Chuck talks Business

Now that Thanksgiving is over, I can share this.

It happened again the other day.  I got a call from a friend who had been laid off.  I know what you are thinking, Chuck you live in Detroit, surprise!  Well, actually this makes 5 friends in as many weeks and they all had two things in common.

1.  They did not live in the Midwest.

2.  They all have advanced degrees.

These folks all have great knowledge.  Stuff that would be useful to way more than just one company.  We are going to be taking advantage of that in the weeks and months ahead and forging some new paths.  It got me thinking about ruts and moving ahead, so I wanted to share a few things that I ran across.  Maybe a few minutes checking this stuff out will be the boost you need going into 2010.  I know I am excited about the abundance that is starting to unfold in the new year and I hope that if you are not, you soon will be.

The first is an interview that Dan Schawbel did with Libby Gill.

If your not familiar with Libby, here website is here.  Dan was good enough to put a short video of another interview with Libby in the piece and it is well worth the few minutes to view.

You can access Dan’s interview with Libby here.

The second resource is from Jim Kukral.  Jim is the Biz Web Coach and provides tons of great information.  You can check out his personal site here.

The specific post that I want to direct you to though is called How do you know when it’s time to change gears?

Let me know what you think.  Are you gearing up for a great 2010?

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Chuck Smith Leadership, LinkedIn, Pay it forward abundance, beginning, change

I ran across this video the other day. Imagine a 14 year old boy who is forced to drop out of school because his parents cannot afford the $80 school fees. Now imagine that he sees a book about windmills and decides to figure out how to bring electricity and irrigation to his families village.

His dream, to enable his people to access the volumes of knowledge available on the internet. In order to do that, they need reliable electricity.

Are you thinking that big in your business? Are you making the change you want to see happen. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Chuck Smith Uncategorized

A little video that caught my eye.

I have a neighbor who is always looking to make things better. An old friend of mine and I touched base this week and there are some great collaborative efforts that will come out of that.

Where do you find business ideas?

Chuck Smith Networking ideas

When Good Clients Go Bad

This is one of those little gem videos that has made the rounds, but I think there are a couple of lessons in it.

1.  Come to terms up front. Obviously if you are ordering at the restaurant, you are expected to pay for the food.  I do like the ending, we’ll have to have you show us how it’s done so we can do it in-house.  I love this one, it’s what I call the “walk in the desert.”  If you had the time, resources and knowledge, coupled with the cost effectiveness to do it in-house, you already would be doing it.  Take you walk in the desert.

Here is an interview that I did with Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, The No Nonsense Lawyer™ on Business Legal Issues.  Near the end, we talk specifically about terms and conditions.  Feel free to skip to about the 45 minutes mark.

2.  There are some clients you just don’t want. This comes from “chasing” clients like they are the last person with money on the planet.  Stop it, and stop agreeing to the lowered fee, because we will make it up later or in volume.  Trust me when I tell you they will want a discount off of you discounted price IF you move to the next transaction.

I interviewed Morgana Rae and we discussed Financial Alchemy.  How to live in abundance and change our relationship with money.  You will want to download it and listen to the whole thing.

3.  Sometimes you have to give a little in order to get. I kept track one year and for every dollar of “extra deliverables” that I gave clients, I got ten dollars in return.  Now, these were good clients, that I tracked and was up front with them about this deliverable would have been X, but I am going to do it for less than X and here’s the reason.

4.  Is the client trying to tell you something about your business? This may be hard to swallow, but here goes.  You may not have delivered as expected.  You may not have delivered value commensurate with the price and you may not be all that and a bag of chips.  Is this one client or is it how the market place is reacting to your business?  The first comment on the Youtube site was basically think about this the next time you don’t make a deadline. - True that!

I want to know what you think of the video and the client - vendor relationship.  Leave me a comment and let’s discuss it.

Chuck Smith Uncategorized clients, Money, terms and conditions, Trust

Operation Kid Equip

OK, Let’s help some kids!

The mission of Operation: Kid Equip is to serve the educational needs of children by providing free school supply kits to students from low-income families.

First a couple of facts:

• There are more than  51,000 underprivileged children in Oakland County MI alone.  (nccp.org)
• Every school system in Oakland County MI has at least one homeless student. (Mike McFall)
• Parents spend $98 per child on supplies alone for back to school. (National Retailers Foundation)

I had a chance to sit down with Mike McFall of Operation Kid Equip (OKE) on the kickoff meeting for Blood, Sweat and Gear.  Operation Kid Equip is the Gear.  Here are a couple of videos of Mike talking about OKE.

What they need and how you can help.

1.  Help spread the word. Menachem Kniespeck is one of the co-founders and you can follow him on twitter. @OKE_Menachim.

Another way to spread the word.  Go to the Operation Kid Equip page on Facebook.  While you are there, scroll down and on the lower left of the page is a share button.  Please click it and share OKE with your friends.

A third place to spread the word.  Go to the Operation Kid Equip group on LinkedIn.

2.  Go to the Operation Kid Equip causes page on Facebook and donate some money to the cause.  If you are a business and you or your employees are donating $250 dollars or more, please contact me and I will set up an interview on my blog talk radio show and do a video interview at your location that can be circulated by the folks working with Motor City Connect to make this happen.

Our goal for the Blood, Sweat and Gear effort is to raise $4,000 for Operation Kid Equip.  They also need 1700 spiral notebooks and packets of filler paper.  The price of paper is making those supplies the most limiting.  That means that they will also be the biggest burden on the folks that Operation Kid Equip serves.

Operation Kid Equip is one of the three charities that are being supported under Blood, Sweat and Gear through Motor City Connect.  I had a chance to talk to Terry Bean about the effort, here is the video.

If you have any questions, put them in the comments section and we can get them answered.

We are making things happen in Detroit.  Let’s help some kids!

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Chuck Smith Leadership, Pay it forward blood sweat and gear, Community, Detroit, MCC, Motor City Connect, operation kid equip

In Detroit we’re Kickin’ it 1-2-3

1 - Community

This is our house, “The D”, Hockeytown.  We are Southeast Michigan, we are Detroit and we are not rolling over and playing dead contrary to popular opinion in many media outlets.  You are gonna have to come bigger and harder if you expect a little recession to stop us in “The D.”  With Detroit, I am of course talking about Detroit city limits, the Suburbs, Ann Arbor and all of Southeast Michigan.

We have 5 major research Universities.  Some of the best Health Care Facilities in the World and too many artists and attractions to list in one blog post.

2 - Great Organizations

The first one is Social Media Club - Detroit and Ann Arbor

Thanks to @jesssoul and @davemurr for getting the group going!

The account is @SMCDA2 and the hashtag is #SMCDA2

The wiki is here.

We are changing the Facebook Group to a Facebook Page and I will update this post with links when it happens.

I did a little video essay from the first meeting.  We are asking the big questions and coming up with BIGGER Answers!

We talked about a number of issues in Social Media and Topics for our Program Committee to take on:

Detroit Awesome
Trends
Detroit Social Media Evangelism
Responsible Usage - particularly for younger users
The Business Case for Social Media
Common Challenges
Putting it all together
Presence Management
Showcasing Detroit Artists
Just a little video of folks Sharing It

The second great organization is Motor City Connect.

I grabbed @CharlieCurve to talk about it a little.

@MotorCity

The LinkedIn group is here.

As Charlie said, @TerryBean is the Chief “Ask” Officer.  If you have no idea what that means, get connected and ask him!

3 - Great Charities

Red, Green and Sledgehammer

Red - American Red Cross - Southeast Michigan

Green - Operation Kid Equip

Sledgehammer - Detroit Blightbusters

Again, I grabbed @CharlieCurve to talk a little about it:

I’m curious about what’s going on with building communities and strengthening relationships in other parts of the country world.  I know there are some folks out there talkin’ smack about the Motor City and us folks in the Midwest.

Just remember, we are giving blood and carrying Sledgehammers!

The first word in Social Media is Social, don’t keep it a Secret.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Chuck Smith Leadership, LinkedIn, Networking, Social Networking, Twitter Community, Detroit, Marketing, MCC, Motor City Connect, SMCDA2, Social Media, Social Media Club, Twitter

Know, Like and Trust - A Twitter Trilogy

It happened again this morning.  I opened Tweetdeck and had half a dozen DMs that were all exactly the same, telling me how I could put twitter on autopilot, build a huge following and make tons of money doing it.  In a word - Bull!

