How to Network online without spamming man at tablet

How To Network Virtually Without Spamming

dianeliseBlog

When our face-to-face networking events became Zoom calls, several networking organizations coached members to reach out across geographic boundaries to join meetings they wouldn’t normally attend, and connect with people they wouldn’t normally meet.  True, with so many people working from home these days there really is no reason for us to remain within our geographic area when it comes …

open for business after covid

Life After COVID For Small Business?

dianeliseBlog

Florida is slowly starting to re-open and we’re hearing that some non-essential businesses will be allowed to open as early as next week, but life as we know it will be far from normal.  Reopening is somewhat disturbing since our infection curve is only starting to trend down slightly and according to the Yale School of Medicine, we are likely …

making it right man with gourmet plate

Making It Right

dianeliseBlog

I started my first business when I was 13. I sold personalized stationery and wrapping paper from a catalog door-to-door.  Yes kids, that’s what we did before the internet.  I still remember my first customer.  She was a really nice lady who bought a pack of pencils from me with her name stamped on them.  Honestly I have no idea …

Over the weekend I attended a funeral for a friend’s mom. I had never met the woman who died, and honestly my friend and I aren’t super close, but I lost my own mom when I was around her age and I still remember who attended her funeral and how much it meant to me, so I just wanted to show my support. I knew it would be important to her. The service was in Spanish and the Priest was an older gentleman who mumbled, so to be honest I didn’t understand much of it, but it was a Catholic Mass, and they have a certain flow to them so even though I didn’t understand the Priest, I could follow along and recite the responses in English. He totally lost me during the sermon though, and so as I looked around at the grieving family members and friends, I reflected on the comfort of ritual in our lives. Not only the ritual of a predictable religious service, but how rituals provide us with a sense of belonging and comfort. While each religion treats death differently, they all embrace a ritual to send their loved ones off into the afterlife, whatever they believe that to be. While you may argue whether or not the ritual does anything for the deceased, it does provide a sense of predictability and closure to those left behind. Looking down the aisle at a casket that held the body of a woman not much older than I, it was tough not to contemplate my own mortality. Once we approach, or pass, the halfway point in our lives, some of us may decide to buy a red convertible and have an affair, but I prefer to use this time to reflect on whether I have done enough. Now for the record, I am totally freaked out by graveyards so truly hope that when my time comes you’ll take out a kickass yacht, throw my ashes over Biscayne Bay and toast me with the best damn Margaritas pesos can buy. But I do hope that when that day comes, I will feel like I have left my mark on the world, and that I have done enough. For me, doing enough is a combination of what I have done for my family and friends, but also the company I’m building. No pressure, but I have several families whose livelihood depends on the decisions I make and I’d like to think that can continue after I’m gone. The most successful companies embrace a combination of purpose and ritual. They set a compelling vision but use ritual, or process, to make it easier for people to get there. In one of my favorite books, “Built To Last”, Jim Collins studied companies like Disney and other corporations close to or beyond their centennial, to see what factors contributed to their longevity. He discovered three things; They have a clear vision and sense of where they need to go, even though they know that individual products and services will all become obsolete at some point, and They use profit like oxygen to fuel their purpose, but not as their purpose, and They are obsessed with succession planning and the processes that will allow the company to carry forward after they’re gone. Those processes are the rituals that reassure our teams and give them the foundation to make their own decisions and take risks. I spent 26 years buried in the processes of Corporate America, and while I hated how rigid they were, I recognize now that being too far in the other direction and lacking process makes people uncomfortable. We humans are creatures of habit and we love ritual. So that’s basically it. Know where you want to go. Make sure you have enough fuel to get there, and hire a backup driver. As I reflected on my business this week, I realized that as obsessed as I am with documenting what we do, it’s not nearly enough. The more we can build that solid foundation, the more we can focus on growth, because delivery can take care of itself. I watched a Masterclass this week with Bob Iger, Disney CEO, one of the Good To Great companies. His typical day begins at 4:15 at the gym, and then he’s at the office by 6, so he can focus and get work done before everyone arrives. He’s in meetings or travelling each day, then leaves for home at 4, spends time with his family, spends a couple of more hours working in the evening, then goes to bed. He’s running a company that makes close to $70 billion in annual revenue. I wonder what a little more ritual could do for the longevity of all of our companies?

