Why do we do the things we do?

What moves us? Do we work for money, for safety or because it is what we are supposed to do? Why do we help someone? Is it because we expect something in return or because we owe them?

Is there still people who do things just for the pleasure of doing them or to have a purpose in life, or because they believe passionately in an ideal or simply for the pleasure of helping someone?

This weekend I proved they still exist!

Imagine this…

First an old lady who’s smiling face doesn’t hide her more than 70 years of age, tending a hotel souvenirs store (one of those stores that sell everything at a way higher price that anywhere else). She turns to say hi to a young woman who is searching for a simple bag to transport a couple of bottles that she and her husband just received as a gift. The store sells a few artisanal bags that will do the job. There are no other clients in the stores, it is empty. And yet, instead of jumping like a tiger that haunts his pray, the old woman reaches into her desk and pulls out a couple of paper bags (the kind she uses to pack the stuff she sells) and not only does she gladly gives these to the woman, she carefully wraps the bottles in paper as if she had sold them. Always with a smile that only someone with a clean conscience can smile.

Now imagine a waitress in a restaurant at 1:30 am who, when asked, does not reply a simple “we are out” but instead goes to get her own hand bag and out of it she pulls a bottle of anti-bacterial gel of hers that she gladly shares with her patrons.

Imagine now a group of college students who, with no extra grades and no economic compensation, enroll to help with the logistics of a local conference, donating their time and work as if they were actually getting paid.

And finally imagine a group of Young professionals who have a dream, not of getting rich fast and becoming famous, but a dream to help their city business grow. And armed only with that dream, they set out to create a marketing and advertising conference in a city that for years has had no interest in such a thing. And yet they do not do it because there is a business opportunity for the lack of competitors, or because they will fill up their buckets with money, actually they know they won’t. They do it because they know it is what needs to be done to promote their community and market.

None of these four cases earned more money with what they did. None will have, immediately at least, new clients or more revenue for doing what they did. But they all have the certainty of having done what was right, of having followed their own voice; and they have the satisfaction of doing and giving more, because they know that is the secret to becoming remarkable.

What a great example you’ve given me. Thanks Oaxaca. Thanks Fusionados 2009. Thanks for the free lessons. Thanks.

To which group do you belong?

We see them every day, no matter the company, the hierarchy, the income or the kind of work they do.

And at the same time we see these other people too, just as often as the others, and with these, the company, the job, title or income does not matter either.

They interact with each other every single day, they work together, share office space, have lunch together and some even went to school together, and although some of them come also from very contrasting backgrounds they spend more time with each other than with their own families.

The ones from the first group become best friends with members from their group and from the other one as well. Those from the second one, doesn’t even become friends with their own group members.

At first glance they all are the same professionals we see every day at work, but we need only to pay a little more attention to realize one thing that distinguishes them from one another: some smile others don’t.

The folks in the first group, even though they are still in their daily crusades and know that they still have a lot of ground to cover, are content with their achievements and happy with their job. The do what they like and like what they do.

The ones in the second group are never happy, are over stressed and are never ever satisfied with what they’ve done at work, thus they are in a frantic search for growth within their organizations.

And no! What makes a person belong to one group or the other is not their title or their compensation plan.

I personally know some apparently “very successful” executives who occupy the top C-level positions in their organization and who are often complaining about the predicaments they are in, worrying about stock prices, quarterly quotas or about what their bosses or boards will think of them; I also know other executives who are as high in the organization as the prior ones (if not higher) who enjoy their work every single day as if it was their first (or last) day on the job.

And I also know people who have a much simpler position and who complain every day about their company not valuing them; and yet I know other folks who are grateful for what they do every day, because they know it’s all part of their plan.

So no, title and comp plan does not have anything to do with to which group we belong to.

What’s more in some cases people will often jump from one group to the other without realizing it.

So, what exactly defines to which group we belong to?

From my personal point of view, people who belong to the second group, the always insatisfied and angry one, do not have a clearly drawn career plan and have no idea as to where they are going, or even worse they do have a very specific career plan which they follow to the letter.

In this group, people start their careers maybe as an assistant then get promoted to coordinator, then to supervisor, manager, and with time, a little luck and an unconditional commitment to their career plan they become the great, very important executives they are today.

Now, in the first group, the one where folks are happy and content, people also start their career as an assistant, get promoted to coordinator, then to supervisor, manager, and also with time, a litter luck too and an unconditional commitment too, the also become the very important executives they are today. Only the people in this group are not just committed to their career plan, rather they understand that this is just another building block of a much bigger plan: their life plan.

These people do not complain because things are not going just as they would like and when facing the same challenges and bumps we all face, they always keep in mind one thing: this is just another step we need to take to get to where we want to go.These folks don’t get to the highest hierarchy in the organization thinking they are better than all the rest or not knowing what to do once they are there; they do not stay there just staring at their success to then fall. They get to where they want to get, no matter whether that is the biggest corner office in the building, owning their dance school, being part of a symphonic orchestra or opening a bar on the beach; because they know that getting there is part of their plan. Not their career plan but the plan of how they want to lead their life.

So now only one question remains: To which group do you want to belong?

7 Simple steps to take your team from "having to" to "wanting to" work with you.

Being the head of an organization or a team can turn out to be a very lonely position and the higher the title the bigger the isolation at times.

Nevertheless, whenever I think about this, I convince myself even more, that this situation is provoked by the holder of the title himself and that, for this very reason, one can completely transform the situation, as long as we are authentically willing to do some adjustments on the way we conduct ourselves every day, so we can stop being managers to become leaders:

1. Understand that we do not work to be on our boss's good grace and that in the same way, our team does not work to please us. We all work for the same organization and, before seeking to do what will be popular with our boss and colleagues, we must seek to do what we know is right for the company we work for, for the industry we are in and for the society we live in.
2. Stop imposing our point of view on others by force of our title's formal authority, and start respecting and valuing the perspectives of all the people we work with; and stop undermining those who don't share our vision, in any case, we should ask ourselves if we are doing a good enough job sharing our vision or even if it is the right one.
3. Loose our arrogance and our poses and start treating every body with respect and humbleness. Being the head of a team does not makes you better than the rest. It also doesn't mean that you know more than the rest or that they are below you. On the contrary, a true leader knows it is him who needs to surround himself with talented and experienced people who, together can help the organization achieve the goals it has set.
4. Stop controlling the flow of information according to your own interests and start respecting and honoring the organization's vision and commitments to each of it's members, even if you weren't there when these were made.
5. Quit imposing your way of doing things, break down your paradigms and make room for the proposals from your team. Learning to recognize the strengths of each member and understand how you can best leverage them in favor of the team and the organization is a skill every leader must develop.
6. Stop invading people's personal space and time with messages, calls and meetings during weekends, vacations, sick leaves or personal days. Very few things scream "I don't care what you are doing" like an email on a Sunday night asking for something or scheduling a meeting at 8 am on Monday.
7. Stop managing your staff from the bubble in your office and start getting truly involved with your team. You don't need to do their job for them, but you need to know what you can do to help them do it better.

Put these simple adjustments into practice and you will see how people stop working with you because your are the boss they have, to start collaborating with you because you are the leader the chose to follow and support.

The good, the not so good about the 2009 Mexico Effie Awards and what I expect for 2010.

Last week I had the chance to go to the 2009 Mexico Effie Awards celebrated by the Mexican Association of Advertising Agencies, which for the last 10 years has rewarded the best , but specially most effective advertising campaigns in our country.

This year the jury was presided by Carlos Fernández, President and General Manager of Grupo Modelo, and was formed by 150 marketing, advertising and communication professionals who, based on their ample experience selected the winners of the awards.

And this is precisely the first item on what I thing was really good in the event:

• First of all such great attendance. It was great to see all the main players in the advertising industry in Mexico, creative directors, brand managers, client service VPs and CMOs, etc. all gathered around in one place at the same time to learn what the best campaigns were in the last year.
  
• Of course the opportunity to meet with so many old and new friends, and to know that they were all there because their campaigns had been nominated.


• The announcement of the upcoming publication of a commemorative book containing all the gold winners campaigns in the last 10 years.


• See how the production of the event gets better every year.

What was not so good (and with this I don’t mean to say that it was wrong either) were just two things:

• The competition spirit seemed to have over thrown the spirit of collaboration and integration of just one industry. To be perfectly honest, it was kind of weird to see how all the audience formed themselves into small groups by agency, and it was plain sad to see how they only applauded to the nomination or award to a campaign of their own, but never to some else's. Weren’t we all supposed to be there to celebrate the best of the industry even if the best did not necessarily come from us?


• Out of 31 awards, only two campaigns showed a clear strong component of interactive marketing, and only one of these won a silver Effie. Which sadly speaks to the still existing lack of adoption within the industry of this discipline, not as an emergent one or a as trend, but as a clear, unstoppable evolution on the way we generate communication.

What I expect from next year?

• Quite frankly, I would hate to see a special award for digital campaigns. This would be a huge mistake we’ve already done in the past. I'd much rather love to see a testimony of the real integration of marketing communication campaigns, not only with the use of traditional on-line display ads or search or social media; but with the integration of off-line metrics tied to web analytics tools.
  
• And definitely a more integrated industry with less interest in winning and a lot more interest in contributing.

What do you expecto for next year?

Walking the talk

I am convinced and I’ve said so for the last three years. The key factor in participating in social media, in fact the only true way to really leverage the full power of social networks is through COLLABORATION.

If you do not bring anything to the table, if you do not add value to others, you will never really know the true benefit of joining the conversation.

You might be a great strategist and may take advantage of a few opportunities, you may even get a job or get invited to an event or even establish good relationships with interesting people that might turn valuable to you, but if you are just trying to take from your network instead of adding value to others, you are just not participating of the conversation.

Collaborating and being part of the conversation it’s something that if truly done with a real interest of adding value, transcends the on-line space of Social Media to be transform into real benefits in the off-line space: education, knowledge, fun, friendship, success and more.

That is exactly what we were able to see last week at the IAB Conecta 09 Conference in Mexico City, where we able to share, collaborate and learn from great personalities who brought their knowledge and experience to this event that for the fourth year in a row surpassed its success in previous years.

Plus we had the presence of other personalities like Joe Krump, Randall Rothenberg, Carlitos Páez, Joseph Jaffe, Mitch Joel and Chris Brogan, who really walked their talk and shared their knowledge and insights with over 700 people who were there with a common goal: learn, share and join the conversation.

There may be a sarcastic critic like the one who approached me during the conference to say “they are here because they are getting paid to speak”. The reality is, yes they do. To some of them public speaking is their main source of income; but the value that you get from sharing time with such talented folks from whom to absorb so much knowledge certainly is worth a whole lot more than what we can pay them.

I think Chris Brogan said it best when he mentioned: “Sharing your knowledge, your experience and your ideas, freely and without waiting to get something in exchange, allow our ideas to grow, they expand and transcends to a whole new plane you didn’t even thought possible; and it gets there because you shared”.

Now, sit in your favorite chair, relax and watch the great conversation I had with Chris last week. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Some great advice

Last week we got very good news from a close friend, he is about to embark on a new professional adventure. He decided to accept an offer to join one of the most important organizations in the country occupying a very important position there.

A very well deserved position might I add; in fact I don’t think there could be a better candidate for it.

We spent some time talking about his new challenges and great opportunities ahead, we share some advice and recommendations, and after such good conversation I kept thinking about the kind of advices I would have liked to get too… So I decided to share a brief list in here:

1- Know your team mates as if they were your family, there will be days where you’ll spend more time with them than with your actual one.

2- Strive to comprehend what really moves and motivates each member of your staff. Understand that not everyone gets excited over the same things and specially that not everybody works just for money. Give meaning to their work.

3- Spend time with them; don’t stay all day inside your office. Work hand in hand with your team but don’t do their work for them.

4- Show how much you really respect your team by empowering them, sharing responsibility and letting them make their own decisions and act accordingly.

5- Celebrate their mistakes. Make sure they are not afraid of making mistakes, this way they will always be trying to do more.

6- Make the right decisions for the right reasons. Always try to do what’s right for the organization and for your team, don’t just do what you think will be the popular thing with your bosses and peers.

7- Never impose your position, rather create a vision that is aligned with the interests and mission of the organization that everyone can follow passionately.

8- Never feel that you are above your team. They are not your employees; in any case it is you who works for them.

9- Understand that you don’t need to be always right or know more than the rest. Recognize your strengths and weaknesses do the same with your team mates and let everybody bring their abilities to the table to strengthen the team.

10- Do not abuse your title. The name in your presentation card does not make you more important or better than the rest. It just means that you have more responsibilities and that you depend more on others.

11- Remember LEADERSHIP means:

Liaison

Emphatic

Adventurous

Dedicated

Enthusiast

Responsible

Simple

Humble

Inclusive

Partnership

No doubt all are good advice, but actually one of the best advices I’ve heard lately is one that precisely my friend shared with me: “No matter what you do, always remember you have a board of directors to report to: your family.”

Picture credit: Frank-Chimero

Your success, your obstacle.

It happens and it happens often. I’ve seen it in friends and colleagues and on the mirror as well.

We work day in and day out on perfecting our trait, we pour our soul into our work and become specialists, experts and in some cases, even some sort of authority or point of reference.

Good for us! But then what?

Of course there is nothing wrong with being successful or being the best at what we do, on the contrary, we should always aim to excel at it. However we often forget to excel at something else: controlling how arrogant we may become after a certain amount of success. And that is just plain wrong.

Granted, it is sweet to be successful. It’s great to have our efforts recognized. And to listen to the sugar coated compliments from other people feeds our ego.

But I insist, what then?

Once we reached our mountain top we need to recognize that we have two options: rejoice in our success, loose focus and fall down or savor it for just a few moments and fix a new horizon and start walking towards it.

And to do this, it is essential that we understand that success has different forms and it is not just in the form of power, material belongings, money or titles; and that, what it’s important to us, might not be so much for others.

We must be humble and make time to learn and identify our greatest strengths and weaknesses.

We need to recognize that our greatest strengths exacerbate our biggest weaknesses.

Nobody is perfect. The fact that you are a great creative does not mean you are a great strategist. If you are great at production you might not necessarily be great at creativity. If you are a Math guru you actually might not be good at explaining it; and if you are an excellent manager it does not mean you are great leader.

Don’t let your greatest strengths turn you blind in front of what you need to improve. Recognize what your weakness is and reinforce it by surrounding yourself and partnering with people who are as good at what you lack as you with your ability.

Admit you are not everything, that you need help from others and that you need to collaborate with them. Open yourself to the possibility of participating with others and let them share their experience with you. You don’t always have to try and prove you are better than the rest.

Picture credit: Redjotter

Alignment and balancing.

For cars, the alignment and balancing maintenance is necessary when the car starts to pull down towards one direction, when at a certain speed it starts vibrating or when you notice an uneven wear out of the wheels.

I think something similar happens to people. You know its time to take corrective actions in your life when you feel your path is going on a different direction than where you want to go; or when, because of the speed at which you are living, you stop vibrating or when your body and mind start to wear you down.

I’m sure all of us, at some point in our lives, maybe even repeatedly, have felt at least one of these three symptoms. What I am not sure though is how fast are we to correct or better yet prevent these problems.

We are always so busy managing our overloaded calendar, trying to be in everybody’s good grace, looking forward to our next promotion, our next salary increase, the annual bonus, the closing of a deal, achieving the quarterly quota, getting public recognition as a great professional; or even in our personal lives, trying to be father of the year, the world’s greatest partner, the splendid host, the great advisor and most reached out friend, etc.

So much in fact, that we completely forget about making time for ourselves, and so our body screams out loud! We become aware of our wear out and we get sick: back spasms, colds for no apparent reason, gastritis and lack of sleep. The projects that once filled us with pride and excitement suddenly feel like a prison and we stop vibrating. We realize that at some point down the road, we took a downturn.

And then we face the awkward and uncomfortable moment of “choosing”. That is, we come up to the point where we have to stop and reconsider the direction our life has taken. We have to evaluate whether we are on the right track and at the pace that feels right or if we are just following the noise that leads masses into indecision.

So its time to have our alignment and balancing and ask us:

• Is what I am doing today aligned with the principles and interests I value the most?
• Which of all the things I do, really makes me vibrate?
• Am I clear about where I want to go and how I want to live my life? And not in a few years, but now.
• Will the path I am currently in, even if it’s another stepping stone; will take me in the right direction?

It’s time to turn the wheels around, realign our direction and balance our life.

Picture credit: MILINTOC

Interview with Joseph Jaffe part 1

Well, a promise is a promise, so here it is, the interview I did last week to Joseph Jaffe last week.

Truth be told, the ilumination in the video is not the best, but the content of it, the conversation we had, is really worth it!

And I promise to improve the videos for the next interviews I'll be doing in the up coming weeks.

By the way, I want to thank everybody who participated by sending me the questions they would like to ask Joseph, specially Hebert Hernandez who helped me record the interview.

Now, enjoy the interview! And remember, you can watch the rest of the it in my YouTube Channel.

And don't forgtet to follow Joe in Twitter, visit his YouTube channel JaffeJuice TV or read his blog.

Enjoy!

5 steps to launch your personal brand.

Well, we’ve already talked about the importance of developing and exercising a great personal brand and how it has to be totally aligned with our values, principle, ideologies and priorities in life, mirroring these in everything we do, but how exactly can we generate awareness of our personal brand, once we’ve gone through the exercise of first establishing it?
It really is much simpler that it seems. As simple as counting to five, 5 steps to launch your personal brand.
 

1. Join the conversation and listen: this is, without a doubt the most important step to launch your personal brand. So before you start talking and preaching that you are an expert in whatever area you specialize, stop and listen to the conversation that already existed about your subject of interest. Listen closely, absorb and learn as much as you can. Take the time to know the trends and understand the general opinions in your niche, identify who the thought leaders are and define your position. And please remember, God gave us a pair of ears, a pair of eyes and just one mouth to use them accordingly.
   Now, how to start listening to the conversation? You can use different resources to find your subject’s thought leaders, like Blogcatalog.com, Bloglog.com, Technorati.com, etc, or you can just Google “Blogs about (ad your theme here) and you’ll most likely find so many people you can start learning from and collaborating with.
2. Define your differentiator: Once you’ve really listened to the conversation, analyzed it and were able to take a first look at what us going on, its time to define your position and the value that you are going to add to this dialog, which will, more likely than not, be tied to your values, principles and vision of life.
   
3. Make yourself tangible: create your space, your base if you will. This can be your blog, your personal website, a profile in one or many social networks, etc. The main object here it to have a point of contact from which you can reach out to your audience to share your thoughts, opinions, knowledge, experience, insights, networks or anything positive you can think of. By the way, two very important practices I recommend are:
   A) Get your own domain, that is yournamehere.com. It might sound exaggerated but if your name belongs to you and that is how people reach out to you off-line, why not do the same on-line? Getting your domain is easy, fast and relatively cheap, you can get it at resources like Nic.com or Godaddy.com
   B) Remember, once you share something, anything and I do mean anything on line it will be accessible to a whole lot of people and recorded for posterity, so if you want to exercise and good personal brand, be very mindful of the content you generate and share.
4. And to continue on the subject of content, make sure yours is relevant, interesting and provocative for your audience. Give them a clear benefit in return for the minutes they are giving you. Of course your content has to be authentic, original and a reflection of your interests, knowledge, etc. but unless you are generating content just for yourself (in which case I’d recommend another very good practice: writing a journal) pay attention on the interests and need of your audience and respond the them accordingly.
   
