Category Archives: Business Mistakes

Big Mistake: Meaning Mismatch in Marketing

Business Mistakes, Marketing, , ,

Yesterday I discovered, to my surprise, that a good friend who does licensed massage therapy said she doesn’t think of herself as an entrepreneur.  In her mind, entrepreneurs want to get outside investment, hire employees, and grow their businesses fast. People like her think of themselves as self employed, sole proprietor maybe, small business owners probably. And those professionals, the doctors, lawyers, accountants and such, they don’t think of themselves as entrepreneurs either. I think of them all as entrepreneurs.  But what if they don’t?

Business mistake: What if you want to reach that larger group, and you address them as entrepreneurs in your marketing, but they don’t think of themselves that way? So most of the people you want to reach don’t ever realize you’re talking to them?

What about you? Official stats say there are about 27 million businesses in the United States and about 21 million of them have no employees. What’s an entrepreneur to you? There are only a handful, a few thousand, that meet that stiffer definition. What matters is whether the target potential customer self identifies into the group. If a business is aiming at one group and using a word that stands for the other, that’s a big mistake.

This isn’t just semantics. It’s not about language or definitions. It’s about the fundamentals of marketing.

In human communication, the listener assigns the meanings to the words. Not the speaker. You don’t get to tell the audience what your word means. They tell themselves.

That’s why so many marketing images show an arrow hitting a target. This kind of meaning mismatch is one really powerful way to miss.

(Image: bigstockphoto.com)

 

The So-Called Arrogance of Gen Y Social Media Managers

Business Mistakes, Social media, , ,

Last Friday NextGen Journal published Cathryn Sloane’s Why Every Social Media Manager Should be Under 25. Her main point was:

We spent our adolescence growing up with social media. … we learned to use social media socially before professionally, rather than vice versa or simultaneously.  To many people in the generations above us, Facebook and Twitter are just the latest ways of getting messages out there to the public, that also happen to be the best.

That generated thousands of Facebook shares, hundreds of Tweets and hundreds of angry comments. NextGen founder Conner Toohill responded Saturday, and 47-year-old guest author Mark Story posted a rebuttal on Sunday. 

It reminds me of something I saw three months ago. It was a job listing for a programming job that — the listing, in print — specified that applicants should be no older than 30. I found that shockingly stupid because it’s first of all illegal (age discrimination) and secondly, well, stupid. Discrimination is stupid. 

However, there is a huge difference between explicit discrimination is a job listing and Cathryn Sloane’s published opinion. She’s not hiring. She’s just making a point. And she’s arguing for the underdog in the situation too. So if she had just toned it down a bit, perhaps suggesting that younger people shouldn’t be ruled out for their youth, or that age and experience are different qualifiers in the context of social media, I might actually agree with her. 

What I believe, firmly, is that the 25-year-old should not be excluded from leadership because she isn’t old enough. And, furthermore, that the 40-year-old shouldn’t be excluded because she’s too old. Do you agree? With both statements? 

I really like three points that Connor Toohill makes in his A Response to Cathryn Sloane’s Article on Saturday.

First, he’s not apologizing for publishing Cathryn’s post. And he shouldn’t: 

In a time when 1 in 2 recent college graduates are unemployed or underemployed, those sentiments are understandable. You may disagree — some members of our Editorial staff happen to disagree. But we don’t consider it a mistake to showcase Cathryn’s honest opinion, informed by her own experience as a recent graduate and shared by many other young Americans. We consider it as part of our mission.

Second, he objects to the nastiness in some of the responses: 

Secondly, for those who disagree with Cathryn’s premise: we respect your opinions. Critics have already penned a number of compelling responses, and the comment section contains dozens of interesting rebuttals.  What’s unfortunate, though, is the amount of vitriol and hate contained as well. We’re referring to personal insults, direct badgering of Cathryn via her social media accounts, and allegations that this one opinion will preclude her from full employment. As one social media professional Tweeted yesterday, ‘I agree with some criticisms of Cathryn Sloane’s @nextgenjournal article, but it’s starting to look like adults cyber-bullying a kid.’ Criticism and disagreement are absolutely legitimate and encouraged, but savage attacks are out of line.

