Five Stories Is A Culture

Because that is all people need to get and hold an idea.

Some need more, and that’s to elevate themselves.

After reaching enough, most replace one story when they acquire another.

Culture is a way to filter data, to make everyday chaos meaningful.

Looking to improve your blog? Our next presentation is BlogLab - Improve Your Blogs! Thursday December 8, 8:30 am - 1 pm. Learn more at http://bit.ly/WMRBlogLab

Your Business Personality – How to Convey It Easily, Simply, and Free

Early November Google released a new tool in their arsenal: – Plus pages just for business.

Why do we care? Because it's a place, a means, and a mechanism to develop and share our business personality – an electronic business persona that's a media substitute for a face-to-face pre-sales conversation establishing your credibility and why the prospect should listen to you.

What you put on your page is up to you, but what you can do with it is pretty sophisticated.

• It is searchable (full text and the evolving Google + preference) from anywhere on the web
• Flexible formatting, including embedded links, graphics, pictures, client testimonials and recommendations
• Pictures and Video collections – like product highlights, and page access directly to YouTube
• Link to additional pages, website, blog, catalog...the world
• Blogs and articles from you, other thought leaders, and your community highlighted (list automatically updated)
• Small group video conference ability
• Simple, easy set-up and updating – can do it yourself
• Cost – free to the individual.

Anything more? Yes - Your Business Personality page can track who's viewing your pages and give you statistics using Google Analytics, so you can tinker and make the pages better. You can even see a graphic of where your posts are being resent – videos and topics go viral on the internet all the time – now you can see how your material is being distributed by others in Ripples.

With a company website, personal blog, my profile, and other on-line material, will I benefit from Google + Business pages - take a look and decide... Click here to see the Muppets Google + Business page

What's it take to set up a Business Personality page? If you have a personal Google Plus site, it is minutes to stand up a Business Personality page – I had one up in under 10 minutes and a robust page after about 90 minutes.

Face-to-face meetings are the most effective in growing a relationship, but can be impossible in an virtual world – Google + Business pages offer you a virtual alternative. Ready to go? Start at: https://plus.google.com/pages/create.

How can this help you get more business?

SalesLab’s next Rainmaker, (Number 9!) is Your Business Personality – How to Convey It Easily, Simply, and Free! - the first 300 seconds of the Capital Technology Management Hub, at 6 pm, Tuesday, December 13^th.

The Blind Men and their Elephant 2.0

I’ve been meeting Business 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Government 2.0, and in each case partisans explain that their particular function is driving the transformation.

Business 2.0 is Finance! Enterprise 2.0 is Architecture! And Government 2.0 is Information Technology! came from a moneychanger, a sheetrocker, and some guy from a hobby shop.

This 2.0 thing is about getting customers better results, which then follows it is about allowing the person working with the customer to do better work, which upstreams to better measuring what and how to do.

Sometimes it could be about funding, or shelter, or toys, but if they are, it’s peripheral.

The next time you get some new, loud and demanding 2.0, check to see how the customer benefits. If it’s not immediately obvious, it’s probably not the real deal.

Are you taking full advantage of your blog? Come to BlogLab - Improve Your Blogs! Thursday December 8, 8:30 am - 1 pm. Learn more at http://bit.ly/WMRBlogLab

And The Winner Is...You!

We participated this week with seven other entrepreneurs in the 2011 Capital Management Technology Hub and George Mason's School of Management Technology Startup Challenge to introduce our cloud-based community and supporting tools: MyLeadershipPractice. What a top notch event and great learning experience! Plenty of innovative solutions to specific needs were presented.

2011 Capital Startup Challenge

The competition was an experiential lab for evaluating a new service or product. Here's what came from competing:

• Makes us think about how to use the service in much greater detail

• Preparing the presentation begins a dialog about the service:
  • defining features and benefits
  • sharpening descriptions of key elements and what's unique or superior
  • translating thoughts, ideas, concepts, and concepts into words
  • choosing statements which are the most precise and compelling in delivering the message
• Questions from the judges show:
  • areas they feel are most important:
  • ones that need additional clarification
  • specifics comments about elements that may need further development (new thoughts or just a different priority?)
• Feedback from the audience indicates the reception of the presentation or topic:
  • non-verbal – are they listening or tuning out
  • verbal – if interactive, did they respond; did they raise questions during or after the presentation
• You can observe other entrepreneurs:
  • what they identified as a need and how they developed a solution
  • how they communicate about their service or product, deliver presentations, and persuade the judges
• Pre- and post-competition publicity gives your new service visibility
• You now have a significant group of people who know about your new service and by competing, they know you are legitimate, not just a dreamer.

