Ignore the boos. They usually come from the cheap seats.

The thing about being successful that is so elusive isn't about the climb, it's staying up.  Most people find it hard to maintain success in anything they do.

I am going to assert two assumptions.

First, other people bring successful people down maliciously.

Why would someone bring me down from the mountain of success that I climbed heroically to summit?  Quite simply it's because there is only so much room at the peak.  Also, You got there first, faster and with a greater authority and that pissed some people off.

Most have heard the quote, "You should never complain about your problems because half the people wont care and the other half will be glad you have problems."

I think that relates well to successful people.  If you want success and you plan, execute and work ferociously to achieve it... not everyone is wired that way.  Some will see your ambition as a threat to them.  A threat to their "plan" which doesn't yield them the same success.  Instead of being humbled by another approach, a proven success model... people are naturally resistant and defensive as to their approach still being one that is superior.

It's like looking down the mountain and seeing people struggle to climb the mountain... yet they never reach the same summit.  When you explain your ascent and the way you went about reaching the peak, they defend their original strategy, why it is superior and how it will yield them the results they seek.  Often, they are even as brazen to poke holes in your strategy and things they would suggest you do differently.  Here is my suggestion, Never take advice - unless it's from someone who you truly know, trust and have respect for.

There is not just one way to do something well enough to be successful.  There are many ways to arrive at the ideal destination.  However, when someone wants to bring you down, just remember that the boos and naysayers all come from the cheap seats.  These are folks who come to an occasional game, show up when it is convenient for them, and heckle the competition.  You are wired for real, sustained success and will leave it all on the field with your team, show up regardless of convenience and sit square in the middle of the action.

Secondly, two things happen when you realize success.  You make a decision to go harder, faster, stronger... and eclipse your previous summit or you decide you've earned a break.  This is fair to go either way.  I am about to take a break to reboot after a rally of a few weeks or extremely relentless work.  I will take a few days then plug right back in.  Often, we can either burn out if we keep going at the pace we're at, or fail to reengage if we take too much time off.

Taking time off is essential to maintaining your balance and perspective.  When I take time off, i try to keep a book open on business strategy, innovation, selling... something to keep the light on while I am unplugged.  I think it's important to not take too much time off.  If you want historic precedent for this, see every research study about kids returning to school after a 3-month summer and see their reading, math and science levels plummet from the previous year.  You have to spend too much time getting back to where you were to be effective at the challenges of that day.

SO, staying up on the mountain is about staying your course, understanding how you arrived there... don't pay attention to the boos and if you take a break, make it just enough time so that you don't interrupt your ability to regain control of the mountain.

Most of all... Ignore the boos.  They usually come from the cheap seats.

What is most important to my customers?

"See, you think I give a shit. Wrong. In fact, while you talk, I'm thinking; How can I give less of shit? That's why I look interested." - Sh*t my Dad Says.comI like to give a shit about important stuff that translates into my own perceived value.  We spend time where we care - family, job, kids games, philanthropy, exercise, food, sports, etc.  Everyone ranks and assigns value to things a hundred times a day.

As an example, I give a shit about my laundry and dry cleaning 'cause that means i get to wear clean clothes and present myself well.  That is valuable to me.  It wasn't always [see every college student's dorm] that way. So, the more important the value I perceive, the more I should care - right?  If I didn't have any washer or dryer to do my laundry, it would be a serious impediment to staying clean and presentable.  I could figure out other solutions to fix this problem, however it would be a large obstacle in achieving the outcome of having clean clothes.  

What about giving a shit for our customers?  Well, I suppose to understand that, we need to understand what our customers give a shit about... What is the #1 thing to the customer, today?  

If i was the CEO, it's likely to improve my shareholder value and hit and exceed revenue targets and maintain profit margin.  If i was the Head of a Nursing School, it might be to increase NCLEX licensure and graduation rates.  If I was a CFO, it would be to reduce churn, balance the budget.  If I was a Mom, it would be to have my kids go to bed on time without whining.  

You get my point?

Maybe it's not anything you can help with... maybe you can directly improve their most significant concern.  They key is to always understand what that concern is, at any given time.  Interestingly, what is #1 on my mind today is not necessarily true next year, next month, next week.  I might have a huge product defect that caused 30 deaths as a Drug Company - now I am most worried about Risk Management and Legal implications.  Either way, the more we position our product and service in support of that #1 priority is going to elevate our outcome likelihood.  If I was dealing with my laundry situation and someone came to sell me an iron, i might not be able to process that because while it does something in support of my goal of looking clean and presentable, the major need i have is a washer and dryer.  

