Grow Your Business

Last Friday night over cards with friends I was asked, “What’s the point of Twitter?” Before I could respond, a guy waded into the conversation by saying, “There is no point. Who cares what I had for breakfast?”

I realize so many people feel the same way, and they totally are missing the point and the value of social media.

Talk with anyone who owns their own business, or is a solo practitioner, or is looking for a job. They will tell you the two most important tools they have are their network and their reputation. Both of these are built today with social media. Without question, Twitter contributes to building your personal brand.

How you use social media, what you say, and the pictures you post will all become part of your permanent record. Not participating will also speak volumes about your brand.

“I have a good job, so I have no need to build a personal brand, right?”

There is no such thing as job security in the digital age; therefore, everyone, regardless of current position, should be building their personal brands because your business worth is becoming more and more predicated on your “Google juice” (getting a high representation in a search for you.)

When was the last time you Googled yourself? That’s right, put your name in the search box and see what comes up. How many times did you appear on the front page of the listings? Did you even appear on the front page of the listings? How many pages deep did you have to search before anything about you appeared?

If I can’t find you in a Google search looking for you, you are brand-less to the world. Who you are and what your skills, talents and capabilities are matter in today’s business environment. Companies are shifting to a more talent-focused approach to hiring and promotion than the old school experience-based hiring approach. Why the shift? Because everything is changing so dramatically that experience is becoming of lesser value compared to skills and talents that apply to current job demands. So what if you have 15 years of experience working with outdated technology? It just doesn’t matter anymore.

So how do you make yourself relevant? By building your personal brand.

Building a personal brand is tough. There are over 845 people in the United States named Russell White (and I think every one of them must have a Facebook account.)  One Russell White was a Heisman Trophy candidate out of California. Another is a gospel singer. Yet another is wanted for armed robbery. So how do I jump above this crowded space to grab some Google Juice and make my brand heard?

Start with creating distinction. I use my middle initial (Russell J White) in most everything I do. That gives me traction on Google with Russell White AND I dominate the first two pages of search results when people search “Russell J White.”  Personal branding takes time, consistent effort and participation in a number of social media outlets. In this article I don’t have time to go into all of the most obvious social media opportunities to build your brand such as with LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and the importance of blogging. I’ll save those for future articles, but I do want to answer my card-playing friend’s question about Twitter.

Twitter

How do I use Twitter to build my personal brand, reputation and network? I simply treat it like a conference hospitality suite. Talk a little business, talk a little fun, and share information. Unlike a hospitality suite conversation, people can find everything you tweet, so keep it clean and friendly — use it to develop your reputation, not harm it.

Think before you tweet.

Many employers check the public record of Twitter streams of employees as the proverbial fly on the wall. It gives a great insight to the thoughts of the individual, how they approach life, and what is important to them. It will also reveal how they view work and relationships and how they communicate. Many celebrities and professional athletes forget the permanence of a tweet and how fast they can be shared. It’s hard to believe how 140 characters can ruin a reputation and cost someone an endorsement deal.

So what do I tweet?

Information you think your followers will find interesting. Monday at 9:04 am, I tweeted that Jim Tressel had resigned and included a link to the Columbus Dispatch article. On Memorial Day, thank those who serve us in the military. I have commented on the storms we are having, that I will be attending the next tweetup, and that I will be going to an upcoming concert if anyone wants to join me.

I will let people know where to find this blog article with title and link. The last blog article I posted someone retweeted it (copied the link and sent it to all of their network, thus building my exposure!) Like I said, a little business, a little fun and sharing information.

Respect the power of Twitter and use the medium to your advantage.

My Twitter account name, @BizWizTV, has over 6,000 followers and is growing. I use that account to specifically refer to my BizWizTV.com television channel where I post weekly three-minute videos. Google still sees my name tied to that account as it is registered in my name, so I still get good juice. Your Twitter name should speak directly to either who you are or what you are talented doing or, in my case, a specific destination that is about me.
Solely because of Twitter I have made many local connections with business owners, and I am offered a number of free networking events, lunches and meetings known as tweetups that have helped my business, my knowledge and my network.

As Twitter is maturing, it is far less about “what I had for breakfast” and more about breaking news stories, making meaningful business connections, and gathering meaningful information that speaks directly to my interests. Twitter is a great tool to build your business reputation, build your network, and build your brand. That is why I think it is the most underused tool in the traditional business person’s toolbox.

