Skip to main content
Category

Comments & Opinion

Apr 21 2014
Love0

Why you Need to be a Thought Leader

By Comments & Opinion, Entrepreneurial, Business Insights, Foundations of Success, Leadership, Personal Accountability No Comments

As I mentioned in my blog post last week, using social media is a great way to gain exposure and build your personal brand. One point that I briefly touched on was about sharing your unique industry experiences through social media channels, and how this will make you a thought leader. But what exactly is thought leadership, and why is it important?

The term itself is pretty self explanatory. It’s someone who has established authority in their work field and has become the “go to” person when you need to know about a specific topic. I’m not going to explain how to become a thought leader, as there are plenty of articles that do a great job of detailing how to create thought leading content. However, I do have three main reasons as to why you need to be a thought leader – and one cautionary piece of advice:

Kills Competition – The best thing about being a thought leader is that you’ll instantly kill your competition. Think about it, if you were a potential customer and had to choose between two different companies, which would you rather choose: the company that has a president who regularly produces content as an expert in their field, or just a regular company?

Lead Generation – Speaking to the point above, generating knockout content that provides your audience with great value isn’t just useful for building a following. There’s bound to be people who’ll take a look at your content and decide that your product or service is worth the price of admission, based only on the fact that you’re an expert at what you do.

Increased Exposure – Another benefit to thought leadership content is the amount of exposure it will get you and your company. This will bring many visitors to your website or blog, and with the proper linking techniques,it can be great for your SEO, PR and content marketing efforts.

However, be Prepared to be in the Spotlight – The piece of cautionary advice that I mentioned links directly to the point above, and most entrepreneurs don’t consider it. Love it or hate it, once you’ve become an established thought leader every piece of information that you publish will be under scrutiny, which can lead to some nasty dialogue between you and your newly expanded audience.

It takes a long time to position yourself as a thought leader, but the sooner you figure out why you should become one, the sooner you’ll begin the process of becoming one. Of course, I myself am still on this journey, but I’m glad I started sooner rather than later. Are you trying to become a thought leader? What pieces of advice would you offer anyone starting out?

Apr 14 2014
Love0

Personal Brand Building with Social Media

By Comments & Opinion, Success & Inspiration, Entrepreneurial, Business Insights, Foundations of Success No Comments

One of the biggest challenges I’ve recently faced is jumping deeply into social media. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t understand the value of social media, I honestly just couldn’t dedicate an adequate amount of time to try and build a proper following. Fast forward to the present and I’m happy to say that I’ve not only been able to post consistently on my blog here, but also on my personal Twitter account.

But why even bother with a social media presence? Most entrepreneurs have been told time and time again that social media is important, but it’s rarely explained why it’s so important. Every user will define the importance in their own way, but for me, social media is a powerful tool to build your own personal brand. As an entrepreneur, you’ve probably started a business in the field of your choice, which means that you’ll be able to provide incredible value to your audience by sharing your unique insight, be it with short and succinct tweets or in-depth blog posts. Sharing these kinds of insights on your social media channels will eventually make you a thought leader in your field, but of course, this will take time.

When it comes to social media, another point that will take time and effort is growing your number of followers. For what seemed like the longest time, my Twitter account had only a handful of followers and refused to grow. After discussing strategies with a digital marketer, the two most valuable lessons I was able to learn was that (a) follow growth takes time and (b) I simply wasn’t being social enough.

These two items are very important to know for any of your social media efforts, be it for personal use or for your brand. The first point about follower growth is especially critical, as business owners become very disappointed with their lack of growth in a set period of time and abandon all of their social media channels. Using my own Twitter account as an example, after two months of consistent use, I now have 190 followers. This is following three months where I couldn’t break 40 followers. So what happened that made my follower number jump? It leads directly to the second point of being social.

