Terrible Bosses; Boring Bosses; Remote Bosses; Eating a Scorpion
August 7, 2014
Five ways to get organized for work
August 14, 2014Escape Overseas; Best Persuasion Technique; Customer Funded Biz; Australia, NZ, Singapore, Jakarta
"…keeping you great"
HEADLINES:
Plan Your Escape Overseas — my latest Fortune column (Aug 11 edition) highlights five reasons to take a sabbatical or move overseas to spur growth in your business. Specifically:
- Get closer to the action
- Eliminate distractions
- Build new relationships
- Uncover best practices
- Beat burnout
Take 2 minutes to scan for details and then plan your move for 2015. Thanks to Larry Gilbert, Event Network; Vernon Menard, Choice Translating; and David Niu, TINYPulse for contributing to this column.
Customer-Funded Businesses — Dell, Microsoft, and Banana Republic "raised" money from their customers to get started. And customers are the best source of growth capital. John Mullins' long awaited book titled The Customer Funded Business is the first to address this important source of funding. The co-author of the famous HBR article on the cash conversion cycle we've referenced for years, he outlines five approaches:
- Matchmaker models (Airbnb)
- Pay-in-advance models (Threadless)
- Subscription models (TutorVista)
- Scarcity models (Vente Privee)
- Service-to-product models (GoViral)
If you're thinking of raising cash or just want more of it faster, read this book. GazellesPro and book club members will receive a copy next week (Mullins keynoted our last Summit).
"Customer" Sourced Sleep Aids — Fortune announced it's first-ever Big Data All Stars – 20 people using this powerful approach to fuel their respective ventures. Scan down through the list (20 short descriptions of each big data application) and read about Monica Rogati, Vice President of Data, Jawbone. Using customer sourced data, they are learning what keeps certain groups of people awake – and then using this information to help them sleep better. Immediately following Monica is Onno Zoeter, Research Scientist, Xerox Research Centre Europe. See how he used big data to analyze parking in Los Angeles and reduced congestion by 10%. Then come hear Kenneth Cukier, co-author of the most important and practical book on big data, keynote the Growth Summit in Vegas.
Persuade Customers Using Visuals — …and if you run into closed-minded customers (or others), take 1 minute to scan CEO (Rapid Learning) Stephen Meyer's piece in Forbes titled "Persuasion: Fascinating Study Shows How to Open a Closed Mind." He highlights three typical approaches, but only one works. The answer surprised me, but makes the most sense – show your evidence in a graphical format! Update your website and sales materials immediately.
Auckland (2 Sept), Melbourne (3 Sept), Sydney (4 Sept), Singapore (5 Sept), and Jakarta (8 Sept) — I'm leading a series of workshops highlighting the new book Scaling Up (Rockefeller Habits 2.0) which publishes Oct 21. Hope to see you there.
Auckland, Melbourne, Sydney
Singapore
For Jakarta email to [email protected]
COACHING:
