SCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENT

To ignore millenials is to commit marketing suicide

Open your eyes!  How much time do you spend with millenials?  Not only do millenials consume the most products, they also expect results.  They are 50% of the workforce in 2018.
To ignore millenials is to commit some form of suicide.

Here are 6 steps for you and your company:

1.  Mobile web-based experiences are a $10 billion dollar industry, with over 7 billion phones.  We now have nearly 4x more mobile browsers than the number of desk-based browsers.  Follow the numbers.  Follow the money.

2.  We can provide emotionally-provocative experiences that combine digital and physical activities.  Here are several examples.  When you go to the zoo you can now rent a GoPro or Segway to make your experience unique.  When you go to a park you can use your mobile device to geocache.  You can have a “Yelp Night” and move from restaurant to bar in any unfamiliar city.    When you go to a conference you can tweet about and score the presenters, in real time.  However, at most amusement parks and concerts we are not doing anything about the visitors who are standing in a line (bored) or tweeting or Face-booking their friends to “stay away” from your business or event.  As a more costly example, we are not doing anything about low compliance with incentive reward programs.  In fact, industrial organizational researchers tell us that some 35% of the US workforce is not engaged in their jobs.  We sorely lack emotionally-provocative experiences that combine digital and physical activities.

3.  In response to these market needs, I have developed a mobile web-based app that can guarantee engagement for any clients.  This app enables clients to have a pre-visit and post-visit experience that integrates their event with any content.  The event becomes a process.  For instance, if a client wants to assign pre-visit training or reading content, the app can assess their engagement.  Using a leader board and social media, they can increase accountability.  They can market and promote the company.  They can include video and photo uploads.  They can earn points by doing more activities.  They can return to the venue.  The app can be delivered in hours, under any name.  And it can be scaled for any sized organization.

4.  Large corporate clients expect global delivery capacity.  Every successful Free Agent has a network of alliance partners.  The myth of the solo-preneur as a lone wolf is dead.  For instance, the largest provider of leadership development coaches is www.coachsource.com, founded by Brian Underhill and Marshall Goldsmith.  Marshall is described as the #1 leadership consultant in the U.S., according to Harvard Business Review.  I am the southeast engagement manager, and represent 1,200 leadership coaches in 60 countries.  We can provide expert leadership coaching to any clients.  A bold claim, but a well validated claim.  We can deliver the value of global leadership coaching to your current clients.  And we can design programs that include a cycle of regular visits to any location with reinforcements from the very best leadership coaches.  Those individual and group agendas typically yield a 500% ROI.

Digital and Global solutions not only satisfy millenials.  They lead to results.  They are required solutions.

If you are a solo-preneur, develop strong alliance with the smartest partners that you can find.  Today.

If you are a business leader, call Doug at 615.236.9845 If I cannot help you I will find someone who can.  Today.

Comments?

 

 

 

Corporate earnings vs. wage earnings vs. professional development

Perhaps you have seen this chart from Q4, 2012?  This data amazed me.

The red line indicates corporate earnings, which are at an all time high.

The blue line indicates individual wage earnings, which are at an all time low.

The gap between these lines is one indication of low engagement by most workers.

IMHO we need more professional development of key talent.  Companies have the cash assets.  Individuals have the need.

What does this gap suggest about the need for professional development at your company?

What does this gap suggest about the proliferation of outsourced specialized roles, such as external coaching and consulting?  (Some 40% of the American workforce…)

I need your help.  I am part of that 40%.

Since 1997, I have guaranteed results with coaching and consulting clients.

Please give me a call and let me know how you are doing.  704.895.6479.  Thanks.


Reason #9. Why I care about safety.

Reason #9.  Rock climbing.

I love to lead climb.

In my 20s I spent several months rock climbing the best cliffs in the United States.  For 3 months I lived in a car with several friends, and we travelled to Boulder, CO and Devils Tower, WY.  We ate granola.  And macaroni and cheese.  While studying guidebooks.  Or talking with lanky climbers from all over the world.

Boulder Canyon and Eldorado Canyons were meccas for serious climbers.  As a lead climber, my partner and I started on the bottom and climbed all day, until we summited on a ledge.  Then we rappelled back down, or hiked down.  Every afternoon the thunderstorms terrified us.  Every climb had terrifying sections.  At Devils Tower we did overhanging aid climbs that required swinging traverses.  Just like James Bond on the Eiger in Switzerland.  We learned to mitigate risks.

When moving on vertical rock, you have 4 potential points of contact.  If two feet and one hand are enough, then you can move the other hand.  Climbers learn to distribute weight evenly.  To select resting places.  To control energy exertion.  To keep your hands below your heart to reduce fatigue.  To ignore fear.

