One year ago, on April 2nd, Double Double began shipping to stores…

Now the second printing was just done as the fulfillment center had run out of books.

Double Double couldn’t have happened without all the people below who helped with proof reading and content ideas.

It’s now available in:

• Hardcover – in many airports, Hudson’s booksellers, and online here… http://amzn.to/HBkeoA
• in e-Book format for Kindle etc… http://amzn.to/HGNeiH
• in Audio format… http://bit.ly/HBkIez
• and even at GetAbstract… http://bit.ly/nwBmaz

Thanks again for your help – glad SO many companies are using it internally now too…

These are the folks I need to thank…

This is the third year where I’m selling 5 advertising spots on my laptop to 5 great brands (3 are already taken, only 2 left).

The 1st brand to grab a spot was Marquis Wine Cellars they have an awesome online ordering area, and free deliver for Vancouver customers too.  No more dreaded trips to the faceless liquor stores, endless isles of wine, mediocre service and never ending shelf tags claiming to profess the fountain of youth and 92 points for $20.00.  Marquis has AWESOME wines from around the world – I know – I drink a lot of them, and I get all my wine from Marquis as well.

The 2nd brand to grab a spot is CPUsage.  CPUsage harnesses the unused processing power of idle computers, using them to deliver an Infrastructure-as-a-Service for high throughput and high performance computing.  CPUsage compensates computer owners for their unused processing power through a point based reward system. Points can be redeemed for gift cards and other items in an online store.  Their customers use CPUsage for tasks such as web crawling, video transcoding, scientific analysis, or other transient workloads.

The 3rd is Nita Lake Lodge, advertising for a second year in a row, Whistler’s most exclusive luxury boutique hotel has perhaps the most privileged location of all Whistler luxury accommodations. Overlooking Nita Lake just steps from the base of Whistler Mountain, and with incredible food, luxury comes naturally at the Nita Lake Lodge.

***

If you want your company name & logo in front of thousands of entrepreneurs and business people throughout North America and occasionally globally along with these two early adopters this year, you gotta move fast.

Only 2 spots left.

I’ll be speaking at dozens of conferences again, flying business class on flights, and 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.

And I’m also planning to post about it the companies sponsoring my laptop on my Blog, Twitter, FaceBook & LinkedIn.

If you sponsor my Laptop for 2012, your logo will be seen by tens of thousands of influential business people & CEOs.

You also get to write a guest blog post that highlights your company’s services.

The price for a spot is $2,500. That comes out to about $200 a month, or $50 a week. Your company logo 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 at BackPocketCOO dot com

Last week I did a Webinar for Vistage with approximately 500 CEOs…  At the end of the call, we had tons of unanswered questions.  So I asked them to email them to me, and I’d answer ten of the best for them…  Here they are…

1. Q: What metrics can you show your leadership team to help them understand how important culture is to attracting the right talent?
   A: I think it’s less about metrics, and more about the buzz and energy you’ll feel when you do have a everyone buzzing the same way.  Read all the press about the top companies to work for in your city and region, and you’ll see what I mean.  They just have that ‘special something’ and they get extra special results.
2. Q: What impact does having policies against personal calls, emails, texts and social media have on company culture?
   A: Worrying about these areas will not drive results.  Hire A level players.  Set clear roles, goals, and KPIs for each of them.  Support them in their roles.  And DON’T care about how or when they do their work.  So long as they get the results, let them do it in their own way, in their own time.
3. Q: Is it better to recruit or to develop internal candidates?
   A: Neither.  It’s better to have A level players in all roles.  When you have people on your team, do EVERYTHING to help build their skills along they way.  But never compromise where they come from, for the results you need.
4. Q: How to revive the morale within a company that is just tired from all the struggles in this economy.
   A: Ask them.  Seriously.  Ask your team, what they want you to do that will make this the best company to work for.  Then do it.
5. Q: How to keep great employees in small business while they get bigger offers from big companies ?
   A: Make your company the BEST one to work for.  And they’ll never leave.  Seriously.
6. Q: How do you reflect the company culture in through the hiring and interviewing process?
   A: Show videos.  Show photos.  Ensure your office and people rock.  And have your best culture people doing the interviews.
7. Q: How do I hire the best people?
   A: Decide what you need the new hire to do over the next two years.  And ONLY hire people who are the best cultural fit, who’ve also DONE what you need them to do.  Theory is bullshit worthless.  Hire experience.
8. Q: Once you have communicated your vision in detail to the team…who owns continue to communicate it and how often?
   A: The CEO owns culture.  Read chapter one of Double Double.
9. Q: How do you convince your leadership that the Short Term pain of terminating a toxic employee will yield significant benefits in the longer term?
   A: The statistics say that the cost of keeping the wrong employee is 15x their annual salary.  You can’t afford to keep the wrong people working with you, not for a single day more.
10. Q: How do you balance telling the staff what the picture will look like and information leaking out to your competition?
    A: Sharing the vision of the company, is not the same as giving them the plans you’ll use to make it happen.  Share your Painted Picture with the world.  They’ll help you make it come true.

