When I was given a copy of Upbeat: Cultivating the Right Attitude to Thrive in Tough Times by a friend who had no connection with the author or publisher, one word in the title caught my eye – thrive. Many times we see books and get advice in how to just get by, especially these days. What also caught my attention was the cover was bright yellow. The author, Rajesh Setty, is trying to get a point across.

Upbeat is a small book and a quick read, but carries a positive message about reaffirming what to do to keep motivated. The book is in 2 parts – the first is narrative, the second is a summary, almost a checklist, for one to follow. Though many of the messages are not unique to this book, the reaffirmed takeaways I have had from other books.

My greatest takeaway is that you cannot do it alone. You need to have a network of people, as well as a mentor. Many entrepreneurs who work solo can easily fall into a quagmire as it is just them. Working and connecting with others will help gain perspective and help you see good in the bad.

Another takeaway is to remember to take care of yourself. A healthy body contributes greatly to a healthy mind. This is one I need to continuously remind myself of.

Everybody operates differently. Some have internal energy sources nobody can quite understand, even the person themselves. Others need a little help to keep motivated. If you are the latter, reading Upbeat might be the nudge you need.

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Book Take-Aways • Business • (1) Comments • Permalink

There is no shortage of business books available to read. All of them offer some unique perspective on one or many aspects of business. As is shown from an entire category here at The Hot Iron on book takeaways, I enjoying reading a variety of business books and manage to take something away from them. With some books, something resonates with me strongly, even if it is a reaffirmation of something I already know.

This was the case for me with The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. It is considered a “classis” small business book as it talks about the dilemma most entrepreneurs (what the “e” stands for) get into, where what they thought was creating a business was more creating a job. Gerber, in a narrative style, takes the reader to the point where they are, and guides them out of it and back to leading a business.

In this description I have oversimplified the details of the book, as there are many to go through, plus I did not want to give too much away as I am hoping anyone who owns their own business reads the book! There is certainly a lot in each step of Gerber’s process, especially as he has developed a consulting firm around helping people do so. I will share with you my takeaways from this book.

My greatest take away from The E-Myth Revisited is to write is down, and write down everything. I am not just referring to to-do lists, rather I am talking about writing everything from a business plan to operation plans to logins and passwords. Many people will confirm with me that if it isn’t written down, it will never happen. This rings true especially for business planning. Why many people don’t write things down is because they believe they do not have to, that it is in their heads and that is good enough. However you will get to a point that you wished you wrote it down, so you have something to look to at all times as a barometer at how successful you are.

An equally important takeaway is to determine what you want out of your business. For most entrepreneurs, including myself, going on your own meant you wanted to do things the way you felt they should be and not how you did them working for someone else. Where this is true, one thing you probably didn’t want to do was work 20 hours a day, every day or balance your business’ books on a regular basis! In E-Myth Gerber calls this your Primary Aim, and defining it even several years down the road is important for you to do. I know, I did it myself.

Note both of these takeaways are not necessarily earth-shattering revelations you could only get from the book. Perhaps it was the style of the book, or when I read it personally, that made these points resonate with me.

The E-Myth Revisited was recommended to me by many people. I purchased my own copy and was personally compelled to write this post. My only regret with reading it is that I wished I read it very early on in the starting of my business. After reading it, myself and a colleague decided to go through defining our Primary Aims and we shared out discoveries. It was a soul-searching experience, not to mention important activity. Needless to say I recommend this book to anyone who is thinking of starting a business or even someone who is already in business who has not read it yet. I consider The E-Myth Revisited a must-read business book, with the likes of Barry Moltz’s You Need To Be a Little Crazy: The Truth About Starting and Growing Your Business. Note the links to books in this post are affiliate links to Amazon.com.

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Book Take-Aways • Business • (2) Comments • Permalink

The FTC has released new guidelines related to endorsements and testimonials in advertising. What is new and alarming to some in these guidelines is the inclusion of blogging and bloggers. In summary, if a blogger gets something for free or is asked to write about something and does so, they must disclose this in their blog post or face monetary fines.

I say in summary as I have read the 81-page guidelines published by the FTC and I am still digesting it. I am not a lawyer, but fortunately the language in this government edict is relatively straightforward. I am working on a full post and opinion on this, which I hope to complete for next week.

In the meantime, people are obviously talking about this, some citing examples of situations which will require them to state disclaimers about their relationship with whom they are writing about. One such example is from billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, who wrote in his blog about having his breakfast comped at IHOP. Where his writing style is tongue-in-cheek, according to the new FTC guidelines he would have to mention he received something for free when he talks about them.

The cost of breakfast at IHOP is under $10 - what about for something of more value, say a trip across the globe to Finland? That happened to me and about 3 dozen others when we attended Nokia OpenLab last September. As part of the trip I got a free round-trip coach ticket, 3 nights in a boutique hotel in Helsinki, meals, entertainment and a loaner Nokia E71 device. I would guestimate the value of all of that was over US$1,000. Does this mean every time I mention anything about Nokia – the company and or its products – I have to disclose this trip, as it could be considered influential to anything I say positive about them? Unfortunately there is nothing I found in the FTC guidelines to specifically address this.

