The Most Important Decision as a Consultant

The number of decisions you have to make when starting your own consulting business are numerous. Decisions like choosing your niche, how much you charge, where you will spend money are all important. But one of the lesser discussed but possibly most important decisions is what business will you NOT take.

I have found this to be the most difficult decision because knowing when the next job will be is usually unknown. You are always in need of the money (lets be honest here), but every opportunity that comes your way has the potential to grow or limit your business (read income).

• Will the contract increase your specific skill or expertise that makes you valuable?
• Will the contract lead to on-going future business with a client?
• How sure are you that the project will end successfully?
• How likely is it that the potential client will provide you with a good reference?
• Is the potential client the type that would recommend your services without request?

These are all important questions to ask when deciding what kind of projects you do or do NOT take. But I'm going to focus on one question where many consultants make the wrong decision.

Will the client pay you what you are asking?

This is an important question because it brings up two equally important questions. First, how much are you worth? And second, what type of personal life do you want?

The temptation to take a contract at a reduced pay is great, especially when the pipeline is small. But one of the most important decisions you will make is sticking to your guns and turning this business away. Consultants are generally willing to take these jobs because they come with a promise of lots of work or because of nervousness that nothing else will come along.

But if you take a contract for either of these two reasons you are both decreasing your perceived value to current and future clients and sacrificing your lifestyle. You should be confident that you are worth your rate and your current and potential clients must see that. Taking a contract for a lower fee says that you believe you are not worth your stated rate. And if you do not believe you are worth your fee then you should not be charging that fee.

The second reason you should not accept a reduced fee is based on simple math. Let's say your normal fee is $100 per hour. If you take a 20% fee reduction at $80 per hour then you have to work more hours and harder to make up the difference.

Most likely you have a revenue goal for your company (if you don't it's time to get one). The more projects you take at a decreased rate the more you have to work to achieve that rate.

If you are still not convinced then look at it this way. Let's say your goal is to bill 30 hours per week at $100 per hour with four weeks of vacation. That means there are 48 billable weeks in the year. This is pretty aggressive goal if you are just starting out.

48 weeks x 30 hours x $100 = $144,000

NOTE: $144,000 may look like a lot (or may not), but when you factor in taxes and business expenses your take home quickly begins to fall.

If you take a 12 week contract at your 20% fee reduction there are only 36 weeks left in your "goal year".

12 week x 30 hours x $80 = $28,800
36 weeks x 30 hours x $100 = $108,000

Now your total revenue is $136,800. In order to make up the difference of $7200 to meet your goal you have to work 72 hours at your $100 rate. That equates to 2.5 weeks of work which leaves you with 1.5 weeks of vacation time.

But the better scenario is that you would only need to work 45.5 weeks at your normal rate to achieve the $136,800 revenue number. This means that you either have 2.5 more weeks of vacation time (imagine a job with 6.5 weeks of vacation), 2.5 more weeks to market and build the business, 2.5 weeks to blog and share your knowledge, or 2.5 weeks to try and find a small contract at your $100 per hour rate.

Be worth what you say you are worth. It will be better for you in the long run.

The Marketing Value of Personal Recognition

I recently have been the lucky recipient of personal recognition as a valued customer. For many organizations personal recognition marketing gets regularly overlooked as one of the best and very cheap ways to spend marketing time and money.

Have you recently personally recognized a customer for their value? Without them you wouldn't be in business...

Example #1
I've written before on my transition to using a local bank (or credit union in my case) versus a big-impersonal-conglomerate-that-apparently-does-not-care-if-they-have-my-money-type-bank (aka Wells Fargo). Since switching to Wescom I have received now at least two (maybe three) personal letters from staff at the bank. I think it is important to note that it is not always from the branch manager but from the bank teller of my last visit. I have never banked at any other bank where the teller sends a "you are valued" letter.P.S. Despite what Chrystal says it is not because I'm Daddy-Big-Bucks. Not even close!