During this year’s most watched ever Super Bowl the ads, the halftime show, and even the singing of the National Anthem came under instant and excessive real-time commentary in social media. What lessons can be learned here?

Opinion and instant feedback are the new norm

With the proliferation of social media, we no longer need a commentator to tell us what we just witnessed; we’d rather tell everyone else our impressions of what we just witnessed! We are a society which has been given a platform and we are eager to use it.

For the business owner:

How well are you monitoring the opinion wave of your organization? The speed, distance and momentum with which impressions and opinions can travel have never been greater. Reputation management has to be real-time, swift and with a plan in place. Viral messages travel in nanoseconds and that applies not only to your messages but to those messages that occur in response to your message.

Which brings us to Groupon…

Groupon’s ad about the plight of Tibetans was in very poor taste. The posts on social media went not only negative — they were angry. According to the CEO of Groupon, this was intended to be a self-parody campaign using a celebrity-PSA type format. Even with all of the negative feedback, as of today they intend on releasing the rest of the campaign ads supposedly all directed by Christopher Guest of Spinal Tap and Best in Show fame. (Wow, it surprised me that he would have his name attached to this.)

Whatever the intent, the concept was not properly executed. With social media, we live in a flock mentality, and once that flock turns away from your company it’s heck trying to get it to come back. Groupon has a damage control situation on its hands. I suggest they take the other ads of this campaign and burn them.

Anyone remember the disastrous movie by Tim Burton, When Mars Attacks? Oh, that was a bad parody.

For the business owner:

If we learn anything, it’s stay away from putting your reputation on the line with parody unless you know what you are doing. I think Capt. Owen Honors, who was relieved of duty from the Navy for his parody videos would agree with me on that one!

The Music(?) of the Super Bowl

Christine Aguilera put her reputation on center stage on the biggest stage and took an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. The lesson here is sometimes it’s more about what the customer wants than about yourself. In this case customers wanted a proper and respectful rendition (with all the words in the right place) of our National Anthem.

Reputation alert:

Carl Lewis and Rosanne Barr will forever be remembered for how they got booed for slaughtering the National Anthem. Notice how those clips came back after Aguilera’s mistakes? Her reputation will forever have this mark on it and be linked with the other clips for future reference.

The Black Eyed Peas also appeared not prepared for the reputation gamble inherent with being the halftime performers. Speakers know if your normal speech is one hour and you are only given 10 minutes, you need to start over and craft something different because you can’t capture the same feeling in that time frame. If you attempt a mashup of all your best lines without the proper story build-up you have a disaster on your hands. Isn’t that what we witnessed? Poor sound, poor special effects, and trying to cram everything they do in a concert into a 20-minute set.

Business owner alert:

Never try to be something you are not. Groupon put their reputation with social media customers in the hands of people who didn’t understand their market. Christine Aguilera put her reputation on the line and tried to make the National Anthem more about herself than about those she was singing for. The Black Eyed Peas put their reputation on the line when they tried to recreate a two-hour event in 20 minutes.

Every one of them forgot what they do best and tried to be something other than who they are. Look at your business: Where are you trying to be something you aren’t and losing your reputation in the process? Do what you do best and listen to your customers for how they want you to evolve while keeping your reputation intact.

As a child I walked to school when it was less than a half mile from my house. When I moved up to the school that was further away I walked to the end of the street and waited for a bus to get me. The bus was painted bright yellow and had blinking red lights on it.

This morning I witnessed a dad driving his junior high school aged child in the family golf cart three doors down to the corner to be picked up by a school bus. It is still painted yellow, but now is equipped with an emergency exit, blinking yellow and red lights, a retractable stop sign with blinking red lights, a swing arm that opens in front of the bus, strobes lights on roof of the bus, large rear view mirrors mounted on the front bumper, and once the kids are on the bus before it pulls off the driver gives five short toots of the horn.

We are teaching children that being responsible is someone else’s job. In my day, we wanted to be fiercely independent and would be embarrassed if our parents had driven or walked up to the bus stop. We wanted the government to impact us as little as possible. We wanted to the opportunity to make our own way.

Today young children are not allowed out of our sight, playtime is painfully structured and organized by adults and children spend more time in front of a screen than any generation in history. We expect the government to take care of our healthcare, our retirement, our security, bail us out when we over extend ourselves financially, send us money when natural disaster strikes and  ensure all of our needs are being taken care of.

And we wonder why the American economy is struggling and we are losing our place as the greatest economic engine in the world?

I think it all started with the school bus.