For the bloggers out there, have you looked into these guidelines? What is your take on how it will impact how and what you write? Have you consulted an attorney about this? Will this change the face of blogging forever?

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Business • (2) Comments • Permalink

Problems happen. If you ask most people it is not the problem itself, but in how it is resolved. To achieve this, there is commonly a process involved, and depending on what vendor or company you are working with, they will have their own method of a resolution process. In most cases this method is customer-centric, focused around not only resolving the problem but ensuring the customer or client is satisfied with how it was resolved. In those rare but abundant cases, it is merely a process of closing tickets in a queue, which does nothing for the customer.

As I am writing about this, you can guess it has happened to me a number of times over the years. A recent series of occurrences with a vendor has had this thought simmering in the back of my head, only to have it come to the forefront when I found out the lack of customer interest permeates other departments within this vendor, and finally I am putting fingers to keyboard on it.

The Customer Doesn’t Care What’s Behind the Curtain

Does it always seem that you, the customer, have a better handle on a problem than the vendor? Whenever you connect with the vendor – by phone, email, etc. – does it seem like you are going back to square one with them? And if you ever bring it up to them, they will certainly blame it on things you have no control over – their problem reporting system, the fact that one of their staff on a different shift did not enter all of the information, and so forth.

Note these are their problems, but now that you have to reinvent the problem with them, they by default become yours too. The missing piece here is the overall concern and caring on the part of the vendor’s staff. I would bet US$1.00 that whenever the tech support person is documenting a problem report, they do not add to it there is missing information or the customer is disappointed in the resolution process. I would double the bet and say they do not fire off an email to a manager for them to review the case, with concern the customer may take their business elsewhere. It is often the personal interactions with staff which cause someone to go elsewhere – think about offshored customer service and you really know what I mean.

The specific issue which caused me pain with this vendor was with a tech support issue. I had logged a ticket on a Thursday, did not reply on Friday and when I went to on Monday, I got a returned email message stating the problem ticket was closed. What? When I called and confronted the support staff about this, I was blatantly told they set all tickets to expire after 72 hours, and they felt there was no reason to keep a ticket open in their queue if it really didn’t need to be there. When I told them the issue was neither resolved and that this policy was the stupidest thing I had ever heard, I was simply told to submit a new ticket.

As Long as the Customer Thinks They Are Right…

Legendary retailer Marshall Field is quoted in saying the customer is always right. I am sure Field did not mean that the customer is always, 100% correct and the vendor is in the wrong to question them. Rather, this is a call to action for the vendor to hold in high regard the concerns of the customer and strive to resolve any issue they may have. If you feel like you are being treated well, you are then a happy customer. If the opposite, you are looking to spend your money elsewhere. This opposite must permeate your organization, especially to those on the front-line who deal with customers.

As the Holiday Inn Express sign stated in an earlier post, it’s the little things. When you think in this detail you realize what type of business you are truly in. If it isn’t obvious, it is not about the internal process, but about the external customers, the ones who provide you with the money to fund your internal process. Your customer doesn’t care about your processes, just their problem. And you should be thinking like them as well.

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Business • (2) Comments • Permalink

I always wanted to put this disclaimer on a Web site, “No stock media was harmed in the creation of this Web site.” Where there is some sarcasm in the message, it also shows my preference to not use stock media, whether they are drawings, photography or video. Why you ask? A major reason is that somebody may notice, which only gets magnified if it is shown on national television! This video below is from The Jay Leno Show where someone sent in print advertisement with the same stock photo of a family used for different companies.

If you don’t see the above video, you can view it with this link.

There is demand for stock media as it is much less costly than custom-created media. Depending on the purpose, it may make perfect sense to use stock media. Do you want to use the skyline of a particular city on a Web site? It makes more sense to pay a few dollars for an image than to hire a photographer and an airplane to take the shot. For other “generic” items the same reasoning can apply. You most likely will not find specific items, such as brands, available as stock media.

So why is stock media much less expensive than custom media? The reason is non-exclusivity. This means you purchase the license to use the media for a particular purpose, such as on a Web site, and somebody else can do the same for their Web site, or brochure or other display purposes. The reason the family was shown in the video for 3 different insurance companies is because it was probably categorized as such, and when a search was performed it came up under the insurance category.

As cost is a deciding factor, stock media is often chosen if the budget does not allow for custom media. Note I am not criticizing the quality of the media itself – it is most all done by professionals and is of high quality. However as it is created to be used for many purposes, it can look very generic and not specific to a locale or industry. As Web users become more sophisticated, they can often recognize a photo that doesn’t look like it completely fits on the Web site. A good example is when a company shows photos of its management team, yet none of them are in the photo of people sitting around a table on another Web page.

In addition to the photos themselves appearing in multiple places, many times you can even recognize some of the people in other places. At a former employer stock photos were used on the Web site. Shortly after I saw one of the women from the Web site in signs in CVS and Staples stores! Granted I worked on the redesign of the Web site that used these photos and was much closer to them as well. For our budget, we could have taken photos exclusive for our use, and they would have also been more realistic looking as well.

When it comes time to design or redesign your Web site, think about the media you will be using as much as the content. If you can afford it, go with custom media. You will get greater control of the scenes as well as have a completely unique user experience.

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Business • Technology • (0) Comments • Permalink