Will Your Business Outlive You?

dianeliseBlog

Over the weekend I attended a funeral for a friend’s mom.  I had never met the woman who died, and honestly my friend and I aren’t super close, but I lost my own mom when I was around her age and I still remember who attended her funeral and how much it meant to me, so I just wanted to …

“Pulling The Trigger”. It’s an expression we use to describe taking an action. But what if we pull the trigger too early? Recently I watched a non-profit pull the trigger on assembling a group of volunteers prior to establishing a clear direction and mandate. As their leader struggled with the direction, the once eager volunteers fell away. I witnessed a tech startup pull the trigger on investing in a rollout team before it had a viable product. They burned away their cash as they struggled to make the technology work. I recently interviewed someone on my podcast who referred to entrepreneurial decision making as being “ready - fire - aim” rather than “ready - aim - fire” and I think that’s true. Entrepreneurs by nature are creative problem solvers who like to move quickly. They see a market opportunity and they know how to mobilize people to get there. Something opens up and they dive right in. And yet, statistics tell us that 50% of the time, that new business will fail. I wonder what the entrepreneurial success rate would be if we all took time to plan? People ask me when is a good time to leave their day job for their side hustle. My answer is simple. 1. When you have a solid plan and projection on how your side hustle will make enough money to support you. 2. When your side hustle is keeping you so busy that it’s making it tough to sustain your day job AND (and this is the important part), if you calculate your hourly rate it’s a number you’d be proud to tell your mom. 3. When you have enough cash to sustain you for 2 years in the event your side hustle isn’t profitable for that long. Now assuming you’ve made it that far and you’re sitting in this room because you understand the value of people-to-people connections to grow your business, how can you improve your chances of being on the good side of that 50% statistic? Plan. Whether you’ve been in business for a month, a year or a decade, taking the time to plan or re-plan your business, rather than managing on guesswork and hope, can make a significant difference as to whether you’ll still be sitting here a year from now. Whether or not you create a formal business plan, research published in the International Small Business Journal showed that just going through the planning process, made a business more likely to succeed. The study showed that having a planning mentality also helped with their success mindset, which made them better leaders. Better leadership, as you might expect, breeds success. They found the same positive impact on serial entrepreneurs as on first time entrepreneurs. Now I see a lot of you are nodding your heads wisely and agreeing that this planning thing makes logical sense. But guess how many of you are actually going to leave this room and do it? Probably zero. So what’s the problem? The problem is that we’re entrepreneurs. We’re the ready - fire - aim people. Planning isn’t fun. It’s much more fun to leave here and go fix something or build something. But what if planning your business could be fun? Here are some ideas: Don’t think of it as planning, think of it as mind mapping. In fact for our clients we have started using visual, interconnected bubbles of ideas to describe their brand and their marketing priorities. We have been using a tool called Mindmeister. It’s helping us to better connect with their strategy because rather than simple writing a bunch of boring notes, we’re visually laying out ideas. And as a side benefit, I have noticed that the visual learners on my creative team are internalizing key brand concepts that we always had written down, but now we’re presenting it in a more interesting way. Even if you’re just doing it on a whiteboard, mind mapping is a great way to get everyone engaged in brainstorming. Start your planning session with physical exercise. Whether this includes going for a walk with your team, playing a game of dodgeball in the parking lot or getting your favorite personal trainer to come and get everyone to plank in the conference room, when you get your blood moving, you’ll think more clearly and your planning session will be more enjoyable. Use pictures. Even if you’re not into doing a full vision board, and I realize that a lot of people feel that’s a bit over the top, have your team find pictures online that describe various aspects of your business, including pictures that describe their ideal culture, customers and your services. This can sometimes be an amusing exercise depending upon what they come up with, so it’s a great brainstorming opener. Plan with Post-its. For some reason, writing ideas on post it notes and sticking them on the wall in phases of your plan is much more fun than writing them on a whiteboard or typing them into a document. Perhaps we love the arts & crafts feel to all of the multi-colored pieces of paper. So grab a big roll of brown paper and stick a piece on the wall, and mark down the quarters of the next year. Brainstorm the different changes and projects you’d like to work on and write them down on post it notes, then stick them on the wall in the quarter you’d like them to happen. Take a picture and boom - instant plan! And for the more social media inclined, try picturing your plan as a series of posts, for example: What we sell and what makes us different How do we solve the needs of our target clients Categories of competitors and how we’re better Where we sell and what marketing activities we do Who are our key team members and what roles do they play Who are our key partners and what roles do they play What is our growth goal What steps are we going to take over the next 12 months to meet our growth goal If it’s more fun, do those on post it notes too. So yes, we may be entrepreneurs and are the masters of firefighting, but while we’re still at the beginning of the year, take an afternoon with your team to plan. It will help keep you on the positive side of that 50% business success rate statistic.

