At 1-800-GOT-JUNK? we did a great job of making the Painted Picture come to life.  Brian Scudamore was the visionary who would write down what he saw ‘in the future.’  He handed me the first Painted Picture in October 2000, after spending some time sitting on his parent’s dock on Bowen Island. It was a vision of what the company would look and feel like by the end of 2003.  He didn’t know how he’d build what he saw that day from the dock, but he wrote down everything he could conjure up. He knew if he could see it, we could build it.

In later versions of Brian’s Painted Pictures, he began asking employees and Franchise Partners what they saw in the future.  Some of their ideas got baked into the Painted Pictures created for the years 2006 and 2009.  Many of their visions were placed in large vinyl letters on what we called our ‘Can You Imagine?’ wall.  We included brief descriptions of our ideas for the future, too. For example, at 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, we called our office the ‘Junktion,’ and envisioned it becoming a famous tourist destination,  an idea generated by Katie Dunsworth.  Then there was Lindsay Peroff’s vision of seeing our company on Dr. Phil, which she later made a reality.

What we proved was that the visualization techniques taught by an ex-Olympic and sports psychologist were as applicable to business as they were to high performance athletes. We didn’t worry about how, and instead, focused on the end result, the vision of success.  By building on that concept, and involving employees, we enlisted people to help us create that vision, and make it a reality.  Then we figured out how to reverse engineer it to make it happen. As a business coach and mentor, I help CEOs create a very goal oriented Painted Picture for their business. Scroll down here to read my Painted Picture for BackPocket COO.  Do you have yours in writing yet?

For more information on this topic, check out: Building a World Class Culture and Leadership at 100MPH.

I coach CEOs to get stuff done properly for cheap by using websites like eLance.com, Guru.com, CrowdSpring.com or Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.  Or check out an awesome new service called Outsourcing Things Done.

It’s really cool how they work: You post the projects or work you need done and people around the world bid on the project, offering their price to get the work done for you. They even provide references and samples for past work they’ve done. Over the last year alone, I’ve had research done by someone living in Karachi, Pakistan, for $2 an hour. I needed to get some contact info, addresses, and information related to venture capital firms and angel investors in Washington state and British Columbia. It would’ve taken me all week to do it and an employee would have cost too much when this person was thrilled to do it for $120 in total.  And the output rocked.

I needed to have all of my training DVDs from speaking events transcribed so I used the transcription services of someone in Sweden for $8 an hour.  I also had some media interviews that produced content I thought could be useful, so I simply emailed her the files and she typed them all up in Word for me. Many transcription firms used to charge $75-125 an hour for this. Her 20 hours of work was a little more than $125 in total.

I’ve used virtual assistants around the world to work on miscellaneous tasks for me. Even CEOs that I mentor are already starting to outsource work they used to delegate to employees. It just doesn’t make sense to delegate work to people for three to ten times what it costs us when you can outsource using services like this. As long as you’re getting the right quality out of these services, it’s worthwhile.

Nine years ago I gave laptops to all of my employees. The productivity gains that happened when they took their laptops home with them to work for a couple extra hours a week was outstanding – totally worth the investment.

As a business coach, I suggest that you should get everyone in your business using a laptop.  My MacBook Air has a 6-hour battery life and I can use it on flights, in the dark, and turn anywhere into my office.

Paper notes are a waste of time and resources.  It drives me nuts watching employees sit in meetings handwriting all their notes, knowing many will go back to their desks to ‘type everything up.’

Some people don’t like others using laptops in meetings because they worry that they are checking email.  A great little system to prevent that from happening is through the use of a ‘fine jar’.  Allow anyone to call someone else out if they suspect them to be using email.  If the person is checking email they put $2 into the fine jar.  If they weren’t checking email, then the person calling them out pays $2.  People will learn to not only avoid checking email in meetings, but to trust that using a laptop in meetings is actually hyper-effective and not a needless distraction.

pic: makezine

The old adage of, ‘hire for attitude, train for skill’ doesn’t work anymore.  A good attitude can’t overcome a lack of skills, and when you’re growing at 100% revenue growth a year, you need the people that will get the job done right away.

What should you do? I coach and mentor CEOs to go attract those who have proven skills and a personality.