Example #2
When I switched from a PC to a Mac I found the need to have an MS Office compatible program with the hope to not pay through my nose for it. On the recommendation of a friend I downloaded NeoOffice and have been "reviewing it" for about 6 months. This week I came to the final conclusion that "it is awesome". I think it is awesome for two major reasons. First, all the functionality I need is there. Second, it's FREE! That's right, a FREE Office Software Suite that includes compatible versions of MS Word, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint, and MS Access. It also has a very basic Visio type program. I only use Writer (Word) and Calc (Excel) but I have not yet had a single compatibility problem. NeoOffice asks for donations to support keeping the software free, so upon deciding how useful it was I made a donation. I immediately received the below automatic email.
But then I also received a personal email from Patrick thanking me for my donation.
Oh, and for the record my very large donation was $100, which seemed really cheap considering it saved me the $400 expense of buying Office for Mac.

"Ya-ttitude" - A Great New Blog

For those of you that have not found it yet, "Ya-ttitude" by Benny Greenberg is one of the best new blogs on the web. If you are interested in joining the allied forcies against the Procrasti-NATION read his blog and join the fight.
Thanks Benny for the insightful wisdom and witty rhetoric!

Apathy = A Problem Technology Cannot Solve

Some of you know I have two blogs currently. I wrote a post for hospitality technology made simple that I thought was worth while for the readers of k.sturm blog as well. I won't do this often as duplicating blog content is a bit lame, but I thought this post was worth it.
_________________
I am a big believer that technology can solve many business and operational problems. There is POS for tracking product mix, streamlining order flow, and revenue reporting; Inventory Management for getting accurate food costs, purchasing cycles, and inventory control; Reservations for managing guest reservations, table turn, and wait times; and a slew of other systems depending on the venue. But for hospitality venues there is a problem that technology solutions cannot solve - mainly apathy or the trait of "learned helplessness."

Last night my family and some friends went out to dinner at El Paseo restaurant in Santa Barbara. We were doing an early dinner (we had two toddlers in tow) and were glad to see the restaurant was not too busy. We really like El Paseo because of the atmosphere (retractable roof) and good food (our opinion). We LOVE the table-side made guacamole and fresh made warm tortillas, and they usually have a pretty solid margarita. We go enough we know what is good and what is not, so we stick to what is good (like the fajitas). Also an important point is I go there because they are a former customer and I am a firm believer in supporting your customers.

But our experience last night ranks in my top 5 worst at any hospitality venue. I point the cause to apathy on the part of the manager and service staff. I will set the stage as it was immediately apparent El Paseo was understaffed for the night. We were all sensitive to this as my wife and friend both waited tables for years and I have spent hours on end helping restaurant staff work through system technology issues (I bused tables in a suit once at a customer site because that was where I could help ensure the guest's experience stayed positive). From the moment we walked in the door at El Paseo we were an annoyance versus a guest. I had to find someone to seat us, and once we were seated had to flag down the manager after 15 minutes. We asked the manager if he could bring us water and napkins (napkins came half way through the meal...recall we had two toddlers with us) and requested a waiter to come over. He declined to get us water and replied, "I will find someone to get your drink order." No apology for the wait or a comment that things might be a little slow.

When our waiter arrived (visibly annoyed we had him summoned) we ordered our drinks, our food (with a one special request), and asked for silverware and napkins. We got three deep sighs and at least four eye rolls. We had been given a kids menu and ordered two kids meals with a lemonade. When our drinks arrived the waiter set a foot-tall-cone-shaped-three-pound-bar-glass filled to top with lemonade in front of our friends 2 year old (no exaggeration!) We asked for kids cup to which he responded they have none (kids menu, kids meals, no kids cup?). We asked if they had a smaller cup, and he came back to the table with a plastic Budweiser cup and no lid (a Bud cup for a toddler?).

We arrived at the restaurant before 6:00 pm and received our food at about 7:00 pm. In that one hour we saw our server once to place our order and once to receive our drinks. We called the manager over twice to ask for more water and napkins, and never once got an apology or a comment on better service. I helped implement El Paseo's technology solutions so I know their systems cannot be to blame for what we experienced last night. I also know the ownership group and have eaten at their other restaurants in Santa Barbara, so I do not believe it is part of the ownership group. Our experience last night was 100% caused by apathetic management and wait staff. But our experience could have been 100% different with the same staff and same poor service. Here's how...

roll out the welcome mat
Greet your customer with a smile and welcome them to your venue. Even if the service is going to be below standard you should still make your customer want to be there.

when required set a low expectation
When as a manager or server you know you cannot deliver the best service, be up front with customers and set that expectation. Offer that you will check in as often as possible, but that service may be slower than normal. That way if it is slow the guest expected it, but if it is not you over achieved. Most customers will be accepting of this.

