Category: culture

Reading Update January 2016

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One of my personal projects for the year is to read (listen to – I’m an Audible.com freak) 24 business books.  Please check out my Reading board on Pinterest for other books I love.

January was a good month for reading.  I cranked out 4 books.  This is all part of my master plan for having an outstanding, amazing, breakthrough year!  Below is a quick summary of each one.

Content Inc. - By Joe Pulizzi

Content Inc is all about how business is changing and how content and the internet is the platform to this new game.  If you have a content vacuum, how can people (more importantly your current and future customers) understand who you are and what you have to offer.  Perfect example is Joe’s site promoting the book.  How many books that you’ve read have their own movie trailer?  Joe’s approach is to build an audience first!  Align your passion, ensure that you have a unique offering, develop your style & tone, build your base and then reap the rewards for all the hard work!  Must read.  It has to be part of your business model.

OverSubscribed - by Daniel Priestley

I swear I didn’t do this on purpose but Oversubscribed was the perfect follow up book to Content Inc.  Daniel Priestly authored one of my all time favorite books – Entrepreneur Revolution. This new book Oversubscribed didn’t disappoint. Oversubscribed tees off on the same principles as Content Inc. Content is critical to building your audience and filling the vacuum of what you and your organization are all about and then the book goes takes that model so much further. Its all about supply and demand.  Its all about building anticipation with your audience and then celebrating your customers!  What can be more powerful that actually celebrating your customers?

Outside In - By Harley Manning & Kerry Bodine

Again I don’t think I could have picked a better book to come next.  I’ve been following Kerry Bodine and Harley Manning on social media for some time.  Outside In is an insane blueprint to what my company Zuggand is doing to help our customers deliver Digital Customer Experiences (DCX).  Again this book is in alignment with the previous two books in that we have passed out of the Age of Information and into the Age of the Customer (and execution).  Being customer centric (or obsessed) is the new differentiator.  The authors take a research based approach (which I love) to systematically designing customer experiences.  I love the examples in the book.  And we aren’t talking about little websites you’ve never heard of.  This book has the Forester brand, research and army behind it and is working with amazing customer-obsessed companies like USAA and Fidelity.  So many takeaways and it lays out a plan for any business to go through this customer experience transformation. It can also be used as a brilliant career development plan for any person that aspires to be a Chief Customer Officer or a Chief Digital Officer.

Crush It! - Gary Vaynerchuck

I read about Gary Vaynerchuk and his Wine Library store years ago.  An amazing story about how Gary help build and transform his family store into an impressive enterprise.  It wasn’t until about a year ago that I first saw him on youtube with his new brand though.  I’ll admit that at first I was a bit turned off.  It’s funny because before I even started writing this article, I saw this post on Instagram from Gary today.

 

GaryVeeInfluence

I love a good F-Bomb like no one else, but when I heard him drop it in the first minute of a video it shocked even me. (Did I mention that I LOVE a good F-BOMB???) Maybe it is his “east” cost style that rubbed my “west” coast style.  But then I saw this video on 6 MINS FOR THE NEXT 60 YEARS OF YOUR LIFE – A RANT.  And now (and I can’t believe I’m going to say this) I am (BIG sigh) part of the Vaner Nation. (f*#* I said it!)

Again, this couldn’t have been a better book for me right now.  Its his oldest book that is on Audible so I decided to start there and catch up.  Gary stays true to his DNA, as he loves to say.  He knows his strengths and he plays to them.  He is a master of his craft.  In his DailyVee video on January 27th The Family Business (you can jump to 6 mins and 54 seconds if you like) he articulates what he does for a living.  “I day trade attention.”  That’s what this book is about.  That is what Gary is all about. That is what each and everyone of us should be about!

 

 

Create Urgency!!!

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Think back to different times when you had a sense of urgency?  What drove it?  What made you work faster, stay up late, get things done, make sure you were doing the important things first?  Below are three core factors to create an insane sense of urgency.

First factor: Definiteness of Purpose! (its even fun to say) Something specific that has to get done.  Write it down (first step of making it real).  Make it sing when you say it!

Second factor: Deadline Driven! Remember when you were a kid and you knew how many days until Christmas, your birthday or summer vacation?  Put a date on it. Work backwards from that date.  Every day look at that count down and see how many days you have left.  Communicate it with your team, your company, the world.  Install a countdown app on your phone and look at how many days you have left every time you turn on your phone.

Third factor: Align to a Greater Cause!   I’d advocate that your definiteness of purpose is something a little bigger than eat breakfast or get the TPS report done.  Make it worthy, critical, even world changing!

That’s the basic formula for developing your sense of urgency.  And all you have to do is drive the heck out of it like it was on fire!  Urgency!

Hiring Perfect vs. Hungry Employees?

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Now that I have your attention, let me break it to you gently…  There is no such freaking thing as a perfect employee!  Got it?  Stop looking for them!  It just not going to happen, ever!

Now take some time and think about what you are really working to accomplish.  First, you don’t want to hire some psycho that is going to destroy your org’s dynamics!  And let’s face it, if you have hired more than a handful of people, you have probably hired at least one psycho.

Second, you want someone that doesn’t depend on their mom or their spouse to show up on time and that you don’t have to watch the clock with them.  Got it – those are very basic requirements. And if you do so happen to accidentally hire one of these people, listen to your gut and let them go quickly.

Now that we have the basics down, you are really looking for a good fit.  How do you know if you have a good fit or not, well that depends on if you have defined your org’s belief system (principles, values, aspirations or whatever you call them). I’m not going to go into how to do that here, but you should have them defined and you should construct cool questions that help you determine if the candidate is going to be a good fit for your beliefs. (if you are saying to yourself – “I can’t believe he just used the word beliefs, that is so no PC”  – well maybe you should just go hire yourself a perfect candidate then and read someone else’s article.)

Lastly (I’m obvisously over simplifying this but my last point in this post), look for hunger!  Look for someone that wants to do cool shit (because you are doing cool shit and that is why you want an awesome, not perfect, employee).  Look for someone that wants to learn, that wants to grow and that is willing to do what it takes to be successful.

So it really comes down to four things: eliminate the psychos, eliminate the apron string suckers, look for fit for your beliefs and look for hunger!  Then it’s time to invest in that employee and grow them into awesomeness.