Hi. I’m a leading indicator. I see good things coming.
I’ve been in business for myself through three recessions. We opened our doors in the middle of one back in 1990 but were too dumb to realize that it probably didn’t make sense to launch a company at that moment. Conditions began to improve a few months later but for all we knew, we were seeing growth because we’d hit on a winning formula.
Recession #2 came along in the summer of 2000. Few realized the dot com bubble had blown until the economy was headed straight down that fall. 9/11 made it worse. And on top of that, most of our customers were companies that had invested too early in internet marketing and were turned off by it. At this point I’d been around long enough to know times were bad and, indeed, business took several years to bounce back.
18 months ago the old feeling was back. With this recession, it wasn’t so much that companies canceled their plans or that we lost out on projects. It was more a case that customers decided to do nothing. Many of our competitors were experiencing the same thing.
Well I’m here with good news. Times are changing. Customers are thawing. There’s a white board around here from a year ago that shows our early 2011 pipeline and right now that’s where some of our new business is coming from. You can feel it. Yes, companies are still sensitive to pricing and in some cases, they tend to want a modest scope of work with a promise of add-ons down the road. (And in a few cases, those add-ons got added-on faster than expected).
I wonder if we just get tired of recessions and that’s how they end.
As a leading economic indicator, I’m here to tell you that 2012 is looking good. Barring some disaster in Greece or something we didn’t expect.
Something to think about…
Regarding Kodak’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy, a quote that should resonate for every company:
“If you’re not willing to cannibalize yourself, others will do it for you.”
- Mark Zupan, dean of the University of Rochester’s business school
The biggest challenge a CEO faces.
Through the years, I think my experience has been the same as most business owners. A lot of good people and a larger number of competent people have worked for us. My biggest challenge in growing a healthy, sustainable business has been putting together a team that’s “simpatico.” A team that’s simpatico means assembling a group — particularly those in leadership positions — that plays well off each other. They don’t have to have the same vision, they don’t agree on everything and they aren’t above arguing from time to time to make their point.
Disagreement is fine. As General George Patton said, “if everybody agrees then no one is thinking.” No, being simpatico is more a matter of each person bringing results to the business in their own way. Because they’re contributing to the growth of the company, they’ve earned the respect to be heard.
Studying companies I respect (A&M Records, Apple Computer) and a few local competitors who got it right, I notice that they all had strong players who were simpatico. The skills are complimentary — what one person excels at, other executives didn’t and vice versa.
My biggest challenge has been to build that kind of team. Those times when someone who wasn’t effective at their job, it was a relatively easy decision to move them out. Painful, yes, but necessary. As Bill Bennett put it the other night at the Georgia Chamber’s annual meeting, “getting fired isn’t terminal.”
The bigger challenge is what to do when team members are just OK. They’re not ripping off the company or sleeping on the job. They’re just going through the motions. They’re not simpatico, a critical issue if they’re in leadership roles. This is the biggest challenge a CEO faces and it’s where I’ve struggled the most.
Fact is, those people either have to be moved to another position where they can become great or they have to be moved out. And moving them out sucks.
But you know what? In most of those cases, those people went on to greater success elsewhere. Some just needed a different kind of environment than ours. Yes, a few of them don’t say kind things about me or my company after they left even though we always did the right thing by them. But that can’t slow you down. It’s the price you pay for being the CEO.
The more often I have made the difficult moves to build a team that’s simpatico, the more it’s paid off.
Just when you figure it out, they change the rules!
Business is brutal no matter what line of work you’re in. Successful companies are always changing to keep up.
Is your company thriving? Or is it in turn-around mode?
Either way, the marketplace is talking to you and forcing you to take a hard look at what you sell, how you sell and the process to deliver the goods. If you don’t, you’ll never cross the finish line!
In the last 90 days, I’ve seen the market for what my company provides change radically. All of a sudden, mobile devices are where it’s at. This week, the amount of traffic on mobile devices overtook web traffic from laptops and desktops.
Sure, smartphones and iPads have been around a while, but only now, mainstream companies have decided to invest money in developing websites and apps for them.
Technology changes faster than perhaps any industry except for healthcare. The emergence of mobile represents the third time What’s Up Interactive has re-invented itself. We started out 20 years ago as a company that designed press releases by fax. It was cutting edge at the time and provided a lucrative living.
Then the marketplace changed and faxes became obsolete. Yet there were people on my staff — those who produced the faxes — who were bitter that we exited the business.
Even big businesses aren’t exempt from radical change. In the early 1950s, A&P was the second largest retailer in the US. Then there’s the story of GM. The government forced General Motors to allow Chrysler to hire its CEO because GM was so dominant – in a move to help level the playing field.
Not long ago, Microsoft was so dominant in software and computing, governments in the US and Europe focused on reducing Microsoft’s power. Not so much the case anymore. Microsoft still innovates and produces wildly profitable software, but its era as a leading innovator has passed. (ReadWriteCloud)
Today RIM, maker of the BlackBerry,an $83 billion dollar company a mere three years ago has collapsed to a mere $15 billion dollar company today. RIM’s collapse begs the question: who would want to buy it? (AllThingsD)
And Apple, which was close to liquidation in the late 1990s could use its cash hoard to buy Nokia, RIM, HTC, Motorola and RIM.
What’s the lesson here? You have to be paranoid. You have to run your business for what the marketplace determines are the opportunities. And if you’re red-hot Apple, the moment you become complacent, you’re headed down.
Three things every CEO should know about corporate video
Within three years, close to 90% of web traffic will be video in nature. Not just Netflix (which currently accounts for about 20% of all web bandwidth) or YouTube, but corporate videos, as well.
More and more often, senior management is looking at video on the web as a way to reach potential customers, attract investors and even train new hires in corporate culture.
But after 35 years in video — most of it interviewing hundreds of CEOs for a half hour PBS television series — I can tell you there are three things to keep in mind about producing an effective corporate video.
1. Have a goal.
From your first meeting, target the video to reach a specific audience and pick one overall message you want them to remember. Trying to reach multiple audiences or convey multiple messages? Produce multiple videos. People will only remember one thing after watching your video. What do you want that message to be?
2. Keep it short.
I remember when Knowledgestorm did a survey of thousands of readers and concluded that 2 ½ minutes was the ideal length for a video. Most executives want to go much longer than that…tell the whole story of the company in a 20-minute video because surely everyone will be interested. Not so. Being brief is difficult. It takes planning and great production. (In other words, it takes time to be brief.) It’s worth the time.
3. Use visuals to tell your story.
80% of what we remember comes from what we see. If you’re on camera more than a few seconds at the beginning, middle and end of the video, you’re wasting an opportunity to accomplish your goal (which, remember now, is one concept per video). Use images of people, places and things to tell your story.
Follow those three rules and you’ll be as much an expert as the guy who’s been doing it for 35 years.
About What’s Up Interactive:
What’s Up Interactive is a relationship-driven interactive marketing agency dedicated to growing our customers’ businesses. What’s Up delivers creative website design; mobile app development; video production; innovative organic search marketing that successfully builds online audiences; social media marketing strategies and email marketing solutions. Our clients include AT&T, Georgia Lottery, Georgia Aquarium, and Fox Television Stations, among many others. To learn more, please visit whatsupinteractive.com, and follow us on twitter.
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