Image credit to Julianfoto

cater to your customer
If you offer a separate kids menu families will come to your restaurant. Parents expect kid cups to be available if you have a kids menu. Not having kids cups is saying you don't want kids in the restaurant.

apologize when you know you should
You know when you need to apologize for crummy service, even when it's not your fault. An apology can go a long long way. Everybody has bad days at the office. Apologizing when you flat out do not deliver means you care enough to want to deliver.

If only I could invent a technology solution that solved the apathetic employee problem...

"Perfectionists are Losers" by Pamela Slim

Here is a great post by Pamela Slim on not being perfect. If you are thinking about starting your own company you should be reading her blog.

After talking with a couple different friends who had made the leap I came to the realization that you have to build a company to have a company. And to have a company you have to start somewhere. kevin sturm Consulting is in no way ultra successful, but I enjoy my work now more than ever and have more time to spend with Chrystal and Brody.

There are tons and tons of things I need to do to make the company better, but if it would never have been if the goal was for it to be perfect.

Grab Your Integrity and Hold on Tight!

Picture courtesy of Ian David

After quitting my job and starting my own company I thought it was time to look into a financial adviser. It was not that my company was ultra successful so I needed somewhere to put the money (far far from it), it just seemed that someone who new more about how to grow wealth than me was needed. I have almost no interest...okay, no interest...in day trading or monitoring the stock market to plan my next stock purchase. But there are people who love it and make a living at it...oh the beauty of capitalism. So why not pay them?

One seemingly opportunistic day while working at Starbucks I struck up a conversation with a really nice person that ended up being someone that could possibly help me with this. Chrystal and I met with them a few times and discussed our financial goals. We reviewed how we should roll over our 401K, what our risk acceptance and aversion was, and all the options of where our money could go. After three meetings we were heading towards investment in a VUL and rolling our 401K into a traditional IRA.

We put our trust in this person and I liked them. I felt we had a bond in being young entrepreneurs, expecting parents, and Christians. In our last meeting to sign papers I was advised to answer a question on the application untruthfully. I questioned the advice and said I would prefer to answer the question truthfully. But I left the meeting feeling very unsettled. In order to not make a short story boring, I'll get the point that today I let the person know we would not be investing our money with them or their company.

The point of this post is this.

Never ever ever do anything that brings your integrity, honesty, or character into question with your customer.

I believe the person we met with is honest, has a high character, and values integrity. But this one thing made me call into question the advice we were being given. And since we were talking about our financial future, I was not willing to take even a small risk.

From a letter I received from the person we met with this was a learning experience for both of us. I took five points from this experience.

1. When deciding on who you are going to work with to invest money, I think it is best to talk with the actual person that is going to be investing your money. Seems somewhat like common sense now. ;-)
   
2. Before you meet with someone about your finances, do your own research on what you think the best options may be. Have a basic understanding of options so you can talk the talk.
3. Find out exactly how fees are paid and who is paid. Ask for a detailed example of if you invest X, and have a return of Y, what will be paid by you in Z. This will most likely be a hard question to get answers to. It is worth it.
4. Entering a partnership like this is a bit like getting married. The first meeting is informal and soon you are talking about long term plans. There is a cost to get in and a larger cost with penalties to get out. And more important, even a small amount of perceived dishonesty can ruin the entire relationship.
   
5. Last but most important was the confirmation that the most important thing you can be to your customer is honest, always!

Business Success and Partnerships

I was meeting with a friend the other morning about a new business idea. His idea was awesome and could really change some of the cooperation and communication in his industry. He was having doubts about his idea though because many of his peers kept saying, "Oh that will never work because people won't risk losing profits by working with you."

For clarification I've left my friend's name and the industry out of the post because he hasn't yet got the company off the ground. But he's got a doozy of an idea!

We had a great conversation on how to overcome this problem which made me think about the concepts of launching a new company where partnerships are a must (which is just about any company). Currently my biggest client is because of a reference from a company that offers the same consulting services, but without a portion of very specific expertise that I have. The company is probably losing $30,000 to $50,000 in revenue by referencing me. However, if I can help turn things around then their upside revenue will exceed $2,000,000 with the client. If I can't turn things around the risk is $50,000, but their annual revenues are beyond $800 million so no big risk for them.