It’s called social media for a reason: if you don’t join in on the conversation, then you can’t expect to see any kind of growth or engagement. Admittedly, one of the things I want to improve on is the engagement of my audience. While I do interact with my followers, I want to specifically try and reach out to more of them and get a regular dialogue going. You need to interact with your followers regularly, otherwise no matter what kind of information you share on your accounts, it’ll quickly become irrelevant.

What has your experience with social media been like? I’d love to discuss this topic more in depth in the comments below.

Apr 07 2014
Love0

How do you become a Successful Sales Manager? (Infographic)

By Comments & Opinion, Business Insights, Sales Advice, Foundations of Success No Comments

successful-sales-teamIt’s unfortunate, but there are sales managers who think that if their sales team is meeting all of their quotas, then there’s no possible way they can get any better. This, of course, couldn’t be any further from the truth. There are always steps that a sales manager can take to become more successful.

I found a great infographic (which you can find at the bottom of this post) from Level Eleven that looks at the secrets of a successful sales manager. The infographic offers valuable insights, and I was able to take three key lessons from it:

Train Your Sales Team to Manage Their Time Wisely – A large majority of sales people can dramatically increase their results with just a bit of direction on their time management skills.  Making sure that your sales team is focusing on important tasks and contacting prospects at the best times are just a few methods that you can instill within your team.

Take the Time to Mentor your Sales Team – Numerous stats on the internet show that it can take a sales person 9 to 12 months to become fully effective at their job. This means that you can’t give up on a member of your team just because they’re not as efficient as you expected they would be. If you take the time to nurture your sales team and ensure that they’re growing in the right direction, the long term pay off will be worth it.

Implement Incentive Programs – As Level Eleven shows, only 20% of sales people are organically motivated and engaged, meaning the other 80% need some kind of incentive to get them to reach their sales quota. Running an incentive program can bring out your team’s inner competitive spirit while boosting your company’s sales in the process. Keep in mind that the prizes of these programs don’t have to be anything completely over the top. Just like the infographic mentions, cash isn’t always the best option either. Tickets to an event, a special delivery of a fresh breakfast or even something as silly as an outdoor working station during nice weather are just a few ideas you could use.

Take a look at the infographic and let me know what you key lessons you took from it in the comments below.

Mar 31 2014
Love0

What did you Learn from the NCAA Sweet Sixteen Match-Ups?

By Comments & Opinion, Entrepreneurial, Business Insights, Foundations of Success No Comments

march-madness-for-businessThe Final Four have been chosen and next Monday the Championship Game will wrap up March Madness. Brackets have been broken, heartbreaks have been plentiful, and overall the dedication has been impressive. Throughout all of my years of running a business, I’m always surprised by the lessons you can learn from watching athletes who have dedicated their lives to becoming the best at their sport. Even if you’re not a fan of basketball, you can still learn numerous lessons from March Madness that you can bring back to your business:

Don’t Dismiss the Underdog – The staggering amount of upsets this year just goes to show that the underdog always has a chance. Just because your business is smaller than some of the better known brands in your industry, that doesn’t mean you don’t stand a chance. Innovative marketing strategies, outstanding public relations and stellar customer service are just some of the ways that your business can compete against larger brands.

Understand your Teammate’s Strengths – When you see a great team play in unison, it looks like they instinctively know where their other teammates will be ahead of time. This isn’t an accident; the players just make it look natural. After months and months of practice, every team member knows each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and they analyze their situation and make their decisions accordingly. This, of course, translates well to a business setting, but your team may be hesitant to admit that they have weaknesses. It’s imperative that you discuss this with your team, because if someone doesn’t understand their weaknesses, they’ll never be able to improve them.

Trust your Mentors – The advice offered by a mentor (or coach) can sometimes sound incredibly risky. They’re not the ones playing the game or running the business, so why should you listen to them? Well, a good mentor has years and years of expertise under their belt, and has experienced both the good and bad in their respected fields. Their triumphs and failures have given them a unique point of view. Don’t ever brush off advice that a mentor is willing to give you, but don’t blindly accept advice either.

