Your startup story

I'm working on a major project related to startups and business planning.

The theory is all pretty much the same; what makes the startup process interesting are the lessons different entrepreneurs learn along the way.

For instance, one piece of advice I've heard from more than a few enterpreneurs is: "Love what you do - because you're going to be doing a lot of it."

If you have any startup-related stories or anecdotes or lessons learned you'd like to share with aspiring business owners (or the other readers of this blog), please e-mail rick(at)rickspence.ca, or leave a comment at the end of his message.

Confidentiality and anonymity will be strictly preserved, so fire away!

CSR Canada

In recent years I have been delighted (and surprised) to see growing support among Canadian entrepreneurs for the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Business owners are eager to “give back” to the community that nourished their businesses, and they are proud of the initiatives they have taken -- whether it’s recycling programs, outreach hiring or charitable giving – that make the world a slightly better place.

I think Canada’s entrepreneurs are ahead of big business on this one. My impression is they are giving back out of a sincere sense of gratitude and duty, not for sake of appearances, or because it’s a CEO’s pet project.

While CSR awareness is growing, it’s still a pretty amorphous concept. But now there’s a how-to guide from the federal government that tries to distill what we know about CSR, including benefits and best practices.

“Corporate Social Responsibility: An Implementation Guide for Canadian Business” is available free on the Web by clicking here. It has a useful background on what CSR is, lots of implantation steps and tips, and tactical information geared to small biz.

(FYI, here’s how the guide defines CSR: “Generally, CSR is understood to be the way firms integrate social, environmental and economic concerns into their values, culture, decision making, strategy and operations in a transparent and accountable manner and thereby establish better practices within the firm, create wealth and improve society.”)

(OK. That’s the most boring part of the post. It gets better now.)

The guide even suggests there are 10 financial benefits to adopting CSR:

* Better anticipation and management of an ever-expanding
spectrum of risk
* Improved reputation management
* Enhanced ability to recruit, develop and retain staff
* Improved competitiveness and market positioning
* Enhanced operational efficiencies and cost savings
* Improved ability to attract and build effective and efficient supply
chain relationships
* Enhanced ability to address change
* More robust “social licence” to operate in the community
* Access to capital (Financial institutions are increasingly incorporating
social and environmental criteria into their assessment of projects.)
* Improved relations with regulators

But in the end, as the guide admits, non-financial criteria must be the key drivers of a CSR program.

“It is important to acknowledge that while positive or neutral correlations between social and environmental responsibility and superior financial performance have generally been supported by the evidence, conclusive causal links have not. Many studies are being undertaken, with varying conclusions. Suffice it to say that research is continuing on this issue.”

Click here for the full report

More on CSR:
Ethics in Action Awards: (a great Vancouver organization that I hope will return to Toronto sometime; I think we’re ready now)

Canadian Business for Social Responsibility
Their motto: Better business, better world

Questions for CSR Practitioners
or those considering starting out.

Getting it done on the Golf Course

Have clear, written objectives.
Respect the rules.
Have a product positioning statement.

Is this a formula for success in some sort of business competition?
Absolutely.

These are just some of the rules offered by Michael Hughes, the Ottawa-based networking guru, for doing business on the golf course this summer.

Hughes’ article reminds us that while the golf course is no place to do deals, it is a serious forum for building business relationships – and that you should prepare for a golf game with an important supplier, client or prospect just as rigorously as you would prepare for any significant business meeting.

To read Michael’s article, click here.

My favourite nugget of his wisdom is point 4:

About business. Don’t discuss business before the 5th hole or after the 15th . This gives everyone a chance to relax and get into the game before discussing business, and to end with the focus on the game. A good finish can help the 19th hole confirm some business.

But I also like point 8:
Play the best golf you’re capable of. Some people believe in playing “customer golf”, allowing the customer to win by missing some obvious shots. This is insulting and can have disastrous consequences. Use the handicap system to even the competition.

Game on.

Happy Canada Day (la fete nationale!)

And for those who like their Canadian symbols, here's the Confederation Bridge, the first "fixed link" to PEI. We're still nation-building: I love it.

Wanted: Dragon Food

I posted earlier about the new CBC program, Dragon's Den, which is picking up a lot of buzz as it wings its way toward its August taping and its October debut.

The show features real business owners and financiers deciding whether or not to really invest in real entrepreneurial ventures - which I guess is why they call this reality TV.

The CBC, with what seems like a pretty health budget, is crossing the country looking for fodder -- er, victims, er, innovators -- to pitch their ideas to the 5-member Dragon panel.

The lineup:
Victoria, Calgary, Ottawa, Halifax: July 6th
St John's, Nfld., Montreal, Edmonton: July 7
Vancouver: July 7 and 8
Winnipeg: July 10

For more info on time and place, see http://www.cbc.ca/dragonsden/

Oh, they did Kingston and Waterloo today.

A big shoutout to the Kingston Economic Development Commission, which stole, I mean borrowed, liberally from my blog in their email anouncing the auditions. Quoting and Linking are fine, guys. Plagiarism is not.
(Thanks to Lukas and Optimus Crime for the heads-up.)

In praise of podcasting

A few readers have responded to my call for comments re podcasting. So far, it has attracted more fervent audio-blogging believers than passive non-pod people, which I suppose is normal for non-professional polls such as this.

But there's an intriguing article today on the StartupNation blog called "Podcast – you can do it!"

It starts out explaining why no one should bother getting into podcasting. "The audience is too small & fragmented. Not everyone listens to audio stuff delivered over the internet. You really don’t have anything to say, anyway. As a matter of fact, the competition from bigger companies with bigger budgets is just too tough. Heck, you might as well just throw in the towel completely and go find a job at a big company."

Then, the tone changes. "Now that we’ve gotten rid of the tire-kickers, let’s have a real visionary-like conversation.Small business is always looking for the differentiator that can set it apart from larger competitors. We’re more nimble. We can let our personality shine through easier than bigger companies can. We can make decisions faster and implement new strategies tomorrow.

"All of that fits in pretty well with podcasting. Especially if your business has 1-to-1 contact with your customers. You’ll wind up speaking with them at some point anyway, so why not grease the skids with your voice in advance, or retain them as customers with a valuable reminder of your expertise?"

The author goes on to say why he thinks podcasting is so powerful. "When I listen to podcasts something extremely intimate happens. Especially when I listen using my ipod & headphones. There is a very personal connection that happens when the audio is flowing directly into my ears from the ear buds and no-one else is listening but me. I’m hooked. I am a customer just waiting to happen.

"Tell me about a product or service that you’ve used and enjoyed - I’m there. Educate me on what it is that you are an expert on – you’re the one I’m calling when I’m in the market for whatever you’ve got."

If it's true, that's power.
My experience with podcasting is still too scant to comment on this phenomenon. Anyone out there want to opine on the power of pods?

Touched by an Editorial

I was touched and honoured at a recent speaking engagement when an attendee asked me to autograph a copy of an editorial I wrote nearly five years ago for PROFIT Magazine.

Usually, the stuff we did in the past stays in the past, and we never hear how it affected others. But my new friend told me how inspiring he had found the article, both as an entrepreneur and a concerned member of his community. He thanked me for writing – and now signing – the article. And I thanked him for the compliment and the feedback, which were inspiring in their own right.

If you're interested, here’s a copy of that editorial, from the November 2001 issue of PROFIT. It says a lot about the role I think entrepreneurs can play in the world. Most of it really was written in my car on the back of a piece of paper at the side of a road a mile south of Hockley Valley.

Letter from the Editor
The GrowthCamp valedictory that never was
A roadside appeal for entrepreneurs to get involved

By Rick Spence

I am writing this note in my car parked on the side of the Mono Third Line, which traverses Ontario's rolling hill country just east of Orangeville.

I've just left GrowthCamp, our second annual conference for Canada's Hottest Startups (a list published last issue). My senses are overwhelmed by the memories and energies unleashed by three days of close contact with the country's most exciting entrepreneurs. The comradeship, the networking and the laughter still echo in my mind. I closed down GrowthCamp with a reading of the camp poem and a call to return next year.

Driving home an hour later, I realize I left too much unsaid. So here it is — the GrowthCamp valedictory that never was:

'You are among Canada's finest entrepreneurs,' I should have said. 'You worked very hard to be here. And you've worked hard here, too, making contacts, listening to keynotes and sharing ideas in our workshops. You've met entrepreneurs from across the country, and I have watched you gain strength and confidence just from being around them.