The point here is that if you can create an upside with little or no risk for your partner then you really create a win-win scenario. My example is maybe not great because their is no risk for me, but that is beside the point. Here are a few things to think about when creating a partnership that you need.1. What is your motivation in creating the partnership? This is an important question because your motivation MUST be something other than you make money. Is there a bigger benefit that helps you, your partner, and your joint customer. A partner will see right through you if a big motivation is not to help them make money. Guy Kawasaki says a key element of any new business must be "to make meaning", and that is this point. The partnership must help make meaning for all involved.

2. Evaluate the value of each partnership and ensure the returns are balanced for you and the partner. If the upside value is almost all yours, then almost all returns may need to be your partners. If the upside is all your partners, then almost all the returns may need to be yours. Don't not do a partnership because there is little direct profits. There may be indirect profits (see #5)

3. My dad always taught me "Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered". It is easy to get caught up in squeezing the partnership for all it's worth. Fight that urge and take what you should versus what you can.

4. Figure out a way to make the partnership low risk. For example, if you want to sell another persons product they will probably not risk losing revenue to your gain. In this situation figure out a minimum sales number before you take profits. This way your potential partner only gives away a portion of the profit when they sell enough to accept it. You can also build in levels of profit sharing here where the more you sell the more profit you get.

5. Recognize that recognized names can bring customers. If you are the little dog in a partnership the big dog may get you leads because they are the big dog. In follow up to point #2 it may be beneficial to just have the partnership and take little (or even no) profit. Rather negotiate an endorsement of some kind. Free press from an influential person and/or company can bring bigger revenues and encourage other partners to join. Creditability for any new business is huge. Acceptance and endorsement from credible sources is priceless.

My final note is don't quit because people don't like your idea. Talk about it with people. You'll be amazed how the idea changes through each conversation. You will turn it into a great idea or realize it probably won't work and scrap it for a better idea.

Ideas Excite Me!

I just had coffee with my friend Carter Crockett, a business professor at Westmont College. If you have read my LinkedIn profile you know talking about new ideas is one of my favorite things to do. Carter and I had this great conversation about a new business idea and I can hardly get my brain to stop working out the details so I can focus and do work for kevin sturm Consulting clients.

One of the biggest changes in my life since quitting my job has been how I think differently. Versus being mired in all the "things" and "problems" that dominated my day and my brain, I am free to dream about new and fun ideas. Your brain really can do amazing things when you stop trying to force it to do something it doesn't want to.

If you have a new business idea you want to talk about, invite me to coffee. I love hashing it out even if it never happens! I'll even buy!

Don't Steal Software

I was on Craigslist today and came across this post.
In response I flagged the post as in violation of Craigslist rules and sent "sale-569449932" the below email. And yes I did give him/her a link to this blog, which I hope they find with this post.There are a few things here that amaze me. First, it is really bold to openly post for the world to see that you do not care about software licensing. Stealing software is a crime, and just really shady.

Second, it takes a narrow minded person to not realize that it is stealing and you are stealing from lots of people. It is not just Bill Gates; it's the Gates Foundation (you cannot argue it's not a good cause), the developers that wrote the software, and some seriously hard working people at Microsoft (that are not rich) which I have had the pleasure of working with during my career.

Thirdly, as much as I like working with Microsoft they are not the only software option. Lots of companies that are not Microsoft exist. If you don't want to buy Microsoft software do a Google search on "mac office software" and NeoOffice comes up on page two. It would take less time than doing a Craigslist post.

If you want something with a little more functionality for a really low price try OpenOSX
for $30.

With so many options out there why resort to something that shows such poor character?

Make Sure What You Do = What Your Customer Wants

Sometimes on the weekends I do very dad-like things.

Brody turns 3 in April, and since we are expecting baby-sister (no name picked yet) in April it was time to move into a "big-boy" bed. So this weekend I built a bunk bed. Okay I assembled a bunk bed, but I did everything but sand and stain the wood. I could not believe the amount of assembly required for this bed. It made me feel very "daddish" though and I was super excited about it. Putting together my sons bunk bad...seriously how dad is that!? Brody loves it and climbs all over it.

