Natural gas industry high on future, despite current low prices – The Washington Times
“Birol quoted in The Washington Times on Marcellus and the opportunity it presents for small business”.
To read article click here.
Breathing Your Own Exhaust
Filed under: Business Growth, Pittsburgh, Profitable Growth, Uncategorized
If it is so wrong to stare at a car crash, then why are they so fascinating? And in these tough times, watching another crooked leader taking the “perp-walk of shame” brings a grin to even the most cordial of us. Leave it to the ever-precise Germans to define this feeling as “shadenfreude” or “the taking of pleasure in the misfortunes of others.” The more pompous or self righteous the civil servant, business titan, or do-gooder is, the more the French got it right, saying revenge is a dessert best enjoyed cold.
If shadenfreude is fun from a distance, why is it so painful to watch someone you care about become so impervious to their impact? It’s because we care. In my work, I have seen the following examples of owners breathing their own exhaust.
- After failing to eliminate his salesforce by going direct to customers, the leader invites the reps to “come back home as all is forgiven” by his marrying the youngest sales rep.
- Returning from France and bragging at work how much money he spent on wine, an owner cuts payroll and publicly borrows money from an employee.
- After kiting a client’s postal check and firing his partner’s son, the tables are turned when he alerts the sheriff who impounds the owner’s boat just as he’s skipping town on it.
- After showing off his new Ferrari, an owner takes me to his board room where he has taped (not framed) Penthouse centerfolds to the mahogany walls.
While the stories are horrifying, I can vouch for the good intentions and years of sacrifice that preceded each owner’s fall from grace. But at some point a chip switched in the owner’s head and the disconnection from reality snowballed down a slippery slope of complete self-delusion.
How can you tell if an owner’s ego and braggadoccicio have overwhelmed their confidence and conviction? What kinds of brakes and controls can you hope they embrace? It is high time when an owner
- Dismisses ideas as being irrelevant to their business when the ideas would create accountability
- Responds to questions regarding how their business is doing, by insisting there is no way to better it. Period.
- Believes that luck or being in the right place at the right time played no role in their success.
Business ownership has so little accountability and oversight that without devil’s advocates and contrarian data to strike a balance, dysfunction is likely. When owners start believing their destiny is assured, it’s more likely that things are never as good or as bad as they think they are.
Here are some simple questions to ask and assure their feet are on the ground and they are not breathing their own exhaust.
- What is their true price of being wrong?
- What is their true benefit of being right?
- Where does their comfort zone really end?
- Where does their dogma really begin?
In such crazy times, there seems to be a fine line between stoicism and irrationality. Help the owners you know to stay on the right side and remember my favorite quote, “We become what we tolerate!”
WWWWW: Why Won’t Wonderful Websites Work?
Filed under: Business Growth, Pittsburgh, Profitable Growth, Uncategorized
For the fourth time in 15 years I’m revamping my website. My technology wingman groans, rolling his eyes and thinks, “Here he goes again.”
Why does the website that made me so proud a few years ago make me cringe? The reasons jump out at me:
It’s too complicated. The messaging isn’t clear, the back end doesn’t work, it’s not SEO-friendly, visitors are down and it’s not written in the right language. Length of stays is down, it’s not customizable, and, thanks to statistics on Google Analytics, the website just isn’t doing the job.
I ask experts and gurus, “What’s your latest thinking on effective websites? What’s working?” The avalanche of ideas and advice I hear only makes things worse.
“Get your reader engaged”…”Crowdsource”…”Give away your value.”…”Tweet, tweet tweet!…”Improve your Klout score!”…Like everything you can on Facebook and you will be liked back”…Your Face book must talk to your blog which talks to your LinkedIn”… “Put ads on your site”… ”Reciprocally link”…”Update your meta tags”…. “Fool Google…”First page or fail!”…“Get people to talk about you!”
With a sense of déjà vu, I freeze up. I can’t move ahead or accept my website for what it is and isn’t. If I upgrade my website, I know I face thousands of dollars and worse yet, a hundred hours invested only to be no further ahead than where I am today.
I ask clients, referral sources, friends and family, “What do you think of my site?” I hear platitudes like: “It’s so informative.” “There’s so much great content.” You’ve done so much.” The worst is, “I was going to hire you anyway.”
I know I have to change my site or accept that websites are nothing more than billboards and content giveaways for a professional-services firm.
Then it hits me. All I ever wanted from my site was to provoke and qualify prospects into having a live conversation with me.
My business, like most conceptual services, only works when I have a conversation with a prospect who shares his or her goals and challenges with me. Website hits, visits, click-throughs, registrations, follows, likes or joins don’t really matter unless they create that conversation.
I went back to the roots about how my prospects hire me, how they build trust with me and their typical buying behavior in hiring me. For every 10 conversations, I can generate five meetings, three proposals and close one sale. And I have decided to build my new website simply to do this.
I can already hear experts scoffing, designers and social media mavens who preach the building of customer engagements, social friendliness and website stickiness. Frankly, I just don’t care. If my strategy generates 10 conversations a month but everyone else thinks it’s a bust, I’ll be pleased.
My business goal is to keep failing in new and different ways, and frankly I haven’t tried this before. And how much worse could it do? But maybe this time, I’ll be saying, “WWWW: Why Website’s Work Wonderfully!”
