Tag: culture - Page 5

Never give away everything, it's as simple as that.

Too many entrepreneurs get so desperate that they give away the kitchen sink when in fact all their prospect wanted to know was that they could do a good job.

As an entrepreneur, it's hard to start a business and to keep it going year-after-year profitability creating value and jobs. But many do so very successful, and yet those who fail seem to do so falling often on their own sword.

For the past 3 weeks I have been quite sick. It has been incredibly hard to be able to work at a pace that is acceptable in my business. Fortunately for me, the team has been running seamlessly and have continued to grow and prosper.

Due to our inherent need for a number of new positions to be filled due to our high growth company, we have to be very careful what clients we take on for now and the future.

Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs have experienced a toxic employee. They are the one's whose glass is half empty. They constantly complain, nitpick, bitch, gossip and in general have an underlying mean spirit.

We are embarking on an influx of new employees. Reflecting on our growth and what it means to the business, I am more determined than ever to get our onboarding process right.

Fortunately, marketing is our forte and as such, there are a few things that we can do to make the onboarding process memorable.

I am not a storyteller, not in the sense that I can engage a crowd verbally; have them hanging off my every word through great wit and charm. I am no Gatsby and certainly not great. I have friends who hold the floor when they speak – command it in fact – but that is not in my nature to do so. I like to listen so I can come back to my desk and write about what I have heard.

That is not to say that I don’t do public speaking, I am quite reasonable when I am on topic, but I am a storyteller in a different sense, more hack than raconteur and certainly no Peter Ustinov – the greatest raconteur that ever lived. Author John Green (The Fault in our Stars) says it best about many writers, “Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don't want to make eye contact while doing it."

I have been reading some great books recently, mostly about how to build a happy and sustainable culture and build a business globally.

At the moment we are employing new people in key positions within our company. Each position is new as Marketing Eye is growing exponentially and we need to hire people to accomodate that.

A client called and asked for a new brand for his new investment fund this week. We were particularly excited by this request because our Art Director had told me just the day before that his favourite part of his job was to develop new brands from scratch.

Our client didn't have any preconceived ideas about what the brand should look like, so for Marketing Eye this was a huge plus, however, we did not have any idea what his taste was like and knew that the logo would be approved by not one, but half a dozen senior executives.

Being a business owner has a multitude of perks; you can make sh*t happen, run your own schedule, feel empowered to do anything you set your mind to, fulfil dreams, make millions (if you work hard and are successful) and in general, you have an ability to change lives, that of your own and others. It's a pretty amazing role if I may say so myself.

The drawbacks, well, there are a number but one of them has never been that I didn't want to get out of bed and turn up to work. Instead, I wake up early and make my way to the office as fast and efficiently as possible. 

What I find challenging is the same things most small to medium-sized business owners find; people management, enough hours in the day to do all the things that you want to do and find the right talent. The latter being the single biggest issue I think most agencies find today.

The lines blurred sometime in the last 10 years, but I don't know exactly when it happened.

Having started my first business at 25 years of age, specializing in technology marketing, I thought I had it all. A marketer who understood technology marketing and who could talk the talk which at that time seemed to be, the height of the dot com boom, the most lucrative marketing position one could hold.

Then of course, someone came along and started talking about company culture, and marketers took a turn to start embellishing the on-boarding process of new recruits, with a mixture of "people marketing" with "technology marketing" - and for a time, that was all the rage. It seemed to be the only thing people were talking about and marketers started to play a role in human resources, giving recruiters and in-house HR managers the tools to "sell their brands" like they were a front line sales executive needing to close the deal in order to reach their quotas.

As seen in LinkedIn:

When examining Marketing Eye’s culture, one idea usually sticks out at people; that is, our stance on bad ideas. Taking a unique approach (remembering nothing we do here is status quo), I encourage my team to share their ideas daily; the great, the good and the terrible.

Why? Because I firmly believe there is value in bad ideas.

If you look in to the journey behind the biggest accomplishments in the world, they’re littered with bad ideas. In fact, it’s the mishaps, the arduous trial and error procedure that leads to greatness. A bad idea simply paves the way for a new and improved one. Bad ideas are often discouraged and quickly discounted as failures, but in reality, they identify solutions.

I need my team; from the marketing managers to the interns, to feel that they have an open forum to exchange their ideas freely; we are, after all, a creative company. And during a consultancy, our marketing managers will implore our clients to lay all of their ideas on the table. And often we harvest gold from the very idea our clients are hesitant to tell us.

I know - when you shut down the idea on bad ideas, you close it on future good ones too.