4 Failure Points that Can Undermine Your Business – Failure Point 4: Don’t Close Your Ears to Experts

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When I launched my second business, a publishing company called Sigma Communications, I was filled with passion but knew next to nothing about publishing a magazine. Without proven competence, I desperately needed guidance. Sure enough, I came to learn that the Chairman Emeritus of Time Warner, Dick Munro, was in the neighboring office. I could not imagine a better advisor for our startup publication and decided to introduce myself.

As I walked down the hall for our initial meeting, I wondered if someone of his stature would take the time to speak to an entrepreneur new to publishing. It turned out that Dick was more than willing to open up to me. He listened carefully as I told him about my idea for my magazine. But I was surprised when he cautioned me that publications usually take a long time to become profitable.

“You’ve got very lofty goals,” Dick said. “When we started Sports Illustrated, we didn’t make a profit for six years. Are you prepared to wait that long? Do you have enough funding to last six years, if necessary?”

I assured Dick that we would do whatever was needed to make our journal successful. In the back of my mind, I had a different thought: We had launched USI and turned a profit in four months. Why couldn’t we accomplish the same with Sigma? I was determined to beat the normal ramp-up to profitability in the publishing industry.

By the close of our discussion, Dick agreed to be our advisor. He immediately started reaching out to his network and introduced us to the publisher of Garden Design magazine. Garden Design‘s publisher was amazingly friendly and generous with his time and knowledge.

As he took us through the mechanics of starting a publication, he, too, explained that magazines take a long time to make money. First, we would need to build an audience. Then, we’d have to sell advertising space. He warned us that revenue from advertising would not start flowing immediately, and even then, it could be just a trickle for several years as we built our subscriber base.

Garden Design‘s publisher was straightforward and very honest. He shared that publishing a magazine was an ongoing challenge. Achieving profitability was a constant struggle with progress measured in years, not months. Because I was used to moving at breakneck speed and expecting immediate returns, I felt we could outperform the publishing industry norm. Rather than listening to my advisors, I allowed my passion for our magazine to distort my views about timing, funding, and reaching breakeven – a fatal mistake.

My unbridled enthusiasm for becoming a publisher, combined with my lack of distinctive competence, put blinders on me. I did not heed the advice of industry experts with superlative track records. Allowing my passion to overrun the common sense of listening to my advisors was Failure Point #4.

4 Failure Points that Can Undermine Your Business

In this series we have shared four failure points that can undermine the efforts of even the most seasoned entrepreneurs. Why not learn from my mistakes?

  • Failure Point #1: Starting a business based on your passion, rather than building a business based on your distinctive competence.
  • Failure Point #2: Convincing yourself that “the world will beat a path to your doorstep” without securing preorders to prove your business model.
  • Failure Point #3: Taking the risk to launch a business without sufficient funding to reach breakeven.
  • Failure Point #4: Allowing your passion to overrun the common sense of listening to your advisors

About the Authors

Ed “Skip” McLaughlinEd “Skip” McLaughlin is the founder of four businesses and is currently running Blue Sunsets LLC, a real estate and angel investment firm. He bootstrapped his first business, United Systems Integrators (USI) Corporation, a corporate real estate outsourcing firm, and grew it into an Inc. 500 company. In 2001, Ed earned Entrepreneur of the Year honors from Ernst & Young. In 2005, he sold USI to Johnson Controls, a Fortune 100 company, and at that point, became CEO of JCI’s Global Workplace Business for the Americas. A member of the Board of Governors for Tufts Medical Center, Ed founded its David E. Wazer Breast Cancer Research Fund. He graduated from the College of the Holy Cross, where he is a member of the Board of Trustees. Active in philanthropy, Ed lives with his wife in Connecticut and has three adult children. Contact Ed at [email protected] or connect with him on Twitter @purposeisprofit.

Wyn LydeckerWyn Lydecker is the founder of Upstart Business Planning, where she works with entrepreneurs to develop plans that answer the questions investors ask most often. Previously, she was Managing Director of Business Plans International in New York and Co-Director of the Small Business Resource Center at Norwalk Community College. Wyn has an MBA in finance and marketing from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in economics from the University of California at Santa Barbara. She serves on the board of a local nonprofit she helped found, At Home In Darien. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and has two adult children. Contact Wyn at [email protected] or connect with her on Twitter @upstartwyn.

