Business Happiness, are you happy?

I read a study with over 30,000 respondents ranking happiness, with the findings (surprisingly) that the rich ARE more read the full article here

 

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Are You Interesting Enough?

Last week I had a meeting with a very interesting gentleman, he is an Investor, Venture Capitalist, been a GM of an international I.T firm and done things like walk for 5 months over North America to raise funds for a Cholmondeley Children's Charity http://www.walk4kids.org/ has a curious mind and is a big thinker... no surprise but to say, we hit it off....

 

It got me thinking, especially something he said about his walk over 4,500 k's in which he mentioned that he met many very interesting people, and if you visit his blog you will see he was all bearded up looking like a skinny Santa [which is an interesting concept in itself] and being interesting both physically as well as characteristically, had him be attractive to other interesting people, this had me have one of those ahha moments....

 

 

... A current trend in thinking promoted by the new age movement The Secret has a principal called the law of attraction, its typically sold as a mystical concept, but I believe to be logical and not metaphysical. We're naturally attracted to humans that are similar to us and once in their realm of influence [we are all influential, some positive and some negative] we take on more of their mannerisms, emulate their actions, values and ultimately get similar results in life they also get... So..

In a marketing sense are you interesting enough to be contacted by a prospect? Many of us like to be associated with interesting businesses ... What's interesting in your industry? Ask the question, what do your clients think are interesting to them?

 

The conclusion is if you're not attracting what you want then look at how you're being.... Are you interesting enough to the people that can make a difference in your life??

 

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A new year

Welcome back, yeah right.... So you've been away on a holiday break and you're now back at work refreshed and ready to attack a new year with vigour and passion. This break you made some decisions about your future and you can't wait until you get into it..... Hmmmm maybe not! So you've had a great break and now being back at work is horrible, you lack focus (especially with this hot weather in Canterbury we're having) motivation, got lost somewhere between Xmas pudding and 2am New Years Eve

Ok so the truth lies probably in the middle for most of us, we have plans for the new year but getting back into the daily ritual of working is hard, so here's how I have done it:-

• Plan the first day as a planning day only, clearing emails and generally mucking about. I found that after doing this I was more prepared to actually do some work, the tasks and objectives were now documented and recorded so it had me relax and not feeling over whelmed
• Turn up in the office everyday for the first week with no massive expectations of personal performance, expecting that after a lovely break you'll be full of beans could be dangerous as it'll set up feelings of guilt when you do get to the end of the day with little achieved. All I did was sit at my computer at 7-7:30 every morning and start from there, it was a making that a couple of days I worked so well that I didn't even consider breaking for lunch until 2am.... Of course I rewarded myself with a 2 hour training ride ;-)
• Be casual if you can get away with it, going straight from jandels to lace up shoes and a tie is down right depressing, I found that I went to the office a couple of days and wore dress shorts and a tidy clean shirt and this had me feel like I was still in control and on a break...

I'm sure that you may have a strategy feel free to share your strategies with us

 

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Who should be the star of your social media?

Having been involved in social media for the last five years, I've beeen part of developing social media strategies for selected clients and being a curious techno I've constantly searched the world for new thoughts on the medium. I've come to the conclusion that it's a person that must be active on social media, who ever likes talking to a in adamant object like a computer (other than strange people that like blow up dolls)

As business people we all understand the value of a referral or the power of word of mouth marketing (I get told this every time I sit with a new client) ... So why do we all constantly search for automated and impersonal marketing vehicles? couple this with my anadotale experience reviewing the web analytics of 100's of sites the second most visited pages on a website are about and team.

So, as a business owner do your best to conduct your social media updates and posts as a human rather than as corporate memo's, you'll find that people will follow and interact with you as a real person getting more followers... that actually follow and they'll stick around longer ... which ultimately means one day they might just need what you sell/produce and since they feel like they know you, you just maybe the chosen supplier! :)

When posting about a product you're wanting push paste a photo of yourself with it, or add a personal message about how much you liked it. Ask questions as this gives your followers an opportunity to engage and before posting read it out loud and ask does this sound like its written by a person or someone in the PR department... if you follow a couple of these rules you should be sweet!

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Its just Horse shit

My kids now talk about the bank that killed the horse, I reckon they threw out the baby with the bath water, but that's just my opinion... and then in the mail [yip we still get paper mail] the official letter arrived, with all the usual 'spin' a landscape with no Horse, a lot of blurb and a a simple goal "To be New Zealand's best bank"

I do wonder what drives a large corporation to make decisions like this? Is it a drive to increase the share price and therefore the value of the company [which executive bonuses are often calculated on] or is there a more honorable drive, a mission to deliver a better quality service, better valued products [lower interest rates] and more services? And what does it really matter to me as the customer?