Third, he objects to the idea that opinions gain importance with age: 

One final point to address: many comments, Tweets and criticisms seemed to convey the idea that a given person’s opinions are worthless absent years of direct work experience. They referred to not just Cathryn, but our entire generation as arrogant, entitled, naïve and ignorant. They reflected back on their own days of ‘thinking they knew everything,’ and proclaimed that maybe, one day, Cathryn and other young people will finally see the light. … The implicit premise of those criticisms is ageist in its own way: they condemn the opinions and ideas of all young people as ‘not worth listening to.’ In the process, they utterly and completely ignore the many advantages that young people bring into any given situation: an energy and idealism, a sense of innovation and willingness to try new things, and a broader focus, among others.”

Mark Story in his rebuttal, makes another valid point. Addressing Cathryn, he writes: 

You confused familiarity with using social media tools like Facebook and Twitter with the ability to turn that into offering actionable, solid communications advice for internal or external clients.  There is a BIG difference between posting Facebook Timeline updates and telling General Motors what to do with their own social media presence in the midst of a crisis.

Hmmm … I’m sticking with what I posted here six months ago in age vs. experience not always obvious.  

At least with my generation, the baby boomers, we were all just one big vague hippy-long-hair-freedom stereotype and we didn’t mind it. But with Gen Y, all this stuff about entitlement and selfishness, jeez, what a drag. … She’s 25 now, classic Gen Y, and might seem impatient with managers who don’t understand Facebook and Twitter. She’s been working with Facebook from the very beginning, and adapted Twitter in 2007. She’s taken social media as instinct, commonplace, something obvious. But the world around her thinks she’s demanding too much too soon. Does that make sense?

Young people, Gen Y, and, for that matter, you 40-somethings too: Go for it. Fight the stereotypes. Demand change. Full speed ahead. 

12 Ways Best Blogging Practices Aren’t

Blogs and blogging, Business Mistakes,

I like Blogger Brad Shorr‘s list of 12 Most Horrible Pieces of Blogging Advice. It’s a good list, well worth reading, good food for thought. More important, in my opinion, is that it’s also an eloquent reminder of the essential case-by-case rule that applies not only to business blogging but also to all of small business, beyond blogging.

Here’s Brad’s list of 12 pieces of bad advice:

  1. Keep posts under 300 words
  2. Stick to a rigid publishing schedule
  3. Blogs are an SEO shortcut
  4. Bloggers need to be edgy
  5. Images aren’t important
  6. Blogs should be monetized
  7. All it takes to succeed is quality content
  8. Cultivate reciprocal links
  9. You must use a custom design
  10. Blogging has been replaced by social media
  11. Corporate blog content can be outsourced
  12. It’s all about subscribers.

In most of these cases, Brad takes a commonly accepted best practice or general rule and points out the exceptions. He sums up most of this with his very first item, for which he explains:

Beware of absolutes. This advice stems from the generalization that all blog readers are in a hurry. However, if your blog’s purpose is to provide information or analysis, and you’re good at it, people will be willing to read five times that word count.

In other cases, advice that used to be good advice has gone stale. For his #8, on reciprocal links, he explains:

This is an outdated SEO tactic that can now do more harm than good if you have links coming in from bad sources. For audience building only, reciprocal linking is OK, but only when you are selective in terms of the relevance and quality of your link partners.

And that, aside from blogging specifics, is the real nugget in this particular post. Attractive as advice and guidelines are, out here in the real world everything is case by case. The only rule is that there are no rules. Best practices only work when applied carefully with a lot of respect for the specifics of context and a lot of flexibility to use not as directed.

I’m sure that applies for small business too, not just blogging. And maybe for life in general too? What do you think?

Which is Worse: Making a Mistake or Losing an Opportunity?

Business Mistakes, Entrepreneurship, Weblogs, ,

What a great thought: how people approach failure is a key to success. That comes straight from Why Failure Drives Innovation, an article by Baba Shiv, Professor of Marketing, published in the Stanford Graduate School of Business news page. Consider this:

“Failure” is a dreaded concept for most business people. But failure can actually be a huge engine of innovation for an individual or an organization. The trick lies in approaching it with the right attitude and harnessing it as a blessing, not a curse.