'But now you have to take this further. Your talents, which have created success in business, are needed in a wider arena.

'Now is the time to begin using your skills to benefit your community. Take this energy, and all your many gifts — for sizing up a situation, seeing an opportunity, planning, leading and analyzing — and focus your efforts on organizations and issues outside of your business.

'We have so many needs in society. We have skills gaps and digital divides. We have too many homeless and not enough homes. We have schools that are out of touch with their market and unable to engage their students. We have big governments that overtax us and municipalities struggling to collect garbage.

'What can entrepreneurs give the world? Contagious enthusiasm and a bias for action. There are too many committees where lawyers debate process and nothing gets done. I've seen what impact one courageous board member can have on a group. By raising questions no one has asked before, suggesting new ways of thinking and proposing creative solutions, you can make an impact on any interest group.

'It won't be easy. Entrepreneurs are used to giving direction. And they like things done right away. Getting involved will require levels of patience and diplomacy you never knew you had. Don't give up, because you have unique gifts to share.

'Don't give up, because the world needs you.'

That's what I should have said.

It was Monday, September 10, 2001.

Fighting Back from a Heart Attack

David Crow is a trouble-maker. Well, that's how he defines himself on his website.

He's actually more of an instigator, a fast-talking, easy-going catalyst who is helping bring focus and community to Toronto's flegling Web 2.0 community.

And last month he suffered a heart attack.

It was totally unexpeted and scary, he wrote in his blog on June 5. "I’m only 32, I don’t use cocaine, I don’t have a strong family history of heart disease, I don’t smoke, I don’t use intravenous drugs, I eat pretty well, and I try to exercise."

It can happen to anyone. Please read his post to see what his warning signs were, and what happened next. It's riveting reading.

You'll even see an innovative use of YouTube video.

David is now mainly resting, with another month or so of recovery time expected. I wish him all the best for a speedy return to healthy instigating.

One of the first features I ever commissioned at PROFIT Magazine was a story about entrepreneurs and heart disease. The typical entrepreneurial lifestyle - long hours, constant pressure, endless rushing around, poor eating and sleeping habits, the never-ending stress of meeting payroll and finding the next customer - is the perfect breeding ground for a heart attack.

Slow down. Manage your stress. Eat better. Stay well.

Podcastaway

A friend has approached me about doing some podcasting together - a regular weekly "radio show" for the Net.

I would love to get a better idea of who listens to podcasts, and why. A number of people have told me that business-related podcasting is becoming a Big Thing. While it's not attracting Big Numbers (and let's face it, neither do most blogs), I am told podcasting is becoming an important medium for promotion, networking, community building - and business development.

So tell me - Do you listen to podcasts? Where, and when? Do you listen live, or download to an iPod? Do you have favorites you listen to regularly? Why do you listen to them? What have you gotten out of them? Do you prefer audio blogging to the text versions (like this blog, for instance)?

When I was speaking to a group of young entrepreneurs a few months ago, I asked how many of them listened to podcasts. Very few hands went up. But hey, if it's the right hands, maybe that's enough.

Please leave a comment or send me an e-mail (rick(at) rickspence.ca). Even if you have never heard a podcast, or have no intention of listening, or have never heard of this podcasting thing before, I would love to hear from you. Thank you for your feedback.

When employees become competitors

I've blogged before about PROFIT Magazine's great online resource, Peer to Peer, where real entrepreneurs answer business questions posed by other real entrepreneurs. Who knows better what you're going through, right?

This week's question, from an anonymous entrepreneur, is pretty compelling.

"I am a new entrepreneur running a small but growing business in custom window fashions and home furnishings. I spent thousands of hours and dollars acquiring market information and locating suppliers before plunging into this business. I hired one salesperson who had no prior experience in the industry, and I extensively trained him. But after learning everything there is to know about my business, the fellow stole data from me, poached one of my employees and started his own identical business, which directly competes with mine.

"Could I have avoided this situation? How do business owners stop employees from stealing their ideas and starting their own companies? And should I take this person to court?"

The best answers are here.

For the whole gamut of previous Peer to Peer questions, click here.

Maybe you've heard the old Chinese proverb: "To know the road ahead, ask those coming back."

Dragons spotted in downtown Toronto

I had lunch yesterday with a group of TV producers from the CBC talking about their new program, a five-part reality show scheduled for this fall: Dragon’s Den.

It’s an entrepreneurial version of American Idol, and it looks fabulous.

It’s a TV version of a venture fair: entrepreneurs and inventors pitching for capital in front of a panel of investors. Only the investors are accomplished Canadian entrepreneurs: articulate, experienced, hopeful, but notoriously skeptical.

The “pitchers” are real Canadian innovators, looking for $50,000, $100,000 or more to fund development or expansion of their products or businesses. At a rehearsal I saw a few weeks ago, the products ranged from an incomprehensible computer service to high-end fashion to a Web 2.0 twist on the age-old jukebox.

The trick, by the way, is that these judges, the dragons, are committed to what they're doing. They have to put up their own money to be on the show, and if they deem a deal worth doing, they invest their own money.

Now, TV being TV, there will be lots of sensationalizing and trivializing of the process. The format requires the “dragons” to be demanding and impatient and superior (think acerbic American Idol judge Simon Cowell – times five!). Aspiring entrepreneurs being entrepreneurs, there will lots of inarticulate, half-baked presentations that will get shot down in hoots of laughter and scorn.

At the root of this, though, Dragon’s Den could do much to promote and showcase the entrepreneurial evolution of Canada. Through the national TV exposure of the dragons themselves – entrepreneurs as rock stars! – and through the motivation and inspiration potential innovators could receive by seeing the breadth and variety of entrepreneurial projects being carried out across this country.

And if it teaches potential pitchers how to present more effectively, Dragon’s Den will be performing a national public service.

The show’s producers are now busy interviewing and auditioning potential presenters for the show, which tapes in August. If you're interested, there's an open audition in Toronto this Saturday from 9 am to 2 pm. There’ll be another audition soon in Montreal, and perhaps others.

For more details, visit http://www.cbc.ca/dragonsden/

Fire sale at EDC

Export Development Canada is a rare bird - a Crown corporation that makes money, a government-owned body that actually helps business.

And now it's acting more like a real business than ever - it's holding a half-price sale.

From now till June 28, you can access EDC's online EXPORT Check at 50% off.

EXPORT Check is an easy way to obtain valuable financial information on potential U.S. or foreign customers. It's a key step before signing any export deal. Prices now start at just $30 until June 28.

EDC, whose mandate includes encouraging more Canadian businesses to export, calls EXPORT Check "a consistent way for everyone involved in sales to decide which potential leads to pursue first," and "fast and easy 24/7 access to valuable information."

Use EXPORT Check from anywhere to evaluate potential customers. For more info visit http://edclist.edc.ca/t/105486/192572/1776/0/ .
(You can also see a sample "credit profile" to preview what your money buys you.)

For more info on exporting, check out http://www.export.ca/

Alternatives to Selling your Business

One of the more popular speakers at last week’s Small Business/Big Thinking conference, sponsored by Visa Canada, was Doug Robbins, a business broker from Hamilton. The buying of small businesses is about to become a big business, as more and more businesses come up for sale with their baby-boomer owners look to cash out while they're still young enough to rollerblade across Russia (or so they think).

I didn’t get to see Doug’s presentation, but I hope to link to a summary soon. Meantime, here’s a post from Robbinex’s website on “11 alternatives to selling your business.”

According to Robbinex, there are several reasons for a business owner to consider selling their business:

* Illness, Retirement, Lack of Capital, Burnout, Boredom;
* Partnership Dispute;
* Family Concerns;
* Too much equity tied up in the business;
* Business is not successful; or,
* Business has become too risky.

Based on Robbinex’s experience, “for each of these reasons, there are alternatives to actually selling the business. If you are thinking of selling your business, these are the 11 alternative options you should consider:

1) Recapitalization
2) Strategic Alliance
3) Amalgamation or Merger
4) Intergenerational Transfer
5) Management Buyout
6) Refinancing
7) Hire Competent Management*
8) Liquidate
9) Value Enhance to increase sales and / or reduce operating costs
10) Joint Venture
11) Create an advisory board to identify and manage problems.”

For more info on these and other strategies, click here.

(*I especially like the tactic of "hiring competent managment." It strikes me as something more companies should do.)