You Can’t Predict The Future – This point has less to do with the athletes, but I still feel that entrepreneurs can learn from it. Warren Buffet had offered a $1 Billion to anyone who delivered a perfect bracket. Roughly 8.7 million entered the contest, even though Yahoo Sports said that there was a 1 in 128 billion chance of making a perfect bracket. And while all of the brackets had been called “un-perfect” by the Sweet Sixteen stage, it shows that no matter how astronomically impossible the odds may be, you have to at least try.

What lessons have you picked up while watching the tournament this year? More importantly, is your team still in the tourney? I look forward to chatting with you in the comments.

Mar 17 2014
Love0

Don’t Sell – Tell a Story

By Comments & Opinion, Entrepreneurial, Sales Advice, Foundations of Success 2 Comments

dont-sell-tell-a-story“I have an amazing product and I want to sell it to you!” If you ever want someone to hang-up on you immediately, just say that phrase and you’ll soon become best friends with the dial tone. Your sales team needs to understand that no one likes being sold to. In fact, it’s estimated that people are exposed to roughly 5,000 different advertisements per day, and thanks to this over-exposure of ads people will regularly tune out anything that begins to sound like a “sell” to them.

Your sales team has probably gotten comfortable telling their prospects that the product they’re selling is amazing, but probably haven’t considered using a story to back up their claims. A story will not only create a better emotional connection with your prospects, it will also leave a lasting impression with them and remind them not only of you, but of your product or service as well. Here are 3 advantages about story telling that I’ve learned over the years.

Stories Simplify Complicated Ideas – During a TED talk about storytelling, Andrew Stanton from Pixar delivered a great quote that really stuck with me: “Don’t give them 4, give them 2 + 2”.  People don’t want to hear the science of how your product will make their business run more efficiently, they simply want to know the results. Don’t get bogged down by the details of your strategy, just tell them a story that delivered concrete results, and explain that you’ll do the same for them.

Stories Leave An Impression –Most business owners and decision makers receive a large number of calls from salespeople every day, so having a memorable story in your arsenal can make a large difference between a meeting and a rejection. A decision maker will always remember an emotional story that meant something to them instead of a well-formulated sales pitch.

Stories Are Sharable – The best thing about a memorable story is that if you deliver it effectively, the listener will share that story with their peers. There’s nothing better than having an advocate of your product or service tell other people about it. Even if they don’t see any value in what you’re selling, they won’t mind sharing a story that stuck out in their mind.

Once your sales team is able to share stories with their prospects, they’ll have a creative way to be in their front of mind. If your team uses the age old “but I don’t have any stories” excuse, sit down with them and talk through some positive experiences they’ve had with past clients, and see if there are stories that they can adapt from that.

Does your team regularly use stories? What has their success been like? I would love to hear your successes and discuss more about this topic in the comments section.

Mar 10 2014
Love0

Motivate Yourself and You’ll Motivate Your Team

By Comments & Opinion, Entrepreneurial, Foundations of Success, Leadership, Personal Accountability No Comments

motivation-for-entrepreneursThere was a recent meeting I attended with my leadership team that got me thinking about motivation. We were discussing sales numbers, and I encountered a typical problem – the numbers were good, but they could have been much better. This can be difficult to communicate to staff, because some think that “good” is enough, and simply don’t have the motivation to improve their methods.

There are countless articles online that discuss how to motivate your employees. In fact, I encountered one great article from Inc.com that details three questions that you should ask your employees every few months to gauge their motivation. After reading this fantastic article, something occurred to me. At the end of the day, you need to make sure that you, yourself, are motivated to become a better worker, a better entrepreneur, and essentially a better person. Once you can keep yourself motivated to do better, you’ll understand how to motivate your team to do better. Here are three pieces of advice I can offer fellow entrepreneurs to help you motivate yourself:

Prioritize your Tasks: It’s easy to get bogged down by little tasks that may seem incredibly important to you at the time, but aren’t truly essential for day-to-day operations. If you keep getting distracted by little tasks, it will eventually drain you and leave you with little “juice” left to focus on the important items on your list. Take a step back and prioritize what tasks are truly essential to business operations, which will keep you focused and inspired to perform to the best of your abilities.

