Rhonda Britten is an Emmy Award-winner, repeat Oprah guest, and author of four best-sellers. She’ll be helping us understand how fear plays a role in our business and entrepreneurial lives, and will give us tools for identifying and dealing with our fear.
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Learn to overcome distraction! Our modern life is built for distraction. Indeed, that’s the basis of many high tech companies’ business models—to take us away from the highest and best use of our time, and “engage” us on their platforms. Sometimes the reasons are benign. There may be a misguided 22-year-old who thinks “engagement” is the goal of their product. Often, the reasons are actively exploitative, as they want to shove ads in our face hoping to distract us even further.
Nir Eyal rose to fame as the author of “Hooked.” He intended engaging products to be used for good. His latest thinking is embodied in “Indistractable,” which tells us how to wrest our lives back from all these engaging products.
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Wouldn’t life just be easier if everyone did what we wanted? Of course it would! Peter and Howard will share what they’ve learned over the years working with leaders of organizations on changing culture and changing behavior. Join us for what’s sure to be a lively discussion. If it isn’t lively enough, I’ll challenge them to use their own methods to up their game. Sometimes I’m just a wee bit ruthless.
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Join me for a discussion with William Arruda, a leading authority on using power of branding and social media to succeed in your career.
William started as a brand expert in corporate America, and brought the concepts to personal branding. A pioneer in the personal branding revolution, he has created products that have been used by over 2 million people and has certified over 1,000 coaches in his premier personal branding methodology. He has been credited with turning the concept of personal branding into a global industry.
He is the bestselling author of the definitive books on the topic of personal branding, Digital YOU, Career Distinction and Ditch. Dare. Do! and he’s a sought-after spokesperson on branding, social media and employee motivation. His clients include Google, Adobe, JPMorgan, BMW, Johnson&Johnson, LinkedIn, Gucci, Microsoft, Warner Bros, Disney and American Express. William’s a senior contributor to Forbes where his column has received over 15 million views.
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Join us for Dr. Brynn to discuss Top Brain-Based Do’s and Don’ts as we return to offices and engage in new hybrid work models. Learn tips and tricks from applied neuroscience for how you stay sustainably motivated and productive at work, no matter what post-pandemic work realities are in store for you!
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Want a great work career? Pamela Slim rose to fame writing Escape from Cubicle Nation. With her help, hundreds of people have successfully escaped from soul-sucking work situations into self-employment. Pam will be joining me to discuss her latest book, The Widest Net, in which she shows how we all have untapped markets for our businesses that we can reach with a moment’s notice.
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In this replay of an interview I did on Just Between Coaches with Melinda Cohan, we explore boundaries. In a world where our home and work lives are increasingly merged, we need good boundaries. Boundaries tell us, and other people, what’s acceptable and where. Melinda and I discuss how coaches—or any professional service provider—should manage their boundaries for the most satisfying relationships with their clients.
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“Hello, valued customer, your call is very important to us. Now please wait 15 minutes because we don’t want to spend the money to staff our phone lines.”
There was an actual human being who decided to record that message. That actual human being may really have believed that they valued customers. I fervently hope I’m not that person.
Values are an interesting thing. We all have them. They drive our behavior. They determine who we hang out with. They determine our decisions. And when we’re giving our TED talk, we even talk about our values. We list them. We point to their worldly goodness. “Family is what matters most.” Everyone nods. We think we live our values.
Except.
The values we proclaim—the ones in our TED talk—may have no relationship to the values we live by. Most of us assume that our lived values correspond to our proclaimed values. Most of us are wrong.
This matters because our lived values are the ones people will judge us by. They’re the values that will determine our reputation and “personal brand.” Those, in turn, will determine who wants to do business with us, who wants to hang out with us, and much of the quality of our emotional lives. The continual neglect of our teenagers’ science fair competitions are what they remember, not the world “family matters most.”
This also matters because presumably we actually want to be living our espoused values! What if we talk about integrity, and really want to be surrounded by people with integrity? What if we talk about respect, and really want to respect people and be respected by them? How can we make this happen?
First, list your proclaimed values. This will be easy, because they’re the ones you proclaim. Simply answer the question “what do you value?” off the top of your head. You’ll get the list. Watch your TED talk. You did a great job of listing them there. “I value truth, constructive disagreement, and following through on promises.”
Next, identify where those values drive your behavior. For each of your values, think about the kinds of decisions and tradeoffs where those values would show up. If you value truth, where would that manifest? Perhaps in giving feedback when someone asks if they’ve done a good job. Or when they ask if their current outfit is flattering.
If you value constructive disagreement, that would manifest in conversations with your spouse where you have differing opinions about something important. When it comes to following through on promises, you would look at things you’ve promised, and when (or if) you delivered on those promises.
Lastly, take a hard look at your lived values. Go through the scenarios you identified and notice what you actually did in those situations. Did you give honest feedback, or did you say the easy thing that wouldn’t rock the boat? Did you cave in to your spouse, because it was easier than asserting your own opinion. Do you have excuses at the ready, to show why it was actually reasonable to break all those promises?
This is very hard, because you will find that your lived values don’t match up perfectly to your proclaimed values. Indeed, some people may find that their lived values are the opposite of their proclaimed values. It is far more comforting to live in ignorance, than face the reality that the person who most betrays your values is you.
Once you know where the gaps are, you know where to change your behavior. Next time you’re in the situations you identified, consciously behave according to your proclaimed values, instead of your lived values.
This will feel wrong and unnatural! You’ve spent your lifetime deciding to reduce staffing in a call center so you boost profits. Now, you’re making a decision to spend more money to provide better customer service. If that decision felt natural, you would already behave that way. Expect yourself to resist, push back, and generally try to maintain the status quo.