In addition to gleaning this priceless information, you have now practiced selling the service in front of 100 people. How easy will it be to present 1-on-1 or to a smaller group now?

With this rich input to work with, you can quickly refine the service, better highlight the benefits of the service, and refine the message you present to the customer – as needed.

I found that presenting at this entrepreneur competition got the juices flowing and raised the level of passion for creating a successful service, valued by the customer.

Why wouldn't someone just jump at an opportunity to compete in an event like this? Only upside gain.

Have you been in a service or product competition? How did it helps your project?

Looking to improve your blog? Our next presentation is BlogLab - Improve Your Blogs! Thursday December 8, 8:30 am - 1 pm. Learn more at http://bit.ly/WMRBlogLab

Bring It!

Jimmy Valentine, the famous safecracker, would sandpaper his fingertips before commencing to winkle open a safe.

Henry Fonda was still throwing up before each stage performance, even when he was seventy-five.

Yesterday I committed my first successful Hangout, Google Plus videoconference. Just like AT&T predicted in the fifties, only in color...with a bigger screen!

Zack, our technical architect, was on the call and got passionate about the mission and the value of our next company, and I thought, “Wow! How can I get that on paper?”

Now I know “Why video?” You can bring the passion. You can use the passion.

So I thought I was ready for last night’s DC Week Keynotes. I like Peter Corbett. He is Peter Pan bringing technology to the lost boys of Washington. When he advertises Keynote“s”, he’s not kidding.

Mayor Vince Gray introduced the members of five DC school robotics clubs.

Genevieve Bell, Intel’s anthropologist taught me about the third place, and made me desperately want to see more when I look.

Scott Kelly from Ford had the video of the blind former Mustang owner of 25 years ago hitting 140 on the salt flats in the new Mustang. Did I care? I don’t know. I was crying too hard.

Game over. Or so I thought.

Coming in to the Warner Theatre. We were given copies of Brian Solis’ The End of Business As Usual: Rewire the Way You Work to Succeed in the Consumer Revolution.

I had just seen Brian for the first time, interviewing John Battelle earlier in the week, so I was pleased. Okay. He’s good.

Wrong. Brian comes out and upends my business paradigm in the first three minutes. Sure you can build an app, but why bother if you’re not going to make the world a much better place? You’ve got the power! Figure out how to use it!

That wasn’t a harangue. It was examples that made me laugh, made me cry, made me mad. We’re now in an Egosystem – all those apps that revolve around you.

Brian’s right. But what if it’s hard?

You want hard? Check out Frank Warren. Frank Warren is on a daily campaign to stare down death and win. He has a website and books as PostSecret, a where people can post their secrets, share them so they become less terrible. Money from that goes to train suicide prevention volunteers at IMAlive.

I would come to a full stop any time for a Frank Warren. But Murphy’s Law “If anything can go wrong it will,” has kicked in with a vengeance. AV support, which has been much more art than science to this point, grinds to a full stop.

How does this affect Frank Warren?

He sees it, he acknowledges it, but not for a second does his focus waver from converting the audience. I guess if your main occupation is staring down death and winning, a little computer nonsupport is a grin.

Finally after adlibbing, starting the balloon toss above the audience, leaving us to entertain ourselves while he goes backstage to assist, and finally getting meaningful help from a geek computer scientist in the audience, Oz appears.

That whole segue was the definition of Master of the Universe.

Keynote“s” Yup.

And the message given to me that day?

Find the passion. Bring it.

Looking to improve your blog? Our next presentation is BlogLab - Improve Your Blogs! Thursday December 8, 8:30 am - 1 pm. Learn more at http://bit.ly/WMRBlogLab