Ron Blunn and the lost art of customer focus

Two days ago, my pal Ron Blunn died of cancer.

Ron was my predecessor as managing editor of the Financial Times of Canada back in the 1980s. He was a visionary journalist and a tough, inspirational mentor. He took a kid who thought he knew how to write and, well, taught him how to write.

“Examples, examples, examples,” he would say, pounding his fist loudly into his palm. In other words, don’t say it, show it. If you have a thesis, prove it.

“What does this mean to investors?” he would ask. “Why should they read this story? How is it useful?”

The day Ron died, on June 14, I gave a presentation in Guelph on business lessons from magazine publishing. My point: in everything they do, great editors put the readers' interests first. The message for business: the way to engage customers is to put them first in everything you do.

Today I realized that it was Ron Blunn, more than anyone else, who taught me that.

I should note that Ron and I also learned from the late David Tafler, the former editor and publisher of the Times who also passed away way too young. Tafler believed that all stories in the publication had to be “Specific, Useful, Timely and Exclusive.” If subsequent management had been as reader-focussed as Ron and David, the Financial Times of Canada would still be around today.

In 1985, Ron Blunn moved into business development for the Financial Times. To most of the writers at the Times, it was a curious career switch: how could he leave journalism? The answer, of course, was that other disciplines paid better, and could be just as satisfying. Ironically, the key spinoff products Ron came up with (the Mutual Fund Sourcebook, and Investment Executive magazine) both outlived the Times by far.

About 1990, Ron left the Times and formed his own investor relations firm, Blunn & Company. Again he was a pioneer, becoming an expert in annual reports and the future of corporate disclosure. Ron's work was industry-leading and he was sought-after as a speaker and consultant across North America.

My best wishes to Ron’s wife Heather and his two 20-something sons, Josh and Oliver. He will be missed.
--
BTW, about 10 years ago Ron moved into my neighborhood, just six blocks away. Every time I drive by his house I think, “Gotta call Ron sometime.”
Call a friend today. Because sometime never comes.

Addition, Friday afternooon.
Here's the link to Ron's obituary in the Globe, with service details.
And click here to see a moving memoir from his I-R colleague, Dominic Jones. He has much better detail on Ron's post-Times career, including his three-year stint at RT Investor Relations, which I'd forgotten about.

Learning from Bill Gates & Co.

In his ezine today, my buddy Curt Skene, a speaker on sales and leadership with a background at Microsoft, has posted one of the best leadership articles I’ve seen.

By looking at the management styles of three leaders at Microsoft, he comes close to defining executive excellence.

Microsoft.
Who knew?

Curt’s ezine is not yet posted on his website, http://www.aahhah.com/ezine.htm, so I hope he’ll forgive me for summarizing his insights here.

“Bill Gates would probably tell you to be more curious about the world that surrounds you. He would remind you that his fortune came when he thought of how the world might be with a computer on every desktop. His passion is in asking, 'what might change?' ...

“Bill surrounds himself with people who think differently than him... Bill was always open to be challenged but keep in mind he demanded that everyone think smart. If you had a different way of seeing the world that’s ok, just be sure you can articulate it clearly…

“Finally, Bill might tell you to never take your success for granted. No industry leader leads forever. He would remind you of all the market leaders that have come and gone. Be paranoid about being the best, don't ever take your position for granted.

“Steve Ballmer [current Microsoft CEO] would remind you that you can never know enough about your customer and you can never know it soon enough. ‘Be customer-passionate,’ are words he would yell and scream until he knew that everyone understood that the customer will always be our livelihood…

“Steve would tell you to know more about the customer’s problem than they do themselves, and to have better answers to the problems your customer faces... As CEO he believed his best day was spent in front of a customer learning and exploring their business and the way they make money.

“Frank Clegg [former president of Microsoft Canada] would tell you to net it out. Your story, your plans, your approach all needed to be clear, concise and crisp. If you can’t say it in one page then you don’t know your message well enough. ..

“Frank would also tell you that your people are your brand. Treat them well, respect them and give them the freedom, autonomy and flexibility to do what’s right for the business. If you question your ability to do that, then question your hiring or management practices…

“Twelve years ago Frank telephoned me and told me to leave the business to be with my dying Brother. His words were simple, “I don’t care what’s on your agenda, you need to be where you’re needed most.” I can still hear the passion and feeling in his words today. I flew out to Calgary that very night, my brother died a few days later. Frank always knew when to push people hard, but to do it in a way that everyone knew he cared immensely about their future.”

If you're serious about improving your business, here's the place to start.
Next: Leadership Lessons from Darth Vader.
(Just kidding.)

Visa Revisited

Visa's Small Business Big Thinking conference in Toronto yesterday was a huge success.

I will be blogging about it more over the next few days as I find time, but more than 200 entrepreneurs turned out and the speakers were fabulous. (Full disclosure: I selected most of them, as a subcontractor to the conference organizers.) I talked to a number of delegates and reviewed a few feedback forms, and it looks like we were a huge hit.

Our keynote speakers, Donald Cooper and Teresa Cascioli, great Canadian entrepreneurs and mavericks, were inspiring and challenging. Donald woke the audience up with humor, insights and challenges, and Teresa sent them marching out the door full of fire, enthusiasm and confidence. I will blog more about them or point you to other writeups later this week.

Another crowd favourite was Krig Kramers, our one American import. Many entrepreneurs lack the experience, structures and processes and systems to grow their businesses in a systematic, professional way. Kramers' "CEO Tools" offer well designed processes and systems that fill the gap.

I didn't attend his sessions (he was the only speaker we asked to speak twice, because he has so much material), but I can point you to his website to check out his tools for yourself. (Yes, most of them are for sale, but you can preview them for free and learn a lot just by looking at the PDF files.)

Want to recruit better? Check out his Interviewing tool. To retain your best people, take a look at his Employee Satisfaction Index. If you're not afraid to think bigger, preview his What causes Sales? tool. Lots more good stuff at http://www.ceotools.com.

One of the best features of the conference? The Meet the Pros lunch, where attendees got to meet over sandwiches with most of the day's speakers. Thanks to all those who took part.

Off-Target Marketing

Catherine McQuaid is a Toronto-based business-development with a new approach to selling to big business. I liked it so much I asked her to speak on it at the Visa Canada Small Business/Big Thinking conference on Monday (June 12).

If you can't make it, at least you can read her theories online. I wrote about Catherine and her journey in my column in the June issue of PROFIT, which has just been put online. Click here for the full story.

For those who hate to leave this site, here's Catherine's insight in a nutshell: "Don't go to the decision-maker." Enlist his or her assistant in the process. (That's why I call it off-target marketing.)

If you call the switchboard to ask for the CEO's phone number or e-mail address, McQuaid warns, you may be pegged as a nuisance. Ask for the number of the support person, and you'll likely get through.

For the rest of the story, click this way.
Catherine's website is at http://www.huntnewbiz.com/

Who are Canada's Fastest-Growing Companies?

PROFIT Magazine has just released its 18th annual PROFIT 100 list of Canada’s Fastest-Growing Companies.

Why should you care? Two things:

1. Seeing what kinds of companies are succeeding and growing incredibly fast in today’s economy is very eye-opening - and could inspire you to defy conventional thinking in your own business.

2. The issue contains lots of great business advice from today’s growth leaders: business insights, tips and tactics that are too new, creative and personal to be found in any books.

You can read the entire list online here. Some of the highlights:

* The No. 1 company (with five-year growth of 31,598%) is Rutter Inc., a St. John’s, Nfld. systems integrator and software developer that makes “black box” recording systems for ocean-going ships. Fascinating stuff. They also do electronics manufacturing and engineering services.
I was lucky enough to write the Rutter profile in this issue, but PROFIT seems not to be putting many of the stories in this issue online until July 3. (They must want you to buy the magazine.)

* The next 4 ranked companies are Workbrain (No. 2), a leading developer of workforce-management software; Fruit d'Or Inc., a $20-million berry processor from Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes, Que.; Peer 1 Network Enterprises Inc., an Internet company in Vancouver; and Imaging Dynamics Co. Ltd., a Digital radiography company from Calgary.

(How great to see a company from Atlantic Canada top the list, for the first time ever! And the fact the top five all hail from different parts of Canada speaks to a welcome diversification of economic potential.)

* Other companies on the list include makers of digital X-ray machines, surveillance systems, solar-powered lighting and soft-soled baby shoes. Plus: Research in Motion makes the list for a sixth year.