So, does that mean I wont also need an iron?  Not necessarily, just not right now.  Maybe i have a constraint that my budget will only allow a $500 purchase of a washer/dryer, but the market price is $900.  The iron sales guy goes and works with a distributor he knows and brings me a coupon for $400 off washer/dryer, he's provided a value to me and i will likely purchase his iron because he saved me money on my primary concern and he provided a elevated level of service in my primary mission.  Not because that iron was such an urgent need.  I really didn't need it, but i needed someone to help me solve my problem given my constraints and obstacles. Now, he has my loyalty and my money in exchange for the solution he has helped to bring.  That solution will be made even slightly better due to his solution, but he gets all the credit and customer appreciation for the primary mission being solved thanks to his/her effort.

Ask your customer, "What is the most important thing you are working to improve right now?"Then, shut the fuck up and listen carefully.

Or, if they start off on the most pressing issue they are facing... see the line above.

So, even if a customer is talking to you about shit that might not seem like it matters to you, doesn't relate to your prioritizes and goals and/or is anything interesting... you gotta listen if you want to succeed.  It's the things that we are most concerned about that dominate our mind share and those things are shared as an attempt to draw together ideas to solve these problems.  

September Eleventh

Here we are at the onset of 9/11 and I remember that day vividly in 2001.  I was in college and I was on my way to class when i heard the chatter on the news.  I was already late with my assignment and I was on the fence at the time on my major.  I was scrapping together sobriety from another night out.. and attempting to comprehend the news as it poured across all media outlets... it couldn't be true, right?

I ran to class holding my now late assignment and I stormed in wanting to hear the latest update.  We had the TV on news and I could see the 2 planes collapsing into the World Trade Towers.  Then I saw the Pentagon was hit.  I froze up and become clammy and anxious.

I stood up...  "My Dad is in the Pentagon, i gotta go"

I stormed back to my dorm and called my mom, dad, brother and seemingly everyone else i could imagine. Cell signals were overwhelmed.  I got a call from a teammate and he stopped by, worried because he was on campus and heard the news as well.  His father works in the DoD in D.C. and works often in the Pentagon.  We had no news of our family.

After a few hours on edge, we both heard from our families and we were not among the victims' families this fateful September day.

However, the implications of that day persist.  My buddy who stayed with me in despair ultimately became a Reservist and served two tours in Afghanistan. I am still close with him today and is about to Marry his high school sweetheart.

I was in industrial design via the college of architecture.  I wanted a career where I worked with people who had difficult missions to lead others and architecture was a very lonely but very rewarding profession.  I exhibited talent at developing worthy concepts, but had difficulty in the task of articulating designs, models and technical drawings.  I could stand my own, but had no passion for the skills i needed to be successful.

There I had an epiphany:  I wanted to sell cool shit, not make it.

At the time of that terrible day in 2001, i was faced with a terribly difficulty decision to alter my career at the age of 19.  I made a decision to enter the business side of the development of disruptive solutions.  I was more prepared to make that decision after experiencing the threat of losing something you value most.  It was that experience that encouraged me to make life decisions to better my happiness.

With great loss, it's hard to reconcile the triumphs, but we must if we are to celebrate the lives of those sacrificed to ensure we have opportunity to triumph.

My buddy Jesse.
Miss you lots brother.  RIP.

What exactly is "Talent" anyways?

Talent is such a loaded word.

It reeks of young go-getter types in overpriced suits and designer shoes.  Or, we think of messy, IT guys who can decode a nuclear bomb by whistling into a program they built.  Both are sometimes true in our declaration of anointing someone with a label "talented"

Is that fair?  If i can make a product that solves a big problem, am I talented?  What if I can't setup payment and distribution or sales channels and support?  I made this great, innovative thing, though?  Why can't all that be handled by someone else? Well, it can and often times is being handled by others.  These are the people offering the true measure of talent, which is to take a product designed for a problem and turn it into a sustainable, growing business.

I like to think of talent as something hidden and underdeveloped in people that exudes their greatest passion, but what the hell is that??

Sales talent is easier to measure due to the hard revenue and profit margins being traceable to the sales professional.  However, some sales people offer much more than simply a result, they offer market development ideas with practical tactics.  Sales people think about the last mile.

Talent.  So loaded a term.  What determines your talent quotient?  Can it be measured?  Is it sustainable or momentary?  Talent isn't always forever - want proof? see every young movie-star from Hollywood, ever.

Talent is bred and born in many ways.  Talented athletes are provided a gene base to catapult their efforts in developing their natural talent.  In many ways, military brats who move and adapt to many global environments throughout childhood develop talent in inter-personnel skills, sales acumen and cultural sensitivity.