Public Service Announcements

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Non-profit organizations and the causes they promote are greatly served by enlightening the public. Public education is an important part of the charge for those organizations.

The earliest PSAs promoted the selling of war bonds and were shown in movie theatres during World War I and II. The campaigns included: “Loose lips sink ships” and “Keep them rolling.” With the advent of radio in the 1920s and its popularity in the 1930s and 1940s, it was a natural sign-off for national shows to include public service messages. Local stations began airing PSAs during their programming to fill the holes when they had not sold all the commercial availabilities. Then, there were Community Calendar shows. Every disc jockey had their favorite causes, and talk shows often featured representatives of non-profit organizations to discuss their services.

When television hit in the late 1940s, public service advertising was institutionalized. PSAs were aired, just as had been done on radio. Local TV stations promoted non-profit organizations via recorded and live spots, ID slides and crawls of calendar items in local communities.

Some of the famous campaigns included annual United Way appeals, Smokey the Bear (“Only you can prevent forest fires”), McGruff, the dog (“Take a bite out of crime”), the United Negro College Fund (“A mind is a terrible thing to lose”), Just Say No to Drugs, the American Cancer Society (“Fight cancer with a check-up and a check”), anti-smoking campaigns, voter awareness, vaccinations, immunizations, educational programs, etc.

Many of the famous PSA campaigns were created by The Advertising Council. This was a consortium of advertising agencies who lent their creativity on a volunteer basis to a variety of causes. These ads won awards for creativity and spurred participating agencies to serve their clients and communities by their volunteer service. Other PSAs were devised by public relations agencies and the non-profit organizations themselves.

The Partnership for a Drug-Free America was founded in New York City in 1985. It was a consortium of advertising agencies who produced public service messages discouraging drug use. It coordinated campaigns with the federal government in its efforts to stem the spread of illegal drugs.

PSAs have had a massive impact on our culture. They steered many people into lives committed to community stewardship and leadership. In the old days, broadcasting was regulated. Stations had to reapply for their licenses from the Federal Communications Commission every three years. We were required to keep Public Files of correspondence from the listeners and community stakeholders. We were required to perform Community Ascertainment, a process by which we interviewed leaders on problems of the municipality and how our station might help to address them. Through all that, I became enamored with community service, developing trust relationships with stakeholders.

Newspapers began contributing space to non-profit causes back in the 1930s, plus writing stories on many of the programs. Community newspapers followed suit in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

The billboard industry began offering free public service facings to non-profit organizations in the 1960s. As public opposition to billboards as environmental blockages increased, its industry made efforts to work with non-profit organizations to get their words out. In the 1990s, I testified to my city council on behalf of the billboard industry. I stated that they would never get rid of the signs, and their best strategy would be to work with the industry, assuring that local non-profits would be served through PSA boards.

Then came my next time to testify, and recalling this incident makes me sad. I testified before the U.S. Congress, begging them NOT to deregulate broadcasting. I was there in support of non-profit organizations and said that deregulation would be a death-knell to public service advertising on radio and TV. I said that unless the FCC requires PSA quotas to broadcasters, they would not deliver the time. I opined that a handful of mega-corporations would ultimately own broadcasting frequencies and would not have the same public service commitment as did the “mom and pop” broadcasters that they purchased. Sadly, history has proven me to be correct.

Because of deregulation, non-profit organizations were forced to buy time on radio and TV. Many got corporate sponsors to pay the freight. Others cut into programs and services in order to fund marketing. That is exhibited when you see every competing educational institution buying airtime to promote their services to the community. I performed a management study for my state comptroller’s office. I reviewed the costs of public awareness campaigns on behalf of state agencies. I opined that agencies felt compelled to spend funds to compete with each other in the arena of marketing.

New forms of public service announcements have emerged to take the place of lost free time on radio and TV. In the 1980s, I started producing filler ads for community newspapers. They were laid out in the style of paid advertising and were furnished as camera-ready copy for newspapers, in the most-needed space fillers as the newspapers had. Thus, they were used.

