Steve Jobs Memorial Cincinnati, Ohio. Photo by Beth Robeson

As a business owner and a marketer I have always admired Steve Jobs’ ability to stay true to the Apple Brand in every aspect of his business…his marketing, packaging, advertising, product development and customer service all drove home the same message, “We have a great respect for our customers.” It was inspiring to watch him work and experience the results of his efforts.  I counted one evening…while other retail stores had one or two staff members on hand during the Christmas rush, the Apple Store had 18 friendly, knowledgeable and passionate staff members on hand.  When I purchased my first iPhone and they said I could take it home, but I wouldn’t be able to activate it for about 2 hours because the Chicago store had just opened and the servers were jammed,  they gave me the phone for free. The phone was activated an hour later. Apple takes customer service to a place no other company can match, at least not in my 48 years of experience.

Apple products are equally inspiring, easy to use on a number of different levels and visually a work of art. My MacBook Air is lighter than my ipad and the 5 hour battery and solid state technology mean that I never have to close any of the files I’m working on when moving from one client’s office to the next. That, and my iPhone have increased my productivity dramatically over the past few years and made my work more enjoyable.

On a personal level the impact has been just as efficacious. Family gatherings and dinner parties are enlivened by the best music in the world at my fingertips, pulling up songs I know my Dad will enjoy mixed with some of my favorites or the kids latest finds. The conversations and intellectual debate inspired by the information I’ve shared with friends and colleagues on my iPad have enriched my life tremendously. The TED Talks and the iPad App for exploring deep spaceare just two examples of  a staggering amount of extraordinary information I can carry around as I navigate my day because of the passion and vision he created in his company. I’m confident that Steve gave Apple what it needs to build on that vision.

Steve Jobs Effect on Local Business

Related Article

Here are a few elements to consider for good communication:

1. Clarity: Say exactly what you mean. Clarity does take some thought, but more than anything it’s a habit you develop, over time, by being clear when you write or speak. If people have to email you back for further information it wastes your time and theirs.

2. Be Specific: Get in the habit of using the names of things, instead of “the document” use “the overview brochure.” Instead of “the restaurant,” use “Baxter’s.” List the people you want in the meeting by name and give some thought to what they might think about beforehand and what they should bring to the meeting.

3. What, When, Where: Include the date, time and location. How about the phone number of the meeting place or a link to the directions? You’ll often have the website in front of you when you’re setting up the meeting anyway. Think of things that will simplify the communication process. Again, the more you do this the easier it gets.

4. Call Me: Always give people a phone number to call if they have questions.

5. Reiterate: Reiterate things you’ve said before. No one is as interested in your idea or project as you are, so they often forget what it is you’re trying to accomplish. Help them out, remind them where you are in the process and where you’re headed.

6. The Habit of Proofing: Develop the priceless habit of proofing before you hit send. Most people will proof a document, but developing the habit of proofing your emails before they go out, not only catches mistakes, but gives you a moment to clarify your message so you don’t have to later. As you read the email, give some thought to places where you are being vague.  Developing the habit of proofing your emails not only catches mistakes, but gives you a moment to refine your message so you won’t have to clarify it later.

7. Be Bold: If the email is long make sure you call attention to the most important elements by making them bold. It makes it easier for people to digest what you’re saying and find the information they need quickly without having to re-read the whole email.

8. Understand Individual Communication Styles: One of the challenges people face when communicating effectively is understanding individual communication styles. If you are running into communication challenges on a regular basis and can’t figure them out, you might want to explore executive coaching. A good executive coach will have the tools and the skill to help you understand your own communication challenges and the unique communication styles of those around you.  I can personally recommend Baker & Daboll Executive Coaching. I’m learning a lot, and I considered myself a fairly competent communicator to begin with.

There’s an avalanche of new business communication tools out there, if you want to be successful you’ll need to know two things… how to use them effectively and how to communicate your ideas efficiently to the people around you. Here’s what Seth Godin has to say on the matter: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/06/email-checklist.html

I’d love to hear other comments, ideas, tools or tips for communicating more effectively. I think this would make a great workshop topic!

