Do anything you want, just set your mind to it.

- Will Steger

I had the opportunity to hear Will Steger’s keynote speech at the Live Green expo in Duluth, MN on September 7, 2008.  While Will’s keynote primarily focused on his first-hand observations of the changing climate at the poles of our planet, his thoughts on life were equally fascinating.

How DO you become an explorer?

Will lead the first dogsled traverse of Antartica, the first dogsled trip without re-supply to the north pole, and countless other expeditions.  When I heard him speak, it was clear his inspiration and lessons for becoming an explorer are directly usable in any context (not just polar exploration)!  For example, you may be innovating and challenging conventional thinking in your current career.  Or, maybe you’re a teacher trying to find the inspiration to push the boundaries of education.  Whatever the case may be, I found Will’s story so relevant that I had to share it here.

3 Ways to Become An Explorer

Tip #1 – Leverage the freedom you have

Will grew up in a household with 3 simple rules.  Outside of these rules, he was given the freedom to do pretty much whatever he wanted.

1. Get good grades
2. Stay out of trouble with the law
3. Pay for things yourself

There is a lesson here for leaders, project managers, educators, and others: give your people the freedom to innovate (with some simple rules to follow), and they will AMAZE you.  It can be scary, and you might get some unfavorable results, but in the end, you go places with them that you never imagined were possible.

Tip #2: Seek inspiration from magazines, and travel places you’ve never been

Will got his climbing inspiration from reading National Geographic, a magazine that typically takes it’s readers far away from where they physically are located on the planet.  This forces the reader to dream, visualize, and wonder what such places are like.  I once read the Dalai Lama recommends visiting one completely new place every year.  I love that idea, and try to practice it annually.

What magazines, books, blogs, or people help you dream?  What trips have you taken lately that push you out of your comfort zone?  When was the last time you sifted through magazines relevant to your career, and non-relevant magazines too, searching for applicable ideas?

Tip #3: Just do it!

When he was fifteen, Will built a boat and sailed it down the Mississippi, from Minneapolis/St. Paul to New Orleans.  He set his mind to exploring, and then he got busy doing it.

How much time do you spend truly doing things you are passionate about every day?  It may sound crazy, but I love internet marketing.  Always have, probably always will.  The desire to be the best internet marketer possible gets me going each morning more than the seriously big cup of coffee on my desk.  If you’ve found a passion but aren’t investing time in it, that’s just as tough as not finding a passion to begin with!  Make the time, and just do it.

Bonus Tip: Persevere like Will Steger

Check out these stats of a Will Steger expedition to cross Antarctica:

• 3,700 miles, 220 days
• 1 dozen mountain ranges to go over
• 56-day storms
• Temperature: -30 degrees farenheit
• Wind Chill: -80 degrees farenheit

And what does Will do?  He endures these extremes and brings back amazing lessons for those who will never go there.

The next time you are working on a project that takes you to extremes, remember to take some notes along the way to teach others.  They’ll benefit tremendously from the “places” you explore.

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The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence.

- Vince Lombardi

Note from Regis: One of my goals for Dot Connector is to connect you with a variety of people we can all learn from: from best-selling authors to successful entrepreneurs, and everyone in between!  This is a guest post from entrepreneur, friend, and colleague, Dave Rigotti.

—

Being in college, on the executive board for multiple student organizations, and running my own online business, I’ve developed a knack for personal productivity and efficiency.  As I became more and more active, I found myself going to bed later and waking up earlier – usually only getting 4 hours of sleep a night.  I couldn’t keep that up.

Here are my tips for getting that job done and freeing up a few extra minutes in your life.

1.    Get a planner.

You know, the kind you had in school.  They are extremely effective at planning your day and can help find inefficiencies.

2.    Download and use RescueTime.

RescueTime is a fantastic application that tracks your computer usage and reports how efficient and productive you are.  It’s free to use and quite easy to set up.

3.    Watch your TV shows online.

I watch most of them at Hulu.com, which has approximately 5-10 minutes less advertisements than if I watched it on the television.  Additionally, you can pause and come back and also watch it at your convenience (on the bus, doctors office, or even on the John).

4.    Stay focused online.

Using RescueTime or FireFox plugins, monitor you unproductive site usage, such as Facebook or Myspace and other sites that do not contribute to you accomplishing your tasks and goals.

5.    Set goals.

I’m surprised hoe many people do not set any goals, even if they are simple as “I’ll write 500 words of this paper by 5pm today.”  Goals formalize your work and for me at least, I hate not accomplishing a goal I’ve set for myself.  Just make sure they are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely.

Bonus: Find where you work best.

I can’t work at home – it’s too distracting – so I go to the local coffee shop that has free wifi.  In fact, I’m writing this article from one.  I suggest you find where you work best.

What are your tricks for staying on track?  Let me know in the comments!

This post was guest blogged by Dave Rigotti, owner of Career Fire.

[Reposted from Unconventional Thinking, the blog of Mark Stevens]

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”

- Albert Einstein

Throughout his life, my Dad taught me that I truly could be whatever I decided to be. His confidence in me gave me the strength to believe in my ideas, challenge conventional thinking, and take risks.

Below are 6 techniques I’ve used to successfully challenge conventional thinking in my life.

1. Identify and ignore “noise” in your life.
Noise is the unnecessary stuff that distracts your attention and limits your effectiveness: naysayers, gossip, opinions of news media, fear, etc. If you are determined to challenge conventional thinking, you have to train yourself to ignore noise.

I work for Quicken Loans, one of the nation’s largest direct mortgage lenders, in arguably the most challenging time for the financial industry in 20 years. If I listened to all the noise about how bad the mortgage crisis is, I would become paralyzed by negativity and fear. Instead of focusing on the constraints around me, I consciously look for opportunities. Don’t let yourself become a product of your environment; let your environment become a product of you!

2. Don’t recreate the wheel.
I’ve seen companies launch huge new initiatives without ever stopping to ask themselves: “has someone done this already?” Be curious! Instead of blindly jumping into a project, take a step back and think “someone must have run into this situation before, what did they do?”

We recently decided to focus on a particular marketing strategy at Quicken Loans. Instead of starting from scratch, we flew several key people to another, non-competitive company to discuss our plan. Because that company had already executed this strategy really well, the day we spent with them saved us months of trial-and-error.

3. Take a stand.
A couple of years ago, I was leading a project that a senior executive didn’t agree with. He didn’t think the project could make an impact on the business. I believed that it would. We compromised, and he gave me 90 days to prove it. I did, and the executive was proud of the accomplishment.

It can be hard to challenge consensus. But if you truly believe in what you are doing, you can’t be afraid to voice an opinion or do things that others don’t understand. Remember: the thinking that got you where you are will seldom get you where you want to go.

4. Get excited when people tell you “no.”
So many people let others dictate what they can and cannot do. Before they know it, they have lost the ability to be effective. When people tell me “no, we can’t do that,” I immediately think “how can we?”

Every day, I have conversations about ideas that are too hard to do, solutions that are too complicated, and costs that are too expensive. If you attack these situations by creatively brainstorming alternatives, you can inevitably find ways to turn these “no’s” into “yes’s.”

5. Keep it simple like Forrest Gump.
“When I got tired, I slept. When I got hungry, I ate. When I had to go… you know… I went.” Forrest kept life simple. Do you?

At Quicken Loans, we have a “no big projects” rule. Why? Big projects usually mean lots of over-complicated ideas that simply aren’t needed to solve the problem at hand. You can have big visions but still execute them in small chunks. Doing this encourages constant improvement, and helps prevent marketing projects that are out of sync with current business needs.

6. Be effective, not busy.
My team completed over 1,100 internet marketing projects last year alone. While that’s an impressive accomplishment, I’m most proud of the impact those projects made. Every single thing we do has a legitimate business reason, or we don’t do it. And every morning we meet to discuss the thing we can do that day to be the most effective.

Every person on my team has (literally) hundreds of things on their to-do list. Our concern is not getting them all done. Instead, we ask ourselves, are we working on the right things, right now? Once we focus on being effective, instead of being busy, we automatically get into
a mental mode of challenging conventional wisdom.

Try one of these techniques, and you can take an ordinary day and make it great! Try them all, and you will hone your ability to challenge conventional thinking.

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As many of you know, I work for Quicken Loans, one of the top 10 home mortgage lenders in the United States, the #1 online lender of home mortgages in the US, and Fortune Magazine’s #2 best place to work in the US (Google is #1).

Many of you have asked for my opinion about the mortgage crisis, what got us here, and what can be done.  Today, I’ll share a drastically simplified version of the comprehensive solution, called “A Solution That Works” that was put forward last week by Dan Gilbert, Chairman of Quicken Loans.

You really don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand the housing crisis, or the solution to it, no matter what anyone tells you.  It will take the right leadership to get us out of the challenging situation we are in.  And, just like in almost every leadership challenge, you can’t let how hard you think the solution is prevent you from doing it.