* Average sales growth of the P100: 2,597% over five years. It's the highest overall growth rate seen on the PROFIT 100 since 2001, and it hasn't come at the expense of profitability: fully 79 of the 100 firms on the list were in the black last year.

For more information, including the Next 100 companies list, see http://www.profit100.com/

For my two stories in the issue and the best new management ideas, check your newsstand next week. Or drop by again in July and I’ll try to remember to link to them.

Getting Calls Returned, part III

My posts on getting calls returned (click here and here) continue to resonate. Here’s a comment from one executive who e-mailed her thoughts to me rather than posting them in order to preserve his anonymity. (Although actually the Comment system here is completely anonymous if you like. Have no fear, ye who enter here.)

Anyway, here are her thoughts:

"I always try to put myself in the other guy's shoes when it comes to getting through on the phone. A variation on the guy who suggests saying he has "a couple of questions" - I use my knowledge of the prospect's interests and leave half an important tidbit of information. If I know he's a sailor I'd say something like "Did you hear how McLaughlin is using his wife to avoid having to contest trials for the Canada Cup?" This works best when you know the person.
"I also usually go back to reception and say I left a voicemail, but it is rather urgent and I wanted to make sure he's not away for a couple of days. That often gets me through or gets a cell phone number that I didn't have. When the person is away, I sometimes ask to speak to their boss, based on the urgency (best if you know the boss' first name).

I brought up this subject at my mastermind group today. Some of that group’s advice for getting calls returned:

* Get used to it. Everyone has more messages than we can handle. And we’re starting to lose our guilt over those we never get around to responding to.
* If your calls or e-mails are going ignored, it’s a sign your value proposition is not attractive enough. Pump up the value.
* Keep calling. I sometimes call even good clients seven times, said one entrepreneur. But often they end up saying, “Thank you for continuing to try to get through.”
* Keep your messages short and simple. “I never send or read long e-mails,” said one. So I asked if had had ever had a time when ignoring long e-mails landed him in trouble or made him miss out on something important. “No,” was his reply.

Keep the comments coming. It’s a fascinating topic that goes to the heart of today's entrepreneurial experience.

Upcoming Appearances

Real posts (i.e., with content of interest to more than me and my mom) will resume tomorrow.

For now, a few promotional notes:

* Rick is speaking on "20 Ways to Grow Your Business" at the Visa Canada "Small Business/Big Thinking" conference at the Metro Toronto Conference Centre on Monday, June 12. It's going to be an innovative and cutting edge, interactive session, with great ideas you'll never find in any book. (Until I publish it next fall.)

The conference alsp features Donald Cooper, Tom Stoyan, Michel Neray, Teresa Cascioli and other superstars of Canadian business.
I couldn't recommend this show more highly if I had selected the speakers myself. :^)
For more info visit www.visa.ca

* Next Wednesday, June 14, Rick will be speaking on "Excellence in Magazines and Business", at the annual Guelph Awards of Excellence Gala 5:30 p.m. at the Guelph Place Banquet Hall. For details, visit www.guelphchamber.com or phone 1-519-822-8081

Mass media vs. the blogger on every corner

The mass media like to think they're a superior form of life to blogs. But the gap is closing.

Make no mistake, I'm a mass media guy. One column of mine in PROFIT or MoneySense reaches more people than will read this blog in a year. And yet - blogs bring many things to the table that the mainstream media lack.

Personality, for one thing. With bloggers you get not just the facts, but interpretation - which is very often bad, but sometimes very good.

Feet on the street, for another. There are more bloggers with eyewitness reports on major events than there will ever be professional news-gatherers.

Moreover, as the media try to expand their coverage and become more useful in an everyday sense to their readers (especially on the Web), they run into the army of bloggers who have been there first.

Case in point: on May 19 I pointed readers to a new feature on the CFIB website for entrepreneurs tryng to cope with the paperwork for the upcoming GST reduction. Six days later, The Globe & Mail "Report on Small Business" webfolks pointed their readers to the same resource.

Did I "scoop" The Globe? Of course not. But I proved, as bloggers are now doing every day, that whenever the media swerve from their highest calling of reporting original news, they are likely to be beaten to the punch.

Yes, The Globe will (presumably) reach more people than will any individual blog, so what they do is still worth doing. But it is no longer journalism as we knew it.

The mass media are now part of the information factory and not above it.

Corollary: Your company needs a strategy for tracking blogs and perhaps publishing one or more. Blogs are starting to matter.

Getting people to call you back

Great post last week by Ottawa-based sales consultant Colleen Francis on a subject I ranted about a few weeks ago: getting people to call you back.

“No matter how persuasive, compelling or brilliant you may be, it’s difficult to build a relationship with a prospect if you can’t get them to call you back,” says Francis. So she offers “12 Ways to Get Your Prospects to Call You Back.”

You can find the post here. Or, below are a few highlights from Francis's article.

* The fine line between persistence and stalking.
The trick is to call consistently If you leave a message, tell the customer precisely when you will call them back – and stick to it. I usually say something like: “If I don’t hear from you by March 15th, I’ll call you back on the 16th.” I get return calls more often, because my prospects know that I will be calling them if they don’t get in touch with me.

Some of my best customers today are those who I was initially the most patient with, and to whom I made multiple calls over a period of weeks, or even months.

* Let them off the hook.
In a voice or email, it’s a great idea to tell a prospect that’s its OK for them to say no. Say something like: “If you’ve chosen to go with a different product, that’s okay. Just let me know so I don’t become a follow-up pest.”

* Put them on auto-drip.
If you’ve tried everything you can think of and still can’t seem to get through, put the prospect on auto-drip. Send them something interesting and of value every month or quarter. This will help keep you top of mind for when the time is right for them to make a decision.

* Create a deadline.
After every conversation, gain agreement from the prospect as to next steps. When the time for the follow-up call comes around and the prospect doesn’t show up, you can leave a message like: “I’m calling because the last time we spoke, we agreed to chat today about….” Reminding them of your agreement will help move them to call you back.

* Call early or late in the day.
Call either early in the morning (say around 7:30 a.m.) or late in the day (after 5). The decision makers are often alone in the office, and therefore more likely to pick up calls themselves.

Seven more great ideas at http://www.engageselling.com/article_230506/index.htm.

Learn from the Pros, June 12

It's high time I alerted you to a fabulous conference in Toronto that's just two weeks away: the Small Business/Big Thinking conference put on by Visa Canada.

This'll be the second annual rendition of the conference, but I think it'll be bigger than ever. I had a hand in selecting the speakers and content, so I know it will be worth your while - if you're serious about growing your business and interested in learning from the best.

The two keynote speakers are proven Canadian successes and inspirational to boot: Retail maverick Donald Cooper, one of the most motivational and idea-filled speakers I've ever heard; and Teresa Cascioli, who turned around Lakeport Brewing and made it one of Canada's top independent breweries.

Then there are seminars on banking, marketing, e-commerce, management, and more, featuring such luminaries as Ian Portsmouth of PROFIT Magazine, Canada's Sales Coach Tom Stoyan, Ken Schafer of AIMS, Michel Neray on positining statements, Catherine McQuaid on selling to big business, Mia Doucet on doing business with China, Jordan Banks of eBay Canada, Margaret Butteriss on Employee Engagement, Doug Robbins on buying a business, panels of successful growth entrepreneurs spilling their secrets, and much, much more.

They even found room for me on the agenda, talking about the best practices of successful growth companies.

And since no one can possibly make it to every session, attendees will receive executive summaries of every session at the entire show. (Click here for the full agenda.)

Run, don't walk to www.Visa.ca, and sign up now. And no, no one's paying me to say this.
The essence of entrepreneurship is learning from the pros, and this is your opportunity of the year.

The Heat is On!

PROFIT Magazine is now searching for young fast-growth companies for inclusion in its dynamic list: The Hot 50, Canada’s Emerging Growth Companies.

The criteria: your company was founded in 2002 0r 2003. And you're bursting with pride over its success so far.

Your company can be in any industry, from any part of Canada. PROFIT will honor its HOT 50 companies in the September 2006 issue of PROFIT, and year-round on its website. Plus, the CEO receives a free ticket to GrowthCamp, an exclusive three-day summit for HOT 50 leaders.

I have to admit that I founded this program when I was editor of PROFIT back in 2000, as a way to capture some of the excitement of the dot-com boom. But the program has thrived and survived despite that.

