What’s your personal brand?

Three years ago when I wrote my Painted Picture it was a mix of Brooks Brothers confidence & J. Crew casual.  Ummm that’s kind of changing. As a business coach, I make sure that I look presentable whenever I talk to different CEO’s all over the world.

When I did speaking events I’d always be wearing a Brooks Brothers button down shirt.  Ya, I’ll still wear them once in a while.

However, I’ve recently discovered Robert Graham Designs – and his shirts are REALLY working for me.  I expect that I’ll be wearing these more and more going forward during my speaking events too.   They feel like the real authentic me too.  I sure know that I’ll be wearing them out & about a lot.

There is certainly a buzz about Robert Graham shirts building but I’d like to think I was pretty early at finding out about them.  Certainly early at shouting about them.

Who do you wear that makes you feel like you ?  What clothes will you rave about ?

This is the first article of mine to be published on the American Express Open Forum…

Hope you enjoy it…

I’d love your comments on their site – and suggestions for future articles you want from me there too.

May 18, 2010 -

I always suggest the CEO’s that I coach to read this article.

This article is about the emotional intricacies of being a CEO or entrepreneur and the emotional roller coaster you’ll ride, or are already riding.  Marc Andreesen, co-founder of Netscape, once wrote:……

Parketing, which is parking branded vehicles at high traffic locations has been around forever yet many companies still don’t leverage its power.

My dad used to have his company logos and lists of the products he sold on our family car! It served as a rolling billboard, and he parked it strategically: no matter where we went, he found the spot that would garner the most views from passing pedestrians and other drivers.

Later, with College Pro Painters, many of us painted our old, used vehicles in a bright yellow color with our huge red and white company logos.  These “big bird” vans, as they were called, attracted attention and got us clients.  Some franchisees even “bartered” with gas stations: in exchange for parking their vans at the stations overnight, College Pro Painters would buy gas from the proprietor all summer long. The arrangement benefitted all those involved, and put College Pro Painters front and center at all times of the day.

To this day 1-800-GOT-JUNK? branded trucks and wrapped cars are a huge percentage of how people first heard about the company.  And even if you have to park your vehicle in a questionable area, potential repair costs due to vandalism are far outweighed by the free marketing exposure you’ll get.

Last time I checked, your prospects aren’t walking around your parking lot.  They are driving down the streets in the areas near their homes and offices.  Where are your company cars & trucks parking tonight? This is one great and effective way of getting you FREE PR!

Most companies either try to measure too many metrics, or they measure none at all.  Even those companies that only measure a few key things rarely look at their numbers enough in any meaningful way to give themselves any insight into the numbers.

We’ve all heard the saying before: We can’t manage what we don’t measure.  However, the key is figuring out the “five w’s of metrics”: who should measure metrics, what to do with the data, when to look at these numbers, where to look for data, and, of course, why to measure at all.

Here are the absolute best basics to get you started.

Each business area of a company should have its own dashboard for metrics that rolls up to an overall dashboard for the entire company.  To start with, though, think about what key numbers each business area should look at in order to determine if they’re successful and staying on track.

An easy way to come up with a list of key metrics is to sit all the people from a business area in a room.  Show them the key goals for the company for the year and ask them to write down as many metrics or “Key Performance Indicators” (KPIs) that they think their business area should measure.  Once you have this all-inclusive list, you’ll easily narrow them down to the TOP 10-15, and even the most critical TOP 5 meaningful metrics for that area.

Once each business area’s metrics are nailed down, you should also be able to assign two to three key numbers to each person in that area.  What are the key data points you can measure to help keep people focused, grade their performance, and keep them aligned with the important areas and numbers for the business unit they work in?  In my role as a Business Coach or Business Mentor I have to help CEOs see the data they should be looking at.

Remember: it’s not about measuring everything.  It’s about measuring and monitoring the right things.

