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In Safety Of Groups, Do You Attack Or Connect?

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This is a "thought bubble". It is an...

This is a "thought bubble". It is an illustration depicting thought. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I failed recently, at a presentation. And once I had a chance to think about it, I was thrilled! Because I learned an important leadership lesson about connecting with others.

Last year I was a part of a leadership development program in which I completed a group project. This year, I was asked to visit the new class and present on my project as an example of success, and to guide them through thinking about their own projects.

That is not what happened.

Instead, the group – 90% of whom I had never met – went on the attack. Rather than listening and questioning me with the goal of learning, they autopsied my project, finding fault with me for things they thought I should have done. They challenged some of the assumptions of the project and criticized me for not doing certain things, not understanding that we had tried those options and given up on them because they didn’t work. I stayed calm and responded to their challenges in an even way but I will admit that on the inside I was irritated and confused about why I was being attacked.

Afterward, I was praised for how I maintained my poise in the face of critique and that my lack of defensiveness was masterful! The meeting leader also said I was the best example of “centered leadership” she had seen live in some time. I disagreed until she pointed this out:

  • If we can’t honor and appreciate a chance to connect with others who think like us, how can we possibly be effective in connecting with others who don’t think like us?

And, with her perspective, I saw that I had in fact imparted a valuable lesson, just not the one I had intended.

I got to thinking about a blog post I wrote for Spin Sucks last year when I found myself in a similar situation. I had wanted to talk about how those of us in the nonprofit world measure our social media results. But because the title inadvertently ended up including a reference to “ROI,” the audience went on the attack. I was told I didn’t know what I was talking about – and that was just for starters.

And, again, privately, I was complimented on how I had “handled” the negative feedback.

Now I’m looking at that debacle through my new lens about honoring a chance to connect. My challengers weren’t interested in connecting with me; they were interested in setting me straight, and not in the nicest way possible.

Naturally I examined myself as well. Where had I sacrificed an opportunity to connect for the sake of being “right”? How about this. The most beautiful words someone can say to me are, “You were right!” That should give you a sense of my thinking.

Does it really make sense for us to make enemies of strangers, especially if we’re on the same side? I’d say that’s not smart networking. While my attackers walked away thinking I was a dope, had they stopped to consider what I might think of them for talking to me that way? Had I done the reverse?

My questions for you are:

  • Do you connect….or do you attack? What makes you choose one or the other?
  • What are the consequences of each approach?
  • Do you think some people aren’t important enough to connect with?
  • Should I make a video of me demonstrating this poise while people throw tomatoes at me? J/K I am not going to make the video.

So, please do share how you act in the safety of groups — do you feel compelled to go on the attack with supporters all around, or do you take another road and attempt to connect with the presenter knowing you could be in those same shoes? Not expecting any answers to that question, but it’s worth a thought or two about your own behavior in the safety of numbers. 

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Tennis Balls And Business Strategy

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I play tennis about four times weekly in leagues, clinics and hitting. In clinics, tennis balls are all over, and that means you need a ball hopper to pick up balls and dump back into the coach’s wheeled cart.

The balls are scattered; like stars in a galaxy. There’s no rhyme or reason how to pick up tennis balls efficiently. As I gaze around the courts, I deduce the best strategy to get the most balls in the least amount of time so I can resume drills.

Stay with me here…

1. If a single ball has landed all alone off to the side, I ignore it. I see some  players use their racquet to flick all the balls into the general vicinity of other balls grouped in back corners. I’d rather head to the area of highest concentration to pick up the most balls in a grouping. If I flick all the balls toward a corner from other areas of the court, it’s like playing marbles — there’s no guarantee the ball rolls nicely to land next to its cousin. And, why waste my energy flicking balls with my racquet? That’s expended fuel I need for playing time!

2. If some balls are off to the right and some are off to the left at the back of the court, I select a logical division point and pick up one ball and proceed towards the grouping with most balls together.  As I play with a variety of ages of women, some don’t have enough arm muscle to carry a heavy ball hopper, or turtle speed is preferred when picking up balls because they just don’t like it.

