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I grew up working in my father’s small business, a quaint Italian market in our neighborhood. It was there that I learned the importance of balancing life and business. My father might not have taught me Harvard business skills or provided me with much financial assistance, but he did offer me his insights and unconditional support. I still find myself applying the lessons he taught me (and sharing them with my EO peers).
There was one in particular that really hit home. During Thanksgiving one year, we were interrupted by a customer’s phone call. The customer was panicking— his family didn’t have a holiday turkey to eat. My father grabbed me, and we headed to the market. I remember being disappointed that our family fun was put on hold to help someone else out. I remember thinking: Was being in business only about making personal sacrifices? But my Dad was committed to helping others first.
I told myself I would never be a business owner, but little did I know that that event would leave an indelible mark on me. It taught me to balance my needs with that of others’ needs. Fast forward almost 30 years later. I own and operate a successful marketing agency, and like my father, I think and breathe my business every hour of every week. What keeps me going? I’ve learned to balance my personal and professional responsibilities. As a result, I’ve been able to enjoy my business and EO membership more.
Throughout my decades of business experience, I’ve learned that balance is different for everyone. It doesn’t necessarily mean equal time spent at work and home. It means finding a healthy balance where your needs and the needs of those closest to you are fulfilled, all while achieving a sense of accomplishment. For me, it’s also about improving my time spent working so that I can enjoy the downtime. Life is short; I want mine to be meaningful.
EO has helped me achieve this balance by connecting me with likeminded peers. When I’m asked to share my experiences with fellow EO members, I think back to when I received my first promotion at the Italian market. It was then that I learned one of the most important life and business lessons: Success isn’t just about the rewards, but rather what I contribute to others. It is my duty to be a responsible and respectful person to myself and those around me. That, to me, means balance.
Last year, my Forum decided to truly go global. The idea was to study a new country from all aspects— its culture, heritage, tradition, business values, lifestyle and people, and also to explore opportunities in and with that country. This development, called the Global Initiative Programme, would give us an up-close look at some of the world’s most unique countries.
We had prepared a list of countries we wanted to visit, and we wound up selecting China. When it came time to plan, we zeroed in on the things we wanted to learn and see. This included production facilities, the service sector, showcase cities and the Olympics. As it turned out, the country proved to be the perfect venue for learning and entertainment.
When we arrived in Beijing, we began our adventure immediately. For starters, we wanted to glimpse the Bird’s Nest, where most of the Olympic events were being held. We waited for two hours before attending boxing qualifiers, and it was completely worth it! Soon after, we enlisted the services of a local tour guide. He was friendly and excited to educate us on the impressive history of his country. Over the course of a few days, he introduced us to Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Imperial Palace … and then he deserted us at the Great Wall of China.
It was a particularly rainy afternoon; he argued that he had a career to build and could not take the risk of climbing the Wall for a few tourists during periods of heavy lightning. Apparently, a little while earlier, six Americans were electrocuted while scaling the man-made creation. He left abruptly, leaving us to contemplate the importance of experience over survival. As it turns out, three EO buddies took the risk, figuring they had come too far to not experience one of the Seven Wonders of the World. That’s entrepreneurs for you, always taking a risk in pursuit of their passion!
The remaining seven of us sat at the coffee shop downhill sipping hot chocolate, feeling somewhat betrayed by our own emotions. Forty-five minutes later, our three friends returned with happy faces as they described the breathtaking view. Exchanging curious looks, the seven of us, still doubtful, finally stood up and decided to take a chance. We waited half an hour more for the weather to improve, which meant missing our flight to Shanghai, and went uphill on a cable car. Climbing steep steps, we finally saw the view! As they rightly say, seeing is believing, and it was completely worth it.
All in all, we had a blast. We saw Michael Phelps, a paper-producing plant, had an eye-opening tour of the Toyota factory in Guangzhou, observed the intricacies that go into managing in a five-star hotel and met with the Chairman of the biggest mutual fund in China. In nine days, we got a first-hand look at the Chinese infrastructure, their commitment to excellence and their simplicity in doing things. It was an entrepreneurial adventure that gave us a refreshingly different view of doing things more efficiently in our personal and professional lives.
Looking back, our EO journey tested both our skills and resilience on the physical and mental levels— just like the billions of Chinese who are trying to meet the challenges of their growing nation with alacrity, dignity and humility. The overall experience has convinced us that this is what we want to do every year. In 2010, will be visiting South Africa, and in 2012, we’ll head to London. The goal: to continue to take risks, bond and learn more about one another—and other countries—in the process.
As an EO member, I am used to having once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Recently, my Forum held our annual retreat in Rome, Italy. The eight of us really came together as a group and bonded in a fashion that I’ve never seen before. We went from taking care of ourselves individually to coming together as one by our last evening.
