Escape from Cubicle Nation

Do you have to drip slime to sell your services?

I used to equate the act of selling with obnoxious, slimy used car salesmen that were all about hustle. I would get sick to my stomach when thinking about cold-calling a prospective client, or handling a project negotiation.

But then I had the good fortune of working with sales training guru Skip Miller.  In my work helping him design classes and grow his business, I was forced to learn a lot about selling. Under his constant tutelage, I got over some major phobias.  I once told him "I will never teach a class on selling since I hate it and I will come across as insincere." 

"Let me ask you a question," he said.  "How long have you been in business?"  At that point, I had been in business for 3 years.  "And you have a number of big clients, right?" he said.  "How did you get them?" 

"Oh, I didn't have to do any selling, they all came via referrals from other clients," I said. 

"Guess what - THAT is selling!"

That sure opened my mind!

Among the many things I learned working with him, here were the highlights:

• Selling is a process. The first time you meet with a client you don't have to worry about jamming your proposal down their throat.  You want to take the time to really get to know their situation and see if there is a mutually beneficial reason to continue down the sales path.  If not, it is better to cut bait and pass them on to a more appropriate resource.  Otherwise you will be forcing yourself on them and validate your distaste at selling to someone who really doesn't want to do business with you.
• Price is based on value.  So many newbie entrepreneurs I know are petrified about pricing their services.  What if the client will think it is too much?  What if Joe next door is selling the same thing for less?  If you just focus on price and ignore the value that it generates the client, you are missing the boat entirely.  Skip always says "you know the funny thing about clients? ... When they give you money, THEY WANT IT BACK!" And if you can't explain in concrete terms how your services will save them money, reduce their risk, increase their profits or build their brand, you will never be successful at negotiating price.
• People buy from people they like and they trust.  If you are selling services that you are passionate about, believe in and know will make a positive difference in your client's lives, your actions will come from a place of truth and authenticity and your clients will feel it.  Approach all conversations with honesty and look out for the best interests of the client, whether or not your services are the answer to their problem.  If they trust you, chances are they will buy from you even if your competitors have a similar service at a lower price.

My Dad was right: cubicles are bad for your health

When I first started writing this blog and came up with the title "Escape from Cubicle Nation," my Dad told me the story of one of his first run-ins with cubicles in the late 1980's.  He was working as a photographer for a large utility company.  One of his assignments was to take pictures of cubicles that would be used in a brochure to explain the benefits of these beige walls to employees.  As he looked at the cubicles, he said, "I just HATED them.  My brain hurt just to be around them."  He turned to his friend Charlie who was writing the brochure and said:

"I promise you that in 10 to 20 years, psychologists and psychotherapists will be publishing research papers about the detrimental effects of people working in cubicles."

His friend Charlie thought he was overreacting, or being funny.  "No, really, I am serious," my Dad said.

And now he is proven right, by the article cited in Kathy Sierra's Brain death by dull cubicle.

Benefit of blogging: new friends and supporters

I have been on the blog scene for a short time but have already run across some truly wonderful and supportive virtual friends.  It is always a pleasant surprise to get an encouraging message from someone like Francis Wade, a management consultant in Jamaica who told me "Please keep on writing!" after I thanked him for listing me on his Chronicles from a Caribbean Cubicle .   Or No Dumb Bunny author Carla Golden, who wrote and told me about her journey from Playboy Bunny to Minister.  Or Matthew Cornell of Matt's Idea Blog who is always sharing an encouraging word.

I met the talented and creative Marilyn Scott Waters through virtual means, and now have both a wonderful client and powerhouse art director for future ventures. 

All this has made me a more eager and fervent proponent of blogging for those who are starting a new business.  What better way to get plugged into a wide network of support than by writing about a business idea you are passionate about?  If you have something substantial to say, you may be surprised who will stand up and take notice.

To encourage this uplifting behavior, make sure you do the same.  When you read a blog you like, let the author know!  Your supportive words will have a big impact.

In this day of fear and cynicism, I appreciate each and every kind word from a stranger. 

