Why small business owners should just say no to gurus

When you own a small business, people (clients, employees, accountants, relatives and neighbours) are quick to tell you what you can do better. Some of these ideas have merit but most of them don’t. This doesn’t mean that the people sharing them are not bright or capable; it simply means that they don’t have enough context or perspective on your situation to present viable solutions for your business. They are familiar with the part of the business that they touch, but they don’t know your monthly overhead, the reason you’re keeping that problematic employee, why you walked away from a lucrative client, or the major development you’re working on behind closed doors but can’t yet disclose.

Many of the advice-givers are not small business owners themselves, never have been and likely never will be. They don’t know what it’s like to walk away from relative job security to start something fresh. It’s inconceivable to them that for the first few years, you will not take home the same salary you made as an employee because all of your profits will be reinvested in the company. They can’t imagine the agony of staying awake all night the first time you have to fire an employee or how many hoops you had to jump through to keep paycheques flowing in a recession.

While their advice is unsolicited and maybe annoying, all of these would-be sages can be shrugged off. Their intentions are good and, even if they’re not, they’re harmless.

Less harmless are professional “business gurus”, highly paid experts who rake in a lot of money telling others how to succeed. Their bestselling books promise to take your business to new heights, teach you how to swim with piranhas and show you how to get rich working only a few hours a week. They also take their winning formulas on tour, keynoting conferences and adding their voice to business columns. For the most part, they are well-educated, intelligent, articulate and authoritative and have achieved success in their field. I’m just not sure that qualifies them to give advice to small business owners.

Take Jack Welch for example. He joined GE, already a huge corporation, when he was 25 and worked his way up the ranks till he retired at 65. He was Chairman and CEO for 20 years, during which time, the company’s value rose 4,000 per cent. His personal net worth is estimated at $720 million. He has written countless bestsellers on his management style and is an inspiration to many.

Obviously, he is accomplished.  I’m not disputing his abilities but I do wonder what a small business owner can learn from a person who spent his entire career at one company.  Is a corporate hero qualified to give advice to someone running a small ad agency in Toronto or a metal fabrication shop in Dallas?

Guru is a Sanskrit word meaning teacher or imparter of knowledge. In ancient times, a guru was someone who ‘dispelled the darkness of ignorance’. But what if you’re not ignorant? What if you know what’s best for you and your business? What if you can trust your instincts?

A familiar suggestion from the business gurus is to “get out of your comfort zone”. The underlying premise is that your complacency and resistance to change is holding back your business. This is sound advice for corporate dinosaurs clinging to their glory days but I think it’s flawed advice for small businesses. What’s wrong with your comfort zone? It gave you the courage to strike out on your own, guided you into the right business niche and helped you assemble a team that works well together. The one time I followed this advice and ignored my instincts, the results were disastrous.

I’m not saying that no one has useful advice or that you can’t benefit from discussing business problems with a mentor. I just think you'll learn more from a retired restaurant owner than from someone who rode a corporate wave to fame.

In closing I’ll leave you with this wonderful quote about social media gurus from Olivier Blanchard, chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and one of the most cited economists in the world: “A social media guru is a term used to assign imaginary expertise in a nascent communications field to an individual with little to no real world business experience”.

Life is better when you know what to expect

Twenty years ago, I landed an amazing job at Canada’s largest public school board.  Reporting to a fabulous communications director, my role was to help our 200 schools better communicate with parents and the school community.   Two weeks in, my boss asked me to meet with one of our elementary school principals to chat about public relations tactics.  It was my first opportunity to actually counsel someone.  I was nervous but I prepared copious notes and took comfort in the knowledge that an informal discussion would be a trial run for more structured presentations in the future. 

When I arrived at the school and told the secretary I was from the communications department, she immediately picked up the microphone for the school’s PA system and announced “Will all staff please report to the lounge for the public relations presentation”.  

My heart started to race when I heard the word ‘presentation’.  I didn’t have a presentation.  I didn't even have handouts.  I wasn’t prepared to impress anyone.  It was supposed to be just a chat, a CHAT! Panicked, I weighed the options available to me.  I could race back to the parking lot, get in my car and flee.  Sure, I’d probably get fired, but I wouldn’t have to suffer the indignity of being unprepared for a presentation.  I could pretend that I’d fallen ill and the meeting would have to be postponed to a later date.  This wasn’t totally inconceivable given that I already felt sick to my stomach.  In the end, I stayed, plastered a smile on my face, thanked everyone for giving up their lunch to listen to me and spoke with minimal authority from the notes I had written for what was supposed to be an informal chat between two people.  It wasn’t my finest hour but I learned a valuable lesson that served me well for the rest of my career – always confirm what is expected of you in any business meeting.

Being clear about your expectations is a vital part of business etiquette.  The purpose of etiquette is to enhance the comfort of the people around you and what’s more uncomfortable than arriving at a meeting, only to find that you’re in a pink sundress and everyone else is wearing a navy blue suit.  If you’re hosting a meeting, whether it’s a conference, social gathering, new business presentation or staff BBQ, it’s your role to tell people what they can expect and what is expected of them.  Here are some tips to help you:

Be crystal-clear about dress code – Let people know how you’ll be dressed or what is expected and refrain from using ambiguous terms like smart-casual or relaxed black-tie.  Rather than fall back on confusing terminology, I usually try to spell it out in a way that leaves no room for interpretation (e.g. Our office has casual Fridays so we’ll be wearing golf shirts and khakis to the meeting and you can feel free to do the same).

Set them up for success – If someone will have a speaking role at the meeting, explain the parameters.  Let them know that you’re looking forward to hearing their presentation, that you’ve allotted 20 minutes and that you will have an LCD display ready for them.  Let them know who else will be in the meeting, who else is presenting and who, if anyone will introduce them. 

Have an agenda – If possible, distribute the agenda by e-mail before the actual meeting but at the very least, distribute it at the start.  That way, if someone has come unprepared, they’ll at least have a few minutes to collect themselves, and their thoughts.

Establish meeting rules – If the meeting starts at 4 p.m. and you have a hard stop at 5 p.m., let everyone know they should stick to their allotted time to ensure everyone has a chance to speak.  If you are chairing the meeting (and every meeting needs a chair), keep everyone on track.

Manage technology – Most people are not so important that they can’t go one hour without responding to e-mails but I regularly see people tapping away while others are talking.  If you’re the meeting host, let people know ahead of time what your expectations are regarding smart phones and IPads.  If the meeting is two hours or longer, tell them you’ll have a 5-minute break during which, they can check e-mails but you’re looking forward to receiving their full attention when the meeting is in session. (Note: as a former agency person, I realize you can’t say this to clients who check their emails while you’re pitching your little heart out).   

Share follow-up plans – If there are follow-up items, share the process with meeting attendees.  Let them know when they can expect to hear back from you and, if a decision is to be made (as in the case of an RFP), tell them how much time you will need to make it.

10 Not-So-Obvious Items for Your Event Bag

If you plan and manage special events, you have an event bag.  The bag (usually an old briefcase or gym bag) contains extra items that might come in handy for any event, on top of all the supplies you are already packing.  So while you will already have pens for the registration desk, your event bag will contain an extra box of pens for when the ones you have go missing, which they will.  A well-stocked event bag usually contains typical office equipment such as scissors, a stapler, Sharpies, name tag holders, string, tape (of the duct, masking and double-sided variety), thumb tacks, pushpins, paper, USB sticks, and the like.

The event bag needs to be checked and inventoried before each event and in a perfect world, it would be restocked immediately after every event but, as any event planner will tell you, restocking the bag is usually the last thing anyone wants to do in the exhausted hours immediately following an event so it gets tossed into a corner where it remains until it's opened hours before the next event.

If you regularly plan events you know all the staples you need for your kit but there are many more, not-so-obvious items you may want to include.  Following is my list of the top ten must-haves for your event bag, based on two decades of managing (mostly) successful events.

1. Plastic ties (see photo above) - At every event, there is something that needs to be secured, fastened or otherwise jury-rigged onto a pole.  When that happens, nothing beats plastic industrial ties.  They adjust to any size and you can just snip off any extra length with scissors.

2. Eye drops - Spectacular events don't happen overnight.  A seamless execution is the result of months of careful planning and last minute changes.  It is very rare to get a good night's sleep before an event, usually because you are still at the venue hanging banners at midnight.  To ensure you look fresh and awake at event time, always carry different varieties of eye drops.

3. Adhesive bandages - All that last minute lifting, hanging, shoving, cleaning wreaks havoc on your fingers and minor cuts and scrapes are the inevitable result.  Having these on hand will prevent you from dripping blood onto your beautiful rented table-cloths.

4. Chargers - Of course your cell phone is dead.  You were up all night trying to find a florist who could deliver 1000 purple lilies by morning since the florist you already booked fell ill.  Your event kit should include every type of wall charger available for today's array of smart phones, cameras, music players, etc.

5. Flashlight - Have you ever crawled under a stage trying to figure out why your PowerPoint presentation isn't working or your exploding confetti gizmo has malfunctioned?  It's a lot easier when you can see where you're going.

6. Sewing kit - I have never staged an event in 20 years where we didn't need to pull out the sewing kit. Dropped hems, popped buttons and inappropriate cleavage present themselves in the moments before the lights go up.

7. Stain remover - It's hard not to spill coffee on your shirt when you're quaffing gulps between table setups. A dab of stain remover may not hide it entirely but it will at least diffuse it over a larger area so it fades. If you have a car, bring along an extra blazer as well.

8. Flat shoes - Every seasoned (female) event planner knows that you wear flat shoes during set-up and put on the heels when it's event time.  Nowadays you can buy ballet flats that role up into a ball and come with their own carrying case.

9. Snacks - It's time for the event and you realize you've been onsite since 6 a.m. and haven't had a thing to eat.  When there's no time to nibble (and there never is), you can hit up your event bag for granola bars, protein bars, chocolate, etc. If you're super organized, you can include a small cooler with cheese strings and other items.

10. OTC medicine - Don't let your great work be sidelined by migraines, indigestion or nausea.  A well-stocked event bag can double as a portable medicine chest.