And today we were playing with his cars from the movie Cars (he has all of them) and I got this great idea to build a ramp to drive the cars down from his top bunk. I thought we would have a great time building it together. We went to the hardware store and got some material, got the project all setup, and after attempting to hammer one nail Brody got bored with the board. I spent the next 45 minutes building a ramp with barriers, lanes, and finish molding. I thought it was really cool (still do). I took it up to him all excited and set it up. Brody thought it was cool for about 4 minutes until a different toy grabbed his fancy.The reality was Brody did not ask for a ramp. He was completely content just playing cars with me and didn't need anything else.

I often find I want to do something for my customers that I think is cool, even if they don't need it. This is especially easy in software development where unnecessary features get added because they are cool but not very functional (think annoying paperclip man in Windows). Avoid doing something because you think it's cool. Instead do something that is useful, which should start with spending some time with your customer and listening.

And if you're a dad spend some solid time playing with your kids and listening.

Spending Money in the Wrong Place

I'm not an economist and I am probably not the best source for how a company worth billions should spend their money. But I think Microsoft is about to spend money in the wrong place. Microsoft submitted an unsolicited offer today of $44.6 billion to buy Yahoo (read about it at Bloomberg.com). This is historic either way as it represents the largest technology take over in history, but I think it may be historic as another bad decision my the new Microsoft. I can't help but think they are competing with Google in the wrong way.

Google did not win the search engine war by buying other companies that were also loosing the war. They were innovative, created a product that was easier to use, and got a reputation as company you wanted to work for (still do). They did awesome things like pay people to advertise for them (AdSense) even when 98% of users never see $0.10. Microsoft's Vista and IE 7.0 "innovation" has created more Mac and Google fans out of former Microsoft fans (me included as I write this from my MacBook Pro using Firefox). At what point did Microsoft make it a business plan to bottom feed buy spending billions of dollars on inferior technology and companies?

This former Microsoft evangalist would like to see them either buy an innovative industry leader (think YouTube) or spend $44 billion dollars and a release a product that gets the kind of buzz and adoption the iPhone got.

At the most basic level they could attempt to copy a very easy thing that made Google easier to use. Look a the three pics below and tell me which you would rather use if you were trying to find something on the Internet.

Set Goals Instead of Resolutions

I've been meaning to do this post for a while, but have been lazy on the post front. It's now almost February, but my post for the 2008 new year is don't set resolutions. In stead set goals. Not widely outrageous goals, but goals that are achievable and broken down into increments. They should be challenging, but also attainable.

On September 26, 2007 on a flight from DFW to Charlotte I made a list of my two year goals. I was reviewing it this week. I've done well in some areas and not so well in others.

Q4 2007
Professional

• Establish my niche in consulting where ever it may be, hotel ideally
  
• Bill 20 hours per week
  
• Start posting meaningful content on hospitality technology made simple every two weeks

Personal

• Read my bible every morning for at least 15 minutes - have not done
  
• Get out of the rat race and keeping up with what we think is the requirements of success
• Run every 3 days at least - sometimes yes, right now no
  
• Read one book per month on something and keep doing it
  
• Finish house - not even close
  
• Post to k.sturm blog at least every 3 days - not quite there

Q1 2008
Professional

• Bill 20 hours per week
• Post meaningful content on hospitality technology made simple every two weeks
• Speak in some capacity at an industry conference
• Have business plan for new company idea complete with market analysis, 1 year, 3 year, 5 year revenue forecast, and mocked up design

Personal

• Have a plan to live “below” our means allowing us the financial freedom to take trips and live free
• Begin taking a one week trip per quarter with Chrystal and Brody somewhere fun where we don’t work at all

Q2 2008
Professional

• Bill 16 hours per week and increase hourly rate
  
• Hire first employee/subcontractor for kevin sturm Consulting billing 20 hrs/week
• Speak in some capacity at major industry conference
• Have a second draft of business plan in place and start moving forward
  
• Find a developer that will “drink the cool-aid” or get venture capital funding…drink the cool-aid is way better

Personal

• Go on Potter’s Clay construction team (not sure if this will be possible with baby due)
• Be training for Marathon or Triathlon

Q3 2008
Professional

• Give Keynote Session presentation at industry conference
  
• Be at least one quarter into v1.0 of new business
  

Personal

• Visit Opportunity International bank in Mexico or Africa
• Run a Marathon or do a Triathlon

Q4 2008
Professional

• Hire second employee/subcontractor for kevin sturm Consulting billing 20 hrs/week
• Speak at hospitality technology industry conference
• Sign up early adopter customers for v1.0 release

Q1 2009
Professional

• Speak at hospitality technology industry conference
  
• Release v1.0 of new business venture
  
• Attend industry conference on new business venture
  

Q2 2009
Professional

• Speak at hospitality technology industry conference
• Release v2.0 of software
• Speak at industry conference on new company venture
  

Personal

• Attend TED Conference in San Francisco Long Beach with two friends

How Promotable Are you?

