS&R: Goal Setting and Review. This simple meeting rhythm provided a ton of focus for all of us.
Fortune magazine asked me once, “How do you motivate your employees?” I said, “I don’t.” I continued, “I refuse to try to motivate people. What I want to do is try to take people who are already motivated and inspire them to do the stuff they know they have to do, and give them the systems and tools to create change. Then be there to support them.”
Help align and keep people focused who are already motivated. That’s a recipe for growth.
Open spaces create transparent and energized work environments.
This leads to the development and transmission of office culture across people, departments, and finally, the entire organization.
Years ago, at 1-800-GOT-JUNK? we had all our employees on two wide open floors in an office. There were no walls.
Then we moved into a downtown office tower and had to use the 14th floor of the building for the better part of a year while our real office space was constructed.
For the first time ever people had private offices,and it was interesting to see what happened. For the first week or so, people loved having their own space. They felt more focused, appeared to get more done and had the quiet they needed to think. Then, after a week,the chatter started. People said, “I miss everyone,” and,“Where is Greg? I haven’t seen him in ages,” or, “Is so-and-so sick today?” It went on and on. After about three weeks,it was unanimous: private offices killed the buzz and employees wanted their open workspace back.
Everyone knows you’re hiding out in your private office playing on FaceBook, Twitter or surfing porn. So go join the rest of your team – open up your entire office space. When I mentor CEOs I push them all to get rid of private offices. Including their own.
Many have already heard that five awesome companies paid to have advertising on my MacBook Pro for 2010. They are already getting great exposure too.
The best potential employees aren’t looking for a job because they’ve already got one. That’s why you have to poach them.
Bill Gates had a great idea with getting a computer on every desktop, but he fell short with that goal. Every company should have two to three monitors on every desktop! 
