Strategy

What Are You Really All About?

/ Jeff Hora / Leave a comment

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blind men and elephant

The blind men and the elephant

Remember the old fable about the blind men and the elephant? Each one of them touched a different part of the animal and conjured up a description of it that was wildly different from the others’, based on their personal experience.

Stay with me….

I have had an experience like this with my business recently. Instead of being blind, though, it’s more like I was up-close-and-personal with my section of the elephant. All I could see clearly was the bit right in front of me. In my desire to really get a good look at where I am and where I’m going, I tried stepping back a bit, but really only got a wider view of the broadside of the elephant, though. I needed to back WAAAAAAAY up to really see it as an elephant….er, as my business.

I am fortunate. I just got back from almost two weeks’ worth of vacation on a lovely tropical island. Lots of beach time, lots of “spare room” for my mind to unwind, and little to no “screen time” to distract me (THAT was nice!). It took most of the vacation for my mind, at all levels, to unwind and back-off enough to not only see the elephant, but discern if this was the elephant I wanted and have been working for / toward for years.

This is humbling, and an eye-opener…

One consideration I confronted was “What do I consider success?” This is a tougher-than-you’d-think question. It is beyond revenue, recognition, client-lists, board and committee memberships, or mission statements. It is “What am I about?” and “Why do I do this…..really?“

This requires me to go deeper into my reason for being. If I truly believe the importance of mindfulness and the present moment, this must be reflected by my business. As a consultant (which holds for any small business owner…), I really AM my business. So, again, what am I about?

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Strategy: Is Your Goal a Place or a Direction?

/ Jeff Hora / Leave a comment

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Strategy

Strategy

You started out putting together something that you could call a Business Plan, right? If you had some help, or needed one to present to the bank or some investors, it was probably pretty detailed and held most everything you hoped to accomplish and how you would get there, all in one hefty document.

Then you launched your business, and got down to the day-to-day of keeping things going and growing.
The months and years flew by. Some products and services took off, and others flopped. You made adjustments, and kept at it. You marketed to your select audience the best you knew how, taking advantage of every free or low-cost method you could find so you could keep costs down. Your strategy, such as it was, was “Keep Things Going!” It worked for awhile…

Now it’s been several months or probably years. You’re working like crazy, but the return has slowed. Even if you’re getting new customers, you’re not getting as many return customers. Your products and services have changed a bit (or a lot..), but not much of the other pieces of the business framework has. You’re still not as profitable as you need to be to REALLY be making a living. You keep looking for things you can alter a bit or tweak to squeeze out more, but you’re running out of options.

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Personas Are NOT the Audience!

/ Jeff Hora / Leave a comment

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Personas

Personas

I read an exceptional article by Mitch Joel recently entitled “The Audience (formerly known as the Audience)“. In it he writes about how perceptions and standard audience research (that leads to the creation of personas or avatars for marketing purposes…) are actually quite flawed. The challenge to fixing this or working through it, is in the ways they are flawed.

Here’s a scenario:

You are developing a new product for your client base that is aimed at stay-at-home moms. Immediately, a persona of the stay-at-home mom is put together in your mind’s eye…

  • Female
  • early 30s – early 40s
  • Spouse / Partner works out of the home, 9-5.
  • Wears casual / workout clothing for comfort and ease of care (the kids are ALWAYS spilling things…)
  • Drinks a LOT of coffee
  • Perpetually exhausted with too much to do
  • Drives a “family” vehicle (mini-van / SUV) that is full of child-related stuff
  • Gets together with friends regularly (with children) to chat and commiserate.
Do you see this stay-at-home mom persona in your mind’s eye? 

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Reviews: Don’t ignore them! It’s Your Reputation…

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How do YOU manage your reputation?

How do YOU manage your reputation?

I got the chance to speak to a large group of business leaders this week about online reviews and how to work with them. This is an area that continues to be of concern to businesses, and has gained particular focus in the past few weeks with the troubles that United Airlines has had.