Quick and easy way to set up an LLC

I am ashamed to admit that I have been in business for almost 10 years and only recently set up my company to be a Limited Liability Company or LLC.  All this time I was operating as a sole proprietor, which almost every lawyer will tell you is not the smartest way to reduce personal liability.  Because I have been a one-woman show with the occasional independent contractor as a partner, I figured my risk wasn't high.  I always have carried a two million dollar liability insurance policy.  I would joke with clients, "I would have to make a pretty expensive typo to merit a 2 million dollar payout!"  But the reality is you never know these days what can lead to a lawsuit.  An LLC is just one option for choosing your organization structure.  Consult your lawyer to see what is best for you.

What held me back from filing was what I figured would be a long, expensive and gnarly process with a lawyer.  Was I wrong!  I found Legalzoom through my buddies at Startup Nation.  All that is required is a simple web-based questionnaire, electronic payment, and your LLC application is underway!  I got my finished papers in a smart-looking binder, embossed with my company name (Ganas Consulting LLC) all in about a month.  They filed all the necessary paperwork with the state agencies.  I am just responsible for listing the LLC in the newspaper and signing the final contract.

If dread has been keeping you from setting up an LLC, I highly recommend Legalzoom.

Bottle that positive feedback - you'll need it later!

Lately I have been coaching a couple of creative, fabulous and talented women who are at different stages of growing their businesses.  Despite the fact that I believe that they have what it takes to really be successful, in their pursuit of freedom they occasionally run up against a gut-gripping fear, doubt, anxiety or plain old pissy mood.  It is at these times that I suggest they drink from their bottle of positive vibes.  And no, I am not referring to Jose Cuervo.

Here is what to do to create your very own bottle of positive vibes:

• Save copies of wonderful things people write about you.  They can be a birthday card from your Mom, emails from raving customers, encouraging comments from a professor or a thoughtful letter from a friend.  My file is called "Pam's Warm Fuzzies."  Name yours what you want.
• When you experience success, experience it!  The experience I am talking about here is to feel the success deep down in your body.  Pay attention to how it feels, and where in your body you feel great.  Stop, walk outside, breathe and reflect on your accomplishment.
• Make a short list of people you can call who lift you up.  Every time that I have to face a difficult consulting situation or teach a class to an important client, my best friend Desiree leaves me a voice mail message for me to listen to the morning of the engagement  "You are great!  Everyone loves you!  People wish they were you!  You will kill them!,"  she says. And the wonderful thing is that it makes me smile every time I hear it. Never mind if it is all true! With her in my corner, I can do anything.

Building a business is hard, sometimes scary work.  In order to get through the tough times, make sure you have strong, emotional anchors to remind you of your greatness and worth. 

Drink up!

Has your lack of passion made you "phone it in?"

The sharp and savvy Kathy Sierra from Passionate has written another thought-provoking post entitled Re-igniting passion.  She wrote it after meeting a group of inspired students while presenting at the Canadian Student Engineering Conference.  She asks:

"I don't know what they put in the water up there, but we could use some down here. Because too many of us (me included) tend to let that early enthusiasm slide... we forget why this thing we do used to matter to us, and we might start wondering why we ever got into it the first place. We start phoning it in.

Forget how that ultimately affects the end user, what about us? What would my days be like, for example, if I could always remember (and re-experience) the "I Rule!" feeling I got when my first program compiled. What would it be like if I remembered how excited I was to get my very first email from a reader telling us that the book made a difference in his life? What would it be like if I remembered how lucky I am to be doing something that--at some point, anyway--I really REALLY wanted to do?"

