Posts Tagged ‘Business Principles’

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Thursday’s Celebrity Apprentice was a pretty lackluster episode. I was excited to see Marilu Henner and Vincent Pastore square off. I like both of them, but Marilu seems to be a much stronger leader than Vincent. I wasn’t sure who I was rooting for. I mean, I love it when Omarosa’s team loses, but I don’t want to see Marilu go.

The women have severe cohesiveness issues, thanks largely due to Omorosa. On the other hand, the guys, who work very well together, had some pre-task fireworks themselves. Which brings me to…

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This show keeps getting more and more interesting. It’s funny because here we have a bunch of people who are so successful and therefore so self confident in their own abilities that they think they are “king”. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a display of misplaced arrogance than what Gene Simmons displayed on Thursday night. He was so confident in himself, yet so far off the mark.

Which, of course, brings us to…

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It’s always fun to watch the beginning of each Apprentice episode. When the candidates return from the boardroom and greet everybody it’s either to wild celebration or muted disdain. Or even a combination of both. This week I felt myself cringing even before Omarosa opened the door to the suite where the rest of the players anxiously awaited the return of the boardroom survivors. Every time she opened her mouth I just wanted to slap her. Ah, the joys of watching someone who thinks more highly of themselves than they ought.

It’s great how many business lessons can be found in a single episode. But what I find amazing is that you often find the wrong lessons. Things that shouldn’t be true, but are. These are not so much lessons you want to take away and say “I want to do that” but lessons to store somewhere to refer back and say, yeah, that’s how it is sometimes. Of course this brings me to…

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Last Thursday kicked off the new season of The Apprentice. I really believed last season would be the last, but as long as you got another schtick to pull out of your magic bag, perhaps you can generate some new excitement. And that brings us to…

Business Lesson #1: It’s not over until you say it’s over.

Many people in business fail because they give up before they should. A number of times when things were rough for my business, I was ready to throw in the towel. But I could never quite bring myself to call it quits. I always felt like I had more to give and a lot more to gain. And I have to say, I’m glad I never gave into the conventional wisdom during those times.

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Last year I made it a New Years Resolution goal to read a book a week. I’ve actually had that goal for the past several years now but it wasn’t until this year that I started documenting all my reading so I’d actually know if I hit my mark. I did.

So if you ever want to know what a person like me reads, here you go. This list incorporates all my business and personal reading. The links will either go to my reviews of the books which I have already posted here on the blog or directly to the Amazon product page.

1. How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter, Ann Coulter
2. The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell
3. Quantum Business, Bobbi DePorter with Mike Hernacki
4. The Winning Attitude: Your Pathway to Personal Success, John C. Maxwell
5. The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town, John Grisham
6. The 7 Best Things Happy Couples Do…plus one, John and Linda Freil
7. True North: Discovering Your Authentic Leadership, Bill George
8. Developing the Leaders Around You, John C. Maxwell
9. Viral Copy: Trading Words For Traffic, Brian Clark (30-page printout)
10. Which Sells Best: A quick Start Guide to Testing for Retailers, Bryan Eisenberg & Anthony Garcia (45-page printout)
11. Knock Knock, Seth Godin (41-page printout)
12. How to Increase Keyword Saturation (Without Destroying the Flow of Your Copy, Karon Thackston (34-page printout)
13. 365 Ways to Motivate and Reward Your Employees Every Day – With Little or No Money, Dianna Podmoroff
14. Next, Michael Crichton
15. Becoming a Person of Influence: How to Positively Impact the Lives of Others, John C. Maxwell & Jim Dornan
16. No B.S. Business Success: The No Holds Barred Kick Butt Take No Prisoners Tough and Spirited Guide, Dan Kennedy
17. A Mind for Pool: How to Master the Mental Game, Philip B. Capelle
18. Persuasion Architecture: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing, Future Now, Inc. (60-page printout)
19. Coaching Your Kids to Be Leaders: The Keys to Unlocking Their Potential, Pat Williams and John Wooden
20. Search Engine Ranking Factors V2, SEOmoz (43-page printed web page)
21. The Professional’s Guide to Link Building, SEOmoz (40-page printout)
22. Deception Point, Dan Brown
23. The Conversion Expert’s Workbook, FutureNow
24. Guerrilla Marketing: Secrets for Making Big Profits from Your Small Business , Jay Conrad Levinson
25. The Professional’s Guide to Keyword Research, SEOmoz (70 page printout)
26. The New Art of War, Tactics, and Power, Rodney Ohebsion
27. How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie
28. Save the Sale!, Bryan & Jeffrey Eisenberg (32 page printout)
29. The Illustrated Guide to Building a Search Friendly Website, SEOmoz (35 page printout)
30. Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines, National Cancer Institute (73 page printout)
31. A Business Case for Usability, E-Consultancy (18-page printout)
32. Online Lead Generation (B2C) 2007, E-Consultancy (32-page printout)
33. Blog Profits Blueprint, Yaro Starak (55-page printout)
34. People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present (P.S.), Howard Zinn
35. The Usability Kit, Gerry Gaffney and Daniel Szuc (350 page binder)
36. Leadership, Rudolph Giuliani
37. Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus, Orson Scott Card
38. Arrogance: Rescuing America From The Media Elite, Bernard Goldberg
39. The Cluetrain Manifesto, Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger
40. Reframe Your Life: Transforming Your Pain into Purpose, Stephen Arterburn
41. Breaking the Idols of Your Heart: How to Navigate the Temptations of Life, Dan B. Allender & Tremper Longman III
42. Facing Your Giants: The God Who Made a Miracle Out of David Stands Ready to Make One Out of You, Max Lucado
43. Think Biblically!: Recovering a Christian Worldview, John MacArthur
44. The Power of Simple Prayer: How to Talk with God about Everything, Joyce Meyer
45. Deliver First Class Web Sites: 101 Essential Checklists, Shirley Kaiser
46. The Perfect Post: Advanced Writing Skills for Pro Bloggers, Bill Hilton (50-page printout)
47. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Malcolm Gladwell
48. S.H.A.P.E.: Finding and Fulfilling Your Unique Purpose for Life, Erik Rees
49. Skin, Ted Dekker
50. Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
51. Social Media Daily, Michelle MacPhearson (26-page printout)
52. Professional Search Engine Optimization w/PHP, Jaimie Sirovich and Cristian Darie
53. The Top 10 Distinctions Between Millionaires and the Middle Class, Keith Cameron Smith
54. Holy Discontent: Fueling the Fire That Ignites Personal Vision, Bill Hybels
55. Teaching Sells: Forget everything you know about making money online… and start making some, Brian Clark (22-page download)
56. Social Media Optimization Strategies, SEOmoz (55-page download)
57. Angels & Demons, Dan Brown
58. Do It Wrong Quickly, Mike Moran
59. Seinfeld on Marketing: 7 Marketing Lessons From the Cast of “The Show About Nothing”, Bill Gammel (14-page download)
60. Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
61. Online Retail 2006: User Experience Benchmarks, E-Consultancy (85-page download)
62. Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right: How One Side Lost Its Mind and the Other Lost Its Nerve, Bernard Goldberg
63. Search Engine Marketing Kit, Dan Thies & Dave Davies
64. Personality Plus, Florence Littauer
65. Viral Marketing and Linkbait on the Web, SEOmoz (46-page printout)
66. The Shining, Stephen King