According to the article, top growth industries for 2011 will be:

• Job Training and Career Consulting
• Advertising Agencies with Digital Media Focus
• Real Estate Appraisal
• Environmental Consulting
• E-commerce and Online Auctions
• Debt Collection Agencies

Here are a  number of ways you can help get your company on the growth wagon:

Give your team a copy of the Inc. Article so they can start positioning themselves to take advantage of these areas of growth as they dedicate time resources in 2011.

If possible position your company strategically to work either directly or indirectly with these companies.

Understand the wider implications of the growth. For example, you may not be working in the environmental industry or the advertising world but think about what these trends mean for your business.

If environmental consulting is a growing business, should your company be implementing or expanding your green initiatives to make product or service more appealing to clients or customers?

If advertising and digital media are a growing industry should you be expanding your advertising budget in this direction?

Maybe it’s time to think about purchasing that new building while real estate prices are still low?

Is there an opportunity to expand your company or gain market share by launching a new training arm of the business to take advantage of the rapidly changing workforce?

I would love to hear other ideas for leveraging the growth in these industries you can read the full article on the Inc. Magazine website:

The biggest time waster in any company: busy work!  Most people focus on busy work because it’s easier than tackling the issues that will grow your company. KPI’s give your team a very specific set of tactics that drive growth for your business. Sitting down on a regular basis with your direct reports and reviewing their progress, usually weekly, helps them leave the busy work behind.

KPIs can cover revenue, profit margins, customer acquisitions, client retention, ROI and relationship strength, as well as brand recognition.

Three things to keep in mind when developing your KPIs:

1. Your KPI’s must align with your business strategy

2. They should drive your current marketing plan

3. Be clearly measurable

How do you develop your KPIs?

1. Make a list of what key factors drive business growth for your company. Each company will have a unique set of KPIs.

For your sales staff your KPIs may look like this:

a.  Prospect calls made each day

b. Appointments made each week

c. Value of deals closed per quarter

d. Increase over previous year in new customers per quarter in a specific demographic region.

For your marketing staff your KPI’s may be:

1.    x number of “value driven” contacts per prospect per quarter

2.    increases in website traffic

3.    x number of “value driven” contact per client per year

4.    leads from the website

5.   x number of blog entries posted each month

Steps in developing your KPI’s:

1.  Determine the specific actions from above that result in business growth for you company.

2. Define the data required for measurement in very specific terms.

3. Determine how the data will be captured and develop measurement and reporting tools to match each KPI.

4. Schedule regular meetings, usually weekly, to assess progress and keep the team/individuals motivated and making progress.

5 . Meet at least once per year to review KPI’s, and their effect on business goals and objectives.

Potential stumbling blocks:

1.    Measurements misaligned with your business strategy.

2.    Too many metrics, so that the process is confusing or too time consuming to be effective.

3.    Metrics without supporting human capital to maintain or monitor effectively.

4.    Using KPI’s for blame or finger pointing. KPI’s should be used as a starting point for effective discussions.

Finally, everyone must agree on the KPIs. If they make real world business sense this shouldn’t be a problem.

Sources:

Chief Marketer Blog: How to Use Key Performance Indicators Jun 28, 2006 3:22 PM, By Ray Schultz

CEO Tools by Kraig Kramers:

There will be lots of hot coffee, tea, juice, pies to eat and fun to be had.
Please plan on arriving between 8am and 9am Tuesday morning.
We should be done by 11am.

Everyone who participates will receive a copy of our amazing pie crust recipe to take home!

You can take your pie home and we will deliver the others to Tender Mercies after lunch.

We have limited rolling pins so we will have to take the first 10 people to RSVP, unless I can get a bigger space!

Let’s take some time to give something special to some really special people.

Life is too short not to bake pies!

RSVP: beth at robesonmarketing dot com
Beth

P.S. Kids are welcome to join us.