It’s helpful to enlist trusted friends and colleagues in helping me change. You can ask your teenagers, “I want to do a better job of putting family Please tell me when I’m falling down.” They’re teenagers. They’ll tell you. You can ask your work colleagues, “I want to do a better job of living our values of customers-first. Please help me make decisions that reflect that.” You’ll be surprised. If you are sincere in your request, and you act on their feedback, people will be happy to help.
Values are the core of our identity. Our proclaimed values represent the ideal we wish to be. Our lived values represent the person we are. By bringing the two together, you’ll be taking control of both who you genuinely develop to be, and others will come to see you as that same (hopefully awesome) person.
I’m a judge for Mass Challenge, as well as the Harvard Business School competition, and I’ve noticed that many entrepreneurs don’t know what market size means. Let me call out two of the most common mistakes, which can be the difference between recognizing a real opportunity and fooling yourself into believing something is an opportunity when it isn’t.
When a potential investor (including you, investing your time and career!) asks the size of your market, they’re asking how much money is out there (or how many customers) that could conceivable be spent on your company.
“The market for our new deodorant is anyone over the age of 12.” Actually, it isn’t. That’s way too general. Your market is defined at least in part by who you can reach. Your accessible market is what matters. You can’t reach everyone over the age of 12. “The market for our new deodorant is teenage girls between 14 and 18.” That is a much more realistic assessment and probably much more reachable through advertising in an identifiable set of magazines, TV ad spots, etc.
The other big mistake entrepreneurs make is giving the market size as the total market revenues of all possible customers. “We sell hand sanitizers to media companies. Combined media revenues were $100 billion last year.” That’s a slippery evasion, because no media company will spend all their income on hand sanitizers. The market is not total revenues of all possible customers, but total amount all possible customers are likely to spend on your product. “Media companies spent $100 million on hand sanitizer last year, so that’s our market size.”
“The market for our internet-enabled back scratchers is middle-age men who feel the need for meaning in their lives. There are 50 million of them in my country, and at $19.95 (+ shipping and handling) that’s a billion dollar market.” Yes, except there’s no way to reach all 50 million of those customers. If there were a mailing list of all 50 million, you could do it. And you can certainly try your best to cover every possible advertising and media outlet that reaches middle-age men. But at the end of the day, only people you can reach with your message are potential customers.
An acquaintance of mine is developing a product for online gamers who make a living by livestreaming their games. That’s an addressable market, because there are forums, awards, conventions, podcasts, and an entire media ecosystem that pretty much every live streamer follows.
To put it all together:
When you’re evaluating the potential of an opportunity, be careful to ask how much money could reasonably come your way from the customers you’re explicitly able to reach. That is a much better number to use for market size.
LinkedIn is an amazing resource! Use it to find people who are selling what you want. Use it to offer or find jobs. But don’t use it for outbound sales.
It’s been open season for people spamming my inbox with unsolicited sales pitches. While I’m sometimes open to sales pitches, not on LinkedIn. It’s a platform where we go to showcase ourselves to anyone interested in what we have to offer. No one goes there to be sold to; everyone goes there to sell.
This is a really great system! If someone wants an executive coach, they search for “executive coach.” Then they reach out. Everyone wins: the customer finds a coach, and the coach deals only with prospects who are already a good match.
Outbound cold emails ruin all that. People reach out with a generic form-letter pitch. “Hi! Buy my product.” The worst thing about these form letters is that they’re so obviously form letters. I’ve even had people ask what I do. What I do? WHAT I DO? Other than pages of description, links to videos, a website with 400 articles on it, and two books, that question betrays the person as a rank amateur.
Think about it. This is LinkedIn! There are pages of information right there. All it takes is a single click, then some reading. And they choose to send a one-size-fits-all form letter. The message is loud and clear: “I don’t bother to put a modicum of thought into my approach.” If they can’t be bothered to read your profile before spamming you, what does that say about the kind of work they’re likely to do?
If that’s you, and you use LinkedIn for outbound marketing (please don’t), customize your pitch. Not by inserting some cut-and-pasted text (“I read your article [ARTICLE_TITLE] today”). Read your prospect’s profile. Read anything they’ve written. Then think. Then, and only then, write:
I read your article “What Koalas Can Teach Us About Community.” Your Eucalyptus-leaf-Like-button insight was brilliant!
… Now when you segue into your pitch, you can make it personal, so in the event they are open to inbound sales, at the very least you’ll stand out from the crowd.
If you don’t use LinkedIn for outbound marketing (good for you!), but you’re on the receiving end of those who do…
Hi,
LinkedIn is primarily a platform for people to inform the world about what they do, so they can accept inbound inquiries. People also use it to list and answer job ads. But no one comes here to be marketed to.
If you are interested in hiring me or my services, let’s set up a time to talk. If, however, you want to pitch me your services in a form-letter cold call, I’m the wrong person for you.
By the way, a word of free coaching: on LinkedIn, you can find out a tremendous amount about someone with a single click. That means letters make you look *especially* bad. A form letter screams “I don’t bother to do my homework.” That’s not a good look, especially if you want someone to hire you.
If you’re going to pitch someone (please don’t) on LinkedIn, five minutes of homework and a minute of customization, will give you a much better chance of coming across in a way that would engender a real response.
I hope you enjoyed this automated response. It attempted to give a clear answer and an example of the kind of coaching advice I give. It’s a sign of the times that this particular coaching advice is so widely needed that a form letter works, but … there you have it.
Enjoy!