In the 21st Century, I believe that the future for public service announcements lies on-line. Every non-profit has its own website, and most have blogs in order to disseminate public awareness messages. Many non-profit organizations are producing videos for YouTube.

Now for something new, yet I’ve been advocating this since 1997. I believe that corporate websites are the most untapped source for public service messages. I encourage corporations to have a Community Corner on their homepages. Highlight the causes that they support. Put filler ads for non-profit groups on their websites. Encourage their customers and stakeholders to support their designated causes. Non-profit organizations need the support of Cause Related Marketing.

Here are some final tips for non-profit organizations in constructing their public service campaigns:

  • Carefully choose your topic. Create plausible narratives.
  • Research the marketplace and your cause for support.
  • Consider your audience. Get reactions from your audiences.
  • Get the attention of stakeholders carefully and tastefully.

About the Author

Hank MoorePower Stars to Light the Business Flame, by Hank Moore, encompasses a full-scope business perspective, invaluable for the corporate and small business markets. It is a compendium book, containing quotes and extrapolations into business culture, arranged in 76 business categories.

Hank’s latest book functions as a ‘PDR of business,’ a view of Big Picture strategies, methodologies and recommendations. This is a creative way of re-treading old knowledge to enable executives to master change rather than feel as they’re victims of it.

Power Stars to Light the Business Flame is now out in all three e-book formats: iTunes, Kindle, and Nook.

Your Most Important Business Strategy Is Culture

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How healthy is the quality of your business culture? Does your work environment ensure every player – leader, team member, customer, even supplier – is treated with trust, respect, and dignity in every interaction?

When I engage business leaders in discussion about their culture, most shrug their shoulders. “Our culture is OK,” most of them say. The reality is that most leaders don’t pay attention to the quality of their culture.

Deloitte’s recent Global Human Capital Trends report, found that “few factors contribute more to business success than culture.” 87 percent of business leaders who responded to their survey believe that culture is important. 54 percent believe culture is very important.

If that’s the case, why don’t leaders make culture a priority? They don’t know how. They’ve never been asked to manage culture. Deloitte’s study found that only 28 percent of respondents believe they understand their current culture well. Only 19 percent believe they have the “right” culture.

This data shows that most leaders don’t know what to look for. Few leaders know what to do if they discover their culture isn’t healthy.

What leaders do know is managing results. They invest more time, energy, and attention in results than they do in their business culture, yet culture drives everything that happens in their organization – for better or worse.

Don’t get me wrong – results are definitely important. But they’re not the only important thing. In fact, managing results is exactly HALF the leader’s job.

The other half? Managing the quality of their work culture.

Those leaders that invest time and energy in the quality of their culture reap tremendous benefits. A purposeful, positive, productive culture boosts employee engagement by 40 percent, customer service by 40 percent, and results and profits by 35 percent. I can prove it.

How can leaders create a healthy work culture? By making values – the way people treat each other – as important as results.

Just as leaders create clear performance expectations then hold people accountable for delivering those expectations, leaders must create clear values expectations and hold people – including themselves – accountable for acting in alignment with those values, every day.

To make values observable, tangible, and measurable requires that values – ideas like “integrity” or “teamwork” – be defined in behavioral terms. Why? Behaviors are measurable.

If you define your integrity value with a measurable behavior like “I keep my promises” or “I do what I say I will do,” everyone will know how they’re expected to behave to ensure they’re demonstrating that value, daily.

By formalizing values in behavioral terms, then requiring all leaders to model those behaviors themselves, you build credibility for your values. You build credibility in your leaders. And you model the purposeful, positive, productive culture you want.

In the absence of formalized values, your culture is one of default rather than one of design. Don’t leave the quality of your work culture to chance.

Make culture one of your critical business strategies – and implement valued behaviors as a means to creating a purposeful, positive, productive culture.

About the Author

S. Chris EdmondsS. Chris Edmonds is a sought-after speaker, author of the Amazon best seller The Culture Engine, an executive consultant and founder and CEO of The Purposeful Culture Group. Named one of Inc. Magazine’s 100 Great Leadership Speakers and a featured presenter at SXSW 2015, Chris’ blog, podcasts, research, and videos are enjoyed by thousands at Driving Results Through Culture. Check out his daily quotes on organizational culture, servant leadership, and workplace inspiration on Twitter at @scedmonds.