Here’s my micro summary of the day:

Key Note: Ben Lerer of  the online magazine Thrillist

Just an amazing guy, who understands business in a digitally connected world, who shared a few amazing insights about how he launched his company. Here are just a few:

1. They didn’t try to use a bunch of social media tools, they used one very well and built from that.

2. They built a very committed audience through great content. 15 hours on one article.

3. They listened to the data!

4. They redefined the relationship between advertisers, subscribers and publishers.

Then came the local start up presentations:

A group of amazing local start ups with great product ideas, a lot of energy. Honestly… I wanted to invest in everyone. And they all seemed to be having a lot of fun bringing their vision to reality.

Giftiki

Idea Rally

LifeBlinx

turboBOTZ

Venture Pax

Venue Agent

You should definitely meet these guys/gals!

To get involved in the Brandery: http://brandery.org/

Day 1

Seth Godin suggests that what separates successful people from unsuccessful people is the ability to bring your vision to reality.

Day 2

Seth Godin says, stop waiting for perfection and “just ship!”

Day 3

Ignite#4 Submission request comes in the mail, I submit.

Day 5

Ignite#4 Voting process begins, I try to vote but am late for a meeting and never get back to it. I have just enough time to see that my topic is way at the bottom; no one will ever see it. And if they do, all the others are so much better than mine…no one will vote for it. Tough competition.

Day 6

Attend #CincySM Happy Hour at the Brandery, am talking with a small group of people and introduce myself to a guy named Joe. Beth: “What do you do Joe?” Joe: “I’m the founder of Ignite Cincy.”Beth: “Oh wow!  I just submitted my application to speak.” Joe: “Really…. what’s your name again?”  Beth: “Beth Robeson.” Joe: ” You’re doing very well in the voting.” Beth: To herself: “Holy Shit!”

Day 7

“You’ve been selected,” e-mail arrives.

Day 8

Work all day on my presentation, just incorporating 3 past presentations into one really cool one. Don’t get it finished, but love the process. E-mail Joe:

Joe,

Wow!!! I’m working on my Ignite#4 presentation. What an amazing process, to try and convey something so amazing in such a short amount of time.

Thanks for this opportunity, it’s very exciting.

Beth

Reply:

It is a pretty awesome format, lots of work paring things down to their essence. I’m glad you are enjoying the process.

Joe

Day 9

Know what slides I want now. Create my shot list for the photo shoot:

Custom Shots:

1. Butter

2. Grandmother’s Breakfast

3. Family Breakfast

4. Barb’s Dinner

5. Grocery Cart Filled With Food

6. Sophie

7. Chickens and Kale

8. Orange vs. Yellow egg

9. Nestle vs. Hershey’s

10. Fair Trade Chocolate

Stock shots:

1. Cow

2. Barb

3. Earth

Day 10

Set up photo shoot, create slides….takes all day. Sophie won’t hold still. She keep flying back to the others.

Day 11

Editing, more editing…. editing…editing…needs to be shorter. Not really liking the process anymore.

Day 12

Slides are done. Now must memorize. Timing and flow is harder than I thought. 20 years of speaking experience and this is very challenging. Meet with Stuart Kunkler to help me be funny, Stuart is always sharing something brilliant and funny with me.

Day of The Event

Still haven’t gotten presentation memorized, too much client work, website launching, strategy sessions. Stress is pretty intense. Husband suggests I use flash cards, I balk at this. “It’s a presentation in front of 380 people I can’t use flash cards.”

Client calls,  one after the other all afternoon, they have no idea how badly I want off the phone.

3 Hours Before Show Time

Stress is mounting, don’t have it down yet, take husband’s advice and create 20 flash cards, one for each slide.

2 Hours Before Show Time

It’s working…flows beautifully with the flash cards.

1 Hour Before Show Time

Head to the venue.

30 Minutes Before Show Time

The place is packed…Joe walks by. I ask him: “Hey Joe, is it ok to use flash cards when you present.” Joe says, “No, the format doesn’t work with notes or anything in your hands. He spends the next few minutes telling me how much better it will be without my note cards, reassuring me. I’m not listening, my mind is exploding. I can’t do it without the note cards!