It’s become a wonderful first chance to recognize the achievements of early-stage companies (many companies on previous Hot 50 lists have gone on to earn great distinctions from other awards programs). The list is also a powerful window into new business trends and dawning opportunities in the ever-shifting “new economy.”

For more details and an entry form, click here. Entry deadline: June 30.

To read about last year’s winners, click this way.

Or to read my story "Go Big or Go Home," featuring three of the coolest companies on the 2005 list, grab a coffee and click this.

Whittling down the GST

Is your business ready for the 1% GST reduction, now just over five weeks away?

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business has a readiness checklist and a useful review of the rules at:
http://www.cfib.ca/pdfs/DIN0613_0605.pdf

The Music of Your (Business) Life

For reasons that will become clear later on, I am looking for examples of songs that express any part of the emotional range of being in business.

Are there songs you identify with because they remind you of emotions or experiences you regularly encounter in your business life?

If so, I would love to hear about them. Put the name of the song, plus the name of the artist/band if you know it, in a comment below, so everyone can share, or e-mail me at rick (at) rickspence.ca
Feel free to name as many songs as you wish.

By business, I mainly mean the experience of entrepreneurship and small business. I'm not so much looking for the depressingly soul-destroying experience of working in big business. (Song going thru my head right now: Dolly Parton's Nine to Five.)

So basically I am looking for songs that express the feeling of business/entrepreneurship/small business as a creative act, if that makes sense to you. An enobling act of visualization, courage, empowerment, success, loss, self-actualization and growth.

Still, if you have a favorite song about big bad big business, send it along anyway. It couldn't hurt. And please, do it now, while you're thinking about it. (I have never been back to most of the sites I bookmark.)

Thanks for your help. I'll share the full list (minus sendees' names) with you in a couple of weeks.

----
Not what we’re looking for:
** Working nine to five, what a way to make living--
Barely getting by, it's all taking and no giving.
They just use your mind and they never give you credit
It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it.
That’s not business. That’s a job.

Once more with Mesh

There's a great summary of the lessons from this week's Mesh 1.0 conference written by Jim Courtney at Skype Journal. I hope he doesn't mind if I steal his list for you:

Business needs to build conversational dialogues with their customers.
Blogs can humanize the enterprise (think Scoble and Microsoft)
Web 2.0 relationships are complementary to "community" media for local news and events, broadcast media for relaxation and print media for easily accessible portable news.
Copyright reform needs to move from controlling markets to facilitating market driven protections.
Technology can and will change the way people do business but in a transparent productivity-enhancing manner
It's about building credibility and trust: When it comes to ethics, etiquette, editorial policies and other social interaction protocols, "legacy" social guidelines survive the technology shift (and, in many cases, become more transparent)
Participants in communities will self-manage credibility and trust issues through tools such as self-editing wikis, blog comments and other dialog facilitators
New advertising models and metrics are needed to build the infrastructure that captures a reasonable ROI for the infrastructure providers.

Wish I'd said that.

BTW, a few weeks ago Jim had a pre-post on Mesh that nicely summed up the remarkable accomplishment of the five part-time organizers:

"In summary, mesh has been organized by five individuals who have to hold down their day job but have succeeded in attracting top-notch speakers and several hundred attendees, all via the web, living the Marketing 2.0/Web 2.0 experience. With no budget and taking all the financial risk associated with ensuring a professional meeting environment."

Congrats, guys. Way to walk the talk.

Summertime, and the hooky is easy

I was taken by surprise today how many people intend to take tomorrow off, or work only three hours and call it a half-day.

That's because it's the 24th of May weekend, the first holiday Monday of the year, and the beginning of summer, even though the temperature where I live feels more like the end of October.

Everyone feels so gleeful about the very prospect of playing hooky. And after two years of being my own boss, it's funny how unfamiliar and alien I find that attitude.

Entrepreneurs like to work. Saturdays and Sundays are our secret weapon. Not talking to clients for three days is like cutting off our oxygen. Sure, we like our free time, and my friend Michael is probably already on board his boat on Lake Simcoe. But for the most part, entrepreneurs (and certainly solopreneurs like me) love what we do, so we don't feel the same deep need to get away from it.

No, we're not workaholics. I just think we're closer to integrating our personal and working lives than most of our deskbound salaried friends.

That doesn't make up for the lack of dental plan. But it's got to be worth something!

Have a great V-Day. Buy Lakeport.

In Mesh we trust

This week's Mesh Web 2.0 conference on “social media” has been blogged pretty thoroughly, so I’ll just offer a few thoughts after attending three sessions on Tuesday. They mostly (as you might gather from the previous post, below) dealt with blogging.

At a panel on corporate blogging, Jeremy Wright of B5Media made the useful observation that the most important progress is being made not in external blogs (e.g., the CEO writes a weblog for customers and the rest of the outside word), but in private, internal blogs. These aren’t promotional media but management tools.

Companies find internal blogs very useful for informing and motivating employees, conveying ongoing workplace and corporate information, polling employees and/or giving them a chance to vent, and to manage projects. Wright said he has several clients that love blogs and only use them for that.

A panel on “Engaging the Blogosphere” discussed how to get more companies experimenting with and using blogs. There was a lot of talk about “convincing” businesses to blog. But there are two problems with that: blogs involve, um, writing, which many organizations are not good at, or which scares them; and they represnet an ongoing infinite commitment, not just a one-off effort like a website. Hence, said Ottawa PR guy Joe Thornley, “You can't convince people to start blogs.” Because even if you succeed, and they start one, it will likely wither and die very quickly, like my plants, for lack of attention, care and warmth.

(Joe's blog ProPR includes some detailed posts about the conference with lots of verbatim quotes, saving me the trouble of writing it up.)

I talked afterward with Nathan Rudyk, a “social media”-oriented PR consultant in Ottawa (and an old buddy who worked at PROFIT Magazine before I did). He is helping lots of companies jump on the blogwagon, and he had an interesting perspective on what drives them. The first step, surprisingly enough, is often podcasting. It’s easy to do, it’s a series of one-off projects rather than an ongoing, evolving print product, and clients seem to love ’em.

And according to Nathan, you can get almost anyone to sit still to be interviewed for a podcast (his company has already nabbed Steve Ballmer).

I think there's something else at work here. I think the printed word (even in cyberspace) scares people more than voice recordings do. There's something permanent (and way too easy to copy) about text. “Smoking guns” are almost always documents, not recordings.

Podcasting is conversation. It’s informal, loose, kind of showbizy, sorta fun. The printed word, however, is an obligation, a line drawn in the sand forever, the bane of lawyers and regulators. It’s still too scary for many people to cozy up to.

Time to get over it, folks. Print (i.e., the words in your blog) is warm, accessible, searchable, linkable, and powerful. Fear must give way to passion, excitement and the need to explore the full potential of your (or your company's) relationships.

Lots more follow-up resources from Mesh at http://www.socialtext.net/mesh/index.cgi

Blogging peaks

Overheard late Tuesday afternoon at Mesh Web 2.0

First Guy: “Everything today is about blogs.”
Other guy: “Yeah. Yesterday it was podcasting, today it’s blogging.”
First: “Too much about blogs.”
Other: “Yeah.”
First: “For the last session, the only one I’m interested in is the one about blogs.”
Other: “Me too. Are you gonna go?”
First: “Yeah. I think so. You?”
Other: “I guess. … Is there a strip club around here?”

(No wonder they call blogs "social media.")

What a Fine Mesh you've gotten us into!

The first Mesh conference on Web 2.0 and the digital future continues today down at the MARs centre in downtown Toronto. Lots of talk about interactivity, blogging and the future of business. Very positive stuff, all about transparency and collaboration.

Some business people might sneer about the return of geeks who take the Internet too seriously, but I for one find the idealism refreshing.

I’ll be taking in some events this afternoon, but here are some links to others blogging about day One.

Mathew Ingram (Globe & Mail tech reporter and conference co-organizer)
Scott Karp on the miracle of live blogging
Tris Hussey: lots of posts that will make you feel you were there
Nathan Rudyk, The Trojan Mouse
Steve Rubel on Om Malik

For serious Web 2.0 aficionados (and those who want to learn more about it): Visit the Mesh wiki page (contributors, in-house blog, further info, etc.)

There should have been more same-day blogging at an event like this, but I understand yesterday’s session was followed by a pub night. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose...