The other morning I was having coffee with my sister-in-law, Cara, discussing her current job opportunities. She is an up and coming tornado at Anthropologie and is now ready for the next big thing. In our conversation we talked about what employees that quickly get promoted do. Obviously there are the qualities of hard work, enthusiasm, knowledge of the business, years of experience, leadership, and such. But in most companies that is not enough, or at least not what is going to get you moving quickly to the next big thing.

In my experience there are a three lesser discussed things that can have a huge impact on your promotability. There are more than three even, but for brevity I'll focus on three.

Stop asking what qualities and experience is needed for a promotion.
As a manager I had an endless number of conversations with employees who would ask me, "What are the traits you look for in a <fill in the title>?" This is a bad way to approach it. The question worded this way tells the manager you don't believe you are ready for the promotion but would like to be considered at some point in the future.

Instead of asking this question do some research to understand the position that you want and then meet with the manager to inform them that you want the promotion. Point out all the areas that you have the experience, qualifications, and successes to be great at the job. Outline how you specifically could add value to the organization in this new position. Then, if need be discuss what specific areas you need experience in before being qualified for the promotion, and ask the manager what opportunities exist in the near future for you to get the experience needed.
Leave your personal finance choices out of the discussion.
Most employees seek out a promotion or pay increase because their personal financial situation has changed and they need to make more money. Probably 80% of employees that asked me for a promotion or raise had this as a major point in the discussion. This is about the worst way to go about getting a promotion. It tells your manager you are spending money you don't have! That is a big red flag because it means you may not be as responsible as you should be. Additionally, don't make the focus of your discussion what Salary.com says you should make. Unless you are working for a Fortune 500 company that pays at the top 10% it is not a realistic comparison.

A conversation about compensation and promotion needs to be focused on what you specifically do or will be doing to increase current revenue production for the business. If you don't know how you are doing this, you have no business asking for a promotion.

I once had an employee ask me for a salary increase and promotion with a breakdown of what affect his current salary had on the percentage of gross margin for the department, how his specific performance was increasing company revenue by tracking his revenue performance for 6 months, and that his requested increase would affect less than .1% of current gross margin for the department. He then outlined how he would further increase his revenue production, and how the increase would make him feel more valued for his hard work and his job would be more enjoyable. I gave him the promotion affective immediately, without even getting approval from our CFO. I knew that with that level of detail the CFO couldn't even say no.
Stop waiting to get recognized.
When I left my last company they asked me to complete an Employee Exit interview. One of the questions was about how often I got feedback from my manager.

How frequently did you get feedback on your performance? What were your feelings about them?
I received feedback almost every year during my normal performance review. I generally found they were informative and provided good feedback and opportunities for improvement.
How frequently did you have discussions with your manager about your career goals? What are your feelings regarding these discussions?
As often as I initiated and felt it was needed. However, I think employees who receive the best feedback seek it out versus wait for it. Generally those who wait patiently for recognition and guidance end up feeling slighted, abused, and unappreciated. I am a firm believer that opportunities are created and taken not given, and corporate recognition is directly related to how well you market yourself.

Recognition in the work place is like dating. If you're a wall flower it's tough to get recognized. If you are waiting for someone to give you pat on the back and a promotion for a job well done, you most likely feel like you work for a company that doesn't reward hard work, you often feel abused by the company, and that the company always says great job to other people but never you (there are companies out there that reward hard work all the time, I worked for one for a while). If this is you, stop waiting to get recognized and point out the value you bring the organization. Most likely the employees that always get recognized are self promoting while you are waiting for someone to notice you.