Here is why.  I don’t know you, which means I can’t like you yet and I sure as hell don’t trust you.  BTW, you’ve already got negative marks on the like and trust thing with the spam.  Don’t kid yourself, just because I follow you back doesn’t mean you get to bombard me with crap! You can send me interesting articles, your blog entries and from time to time an offer or direct link to something that you monetize, but if you are selling me crap before you say hello, get lost.

Which brings me to the auto DM.  I used to use one, and it said “Thanks for the follow, Happy tweeting.”  I turned it off about a month ago.  It was a choice made because I stopped reading the ones that I got, even the ones that said “Thanks for following.”

Know

Here is some expert advice from @TheExpert on the first step of Know, Like and Trust.

One of the folks that gets this right is Jessica Swanson, you can follow her @shoestringing or check out her Shoestring Marketing Kit.  I interviewed her a few months ago, the interview is here.

Like

The next step is Like.  This can be a tricky thing to accomplish, so maybe it would be easier to show how not to get some folks to like you.  Dr. Ellen Brandt has a great post on her blog that covers three experiences where people didn’t exactly put their best foot forward.  It’s Titled “I Don’t Like What You Wrote.  You Should Be Poisoned, Garrotted, Stabbed With Stiletto Heels, Thrown Off A Tall Building and Have Vultures Eat Your Liver.”

I want to make my view on this known.  It is perfectly acceptable to disagree, but you don’t have to be disagreeable when you do it.  If your rebuttal starts with Socialist or Fascist or any other manner of name calling, my ears slam shut!  Make a case on facts and be civil about it.  Just because it is the internet, doesn’t mean that you have the inalienable right to be an explicative deleted.

Trust

Trust, now we are at the pinnacle.  There has been a lot of talk about “The Oprah Effect.”  Which means that I will move on.  Trust comes from being responsible and acting with integrity. One of the folks that I follow on twitter is @chrisbrogan.  He co-authored a book coming out called “Trust Agents.”  Here is a little video of Chris doing a presentation about the book’s content.

So, your turn.  Please leave a comment below.

Have I got it all wrong?

Was this useful, or a waste of time?

Give me your feedback, your twitpics of hiking trails and links to useful stuff, but please say “hello” before you attempt to monetize me!

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Chuck Smith Free Marketing, Marketing, Twitter Know, Like, Marketing, Social Media, Trust, Twitter

Business Lesson from the Submarine Force Number 2.

Life is Simple,  … either you’re qualified or you’re Not!

I arrived on the boat and the first thing that I got was a stack of “qual cards.”  You don’t touch anything on a submarine if you are not qualified.  I mean anything, the first qual card that I had to do was phone talker.  Think about that, you can’t use a phone without being qualified!  I can think of a few places that I have phoned that could use a qual card.

That stack had 13 qual cards initially.  One of them was special, it was my submarine qualification card.  All submariners get one.  There were over 70 signatures (sig) needed.  In order to get a sig, you needed to show that you knew all of the text book stuff about the system and them things like locations, operations, what to do if something went wrong, etc.  This process was called a “check out.”

I once saw a non-qual attempt a check out without knowing what he was doing.  He promptly had a new necklace made from a spoon with a hole punched in the handle and some string.  He has soon going throughout the boat touching valves and saying “I know where this valve is, because I touched it with my spoon.”  Submarine sailors have a sense of humor.

Qualifying in submarines is not just some little nice to do exercise.  We were on a nuclear powered fast attack submarine.  As we covered in business lesson one, there were more than a few things that could do wrong.  In order to maximize our ability to survive, everyone pulls their weight, and everyone is qualified.  If you couldn’t cut it, we canned you.  Kthaxbai!

We had fairly simple rules for non-quals.  You didn’t get movie privileges, you got the worst assignments (cleaning dishes, etc.) and you were expected to be learning or learning.  Fairly straightforward choices right?  You will notice that sleep wasn’t in the choices of learning or learning.  One of the common phrases was “you can sleep when your dead.”