I have some ideas why it happens Kathy, gathered from my own experience and those of my clients:

1. We forget to get excited about our accomplishments.  So much time is put into getting to a successful outcome in our work that when we do, we hardly stop to breathe before moving on to the next big thing.  How about taking a moment to stop, smile, be grateful and say to ourselves "Damn, I'm good!"
2. We forget to make it fresh every day.  My 71-year-old Dad, who is a photographer, is one of the few people I know who is truly present in his work every time he does it.  He has been taking pictures for over 45 years, but still gets excited thinking about each shot, and always worries if his client will like it (they always love it).  Why does he stay fresh?  He challenges himself to always do better, and learn and adapt with technology.  He went from a die-hard black and white Nikon man up to his elbows in chemicals to a digital photographer who only sends pictures via email.
3. We often miss the signals that it is time to move on to try something different.  I was impressed with the difference between Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger as the half-time show entertainment at the Superbowl.  While I love the Beatles and feel like Paul is a very talented musician, I got the feeling that he was "phoning it in."  Mick Jagger on the other hand, took me back by his butt-shaking bravado.  I was not the only one who felt his passion - my 10 month old son Joshua was riveted by his performance, dancing wildly while sitting and putting his hands in the air.  To our amazement, he even clapped at the end of the performance, the first time we had ever seen him do that.  I can't quite pinpoint the difference between the two, but I always feel like Paul is the "one that used to be in a great band" while Mick and his liver-pickled buddy Keith Richards are "still kicking ass after all these years."

Breakthrough Ideas for 2006 Part II

The other day I posted the first ten of twenty Breakthrough Ideas for 2006 from the February 2006 edition of the Harvard Business Review.  Here are the second ten, pulled from Page 53.  My comments about new business ideas based on these ideas are in red. (Remind me next time to just choose highlights from my favorite five - twenty are pretty tiring to write about, as you can see with my ideas running a bit thin.)

11.  Peer to Peer Leadership Development.  When it comes to training your next-generation executives, do you wonder about the effectiveness of conventional methods, in which senior leaders impart general, sometimes outdated, principles to junior managers?  A U.S. Army intranet site offers a new model for leadership development, one that has advantages over both formal corporate training programs and informal watercooler-based networking.
The site is largely based on peer-to-peer feedback about real-time challenges leaders are facing in the field.  Trainers, leadership coaches, management consultants, how might you create new products or services around this model?  We all know that people are very sick of traditional training methods.

12.  Unstick Your Customers.  Physical stores are designed to "trap" customers-shepherding them past displays retailers want them to see on their way to the products they really want.  But what if physical stores mirrored the Web's best practices for making information easily and always accessible?  Customers would get out quickly with exactly what they needed, never forced to double back for forgotten items.  The result would be increased loyalty.
In this area, they say "Creating a real-world version of an online organization means treating retail space as if it were information space."  Are you a web developer that wants to transfer your knowledge of well-designed sites to a retail environment? 

13.  Follow the Leader.  The types of choices you make influence your employees' decision-making tendencies-and, consequently, the corporate culture.  Think carefully about what values your decisions communicate, and, if necessary, revise your personal rules of thumb to get the desired results.
The obvious link here is for leadership coaches, but I would say that anyone looking at personal development should take this into consideration.

14.  Wake Up and Smell the Performance Gap.  The gap between the economic performance of nations and that of companies is growing wider every month, made worse by offshoring and advances in technology.  Yet both sides continue to play by the rules for a level field.  As a result, states overreach while companies harbor unrealistic expectations about what governments can do for them.
There are huge opportunities here for those with corporate experience and political minds.  We have massive change to affect between how our governments are run and how business is run.  Both could use a lot of help.

15.  The Avatar as Consumer.  Millions upon millions of people have created avatars, personalized representations of themselves that they use in an array of online environments.  These alternative selves represent a whole new set of "customers" that marketers can analyze, segment, and sell to-both in the virtual worlds in which avatars live an din the real worlds of their creators.
Wow, can you imagine being in the business of marketing to made up characters?  For those of you with vivid imaginations and distain for the hard, cold realities of life, this could be just the niche for you.

16.  Befriending the Private Label.  In a variety of categories, including cellular phones, financial services, and packaged goods, suppliers are helping their retail customers become competitors through the retailers' use of their own branded products.  This stimulates more than just low-price competition:  Many private-label brands created and supported by large manufacturers are of equal or superior value to the manufacturers' regular brands.
The entire supply chain of product development will be impacted by this, as well as marketing brains, sales gurus and advertisers.