In the letter they went to great lengths to explain all the new advantages, but hang on a minute .... I already had those advantages, and I've been enjoying them ever since the ANZ bought the bank a few years back, so I again I ask, what is the benefit of belonging to a bank that wants to be the best bank in NZ?

An interesting additional piece of information that needs to be tabled is that the National Bank was already ranked the best bank in NZ, so now that they've merged, they've succeeded in taking one bank back and the other mildly forward (remember that the ANZ was ranked one of the worst ;-).

I wish I had an answer to this question, and I can't be bothered contacting the Ad Agency or the Comm's department at the bank to get any answers as I dare say I'll just get more 'Spin'... so maybe over the next few days some of you may be able to shed some light and educate a rural boy from Ranfurly ... please...comments are now open

 

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Don't be up yourself!

Reading my bible is a daily challenge, but it's one thing I enjoy, but only after the exercise. Anyway this particular day I read in Proverbs 27:2. Don't call attention to yourself; let others do that for you. I stopped and thought about this for some time and realized the truth is especially important in a business marketing context.

God, is stating that we should not self promote, but let others do it for us, and in my experience this is true, making sales easily, faster and getting those all important calls or enquiries and we must resist the temptation of thinking that we should tell people how good we are. it's like our CV that's us self promoting, and that's why prospective employers contact and interview referees and past employers. A good book written specifically about this was by Al Ries "The fall of Advertising and the rise of PR" His premise in his book was that large firms that appear to have built their position or reputation by creative advertising, actually built it early in their life cycle on the back of some very good PR and all that advertising does is maintain or strengthen that market perception.

... So then how can we improve our reputation?

1. If you have a LinkedIn page then get other contacts to write recommendations. This is very easy to do if you've taken the time already to connect with many business contacts.
2. Join networking groups, like the chamber of commerce, The Cycling Cluster, BNI and get to know other business people that will actively recommend you.
3. Build a blog so that people the ability to comment on your posts, this has others see that you have people following you or social proof (take a hint people write nice things please ;-)
4. Post in Facebook and Twitter regularly asking questions that inspire others to comment, just don't be like me and go too contraversal
5. Here's a big one: DO A GOOD JOB! all the tricky tactics in the world don't work unless you or your business aren't delivering good value.
6. Avoid all tactics that have you stand out from the crowd, they'll be the reason people remember you, for potentially all the wrong reasons
7. Become world famous, write a blog, post in the social networking arena, or like my good friends at concentrate.co.nz, write articles for the local media.
8. Be easy to talk about, my anadotal evidence as a marketer involved in networking groups, is the businesses that are the easist to understand get the most referrals. This requires a deeper understanding of what you do for your clients, not what you do! (If you need help call me 03-974-9230 and I'll steer you in the right direction)

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Bloody cyclist!

OK its no secret, I'm a keen cyclist with one of my rants being [check previous blog] around aggressive and inconsiderate road users and their attitude and actions towards other road users. Today while in Dunedin I rode past one of those signs "Share the road" took the snap and decided to take it to task later in my weekly blog.

Do you really think that this signage and education makes any difference? Does it change the behaviour of a road rage induced individual with a strong sense of entitlement? Lets take a wee looksie at this then...

Dale Carnegie in his famous book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" made the statement "A man convinced against his own will is of the same opinion still". No doubt as one of my blog readers [the ones that don't read my blog are probably not very mature in thought] you've had many a discussion with work mates and family [no one you would choose to be a friend] around issues that they believe to be correct even in the face of a mountain of evidence adamantly stating the opposite of what is proven [flat earth types]. So I believe that the signage here could be falling on deaf ears, only reinforcing to other cyclists like myself that we're right creating a sense of righteousness potentially fueling the rage issue even more.

Secondly how do we respond to be being preached at? hmmm, not very well and the reason this is so is that many of us have to understand the reasons behind the rule or statement for us transform our attitudes and actions. Does this sign do that?

OK, so Ive bought into question the potential success of the sign, I do feel that the designers of this sign have the best of intentions to have us all be safe and enjoy the right to a conflict free journey. What could we do to change the nature of this signage? I'm not proposing a strategy to transform every road user, as that takes time to change attitudes and can take generations, but we could make the tone softer, less preachey and potentially more effective,

...How... in my opinion two simple words are missing...

We drum these words into our kids from an early age and the reason we teach our children to do this is that we realise as grown ups that the way to increase the success of life is to mind your P's and Q's. So we could say please share the road, but that again assumes that some might not want to or we don't share, so...

...How does this read to you? please comment back, i'd love to know your thoughts...

Thanks

for

Sharing the road

 

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