Brad and Geoff Smart wrote an awesome book called Topgrading It’s one of the best systems for interviewing candidates and determining why you should bring someone into your organization. Topgrading recommends ‘leaning out’ two years into the future with every prospective candidate and determining what they have to achieve for you to be happy that you hired them at the end of those two years. Once you’ve started this ‘scorecard’ for the role, construct your job description around the milestones your candidate needs to have achieved after two years.

Once you have a tight job description, then you can interview against it to make sure that candidates have what it takes.

For information on this topic, check out: Leadership at 100MPH.

Twitter has become an invaluable PR tool for all business owners. It has been one of the greatest online tools where we can get a good quality yet free PR. It is very easy to use and is really effective in reaching out to your target market.

Last week one of my friends and former co-workers Andrea Baxter and now Founder of Bratface marketing and I were talking about Twitter.  We agreed that a list of Twitter resources always seems elusive for companies.  So here it is…

Before you get all the Twitter tools though – make sure you are following her on Twitter (@andreabaxter) she has some great marketing info you’ll want to have and share.

Now – lets put these to the test…

The Basics
1.  www.twitter.com – you sign up for the account here (but who isn’t on Twitter yet?).
2.  www.twitter.com/cameronherold – follow me here if you’d like – highly recommended
3.  http://twitter.grader.com/ – great place to see where you rank, to find others to follow etc. – Add some from the Twitter elite who interest you such as your favourite brands, influencers, newsworthy publications, politicians etc.  You can also search terms here and add people who rank highly on those terms as well.
4.  http://socialtoo.com/ – you can use this site to automatically follow people who follow you (this is the fastest way to start adding followers) but it’s not for everyone. If you choose to keep your follow list low, then this is not the app for you, but why wouldn’t you?

Searching & Tracking Stuff On Twitter
1.  http://search.twitter.com/ – you can use this to see what’s happening on Twitter – think Google for Tweets (messages people send out).
2.  http://www.twitscoop.com/ – another great way to see what’s buzzing on Twitter.
3.  http://www.twhirl.org/ – a good desktop client for Twitter – personally I use TweetDeck. Hootsuite is also great.
4.  http://www.twitterhawk.com/ – a great way to search for keywords – and send replies to people – i.e. those talking about your company or product. Great tracking & marketing tool!
5.  http://www.twibs.com/ – this is where you register your company – so people can find you if your twitter name is your personal name, you can also find companies to follow here too.
6.  http://live.tweetmeme.com/ – one of my recent favs where you can see what’s hot on Twitter (think Digg for Twitter).

Advanced Stuff
1.  http://www.twitpic.com – you can upload photos to Twitter from here – great way to share your story…in images to add something extra to your tweets.
2.  http://tweetstats.com - for the advanced tweet-a-holic and if you really start getting into it, you can see tons of stats.
3.  http://tweetmic.com/ – how to upload an audio tweet. Use this to upload radio interviews and podcasts you are on. Get my PR DVD to learn how to land Free Press.
4.  http://www.adjix.com/WebObjects/Adjix.woa/ and www.tinyurl.com are both great ways to automatically a) shorten URLS and b) send them out as tweets. A MUST have tool to fit into the 140 character count. You should also have these features available on your desktop application (Hootsuite, Seesmic Desktop and TweetDeck).
5.  http://retweetist.com/users – see if people are re-tweeting your stuff – if you don’t have the reply feature on your desktop app, this is a great tool to use.
6.  http://twittercounter.com – basic stats

PR People on Twitter
1.  http://muckrack.com/ – journalists on Twitter if you’re a bit of a media junkie.
2.  http://www.mediaontwitter.com/
3.  https://twitteringjournalists.pbworks.com/Media+People+Using+Twitter

Put these in action and leave comments here of others I should add to the list or try out too.

I’ve never been a good student.  I got about 64% in both high school & university.  I’ve never felt smart.  I’ve often felt like I have no idea what I’m really doing.  And I often feel like I must be doing something wrong otherwise how could it be so easy?  My mind would spin with thoughts of ‘How could someone that was always told by the education system they were a C or D student actually be smart enough to really teach CEOs how to grow companies?’