When I was 21 and running my College Pro Painters franchise, I knew I wanted to make $12,000 profit that first summer (this was good money in the 80s – today’s College Pro franchisees can make $50K in one summer). To do that I actually reverse engineered my entire summer’s production to give me the profit I wanted.

Aside from the amount of jobs I needed to land and number of painters I needed to hire, knowing my exact gross margin per labor hour was absolutely vital to achieve my goals.

Measuring productivity per hour is often overlooked in many companies. People think bigger projects or consulting services can’t operate like that. I disagree. Tracking revenues produced per hour can be a great financial guide for your entire company.  It allows you to find ways to be more productive and efficient, and constantly look for areas of improvement. This has been one of my grounds or basis in coaching or mentoring CEO’s in running their businesses.

Not measuring your past company metrics to gauge future projections is the equivalent of paying one of those weird fortune tellers at the carnival to tell you how to run your company.

I always advise the CEO’s that I coach to avoid this common trap by using lagging and leading indicators.

· Lagging indicators measure what’s already taken place, but they don’t forecast the future

· Leading indicators give you a glimpse into what is coming your way

You want to be able to track and measure numbers that give you both lagging and leading data, and then use them to support your decisions.

Your company’s metrics should be hosted live on a company intranet. Have a finance person be the person pulling the data together or making it look great on spreadsheets, while holding people in each business area responsible for ensuring the data for their respective area is updated on time, accurate and regularly reported.

Prior to building, purchasing, or even using dashboard software or web applications, I always mentor CEO’s to start using good old Microsoft Excel or Google Spreadsheets (which can then be easily shared with others). It will take you about 6-12 months of using and reviewing the data to really know how you want it to be represented.

These indicators should be easy to view so that only the outliers should jump out at you – meaning the numbers that are below or above your specified threshold for various metrics. There is no sense in wasting time reviewing numbers that are right where you want them to be, so have the others jump out at you. Play with each metric over the course of a year and, if possible, ask other companies what they use.

If you’re not a numbers person (common for entrepreneurs) here’s an encouragement:
IT’S EASIER THAN YOU THINK!

Don’t put it off.  Measure your way to bigger growth and profitability.

pic Future Forecast

Facebook’s new office in Palo Alto

If you’re interested in showing people you’re committed to a work environment, as a business coach and mentor, I can say that the easiest way to do that is by getting rid of your private offices. Seriously. While this isn’t the only way to show your committed to the free-flow of information, I believe it’s a powerful way of setting the stage—so to speak—for your employees to pick up on the importance of free-flow information, feedback, and ultimately, success.

When I was a little kid in Winnipeg, Canada, I attended the first “open concept” school, which meant that there were no classrooms, no walls, and lots of great buzz. Sure, there were lots of distractions, but also lots of absorbing what others were doing, too. From this experience, I learned how to focus when I had to, and also how to filter out what I could learn from others around.

Building an open office doesn’t mean that the employees work out in the open and CEO and other senior staff can retreat to private offices. Everyone has to be out in the open—and I mean everyone. Of course, you can still have groups of people with glass walls between some areas. For example, why not create the “Finance Fishbowl” and put all the finance people in one area and give them a glass wall if needed. You can also go radical and have the only barriers be forty-two inch high work stations–that’s only three and a half feet, so you really aren’t blocking much at all.   Everyone can see everyone, which means no hiding.  If you aren’t working, it’ll be obvious.

The benefits of an open work space are numerous. For starters, open offices teach you to filter out the noise and still concentrate on your work. They also allow everyone to hear what’s going on, which means they’ll understand others’ roles better. Best of all? You’ll feel the energy and togetherness grow within the company because you can see everyone more than when they are hiding out in walled offices. Obviously if you want to have private work areas, spots to take confidential phone calls, or little places for private discussions, you can still have lots of small meeting rooms. But whatever you do, get out of your offices!

pic Chill Out Point

For more information on this topic, check out: Building a World Class Culture.