All of us in EO have completed the Lifeline Exercise. But, how many of us can say we performed the exercise while sitting atop a sun-drenched, rooftop veranda, overlooking the Tiber River with the smell of espresso wafting across the warm spring breeze?
Sometimes you have to travel a long distance to see what is right in front of you. Completing the Lifeline Exercise while situated in the heart of ancient Rome, I thought of and discussed things that haven’t entered my consciousness in years. Others in my Forum, some of whom I know as well as anyone in my life, had the same observation. Shifting hemispheres to an environment where everything was new opened our senses and transformed the experience.
During the retreat, we experienced one once-in-a-lifetime event after another. We journeyed through the ancient Jewish Catacombs, a site completely off limits to the public. We grabbed flashlights, bribed the groundskeeper and slipped through a small opening in a stone wall. Our guide, Katie Parla, a specialist in underground Rome, brought to life how an ancient civilization celebrated life and death two thousand years ago.
Our adventures continued with a private after-hours tour of the Vatican Museum, which ended at the Sistine Chapel. The guide, who personified the word “passion”, created a truly amazing experience for us by bringing Michelangelo to life in a fashion that animated the chapel’s ceiling. Through the guide’s enthusiastic narration, I instantly began to appreciate Michelangelo’s personality—from devotion to sarcasm—and watched how it played out in his frescos.
As a result of our Roman retreat, we could see and feel our Forum grow closer. The culture and language barrier forced us to work together and depend on one another. We gained strength and unity. The trip eventually came to a close, and we returned to our normal lives … but not before reflecting on the effects of a Forum retreat that will linger for a lifetime.
Check out Katie's blog entry about this amazing retreat!
When building a company, one of the first challenges entrepreneurs face is hiring the right people. The next challenge, of course, is how to keep the people that you’ve hired. When we set out to build Nurse Next Door into a North American-wide homecare franchise system, we knew that hiring, and more importantly keeping, the right people was critical to our success.
Becoming a great employer didn’t happen overnight for us. We made the mistake, as most companies do, of failing to define and focus on our culture. It turns out that understanding your organization’s culture is critical to coming up with the right recruitment and retention strategies to ensure your business has future success and your staff is excited to come to work every morning.
When we undertook the seemingly daunting task of positioning ourselves as a top 10 employer in our region, we surveyed the staff to find out what we were doing well and what we needed to improve. We carefully reviewed our survey results. We realized that what our employees valued most was not compensation, but having a fun, unique and exciting work environment— a place that took their individual needs into consideration. We learned we needed to focus on things like flexibility, work-life balance and rewards and recognition. These were things that were important to our staff.
For a single mom working for us, it was important to be able to bring her young son in when childcare fell through. Employees living far from the office, valued being able to telecommute whenever possible. For those with families, the chance to get away more often on a family vacation was key. These are just a few examples of the types of things we learned were important to our employees.
With this in mind, we started developing innovative new strategies to make our company a great place to work; a place where people would tell their friends how great it was, start Facebook groups, refer contacts and really just be our promoters in the community.
So what did we put in place? Five weeks vacation, flexible work hours, telecommuting, the ability to bring kids to work, employee stock options and profit share, just to name a few. And where did all of this get us? Well, it significantly reduced our recruitment and turnover issues. It made us the sixth best employer in British Columbia. But most of all, it made our office a fun place to be— a place where you can tell just from the energy in the air that people wanted to be here.
From a strategic standpoint, building an ideal work environment has given us an enormous competitive advantage over our competition. What’s more, we’ve been able to share our strategies with our franchise partners and help ensure they have a happy and engaged staff, as well.
For us, the secret to having an enthusiastic team that enjoys coming to work every day was listening to what it is the staff wants and focusing our strategies to meet their needs so everyone wins. And as we move forward, and our competition catches on, we’ll keep pushing forward with new innovative strategies.
In the past few years, social media and social networking have become integral to Internet marketing. If you are considering using this new marketing channel, but don’t know where or how to begin, then it may be helpful to learn how to develop a social-media marketing (SMM) strategy. Here is what I tell fellow entrepreneurs about developing a strategy.
Define Your Social-Media Marketing GoalsI start off by asking my peers to consider the following questions:
Determining exactly what you want to accomplish through a social-media strategy will drive prioritization of your actions.
Define Social-Media Marketing InitiativesHow can entrepreneurs use SMM and social networking to improve how a particular function is performed or how the entire organization performs? It’s easy: They can list appropriate programs, initiatives and projects that rely on social media and social networking and how they relate to their business goals.
Implement and EvaluateOnce the SMM and networking strategy has begun, entrepreneurs can begin to evaluate how the strategy meets their organizations’ goals. Interaction and engagement are key elements for building trust in a brand. The beauty of social media marketing is the opportunity it offers for the interaction and engagement that customers desire today.