Pulling The Trigger

dianeliseBlog

“Pulling The Trigger”.  It’s an expression we use to describe taking an action.  But what if we pull the trigger too early?   Recently I watched a non-profit pull the trigger on assembling a group of volunteers prior to establishing a clear direction and mandate.  As their leader struggled with the direction, the once eager volunteers fell away. I witnessed a …

entrepreneurs have no off button finger turning computer off

Entrepreneurs Have No “Off Button”

Diane MouraBlog

I was interviewing a founder for my podcast last week and we were talking about how difficult it is for entrepreneurs to stop thinking about their business.  An entrepreneur simply doesn’t have an off button.  It took a long time for my family to give up being frustrated with me for being glued to my computer most of the time, …

Last week I talked about how we need to be prepared for our businesses to change over the next decade when Gen Z, now high school and college students, become our clients. One of the traits of this generation is connecting with brands who tell a positive story, so today I’d like to share some tips on how to tell your business story. As humans we’re wired to listen to stories. It’s how we communicated our traditions and values before the written word so we could pass our history and lessons down from generation to generation. Clearly the printing press and the internet have changed the way we tell those stories. Today we can instantly communicate a story through a single photo we share on Instagram and we no longer have to wait for uncle Roko to return from his journey to tell the story of how he killed the Saber Tooth Tiger. There are actually brain chemicals that substantiate why we’re so wired to listen to stories. Cortisol is a stress chemical that makes us pay attention and get caught up in the story. Oxytocin, that same chemical released by women during childbirth, (but men have it too) is a brain chemical that stimulates feelings of caring & empathy and gets people to take the actions the story is leading them toward. Well told stories are able to take us to another place and to imagine a different world, and they get us to pay attention. I remember back in university I was taking an advertising class that had a huge textbook that covered such fascinating topics as how to calculate the value of an ad buy. Honestly it just wasn’t that interesting. But toward the end of each lecture, my professor would move around to the front of his desk, lean against it and tell us a story about what it was like being a brand manager at Procter & Gamble. We would all wake up from our boredom, and lean forward in anticipation of what would happen next. A great place to learn the art of storytelling, is to read great novels or watch movies that have become classics. Because each successful story follows a formula that goes something like this. And I share this with you giving full credit to Donald Miller and “Storybrand”, which is a book I highly recommend. The hero has a goal but some villain is preventing him from achieving his goal. This creates tension as we wonder if the hero will win. Along the way the hero meets a guide who gives him the tools or clears the roadblocks to achieving his goal, thus releasing the tension and leaving him to live happily ever after or to fight his next battle. Here are a couple of examples you may recognize: In the first Harry Potter book, our hero Harry finds out he’s a wizard on his 11th birthday and that the evil villain Voldemort killed his parents when he was a baby but was unable to kill him and so his powers were destroyed. He is trying to get his hands on a stone that would restore his powers and make him immortal so he can come back and take over the wizarding world. We have conflict. Fortunately, Harry has his guide Dumbledore to help him with his magic and he and his friends are able to thwart Voldemort until the next battle. In the first Star Wars, the galaxy is at war and rebels under the command of the evil Darth Vader have stolen the plans to the Death Star which can destroy entire planets. We have conflict. Our hero, Luke Skywalker, after seeing a holographic recording of Princess Leia asking for help from Obi-Wan Kenobi, seeks him out. Obi-Wan plays the role of the guide, teaching Luke the ways of the force so he is ultimately able to destroy the death star. These same principles can be applied when you are writing the story of your business. But there are some key points to remember. First, your business can never be the hero of the story. Your customer is the hero and you are the guide. Because of what you do, you will allow them to be the hero. When JJ’s firm saves someone a bunch of money on their taxes, he isn’t the hero. But he has enabled that parent to be a hero to their kids and take them on a surprise trip to Disney. When Emilio is able to find a business a faster, more redundant internet solution, he isn’t the hero. But perhaps he enabled a health insurance call center to keep operating in the middle of a storm so that one nurse was able to get an elderly woman the care she needed. Second, your customer must always face a villain. That villain could be real, or more of a concept. In JJ’s case, Uncle Sam is the evil villain trying to take our hard earned money and deprive a family of relaxing time together. In Emilio’s case, the villain could be unstable internet that interferes with the ability of people to help one another. But a villain could just as easily be time, for some businesses. Third, you and your business are the guide to help your customer be the hero. You are their Yoda, their Mr. Miyagi and their Dumbledore. To be a credible guide you need to show 3 things; empathy, authority and a plan. You need to convince them that you feel their pain, that you have the deep experience that makes you the right choice, and that you have a clear process to pull them out of their pain. This simple formula of using the hero, the villain and the guide can help you to write a relatable story that will allow your target customers to really feel that you understand them. Deep down, we all want to be heros to people we care about, so my challenge to you this week is to find a way to show how you can make your customers heros.