3. The ball hopper is steel with open gaps in the bottom. When you push the handles of the hopper down on top of a ball, it squeezes into the hopper and pops up into the bottom. Here’s the rub…I’ve tried to pick up three balls at a time with the hopper, but invariably something goes awry. Three just isn’t efficient because I add an extra step to capture the ball that squeezed away. Picking up two at a time is perfect; goes smoothly, and I can get into a rhythm and be done faster.

Tennis Balls and Your Business

When you read the items above, did you begin to see a correlation with tennis balls and your business?  Let me help:

1. When you try to rush through an exercise without methodical planning and execution, something will become chaotic or a crisis which sets you down an unplanned path.

Do use thoughtful strategy when planning a campaign or growth goals.

2. Is your team handpicked with high energy? Do they contribute to your business with the same level of knowledge and expertise so you can realize your growth goals?

Do examine your human assets and ensure they’re right for your business longterm. 

3. How frequently do you permit yourself or your team to get pulled off track to an interesting tangent that looks juicy until you dive in?

Don’t waste time on programs that take you off goal. Stay the course and only add additional programs/tasks when they directly benefit your opportunity. 

4. Think about how you approach a problem; better yet, think about the solution you execute to solve that problem. If the balls are scattered in all directions (like so many balls in the air), think carefully how you will approach each ball to address it independently or as a grouped situation.

If one situation, person or ball is screaming loudly, step back and assess the situation and see how best to manage it in a streamlined fashion.

Business owners, whether startups or 10-year-old companies, need to remember that how you pick up a tennis ball provides a thoughtful look at how to grow a business. Can you see that analogy?

7 Reasons Why PR Should Not Share Hourly Rates

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Public Relations practitioners are a dime a dozen, or so I’ve heard. Who’s not a dime a dozen are really good practitioners who bridge business and marketing with public relations (ok, here’s a plug, close your eyes…like Jayme Soulati).

Of late, more small business owners are asking me for hourly rates, and the answer is not one I ever provide immediately. Here’s why:

1. Hourly rates vary per client, project, budget available, deadline, and other parameters.

2. Marketing and public relations practitioners do not bill like lawyers. If someone in our field is billing $300/hour, that is extraordinary, and the small business is likely looking too far up the ladder or in an agency for a business partner. (By the way, even lawyers are getting slammed for hourly rates; more clients are demanding alternative fee arrangements.)

3. Independent practitioners should recognize that if a business owner is asking for an hourly rate, there’s an opportunity to sell a project or a retainer that becomes a long-term partnership versus a one-off hourly gig.

3. Before sharing an hourly rate, schedule a call (call it a “free consult”) with the small business owner to ascertain what the needs are or what project is looming that requires some marketing help.

4. After listening, assess the project duration. If you’re still tied in with the traditional ways of accounting, then multiply the hours to complete the project by an hourly rate.

A typical press release, for example, should be billed at about $500 (this includes research/interview, writing, approvals, publishing). That happens to be a project fee and not an hourly rate x 5 hours — why? Because senior practitioners who know their stuff can write a press release faster than it takes to engage on social media every day. Why should that expert penalize her expertise with an hourly rate to accomplish something more efficiently?

5. When someone asks for an hourly rate, push back and say, “how about a phone call?” Assess what the needs are. If you don’t do this, you’re worse off than if you provide an hourly rate. People are fishing and comparing notes — well, Sally in Miami is $250/hour and John in Little Rock is half that, guess John gets the business!

6. If you provide an hourly rate, you get no chance to sell your expertise. This is the clincher, so let me repeat…if you think that informing people of your cheap hourly rate is going to earn you business, you’re sadly mistaken. Don’t denigrate your expertise just to win a project for a few hours; you’ll find yourself backtracking and expending too much time for too little money.

7. Those business owners seeking hourly rates are likely shopping amongst a cadre of practitioners (because there are hundreds seeking work today) to find the cheapest labor. Remind yourself “people get what they pay for.” When you as a practitioner refuse to play that way, you’re doing yourself and your profession a huge favor. Be mindful of that.

If your response below happens to be, “yes, but it pays the bills.” I’ll argue and say, “I beg to differ, respectfully.” When you realize your valuable time is being eaten with a gig that went south, you can do nothing about it but lose money and deliver on the plan to save your reputation.