If you became DINQ (Delinquent in Quals) you got the privilege of spending extra organized learning time.  This often involved giving up your sleep and often the sleep of your qualified “sea dad.”  You can imagine how popular that made you in a place were three or four hours of sleep a day was the norm.  In submarine terms that is “motivation.”

The end of the qualification process involves a board.  Three senior members of the crew grill you on all of the ship’s systems.  Navigation, fire control, damage control, reactor operations, valves, switches, electrical distribution, etc.  I qualified and I sat on more than a few boards.  They are not things that submarine sailors take lightly.  We are not only saying that this person is safe, but that we TRUST them.

To this day, if I come across someone with “fish” (submarine qualified insignia), we know the rules.  There is trust and there is mutual respect.  It really is simple…You are either qualified or you are not!

Now for the business lesson(s).

1.  If you have employees or need to delegate things, are there processes in place that people can follow?  Are your employees qualified?

2.  Are you building a community that trusts?  Think about your clients and prospects as “Qualified” and your business as a non-qual.  Are you bragging before you’ve earned your “fish?”

3.  Do your clients trust you the way a qualified submariner trusts another qualified submariner?

Chuck Smith Submarine business lesson Submarine business lesson

My guest on June 9th was Morgana Rae.  You can listen to the show here. 

If you could RAPIDLY, RADICALLY, and PERMANENTLY change your Relationship with Money, what would that be worth to you?  Morgana Rae is an internationally acclaimed life coach, author, and professional speaker who guides entrepreneurs to attract more than they chase, to market creatively and inexpensively, and to RADICALLY change their relationship with money. A certified Master Results Coach and mythologist trained in NLP, hypnosis, and co-active coaching, Morgana draws on these skills and 20 years in the entertainment industry to create fun, dynamic exercises that transform your life quickly – with stunning results.

One of the world’s leading experts on wealth manifestation, Morgana is a popular speaker and frequent television and radio guest. She delivers keynote addresses and breakout sessions at expos and conferences from Baja Mexico to Oslo, Norway.

Morgana wrote Financial Alchemy: Twelve Months of Magic and Manifestation, and she is a contributing author to the bestselling books Heart of a Woman in the Workplace, and Inspiration to Realization, ranked a “must read’ by Entrepreneur Magazine. Her articles have appeared in over fifty magazines worldwide, and she was the “Life Magic” columnist for a national magazine.

You can get more information on Financial Alchemy at www.howtobeamoneymagnet.com.

Morgana’s blog is excellent and you can find it at www.abundanceandprosperity.com.

Chuck Smith Money abundance, Financial Alchemy, Money, money magnet, Morgana Rae, prosperity

My guest on June 2nd was Melanie Jordan.  You can listen to the show here.

Melanie heads up SunLover Publishing LLC, her publishing, media properties and coaching company.  She has 20+ years of experience in marketing from her work with some of the country’s largest financial services companies, her own entrepreneurial pursuits and working with clients, plus a decade of information product experience.  Melanie Jordan is also a faculty member for Alex Mandossian’s prestigious Optimization University for her marketing expertise in working with small businesses and professionals worldwide.  She also is a frequent speaker, trainer and guest for top online conferences, teleseminars and podcasts, and a mentor to top sites such as TheCircle.org and Wellsphere.

As “Everybody’s Infopreneur Coach”, Melanie believes that “everyone knows something that is worth something to others”, and specializes in helping Corporate America workers protect their livelihoods, its refugees regain their financial future, and entrepreneurs and content creators achieve their maximum possible audience and revenue. Melanie’s newest book is What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know (TM) - Achieving The Life You Were Meant To Have By Making Money From What YOU Know!

It’s the first in a complete line of information products and services on all aspects of infopreneuring, marketing and social media. Melanie Jordan also produces and hosts What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know (TM), The Podcast at http://www.WhatYouKnowIsWorthMorePodcast.com, which has been honored as a featured podcast on Microsoft’s Office Podcasts Directory since its inception. Melanie also hosts the What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know (TM) Free Teleseminar Series featuring thought leaders and innovative companies who provide products and services that help entrepreneurs and infopreneurs grow their businesses online (a free All-Access Pass may be obtained at http://BudUrl.com/WYKTeleseminars).

Chuck Smith Marketing info products, infopreneur