I have said a hundred times — luck happens when opportunity meets preparation. I’ve heard others say luck is another word for hard work that pays off. I’ve also noticed those who say these things are the ones who have benefited from good luck.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, he found that success was largely impacted by good fortune. When you were born, who your parents are, and those you had a chance encounter with. Not to mention shifts in the world that adjusted the road to success in your direction. What was previously thought of as grunt work, was now a valued process. The work didn’t change, the focus of the world simply shifted.

None of us want to believe our success came from simply good fortune. But how else can you explain the meteoric rise of the formerly homeless golden-voiced Ted Williams? He was pan-handling on a street corner like many others in this country. A newspaper person shot a video of him, sat on it for five weeks, and then posted it on youtube where it took a life of its own.

I embrace the story of Mr. Williams; I think it is wonderful for him. But it wasn’t an intersection of preparation meeting opportunity. It was good luck.

My largest contract in my career came as a result of luck. It was a chance encounter in an airport club room. I’ve struck up hundreds of conversations in airport club rooms. If skill was involved I would have many more contracts of that size and would spent a lot more time in airport club rooms! It was just good fortune that someone was speaking to the right person at the right time who was interested in what I was offering.

Unfortunately luck also has a down side.

Consider the story of the 9 year old girl who was born into a major league baseball family, had been profiled in a book about children who were born on September 11, 2001, and then was asked by a neighbor to attend a congresswoman’s meet and greet with constituents in Tucson on January 8, 2011, where sadly she was shot to death.

She did not ask to be born into a wealthy, high profile family, she was one of a select few born on that day profiled in the book, and there was no action on her part that caused her death other than to simply be there. It was pure bad luck.

In poker the top players calculate the odds in how to proceed in playing a hand. When long odds hit against you it is referred to as taking a “bad beat.” By the same token when long odds fall in your favor in the poker world it is called a “suck out.”

With a 52-card deck odds can be calculated. In life, odds are so variable as to be incalculable, but it doesn’t mean bad beats and suck outs don’t exist. Life is filled with luck.

Does that mean I am saying sit, wait and see what life brings to your doorstep? Not in the least! We have to put ourselves in play to allow positive impact to occur. But I am saying before we reject people because of their standing in life, we should consider luck had a large hand in the outcome. By the same token, before we get caught up in all of our own successes, we should be thankful at our good fortune. I am sure you can think of a hundred decision points in your life where you got the fortunate break and had that decision gone the other way; you would be a very different person for it.

Can you imagine your every move during a disaster being scrutinized and reported to the world. BP is giving us a vision into the future of business reporting. Is your business ready for the microscope of attention during your worst times? Just looking at the drop in BP stock says the cost of mistakes has significantly gone up.

To prepare for such close scrutiny:

• Manage the news from the beginning by being upfront and forthright with information.

• Throw the kitchen sink at problems. Time is measured in nanoseconds in today’s world.Mistakes and disasters will happen to your organization at some point.

• Be financially ready for the dip in orders and possible stock backlash.

• Expect external finger-pointing while you are still in solution mode. Maintain focus.

• Once the problem is finally solved. Develop a white paper on everything you learned in the process and share it with the rest of your industry as a gesture of commitment to preventing this from happening again. If you don’t do it, someone else will with an edge of blame and contempt. Rebuild your reputation on your own terms with this first step.

In working with small businesses on a daily basis, I am constantly alarmed at how few of them are actually using the numbers in their business to drive the growth of their business.  It is rare that I meet a small business owner that can tell me exactly what his numbers were last month, much less one that knows what his key economic engine is use it to manage his Company.

In it’s simplest terms, your company’s economic engine is that one key ratio that your company can focus on that will have the most sustainable growth impact.  This ratio varies from industry to industry, and even from company to company within the exact same industry.

In Good to Great, Jim Collins detailed how Walgreen’s switched its focus from profit per store to profit per customer visit.    Walgreen’s business strategy was convenience.  They wanted to make it as convenient as possible for their customers to get to a Walgreen’s and to shop there.  This would result in many stores close together within a geographic area which had a negative effect on profit per store.  On the other hand, profit per customer made sense because it was a true indicator of the customer experience.    Another advantage is that it is much easier for store level employees to focus their efforts on the goal of profit per customer than profit per store.  Each and every employee that comes into contact with a customer has the opportunity to influence this ratio.