17.  A Critical Mass for the Long Term.  Hounded by pressure for short-term results, companies often find it touch to make the long-term decisions that are best for them.  But while many CEOs fear bucking the status quo alone, a group of vanguard companies hopes, through its collective strength, to change the market's orientation for good.
If we could do something, anything to stop the brutal quarter-by-quarter results focus of companies, it would make life inside and outside of companies so much more bearable. 

18.  The Costly Secret of China Sourcing.  Many companies aren't reaping the benefits they expected from sourcing their products in China.  Physical, logistical, and political limitations-not to mention the inevitable supply chain bottlenecks-are making it difficult.  To combat these obstacles, organizations must think flexibly and act aggressively, even using rivals' overseas-sourcing strategies against them.
China experts, here is another area to help.

19.  The Brain as Boondoggle.  Despite the recent buzz around neuroscience, you aren't going to be able to use brain scans to choose the "perfect" CEO or the R&D scientist with the most "Eureka!" potential.  Not in this lifetime.  Hiring will still require insightful, nuanced reading of people, not biological data.
Experienced recruiters may smirk at this idea as "breakthrough," since they know this has always been the case.  But maybe there is an opportunity to take the best from both of these worlds and make a very effective recruiting process.

20.  Why They Call It Work.  Employees should not demand that their companies imbue their lives with meaning.  If people's jobs are simply worth doing-that is, if the positions are commensurate with their skills, experiences, priorities and goals-that should be meaningful enough.
One more opportunity for me to screech my rallying cry to anyone who will listen:  WE ARE ALL SELF EMPLOYED!!!  Companies lost their patience long ago with being parents/camp directors/therapists.  We need to give our working people tools to know how to create meaning for themselves out of any situation.

Terry Tate, Office Linebacker

I had forgotten how funny the Reebok short of "Terry Tate, Office Linebacker" was until I saw it again today.  It spoofs what many of us would love to have in a corporate environment - a football enforcer to handle egregious co-worker behavior.  My favorite has to be the recycle scene.

http://reebok.com.edgesuite.net/lastexit_terrys_world_dsl.mov

How will you take advantage of the Breakthrough Ideas for 2006?

One of the biggest skills of a successful entrepreneur is being able to quickly synthesize what is going on in the world and translate opportunities into viable businesses.  A good way to do this is to read newspaper, magazine and journal articles and ask yourself "what impact might this have on the business environment?" With this in mind, I just read the Harvard Business Review which coupled with the World Economic Forum to report on 20 breakthrough ideas for 2006.  Here are summaries of the first 10, pulled from pages 52-53 of the February 2006 issue. I will write about the second 10 tomorrow.  My notes are in red.

1:  The Synthesizing Leader:  The ability to decide which data to heed, which to ignore, and how to organize and communicate information will be among the most important traits of business executives in this century.
How might you help a leader synthesize information?  What kind of coaching could you provide to help them develop this critical skill?

2.  Can I Hear Me Now? Body area networks that can tell us things about our physiology-when our blood pressure is rising, when our blood sugar is falling, or when we're about to keel at the wheel-will help lower health care costs and improve public safety. Such networks give new meaning to the word "self-awareness."
The article says "body area networks rely on sensors embedded into "smart" fabrics and materials.  These sensors will eventually appear in a range of consumer products, from shoes to keyboards to jewelry and even makeup."  Yikes, this can have many implications including some Big Brother ones ... how might you educate the public about the pitfalls of this trend?  If you are a clothing designer, how might you keep it in mind for future lines?

3.  China as Green Lab*.  The urgency of China's environmental problems-including an overreliance on fossil fuels and water shortages in many cities-will open up vast markets for forward-looking energy and technology companies and will offer the world a seedbed for new types of ecologically intelligent products, services and technologies.
Eco-buddies out there that have been slogging away for years to make headway in alternative energy may have a great new market to play in.  Or those Asian Studies majors that haven't yet found use for your degree might want to apply it here as a consultant to those that are heading East to enter new markets.