La Mer, the final frontier

I talked today with Dave King, who runs the Genesis Group business incubator at Memorial University in St. John’s, Nfld. We were talking mainly about ocean-related industries, and how important they are to Newfoundland’s economic future.

We in Central Canada don't often think about the oceans, but many people consider them the next great business frontier. F’rinstance, you might not guess it in these days of air travel, but sea-going transportation is growing every year. We may not build ships in Canada anymore (they mostly come of the Far East now, especially China), but someone is building 1500 new cargo ships a year.

According to King, lots of different forces are driving ocean technology today: maritime commerce and trade, which has all kinds of need for new services, new technologies (especially in communications and controls), and safety-related products; new concerns about border security and coastal surveillance; the worldwide quest for offshore oil and gas; environment-related industries; and of course the fishing industry and conservation-related services.

The cod may be gone, but Newfoundland is now harvesting surf clams, a red-tipped mollusk that’s a popular delicacy in Japan (where it's often eaten raw).

The other interesting thing King pointed out is the way industries evolve. He cited one Newfoundland company that started out in ocean technologies and ended up with a world-beating system to track money laundering. If anyone ever started such a business from scratch in Newfoundland, you’d question their sanity; but business excels at serving up such synergistic anomalies. (Did you know Prince Edward Island has one of North America’s most successful producers of upscale cookware? Go figure.)

For Newfoundland (and other under-developed regions), maybe having a business-development strategy is more important than whether individual entrepreneurs stick to it. As King says, to succeed in business you need strategy and focus: “Where you begin is not always where you end up, but you have to have a plan to start.”

The Steak Guy Only Rings Once

I just had some guy knock on my door to tell me about the fabulous fish and steaks he distributes – perfect Alberta steaks from High River, best barbecuing ever, that sort ofthing. He seemed very sincere but I was just trying to get rid of him, cuz I have work to do.

Then he offered his fabulous guarantee: meat so tender, you can cut it with a plastic fork. And if it’s not, he said, with a grand sweep of his arm, he would come back and mow my lawn.

Well, that got my attention. It didn’t make the sale, but it did make me ask for his brochure. And it made me a lot more likely to try him out. Self-confidence such as that inspires confidence in others.

How can you inspire confidence among disinterested prospects?
What grand gesture can you make?

Saying Goodbye to a Client

A new Toronto-based blog, The Essential Message, offers compelling insights into a number of common communication challenges in business. (And if you know my work, you know that I think communication accounts for about 90% of everything that matters in business.)

Last month, TEM wrote a post on "5 Steps to Say Goodbye to a Client." Writer Jonathan Cohen reports that one of his firm's longstanding clients has hired its own writer, and doesn't need the firm's services any more. But how do you say au revoir to a good client? Cohen identifies five steps, which I have condensed below for your convenience.

1. Get clear on where you stand. Review your contract, if you have one. Have both sides met the expectations of termination?

2. Finish up outstanding work. "If you can provide some stellar, unexpected benefits at the end of your relationship, you’ll leave a lasting positive impression."

3. Hand over all documentation (where appropriate).

4. Hold an exit interview. This can be as informal as a telephone call. Make sure you cover points 1-3 above. Ask what the client liked and didn’t like about working with you. What could be improved? Ask for a testimonial if you haven't already done so.

5. Stay in touch. If you’ve ended on good terms, your client will appreciate the odd call, email, or note. Even if you only contact them twice a year, you'll maintain your network and remind them you’re around.

As Cohen notes, "Proper client care can turn a parting of the ways into a positive experience that leads to referrals and more business down the line."

It's good stuff. Read the full post here.

Selling to Growth-Oriented Entrepreneurs

I've just completed a significant two-part posting over on my other blog, Selling to Small Business.

"How to sell to entrepeneurs" looks at 10 characteristics of growth entrepreneurs, with tips on how to use these insights to sell to them.

(And no, I am not selling out entrepreneurs. I am helping potential service providers communicate with them more clearly - which I believe will result in a win for both parties.)

You can read Part 1 here, and then click on the link at the bottom of the page for part II. Or click here to go straight to Part deux.

Exciting News!

We interrupt this blog to brag for a minute.

I just learned this week that a story I wrote for PROFIT Magazine last year has been nominated for a National Magazine Award.

The story, "The Trillion-Dollar Trap," examines the looming succession crisis in small and medium-sized business in Canada, as tens of thousands of baby-boom entrepreneurs bail out of their busnesses over the next 10 years. I found that neither the entrepreneurs nor the people who are supposed to help them - from the banks to the federal government - are remotely prepared for this generational transition.

Forewarded is forearmed.
If you missed the story the first time around, you can read it here.

Wish me luck. I've been the president of the National Magazine Awards (1994-95), but I've never been personally nominated before. The awards get won at a gala soiree at the Carlu on June 9.

Getting those calls returned

Long-time readers may remember me griping occasionally about the failure of so many business contacts to return phone calls or e-mail.

I think it’s because most people are so busy that they have no time to deal with complex messages. If they can’t respond immediately with a snappy answer like “Yes,” “No,” or “Thursday at 2,” they have trouble processing the message in real time. So they put it off, recording the message on a scrap of paper or saving it in voice mail. Or they leave the unanswered e-mail in their Outlook “In” box – where it quickly (and conveniently) slips off the screen, never to annoy them again.

Either way, few people are organized – or professional – enough to either finish processing messages immediately, or maintain follow-up systems. (I’m working on both of those myself.)

To get my calls returned, lately I have had some success with calling or e-mailing people back (after waiting a week or so), acknowledging how busy they are, and simply asking them to confirm their receipt of my original message. That’s usually enough to get them to process the message and move it forward, since it gives people a non-committal, non-judgmental opportunity to pick up the ball.

The other thing I am working on is making it easier for people to respond immediately by reducing what I want to its simplest form. Example: asking for a short meeting if what I want is a million-dollar contract. The old KISS rule (Keep it Simple, Stupid) still rules!

I know the seasoned pros out there learned all this long ago, but for the rest of us, success in an era of shrinking attention spans is a ongoing journey of discovery.

If you have a system that works for you, please let us know in a comment. (Or if it's really powerful, send me an e-mail so only you and I know it.)

Ontario Rocks!

Yesterday’s Ontario Global Traders awards luncheon in North Bay was one of the best. The winners – from all over Northern Ontario – were terrific success stories, and their acceptance/thank you speeches were heartfelt and in some cases quite moving.

Since I was on stage the whole time as MC, I couldn’t take notes. But you can read about the winners here.

It was particularly fun when Jeff Borer of McLaren’s Bay Mica Stone Quarries in Redbridge, Ont., came to the podium, held up a big hunk of red granite and yelled, “Ontario rocks!” Jeff brought the house down, even if he did leave tiny, sharp crumbs of red grit all over my script.

And I particularly liked a comment by Partnerships winner Brent Bywater, of North Bay importer Vested Interest Trading. He said he doesn’t mind tough times, because he knows it will knock some of his competitors and make life easier for his firm in the long term. Talk about winning attitudes!

The provincial finals awards take place May 31 in Toronto. You can read all about the program and the other regional award winners by clicking here.

Trout Creek Confidential

So I drove through Trout Creek...

Maybe I should explain. At the Ontario Global Traders Awards luncheon in North Bay on Thursday, I got talking with Victor Fedeli, the mayor of North Bay, and we started talking about “twinning” – the ongoing project to convert Hwy 11 from a two-lane road to four-lane divided highway all the way from Huntsville to North Bay.

They’ve been working on it for years, and there’s only about 25 miles to go. I suggested that it would be nice to see it finished, but the mayor expressed regret about what will happen to some of the communities along the way.

He said Emsdale, Burk’s Falls, Trout Creek and other communities that grew up along Hwy 11 have hit hard times now that the highway bypasses them entirely. And he expressed concern for the future of South River, Sundridge and other towns that the two-lane highway currently drives right through.

I could see his point. On the way north Wednesday night, I stopped at a bank in Sundridge, thinking how convenient it was not to have to go searching for a bank machine once I got to North Bay. That transaction wasn’t worth much (if any) revenue to the town, but I could see how preferable it is for the community to have all that through traffic funnel through downtown rather than take their business to Huntsville or North Bay. In fact, Mayor Fedeli mentioned going off the highway recently to get some gas at Emsdale – where the station owner said he was the only customer of the day. One more local business that won’t last much longer.