Laptop at TEDx

In 2010 & 2011, I sold 5 spots for great B2B companies to advertise on my laptop. We had a waiting list within days.

Now, for 2012, there are five spaces available. The 6th space as always is donated to Kiva.org, the charity that helps entrepreneurs from around the world.

Only 5 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 2012? 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 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 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

p.s. You also get to write a guest blog post for my blog that will highlight your company to thousands of entrepreneurs…

Everything can be explained using beer:

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.  If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do.  The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ball.  “Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.”  Drinks for the ten men would now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.  So the first four men were unaffected.  They would still drink for free.  But what about the other six men?  How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?  They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33.  But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.

So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay.

And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% saving).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% saving).
The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% saving).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% saving).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% saving).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% saving).

Each of the six was better off than before.  And the first four continued to drink for free.  But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings.

“I only got a dollar out of the $20 saving,” declared the sixth man.  He pointed to the tenth man, “but he got $10!”

“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man.  “I only saved a dollar, too.  It’s unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!”

“That’s true!” shouted the seventh man.  “Why should he get $10 back, when I got only $2?  The wealthy get all the breaks!”

“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison, “we didn’t get anything at all.  This new tax system exploits the poor!”

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had their beers without him.  But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important – they didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and government ministers, is how our tax system works.  The people who already pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most benefit from a tax reduction.  Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore.  In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

Here are 22 simple, cheap/free technology tools that virtually every company or leader can use to help them run the business more efficiently.  And I don’t care if they don’t work on PCs or Blackberries – those are freakin useless so 2008 – move to an iPhone & Mac – join me on the dark side

