My very own golden rule is ‘Proper Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance.’
This is especially true when it comes to working with a Board of Advisers.

The CEO or CEO’s staff should send material and bring board members up to speed well in advance of each meeting.  Busy is not an excuse for not doing this.  These meetings should be one of your biggest priorities.  Give members plenty of advanced notice about the issues you’ll be talking about at the meeting, so they can prepare and you can benefit.

Ideally the report should be brief, and contain updates on:

• The company’s achievements since the last meeting
• The areas in which the company is struggling
• Any key, relevant metrics
• Financial statements showing key ratios and performance versus budget, versus previous quarter and year
• Key decisions the company may be facing in the coming quarter and year
• And every report should include your company’s Painted Picture as an ongoing reminder of what’s being built

The board’s prep package should also contain:

• Facts as well as feelings various board members have regarding company
• Specifics versus generalizations
• The absolute truth.  If there is existing stress between members of the leadership team, then those underlying facts must be revealed to the board so they have the same level of transparency to be able to help you.

If your leadership team is worried that board members might ‘think less of them’ with some fact being brought into the open, then the trust begins to erode and the advice the board gives is never as ‘informed’ as it could and should be.

Don’t let anyone’s pride get in the way of great advice.

Laptop Bag Advertising 2011

OK – You asked for it.

The advertising spots on my laptop sold out in less than 12 hours for 2011.

A few savvy companies asked if they could advertise on my laptop bag instead, as the laptop was sold out.

I said I’d check. I did.

And I found a new laptop case for 2011 that will allow for 6 iPhone sized logo ads to be produced and sewn on.  These will be professionally produced badges and will be professionally sewn on the front of the laptop bag.

Remember – the advertising value here is huge – I spend a LOT of time in Airports, with groups of Entrepreneurs/CEOs.  And a ton of time in business lounges, etc.

Your logo will be seen by thousands of people throughout the year.

As well your logo & the advertising on my laptop bag (which is the first I’ve heard of) will be talked about a number of times on my Blog, on Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn etc.

ONLY 6 Spots available for 2011.  $2,500 per spot.  And I still have to approve advertisers, as I can only recommend brands I love.

This is the exact bag your ads will be one.  You can even pic the placement (priority order of when you book with me).

While everyone else is recession minded and shutting down production, you’re going to be planting the seeds for growth.

I was working with a client in Berlin who mentioned that they just landed a TV advertising deal where they don’t pay any fixed advertising fees. Instead, they negotiated a revenue-share deal with the TV station where they make a bit of money off of each new client their TV ads generate.

Remember, advertising outlets like TV, radio, magazines, newspapers and websites have no hard costs to run your ad.  For TV and radio, it’s airtime.  For magazines and newspapers, it’s a piece of paper they have to print anyway (one piece of paper in a magazine ends up being four full page ads and a staple in the middle).  Often, and especially now, magazines will run ads for free or very cheap if they are going to print the next day. Any unsold ad space in newspapers can never be re-sold.  Once Tuesday’s issue goes to print, it’s over for that specific window of sales potential.  It’s not as if it were a bottle of wine they are selling, which if not sold today, they can always sell tomorrow.

All media outlets have expiring inventory and they will sell their space for whatever they can negotiate as a price for at that time.

Years ago, I ran a very large barter company and we had tons of clients in advertising.  They would all trade advertising space for products from other companies.  All those ads you see in magazines for golf courses and hotels were not paid for with cash.  They were all paid for by the golf course trading twenty, fifty, or one hundred green fees in exchange for the ad. What about the hotel advertised on page 2? About ten to twenty nights in a hotel room for the ad.  It doesn’t cost a golf course anything to trade green fees except the cost of a scorecard and pencil–the golf course and hotel room will still be there the next day to re-sell to someone paying cash.  If you can trade your products or services with the media, they’ll turn around and re-sell it for cash to their clients later, too.

Don’t be afraid to negotiate the price, too; all advertising gets cheaper the closer it is to the date or time the ad will run, as I mentioned earlier.  I’ve negotiated millions of dollars of radio and TV ads, which were “pre-emptable.” We got them for fifty percent off, but if someone else came along willing to pay full price they’d cancel our ads. “Great,” I’d say. “I’m building a brand for years to come – I’ll take as many 50% off ads as I can get.” Someone else can pay full price.

I live by an old adage that always helps me through downturns:
“Early to bed, early to rise. Work like hell and advertise…”

pic Por Homme

A great example of 1-800-GOT-JUNK?’s painted picture in action was when one of our amazing marketing managers Andrea Baxter said, “Can you imagine our company name on Starbucks cups?” I thought she was kinda nuts for suggesting such an idea, but I didn’t say anything.  When she said, “Don’t worry about how it’ll happen. As long as you can see it three years from now, I’ll make it happen,” I knew she was nuts, but I loved her passion and conviction.

A few months later Andrea told us we’d soon be on ten million Starbucks cups across North America–for free–with a quote and the 1-800-GOT-JUNK? name on it.  Nice!

