success

In an hour, team USA will take the field in a match against Algeria at this year’s World Cup.

In their first two matches they gave up a goal right away, and in their second match they headed into halftime down 2-0 against Slovenia. They adjusted in the second half, tied the match up, and would have gone ahead 3-2 if a ref hadn’t made a bad call on a corner kick.

What adjustments did they make? Not much: the one thing they did was play in attack mode. They were aggressive. It made Slovenia uncomfortable and they took the match over.

Considering a win today almost guarantees they’ll advance to the round of 16, we all would think team USA will come out in attack mode.

We face this same scenario every day in our lives. Are we playing to our strengths as much as possible? When we do amazing things can happen. When we don’t we sit back and wonder what could have been.

Play to your strengths, USA. Attack and put pressure on Algeria. Keep it up and who knows how deep you could make it in this year’s Cup!

In my previous post I laid out a system to define incentives. The question still needs to be asked: when should I offer incentives?

To answer that you'll have to ask more questions. The biggest: How will offering this incentive affect my employees and the business? Think of the positive and negative effects. Sometimes the negative outweighs any gains you might get.

Another big question: What do my employees want as an incentive? This does not get asked enough. Money is not always the answer! The most fun incentive I ever had was a competition I had with my first sales manager. Whichever one of us went farther above what was expected of us in terms of cold calls and appointments would get lunch at a restaurant compliments of that month's loser.

One last major question to answer: how will this affect anyone who doesn't have an incentive? Team Go For The Bonus might be surrounded by Coworkers Willing To Sabotage Everything. If you have to explain the bonuses and how people were chosen, do so. Let everyone know what's going on and why.Read more

In reply to my post on employees, management, and communication going up and down a company hierarchy, Mike asked me about compensation and incentives:

"It seems to me that if Management expects certain Actions from Employees, they should create a incentive structure that rewards Employees for doing the Actions. "

I've heard and been part of numerous debates on the good and bad of pure hourly/salary compensation and offering incentives and bonuses based on performance. Incentives make sense if you can have the following happen:

1) Make sure the incentives are tied to something measurable. If there is any doubt as to whether or not the goal was achieved, it's more likely to cause an argument than motivate employees.

2) Make sure the goal is clear. 20% increase in site traffic within 8 weeks. $50,000 in new business by the end of the month. Simple and clear works.Read more

In a radio interview with the legendary rock band AC/DC one listener called in just to say, “You guys have put out 12 albums and they all sound the same!”

The band’s lead guitarist, Angus Young, replied with, “Actually, we’ve put out 13.”

When you’ve sold over 200 million albums worldwide it’s easy to answer questions that way. The band doesn’t care if you think they’re a one-trick pony: they set out to write the music they wanted to, never changed their style, and it worked better than most bands could ever dream of.

Then again, AC/DC were far from being an overnight success anywhere outside of their home country, Australia. Their first international album flopped when it came out. So did their second album, which the label didn’t even bother releasing in the USA (until 1981 – five years later). With their third album they cracked the top-40 in a few European countries. When AC/DC released Highway to Hell they had their first hit album across Europe and in the USA.

International success came with their fifth album, 5 years after their first single in Australia which (I bet you can guess it…) failed to chart.Read more

Have you ever given a little extra push when preparing and had it pay off?

Lots of successful people talk about working hard. Most of them talk about working smart, too. Yet I’m sure you know someone who is a hard worker, or someone who comes up with lots of fantastic solutions, and neither seems to ever get ahead even though they want to. How do we work hard and smart AND get ahead?

The key is not in the hard, or the smart - it’s in why you’re doing what you do.

I want to make it clear that you do need to work hard and smart if you want to get ahead. There is no way around those two. Keep that in mind.

Take working hard and smart and add a why. I’m talking about a purpose here, not some mere goal. People who have purpose get more accomplished, as in things they want to do, for two reasons.Read more

How likely are you to refer me to a friend?

According to the Harvard Business Review, that’s the only question you can ask which will determine how easily you can grow your business. The people who tell others about you are far more valuable than anyone in your sales organization because they will grow your company for you. Yes, this is true even if you’re flying solo.

Think about it for a moment. Which is more powerful, the company telling you how great they are or a friend of yours telling you how great they are? So people who are going to tell people about you – not just likely, those who will or already have – are the most credible in spreading the word. They’re the people you want to shower with love.

One of our customers is testing this question out in a customer survey. I'm looking forward to checking out the feedback.Read more

As TechCrunch’s TC50 conference wrapped up the buzz was about how weak this year’s group of companies were. The judges, the writers, and everyone in attendance was wondering, “Where were the earth changing companies?”

TechCrunch made post after post asking this very question. Top to bottom, they wrote about how unimpressed their panel of judges were over this year’s crop.

Which leads me to ask TechCrunch one thing: uh, why didn’t you pick better companies?

There’s nothing respectable about pointing out how bored the judges were over your fifty chosen finalists. You picked them, remember? You’re the reason they were on stage strutting their stuff. Every step of the way you stomped on them. Were you hoping people would forget YOU are the sole reason these particular 50 companies were on stage presenting?Read more

Have you ever read a personal development book? You know what I’m talking about, that self-help feel good inside stuff.

Looking at the short stack of personal development books I’ve read, along with the ones I’ve skimmed and gagged at, I get it now. Some people read new ones all the time because they get a rush from it. It’s like reading all mystery or romance… except we’re talking about books which are supposed to help you help yourself.

If you’re reading new ones all the time at some point I hope you have this thought: are these books helping me get any better at X, Y and Z?

That’s the point of them. If all you get out of them is a good feeling before you slack off and read another one, what are you doing? It’s an addiction at that point. But hey, I bet you can find a book to help you break that addiction.

Or maybe you can’t and that’s why you’re still reading self-help books all the time. You’d rather scratch the itch than find a way to make it go away. It feels good enough for a little while. Even though nothing changes long-term it seems like a healthy way to change. And maybe this time you can do it. Maybe this time you’ll make those changes you wanted to make.Read more

“Nobody will sift through the entire 47-yr Rolling Stones library. But they WILL buy Forty Licks.” @nametagscott

As a music aficionado, I have to admit I enjoy sifting through the entire Rolling Stones catalog. Most people? Nah. Their best-selling album is “Hot Rocks: 1964-1971,” a greatest hits collection released at their peak in popularity. It has sold twice as many copies as anything else they’ve released. Heck, the Stones have six different “hits” collections that have sold at least a million copies in the USA.

The all-time best-selling album in the USA? The Eagles collection “Their Greatest Hits: 1971-1975,” which has sold 29 million copies.Read more

In music, most mainstream artists have a moment when their popularity hits a peak.

For some it’s a brief moment of success which never comes again. When “Closing Time” was all over alternative and pop radio and the video was played a gazillion times on VH1, the band Semisonic had no idea they would go down as a one-hit wonder.

Others have a solid career with one defining album or song. Kim Carnes had ten top-40 singles between 1978 and 1985, yet most people can only name “Bette Davis Eyes,” her biggest hit and sole #1. It topped the charts in the USA for nine weeks, won two Grammy awards, and the album it was on sold over eight million copies worldwide.

Many of the biggest artists ever have one album which is far bigger than anything else they put out: Michael Jackson had “Thriller,” Guns ‘n Roses had “Appetite for Destruction,” and Metallica had their self-titled black album.

Of the five artists I just named, which one enjoyed the peak for what it was and never worried about duplicating it?

The answer is Kim Carnes.Read more