Realize That People Are Depending On You: They may not blatantly tell you to your face, but your team is depending on you in many different ways. They depend on you for guidance, mentorship and general leadership. Of course, it’s not just your team that is depending on you either – your family is depending on you too. When you realize that you have so many people counting on you, you’ll recognize that you have to become better in more ways than one.

Think about the Flip Side: As an entrepreneur, you ultimately decided to take the risk of running your own business for one central reason: you despise the idea of working for someone else. This one point alone is usually enough to motivate most entrepreneurs, but hectic days can make you lose sight of this. Remind yourself that you opened the doors of your business because you not only wanted to be your own boss – but you knew that you could do it better than anyone else.

What methods do you use to keep yourself motivated? Do you find that motivating yourself helps your team stay focused? I’d love to chat with you about this in the comments below.

Mar 03 2014
Love0

Don’t Halt Creativity in Your Office – Let it Grow

By Comments & Opinion, Success & Inspiration, Entrepreneurial, Business Insights, Foundations of Success One Comment

fostering-creativityNo matter what type of industry you’re working in, creativity is the foundation of exceptional work. If you’re not fostering that creativity in your workplace, your team won’t produce the best work that they’re capable of. I touched this point briefly in one of my previous blog posts, but I decided that I should expand on this issue because of how important it is. Making sure that your work environment is a transparent and accessible space for ideas to flow will let your team reach new creative heights, allowing them to produce stimulating work at the same time.

Be a Mentor: I know I’ve discussed this point to no end in other blog posts, but I come back to it so often because I can’t stress how important it is to provide an avenue for creative growth. You simply can’t bring someone onto your team without providing constructive criticism and constant mentorship. However, you can’t micro-manage people either; you need to find a balance where you can give them a space to devise their ideas, and then see how you can help these ideas grow.

Have an Open Door Policy – and Mean it: Tying in with my last point, a phrase that is often tossed around by leaders when a new team member is brought in is “my door is always open”, yet this isn’t always the case. When you tell your team that your door is always open – mean it. Be available to them when they have ideas, suggestions or even just banter. Not only does this make you more human from your staff’s point of view, it also makes them more comfortable with you. This means that they’ll feel at ease when they suggest outlandish (and often creative) ideas.

Encourage Open Discussion: When you come together with your team for a brainstorming session, you should ask everyone present to throw an idea on the table, no matter how “bad” they feel the idea is. This open exchange of creativity often leads to some great ideas created from a thought that could have been discarded. A great idea is simply a bad idea that has been refined.

Reward Great Ideas: One of the simplest and most effective ways to foster creativity in your workplace is to reward great ideas. Of course, this doesn’t mean punish bad ones, but when there is a fantastic idea brought to the table you need to praise and reward these efforts. Don’t go overboard and give every admirable thought a new car – it can be something as simple as a cup of coffee or showing them praise in a companywide e-mail.

Do you feel like you’re doing enough to encourage creativity in your workplace? What methods do you use at your office? Do you feel like your team is comfortable sharing all of their creative thoughts? I would enjoy discussing this topic with everyone in the comments. 

Feb 24 2014
Love0

What can Olympic Athletes teach Entrepreneurs?

By Comments & Opinion, Entrepreneurial, Business Growth, Planning for the future No Comments

OLY HKW Canada United States 20140220 TOPIXIf you’re like most Canadians I know, you were up on Sunday morning watching the Olympic men’s hockey team beat Sweden and earn their gold medal. Likewise, you were probably huddled around the computer in your office on Thursday afternoon watching the women’s hockey team defeat USA and earn their back-to-back gold medal as well.