It’s quite the long list so I think this year I’ll start posting these reading lists monthly. If any of the links above are broken, just let me know so I can get it fixed. Happy reading in 2008!

Every business goes through tough times. Expecting to have season after season of continuous growth without any dips or downturns is pretty much unreasonable. And despite all your strong marketing pushes, there will always be times when business isn’t as swift as you’d like it to be. But that doesn’t have to be cause for concern. Well, OK, concern is good, but there are things that you can do to make slow times a whole lot less stressful on you and your finances.

1) Prepare

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Another year has almost gone? How is your overall profit looking? Maybe it’s not quite what you had expected for the year. Well, step it up! Encourage yourself and employees to think outside the box the way many successful big and small fish companies have. Yes there may be failure but from failure you’ll learn and grow. “It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” – Bill Gates.

Get together with your employees and take a look at your company; what would they change? You hired them so I hope you have some interest in what they really think. Drive out the fear! Create an atmosphere in which employees are not afraid to ask questions or to point out problems. “When employees and employers, even coworkers, have a commitment to one another, everyone benefits.”-Donald Trump.

Here are some business stories to get everyone’s creative juices flowing:

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We all have had our share of good and poor customer service, but my experience with Wal-Mart is one that I will not forget, and I was appalled to receive such unpleasant customer service.
I went to Wal-Mart to purchase a cover for my electric blanket but was unable to find it in the department that carries all the blankets. I finally found someone who I thought would be able to assist me, but I should remind you that I put emphasis on the word “thought.” I guess it just wasn’t her day, because when I asked her where I could find the covers for an electric blanket, she told me I needed to look in the aisle with all the blankets. I explained to her that I was unable to locate one, and needed her assistance. She just groaned and told me to follow her. On the way over to the department, two people were looking at some yarn and knocked a ball off the shelf. She said in a very stern voice, “You better pick that yarn up.”
The woman who was ‘assisting’ me said she would be right back because she would ask the associate who worked in bedding where we could find the covers. She finally returned with the answer that they were sold out of electric blankets and covers. I tried to ask her where I could find the covers, but she just ignored me and walked off…guess she was done with me.
In that situation, to better assist a customer, I would have tried to locate the cover for the electric blanket in another Wal-Mart. The associate could have called around to other Wal-Mart stores to see if they were stocked with the covers, at least to please me, the customer. Having a happy customer is more beneficial than an unhappy customer because an unhappy customer is like a domino effect; that unhappy customer tells five people what happened then those people tell others, and so on. It can hurt one’s business. All I have to say is do what you can to please the customer. I know this from my 10 years of experience in customer service.

Audio feed[audio:http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/emp/blog-audio/success-quiz.mp3]

We all want to know if we have what it takes so succeed. Let’s find out by answering these three simple questions:

1) Are you happy?

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When was the last time someone received a thank you note from you? Been a while? Don’t assume that people know you appreciate them or their help. Tell them. You know yourself how much a thank you means — and how good it makes you feel when someone says it. Take the time to thank people no matter how busy you are.

There are countless articles and business tycoons that swear by the mighty thank you note. Management guru Peter F. Drucker, honorary chairman of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, attributes much of his success in life to his early habit of writing 10 to 12 thank you notes a day. Ken Langone, VC and Home Depot Founder states “The two most powerful things in existence: a kind word and a thoughtful gesture.” Southwest requires it in their hiring criteria, “We look for listening, caring, smiling, saying ‘Thank you,’ being warm.”— Colleen Barrett, president, Southwest Airlines.

There are countless occasions that merit a thank you note such as, a nice to meet you note, a new project from a current client, a vendor that has recently done a great job for you, an employee for a job well done or a presentation they assisted with, for people who refer others to you, etc.

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