4 Failure Points that Can Undermine Your Business – Failure Point 3: The Dark Side of Bootstrapping

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When we launched my publishing business, Sigma Communications, I was so passionate about the magazine, and so confident that it would be a runaway success, that I decided to self-fund. After all, I had successfully bootstrapped my first business, USI. Why couldn’t we bootstrap Sigma, too? Unfortunately, I had to learn the hard way that bootstrapping is not always best.

I came to realize that I did not properly factor the size and scale against the funding needs of Sigma. And I completely miscalculated the time it would take to reach breakeven. Sigma’s quarterly magazine, The National Register of Commercial Real Estate, consumed capital at a rate far greater than USI could generate it. Since I had never manufactured and shipped my own product before, I underestimated the continuous cash drain from ongoing production and distribution.

After almost three years of losing money, things started to become stressful. Our business model was not working as planned. Advertising revenues were slow to trickle in. While some major holders of real estate agreed to place listings, many did not. The deep recession in commercial real estate had forced corporations to freeze all marketing budgets. Many of the big real estate holders were not allowed to spend a dime on advertising, even though corporations were spending millions just to maintain their surplus real estate.

Selling display advertising to non-real estate advertisers also proved to be extremely challenging. As a new publication, we did not have an audited distribution to prove our circulation. While we planned to sell a full-page, four-color ad for $10,000, no advertisers would pay that rate. We were lucky to get $5,000 for a four-color ad and $2,500 for a black-and-white ad. When we approached big advertisers like Absolut Vodka, they said they would love to put an ad in our magazine, but they would not pay us anything for the placement because they felt their brand name gave our magazine credibility. We were forced to accept their terms.

With little advertising revenue flowing in, we had to rely on USI’s profits to fund most of Sigma’s cash needs. To make matters worse, we found ourselves spending 80 percent of our time on Sigma and only 20 percent on our cash cow, USI.

By its third year, Sigma was still burning cash. Quarterly advertising revenue was averaging $100,000 per issue, while expenses were running at $200,000 per issue (20,000 copies × $10 per copy = $200,000 in expenses). We were losing $100,000 per issue and could not forecast when we would break even. We started to hit a wall.

Generating a profit from a publication was a slow process. Sigma had begun to run an annual deficit of $400,000. We could not continue to bleed cash and rely on USI to fund the shortfall. USI needed money to fund its own growth. If we had planned properly, we would have raised enough financing to see us through the gestation period of a national publication.

Bootstrapping was not enough. We needed outside capital to reach breakeven – but my desire to maintain control and my ego stood in the way. Having insufficient funding was Failure Point #3.

About the Author

Ed “Skip” McLaughlinEd “Skip” McLaughlin is the founder of four businesses and is currently running Blue Sunsets LLC, a real estate and angel investment firm. He bootstrapped his first business, United Systems Integrators (USI) Corporation, a corporate real estate outsourcing firm, and grew it into an Inc. 500 company. In 2001, Ed earned Entrepreneur of the Year honors from Ernst & Young. In 2005, he sold USI to Johnson Controls, a Fortune 100 company, and at that point, became CEO of JCI’s Global Workplace Business for the Americas. A member of the Board of Governors for Tufts Medical Center, Ed founded its David E. Wazer Breast Cancer Research Fund. He graduated from the College of the Holy Cross, where he is a member of the Board of Trustees. Active in philanthropy, Ed lives with his wife in Connecticut and has three adult children. Contact Ed at [email protected] or connect with him on Twitter @purposeisprofit.

Wyn LydeckerWyn Lydecker is the founder of Upstart Business Planning, where she works with entrepreneurs to develop plans that answer the questions investors ask most often. Previously, she was Managing Director of Business Plans International in New York and Co-Director of the Small Business Resource Center at Norwalk Community College. Wyn has an MBA in finance and marketing from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in economics from the University of California at Santa Barbara. She serves on the board of a local nonprofit she helped found, At Home In Darien. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and has two adult children. Contact Wyn at [email protected] or connect with her on Twitter @upstartwyn.