It goes without saying that both of these teams got to the podium with determination, focus and training. Of course, they’ll take their well-earned rest, but after a few days they’ll be back to honing their skills because they know that they’ll have to prove they’re still the best during their next Olympic appearance. Entrepreneurs can learn many things from Olympic athletes and apply these lessons to their business operations. Here are three key lessons I’ve picked up from Olympic athletes this year:

Olympic Athletes Never Stop Training: Just because the teams have won the gold, do you think they’re going to lose their resolve? Olympians have to make sure they never lose the edge that got them their gold in the first place, which means they’re constantly looking for ways to maintain or improve their techniques for their next Olympic appearance.
Takeaway for Entrepreneurs: There should never be a time on your entrepreneurial path where you stop maintaining or improving skills that will help your business achieve growth. Sharpening old techniques and keeping up with new trends will ensure that your business continues to prosper.

Olympic Athletes Know They Didn’t get to the Podium on Their Own: When an Olympian receives their medal and talks to the media, they never say that they made it to where they are by themselves. The support they receive from their family, friends, and coaches is instrumental to getting them onto the podium.
Takeaway for Entrepreneurs: There isn’t a single entrepreneur that’s reached their level of success on their own. Support from family, friends, and mentors have helped entrepreneurs everywhere reach levels that they never thought were possible.

Olympic Athletes Know Their Goal, and Stop at Nothing to get it: For an Olympian, the goal is obvious – go for the gold. For these athletes, there is nothing more they want than to be on the podium accepting the gold medal for their country.
Takeaway for Entrepreneurs: As an entrepreneur, you should always have the gold in your sights. You need to have goals for your business, be it fiscal or personal. Having goals will give your business something to strive for, allowing your focus and resolve to influence your team.

You may feel like your business has reached the pinnacle of success, but there is no such thing when you’re an entrepreneur. The reality is, you can constantly grow your business, constantly learn new skills, and constantly try to take your business to the next level.

Jan 27 2014
Love1

Live Your True Calling

By Comments & Opinion, Success & Inspiration One Comment

Recently The Wish Group had our annual Winter Kick Off in Niagara Falls. The theme was centered on Top Gun and specifically around one of The Groups values of Discipline. My interpretation of the Top Gun theme beyond the integrity, energy and ambition that it takes to be one is understanding what your true calling and destiny in life is, similar to Tom Cruise’s character in the movie.

I’ve been rereading Steven Pressfield’s newest book Turning Pro which is a follow up to his amazing book The War of Art.  In this book Pressfield talks about “shadow” careers. That is to say, things we do that are not our true calling because we are afraid to or fall victim to resistance. Resistance, or the bad voice in your head, is what inhibits us from doing our work, from being a professional versus an amateur in our lives. We get a lot of certainty out of our shadow careers, but not true fulfillment. Imagine the actor who chose to be a server in a restaurant instead or the entrepreneur who took the 9 to 5 because it was a more certain path. The shadow career is a false expression of who we really are, it’s what I’ll call our fate or the way our life will turn out based on the circumstances of our life. Fate is letting your life be defined by your conditions and by fear. Fate is not destiny, destiny is something you create which has a calling to it. As Anthony Robbins says, growth equals happiness and in regards to our job in life – if we want to be happy we need to step into our destiny, into our calling.

For a long time in my life I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, a grade 8 teacher along with my father’s guidance helped me come to that conclusion. I focused much of my attention from that age until my mid-twenties pursuing that objective but it never felt right for some reason. That being said I think I would have been a good litigator and would have thrived as many living their shadow careers do. However something happened when I started my first entrepreneurial venture at the age of 28, it was like the universe hit me with a burst of energy and what became clear to me was that my true calling in life was being an entrepreneur and the result of that revelation changed my life so profoundly that my life’s purpose now is having others live their calling and expressing it with passion.