First there was the eviction of a couple of young women from an airplane for wearing leggings (read more about this incident here). Without going deep into company policy regarding employee’s and their dependents using the United “pass rider” benefit, it is a bit vague and worth reviewing at the company policy level. The company took serious public relations heat for this.

Even more infamous was the recent incident where a paying passenger was forcibly evicted from a flight, apparently chosen at random, to make room for 4 United employees who needed the seats to get to an assignment elsewhere. The video that was shot by another passenger on the plane shows this person being forced by airport security, in a most physical and brutal way, from his seat and off the plane. To say that United Airlines has taken a HUGE hit to its reputation as a result is an understatement (a 5% stock drop amounting to more than $600,000,000, although by the opening bell the next day it had regained almost all the value, and news outlets and social media piling on them has been very visible). How the company communications progressed in the aftermath didn’t help their public case much either (read more about the “Apologies Timeline” in this New York Times article). United now says that certain policies have been altered and others are under review to keep this from happening again. The changes will need to demonstrable and highly visible before they can begin to rebuild the trust deficit they’ve experienced.

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Which is Key for Your Customers: Innovation or Influence?

/ Jeff Hora / Leave a comment

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Influencer's Universe

The Influencers’ Universe

Any business follows the well-know track of building awareness -> establishing reputation -> making money. Each of these has its own challenges and opportunities for advance and missteps. Ignoring any of them isn’t an option, and you can’t really hop over any of them either, despite the burning desire to get to the “making money” bit.

I recently read an article by Valeria Maltoni entitled How to Increase an Idea’s Adoption Rate. In it she writes of how a couple of individuals became key influencers in their fields, and how one in particular approached this goal with some preconceptions (that, frankly, mirror a lot of thoughts business owners have when going into business or launching new products and services…) that fell flat.

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Draw the Line from Problem to Strategy and Back

/ Jeff Hora / Leave a comment

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Problem to Strategy

Problem to Strategy

I wrote an article awhile back called Reaction is Not Solution. In it I wrote about how you can discover a problem and are then presented with a couple of different paths to solve it. Unfortunately, the culture in many businesses is to not even bring a problem to the surface unless you have a solution ready to share. In that article I go over why that’s probably not a great idea.

While it was more about decision-making and problem-solving, I never addressed strategy and planning in that article. Admittedly I am in a different position now as an entrepreneur, and it can seem to others that I can afford the “luxury” of working on mapping strategy and plans to a problem, spending the time needed to research and virtually test possible scenarios before heading in a single direction. I’d like to say that (a) that always happens, (b) it always works, and (c) I always have time to do it. None of those is true. So, the only difference between my current state and that of when I worked in corporate is that now my own business needs drive my discipline to the process, as opposed to the requirements laid on me by my manager. The latter is annoying, but the former will raise the hairs on the back of your head, believe me.

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Doing Specifics the Right Way

/ Jeff Hora / Leave a comment

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specific

Be Specific!

The challenge of being specific is that it seems impossible to scale.

What does being specific mean in your business? It’s the truth behind perception, communication, understanding, prejudice and the barriers presented by a kind of ‘telephone’ game space between people. It means that if you can connect with one person, that doesn’t mean you can connect with the next one, no matter HOW much alike they are. And that is the end point….how do you plan or strategize for this kind of connection?

Going by previous data and experience will only get you so far. And sometimes it doesn’t even work for the same person! Think about how your own thoughts and feelings have changed over the years. If the “younger me” tried to convince the “today me” of a number of things about people, places, beliefs, prejudices and things I’ve learned more about over the years, well….I would have walked away as a younger man.

So back to being specific…in business, I’ve learned that a focus on “anybody who” as a customer is actually no one. Even honing it down to “A small business owner with a company that has 5 – 100 employees and has been in business for at least 5 years” is too broad. What do they care about? What are those 2 or 3 things that are nagging, painful problems they just can’t seem to crack? While each business is unique and has its own problems, there ARE business norms and trends in the U.S. There is a certain amount of consistency.

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Start by Engaging in the New Year! – Best of January

/ Jeff Hora / Leave a comment

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Social Media Engagement

Social Media Engagement

This case study, while focusing on the use of Post Planner as a tool, provides a number of terrific strategies on going full-tilt to build engagement across your social media channels. Take note of his advice at the end of the article….understand the importance of a solid yet flexible strategy!