Talent is no doubt something that we need to know how to inspire among those that have a passion to share their talent, and we need to inspire those who keep their talents guarded to unlock and develop that talent.  With a focus on talent, we can reduce our risk profile and illuminate our HR practices to fast-track those that are deemed talented.

Lastly, let's take it back up to the organizational level...

Most companies develop products and services to solve problems that exist already.

Great, Talented companies create solutions for immediate problems we know about today, problems we didn't know about until you solved them proactively in addition to prepare to solve problems we may face in the future.  Our challenge is sometimes not knowing the challenges tomorrow, but we must anticipate and project the future to be ready now to support those risks.  Talent is the key to unlocking that mystery.  People solve problems, technology and process are the vehicles.

Talent.  Unloaded.

It's been too long. Stories of my past adventures.

This is my first Blog post since October 2011.  It's been too long and this is the revival of this blog.  In scanning back through the last few posts, it reminds me on some interesting experiences and stories of my career evolution.  I want to share some of those stories.

I entered the world of start-ups originally in 2007.  I joined a garage pair of former associates at a large Bank for 20 years.  They had an idea to infuse customer engagement with retail business through text message driven marketing.  SMS was the short form for this style of messaging.  It was a local, Richmond VA pair of family-men in their 40's and 50's trying to get into a race for mobile gold.

I came on a short 2 years after they launched...

There was one other "sales" guy who had driven all of about $40K in the last year of revenue... I knew he was toast after I was there for 2 days.  Our offices adorned the strip mall adjacent to an Asian-business owned Nail Salon and a Subway.  I couldn't care less where we were every day for 10-12 hours, I thought it was kind of cool... when people walked in off the street for whatever reason - it was like a zoo exhibit for a start up.  We'd conduct our customer presentations on site at times... with meetings circled in the center of the store.  Our product development was to think up good ideas and ways we could approach a market, sector, channel, partner, and we had a lot of ideas.

The initial toe in the water with our mobile company was into the local restaurant scence and clubs like comedy joints and nightclubs. Within a month, I had secured a meeting with the largest email marketer and traditional marketing agency for Restaurants.  We won a huge deal with a revenue share program.  They had also considered large scale operators of mobile services.  Here we are 4 guys in a store with a couple short codes and some dreams... We began immediately with plans to scale the partnership and plans for everything...

When I was able to ink a joint alliance and reseller agreement to pinch our mobile platform into the product suite of an adjacent market, we rose revenue 200% in less than 6 months.  We were poised to do even better with some new license revenue.

When we moved into the downtown clock-tower top floor in the historic Richmond train station, it felt like we had arrived.  There were over 8 offices in our suite, i picked the corner near the train depot.  My office was sick. It was the old brick, huge ceilings, nice furniture and posted up on top of the building next to a leading advertising agency in Richmond at the time.

Now, because i was intimately involved with the revenue source for the company, I knew things were picking up.  We had nearly quadrupled the revenue from our alliance in the last 3 months as sales picked up with key retail restaurants.  Things were good and the money was coming in... What comes in didn't appear to be reinvested and put into strategic buckets for continued growth, however.  When i asked for budgets and conference attendance, we seemed to always have a reason not to participate.

What I found out later was that the partners had serious financial distress and debt that was causing them to think twice about the risks.

When i caught the scent of this trend, I knew I was on my way. We were successful in laying the foundation for future success and dominance in a market with 30,000 restaurant targets... but it wasn't to be.  The partner we notably acquired an alliance in the Restaurant industry decided to divest that partnership and send us directly all leads from mobile.  We thought this would be a folly of business, not having to share revenue.

But the phones didn't ring off the hook.  We were able to secure hundreds of location license deals, but the real goal was large-scale institutional license for mobile for every McDonalds, KFC, taco bell, applebees, and every other restaurant chain worldwide... at least that was my goal.  We were restricted from direct selling, but i hit up 80 calls a day for several weeks in a row to drum up biz, it was not the same edge than saying "Hello Sir, This is James with the company currently handling your digital customer engagement on your website and email - your trusted marketing partner today - we got a great way to help with mobile engagement, let's sit down and take a look..."

I left and began my next chapter - I learned to much about being an Entrepreneur and developing a market-focus in your brand, operations, sales vernacular and understanding of their unique challenges and customers mindset.  I also learned that having a trust established through evidenced gains in customer goals - will translate into larger revenue per customer.  You need to have a focus, but you need to solve all your customers problems if you want that relationship to flourish and ripen over time.  The more you are valued, the more you become indispensable.

Next up, my own lead on a start-up.

Best,
James