I’ve been on my destiny path for a few years now. At first I wasn’t even aware that it was my destiny and it started out terrifying and although it’s often still scary, I keep reminding myself that part of living your destiny and not your shadow career is being able to live with and even embrace uncertainty. It’s about declaring that you love how your life is currently unfolding regarding of whether you’re currently dealing with a breakdown or breakthrough. It’s about trusting that God or the universe always has your back and realizing you have a gift and your job is to give that gift to the world. It’s about doing what’s right, rather than what’s easy. It’s about turning pro and showing up to do your work- whether you are inspired to or not.

Are you living in your shadow career? Are you bound by fate or creating your destiny? Take the leap like I did years ago and you will be surprised at how graceful the transition will be and how joyful your life will become.

Jan 13 2014
Love0

Where there is no leadership, the people will perish!

By Comments & Opinion, Leadership, Personal Accountability No Comments

My last posting I introduced my life long hobby of hockey and my beer league team of the Screaming Eagles.  Since that posting I’ve become a lot more in tune of some potential on ice lessons and been on a pretty awesome point streak.  In the last post I spoke about how our team doesn’t have a formal coach and how we essentially have to hold each other accountable as peers and I spoke about the brilliance and effectiveness of that.  However, two games after that one our team organizer as I’ll call him, John Grobanopoulos (Grobo), not to be mistaken with George Strombolopolous (Strombo) who is another lifelong school mate, missed a game.  We joked prior to the game as we were getting dressed that his presence on the ice probably won’t be missed as we had several of our more talented players in attendance but what took place even before the puck dropped was noticeable and as a result reminded me of some valuable lessons in leadership and organizational behavior.

Right after warm up it was time for the puck drop and one of my team mates yelled out “what are the lines?” and all I heard was silence,  I knew immediately we may be in for a long night.  John although not the formal coach, looks after all the administration and setting of the lines, we were lost right off the bat, nobody seamlessly took over what might be a menial task yet an important one that can set the tone for the game and ultimately be the difference between winning and losing.  After some comical back and forth and mass confusion of who was starting even after we organized the lines we finally dropped the puck.  After we observed the pace and assessed our opponent, it was clear that our speed and talent far exceeded theirs and we should be able to easily defeat them.  However, without Grobo on the bench to make game observations to see who was on and which pairs were clicking, we suffered from a lack of discipline, taking too many penalties and ultimately not moving our feet enough.  Since we had more talent we kept it close and went late into the game holding a one goal advantage yet we let that slip away with only mere seconds left in the game.  This meant overtime which was also Grobo’s responsibility to decide who the best players of the night were and who deserved to play the extra session and ultimately give us the best chance to win.  Well needless to say especially since we were shaken by giving the late game tying goal, confusion and ego prevailed and we entered the overtime period as discombobulated as we had started the game and it took only 30 second for our weaker opponent to finish us off and emerge victorious.

As the screaming eagles retired to the dressing room and did what we do best (yell and drink beer), I sat and reflected and couldn’t help but notice how the lack of at least some organization, guidance and gentle accountability can be fatal to any team or organization.  It’s not always about being a charismatic game changing vocal leader who can quote all of Jack Welch’s books, sometimes all that is needed is someone who can keep order and eliminate confusion within an organization.  Upon John’s return when he asked how we lost to such a weaker opponent everybody chimed in with some excuses but I paid John a compliment and said we really missed him, and not necessarily his fierce back checking (he will resent that sarcastic comment) but his leadership.  Like the humble effective business and team leader that he is, he shrugged it off and taught me another lesson when he comically said “The key to leading or motivating a bunch of type A personalities is simply to out yell them”.  Can’t say I ever thought about that but at The Wish Group I lead several Presidents and a management team of over 20 type A’s and come to think of it I do yell a lot.  It’s an old biblical saying yet it’s true, without leadership regardless of its form a group or organization striving to achieve a task will perish or at least not be merely as effective as it can be.  I encourage each of you to reflect on times where nobody takes leadership of a situation and observe what occurs, it may be enlightening, and maybe that will motivate you to step up and take the leadership, because often leadership isn’t given, it’s taken.

Close Menu