Like Mayor Fedeli, I care a lot about small towns. So on the way back home from North Bay, I pulled off the highway at Trout Creek to see what today’s busy motorists are missing.

The sad answer: nothin’. People aren't going to Trout Creek because there is no reason to go to Trout Creek.

A couple of restaurant, a motel, and one of those dingy old two-storey hotels (one of the last old buildings left on the main street) that makes you wonder who would ever stay there. Plus a really ugly lumber yard with piles of greying wood. Nothing distinctive – or even attractive - about the place at all. If Trout Creek is dying, it’s by suicide.

Irma’s Restaurant might be a great place to eat. Maybe they have fresh daily specials, or homemade desserts, or special kids’ menus. Who knows? Irma isn't talking. The sign just says “Irma’s Restaurant,” so you better know Irma going in – or be prepared to be surprised.

Is marketing dead in northern Ontario? A hooked trout would fight harder to survive than Trout Creek seems to be doing. (Maybe they should change their name to Minnow Creek?)

Why not put signs along the highway giving people a reason to pull into town? “Visit historic Trout Creek.” Put up a plaque talking about the difficulties faced by early settlers. The old railway hotel could be restored and turned into a working tourist attraction – see where people stayed in the years before Motel 6. Irma could promote lunch specials or free coffee refills – anything to let people know she’s in business to serve and eager to help. Maybe the village council could put up some new playground equipment and invite tourists with kids to stop in for a break.

Today’s tourists want experiences, folks. Families with kids want quick, safe breaks. Know your market.

Like Mayor Fedeli, I wish all small towns could flourish. But you have to put up a fight. Give people a reason to visit – or suffer the fate you deserve.

Notes: (According to this site, the taxpayers of Ontario paid $46 million to bypass Trout Creek! If we had known the village would roll over and die, we could probably have steam-rollered it and saved a bundle by not building 5 km of new highway.)

Thanks to this site for the old postcard of Trout Creek (which has a lot fewer buildings today than in the old photo). It also features a short history of the village, which makes me think today’s residents are letting their forebears down badly.

10 Steps to Personal PR

I spoke Monday night to the Association of Independent Consultants on Do-it-yourself PR. First I quoted a professional public relations practitioner saying Step One in any PR strategy is to hire a PR practitioner (No wonder, I said, consultants have an image problem).

There's nothing wrong with professional PR practitioners, but if cost is a concern, you can do your own. At any rate, it’s a good way to learn the field during the point in your life (could be years!) when you have more time than money.

So here, much condensed, is the 10-point plan I set out for entrepreneurs interested in doing their own publicity. If you want to know a bit more on any single topic, please leave a comment at the end.

Step 1. Understand what “news” means. It’s not what you want to say. It’s what people want to hear about, read about, talk about.

2. Identify your motives. Why are you seeking press attention? Be honest with yourself.

3. Identify your target market(s). Your media strategy depends on the markets you wish to influence.

4. Identify the message(s) you want to communicate. Each market deserves its own message.

5. Identify the best media to reach your target audience. Where your audience is, you want to be.

6. Get to know those media and their needs, to help you identify the most effective way to communicate with them. (This is the step most often left out, even by communication professionals.)

7. Speak the language of the media. Media thrive on passion, on conflict, on evidence and on anecdotes.

8. Maintain a vigorous, pro-active campaign to get your message across. Keep up the pressure, stay in touch.

9. Make effective use of the attention you get. The spinoff benefits may be more important than the original media impact.

10. Make your own media. Opportunities abound in websites, newsletters, blogs – and the new electronic communities they beget.

The presentation got a great response. One attendee has already recommended me to speak at another association. With the referral he wrote this: “I've spent the day building articles about myself to feed a mini-public relations machine, to improve my visibility and to open doors. Surely anyone who can wean me away from 35 years of passionate programming is worth listening to.”

And thanks to Darla for manning the projector when the remote control wouldn’t work.

Public Service Announcement

When I was a magazine editor, we received so many useless press releases that most were tossed unopened into the round file. My blog, however, is not so choosy. If someone thinks us worthy of disseminating their information, and it's relevant to our mandate, we will consider it.

So I am happy to alert you to one of the biggest annual conferences on entrepreneurs and technology, taking place May 12-13 in Santa Clara, Calif. (Silicon Valley). It sounds very cool.

It's TiECon 2006: Disruption and Convergence – Entrepreneurs Unlimited

The theme: Disruption and Convergence are the yin-yang push-pull that periodically demolish and realign the world of business. While the unprepared enterprise risks being destroyed in its wake, the well-prepared entrepreneurial professional knows that the froth that surfaces in the churn promises the freshest opportunities!

Here's the bumph: The 13th TiE Conference is dedicated to providing a collaborative framework for entrepreneurs, Venture Capitalists and leaders of global ITC companies to discuss the big issues facing the technology industry and entrepreneurism. Keynotes, panel discussions and case studies will focus on various business ecosystems including networking, semiconductors, software, storage, security, Internet, hospitality, wireless, life sciences, and other emerging businesses.

Who: TiE.org (Talent, Ideas and Enterprise) is a not-for-profit global network of entrepreneurs and professionals. Originally founded in 1992 in Silicon Valley, as ‘The Indus Entrepreneurs,’ reflecting the ethnic South Asian or Indus roots of the founders, it is today is an open and inclusive organization with more than 45 chapters in ten countries. TieConference brings together the talent, ideas, enterprise and people who are shaping the future of our electronic world.

What: TiECon features a series of Keynote speakers, panel discussions and networking opportunities. This year’s keynote speakers are John Doerr General Partner, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers; Shashi Tharoor, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, United Nations; Dr. Vijay Mallya, Chairman, UB Group; David Lynch, Director & Writer, Hollywood Producer; Judy Estrin, CEO, Packet Design; Jane Wales, President & CEO, World Affairs Council, NC; T J Rodgers, CEO, Cypress Semiconductor; Howard Dean, Chairman, Democratic National Committee.

Other speakers include: Tom Berquist, CEO, Ingres Corporation; Subrah Iyer, Chairman & CEO, WebEx Communications, Inc.; Guy Kawasaki, Managing Director, Garage Technology Ventures; Byung Moo Kim, Global CTO, SK Telecom; Nobuharu Ono, President & CEO, NTT DoCoMo USA, Inc., etc.

If any of this excites you, click here for more info.
For Online Registration click here
Conference Contact: TiEadmin@TiE.org, Phone: 408.567.0700 Fax: 408.567.0777

Say hi for me.

Frustrated

I had a very frustrating lunch today with a self-employed business consultant I’ve known casually for a while.

She’s made a good living from her field for 18 years, but admits the big win has eluded her – the major, longer-term service contract that could provide income stability and serious money in the bank.

She is outstanding at what she does. And she clearly wants something to happen. But she’s been at it so long I think she’s lost the stomach for taking chances – and the will to try new things. I wasn’t trying to sell her anything – just looking for new ideas that would rekindle her passion for the business and connect her with the high-value clients she needs. But despite her current dissatisfaction, she wasn’t listening.

It was very strange. Every time I came up with an idea she told me a story. She wasn’t building on my idea, nor did she pooh-pooh it – she just talked about things she had done in the past. Sometimes it was about a similar initiative she had tried that didn’t work out, but often it was just vaguely related. She wasn’t saying my ideas wouldn’t work (at least, not directly). Just talking right past my suggestions, as if hoping they would go away.

Her evasion got so blatant that finally I pointed out what she was doing. Pointing out people’s flaws to their face is a high-risk strategy, but sometimes I’ll take the chance. (Just ask my friends, if you can find one.)

The consultant considered my feedback. Then, consciously or not, she kept on doing it. She didn’t reject any of my ideas, but continued to ignore them. Most involved only an investment of time, not money, but I guess the opportunities I was suggesting to her were not the slam-dunk she’s looking for.

I have rarely met an entrepreneur so in need of opportunity, yet so unresponsive to it. I think it’s called burnout.

I'll be thinking more about this person, and I'll try to help one more time. Suggestions welcome.

Ideas are a dime a dozen

Synnex Canada CEO Jim Estill makes a great point in his blog today about what makes business work - and why startup entrepreneurs needn't fret so over non-disclosure agreements and Keeping Everything Secret.

"It is not the ideas that will make a business successful, it is the implementation."