Importance of Fellowship

One of my favorite things about being self employed is getting to fellowship with friends in the morning over coffee. This morning I got hang with DJ at his SWEET pad in Santa Barbara. This place is seriously amazing because it has a view that is unique even in Santa Barbara. You can see Ventura and north Goleta practically. DJ and I were going to meet at Whales Tail downtown but we decided to have breakfast at the Freedom House instead. Crystal cooked us an amazing breakfast of French toast coated with corn flakes and almonds. It was 5-star style eating, plus we ate on the patio (which DJ had never done!) and had an amazing view to go with the amazing meal. Thanks Crystal! We also had mimosas with Dom Perignon that was left over from a get together the previous night...livin' the high life!DJ and I talked about how much fun it was to be able to just hang out in the morning to do what we felt was important (which may be to work, read, or fellowship) versus rush to be at work at 8:00 am. I really feel so blessed to have the freedom to do this and have friends like DJ to hang with and enjoy time together.

The view from DJ's patio as displayed by my iPhone!

Word of Mouse Marketing

My friend DJ always talks about word-of-mouse marketing. The power of the web in marketing is that if you do something unique it can get passed all across the world in hours. WHAM! You have gajillions (yes it's a word) of hits. Check out this website and watch what happens.

My friend Paul posted this. He got it from a friend I'm assuming (as Paul doesn't speak anything but English), and that person got it from someone. I'm betting I am way down in the chain of people to see this and I'm passing it on to all the people who read my blog (maybe 6) .

Delivery for a $1.00

I'm on my way home from my first client trip. I was at Microsoft's office in Seattle for three days (never saw the sun).
I was working out of the R&D building and tried to see the latest Microsoft Surfaces demonstration but no luck. I didn't even get to see the current one. Most of the things going on in the building we won't see for 10 to 15 years. How do you plan for technology products 10 years in advance? With as fast as technology changes that just seems unrealistic...but I suppose somebody has to do it. There were also supposedly 30+ researchers with PhDs in the R&D building! That is a whole bunch of brain power.

Most of the offices are in Redmond, WA and the entire city is pretty much Microsoft. From what I was told Microsoft employs 45,000 people at the Redmond campus! That is almost half the population of Santa Barbara! And the campus is pretty amazing. They have multiple soccer, football, and baseball fields, indoor and outdoor basketball courts, and all sorts of other fun stuff.

I was there to install eMenu, a software that will allow all Microsoft employees to order lunch via the company Intranet and have it delivered to their desk. Seriously. You can check out eMeu here, but don't order from this site because this place actually exists in NY. Microsoft has the most amazing company cafeterias with awesome food and now they are offering to deliver your lunch for $1.00 (plus the cost of the food). I think that is awesome because I'd take a lunch break to go work out and then have my lunch delivered to my desk and eat it there (in the scenario I had an office of course).

James, the Microsoft analyst I did the install with, had a futon, big screen TV, DVD player, Xbox and wii in his office! It was complete with a small movie and video game library. How would you ever get any work done?
Microsoft's countdown to release clock

Extreme Marketing

Marketing is hard. Really. Once you are uber successful I'm guessing it gets much easier, but before that point it's hard. When you don't have a huge customer base all blabbering on about how brilliant you are the only option is to self blabber about brilliance. I've spent the last two work days self marketing. Whether cold calling, emailing, requesting references via LinkedIn, or getting my new hospitality technology blog (to be announced soon) together. This is all pretty much standard new business stuff though and comes with the territory. It's one of those things though before you start you think, "I've got a huge network, I'll get business." (at least that is what I thought). The reality is that it is a long ramp and you have to claw for every opportunity. Nobody starts at the top. People may indirectly reference you but most likely they are not looking for business for you.

I am a true believer that word of mouth marketing is king (especially in my business). But, if you can't tell one great story about yourself no one else will be able to either. To get one big deal someone has to believe that you can be successful with that big deal. And if you have no references for your greatness then you must become your own self reference.
This post was prompted by an absolutely outlandish extreme marketing example I saw in the Starbucks parking lot today. Check out this guys car. He caught me taking pictures of it which was pretty funny. He acted like it was a totally normal occurrence, which was more funny.

Chicken Little and Sky Catcher

My dad used to always say, “If you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem.” (though the saying is generally credited to Eldridge Cleaver). I've tried to take this philosophy with me to every project and believe it is a good rule to live by. For the sake of clarity I'll define this as being a person that brings solutions not problems (hugely insightful I know).
Everyone has been on a project with someone that has “Chicken Little Complex”. They bring up every possible pitfall in the project, why ideas won't work, and regularly send emails to the project team when pending disaster is inevitable - leading everyone on the project in a fire drill effort that generally could have been avoided (i.e. Foxy Woxy's hole). As a project manager or a project team member strive to be the antithesis to Chicken Little. I call this person “Sky Catcher”. I've held this title on projects multiple times in my career. Sky Catcher is the person on the project that objectively looks at each situation and offers solutions to problems, but more importantly becomes the person that helps advise Chicken Little.