In his article, Prof. Shiv pits fear of making mistakes against fear of losing opportunities. 

He says most individuals, managers and corporations live with fear of making mistakes:

In this mindset, to fail is shameful and painful. Because the brain becomes very risk averse under this line of thinking, innovation is generally nothing more than incremental. You don’t get off-the-charts results.

The entrepreneur, however, is more worries about losing out on opportunities: 

Places like Silicon Valley are full of type 2s. What is shameful to these people is sitting on the sidelines while someone else runs away with a great idea. Failure is not bad; it can actually be exciting. From so-called “failures” emerge those valuable gold nuggets — the “aha!” moments of insight that guide you toward your next innovation.

I like that a lot. I’ve written often that one of the most important traits for entrepreneurs is being able to live with mistakes. This makes perfect sense to me.  

Backroom Backbiting Will Bite You Back

Business Mistakes, Weblogs, ,

There’s a coffee shop in the Portland (OR) airport with the tagline “good coffee … no backtalk.” It’s hard to see in my picture here, but there it is. 

What I make of this is a reminder about a fundamental business practice that way too many business owners forget. You can’t, simply can’t, let your employees get together and amuse each other by telling stories of how annoying the customers are. 

Seems obvious. But it happens all the time. Criticizing somebody else is the best ice breaker between strangers. When you sit beside a stranger in a plane, does conversation start with how wonderful air travel is? Or does it start with how bad the airline, how late the flight, how small the seats? We criticize. It’s who we are. 

But don’t let it happen behind your scenes, backstage, in your business. Don’t let your employees do it. 

I have no data to prove it, but I’d bet that the the annoyed and self-righteous tone of the petty bureaucrat and counter minder starts behind the scenes, with people sharing stupid questions and annoying traits of the customers. 

Don’t let that happen to your business. 

(Image courtesy of Shelley’s Coffee Notes)

Growing Your Business: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

Business Mistakes,

This was more than 10 years ago but I still remember it well. I was walking to lunch with a friend and long-time business planning client talking about our growth at Palo Alto Software. We had doubled revenue in the previous two years. These were good times. But my friend had a warning: 

Be especially careful at this point. It’s two times harder to go from 25 employees to 50 than from 10 to 25.

That didn’t make sense to me then, but it does now. It’s related to culture and accountability and leadership. What reminded me was Josh Linkner’s 5 Traps to Avoid When Growing Your Business on Inc.com. Especially his #3, which he calls “Putting Religion Ahead of Science.”

When you were a start-up, all you had was your vision and belief (aka “religion”). Your burning desire fueled you and the company to break through start-up gravity and get your business off the ground. As you grow, however, religion alone won’t be enough to sustain your trajectory. My business partner, Dan Gilbert, often says, “What got you here won’t get you there.” In most companies’ evolution, there comes a point where systems have to be documented, training materials established, and processes architected (aka “science”). Without this foundation, a company fueled only by passion derails, since your 126th employee won’t possess the same fire as team member No. 6.

The emphasis there is mine, by the way. 

Josh has several other good points on this list. Gorging opportunities, for example, meaning trying to do too much. This is also really good:

Remember this: More companies die of indigestion than starvation. When you look back five years from now, your success will based much more on the times you said “no” rather than the times you said “yes.” As the old Chinese proverb states wisely, “Chase two rabbits and both will escape.”

Good stuff. Nice post. And we don’t talk enough about this second inflection point, getting a company through its adolescence. It’s hard to do. 

The Paradox of Profits

Business Financing, Business Mistakes, Weblogs

We take it for granted. One of the main goals of a business is making a profit. Right?

Maybe not.

Answer this question: What makes a business more valuable? Is it profits, or growth? Or future prospects?

And then this question: Don’t you have a straight trade-off between profits and growth?

Assume you have money still in your bank account after you’ve booked costs and expenses.

  • That money could be booked right then as profits. 
  • Or you could spend it instead on marketing or product development to enhance future growth. 

Reinvesting profits really happens before the month is closed and that discretionary money is booked as profits. Once it’s down on the accounting statements as profits, it’s almost always going out of the company.