"When EMJ (Jim's startup firm) was public, I was worried people would see our statements and public disclosures and copy what we were doing. Some tried. Over time I came to realize that implementation is hundreds of little things that tend to be almost impossible to copy.

"Also, businesses are not static. In the rapidly changing business world, in my case accelerated by being in technology, even implementation is a moving target.

"Most entrepeneurs could be more successful by simply implementing now and faster rather than trying to keep everything a secret. I have seen more failures caused by inaction than caused by having ideas stolen."

In my experience, when the lawyers and the NDAs are in the room, it's time to get out. As the goddess Nike might have said, "Just Do it."

Why you need your own blog

Everyone’s talking about corporate blogging. It’s a great way to create broader, deeper relationships with clients, prospects, or any other stakeholders you target. But is it for your business?

You bet, says Mark Kingdon, CEO of Organic, a U.S.-based digital marketing agency. His employees maintain a blog on digital design, and he himself recently started an in-house blog for employees. He’s not sure why only 5% of Fortune 500 companies maintain corporate blogs, but he thinks you should have one. “Coupled with your Web site, it's a great way to create a dialogue with customers and employees.”

In a recent news release, he offered these 8 lessons from his blog’s first year:

* Designate an editor. Corporate blogs need an editor to monitor the blog and ensure posts pass whatever standards you set.

* Have a purpose. Yes, a blog is a reflection of your company, but it's a less formal communication medium so you should experiment, take feedback, and adapt your blog as you learn.

* Content is king. What makes a good post? An honest perspective; a fresh point of view, provocative thinking about an issue, trend, or technology; and real news all make good posts.

* Develop a content engine. It's hard for just one writer to produce a lot of high-quality content. A dozen or so people inside our agency post regularly on our blog.

* Have an editorial policy. Some blogs allow people to post whatever they want. We have an editorial policy inside the agency that's quite simple: if you wouldn't be comfortable sitting around a dinner table discussing the content of your blog posting with your mother, your largest client, your best friend, your boss, and your mentor, then you probably shouldn't post it.

* Experiment, learn, and evolve. The Web is a constantly evolving medium, and we try new things all the time. If something isn't working, we pull it off… Ultimately, a blog is a journey, not a destination, and should evolve as your readership changes and grows.

* Make it a core part of your marketing strategy. At first, our corporate blog was an experiment. We kept it quiet as we built the foundation. Then, we added our blog address to our marketing materials, e-mail signatures, and main site. Today, we dedicate half of our home page to it. As people link to our blog and we link to theirs, our presence in the blogosphere grows.

* Be patient and watch your audience grow. When we started, we had tens of hits a day, mostly from inside the agency. Traffic is growing steadily, thanks to increased citations from others, e-mail list growth, and RSS feeds. Now, over 3,000 people read the blog every week with staffers representing only 15 percent of the total.

"Corporate blogs are the new faces of business,” concludes Kingdon. “Customers, employees, and those interested in your business want authentic dialogue, real insights, and a fresh perspective. Give it to them with a blog.”

To get started, ask the youngest employees in your company. They may already blog, and they can get you up and running in an hour for free.

I am working on my own treatise on corporate blogging. If you’d like to see it, email me and I will send you a copy when it’s done. Rick (at) Rickspence.ca

Meet the New Web

"It's fashionable now to laugh at the great Tech Boom of 1998-2000. All that hype about the Net, stock prices and VCs tripping over each other to give too much money to companies with too few customers..."

That’s the way I started out my PROFIT column this month on the new Web boom. But I came to the conclusion that what’s happening now is pretty significant – and pretty exciting. This time, the power is in what individuals can do with the Web, not what the Web can do for (or to) us.

“In the Web 2.0 spirit, it's about personalization and connecting, not simply the provision of a prepackaged commodity to aggregated online markets.”

It’s a pretty good read, I think. Why not check it out online at the PROFIT/Canadian Business website by clicking here.

V for Visitor 5,000

Visitor No. 5000, from Richmond, Que., dropped in Monday night on a referral from the Blogs Canada site.

Although he didn’t know he was Visitor 5000, he was kind enough to leave a supportive comment on his way out.

In response to the April 6 post, Global Heroes, about the Ontario Global Traders Awards, Don wrote: “Great to see small businesses thriving. It really is the engine that keeps going when the big companies go through the ups and downs.”

I couldn’t agree more, Don. Thanks for being our best millennial visitor ever.

Welcome 5,000th Visitor!

Sometime today, Canadian Entrepreneur will record its 5,000th visitor. Considering all the noise on the Internet, that's a pretty awesome number.

Of course, it's not about traffic. Blogging is about getting new conversations going, and I appreciate all those who have turned my one-way monologuing into enlightening discussions.

And for those who silently read and lurk, keep on reading - but feel welcome to make a comment, in this or any other blog you frequent. Because that is where the value really lies - in sparking new conversation and relationships.

And while it's not about traffic, I continue to be thrilled by the international scale of the visitors to this site. The picture above is a map of where the last 100 visitors to this site come from. As you'll see, we cover every continent. And I (a short-wave radio nut when I was a kid) find the idea of yakking about entrepreneurship to people from Eastern Europe and Mongolia very exciting.

Thank you for visiting and for passing the word about this site. The countdown to 10,000 has begun!

23 Words And Phrases That Weaken Your Credibility

Oscar Bruce is a U.S.-based marketer who has written several books on effective language and conversation. I haven’t read his books, but I’ve been checking out his newsletters. And while some of it bothers me a bit (for one thing, he warns readers to ignore his spelling and grammar mistakes), some of his stuff is quite good.

Here, for instance, from his e-book WINNING WORDS & WINNING WAYS, are 23 words, phrases and clichés that seriously weaken your credibility and your message.

They are so habitual, says Bruce, that you may never notice them. But others do.

Statements to banish from your language:

Um
But
Like
Well
I'll try
Never
Always
Perhaps
Should
It's kind-of
Whatever
I'll have to
What you need to do is
I wish someone would
You ought to
It seems like
I'm not good at
Maybe we could
I'm wondering if
I might be able to
Sorry to bother you
I could be wrong , but
This is just a thought…

I agree with most of these, but I can think of a few more, too. How about:

“You must buy today…”
“Just between you and me”
“You can trust me”
and “Ignore my spelling and bad grammar. It’s what I mean that counts.”

If you want to suggest any more credibility-killers, please leave a comment.

Best Quote Ever

I just ran across this quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes:

"To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad."

Fascinating insight (what a blogger he would have made!).
But do you think it's true?

Comments welcome.

Tomorrow's Obituary Today!

The big winner of yesterday’s Global Traders Awards event in Barrie (see previous post) was Grimsby, Ont.'s Dennis Parass, who won the Gold award for export leadership in Central Ontario. His company, Handling Specialty Manufacturing Ltd., has become a world leader in custom-engineered hydraulic and mechanical lifting equipment.

It has built lifts for the major automakers as well as for some of the most prestigious stages in the world - including Las Vegas’s Bellagio Theater, the Neil Simon Theater in New York, and the National Institute of Arts (Taiwan).

I was struck by Parass’s down-to-earth approach to success. When speaking to the luncheon crowd yesderday, he extolled the virtues of “leadership from behind.” That means standing behind your employees and encouraging them to move forward, to explore, to take chances – urging them on to success and catching them if they fall.

I know a lot of big corporations that could benefit from some of Parass’s common-sense wisdom.

Parass also had some interesting advice when interviewed a few years ago by Niagara Business Magazine after being named Niagara’s Entrepreneur of the Decade in 2003. Here’s an excerpt from the story by Wendy Luce:

“To maintain perspective and a sense of mortality—as well as find long-term direction for the company—Parass recommends that anyone starting out in business first write his or her own obituary. “If you are going to die at 85, it’s a chance to put into writing and define the things that will be most important to you in your lifetime.

“By knowing who you are going to be as a person, you will know how you are going to handle that business,” says Parass.

For him, it means a business that is built on integrity, service, investment in staff and a management style that is “tough but fair”.

(snip...)
Parass says he has always tried to react in such a way that Handling Specialty’s success would be measured in a certain way. He has worked, as leader, to expand the foundation laid by [company founder] George Machand, and to build a company of integrity, innovation and strong from the inside out.

“I have tried to build something that is solid enough to withstand both success and difficult times,” Parass says. “And with a character that is respected and admired by its peers and competitors.”

Congratulations to a creative innovator with decency and wisdom to spare.