Here’s the cool part:  Starbucks told Andrea that they’d put a quote from our founder on the cups but not the company name. In response, Andrea told Starbucks, “No, you have to put the company name on the cup!  That’s part of our vision.  It says so on our wall!” She sent Starbucks a picture of the 1-800-GOT-JUNK? ‘Can You Imagine?’ wall and convinced them to include the company name. Her belief in the idea helped the company achieve our goal of getting 1-800-GOT-JUNK? on ten million cups of Starbucks coffee.

Brian’s quote on Starbucks cups:  “It’s difficult for people to get rid of junk. They get attached to things and let them define who they are. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this business, it’s that you are what you can’t let go of.”  Brian Scudamore, CEO, 1-800-GOT-JUNK?

Make your painted picture stick.  An unwavering vision that comes to pass will be celebrated 100 times more than something you’re willing to compromise on.

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

Laptop at TEDx

Last year, I sold 5 spots for great B2B companies to advertise on my laptop.  We had a waiting list within days.

Now, for 2011, there are three spaces available (2 have already sold for 2011, 1 spot is already taken for 2012).  The 6th space is donated to Kiva.org as I did last year.

Only 3 spots left.

If you want your company name & logo in front of thousands of entrepreneurs and business people throughout North America and occasionally globally this year. Try it.

I’ll be speaking at more EO & YPO chapters than ever before.  I’ll be speaking at dozens of conferences, flying business class, and as usual spending time in airport business lounges.

My MacBook Pro is with me and pretty much always out and being used.  I take it out in all my meetings regardless of who I’m working with.

I will also post about the advertising companies on my Blog and regularly all year on Twitter, FaceBook & LinkedIn.

Why sponsor my Laptop for all of 2011? This will get your logo seen by tens of thousands of influential business people this year.

It’s pretty widely known that my nickname is ‘Connector’ so you know I’ll be telling everyone that your company is sponsoring my laptop too.

Ya – and it’s capped at 5 (2 Sold – Now 3 left) placements…

First come first serve (but I have to like the brands)… i.e. the only chair company I could rave about is Herman Miller with their Aeron, and my favorite headsets are from Headsets.com etc.  I have to be able to say no if the brand doesn’t fit.

I’m auctioning off five (2 Sold – Now 3 left) sticker spaces on my MacBook Pro cover for $2,500 a piece. That comes out to about $200 a month, or $50 a week.

They will stay on my laptop all year, and you’ll “own” that piece of real estate on my laptop case. If anyone asks about your sticker, I’ll send him or her to whatever website/email address you want.

Want in? Email me – Cameron@BackPocketCOO.com

Facts and feelings are both clarified when real data in your company is examined and analyzed.

And remember “you can’t manage what you don’t measure.” That simple sentence couldn’t be more true.

You can even easily measure things that are seemingly intangible.  Use Net Promoter Score to measure employee and customer satisfaction. Just asking the one simple question: “How enthusiastically would you recommend our company to your friends?” is enough to measure each area more completely than a dozen other metrics, especially when using this formula to calculate the results.

pic Nick Sayers

OMG, glad to say that it wasn’t WalMart who did this – it was actually a Greenwich Village gourmet grocery store, Balducci’s, that has become the butt of the Jewish holiday by advertising its boneless hams as “Delicious for Chanukah.”

Doesn’t anyone proof read their marketing anymore ?  Perhaps the wrong target audience on this product…  And good reminder to me as well, to fact check – I’d originally seen this & reported it as Wal-Mart’s mistake

When it comes to paid vacation, the U.S. and Canada don’t get it. Giving two weeks paid vacation to employees says you’re a mediocre employer, at best. In fact, most people would never work for someone for years if they knew they only got two weeks of vacation.

Two weeks of paid vacation is particularly hard to swallow if you characterize your company as being “like a family.” Really? You call that family.

Would you really want your siblings or parents only getting two weeks of vacation? You know that would really suck. So, don’t do it.

European and Australian employers give five to six weeks’ vacation.  The argument in the 1980s used to be, “Yeah, but look at the productivity of Americans—they only give two weeks of paid vacation!”But we can’t in good faith argue that point anymore. Productivity has declined because we give our employees less and expect more, and that has to change.

The companies attracting and retaining the most qualified employees all give more vacation than their mediocre counterparts.

If you really want to be a great employer, here is one easy way to do it that doesn’t cost you any more money that you spend on people today: Give all of your full time employees five (yes, five) weeks’ vacation. Include sick days in those five weeks off.  In addition to those five paid weeks’ vacation, they obviously still get the other statutory government holidays like Christmas, New Year’s Day and so on.

Why does this work?Vacation time that includes sick days means employees won’t come into work as often when they are sick.  They know they have enough time off to cover those days, so they won’t come in and infect everyone else.  The number of sick days per year for your company will drop. You are also going to find that the only people who don’t love this are the people who smoke or are unhealthy and perpetually sick.  Well, you don’t want them on your bus anyway.

No one is going to quit.  Why would they?  Where else can they get such a great vacation package?  With lower attrition rates and increased retention of employees, your employee training costs drop.

Everyone knows that the most productive day at the office is the day before vacation.  So the more vacation you give people, the more days they’ll have those “before vacation” productivity gains.

Give all employees the same vacation time, too, otherwise if you give tenured staff more vacation time you’re saying, “we like them more than we like you.” Not a good move.

pic: Wayfaring

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