As stated earlier, the economic engine for your company may not be profit per customer – there is a good chance that it is not.  Some companies use a measure of employee productivity- such as profit per employee as their economic engine.  Nucor uses profit per ton of finished steel. Kroger uses profit per local population and Southwest Airlines uses profit per place.  Many restaurants use profit per square foot.   The first step is to determine what your key economic engine is and focus your efforts on it’s continual improvement.

Chad is a Charlotte CPA who works with small business owners and individuals on a monthly basis to provide them with proactive guidance and advice on how to grow their business, minimize their tax liabilities and grow their bottom line. Chad is also a primary contributor to his firms blog – Beancounter Ramblings You can find our more about Chad by visiting his profile here: Chad Bordeaux

Wasting time has always been a pet peeve of mine.  Being placed on hold with a customer service department is a great example.  I recently needed to call my local utility company and based on past experiences, I decided to make good use of the time I would be on hold. Before I placed the call I opened a document on my computer which I could work on while listening to the elevator music on my headset.

The only thing worse than others wasting my time is when I waste my own time. We’ve all heard the phrase that “time is money” so look around your office. Where are you wasting time waiting?  Perhaps you’ve grown accustomed to the wait and you don’t even recognize it anymore.  Here is a short list to get you started in identifying those wasted moments:

1. Using the “search” function to find an E-mail or a document on your computer – It is estimated that we spend 150 hours each year looking for misplaced information. That’s almost four work weeks! Take the time to properly name a document or to place an E-mail in its proper file.
2. Sluggish computer – A slow computer not only wastes time but causes frustration. Remove any programs or software that you no longer use and contact your computer geek to perform a tune-up.
3. Waiting for a return phone call or E-mail – If the response you need is an urgent one, avoid  E-mail. Instead, use the phone. Your message should specify the urgency of your need. In order to help others from wasting time waiting on you, turn on your E-mail auto responder and record a specific voicemail message any time you’ll be away for a half day or more.
4. Signatures – Sometimes the wheels of Corporate America grind ever so slowly due to a heavy layer of signatures required. Suggest a review of the signatures required in order to gain efficiency in a process and to keep projects moving forward in a timely fashion.
5. Waiting in queue for a printer or fax machine – If you’re spending a great deal of time standing around the department printer, begin documenting the time. Many companies have taken the lean approach in reducing the number of printers/faxes available to their employees. However, they may not be aware of the amount of time people are standing around waiting. Investing in a few additional pieces of equipment will make better use of their employee’s time and cut down on everyone’s frustration.

As I wrap this up, I’ll leave you with this thought: If you learned to save just 15 minutes a day, you would be saving 75 minutes each week which computes to 65 hours over the course of one year. Wow – that’s a lot!  Now who can’t use a little more time?

Audrey Thomas, CPO®, is a national speaker, author, and Lean Office expert.  She is the author of Buried Alive!: Surviving the Avalanche of Paper and E-mail and Getting Organized with MS Outlook and serves as Past-President of the National Speakers Association-Minnesota. A frequent speaker at conferences and sales meetings, Audrey also coaches individuals who want to improve their productivity and get more done in their day. Contact her at Audrey@OrganizedAudrey.com 1-866-767-0455 or visit www.OrganizedAudrey.com

Large companies are embarking on a new healthcare strategy for their employees: Offer to pay completely, including travel, for certain surgeries provided they are performed at a select hospital.

According to an article in the Charlotte Observer:

“In a move to control rising health care costs, Mooresville-based Lowe’s has cut an unusual deal with a nationally known hospital.

Lowe’s is giving its full-time employees a choice: Have selected heart surgery at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio instead of at a local hospital, and the company will pay for it in full, even covering travel and living expenses for the patient and a companion.”

With out of control healthcare costs and directionless decisions being pondered in Washington, some employers are taking controls into their own hands.

Which raises the questions:

Will hospitals begin negotiating multi-year contracts directly with employers for specific surgeries thus eliminating the insurer in the equation?

What new jobs will be created as a result of this trend? Doctor agents who will negotiate free agent deals with hospitals looking to strengthen their bench in certain specialties? Hospital negotiators who will approach large employers for such contractual agreements? Travel agencies who specialize in domestic medical trips?

Will drug manufacturers be next?

Will this create favored employer status based on the medical deals they have negotiated?

Obviously, Lowe’s and the Cleveland Clinic believe such an arrangement will be more profitable and the employee incurs no expenses for this surgery. Is this the new model for company-provided healthcare coverage? How will small businesses compete?

This revolutionary step opens an entirely new approach to providing medical benefits to employees.

How would your organization participate in such a venture? It might be something well worth exploring.