After days or weeks, your hands develop callouses.  After many first ascents, your confidence increases.  So you try something harder.

And then you fall.

My most terrifying fall was about 40′ late one afternoon.  I had felt invincible.  Then the crack thinned out.  I could not find any placement.  My legs shook.  I could not climb back down.  And my last piece of protection (climbing hardware) was about 20′ below me.  Because I had felt so confident… I had climbed higher than I should have.

I recall pausing.  There was a choice.  And I chose to fall.  I still recall that instant, some 30+ years later.

So I tumbled 20′ to the climbing hardware, then another 20′ below that, until my partner saved my life.  We were hundreds of feet above the canyon floor.

That instant of choice reminds me that we can choose to be safe, or not.

Just like adults on a job site.  Or adults sorting through career choices.  Or adults considering a risky move.

What are some reasons why you care about safety?

 

 

Reason #11. Why I care about safety

Reason #11.  Graduate School.

When doing my graduate research at Dartmouth College I was obsessed with risk-taking behavior.  Key questions included:  Why do we intentionally embrace a known risk?  What causes us to embrace more risk in academics or business or interpersonal choices?  How do we encourage constructive  risk tolerance, risky shift, and risk taking behavior?

At the time I was teaching high school English in a boarding school in New Hampshire.  Like every faculty member, I was required to embrace the “triple threat” requirements as a teacher, dorm parent, and a coach.  I supervised a dormitory house with 12 9th grade boys.  I coached soccer and x-c skiing.  I taught rock climbing, whitewater canoeing, winter camping, outdoor adventures.  I ran a January program that was designed to “foster risk taking”  in academics and socially constructive outdoor adventures, which included a 3-day mandatory winter camping expedition called “Sophomore Wilderness.”  And I met a lovely woman that I was not supposed to date– because she was on the faculty.  And we dated.  Got engaged.  Then married, on Lake Winnepausaukee.  Some 23 + years ago.  Like the students and other faculty, I embraced risk.

My research required that I develop an assessment of adolescent risk taking behavior.  Based upon recent related research and validated approaches.  Then test the questions on hundreds of adolescents at summer camps, and at two independent high schools.

I found that adolescents described self-esteem in multi-dimensions (such as physical, social, academic, etc.)   But adolescents did not discriminate between types of risk in that way.  They only discriminated between socially constructive risks (helping others, talking to a teacher, etc) or socially destructive  risks (taking drugs, sexual activity, etc.)

Some 25+ years later I remain fascinated by several facts:

1.  Adults act like those adolescents.  Adults discriminate between socially constructive and socially non-constructive risks.

2.  That instant between a stimulus/trigger and a response/action defines our career success.

3.  Coaches/consultants can help adults determine what is safe or risky, and what is productive or not.

4.  I remain continually surprised and puzzled by that opening question:  Why do people intentionally embrace a known risk?

 

What do you think?

Daddy, What are the 2 keys to success?

Recently our high school-aged daughter asked, “Daddy, you talk to people all day long about their success.  If you can make it simple, what are the two keys to success?”

If she was quizzing me, then I failed.   Perhaps because I did not expect the question, perhaps because I wanted to say something special to her.

I said something trite:  Focus on your strengths.  Persist.  Follow your passions.  Build a great team.  But sadly, like most of us, perhaps, I just  could not find the words.  Frankly, I struck out.

Then yesterday someone made it simple.  Now I can answer her…

What are the 2 keys to success?

1.  Attention, and 2.  Support.

Just as we attend to an infant and support their growth, we create gardens of success.  Every successful person talks about those who gave them attention.  Their mentors.  Their elders.  Their coaches.  Those who listened well, believed in them, supported them.    After repeated actions toward a desirable goal, those people thrived and eventually felt successful.

This morning I shared this idea with someone.  She doodled a circle, then drew an exclamation point, bold, in the center of the circle, to represent “attention,” then she gave it legs to represent “support,” then gave it an arrow to represent a future success.  That image works!

******************

The same pattern occurs in a coaching engagement.  When I first meet someone they may be uncertain of the process, unclear about why they are receiving the attention.    A common fear is that coaching is a process of “fixing behavioral gaps or deficiencies.”  As if we could dunk people into a “flea and tick bath” and they emerge cleaned, ready for the next challenge.  Instead, people decide if they like the attention, if they can use the support, and if they want to develop their strengths.    That choice is the key to success.

So, key coaching questions may include, “Who do you need to give more attention to?”   Or, “How can you support someone’s strengths?”

Time to go… I now have an answer for my daughter.

What are you going to do?