March Makes A Difference!

• What is driving you and your team?
• What is your defined purpose and strategic mission as an organization?
• What are you doing to engage and motivate your team to win?
• What are you doing to equip yourself and your team to win?

Funny how some non-structured time in the sun with a good book allows your mind to wander and wonder. Amazing how the warmth and sea air can stimulate your imagination and your ability to dream. March is the end of your 1st quarter and a good time to pause and reflect on how you and/or your team are actually doing. Remember those goals you set late last year or early this year? How are you doing?

I found myself rethinking ‘what I do’ and ‘why I do it’ on a recent trip to Cancun. I had a wonderful time addressing the dealer/owners of a Canadian National Tire Chain. They were very receptive and open to challenge their own experiences and to revisit ‘why’ and ‘what’ they were doing. This, I believe, is the beginning of building strong, long-term foundations for profitable success under any organization. I hope my time with them will lead to additional opportunities to serve them and work with their organization. They are a great team of people!

From personal experience, having a “strongly defined,” visual image of your purpose and a strategic mission of what you do will keep you focused. It will also keep you fired up and excited about your business and career. It will help you ride the tough times and challenges that come with everyday life and modern day business.

My challenge for you is to take a minute… ok, 15 minutes, and take a serious look at what you are doing.

Ask yourself,

• Why you are doing it?
• What real value do you bring to your industry, market, and clients?
• What are you willing to change to make it better, more attractive, and value-added to your team and your customers?

(c) Copyright 2006 Bob ‘Idea Man’ Hooey
Creative Catalyst & Idea Farmer

iMedia Connection: Experience Wanted:

Gay is challenging us as business people to focus on giving our customers what they want… a better and deeper experience.
This a a portion of her remarks recently.

“Old-school thinking

I’m still seeing a lot of hesitation amongst old-school marketers to try this. These are the same dinosaurs that are willing to spend tons of money on TV spots and other branding efforts without any honest-to-god results. They’re driving with their blinders on, and if they’re not careful, they’re going to be left behind.

You can’t score if you don’t play the game. Experiment with different messages and media placements. Give your online creative teams bigger budgets for photography, video, animation and illustration. With the right resources, they may just come up with that stopping experience that gives people a reason to take a detour and invest their time with your brand– leaving a lasting impression and taking the first step toward increasing sales.

Disciplines and wild rides

I’d like to leave you with three points that I think are crucial to success:

As you test your way into this, be disciplined not only about collecting data, but also about understanding your data.

Commit budget, tools and staff to analyze your findings– and use that information to refine, refine, refine.

Embrace the different media that are out there. From podcasts to cell phones, there is an unprecedented number of avenues available today to convey your message. Dig deep to see if the medium is right for the message and to gain a clear understanding of how you can leverage each medium to the best possible means.

Keep an eagle-eye on the cost-effectiveness of what you’re doing. Stick with your testing, and give it enough time to see if it works. However, if after a sales cycle you see that something isn’t working, don’t hesitate to put a bullet in its head. It’s like I always tell my team– fail fast, and get 80 percent of it right.

Gay Warren Gaddis is the President and CEO of T3 (The Think Tank). I get her ezine on occassion and find what she and her team have to say informative and challenging/

Fall is now upon us and the summer is a softly fading memory. The days are growing shorter, the leaves are turning color and some are shedding already. Now what?

Where do you go from here?

Henry R. Luce who published “Time,” “Life” and other magazines once wrote, “Business more than any other occupation is a continual dealing with the future; it is a continual calculation, an instinctive exercise in foresight.”

Whether you are an entrepreneur, leading edge manager, or a rising star employee; taking time to consider the future, as you may encounter it, is one of the most important activities in which you invest. Your career is important – why not invest in it now!

Perhaps you took some time to reflect on your future and that of your team or company over the summer? Great! So now what?

• Where do you go from here?

• What changes are you going to initiate to re-invent yourself and ensure what you offer is more attractive and beneficial to your prospective clients?
• What changes are you going to revise in your processes to make them more effective?
  What investments are you going to put into your personal skills training and that of your team?
• How will you prepare for future success and service?
• What is your ‘next’ move or ‘next’ level to strive for?

You see, each of us is continually making changes and decisions which affect our future.

I’ve been quoted as saying, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it or create it!”

That “creation” is an act of faith and a deliberate forward thinking action we take… we have the opportunity to take personal leadership in making our lives what we imagine and in making the lives of our clients, colleagues, family and friends, better than they ever imagined.