Social Media Changes

Social Media Changes

There are number of lesser known changes to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn that are going to impact your activities and those of your audience, so you should definitely become familiar with them. This article goes over 8 of them that are most likely to make a difference.

Video Tools

Video Tools

You’re already aware that video is HUGE online, and 2017 is only going to see its influence increase. You need to figure out how to leverage it and world-class story-telling for your business. The 6 tools described in this article are each just different enough that you should be able to find the one that will work for you, even if you think are, shall we say, “ability constrained”…

David Ogilvy

David Ogilvy

This excellently focused article by Valeria Maltoni underscores the clarity and wisdom of this list of guiding tips by David Ogilvy on writing well. Much harder than it seems, if you’re looking to up your content writing game, you can’t do better than this.

Facebook Cheat Sheet

Facebook Cheat Sheet

I and most all my clients constantly refer to cheat sheets for image sizes online. To neglect this bit of information means you’re more likely to post a graphic or photo that gets cropped or, as one of my clients says, “Schmooshed”! Don’t let that happen to you…
Awareness

Awareness

This article confronts the challenge of getting noticed online despite all of the noise on the Internet. Building awareness, especially in a crowded industry, is tough. Think differently about how to do this and your chances improve a LOT!

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FOCUS: How Do You Compare Awareness vs. A Noisy Internet?

/ Jeff Hora / Leave a comment

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Awareness

Awareness

Moving from Awareness (I sometimes call it Discoverability…) to Reputation, and then to some kind of Economic Engagement (Sales, Donations, etc…) is a well-known path for many businesses.

The first stop on this journey is gaining Awareness of your business. Sadly, there are still a number of businesses who feel and act as though the best way to get attention is to YELL A LOT ONLINE! This number is shrinking, but they are still there. What the rest scatter into are versions of:
  • Semi-random posts based partly on the business and partly on when whomever is managing the online activity has time or interest to post something. Hence pages that will have four posts in one day, and then go 3 months before the next one.
  • A steady stream of “We’re Great! Everyone Says So!” and “Buy Our Stuff!“. These folks generally post a lot, and descend into “Internet Noise” pretty quickly…
  • The “Cats Rule the Internet” strategy, where a large number of posts are entertaining GIFs and Videos of Pets, People and Fun things, but without any balancing of content that’s valuable to the customer, except for those who find filling their day with looking at this kind of stuff valuable. May drive a l lot of traffic, but no business.
  • Patterns that ALMOST come together into a coherent plan, but lack the real strategy to make progress in their marketing and business goals. Sometimes the owner is a regular use of some channel like Facebook, and so knows kind of what others do, but hasn’t worked through how that looks for her business.
  • Some solid execution plans that are moving the needle for the business and producing value. These companies are intelligently investing in and leveraging digital/social media to MAKE MONEY.

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What’s The Truth About Your Big Bang Theory?

/ Jeff Hora / Leave a comment

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Big Bang Theory

Big Bang Theory

The Big Bang Theory.

No, not the TV show or the Universe Origin theory. I mean what’s your plan (personal and business) for when something catastrophic takes place? Not only that, but, as anyone who has lived in the world of business for a while knows, there is likely some distance between “theory” and “reality.” That’s the problem…

Many businesses have a disaster plan. Call it crisis management, emergency management planning, or what you will, if you have spent time identifying likely disaster scenarios, you have invested in creating plans for them that will mean less disruption to you and your business. There are an enormous amount of resources available for the Small Business Administration here, which are helpful in the process. However, it is impossible to plan for Every Single Crisis you could confront. Not only that, but the test of a plan is how it works when the event takes place, and this is where a lot of businesses fall down. Business catastrophes are many times predicated on natural disasters of some sort. That is well and good. There are other disasters, aside from death (dying is a real problem, obviously, but not the focus of this article….), that take place. Many of these are personal, and can have a huge impact on your business, especially if you are a solo-preneur.

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