1. Teamly.com is a great new website for managing your TOP 5 priorities, and those of your team as well.  It sends you great reminders & forces the habit of setting TOP 5 goals daily.
2. Outsourcing Things Done – This company hires and manages executive assistants based in Manila for people like me.  My assistant Melanel Perez is based in Manila and managed by people I’ve never met.  In fact, they interviewed and trained her for me.  I assign tasks to her weekly, and she cranks through them like a normal assistant would.  We communicate via their company Wiki & Task software as well as Skype Video & email.  Sure beats paying someone $40,000 a year who lives in North America when I can get the same work done for $1,200 a month by her.  She’s got her business degree from one of the top schools over there too.
3. Time Scroller – great free App for iPhone & Widget for MACs that allows you to see multiple cities time zones at the same time.  You just scroll over with the mouse and it shows you when meetings can be set up at times that make sense for people in different time zones, countries etc.  I find this super helpful when setting up conference calls with CEOs that I mentor in Europe, Asia & Australia.
4. Tungle.com – free online application that seamlessly uploads your calendars.  Others wanting to book time for meetings or calls with you simply look at your Free/Busy slots.  All they can se is if you are free, they can’t see any details of the busy appointments at all.
5. Dragon Dictation – allows you to leave a voice message which comes back to you transcribed for you to tweet, send as an email, copy & paste etc.  Works awesome.  It’s free.  And works great in noisy environments too.
6. Duo / TweekDeck – Great Apps to Update your status in multiple places like Twitter, FaceBook & LinkedIn at the same time.  Duo is for the iPhone.  Tweetdeck has both iPhone & free software downloads for your computer too.
7. CardSnap – Great simple app for iPhone to take a photo of a business card.  The data on the business card is then automatically imported into your database using OCR (Object Character Recognition).  For $5 total – this is WAY better than any scanner I’ve used.
8. Automator – MACs have a built in software program that allows you to Automate Tasks – (similar things can be done with a PC).  An example is if you open the same 6 applications each time you start your computer – why not have it set up to open them automatically for you.
9. eLance, Guru, Mechanical Turk – All three are great services for getting miscellaneous admin and technical tasks done by remote casual workers around the world.  If eBay is a place where you sell stuff and people bid on what they pay to purchase your stuff.  These services work the same way.  You simply post your project that you need done, when you need it done, and people bid on what they are willing to do the work for.  You’ll get references & samples of prior work and you can often get work done for 1/10th of what you’d pay a full time employee to do it in America.
10. Skype Video – Why use a telephone to make sales calls or customer calls.  We’ve been waiting for years to play with the technology that we saw on the TV Show The Jetsons.   Now you can use it for free.  Skype video calls are a fantastic way to keep building the relationship between you and your team, clients or prospects.  Something extra happens with the face to face communication.
11. Google Docs – There is no need to keep purchasing software applications like Word & Excel for your employees.  Google Docs gives you these applications for free and IF you need to have something specific you can have one version of the real thing running on a shared computer in the lunchroom.  Why pay for software licences year-after-year when you can get the same tools for free in the cloud.
12. Basecamp – Fantastic project management software.  Simple to use.  Easy to access.  And way less cumbersome than any of the big project management tools companies waste time using.
13. Crowdspring & 99 Designs – These are both great services that many companies could utilize when getting random things designed.  You post your project up and what you’re willing to pay and people from around the world submit designs to you hoping to be chosen.  If you chose them, they get paid.  It’s a great way to use Crowdsourcing to get marketing work done cheaply and quickly.  It’s often as good as anything a normal designer would do for you.
14. HARO – This free service which is called Help A Reporter Out sends you emails daily with writers around North America who are looking for experts to include in stories they are writing.  Its an easy way to grow your brand.
15. LinkedIn – This has been around for over ten years now.  And it’s a great way to get introduced to people you need to talk with at companies.  It is also a great way to read up on potential employees you are thinking of hiring.
16. FaceBook – We all know what it is now, but many are missing the biggest opportunity that FaceBook provides.  It’s a fantastic way to really get to know potential employees or companies you are looking to get affiliated with.  People put a lot of information and pictures of themselves up there which give keys to valuable insights that normally take yeast to learn.
17. RSS Readers – Don’t waste time going to each individual persons blog that you read.  Set up an RSS Feeder such as NetNewswire that downloads all the blog posts for you to one place – and has them synchronized both on your laptop & iPhone.  That way you can read them when you have spare time to kill versus reading them while you’re at your desk and could be focusing on project work.
18. Ambiance – Simple App for the iPhone which plays background sounds at night when you’re on the road, trying to fall asleep in a strange hotel room.  I used it recently while staying at The Driskill Hotel in Austin which is supposedly haunted.  Falling asleep while listening to waves rolling up on shore made sleep easier than worrying about ghosts, or listening to traffic 10 streets below.

Years ago I realized my Unique Ability is to lead & energize people by using quick, intuitive alternatives to build plans that reverse engineer their dreams.  That’s how I help entrepreneurs make their dreams happen. If you’re not sure what systems to put in place. If you’re not sure what to do next. If you’re still struggling with doing what you’ve read in books or learned at conferences then BackPocket COO’s proven experience will help you.

I stay hyper-focused by only working with young, fun, entrepreneurial, high-growth companies. My Leadership DVDs are being used by companies and their employees in over 15 countries around the world.

Stay tuned for my blog posts coming soon!