If you can, reinvest your profits before they become profits. 

(Image: shutterstock.com)

5 Hard Lessons Related to Firing Somebody

Business Mistakes, Management,

So you start your business, and you get it going, and growing. If you have employees, it’s likely you’re going to have to deal with firing somebody. Here are my some of my thoughts (based on actual experience; not theoretical) on that subject.

failure_bigstock_436908.jpg

  1. Having to fire somebody who’s been trying hard and failing is the worst job a business owner has. I’d rather do collection calls. But it happens sometimes. If you can’t stand the heat …
  2. Because of the recession in 2001 I had to let five people go on the same day. We had to cut costs and we had no choice. They weren’t let go for their own failure, but ours, and they knew it. For the record, that’s much easier than letting one person go because of work or performance reasons.
  3. Firing somebody should never be a surprise. It should be because expectations weren’t met, and performance wasn’t as expected, and that person should always know it. If it’s a surprise, management has failed. (Well, if it is a surprise to the person let go, that is; as for co-workers, that’s none of their business.)
  4. A good lawyer I worked with for years used to say that the time to let somebody go is the first time you ask yourself whether or not you should; the first moment you even think of it. He’s a smart guy, a good and honest lawyer, and basically compassionate. His underlying though was that it was best for both sides to do it as soon as you start wondering. And I’ve never known anybody to actually work that way. I didn’t. Still, the wisdom here is that it’s better sooner than later. Later does more damage.
  5. I’ve had some successes with repositioning a person, rewriting their job description, having them do something entirely different, rather than firing them. However, to be honest, those successes were the exception, not the rule.
  6. (Bonus) We live in a litigious world. Talk to your attorney before you do it. There are a lot of things you’d like to say but you shouldn’t. And some very unfair lawsuits happen.

What do you think?

(Image: bigstock photo) 

Do You Like Working Alone, in Teams, or Both?

Business Mistakes, , , ,

Did you perhaps catch The Rise of the New Groupthink on the NYtimes.com last week? Here’s author Susan Cain’s interesting lead …New York Times Page

SOLITUDE is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place. Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in.

But there’s a problem with this view. Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by …

It’s not that teamwork is bad, but rather that alone work isn’t bad either. It feels like we need to respect both, and the need to approach different problems in different ways. When pendulums swing too far, we go back.

Confession: when I was in business school I avoided group projects as much as I could get away with. When assigned to a team, I sometimes negotiated breaking off a part of the project that I could do by myself.

Susan cites Apple and Steve Jobs and the early history of the company as a good example:

In the wake of Steve Jobs’s death, we’ve seen a profusion of myths about the company’s success. Most focus on Mr. Jobs’s supernatural magnetism and tend to ignore the other crucial figure in Apple’s creation: a kindly, introverted engineering wizard, Steve Wozniak, who toiled alone on a beloved invention, the personal computer.

I’m going to finish this with Susan’s choice of quote from Steve Wozniak’s autobiography:

Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me … they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone …. I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone… Not on a committee. Not on a team.

Think about it. Alone.

Good Business Decisions Aren’t Made by Vote

Business Mistakes, Business Stories, , ,

Have you heard this? It’s not mine, I think it’s sort of common knowledge:

If the decisions were made by consensus, every wall would be painted beige.

fingers planning

As my business grew up from entrepreneurial to stable, we had to redo our decision process. Early on, we sat around, a few of us, discussed and decided. That was when there were 10 or 12 of us. I guess I made a lot of the final decisions, because it was my work, my product, and my company. But it often felt like consensus. And it seemed to work.

But it didn’t work forever. After a while — a few years, really, but it seemed like a blink of the eye — we were 30-40 people. And we had programmers and bookkeepers not just chiming in on decisions about, say, packaging and web designs … but feeling alienated if their opinions weren’t given enough weight. And here’s what I learned:

Good business decisions aren’t done by votes

Ultimately, we had to learn that we’d evolved into a structure based on functional expertise, and we wanted our financial people minding cash flow and taxes, our development people writing code, and our marketing people deciding on packaging, web strategies, and social media. And that hurt some feelings. But it improved the business.

Businesses that grow must also grow up.

(Image: Big Stock Photo)

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