Imagine how different the story would be if Chicken Little was productively educated by Henny Penny on the elemental nature of the atmosphere, the concept of gravity, prompted with ideas of what could have hit her on the head, and more importantly the danger of “forest frenzy” due to adoptive apprehension.

If you have a project team member with “Chicken Little Complex” make it your personal duty on the team to be “Sky Catcher”. Provide solutions but also help prevent others from only bringing problems. Most likely you will find yourself in the position to offer advice often, and may just find yourself leading the next project.

"Seven Steps to Success"

My friend Nazia sent me a "Tip of the Day" email with some wise words from Dr. Mark Goulston (author of Get Out of Your Own Way at Work) on things you should know the answers to when starting your own business. If you want to start you own business make sure you have an answer to these questions.

1. What do you love making (product) or doing (service) that has enough value that other people would be willing and want to pay for (your DREAM)?

2. What desire or problem is your product (what you make) or service (what you do) the best answer or solution to (your VISION and MISSION)?

3. What people or what company has a desire or problem that most urgently needs your product or service, i.e. who are the ones that "Gotta have you!" (your MARKETING)?

4. How do you get those people or that company to be aware of their urgent need for your product or service (your ADVERTISING)?

5. How do you convince those people to buy that service or product that they "gotta have?" (your SALES)

6. How do you get your product or service to those people or that company (your PRODUCTION and DELIVERY)?

7. How do you continue to increase the satisfaction and enthusiasm for your product or service, so they'll tell others (your CUSTOMER SERVICE)?

Do You Have Different Types of Ethics?

Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking at Westmont (my alma mater) to the Business Ethics class. There were even a few pre-med students in the class so they got to hear the story of a doctor bound student who took a different road.
In preparing some material I began to formulate some questions regarding having multiple types of ethics. I asked the class, "Have you heard of Marriage Ethics, Sports Ethics, Driving Ethics, or Raising Kids Ethics?" They all said, “No.” But they were taking a class called “Business Ethics”. Why do we have an entire subject dedicated to Ethics in Business?

Yesterday morning I had breakfast with my college coach and we were talking about how it is often easy to justify a different set of ethics in sports. A similar example came up in my conversations with the class when one of the students talked about the last World Cup the USA Women's soccer team won. I had not heard this but the USA goal keeper had stopped a shot during a shoot-out that won them the game. After the game was over a slow motion replay showed the goal keeper steeping forward towards the shooter. In soccer this is illegal as you can only move laterally to stop the ball during a shoot-out. In keeping with a single sports theme, would you slide tackle someone in soccer knowing you could not get the ball to keep them from scoring?

If you knew it meant the difference between winning or losing the World Cup would you take a step forward? It is cheating and against the rules, but could you justify it for that? I don't know if the goal keeper did it on purpose or accident, but she did break the rules.

As a separate example if it meant paying the rent or not paying the rent, would your normal ethical actions change? Do your ethics change when you have more to lose?

During my research I found a quote that my buddy DJ had told me a while back from John Maxwell and made it the topic of discussion with the class.
“There's no such thing as business ethics—there's only ethics. People try to use one set of ethics for their professional life, another for their spiritual life, and still another at home with their family. That gets them into trouble. Ethics is ethics. If you desire to be ethical, you live by one standard across the board.”

The discussion in class was great and they really had awesome insight. Way better insight than I had during college. They even asked me some questions that I had not thought about with regard to a few personal experiences I shared with them. The short of it came to the fact that when there is more at stake you are more willing to move the ethical line. I even got a question during one of the discussions from a student asking if there was any way to “spin” a message so that it did not seem so bad. He didn't use the term “spin” but I think that was the underlying question. It is the dilemma of a whole truth versus half truth. If you tell half the truth does it cancel out not telling the whole truth, and is a half truth more ethical when there is more at stake? I say no, but my experience has showed me that when more is at stake what is ethical becomes hard to see.
I have not read John Maxwell's book, but his underlying premises is The Golden Rule still applies to life. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Thanks to moms around the world (especially mine), you were right.