Drop me a line and let me know where you are “going” this fall: bob@ideaman.net

• Visit our main website: www.ideaman.net and sign up for our newly redesignedIdeas@Work! – Strategies to Success monthly ezine.
• Visit our www.businessSuccess.ca site for free downloadable leadership, business and career development articles from some of North America’s top experts and authors.
• Visit one or more of our Ideas At Work! Group websites to see what we’ve been up to this summer.

• By working on the business, I mean spending time in strategic planning and development of new service and profit areas.
• By working on the business, I mean investing time marketing and promoting what you do to current and prospective clients.
• By working on the business, I mean investing time and resources in your own skills development.
• By working on the business, I mean investing time in strategic play and creative indulgence. This will energize your mind and your body.

When you are working in the business, your focus is on doing the jobs, engagements, projects that you have commmitted to doing. The result of not investing time to work onthe business is the gigantic roller coaster of cash flow and client engagement.

I love to be busy and am at my best when I am working on a variety of projects. This allows me to more fully utilize my energy and creativity. I can switch from one project to another and often this change is an energizer. But I need to remind myself that some of those projects need to be focused on building the business by working on the business.

For example: We’ve just designed and launched our Ideas@Work! – Strategies for Success e-zine earlier this month and will be sending out our June issue at the end of the month. I’m already working on the July, August and September issues. (Editor’s note: we are now (2011) in our 7th year.

My plan is to have at least one issue completed a month in advance at all times. That way, should I find myself too busy or away from the office, I can still send it out on time. I can add breaking news as needed, but the majority of the ezine will be locked and loaded. I am also working ahead and eventually will take part of my ‘mini-breaks’ as creative writing sessions where I can work on issues as far out as 6 months.

Another area where we have taken some pro-active moves in expanding and working on the business is in the expansion of our websites. We have registered quite a few websites and are busy creating a series of mini-sites that will serve to promote or focus on specific services.

These mini-sites will also act as portals leading people to our main sites. With more people searching the web for products and professional services it makes dollars and sense to invest in creating opportunities for current and potential clients to find us and find out what we can do for them.

We need to work for a sense of fluidity or balance in our lives, careers and companies. We are never really in balance, but we can work to ensure we are not running full tilt, out of control toward a brick wall or cliff in our futures.

Investing time to work on your life, career or business is the best investment of your time and resources. The pay offs can be tremendous in better use of time, increased energy, enhanced career success, increased productivity and profitability.

If you need a hand, drop me a note at: bob@ideaman.net or visit one of our main sites:www.ideaman.net, www.leadersedge.biz, or www.secretsellingtips.com If you’d like to be added to our monthly ezine simply send me an email with subscribe in the subject line at: bob@ideaman.net

What a great Friday I had! Was invited to Red Deer College to do a keynote for a student organized Office Admin conference. What a great group of women… and what a great job they did too!

This is a class project for the 2nd year students and in my opinion, they passed with flying colors.

From a speaker’s perspective they made me feel right at home and were very responsive as I shared some ideas during the 100 mins or so on stage.

I was able to encourage them to take risks and to sail out of the protection of their ‘safe habour’ as they finish their program and tackle building their new careers.

I shared the story of my Hawaii to Kobe, Japan story with the typhoon encounter as the background for my remarks.

The nice thing about this event was being able to actually stay around and talk with some of the audience members instead of having to rush off to another plane or drive to the next engagement. This was a luxury I do not enjoy too often and it was fun. Nice to hear the remarks and answer questions in person.

To the organizing class of Red Deer College’s Office Admin program… my thanks for a wonderful day…. YOU DID GREAT!

Am starting to use this new tool now, so look for more frequent postings as I learn how to leverage myself and my skills with it.

It has been a busy year already… did a public program on presentation skills Jan 14th and then left for a two week break… had the opportunity to visit friends in Vancouver, Bellingham, Las Vegas and Phoenix and attend a 3 day business building workshop in Scottsdale enroute.

Am focused this year on increasing the passive income side of my businesses…. so buy a book… smile. Visit www.SuccessPublications.ca

Just got back from Washington, DC a week or so back… was speaking in Bethesda, MD on the 10th.

Actually played tourist…. saw the White House, Smithsonian, and Ford Theatre… and took some pictures with my new camera phone… so will be able to share some of them with you along the way now.

Bob