4.  Risk, Uncertainty and Doubt*.  In the twentieth century, businesses concentrated on managing risk-developing assembly lines, budget tools, and organizational structures that, to varying degrees, made transactions and processes predictable.  In this century, businesses will need to tame two more amorphous foes:  uncertainty and doubt.
Yoga teachers, massage therapists, coaches and management consultants, how are you going to help people deal with this uncertainty and doubt?  Business coaches, how can you sieze this opportunity to help people plan for a scary future?

5.  Battle of the Networks.  Companies are steadily mastering the art of networking their products, customers and suppliers-some to the point of successfully locking out their more traditional rivals.  The next challenge for these firms is to determine how to navigate network-to-network competition.
By "networks," they are referring to critical masses of customers or vendors tied together with technology.  How might you offer a product or service to help people navigate in this new world?

6.  Science in the Wild*.  More and more, scientists are extinguishing their Bunsen burners, flinging open their lab doors, and using the messy world outside as their petri dish.  Corporate R&D departments could benefit from similar forays into the wild, using segments of the general population as test subjects or as amateur collaborators in helping to process hitherto unimagined quantities of data.
This one frankly gives me the "heebie jeebies" (for any non-US readers, this means it makes me very scared).  When I think of using segments of the general population as test subjects, I can only think of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments conducted on unsuspecting African-American men between 1932-1972.  But aside from this horrible example, there might be some ethical and interesting areas to play in.

7.  A Homestead Act for the Twenty-First Century.  What if ever newborn in America received $6,000 as seed money for college, a first house or a business?  The nation would spawn a mass investor class, with ever more citizens deriving their income from returns on financial holdings as well as fro wages; there would be less need for a generous welfare state; and the interests of workers and business would be better aligned.
Can you say financial education?  If this truly came to pass, we would need to undertake a massive educational campaign for all citizens.

8.  Customers Demand Their Slice of IP*. It used to be that your customer-collaborators were more than happy to leave their beta marks on your products or services; remuneration didn't matter.  Now the novelty is wearing thin, and these enthusiasts are starting to ask, "What's in it for me?"  How are you going to reward these people for their great ideas?
This could have multiple angles, from new ways to market to customers to innovative profit-sharing ideas.  I kind of like the thought of getting paid to be a bug tester for Microsoft (since I am convinced all software I have bought has been in beta version)

9.  A Cartel for Oil Consumers*.  As worldwide oil consumption begins to overtake petroleum-producing nations' capacity to pump out black gold, governments may need to convene a controlling organization of petroleum-importing countries or OPIC.  Otherwise regional groups and large states will pursue their own energy interests in a form of energy mercantilism-and that wouldn't serve anyone's interests.
The whole issue of energy and oil has hundreds of different implications for business from environmental advocacy to rideshare programs to indigenous rights to conflict resolution.

10.  Seeing the "Health" in Health Care Costs.  What company would willingly look for ways to increase its health care spending ?  Still, targeted investments in employees' health-covering the full cost of workers' diabetes or asthma drugs, for instance-can more than pay for themselves by reducing employees' treatment costs and improving workers' productivity.
Health educators, nutritionists, acupuncturists and benefit companies all could exploit this encouraging trend.

*Codeveloped by Harvard Business Review and the World Economic Forum

I'd love your thoughts on these trends.  Tomorrow I will write about the next 10.

Why are women still paid less than men?

I am still grumbling about the statistic that I just read from 101 Facts on the Status of Workingwomen, published by the Business and Professional Women's Foundation:

"In the year 2004, full-time workingwomen were paid only about 76 cents for every dollar paid to men.  The wage gap is even wider for women of color - African-American women are paid only 66 cents and Latinas only 54 cents for a dollar paid to a white man."

What?  54 cents?

And it gets worse ...

"Since 1963, the wage gap has narrowed by only one-third of a penny per year.  At the current rate of change, the wage gap will not be eliminated until 2039."

I don't know about you, but I think that is ludicrous.  Us women really need to get together and make this change happen faster.  We work too damn hard to not get equal pay for equal work.

Being my own boss is my answer to controlling my own financial destiny.  What other suggestions do you have?