 

 

Should Health Of Blog Community Align To ROI?

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I had a post all ready for today, and then @TheJackB spat all over my blog in comments. I could not let that slide, so this post is a compilation of his musings and mine. (You get co-authorship, TheJack, but just not in the byline…heh.)

The Sales Lion wrote a post yesterday about why community is not Holy Grail of blogging that I’m sure is creating a slew of comments, not the most of which is Gini Dietrich (although I’ve not been over to comment myself). Marcus said something to the effect that “Gini shocked the blogosphere admitting her business almost went bankrupt in 2011 in spite of her healthy blog, Spin Sucks, and its huge community with lengthier commentary.” (paraphrase)

IMHO (In my humble opinion), Arment Dietrich is a service firm; it delivers professional services and seeks clients to pay it to stay viable. Gini is the point person, face, poster child, CEO, founder, biz dev artist for her firm, and, oh, yeah, she’s chief cook and bottle writer for her highly popularly ranked and accoladed blog, Spin Sucks. Her new product, Spin Sucks Pro, for which peeps will subscribe to content and teachings via webinars and writings from around the ‘sphere, launches soon (after a one-year delay during which she had to fire a tech team and start from scratch). (Never write sentences like these two.)

When you’re running a successful digital marketing/PR shop with staff and expensive headquarters near the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, and you’re launching a brand new online moneymaker that fails and requires an immediate new investment in tech dollars and clients refuse to pay you for six months and the economy sucks (like Spin), then what’s so surprising about a firm nearly going belly up (in spite of a successful blog and community)?

This dilemma is one many successful entrepreneurs face —  how to clone oneself. We are the brand and brain power clients wants, hire and require. Using Gini Dietrich was a poor example to showcase that a profitable business has nothing to do with a healthy blogging community, and here’s why:

The target audience for Spin Sucks Pro are PR, marketing, social media peeps; a healthy community of such is required to ensure that Gini’s new $ venture succeeds. Can you imagine if she had attempted to launch Spin Sucks Pro without putting all the sweat and tears into building a healthy and growing community at its precursor? Right.

 

Here’s what THEJACKB had to say in comments here yesterday:

Yep, I commented on Marcus’s post. I was half awake at the time and uninterested in picking that post apart but I am not convinced that there is a relationship between Gini’s biz and comments.

Fact is that if you can demonstrate to brands that your blog reaches the eyeballs that they want to get in front of then you can make money blogging. It happens, and any one of us has the opportunity to make it happen. It might not make sense for some of us to pursue that path but the opportunity is there.

Let’s circle back to comments and community. You and I (Jack and Jayme) have talked about this, and I’ll repeat that I don’t see comments as being currency. They aren’t always useful social proof for whether a blog is popular, influential etc.

But that doesn’t apply across the board. Fact is that many of the people that speak at blog conferences get their positions as faculty because of their community and the comments. It is not impossible to get a gig without, but it is much easier when you have it.

Data mining is useful for bloggers. When you start to break down who your readers are you can learn all sorts of interesting things. During the past four days more than 4k uniques took a moment to read my post.

Two PR agencies and several brands were camped out on that post for extended periods of time. I don’t believe that they hung out there solely because they loved the writing. There is something more going on. My job is to figure out why. Maybe it is because they are looking for a writer or maybe it set off a keyword alert, but I’ll put money down that there is a money making opportunity tied into it.

Let’s circle back to the question of can you make money and approach it in a more direct manner. Let’s pretend that blogger XYZ has a product/service that they sell and that there is a valid value proposition tied into it.

Blogger XYZ needs to learn how to close. Ask for the order. Stop pussy footing around with “you might be interested or want” and ask for the sale. Remember Alec Baldwin in Glen Garry Glen Ross- “Always Be Closing.” (Excuse me while I reconnect the IV, the coffee drip just ran out.) (Indeed, Friend, you exhausted yourself with that spittle.)

What say you? (This is edited; thank you, Marcus.) Are business success and community related? Need you have a thriving blog community to also have a thriving business?