Those are just a few of the not-so-obvious essentials I make sure to include.  What are some other surprising things you pack for events?

Rethinking Conference Etiquette

As you know, I'm a student of etiquette, literally. I have most of the rules and protocol required for various situations stored away in my brain, try (with various levels of success) to conduct myself with decorum in public and regularly bemoan the "utter bloody rudeness of people today" to use a phrase from one of my favourite etiquette authors, Lynne Truss.

Once in a while, all of my notions of civility are challenged with pleasantly surprising outcomes. This week I attended MESH 2011, Canada's Web conference, where visionaries, experts, newbies, and people just desperately trying to stay abreast of trends (me) come together to connect, share and inspire. I'm here to talk about etiquette but let me just say off the bat that it was great - content, speakers, networking, venue, food - all well worth the price of admission.

So here's what I witnessed at MESH. When I walked into the morning keynote on the first day I was shocked to see the room doors were wide open, people were milling around and coming and going as they pleased. Almost everyone was engaged in something other than actively looking at the speaker. The iPads, laptops and smartphones on the tables outnumbered the people sitting at them.

The conference attendees were chatting, tweeting, eating, drinking and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves. Towards the back of the room, people were lounging on huge bean bag chairs so I decided to plop down on one and hey presto, I immediately became a "new etiquette" convert. Here's a photo of the Fat Boy bean bag chair which is the most comfortable thing in the world.

Over the next two days I continued to be amazed with this extremely relaxed approach to conference-going. While I eventually grew to embrace it, there were some people who took it a bit too far. A man slumped in the bean bag chair in front of me was so relaxed he took his shoes off, an etiquette no-no in any business situation. No one wants to smell your socks, no matter how informal the environment. And, chairs filled with beans are not always conducive to learning - a young woman to my right dozed off in her bean bag, Blackberry clutched in her hands. I even saw a woman knitting fervently during an afternoon session, which ironically, was more distracting than all of the electronic devices.

But overall, despite the casual atmosphere, everyone was very well-behaved. I didn't hear a single cell phone ringtone in any of the sessions. People formed orderly lines and behaved at the buffets, and most importantly, actively networked. Everyone was polite, kind and willing to share their business cards and their ideas.

I found myself thinking back to the hundreds of traditional conferences I've attended in two decades in business and if I'm really honest, there have been many times where I've sat on a hard chair, in a freezing, dated hotel conference room, bored by an uninspiring speaker and desperately needing to go to the washroom or refill my coffee (or both) but remaining glued to my seat out of respect for the presentation or a fear of being too conspicuous as I make my way to the doors. Likewise, I've signed up for sessions only to find out after a few minutes that I know more about the topic than the speaker and could have used the time more productively. MESH turns this on its head. They bring together the content, people and opportunities and provide a basic structure but its up to you to decide how you're going to make it work for you. If that means you want to be taking notes in the front row at every session, so be it. If you'd rather linger in the periphery sipping coffee, knock yourself out. If you only want to socialize and get the t-shirt, that's fine too.

The role of etiquette in society is to increase the comfort level of the people around you. Traditionally, this has assumed that the people around you are comforted by the same things that you take comfort in. MESH proves that's not necessarily the case and that, as long as no one is acting like a complete boor, and everyone is aware of the expectations at the onset, we can set up our own comfort levels. This etiquette afficionado takes comfort in the idea that the rules of civility are always evolving...in a good way.

When in Rome...

When I do business etiquette training sessions, I share the tools of appropriate professional conduct but caution that some flexibility is required, depending on the situation in which you find yourself. It's good to know what's required in a highly formal setting but obviously acceptable conduct for dinner with the Queen is different from what you might see at a Tweet-up.

The purpose of etiquette is to increase the comfort level of those around you. Having guidelines (e.g. business card protocol, when to start eating) eliminates confusion and helps everyone relax a bit more but they are just guidelines. Even the grande dame of etiquette, Emily Post, encouraged people to be flexible and adapt with changing times and new environments and cultures.

Last weekend I attended my first Podcamp in Toronto. If you haven't been to a Podcamp, you should plan to attend the next one. Podcamp is a free 'unconference' for anyone who is interested in all things podcasting, blogging and new media. Amateurs, pros, newbies and veterans are all welcome. Last week's event was a huge success, attracting over 700 people.

The term 'unconference' is an apt description for this event which was unlike any 'real' conference I've ever attended. One of the founders, Chris Brogan told us that Podcamp is based on the rule of two feet - if you're in a session and realize you're not getting anything out of it, then leave and go to another one. No hard feelings. I saw other traditional etiquette violations such as people arriving late at sessions, checking e-mails and text messages in the middle of presentations and openly challenging the opinions of speakers. But, I quickly realized that this was a perfect time for me to put my adaptability to the test and roll with the punches.

For such a large crowd and a volunteer-run event, everyone was really well behaved. There was an amazing energy in the air coupled with a feeling that we're on the cusp of something really big. The idea that everyone, regardless of income or position, should have access to great speakers and information is one I can get behind.