For the last couple of months Robert Graham Designs has been dressing me for all my speaking events, and social engagements where I’m around other CEOs and business people.

Yesterday while attending a charity event in the city filled with Vancouver business elite I was asked 5 times where I got the shirt I was wearing. a) Made me feel great cuz no one asked when I was wearing a boring button down and b) Robert Graham Designs got more word of mouth and buzz being generated.

You’ll see me for the rest of 2010 & 2011 wearing Robert Graham clothing. The brand’s Credo “Knowledge Wisdom Truth” is embroidered on every shirt. Who’s dressing you?

Grandmothers are chock full of wisdom, so when you’re thinking about running your business, think about the simplicity of grandmother’s rules, and make sure they’re incorporated into the way you run your business.

Simple, handwritten thank you notes go miles. Nothing beats a handwritten thank you note.  It’s even more powerful today in our fleeting, electronic world. Getting a handwritten note means you took the time to say thank you the right way.

Jack Daly takes the handwritten thank you note one step further. Jack takes photos of himself with people, often in fun situations.  He then uploads those photos to Shutterfly.com, SendOutCards.com or a similar website where he can quickly type up a personal note.  Then presto, Shutterfly mails the card to the person’s address for Jack. Those cards don’t get thrown away.  Instead, they stay as little marketing reminders to his friends.

Ray Kroc grew McDonalds from a few locations to the enormously powerful brand we all know and secretly crave.

He had a particularly cut-throat saying about business: “When the competition is drowning, stick a hose in their mouths.”

While that sounds brutal, Kroc understood that in a recession competitors leave themselves vulnerable. He knew that the best time to eliminate your competition is when they’re at their weakest–during an economic downturn.

I once saw a Nike t-shirt that said, “Somewhere, right now, someone is practicing.  When they meet you head to head in competition, they’ll beat you.”

This seizing on vulnerability is where business is most like sports.  Your competition is naturally your opponent, and when you come to the game unprepared for the challenge, someone will be waiting for you to choke, and when you do, they’ll happily leave you on the sidelines while they advance toward their goal.

Hiring competitors’ salespeople, proactively targeting your competitors’ clients and even re-pricing your products or services to attract those clients will help you and hurt your competitor.  Worry more about yourself, but when the competition is drowning, stick a hose in their mouth.  This is one area I mentor CEOs on when I’m coaching them.

‘Survival of the fittest’ isn’t just for the Serengeti – it is alive and well in your industry too.  Who’ll win?

pic Poliza

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?

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.

I learned about this idea from a great friend Gini Dietrich of The Fight Against Destructive Spin.

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.

Go ahead! Promote your blog here…

I just realized how lucky I am. 

Over the past twenty years I’ve worked REALLY hard to build awesome companies, build great teams, and build the trust of entrepreneurs around the world.

I was just getting ready to upload this photo and realized that these six companies are ones I’m humbled to have built the trust of.

Five of these great brands have paid $2,500 each to put their logo on my laptop for 2010.

The companies are: Outsourcing Things Done, Maverick Business Adventures, Grasshopper.com, Media Temple, and Hire Better.  I got so lucky to find such awesome ones.  And in the process I turned down many others (some who just didn’t get in early enough, and others who weren’t just the perfect fit yet).  Anyway – thanks to all of them.

Yes they are paying me – but you all know me – I wouldn’t rave about them if I didn’t love them.  And if anything changed – I’d be the first to give them there money back and take the sticker off too.

I’m lucky to have such great brands supporting me that you’d be smart to check out too.

Lastly, yes there are 6 stickers here.  I gave one free spot away to the non-profit that I support.  I contacted the CEO of Kiva.org and asked him if he’d like to be on my laptop with the other brands.  He loved the idea and said yes.  I then told him I’d give them the spot for free because their mission was so similar to mine.  They are all about helping entrepreneurs grow too.

This year, I’ll be speaking in front of tens of thousands of entrepreneurs.  They’ll all see these six logos.  And trust me, I’ll be raving about them all year too.

To days ago I decided to sell 5 spots on my laptop to 5 great brands to advertise on for 2010 (4 are already taken, only 1 left).

Another company will be taking the back of my iPhone – so that’s now sold too.

The most recent two brands to take spots are:

3rd spot went to Media Temple – an awesome company that hosts websites for large companies like (Starbucks, Sony & Volkswagen) & small companies (too many to list

The company grabbing spot #4 is Grasshopper.com – Great brand that launched last year in an awesome way sending chocolate covered grasshoppers to thousands of bloggers & media.  They provide a virtual phone system designed for entrepreneurs.  Check em out.

The first two spots went to Outsourcing Things Done and Maverick Business Adventures who I introduced on the blog post before this one.

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 four early adopters this year – move fast.

Only 1 spot left.

I’ll be speaking at dozens of conferences again, flying business class on all flights, and spending time in airport business lounges.  My MacBook Air 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 2010, your logo will be seen by tens of thousands of influential business people & CEOs.

I’m also planning to get my laptop some press this year too…

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.

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@BackPocketCOO.com

Yesterday I decided to sell 5 spots on my laptop to 5 great brands to advertise on for 2010 (2 are already taken, only 3 left).

And someone offered to pay to advertise on the back of my iPhone – so that’s now sold too.

The 1st brand to grab a spot was Outsourcing Things Done.  They are an awesome place for entrepreneurial company to get a ton of misc stuff done far cheaper than using full time staff.

The 2nd brand to grab a spot is Maverick Business Adventures (yes the company owned by internet guru Yanik Silver).  This company of his organizes fantastic adventures for select groups of entrepreneurs every couple months.

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 3 spots left.

I’ll be speaking at dozens of conferences again, flying business class on all flights, and spending time in airport business lounges.  My MacBook Air 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 2010, your logo will be seen by tens of thousands of influential business people & CEOs.

I’m also planning to get my laptop some press this year too…

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.

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 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.