Something started to change for me about 6 years ago, when I was already 38 years old.  I was taking a course trying to learn how to get better as a leader and I came across my ‘unique ability’.  I realized that I’m awesome at using quick intuitive alternatives to help CEOs reverse engineer their dreams.  Like architects help homeowners put their ideas into blueprints and get them built into a home, I help CEOs get the ideas out of the heads, and help them build the teams and systems to make their dreams happen.  To me it feels easy.  To me I wonder why they’d pay me to do what feels so simple.  And to me I keep thinking I’d do it for free – but my kids like to eat and I like expensive toys.  So I gotta charge for it. From there, I became a more effective business coach.

Once I learned what I was great at, I began eliminating everything else from my day-to-day.  I began to focus on finding clients that fit me.  I found that I work best with young, fun, entrepreneurial, high viral, high growth, pre-public companies.  My ideas resonate with them.  They get huge value from my systems.  And they feel like I’m cheap compared to paying for someone with my skills full time.

The more time I spend in my ‘unique ability’ now coaching & mentoring CEOs and the teams running entrepreneurial companies the more I feel I’m on my game.  Malcolm Gladwell said a person needs at least 10,000 hours to be an expert.  I’ve been coaching or building entrepreneurial companies for 60,000 hours (45,000 hours alone in the franchising space).  No wonder I’ve more than maintained my nerve.  My company is growing very fast and I’m helping tons of great companies globally with my coaching programs & training DVDs on leading and building companies.

I realize now that the teachers and professors who told me I didn’t know what I was doing had never built a company.  They’d never run great teams of people to lead. They had however perhaps unknowingly destroyed my nerve and confidence for years upon years.  Five years ago I started writing down the things I’d accomplished each week.  Weekly writing down my successes like this helped re-build my confidence.  Now companies that I helped build and lead are case studies in textbooks and are studied at MBA programs around the USA & Canada.   And last year I was the highest rated lecturer at MIT’s Entrepreneurial Masters Program.  It wasn’t easy but I have definitely got my nerve back.

A quote I read by Theodore Roosevelt in 1910 has given me the confidence now that I’m smart and perhaps my teachers weren’t as smart as I thought…

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement.”

For information on this topic, check out: Leadership at 100MPH.

How do you get free PR?

Here is the first step:

Step 1: Know Your Angle

As a business coach, I believe the number one thing that every company can do in 2010 to be successful is focus.  Pure and simple focus.

Too many employees and companies are off plan, stuck in email, wasting time in poorly planned meetings, and chasing after big shiny objects instead of getting hyper focused.

It’s about getting the critical few things done, not the important many.  It’s not rocket science. Focused effort will beat everything else, hands down, every time.  Prove me wrong

I coach & mentor CEOs in 5 countries.  And last year I was the top rated lecturer at MIT’s Entrepreneurial Masters Program.  I’m certainly not the smartest guy out there but I can get more done than almost anyone due to one thing.  Focus.  And when I’m not focused I’m pretty useless just like everyone else.

You may not have a deep love for technology, but you better get used to it.  CEOs that resist changing will be left in the dust even quicker as we continue integrating tech into our lives. If the rate of change outside your business is greater than the rate of change inside your business, then you’re out of business.  Period.

As a business mentor, I recommend you and your employees learn one tech shortcut each week.  Here are shortcuts to Outlook, Gmail and Apple, but these are just the beginning.  Shortcuts and quick, savvy web navigation have proven to be faster and increase office productivity.

If something tech related feels complicated or expensive, it probably is. Look for simple ‘tech hacks’ via bloggers and Twitter search to help you before you try and figure it out.  ‘R&D’ (rip off and duplicate) should be your mantra when finding tech solutions to make your company faster.

When I lectured at MIT at the Entrepreneurial Masters Program, I promised the CEOs in the class that we’d start on time.

When I actually delivered on that promise, they were dumbfounded.

If CEOs weren’t present at the start of class, or hadn’t returned to the class after a break, we shut the door and started without them.

A gesture this simple respects people’s time and helps you stay on course.

I coach and mentor CEOs to try to also ’compress time’ when you are booking meetings.  When you are thinking of booking a meeting if what ever time amount you first think you’ll need to have the meeting in – reduce it by fifty percent and book it for that shorter period of time.  So instead of booking it for one hour, book it and finish it in thirty minutes.

Like so many other obligations, meetings tend to fill the space you give them. By compressing the time of meetings, you increase everyone’s productivity, and implement a highly profitable system of time management.

For more information on this topic, check out: Leadership at 100MPH.