Telling Your Business Story

dianeliseBlog

Last week I talked about how we need to be prepared for our businesses to change over the next decade when Gen Z, now high school and college students, become our clients.  One of the traits of this generation is connecting with brands who tell a positive story, so today I’d like to share some tips on how to tell …

It’s the holidays, so I thought today I’d talk about a feelgood topic, and that is the subject of human connections. As a marketer, I’m keenly aware of how much more we’re able to get through our day without making any human connections. Over 20 years ago, when my husband and I were first dating and he lived in Brazil, we used to laugh about how Brazilians never needed maps. Here’s how finding your way from Point A to Point B used to work when driving around Brazil. Maybe this will sound familiar for some of you as you think about your home countries. You’d start out in the right general direction, and then when you weren’t sure which road to take, you’d stop and ask someone in a small town. Their directions would go something like this, “you go down the road for 3 speed bumps, and then turn right at the little blue church.” “And then what?” you’d ask them. “And then you stop and ask for directions”, they’d say. And if you think I’m kidding, this is a direct translation from an actual road trip. Fast forward to today, and we don’t need to talk to humans to ask for directions because we have a GPS in our smartphone. We don’t need to ask about the weather, because there’s an app for that. And when did you last ask someone for the time? Adults ask an average of 20 questions per day. Google has almost 93% of online search engine volume. The average person makes 4 searches/day on Google, not including the average of 142 minutes per day we spend on social media, in which we are certainly asking more questions. That means at least 40% of our questions don’t involve asking a human. But here’s the downside. Today my husband and I are happily married, but let’s say he really did something to piss me off. I might Google, “best divorce attorney near me”. I’d come up with a list, all of whom would undoubtedly offer a free consultation, and I’d pick one. On the other hand, if I spoke with a human, they might ask me if I had considered mediation. “What’s that?” I would ask. Not being familiar with this practice area it wouldn’t have entered my mind to Google it. They would explain that it was a professionally guided discussion of how to split up our stuff where I would be left feeling more in control of my circumstances. Well that does seem less disruptive. But then perhaps I’d speak with another human, who would suggest that maybe we just needed some time away from our daily stresses and there is an amazing resort called Sandals that specializes in pampering couples. Now that sounds even better and I certainly wouldn’t have started out Googling “couples resort” after my husband pissed me off. So in theory I have gone from a messy divorce to a sexy getaway with my husband. All because real humans opened my perspective to more ideas than I had considered searching for on my own. The same thing goes for your business. The power of the real human connections we have in this room is far greater than going through the mechanics of passing each other referrals. It’s about taking the time to truly understand each other’s business. It’s about coming up with creative ideas on how we might grow, and making connections to people in our own network who can support that growth. To form a network you need two things: Humans Connections If you go to your local Chamber event, spend 15 minutes sharing a cocktail with strangers and then exchange business cards, you have humans, but you haven’t made a connection, so you’re not really networking. If you follow up by sending an email outlining all of the things your business does, then you’re still not really networking because you still haven’t made a connection. You’re missing the next step of taking those business cards and setting up a coffee or dropping by their office to begin the process of understanding more about their business. Once you’ve made that connection, then you’re truly networking and over time, this investment will lead to results. Over the holidays, while you’re spending time with family and friends enjoying your eggnog or several glasses of Macallan, take a moment to reconnect and anchor that good feeling of spending meaningful time with other humans. Then in January when we get back together, work on how you can deepen the relationships with your business family, and we’ll all have a spectacular 2020!

The Power Of Connections

dianeliseBlog

It’s the holidays, so I thought today I’d talk about a feelgood topic, and that is the subject of human connections.  As a marketer, I’m keenly aware of how much more we’re able to get through our day without making any human connections.  Over 20 years ago, when my husband and I were first dating and he lived in Brazil, …