On to the plan…

The Situation Right NOW

• Homeowners today are “striking out” by having a declining home value (strike 1), an unpredictable and growing monthly mortgage payment (strike 2), a growing mortgage balance that they owe the bank (strike 3). Often when this strike out happens, a Homeowner cannot make their payments, or chooses not to, resulting in foreclosure.
• Unfortunately, the $700 billion financial rescue plan passed by Congress last week does little if anything to address these Homeowner issues (stopping foreclosures, declining home values, and dramatic increases in mortgage payments).  These issues are the fundamental reason why the “credit markets” you hear about on the nightly news are in crisis.
• The goal of “A Solution That Works” is to help each American Homeowner stay in their home, prevent their home’s value from declining, change their bad mortgage to a good mortgage, and prevent foreclosure.

A Solution That Works, a Simplified Version of the Plan

1. The Homeowner would work through a Lender to have their bad mortgage changed to a new, 30-year fixed rate mortgage.
2. This new mortgage would have an interest rate of 6.375% fixed for the life of the loan, but would also have a low interest rate (starting at 4.875%) for the first 5 years, to give the homeowner some relief and allow them to “dig out” of their mortgage situation.
3. If the Homeowner owes more than the original loan amount (due to not paying enough interest or any principal, like if they are in an “Option ARM”), the Lender will essentially cover the difference.

A Solution That Works, an Example

The Smith family purchased a home in 2006 and got an adjustable rate mortgage (ARM).  In October, their interest rate adjusted from 6.5% to 9%.  As you can see below, their payment jumped as well:

With A Solution That Works, the Smith’s family’s mortgage payment is reduced to $1,064 initially, and gradually increases over 5 years to approx. $1,250 and WILL NOT change for the remaining 25 years of the loan.

My Thoughts

Personally, I believe that a combination of greed (from Homeowners, Banks, and Financial Institutions), irrational expectations about home values, and a lack of Federal oversight lead to the housing crisis we are in right now.

To get out of this, we have to treat the cause of the disease, not merely it’s symptoms.  I believe “A Solution That Works” would do that.  Here’s why:

1. This plan puts the Homeowner first, helping them to get out of the bad mortgage they are in.  The result is reduced foreclosures and more stable property values.
2. This plan can quickly create a win-win for Homeowners (who get a new, better loan) and Lenders (who get support from the government).
3. This plan is an efficient and practical use of Federal dollars, especially since a lack of government oversight was a major contributor to the situation we are in now.  In this plan, the Federal government would pay the difference between the 4.875% rate and the 6.375% rate for those first five years.  Also, this plan would allow lenders to write off 2x the interest the Homeowner did not pay that was previously added to their loan amount.
4. The cost of this plan would be $50 billion, roughly 1/14 the cost of the $700 billion financial rescue plan passed by Congress last week.  And, it also eliminates the need for a new bureaucracy outlined in the bailout bill to buy bad mortgages.
5. Finally, this plan also gives the investor in these loans higher odds of recovering their investment (versus dealing with foreclosure) by immediately stabilizing the housing market.

Now, before you think: “isn’t Quicken Loans one of the reasons we are in this situation?” Please consider that although Quicken Loans did offer some versions of these loans, we never made these products our “bread and butter” and we never did any significant subprime mortgage business.  Our overall business has always been in standard, “conforming” loans.  Also, please feel free to read Quicken Loans Reviews to learn about our excellent customer service.

I encourage everyone to read the plan for yourself and comment here to let Dot Connector readers know what you think!

More information

• A Solution The Works Website
• A Solution That Works: Frequently Asked Questions
• Watch Dan Gilbert discuss his plan on CNBC
• Detroit Free Press coverage of the plan

What you can do

• Find your Congressional Representative
• Find your U.S. Senator
• Contact the President and White House
• Contact Henry Paulson, The US Secretary of the Treasury.
• Contact Your State Governor
• Contact Your State Representative
• Contact Presidential Candidate Barack Obama
• Contact Presidential Candidate John McCain

UPDATE: A great overview of the current financial situation, in extremely clear terms:

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I have never seen a monument erected to a pessimist.

- Paul Harvey

How you choose to spend your “mental energy” is the single-biggest determinant of your career. The power of mental focus separates those who are good from those who are great.

How do you “spend” your unconscious and conscious thoughts? Do you ever think about that? Try the test below to see if you are an abundance thinker, or if you are focused on scarcity. The following test and solutions are adapted from a newsletter article by Tim Sanders, former Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo! and author of the books How to Save the World at Work and Love is the Killer App. From Tim:

Scarcity is the greatest crisis today in our society. There is no greater evil than the belief that there is not enough to go around. There is no greater threat to your organization or company’s future than the Scarcity mindset. Sounds scary? There are two pieces of good news: there are solutions and when they are implemented, you will experience profound happiness and peace.

- Tim Sanders

Scarcity Test – 4 Questions to Better Understand Your Thinking

1. Do you believe that there is “not enough to go around”?
2. Do you ever define yourself based on what you lack, not what you have?
3. Are you motivated by fear, do you talk about fear (i.e. “my fear is…”), and/or do you motivate others by fear?
4. Do you find yourself thinking that when others gain, you lose; or, when you give, you have less?

If you answer yes to any of these questions, you focus on scarcity in your thinking. The more questions you answered yes to, the more scarcity has taken over your thinking. Yes, it really is that simple.

Impact of Scarcity Thinking

Focusing on scarcity hurts you and the people around you. Why?

1. You create a personal “doomloop” (a phrase coined by Jim Collins in “Good to Great“). A doomloop is a situation where you are constantly looking for the single defining action, the grand program, the one killer innovation, the miracle moment that will allow you to skip the tough “buildup stage” of any idea, career, etc. and jump right to realizing the benefits of your work.
2. You can no longer share in the success of others. Ideas create new ideas. Friendships and communities create new friendships and new communities. If you are inwardly focused (”what about me?”), you create a fundamental, internal, “mental disagreement” with those around you.
3. You limit your potential to be a leader. Leadership is about giving to and serving the people you lead. If you focus on scarcity, you stop seeking opinions and stop trying to bring out the best in others.

Solution: Return to Your Abundance Mentality

Here are 3 solutions to eliminate your scarcity mentaility, from Tim Sanders:

Step 1: Change your thinking. Define yourself by what you have, not what you lack.
As Dr. Wayne Dyer says, “find the Abundance in the little things in your daily life”. This morning I found Abundance in my breakfast and the endless cup of coffee given to me. In 2000, during the crash, I found abundance in the smiles of others. At Yahoo, I led the ‘refresh’ campaign and encouraged people to find abundance in what they had, especially compared to all of the others that had so much less and so little to look forward to.

Step 2: Stay on the lookout for Fear. Replace it with Faith and Endurance.
This is one of the few places where it is OK to label people. Call a spade a spade. That’s what I do at Yahoo as the Leadership Coach. When I catch someone acting like Chicken Little, I stamp them. When I observe someone acting out their personal story of Abundance, I name them DaVinci (Don, Doris, etc.). My mom gave me advice for this talk; I need only two things to lead and thrive-faith and endurance. One will help me when the other is in short supply.

Step 3: Practice Abundance daily.
Practicing Abundance requires letting go of stuff – and believing that there is more. Every day, give something, share something or be a bigger person because you know there is enough to go around. Each act of generosity on your part sends a signal to the world that you are in touch with your Abundance.

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A crucial component in evaluating your own career is to understand your alignment (or lack there of) with your immediate Team Leader (I.e. your “Boss”). Below are seven questions, adapted from a Fast Company list, that will help you focus in on that alignment.

If you find yourself in alignment with your Team Leader, great! If not, then you really have to ask yourself – do I want to change and adapt for the greater good of my organization, or do I want to move on?

7 Questions to Help You Understand “The Boss” and Your Career

1. What is your Team Leader (i.e. “The Boss”) trying to accomplish? What are his/her goals?

Start with truly understanding your Team Leader’s overall goals, either stated or implied (through their actions).

2. Is your team leader ambitious or content? What kinds of problems most worry your Team Leader? What kinds of victories most please your Team Leader?

Understanding these questions are key to understanding your potential for growth within your organization. Put bluntly, a Team Leader who is a small thinker, and content with her status, will not have as many opportunities for you to build critical experience and new skills. By understanding what things worry and please your Team Leader, you’ll get a true sense of how she views the world.

3. Why is your Team Leader the Team Leader? Why was your Team Leader picked for the job?

This question will help you understand the history behind how your Team Leader arrived at her position, and how the more senior executives feel about your Team Leader’s value to the organization.

4. If your Team Leader is ambitious, is it about substance, recognition, or both?

Understanding what drives your Team Leader’s ambitions will help you clearly assess your room for growth. A Team Leader who cares about the personal and professional growth of her team will open more opportunities than one who is solely focused on recognition.

5. What does your Team Leader need from you, and how do you plan to do it?

Next, get a crystal clear explanation of what your Team Leader needs from you. Dig deep here and understand not just her tactical project needs, but the personality traits that she wants to see you demonstrate.

6. What do you want out of your current position? Is this compatible with your Team Leader’s goals and ambitions? Do your goals advance your Team Leader’s ambitions, or conflict with them?

This is where you need to take an honest, objective look at what you want out of your career. Next, determine if when you achieve your goals, your Team Leader’s ambitions will also be met. If this won’t happen, you should re-evaluate your goals, your position, and/or your career plan.

7. Are you more ambitious than your team leader?

If you have a disconnect between your ambition and your Team Leader’s ambition, you might run into issues in the future. However, if you feel you can see beyond your own ambitions, and learn as much as possible from your Team Leader, new opportunities may also present themselves later.

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Firefox Addons are extensions for the Firefox web browser from Mozilla.  Firefox Addons make Firefox better, they make other websites and web applications better, and they make web tasks a lot easier.  Here are the top 12 Firefox Addons that I use on a daily basis.

Note: these are all free to install and use. Many of these Firefox Addons take donations, so consider supporting the people who have developed them.

Personal Productivity

1. Remember the Milk for Gmail -  An extension that makes Remember the Milk even better by integrating your tasks right in Gmail.  Expect a full review of Remember the Milk in an upcoming post.

2. Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures – Fills the biggest void in Gmail (Google’s email application), by allowing you to create multiple email signatures for one account.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

3. RankChecker – Simple tool to check where you show up in Google, Yahoo!, and Live.com search results.  Enter a URL and keywords, and RankChecker will tell you where the URL shows up in each search engine’s results for each keyword.

4. Live HTTP Headers – A more technical SEO tool which helps you determine what’s going on between the server and web browser when a web page loads.  Helpful for troubleshooting URL redirection too.

5. SeoQuake - Provides a toolbar of SEO data, as well as data directly in search results while you are using sites like Google.  SEO data includes lots of information about scores, ranks, links, keyword density, and other SEO factors.

6. Web Developer Toolbar – All-ini-one toolbar of information about a web page.  Allows you to turn off and turn on different things in the browser to see how a web page looks (i.e. turn off images and cascading style sheets (CSS), and see how a page looks to a search engine spider).

Social Networking

7. Digg Firefox Extension – Creates a top level menu item (between “Tools” and “Help”) in Firefox that gives you quick access to Digg a web page you are viewing.  Also reports on how many Diggs the current web page you are viewing has.

8. Delicious Bookmarks - Integrates a bookmarking function into Firefox, as well as easy access to all of your tagged bookmarks.  If you haven’t centralized your bookmarks in Delicious yet, you are missing out!

9. StumbleUpon - Adds a toolbar to Firefox that let’s you interact with the StumbleUpon website: you can “stumble” sites for topics you are interested in (i.e. click a button and a new website is shown in that topic), access your profile, give previously stumbled sites a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, etc.

Blogging and Web Development

10. ColorZilla - Adds an “eyedropper” color picker tool to Firefox – use it to detect the color of any element on a webpage.  Simply hover over the element (image, border, etc.), and click the eyedropper to get the hex value for the web color.

11. CoLT - Capture a link text and the link at the same time, as HTML or plain text.  Adds options to the menu you see when you right-click on a link.

12. ScreenGrab - A powerful screen capture tool – see something online you want to remember?  Use ScreenGrab to take a picture of it, save it to your clipboard (or as an image file) and paste it into another program or save it in a folder for later use.

BONUS FIREFOX ADDON #13: FireFTP - Simple, fast, easy to use FTP program for Firefox.  No need to use a separate FTP program to transfer files between computers and web servers anymore!

Did I miss a Firefox Addon that you love?  Leave a comment!

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Note from Regis: This is Part III of a three-part interview with Mark Stevens, best-selling author of Your Marketing Sucks, Your Management Sucks, and God is a Salesman. Mark is also CEO of MSCO, a results-driven management and marketing firm.  This is the second interview in Dot Connector’s Leadership Skills interview series.  Read Part I here. Read Part II here.

Regis: Why is it so difficult for many marketers to understand that advertising and marketing is suppose to drive sales?

Mark Stevens: A lot of people just don’t “do marketing.” First of all, a lot of them don’t know what marketing means unless they go into advertising.  They go into it because they think it’s creative.  Finance is ugly, marketing is creative.  That is what they think.  Actually finance is extremely creative i.e. the mortgage, the lease, etc.

Regis: Exactly! I have a finance degree so I couldn’t agree more (laughs).

Mark Stevens: But there tends to be the feeling that marketing is creative, so “creative” means: “I should be able to do creative things. What does that have to do with commerce?”

It’s really amazing – you get people who think a marketer can be a creative person, yet most people who go into marketing really don’t like business.

That is the thing: they really don’t like business.  They don’t consider themselves business people, they consider themselves creative people.  They say “don’t weigh me down with those financials, I don’t want to see a spreadsheet.  I don’t want to know about it.  And, I don’t ever want to talk to a sales person because a sales person is a low life.”

They think a sales person is a low life.  I mean that is what they think!  That is so obnoxious to me.

- Mark Stevens

You get CMOs who have no connection to the sales force.  “We’re the Marketing Department.   The sales morons go out there and sell the shit and we tell them how to sell it.”  It’s terrible!

Great sales forces – and there have been some in this country’s history – founded the great companies:

• When IBM was in the early days of selling hardware, it had an amazing sales force.
• When Xerox was a truly great company, they required that its sales people fly first class, because they called them the “Princes of the company.”  It was a rule.  It was a rule!  Why? Because they’re the “Princes of the company.”

So that is what I think it is Regis. They say “I am not in business! Don’t bother me with finance guys like Regis, because he is an ugly finance guy.  He is not ‘creative.’ Why would I need to know anything else as long as I am creating cute campaigns?”

Regis: It’s interesting to go back to what you were saying earlier about business school.  Do you think that maybe the way business schools segment paths for being in “business” is the tipping point (for this thinking)?  Because you have to pick:  Accounting? “Oh no, that’s really dry I don’t want to do that.”  Finance? “No that is scary and ugly.”  Management? “Well, I am not really sure what that means.”  Marketing? “Oh, that’s creative and cool, I will do that!”

Mark Stevens: Absolutely. I think that is a big part of it.  Unless you came to school with a mindset that told you you wanted to be an engineer, or doctor, or in finance.  The menu of choices if, you came (to college) uncertain, drives you towards the less, it drives you toward what people can view as “gut” (must-have) courses and those with more “creative elbow room” etc.

I just think that business school, for the most part, is counterproductive for most people.  It just keeps you out of the workplace longer…where you really learn.  You know you learned a lot more when you started working than you ever learned in school.

Regis: Oh, absolutely.

Mark Stevens: Now in finance, you certainly have to have the building blocks.  But then again, Carl Ichan never took a business class in his life.  One of the first things he did when he got out of undergraduate school was to create the first options exchange.  There was no options exchange and he did it by himself.

I am a big believer in — and you do it through your blog and your relationships and your thinking about unconventional stuff — the idea that people of like minds are continuing through a liberal arts education their whole life.  And in a liberal arts education, you are exposed to Newton and Niche, to the Rolling Stones, and to every possible piece of information.

You never know where your idea will come from that will be the thing that will drive you.

- Mark Stevens

I am writing music right now, popular music. I am working with a composer. It’s amazing to be doing this now because when you write music, you have to be in absolute tandem with the person who is writing the music.  You have to weave and knead your art together.  I write lyrics and he writes the music. But they can’t sit apart, they have to be making love at every single moment.

Yesterday, I had a song that came into my mind.  You see, I write everything out, including my books, in my Blackberry.  So, a flash came to me and I wrote another song.  One [song] I had already written and it was in the can.  The second one is written and being composed now.  But, I had a flash from nowhere and I wrote the third song in ten minutes.  I know it’s a really good song, but I will learn from that song.  I had an idea that “God’s a salesman.” So I write a book.  Where the hell did that come from?  It’s a complete learning process.

The great things come to you out of nowhere and come to you really fast.

- Mark Stevens

By doing something new, like writing music for me, it opens up a whole new card of thought or action that I know I will apply on many different ways beyond just music.

Now, the proudest moment I have in my life is when I was in a restaurant in Greenwich, CT.  I asked if they would play my song while everyone was eating.  They played it, and I watched people listen to my music.  It was just…I can’t explain the joy of that.  You have to do it.  You never can hear people reading your books, although I love to hear people who have read the books and are using it in their companies.  Watching people listen to you music, and not even knowing you’re there…god it’s great!

Regis: That’s fantastic.  One question about social media.  In general, social media or social networking is in its infancy.  A lot of companies are trying to figure social networking/social media out as a marketing channel.  Some companies are “touching the stove” and getting burned.  Some are figuring out how to leverage it successfully.  Do you think social networking is at the point that it can be a profitable marketing channel in an integrated plan (like a “Your Marketing Sucks”-style plan) or do you feel like it’s something that is still too unproven?

Mark Stevens: No, I think you can definitely look at it as a profitable channel.  A successful social network that gets enough of a following is an extremely viable business model because of two things: traffic, but more important than traffic, intimacy.

So in a social network, if it is a successful one, you belong to something.  It’s almost like an affinity group.  The two largest affinity groups in the United States are AARP and the Catholic Church.  A social network will come along that will be bigger than both of them.  One of them may be already [bigger], I don’t know what the numbers are now.  So I think that absolutely can be [a viable marketing channel], it’s just a new way.

You told me you reached for questions for this interview on LinkedIn.  What social media does is so interesting because it takes a lot of the old behavior models and makes them unnecessary.  A lot of people never wanted to network, because they would have to show up and talk to people.  Now, you don’t have to be outgoing; you don’t have to work a room. So the people who used to be successful in networking, the guys that could “work a room” probably aren’t successful in working LinkedIn.  It’s a different mindset. It just changes everything.

From a financial perspective I think that the true profitability is yet to come but God, they are just like gigantic networks with intimacy.  Nobody feels intimate with NBC.  But people feel intimate with their various circles in Myspace, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc.  So I think that adds a very important component to the equation and that can be leveraged.

This concludes the interview with Mark Stevens.  If you haven’t already, be sure to check out Part I and Part II.

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Note from Regis: This is Part II of a three-part interview with Mark Stevens, best-selling author of Your Marketing Sucks, Your Management Sucks, and God is a Salesman. Mark is also CEO of MSCO, a results-driven management and marketing firm.  This is the second interview in Dot Connector’s Leadership Skills interview series.  Read Part I here.

Regis: Are there two or three leaders who have consistently challenged you and your thinking?

Mark Stevens:

My Dad. He was a salesman.  He always told me not to believe anything anybody tells me, just because they are telling me.  And, [he taught me] to stop and say “well now, is that actually true?”

He taught me that the higher up the totem pole the person is, in terms of power and authority, the more likely we are to believe at face value what they have to say.

- Mark Stevens

That is really where he would turn on the skepticism jets: he’d say “wait a minute, you are believing that person simply because they have the titled of Senior Vice President or Czar of the Americas?” Ask yourself Mark, “does that really make sense to you? And, what is his or her reason for saying it?”  He taught me that.

Carl Icahn. I’ve spent a lot of time with Carl Icahn.  He never took a business course in his life, and yet he is the smartest guy I have ever met.  I have met a lot of really smart, successful people that we have worked with at MSCO.  Carl was the smartest.

Instead of looking at business through the eyes of famous business leaders – Carl was a chess champion at Princeton and a Philosophy major – he looks at business through the eyes of a chess player, and through the eyes of the great philosophers. We would be talking, and I would ask him a question about some deal he was working on, and he would say, “this is what Socrates would say in this case.”  He never said, “this is what Alfred Sloan would say.”

So, I learned and understood that greatness often comes from looking at things through a prism, your own kind of prism.  Carl looks at life through the chess / philosophy prism.

- Mark Stevens

I think the reason that Carl wins so often is because he was used to making eleven moves in advance.  The average CEO he goes after now, even somebody as smart as Jerry Yang [CEO of Yahoo!], thinks two or three moves ahead, four maybe.  When you are a competitor, Carl is thinking eleven moves ahead.  He is always going to win.

I gave a speech in Berlin this past October.  Every year, Siemens invites 180 of the most important CEOs in the world to Berlin for something they call Ascent, which is the premiere CEO conference in the world.  After I spoke, we all went on a boat ride and to dinner at this unusual warehouse that was turned into a restaurant.  The former world chess champion, Vladimir Kramnik, was talking and he said “You know, when I was going up the ranks of Grand Master, in the middle of a match I used to – and I would plan this – I would make a really stupid move on purpose, and it would completely throw off my opponent.  I had to already have my plan for extracting myself from the problem I created for myself, but the [opponent] would be so stunned, that it would throw him back on his heels.”  He used this as his strategy for becoming the champion of the world.  I found that to be fascinating.

So, Carl taught me that look at things through the prism that you really find helpful, not the common one, necessarily.

Sir Issac Newton. There are two things that Newton taught me.  He didn’t mean it for business, but he said, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction [and a body in motion stays in motion].

For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction.

You know,  on your job Reg – and anybody else that reads this interview – someone is going to have a great day, one day next week, or the week after.  They are going to sign a big deal, they are going to have a promotion, something is going to be great.  I always say to my clients, my team members at MSCO, and my sons.  Watch out for Newton!  I don’t want to damper your spirits today, but Newton’s coming.

A body in motion stays in motion.

Leaders are driven.  They don’t look for balance.  They stay in motion.  They are not liked by the lowest common denominator.  You can’t stop them.  You can’t pin them down.  You can chop their legs off, and they will crawl through the ground.  They are not stopping.

A body at rest, does it stay at rest?  You know some people like that in your job, and I know them too.  You can’t rouse them.  Nothing will rouse them because they don’t have the drive.  You can’t rely on them to forge any of your projects, because they won’t carry the ball.  I don’t wish them ill will.  But, you have know that as you figure out your own success equations and who will actually support you in any project, or dream, or passion that you have.

We only have one life Reg, one life, one life – and we should strive to achieve something significant in it.  We should have somebody look back and say, “I learned something from that guy or that women.”  He or she left a stamp – something that changed people’s thinking.  Something that changed the way they do business.  Something that changed the way they do parenting.  Something!

Just don’t go through this life from cradle to grave going to work, going through the motions, watching television, eating a piece of pie, and going to sleep.

- Mark Stevens

And that is what most people do.  Sorry to say, but that is what it is.

Regis: I couldn’t agree more.  And I think that drive is what separates leaders from people who do not want to lead.  Do you feel like there are ways to bring people across that gap?  Can that be learned?

Mark Stevens: No, you can’t learn passion.  It’s impossible.  There is a way to bring them across the gap, and that is a leader.  A leader inspires.  People who do not have the DNA to be driven will ‘take the hill’ when inspired by a leader. They will never do it on their own.  They will say “that’s a nice hill.”  They will never do it on their own.  That’s exactly what a leader does, that’s a great question, because our whole conversation boils down to that.

A great leader, without threats and without bribes, gets people who are not driven on their own to effectively accomplish a mission.

- Mark Stevens

That is what a leader does, and [the people being lead] feel good about because they did it effectively.  They never would have taken the hill on their own.  They would have looked at the hill.  They would have sat on the bench, with a sandwich, looking at the hill.  But the leader is so dynamic, and because he or she wants to take the hill, that they want to go take it.

Great leaders don’t have to pay people lots of money.  People should be rewarded for what they do, but when you are working with a poor leader, you want to get paid a lot because it’s the only reward you have.  When you are in the company of somebody amazing, the amount of pay you get becomes minimally important.

You see great actors and actresses that want to work in Woody Allen movies and Robert Altman movies – and they’ll take tiny paychecks – because they want to be with a leader.

- Mark Stevens

If they are making some dumb-ass movie, the check can’t be big enough.  You do not have to bribe people or threaten people if you are a leader.  If you bribe or threaten them, It doesn’t really work anyway.

It’s so magically wonderful to watch a leader work.  I believe in things that are greater than some of their parts, so you start to go into another dimension when somebody is a great leader.  And people want to – for some mystical, chemical, magical reason – want to do something with that person, and that’s extraordinary.

Stay tuned for more from Mark Stevens: In Part III, you’ll learn why there is a disconnect between Marketing and Sales, and Mark’s thoughts on Social Media Marketing.

If you enjoyed this post, get free Dot Connector updates by email or RSS.

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

- Albert Einstein

Note from Regis: This is the second interview in Dot Connector’s Leadership Skills interview series. My goal is to bring you people who exemplify leadership skills needed for success.  Read Part II of this interview here.

Today’s interview is with Mark Stevens, best-selling author of Your Marketing Sucks, Your Management Sucks, and God is a Salesman. Mark is also CEO of MSCO, a results-driven management and marketing firm, and a popular media commentator on marketing, branding, management and sales. Mark is known for delivering business insights with blunt truths and unconventional wisdom.

In this interview, you’ll hear Mark’s thoughts on the rules of unconventional thinking and leadership, and how you can apply them to your own life.

Regis: We’re going to talk a lot today about the rules of unconventional thinking and following them as a leader. What does that mean to you?

Mark Stevens: I have divided life into two parts: I don’t want to follow anyone’s rules about anything, but I want to follow the law. So, the only place that I will follow a formula is to make sure that everything I am doing is legal. However, I don’t believe any single law imposed by convention.

When you live your life that way, you constantly find things that you are living your life by convention. I stop in my tracks and I say, “Whoa, you are doing this for what reason Mark?” And I realize that I am doing it because convention imposed it upon me at a certain point of my life. I started to follow it as if it was legal, or as if it was the only way you could do something.

Convention, from a leader standpoint, is so filled with horrible nonsense that can destroy leadership and destroy full enjoyment of a career and a life.

- Mark Stevens

For example, convention says that you have to have a balanced life: there has to be work, and there has to be play. I think they are intermingled. I don’t believe in that balance sheet. I believe if you have true passion for what you do, it’s all wrapped into one great, exciting, exhilarating ball. I don’t believe in putting down your mind in a corner over here, and putting it back on again Monday morning.

If you ask a million people, “Do you believe in a balanced life?” They say, “oh absolutely, you have to have a balanced life.” I don’t know what the hell balanced means! Then sometimes people will say “Well, you’re a workaholic.” People say “Oh no, I don’t want to be a workaholic.”

Well, what if I want to be a workaholic? What does that word workaholic mean? If I do what I love to do all the time, does that mean I am a workaholic? I am not hurting anybody. I am not driving out of control. I’m not hurting my body, which I have a right to do if I want to. These terms get applied to us. You know why they get applied to us? It’s because the lowest common denominator of people – who have the least drive, the least ambition, and the least determination to be successful – want us all at their level. So they invent these terms to keep us at their level.

It’s about not being a follower, not following convention, and not accepting the terminology of the lowest common denominator. If ask most managers, do you believe in this (idea), they’ll say I want to build a “consensus” around this. Well, I hate that word. I don’t understand what it means. Why do you have to build a consensus around it? I can’t imagine.

The metaphor I always use is, Steve Jobs wakes up in the middle of the night and says ‘I want to create an iPhone. But, let me go to the office first and see if I can build a consensus around it.’ I mean, no!

- Mark Stevens

A leader finds out something, and he or she goes back to the office and tries to bring his or her team into the mission – and certainly listens to feedback from others. But at the end of the day, every single person in the company, or the family, or whatever it is, says “that’s a bad idea I wouldn’t do that,” the leader does it (because he/she knows it’s the right idea).

During World War II, right after Pearl Harbor, FDR was advised to mount the US war against the axis powers based on sea power. The naval forces, and most of the military establishment, put a tremendous pressure on him to mount the power war, based on sea power and ground troops.

Then, a few small voices in the wilderness said “Make it air, make it air, make it air.” We had about fifty planes, I think. I am not exaggerating. It was very few. The US Air Force was tiny. The US Army was tiny. We had almost no Air Force. And then he said “No, I am going to go against the grain. I am going to build the greatest Air Force in the world. I am going to command the skies.” And that was the secret to our winning. Everybody in the Pentagon was completely against his decision, but he was the leader. So the popularity contest argument, which I hear all the time: “people don’t like it,” “I have to get buy in,” and blah blah blah blah. I hate that stuff. That is not a leader.

Regis: I couldn’t agree more. When we talk about leadership, we talk about different styles of leaders: the “quiet but strong” leader, the “authoritative” leader, the “leader that leads by example.” Is there a common thread you see between all of those types that qualifies someone as being an unconventional leader?

Mark Stevens: I think one common thread which you never read about in Harvard Business School, which by the way, I think teaches you all of the wrong things. I think it’s the best place to get most ill-prepared for a business career. If you want to use it for a network thing, fine, but it teaches you all the wrong things. You get taught by people who have never done business. I know the usual B.S. that these guys used to be, used to be, used to be, blah, blah, blah. But they’re not. They are not in the war. They are not in the game. They are sitting someplace teaching you something they have never done. They haven’t done for years and they were not very successful.

When one of my sons – he is on Wall Street now – when he went to Cornell as a finance major, his first finance professor the first day of class said to him, “I am your finance professor. I am not very good. If I was really good, I wouldn’t be here.” He turned out to be one of the three professors that my son truly enjoyed at Cornell. The guy was sensing all the B.S. and coming clean. He went on from there to be quite an interesting guy. I love that story.

Coming back to your question, one thing that I think is a common thread is that leaders don’t care what anybody else thinks of them. And that is a very hard place to get. I have people working at MSCO who come on, and I say, “that person over there, that girl or that guy has the potential to go all the way.” I really mentor them heavily. I invest in them. Because I say “They could be great, they could be creative, innovative, they could make something new happen in the world.” Then it turns out so often that their trajectory is cut short: not because they don’t have the intellectual fire power, and not because they don’t have the creativity, but because they are afraid of what other people think of them:

• They are afraid of what their fellow team members will think: “Oh, you are getting ahead of us” or “Oh, you think you are so important now.” You have to think you are important if you are a leader!
• In their personal lives, one of the people that want to hold them back says to them, “You are a workaholic.” (coming around to our theme before of “there isn’t enough balance in your life”)…and so they say, “Oh, I don’t want to be unpopular with my friends, and perceived as working too hard and being a workaholic, so I will pull back.”

I really don’t care what people think about me. I mean, I want my friends and my family to know that I am sensitive to them and love them. I want the people that I work with at my company and my clients to believe and know that I have their best interest at heart: that I will put out for them way beyond the traditional business relationship. But I don’t care if they don’t like me. I tell them what my political stance is. I tell them what I think of things. People say “You don’t say that to people in business.” But I do, I don’t care. Take me as I am or don’t take me.

Regis: Right, leadership is about having a lack of fear. I think you hear it a lot of time even in people’s vocabulary. You hear people talking about ideas, and they say “well, my fear is that…” and I just want to say “don’t be afraid, just try it!”

Mark Stevens: Exactly. I have young people say to me all the time. “Well, I can’t really express my opinion because I am young and the senior people in the company won’t like what I have to say.”

My answer to that is that with every success in life comes risk. It’s impossible to achieve success without risk. One of the risks you will have to take, whatever age you are, whatever business you are in, is that the people that you work with won’t like what you are saying.

- Mark Stevens

If they won’t give you a chance to strive because they don’t like your opinion or your forthrightness, you have to leave. Not tomorrow: I understand that there are economic realities, but you have to start to pave the way to go. You can’t tell me thirty years later that you have wasted your life in a company that has decided that it wants to have you be a person without a voice.

Regis: Well, that is exactly it. If I think about Quicken Loans, mortgages aren’t sexy, but the environment of being able to try ideas and not be afraid is what gets me up every day.

Mark Stevens: Every business is exciting and every business is the same. There is nothing more or less exciting about Quicken Loans mortgages than there is about creating chips at Intel. Because at the end of the day you can be creative in any business.

I always say that if I do one more business, because I have done a lot of businesses in my life, if I do one more business I want to do a manure company. I want to turn that into a cool kind of manure. I want to take the greatest frowned-upon commodity and make into something special.

- Mark Stevens

We had a client some years ago that sold asphalt. Now, asphalt at that time was selling for $9.00 a ton. Contractors would pull up their trucks and they would fill up their truck with asphalt and they would pay $9 a ton. What are you going to do to increase the margin of a business like that? How could you take a business like that and make it sexy?

Well, we actually worked with the company to create different strings of asphalt. One which was environmentally friendly and one which melted snow very quickly. So, we sold the second one to schools and places that where very sensitive to safety. And we sold the other one to early movers in the green movement. That asphalt sells for $50/ton and $60/ton. That gave me greater satisfaction than representing some of the “cooler” companies that we have worked for over the years.

I think that every business is immensely exciting and enjoyable. The mortgage to me is one of the great inventions in history and people take it for granted! The mortgage was an invention. We all think now that it came through divine intervention, that there was always a mortgage. But there wasn’t.

Some smart financial guy says ‘Wait a minute, okay there’s a house over there. Regis wants the house but he doesn’t have the cash for it. I will create this thing called a mortgage. Since I create this thing, Regis can move into that house that he cannot afford right now.’ What a genius thing that is!

- Mark Stevens

Regis: I love that! You are right on.

Mark Stevens: It was an act of genius that changed the world. Now we all think “Oh there were always mortgages.” But no. Somebody said “I have to find a way to get people to be able to have this thing that they could not have.”

Now, it’s interesting how the pendulum has swung and we took it too far. I have a new book coming out this fall called “Rich is a Religion.” One of the things it talks about is how people, started to say, “You know what? I will now use the industry to buy something I can not at all afford.” I don’t blame the mortgage crisis on anybody but people’s lack of discipline.

But let’s stop and realize that the industry you work in is one founded by an act of genius, that is waiting for the next act of genius.

- Mark Stevens

So what’s next best mortgage, what’s the next new mortgage idea? How can I move into a house and never pay any money and when I die my kids will pay for it? Now I don’t know what it will be, but that is where the beauty is!

Regis: The mortgage industry is in crisis. The Automotive industry is another that is having a really hard time right now. Jobs are cut, benefits are being peeled away, and salaries are frozen. Do you have advice specifically for leaders who are trying to challenge conventional thinking in these industries? When their team is under so much stress, how do you challenge thinking, inspire them, develop them, and challenge them during a crisis?

Mark Stevens: Well, let’s take the automotive industry. I have strong feelings about the US automotive industry in particular.

Here’s what I would do if I was appointed CEO of GM tomorrow, which is something I would like. I wouldn’t like to do it for the rest of my life, but I would like to do it only because I believe I know the path to success:

• The way I would demonstrate my leadership is gather everyone around virtually and actually. Obviously, It’s too big to bring everyone together all at once. But I would hold town hall meetings across the country. I would bring one of the GM cars with me and I would put it down in Yankee stadium, which I would rent and put all of the GM workers into the stadium and talk with them.

• I would say “This is our Pontiac, Chevy, whatever car, Malibu…. This car is a piece of junk. What do I mean by that? Let me show you the fit and finish of this car.” and I would run my hand across and say…“Can I get somebody in the bleachers to come down with me. Okay, you do it with me…run your hand along the side of the car where the trunk lid touches the body of the car. See how there is too much space there and where water could get it? This is called the fit and finish, you all know that. We don’t do a good job on that. Now I am going to show you a Toyota, which I brought with me also and show you the difference. Now there is absolutely nothing complex about making fit and finish it’s just a matter of caring, it’s a matter of doing it right.”

• I am starting off by telling all of you, as one of your team members, that we do a terrible job. The world hasn’t been cruel to us, we have been cruel to ourselves. The basic thing of fit and finish, there is nothing sophisticated, no sophisticated technology anything, just caring enough to make the component parts line up right, we don’t do. So we don’t deserve to be successful.

• So starting tomorrow, I am going to join the assembly line. I am going to work a week in this one, a week in this one, and I will stop everyday at 1:00 so I can do my CEO duties but I want to be part of the fix.

The reason I say this Regis is for a number of reasons.

1. All these beleaguered industries have been beleaguered in part because management is stuck itself into a bunker and said: “the world is unfair to us, we are fine, they are wrong, we are right and we don’t want to hear anything.” So, I would go out by admitting to my team we deserve this, but now we will go back together and fix it.
2. I think a great leader can’t fight the war from the rear guard. They have to go out in front. So I will work on the assembly line and I will figure out why we don’t have good fit and finish as a starting point, cause it’s a very easy thing to fix.
3. I think that coming clean – admitting mistakes – is a very big part of leading. We all respect that so much! Whether you liked Ronald Regan or not, the country was down on itself and he came in and said “We shouldn’t be down on ourselves. We should be proud of ourselves. We should be proud to be Americans. We have always been a proud nation, so we are going to be proud again.”

Going back to FDR, when he became President during the Great Depression, he said “I am going to ride around this country – a man with polio – but you’re not going to see that, you’re going to see me defiantly smoking a cigarette through a cigarette holder and wearing a cape…and I am telling you better days are here again. “

People don’t know this, but in one of FDR’s first fireside chats, after he had closed the banks, when he reopened them he said “okay I want you to start bringing your money back to the banks.” Now, we never lived in a time when you had to worry about the banks. Neither you nor I. Why would you bring your money to a bank if you were afraid it could go into a black hole? You wouldn’t! But if you look at the newsreels, people listened to Roosevelt, and they started to bring their money back. That was a tremendous sign of confidence in a leader.

So you admit it, and you act. Closing the banks was an act of leadership. You act, you don’t act beleaguered, you act like you are confident, which you are, and you back it up with your actions.

Stay tuned for more from Mark Stevens: In Part II, you’ll learn who has challenged Mark’s thinking, and what separates leaders from those who don’t want to lead. In Part III, you’ll learn why there is a “disconnect” between Marketing and Sales, and Mark’s thoughts on Social Media Marketing.

If you enjoyed this post, get free Dot Connector updates by email or RSS.

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

- Thomas Edison

Are you “freaked out” by the current recession? Do you let that constantly put you in a state of stress and anxiety, or do you use it to find new opportunities?

Taking a look at recession history, we learn that: according to economists, since 1854, the US has encountered 32 cycles of expansions and contractions, with an average of 17 months of contraction and 38 months of expansion. However, since 1980 there have been only eight periods of negative economic growth over one fiscal quarter or more, and three periods considered recessions.

A critical component to personal effectiveness is to constantly look at the situation you are in from a historical context. Once you have that context, you open your mind to new opportunities you previously would not have thought of.

Companies Started in a Recession

Check out this list of companies from recession history. Let this list inspire you to find opportunities to do something today that you are proud of!

1. GE
2. HP
3. Disney
4. Microsoft
5. method (soaps)
6. Cliff Bar

(Source: Fast Company)

There isn’t a single book in my library that has more dog-eared pages and highlighted phrases than Your Marketing Sucks, by Mark Stevens. If you believe that effective marketing is about making money, as I do, you need to read this book.

In this article, I’ll share my favorite ideas that you can use when developing your marketing plan, refreshing your marketing strategies, or improving the efficiency of your marketing mix – all directly from Your Marketing Sucks.

In Your Marketing Sucks, Mark Stevens discusses how to look at the money you spend in marketing as a direct investment with a direct return on investment (ROI). Referred to as extreme marketing, Stevens demands (and you should too) that every $1 you spend on marketing should bring back at least $1 in revenue.

What is “extreme marketing?”

Stevens says extreme marketing is “doing everything possible to guarantee that every marketing dollar you spend:

• Is set in a strategic context – meaning you know why you are spending it
• Is based on a plan constructed to make certain that every marketing tactic reinforces every other one (Regis says: think integration!)
• Brings back more than $1 in revenue”

The last point is the most important: for EVERY marketing dollar you spend, you need to know how much revenue it brings you.

Did you know? Brand marketers will generally tell you that you have to invest in the brand, and not think of things this way. That’s a cop-out for not thinking through how to quantify the impact of a brand campaign. Direct response marketers will generally tell you to only invest in marketing tactics where you can immediately track this metric. While ideal, that might not be true for everyone either.

Bottom-line: whatever situation or “marketing philosophy” you have, you HAVE to figure this out. It’s the way to bring accountability to your marketing, and really grow your business through it’s marketing efforts.

Extreme Marketing Plan:

In the section “How to Think About Extreme Marketing” Stevens outlines an excellent 7-step process…

1. Marketing is an integrated process (i.e. all of your marketing tactics – direct mail, website, pr, etc. – work TOGETHER to drive your business
2. Identify innovative initiatives that can command the attention in the marketplace
3. Integrate all of the elements of your marketing program
4. Stop all marketing tactics that do not produce a positive return on the money invested
5. Pick the low-hanging fruit (i.e. you don’t always have to invest more money to grow your business)
6. Don’t be linear (i.e. overlap marketing tactics for exponential returns)
7. Be persistent, relentless, inventive, counter-intuitive, challenging, combative, strategic, and tactical

You may have already guessed this, but #7 is my favorite step. Why? Because those are management tips, personal productivity tips, and marketing tips all in one – basically, they are how you should act every day as a leader!

What You Can Learn from Infomercials

Stevens has a great section on “Earning your infomercial MBA.” Now, before you cringe, think about it – some of the products we buy every day started as infomercials. And, who hasn’t stayed up late at least once in their life watching an infomercial on TV. They capture attention, they push the desire to buy, and they work for a lot of products.

The tips Stevens suggests in this section on infomercials can be applied to every marketing project:

1. Give your product a cool and compelling name
2. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words
3. Provide the appearance of exceptional value
4. Expose the viewer to testimonials
5. (Added by Regis…) Create a sense of urgency in your message

I add #5 because I think it’s another effective tactic you can use (How many times has a phrase like: “Hurry, this offer ends…” or “If you call right now…” caught your attention?). Remember the principles of selling and conversion: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action or AIDA.

Marketing Leadership

In one of my favorite sections of the book, Stevens outlines lazy marketing leadership and effective marketing leadership, as follows:

4 Mistakes of Marketing Leaders

1. Creating a budget first, and goals second (Regis says: i.e. how can you decide how much money to spend if you haven’t defined how it will generate revenue for the business?)
2. Being a one-day wonder (Regis says: i.e. beware of the big vision that is never actually executed)
3. Delegate (Regis says: i.e. you can’t delegate effectively without monitoring progress – trust but verify)
4. The gullibility factor (Regis says: i.e. you can’t let people talk you out of your revenue per marketing dollar approach)

4 Attributes of Effective Marketing Leadership

1. The ability to paint a picture of what the marketing will accomplish (Regis says: i.e. set and execute goals that tie marketing to sales/revenue)
2. The determination to monitor the logistics and measure the results (Regis says: i.e. you have to monitor the performance of every marketing tactic)
3. The staying power to remain committed throughout the course of the campaign (Regis says: i.e. leadership is about perseverance, and marketing leadership is no exception)
4. The willingness to create a tight alignment between the president’s office and the marketing campaign (Regis says: i.e. the leader of your company is the chief strategist and marketing has to be a natural, integrated extension of her strategy)

Even though this is a fairly long post, we are literally scratching the surface of the ideas in this book. Definitely check it out, and if you’re feeling bold – and hopefully you are – then, try the “Marketing Moratorium 7-Day Planner” on page 215!

Other “Your Marketing Sucks” references:

• Hear 2.0: “Your Marketing Sucks – an interview with Mark Stevens“
• Mark Steven’s Company’s Blog: “Unconventional Thinking Blog“

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If I want to be as successful as I want to be, I have to be thinking about it all the time.

- Michael Phelps

Here’s the next post in my Blackberry Help series. Today we’ll focus on some of my favorite ways to edit text on a Blackberry.

Did you know? You may be relying on time-consuming menu options more than you need to when working with text on your Blackberry? By using some of these Blackberry tips for editing text, you can speed up the way you create emails and other content on your Blackberry.

Selecting Text

• Press shift once and then roll the trackwheel/trackball to select a line, or multiple lines, of text.
• Press and hold shift and roll the trackwheel to select text character by character. If you use a trackball, you can simply use #1 above and select the text character by character.

Cut, Copy and Paste Text

• When editing text, Shift + Del (the delete key) cuts text.
• Press Alt and click the trackwheel/trackball to copy text.
• Shift and click the trackwheel/trackball to paste text.

Shortcuts for Typing Text

• To insert the at sign (@) and period in an email address, press the Space bar for each when entering the email address.
• To capitalize a letter, simply hold the letter until the capitalized letter appears.
• In a number field (like a phone number field), just press the number keys to enter numbers. You do not need to press the Alt key to enter numbers, like you would in the body of an email.

If you have a favorite Blackberry tip for editing text, please feel free to share it in the comments!

Other Blackberry Help posts from Dot Connector:

• 6 Blackberry Tips for Reading Emails
• 5 Useful Blackberry Tips and Tricks to Boost Your Productivity

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The years teach much which the days never knew.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do you like to learn the management styles of successful people? I find them incredibly interesting as well as a good reminder of core management tips and tricks.

In this article, learn about Barack Obama’s management style, via excepts from the Fortune article these tips were drawn from. Also, see my interpretations and opinions on how these management tips can apply to you.

Note: These management tips were reported in the “How Obama Manages” section by Jia Lynn Yang in the July 7, 2008 issue of Fortune Magazine. To order a copy of this issue, please click here.

Management Tip #1: No Drama

Excerpt from the Fortune article: When Barack Obama was selecting his closest advisors, he told each person he wanted zero drama-meaning no backstabbing, damaging media leaks or anything that would detract from the campaign.

Dot Connector’s opinion on this:

• Ask yourself, do you create drama or avoid it? You can get a lot done as a team member and as a leader by ignoring drama and actively working to reduce it. How? Use metrics (i.e. reportable numbers) in your work to completely dissolve “arguments of opinion.” Build effective work relationships. If you’re a leader, then lead without surprises.

Management Tip #2: Praise those who don’t expect it

Excerpt from the Fortune article: Obama emphasized his grassroots approach by bringing organizers onto the stage as well.

Dot Connector’s opinion on this:

• Actively look at those around you. Who has done a great job, but maybe hasn’t been recognized?
• Perhaps there’s someone who just achieved a personal milestone, but something you’ve already done in your career. Take the time to notice them for it. You don’t have to do it as publicly as the example above – even dropping a simple card in their mailbox is a great way to praise those who don’t expect it.
• Another idea: when was the last time you recognized someone in a meeting for the work they have been doing?

Management Tip #3: Make every person in a meeting participate

Excerpt from the Fortune article: Like a tough law professor, Obama will call on staffers who haven’t spoken up.

Dot Connector’s opinion on this:

• Quite often, the best ideas are not spoken, and that’s a shame. Sometimes, the only way you can effectively engage people in a meeting is to call on them. Yes, there will be times that this will not work. The person will just go along with the flow of what was already said, or decline to comment. However, the best ideas are sometimes the ones that are most vigorously debated.
• Other times, you can have a moment of obvious clarity – a “duh” moment – just by reflecting on a random idea from someone in the meeting.
• Try this: for one day, conduct your day as if it’s your responsibility to get participation in meetings. You are the “host” of the “party” for that day – trying to connect people with different ideas around a common purpose. Reflect on what you learned at the end of the day – you might be surprised at what you are able to accomplish.

Management Tip #4: Establish a plan and stick to it

Excerpt from the Fortune article: National finance chairman Penny Pritzker said Obama decided he wanted to run the campaign like a disciplined business.

Dot Connector’s opinion on this:

• Especially in the Web Marketing world in which I work, plans change weekly, daily, sometimes hourly. However, having a bigger plan, and over-arching vision, dramatically improves your effectiveness.
• Anyone can get work done. Some of those can get work done well. However, it’s a rare person who can get effective work done.
• What is effective work? Work necessary to achieve your goals, your team’s goals, and your organization’s goals at the same time. If you have a bigger goal or plan, you’re much more likely to maintain focus and become effective at what you do.

Management Tip #5: Give feedback that’s clear, direct, and immediate

From the Fortune article: If he’s happy, you know it. If he prefers to do something different, you know it, says (Valerie) Jarrett (an Obama campaign advisor).

Dot Connector’s opinion on this:

• Adopt a new style immediately: let those that you work with know exactly what you know and exactly how you feel.
• This is especially true with leaders. Far too often, we have a tendency to hold back criticism or praise, fearing how the person will react. Delivering both quickly is one of the keys to being a successful leader – whether you lead people or projects.
• If you hold back criticism, you prevent the person from being able to grow and react to it. When you hold back praise, you limit the person’s feelings of self-worth. Remember: people rise to the expectations you set for them.

Management Tip #6: Allow new ideas to come from the bottom up

Excerpt from the Fortune article: The idea for Obama University, a unique training program for first-time fundraisers, came not from campaign leadership but from three supporters…

Dot Connector’s opinion on this:

• Do you truly allow new ideas to impact you? It’s very easy to bias ideas based on their source. Don’t do it!
• Keeping a dramatically open mind is a key to growth and productivity. Listen to your Clients, listen to your teammates, listen to your partners and vendors, and listen to anyone and everyone you come into contact with.
• Within every email, conversation, etc. that you have are ideas that can help you.

Management Tip #7: Genuinely listen to those who disagree with you

Excerpt from the Fortune article: He wants to see disagreements aired in front of him.

Dot Connector’s opinion on this:

• I recently had a disagreement with a teammate about how we were interacting with each other. I was forcing my point and forming an opinion about how this person was reacting to me.
• Then, after a talk with another teammate, I realized I hadn’t been doing myself what I had expected from this person. To say the least, it was a humbling experience, as I pride myself on treating others as I would like to be treated.
• If I hadn’t genuinely listened, and opened up my mind to being wrong, I never could have resolved the situation or learned from it. Bottom-line: be humble enough to be wrong.

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Please note: this blog post is not an endorsement for Barack Obama. It is simply sharing and building upon information in the “How Obama Manages” section by Jia Lynn Yang in the July 7, 2008 issue of Fortune Magazine.

With new work from home opportunities emerging every day, it’s possible to survive and thrive as a remote worker.

In this article, learn how a 3 year veteran of a work from home situation does it. Whether you work from home once a week or permanently, these answers to common questions and essential work from home tips and tricks will help you be more successful.

Work from Home – An Overview

My work from home experience has been a rewarding yet very tough challenge since day 1. If you’ve read the 4-Hour Workweek, you know that Tim Ferriss advocates a plan for transitioning your “day job” into a work from home arrangement. While this is doable in many situations, making your new work from home arrangement actually work is another. I’ve seen people try and fail to work from home. I’ve seen others succeed and grow. In this article, I’ll share how I do it. I hope that what I share here you can apply to your work from home situation, whatever it may be.

Did You Know? While some people scoff at working from home as all perks and no responsibility, it’s really just like anything else: it has it’s pros and cons, and doing work from home successfully is very hard work.

Over the past 3 years, I’ve worked very hard to make my work from home arrangement a happy, productive, and rewarding stage of my career. Successfully working from home in a fast-paced, high performance, results-oriented company like Quicken Loans is not easy. Yet over this time period, I’ve created new initiatives, lead a team of 8 and project teams of 75, worked with all sorts of Clients, managed external partnerships and lead several different high-profile projects all from central command: my home office.

Work from Home – FAQ

Here are answers to the five common work from home questions:

1. Is it realistic for me to think I could work remotely?

It depends. Are you really self-motivated or do you (consciously or unconsciously) rely on others to help direct your day, priorities, and projects? Can you handle being alone and only interacting via phone, email, and instant messaging (IM) for long periods of time? Are you open to changing your work habits to match the styles of the people you work with, even if it may be a minor inconvenience to you? Are you open to accepting criticism and changing your approach quickly? If you answer yes to these questions, then you can work from home! If not, you’d have to seriously consider whether or not you can make it. To work from home successfully you need to master lots of different communication techniques, be open to continuously improve yourself, practice extreme flexibility with those you work with, and hone your instincts about what is happening at the office that you cannot physically see.

2. My big concerns are about communication; is it possible to stay in the loop while remote?

Yes. However, it takes a multifaceted approach to stay in the loop. Since you are not physically in the office, you have to find other ways to have “physical presence,” the non-verbal factor that makes up 90% of communication. Without it, you have only the words you say and the tone you deliver it in (the other 10% of communication). Be sure to check out the Work from Home – 20 Tips and Tricks section below for ideas to overcome physical presence and be a great communicator.

3. What are the challenges of having good communication with your Clients and meeting their needs?

The single biggest challenge about working remotely is you miss out on the intangible conversations: passing someone in the hall, over hearing a project team talking, getting pulled into a conference room as you walk by, etc. It’s possible to recreate some (but not all) of these scenarios while remote, but it takes extreme flexibility in how and when you can be reached to make it happen. See the Work from Home – 20 Tips and Tricks below for more info.

4. Do you spend so much time on overcoming the communication hurdles that it negatively impacts your productivity?

No. If you are committed to it, the amount of productivity you can have when you work from home is extreme (even without working too many extra hours, which is very easy to do). In fact, I believe the skills you learn while working from home actually improve your productivity. You learn how to effectively manage your work, your team, your Client relationships, etc. without physical presence. These skills are useful and reusable whether you are working from home or not.

5. Would you recommend working remotely to someone else?

I definitely recommend work from home opportunities to other people, but only if you can honestly answer yes to the 4 questions in #1 above. Working from home can be a very rewarding experience for those who can make it work.

Work from Home – 20 Tips and Tricks

1. Start your day off right. Get up, have breakfast, take a shower, put on something other than pajamas, etc. – you get the idea. Remember, how you treat yourself on the outside reflects what you are thinking on the inside. Be good to yourself and it will show in your communications. Remember, when you work from home you only have your voice and tone, so everything you say and do will be scrutinized.

2. Create a dedicated work space with a door you can shut. You need a place where you do work that you can leave at the end of the day. To work from home successfully, you need to maintain a strong mental focus on what you do. You don’t want to have your work everywhere around your house, and you definitely want a door you can shut when needed.

3. Buy a headset with a good mute function. You want the headset so you can still have both hands-free while on the phone. A good mute function (i.e. it works, and others cannot tell when you switch mute on) will be an asset for you. It’s critical that your co-workers do not hear other noises in the background. That can disrupt important meetings and build resentment that you are at home.

4. Use a cordless phone. It’s hard to sit in the same spot in your house all day. Also, people who work from home generally work more (i.e. during times when others are commuting, etc.), so you need to be able to get up, stretch, do some things around the house, etc. A cordless phone, including a headset with a good mute function, is key.

5. Use two monitors with your computer. There are studies and articles that show adding a second monitor will boost your productivity 20-30%. It’s totally true. A second monitor is critical to anyone who wants to work from home.

6. Leverage a web cam. One of the things you can do to regain physical presence in your communications is use a web cam. A web cam plus an instant messaging tool allow others to see you and for you to see them. This is critical in building rapport and communication with others. I highly recommend at least your team (if you manage one) and the person you report to have web cams.

7. Partner with your Team Leader (i.e. who you report to, some people use the term “boss”). The person you report to is a critical component in your work from home success. You should meet with this person once per week via phone to review what you have accomplished in the previous week, and what you plan to accomplish next week. It’s also critical that you make yourself available to this person whenever necessary. If they are going to trust you to work from home, you have to be transparent and accessible to them.

8. Develop key relationships with your team. You need eyes and ears in the office because you don’t have them. If you have effective work relationships with team members, work with them to support you while you are remote. Calling team members just to check in (i.e. without a specific need) is a helpful way to do this.

9. Master your phone system and conferencing tools. Phone conversations, conference calls, and voice mails are three critical tools in your work from home toolbox. All three of these tools allow you to inject tone into your communications, something that is lacking in email and IM. Each of these scenarios is an opportunity to create memorable communication experiences with the people you work with. Most phone systems have additional, rarely used features (like scheduling voice mails) that you can leverage to your advantage. Be sure to check the Dot Connector 10 Tips to Improve Your Voicemails for other ideas to help you.

10. Master your instant messaging (IM) program. IM is a useful tool for communicating with folks quickly and orchestrating events in the office. Need someone to jump into a conference room to join a meeting? Use IM to coordinate that. Knowing the full capabilities of your IM program can help you leverage it effectively. Be careful, however, not to use acronyms and abbreviated words too frequently. Not everyone will know what you are saying, and when you work from home, you need to be a clear communicator, not a confusing one.

11. Master your email program. Email will be a lifeblood of your work at home expereince. However, it’s important to remember that if you “match the medium to the message” (i.e. email is not appropriate for every message) in your communications, there will be times to use email and times not to use it. Check out the Dot Connector Email Management Series to get control of your email.

12. Leverage a screen sharing program. There are several tools that let you share your screen with people in the office, and vice-versa. This is a crucial technique for participating in meetings, as you can follow the presentation slides on your screen or present your slides just like you were in the room. These tools also help you train others on how to use other tools, websites, etc. and vice-versa.

13. Go back to the office regularly. It’s up to you to define how frequently you need to revisit the office. Some folks go back twice a year, some every quarter, and some even go back monthly. It all depends on your unique situation. However, it’s critical that you do have face-to-face time with people you work with.

14. Be memorable when you are in the office. Be animated in discussions and meetings, walk around the room in key meetings, and volunteer to give presentations to large groups. The key is to create expereinces and situations where the people you work with will remember you when you are not there. Also, by doing this you create visuals in people’s minds that can augment your lack of presence in your communications when you work from home.

15. Go out to lunch. You need to leave the house. Going out to lunch is a great way to take a break, interact with other people, and refresh your mind for the afternoon. It is great to save money on lunch by eating at home, but forcing yourself to go out will help freshen your perspective.

16. Drive conversations. You have to tell your story, or someone will tell it for you. It’s critical that when you work from home, you make your point in discussions and meetings. People will forget that you are on the phone. They will talk over you and sometimes not hear what you say (especially if you are on speakerphone in a conference room full of people). Therefore, it’s critical that you are assertive in your speaking and focus on getting at least one major point/idea in each discussion.

17. Match the timezone of your co-workers and Clients. To make the transition to work from home easier, it’s important to match time timezone of your co-workers and Clients. For example, if they are primarily in the Eastern time zone, work and take breaks similar to business hours for Eastern time.

18. Stay organized. Staying organized is another key to successfully working from home. If you get too disorganized your productivity can drop exponentially, since you don’t have co-worker interactions to help change your attitude and boost your focus. Keeping accurate to-do lists and a strong mental focus can help you stay focused and organized.

19. Send hand-written cards to people. Not only is this a great thing to do in general, but for people who work from home it’s a critical tool. This is another way to make up for your lack of presence in the office and make yourself memorable to your co-workers and Clients. When you work from home, it can be easy to slip into “doing mode” and forget the intangible communication tools you would use if you were in the office: asking how people are doing before you “talk business,” saying thank you when someone does something for you, and reaching out to people just to see how they are.

20. Match your sense of urgency to your co-workers and Clients. It’s very easy to be “over urgent” when working from home. Issues sometimes seem bigger than they are. Sometimes it seems you are getting inundated with co-worker communications. Your workload can seem insurmountable. When you get these feelings, it’s time to get orgnanized, reprioritize your work, take a break, and have a discussion with someone in the office to get a sense of the “vibe” there.

Bonus Tip #21. Create a virtual “stop by to chat” scenario. If you lead a team remotely, one of the hardest things to recreate is being able to have your team stop by to chat. To solve this, call into a conference line at the same time every day (say, at 3pm for an hour). Then, let your team know they can reach you at that time. This will help create a “stop by” and chat opportunity while you work from home.

Work from Home – Additional Reading

• Top 30 Tips for Staying Productive and Sane While Working From Home from Zen Habits
• How to be Productive Working from Home from To-Done!
• The “Work from Home” Generation from Read Write Web
• Walking the Line When You Work from Home from A List Apart

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