Consider the amazing growth of the following:Facebook: In 2007, Facebook had an estimated 65 million users, which is a 120 percent increase over the previous year. It was the seventh most visited site worldwide with an average of 250,000 new registrations per day. More than half of active users return daily for at least 20 minutes per visit, racking up 65 billion page views per month.
MySpace: More than 300 million users visited MySpace in 2007, which is an increase of four percent over the previous year. It is the fifth most visited site worldwide, averaging 320,000 new registrations per day.
YouTube: Every day, more than 100 million YouTube videos are played. Approximately 100,000 new videos were added in 2007. It is the second most visited site worldwide.
LinkedIn: The darling of the business community, LinkedIn has more than 18 million users with more than a million new members joining every month. In 2007, LinkedIn experienced a growth rate of a little more than 270 percent.
Not only should entrepreneurs monitor their own social media activities, but their SMM strategy should also include monitoring customers’ and potential customers’ social-media activities. Web analytics data, as well as active involvement in key social media sites, will help entrepreneurs collect quantitative and qualitative information in order to understand and adjust to the activities and goals of their customers.
These suggestions assume a “top-down,” SMM strategy model where the organization’s leaders implement and lead the adoption of blogs, wikis and social-networking systems. However, some folks may experience a “bottom up” adoption model where employees spontaneously engage in social networking and it rises to the level of an organizational initiative. In this case, a collaborative SMM strategy process that engages employees already taking advantage of social media can provide tremendous insight into ways to use these tools and techniques to reach your business goals.
My personal morals and business ethics have significantly shaped the corporate culture of my business. They determine who we work with and how we interact. As a result, my employees, partners and clients have an unusually high level of personal integrity. Unfortunately, sharing common values did not prepare us for a client that requested help repairing his reputation online.
As a boutique search engine marketing (SEM) agency, my business, Anvil Media, pushes the e-marketing envelope for our clients. A few years ago, we developed an online reputation management (ORM) service. In a nutshell, ORM is the art of combining fundamental SEM strategies and tactics to mitigate negative or undesirable listings in search results for specific keywords.
Last year, we were referred to a high profile CEO at a wealth management firm who had received a bout of bad press in The New York Post. While the article itself didn’t appear in the top 10 online search results for his name, a blog post abstract did. It made sense that he wanted it gone. Our work with other ORM clients (including an EO member) convinced him he was in good hands.
Unfortunately, we did not heed our gut instinct that he may be a difficult client, due to his high profile in Hollywood, finance and political circles. Sure enough, we had challenges out of the gate with his lack of responsiveness and inability to implement our recommendations. After a few months of working together and making minor progress, it was clear that we were not considered strategic partners. We agreed to part ways.
While we ended the engagement on good terms, his delinquency in paying the final bill bit us hard. The day he was prepared to cut the check, he did a Google search for his name and found the original offending blog post back at the number one search rank.
Frequently, untrustworthy people lack trust in others, so he assumed we had “worked our magic” to alter the listings due to his lack of timely payment. Although I was completely offended, I kept my cool and tried to reassure him, without success, that we were not that kind of firm. It took a few weeks of negotiating with the client and his lawyer to create a legal statement stating we had no hand in influencing the search results in order to receive final payment. I signed the statement, he mailed a check and, thankfully, it cleared.
In the end, I learned a great deal from my experience with this client. First and foremost, if someone comes to you needing help with reputation repair, there is a good chance they did something wrong and it may be a fatal flaw in their character. As such, we’ve agreed not to take on any new ORM clients that do not come with positive references from trusted sources. Similarly, we’ve learned to trust our gut and not the promise of a big paycheck or high profile case study.
More importantly, I learned to stick to my principles morals and not let someone strong-arm me with threats. I also learned not to fear legal action (or at least negotiations) in order to come to an amicable solution. I do believe my company is better off for having this experience, but it could have been a very expensive mistake if it wasn’t handled properly. Thankfully, I kept my cool.
Did you apply for the EMP Class of 2011 yet?
If you answered “no” to this question, don’t worry— it’s not too late! The EO/MIT Entrepreneurial Masters Program (EMP) deadline has been extended! You now have until 1 April to apply for the EMP. Don’t wait though— there is only enough space at the MIT Endicott House to host 60 highly competitive and growth-minded entrepreneurs.
Take this opportunity to join your peers at this learning-intensive program, which focuses on growing your business; increasing cash flow; stabilizing operations; marketing that will eliminate your competition; and taking your company to new heights of success. Along the way, you will meet with other entrepreneurs who will quickly become some of your closest friends, advisors and confidants.
There's no need to spend time away from the office and your family to pursue your education, and there's no need to worry about the financial burden of attending a costly business college or university. The EMP offers an MBA-level education that works with your schedule and your budget.
Now is the time to invest in your company. Get ahead of the fray by learning how to propel your company to the next level. If you’re just starting out, if you’ve reached a plateau, or if you’re looking for the perfect exit strategy, the EMP will provide the guidance, solutions and advice you need. Spend less time thinking about where your business could go and more time thinking about how to get there. Apply for the EMP today!
All applicants will be notified of their status the week of 13 April.
Peter Thomas, Founder and Chairman of LifePilot, and Chairman Emeritus of EO, recently hosted 90+ EO members on a Global conference call that addressed how entrepreneurs can survive in tough economic times.
Moderated by EO Global Chairman and EO Detroit member David Galbenski, Peter shared his life experiences as a serial entrepreneur and successful businessman. Having survived four recessions throughout his lengthy career, Peter discussed the 10 tips that would help entrepreneurs from all age groups, industries and geographic locations make it through challenging times.
Those tips include:
1. Understand your values. When you understand your values, you understand what it takes to reach success and stay there.
2. Even if it’s bad news, communicate it. Your staff and high-level executives cannot help you and your company through tough times if they don’t know tough times lie ahead.
3. Find a mentor. Seek out someone who is at least 15+ years older than you, and go to them for guidance and advice. Keep them “in your back pocket” for any and all challenges you may face.
4. Be proactive. Focus on the Most Important Things (MITs) for tomorrow.
5. Don’t bank corporately where you bank personally. Enough said!
6. Recognize your situation and DEAL with it. Don’t sit in your office and let your problems fester. Get up, get out and get things done!
7. Be MORE protective of your corporate secrets. Think you’re doing enough to keep your trade secrets out of the hands of your competitors? Think again.
8. The time is NOW to invest in opportunities. Even if you don’t have the money, find a way to make it work, for the good of your company and its future!
9. Be an entrepreneurial leader. Get involved locally— be a spokesperson for your community and you will be surprised by the doors that will open for your business.
10. Remember: Attitude, Motivation, Commitment. Ask yourself: Do I have the right attitude? Is my attitude affecting my motivation? Is my motivation influencing how committed I am to my business, my staff, the current risks I’m taking, etc.?
It’s amazing how your life can change in an instant.
At the age of 20, I married David, my best friend of five years. We were finishing school and were getting ready to embark on our life journey together. His dream was to be a millionaire by the time he was 30, do it “on his own” and create a company that supported his desire to succeed and share wealth. When he realized the family business was not going to support his dreams, he started our marketing company, Advantages, with absolutely nothing. Eventually, it evolved into a mom-and-pop printing business.
After about a year, David needed help managing the growth of the company, so I offered. Together, we were a powerful team. But, just as everything was going right—we were on the threshold of breaking our first US$1 million in sales—David was diagnosed with cancer.
While he was battling this illness, I took over all aspects of the business. For two years, I lived my life in a blur. While David was being treated all over the world, I would either be with him or with the kids and the business, always on the go. Week to week it changed. I had three full time jobs: researching David’s illness, maintaining the business and trying to keep our family from falling apart.
After a two-year battle, I lost my husband, our kids lost their father and Advantages lost its leader. I was left to carry on. Honestly, I am not sure how I got through each day. All I knew is that I would not fail ... skin my knees maybe, but not fail.
During this difficult time, two voices kept me going: the first was David’s voice. He always used to tell me that it was a waste to have me behind a desk; that I would do much better selling in the field. The second voice that kept me going was my grandmother’s voice. “You are your own best investment. Invest in yourself. You are the most determined person I know. I would rather invest in you than the bank,” she used to tell me.
Still, I did not know where to start. For about 14 months, I felt like I came to work every day and had no idea how to succeed. I wasn’t motivated, and I stared out of the window a lot. Then I found a group of fellow entrepreneurs who offered me the solid support system I needed to learn and grow. One day, a friend and fellow business owner dragged me to my first EO event. It felt like coming home.
I found other people like me! They were passionate about business and very driven. What’s more, they were all experiencing the same business issues and were interested in sharing their experiences. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before. Typically, networking groups tend to be all the same. You walk into a room and try to meet as many people you can, hoping on a prayer someone will like you and want to do business with you.
EO was completely different thanks to its “no solicitation” rule— you are there to share your experiences, not sell your business. I felt supported in EO. Even better, I was able to talk securely about both business and personal challenges, as well as get ideas and take them back to my business.
Thanks to EO, I rebuilt the company, redirected its vision and brought new levels of success. I have since grown it into a $1.5+ million business (and I happened to meet a new love in the process.) If there were any tips I could share regarding how to pull off a professional recovery, the one thing I would say is: Be open to changes in the market and live your passions. I’ve learned that you must be true to yourself in order to be successful, and be open minded enough to learn from others.