20 Minutes Before Show Time

I stuff the cards into my back pocket and start quickly running through the slides without them….over and over and over. I have to take my seat. I drop my laptop off with my husband in the audience and take my seat. People want to talk to me, wish me luck. I smile, running through the slides in my head over and over.

10 Minutes Before

I take my seat…burning boats guy is sitting next to me on the right.  We talk briefly.  Guy on my left…. his lips are moving as he runs through his slide, thank god I’m not the only one.

1 Minute Before

I’m ok… I’ve made it through with out missing a slide. Burning boats guy finishes…up on the screen… my name.

Mark never makes it into a club, but….it turns out he didn’t really need their help after all. He instead aligned himself with something much more powerful…a whole new way to communicate and organize information.

“America in the 20th century was called a “society of organizations.” Formal hierarchies with clear reporting relationships gave people their position and their power. In the 21st century, America is rapidly becoming a society of networks, even within organizations. Maintenance of organizations as structures is less important than assembling resources to get results, even if the assemblage itself is loose and perishable.” Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business Review.

While many still perceive social networking as a form of entertainment, the mavericks, who will rule the future, are the individuals who use these tools to build stronger companies, pull in scarce resources and build solid but dispersed networks for organizational progress. Allegorically,  think of a cattle rustler in the American West where the individual with the fastest lasso wins. What matters is the ability to harness the rich data at your fingertips. Restricting your staff from using social networking while at work, is analogous to throwing their telephone out the window or taking away their pen or computer.

The holy grail for the future is to get them the training they need to harness the tsunami of information and resources headed their way. If your team doesn’t understand how to use tools like  LinkedIn, Google Docs, Facebook, Basecamp and Delicious for conducting research, collaboration, storing and retrieving information or building business relationships you’re already behind the curve.

Jason Fried has a way of making really cool things happen easily. If you haven’t read his new book Rework it’s a powerful resource for getting great things done in a digital world. One of his many insights is the idea that “inspiration is perishable,” wish I could quote him, but I just lent the book to a friend (my second copy, I gave my first to one of my clients.) so I don’t have the passage in front of me.

So, leveraging the idea that inspiration is perishable I am collecting really cool ideas for DigNC 2011.

Here’s a start:

1. Closed Door Sessions: keynotes and breakout session are great, but there’s a lot of discourse that doesn’t happen, because those events are public and less personal. If you’re going to get great minds together for 2 days. Why not dedicate some time to seeing what they can achieve in a few closed door sessions. Maybe it’s an opportunity for them to simply exchange ideas or pick each others brains in private, maybe they tackle a challenging social issue or brain storm ideas for 2012. Any thing is possible when great creative minds come together.

2. DigNC TV: How about putting some creative energy to really developing our DigNC channel?

3. MPMF: How about a stronger connection with MidPoint? What would that look like? Tim Westergen said he wished he’d know about MPMF, he would have liked to stay and attend. I think we could do a lot here?

4. Let’s Get Physical: How can we create an experience that’s more interactive/engaging/experiential?

5. Giving Back: How can we leverage the energy around the event to give a little back to our community?

6. A Program You Want to Keep: A lot of work went into creating the program, time, energy, trees, ink etc… As I was flipping through it last night, I was thinking what a shame it was that most of them will wind up in the trash. How can we make the program book something people want to hold on to and reference for a while?

What do you think?

Say you get your organization to switch over to Google apps for all of it’s convenience, simplicity and security.  No more trying to figure out who’s computer has the latest version of the document you need to present at the upcoming meeting. Best of all, everything is safe and sound because it’s on the Google servers, you never have to worry about backing up your files, right? Not so fast.

The tech support people who spend their days answering phone calls from desperate people who can’t get their computers to do what they want them to have an acronym they employ for most of the calls: PICNIC. Problem In Chair Not In Computer. Backupify is one service that protects you from the problem in the chair. One more level of security for your WordPress, Facebook, twitter and Google apps.