4 Trends; Wacky Practices; Tiger’s New Coach; Real-Time Marketing

  "…keeping you great"

HEADLINES: 

Real-Time Marketing & PR — the highest rated speaker, by far, at our latest Fortune Growth Summit was David Meerman Scott. His presentation is now available online for a nominal fee (full money back guarantee if not useful). Marketing is THE function to pump up for this next decade — reacting in real time to current news about your clients, competitors, and marketplace is key to getting noticed. Gather your team around a computer, watch his presentation (again, if you attended the Summit), and plan your marketing strategy for 2011.

4 Trends Shaping the Decade — my latest "Growth Guy" syndicated column is out, heavily influenced by a recent speech by Dr. Hermann Simon. Please take 3 minutes to consider 4 trends shaping the next decade: accelerating globalization; increased government intervention; ultra-low price or super luxury goods (middle is gone); and mesh businesses. In the article I suggest specific ways to apply these trends to your business right now! Might stimulate some thinking at your next strategic planning session (or at your weekly "council" meeting)

Importance of Wacky Practices — Pat Lencioni, of Five Dysfunctions of a Team fame, puts out a quarterly email on a single topic. This quarter he shares how it's the simple, wacky, homey stuff of highly successful firms that puts them ahead of the competition — stuff that is seen as "beneath the dignity" of others like singing a corporate song — a perfect blocking strategy. Another great article to ponder as you prepare for 2011.

What Sean Foley is Teaching Tiger Woods — Tiger Woods has a new (permanent?) coach after his previous coach, Hank Haney, resigned. So what is Sean Foley teaching Tiger? Here's the best article I found that lays out Foley's approach to golf and life. As Foley suggests, you can't just coach the "golfer" — you have to coach the person, taking into account the impact of love, hate, and fear on performance — something I've found is true when coaching leaders of growth firms. Do you have a coach for 2011?

5 Business Killers — Thank You To…Jana Eggers, CEO of Spreadshirt; Stephen Shang, CEO of Falcon Containers; Kim McConnell, founder of AdFarm; Niraj Balasaria, CEO of Petron Pacific; and Brian Scudamore, CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK; for their contributions to my latest Fortune magazine column entitled "5 Business Killers." Please take three minutes to read if you didn't last week

Naysayers Converted — and this kind note from Beth Miller, CEO of Atlanta-based Executive Velocity, "I just returned from a strategic planning session with a client and decided to use the one page strategic plan. The session was a huge success and we accomplished everything on the agenda in record time. There was one participant, a known naysayer, who even praised the process as well as a representative from a private equity firm who wants some of this portfolio companies to use the process. This is going to be my standard process moving forward." FYI, Beth used to be a personal client over a decade ago; now she's coaching other CEOs of growth firms