7 Presentation Strategies to Skyrocket Your Career

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If you are a professional working in business today then regardless of your industry, age or position you will be called on regularly to present your ideas to others. If it hasn’t begun yet then be patient, it will soon.

Whether it’s a team meeting, monthly update, a new initiative or project briefing there will be moments when everything you say and the way you say it matters. It is precisely that significance which leaves many professionals dreading the thought of presenting to colleagues and clients.

Instead of letting the prospect of sharing your thoughts and ideas with others invoke such anxiety consider the opportunity and value it offers you.

Many people would agree that far too many business presentations are too long and extremely tedious. With such a perspective being so prevalent in organisations today there is a huge opportunity to challenge the status quo and to stand out from the crowd.

The ability to connect emotionally as well as intellectually with others at work is arguably the most important skill in the world today. Imagine how quickly and how far you could climb the corporate ladder if you presented your ideas with confidence, creativity and impact. Set aside any personal angst you may have about presenting and public speaking and follow these 7 strategies to take your career to the next level.

1. Lose the ‘crystal ball’

As former executive of some of the UK’s most successful brands I was called on to present to colleagues and clients a great deal. After many years of sleepless nights trying to second guess what my audience actually wanted from me and how much they already knew I had an epiphany.

I started to ask them.

I realised that I could craft and deliver what I considered to be the most relevant, powerful and even entertaining presentation but if it wasn’t what my audience wanted or needed I was wasting my time and theirs.

2. Build it like a Tipi

One of the many reasons that so many business presentations aren’t as engaging as they should be is because they lack focus and structure.

The aboriginal tipi is an amazing feat of indigenous engineering. It is constructed using a number of poles but its core strength emanates from the 3 largest poles which provide the support structure.

I often consider a great presentation akin to a well-constructed tipi which has been built using many poles. The 3 largest and most important poles of presenting will determine the impact and memorability of your presentation.

  • What do you want your audience to think?
  • How do you want your audience to feel?
  • What do you want your audience to do?

3. Think like a tweet

Have you ever had someone strongly recommend a book for you to read and when you ask them what it’s about they can’t really explain it. Business presentations can be a little like that as the speaker talks you through 30 slides without clarity of their message.

We live in a world of social media and a great practice to get into is clarifying and writing your key message down in less than 140 characters. That won’t be the way you present it of course but it will ensure that everything you say focuses around that core message.

4. Craft a conversation

Another reason many business presentations are considered tedious is because they are crafted and delivered as lectures. In other words the audience is spoken at for the full 20 minutes.

Craft a conversation instead.

Ask them questions, get them involved and seek their opinion don’t just talk at them.

5. Be different

If the information, insights or ideas you have can be communicated easily in an email then respect your audience’s time and send them one. If however, presenting to them face to face will help you to bring your message to life and really connect with them then make it different.

  • Don’t use bullet points – Use powerful images
  • Make it personal to them
  • Tell them something they don’t know
  • Tell them stories
  • Use video’s, props or get them doing something
  • Ask thought provoking questions

6. Practice

By practicing I don’t mean memorise a script. There are 3 central elements to work on when practising:

  • Content – Get to know your message, supporting points and content inside out.
  • Verbal – Stretch and challenge your voice as much as you possibly can. Try out a few vocal exercises on the internet. Read a few passages from your favourite book in as many different ways as you can. Read with, passion, excitement, as though you were angry, etc. Change your pace, volume, intonation and practice pausing.
  • Move – Practice the way you move. Get some feedback on your eye contact, facial expressions, hand gestures and the way you use the space you have.

7. Have some fun

Unless you are reading a eulogy or making people redundant business presentations don’t have to be deadly serious all of the time. You can deliver a really important and serious message whilst still lightening up a little, adding a touch of humour and making sure that both you and your audience enjoy it.

About the Author

Maurice De CastroMaurice De Castro is a former corporate executive of some of the UK’s most successful brands. Maurice believes that the route to success in any organisation lies squarely in its ability to really connect with people. That’s why he left the boardroom to create a business helping leaders to do exactly that. Learn more at https://mindfulpresenter.com/