5. Open yourself to feedback and keep listening: keep in mind that exercising a personal brand has the objective of being represented in today’s worldwide conversation and the keyword here is CONVERSATION and in order for there to be one we need to listen and have good feedback. Fortunately there are different resources we can use to help us deal with this crucial task:
   A) First of all you need to keep track of all the comments and opinions your audience leave for you. Every social media platform (blogs, networks, podcasts, video sharing, etc) have the functionality of allowing users to write comments about the content you share with them. On the other hand, some of your followers might want to share their thoughts in a more private fashion so be sure to have a special email address they can contact you through. Then, open yourself to the feedback, listen to it, understand it, cherish it and respond to it. Establish a healthy interaction.
   B) Sometimes you might not get any comments in your comments section and you might get to think that no one has seen, read or listen to your stuff. Luckily for us, technology comes to the rescue and provide us with resources with which we can not only track how many visitors we got but what piece of our content is more relevant to them and which is the most popular. A tool you can use to track visits and behavior in your site is Google Analytics, its free and relatively easy to use in its basic functionality. Plus there are also some sites where you can keep track of how you rank versus other and how popular have you become, like technorati.com

 
Definitely, exercising and managing a great personal brand is no easy task and it is not something you can do in a flash or instantaneously. Seth Godin said it better when he said “It took me 6 years to have an overnight ".

Exercising a great personal brand requires work, time and focus plus honesty and authenticity; but like everything in life, those things that take really hard work from our part are the things that bring us more benefits in return.

Mekate Friday: Erasing Lines.

Authors note: This is a translation of the new entry I just posted on Mekate.com

Erasing lines.

It’s funny you know? It is said that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, yet it is precisely a line which has created the longest distance between what brands want to do to communicate with consumers and what these want to see and experiment from brands.

I mean, after working for 14 years in the advertising and communication industry and having worked with traditional advertising, direct marketing, promotions, interactive marketing; above the line, below the line, through the line, on its side and even in the middle of it, I have never found someone who could tell me who was the arrogant genius who decided that communication could be divided and even classified in to above and below.

I can almost imagine a character worthy of the biggest villain in a James Bond movie, Siamese cat on lap and all, locked behind the crystals of the highest floor in his corporate tower, which event though has hosted his throne for years, now has been transformed into his very own cell.

Why? Let me elaborate. According to the ATL/BTL division, a medium is considered above the line when it has a massive reach and below the line when it establishes a one on one contact with consumers, right?

 Then what happens when we have a platform like the Internet where we can reach 27.4 million people in Mexico alone and 1.172 billion worldwide? Should we consider it Above the Line then? But what about its ability of helping us reach those 27.4 mm users on a one to one basis? Should we then call it Below the Line?

And what about all the other marketing communication disciplines like P.R, Shopper Marketing or Direct Marketing with which we can also reach millions of people with one single campaign? (Just ask the postal service who their biggest clients are, I’m sure you’ll find some big brands among them).

You see, from my personal and professional perspective, the strategies, tactics, actions and even media cannot be divided into above or below the line anymore, in fact they never should have! The efforts that a very few people are still doing to keep this kind of division alive so they can still try to keep the thinning budgets on their hands are facing and big and inevitable change.

Today any marketing communications professional, be it a strategic planner, media planners, marketing director, brand manager, creative director, copy writers on an accoutn executive, must understand that fortunately for our industry, our client’s and specially for consumers, there are very diverse disciplines and media that allow us to connect with consumers in many different ways, thus letting brands acomplish their ever growing objectives while making themselves available for consumers whenever, wherever and however they want to contact us.

So put this into practice: erase the line once and for all and stop preaching that you do “integrated campaigns” and really start doing so. Do this and I’m sure you’ll have loyal customers for a long time.

5 previous steps to successfully develop your Personal Brand.

There is a lot of talk today about the practice of Personal Branding and about how social media which we know as social networks like FaceBook or Linked-in, public forums like Twitter and other vehicles like blogs and podcasts really help us maximize the reach that each of us, as individuals, both professionally and personally, can have to establish a bigger and better network; be it to look for a new job, become part of a certain community, collaborate with other people, learn from them and share with them our point perspectives too, thus exercising what we call our Personal Brand.

In fact in this “Age of Conversation”, this is a subject that has become so important that we just cannot affor to ignore. So important in fact, that 86% of professional talent recruiters today look on-line for information on their candidates; plus 7 out of 10 of those recruiters have said that the odds of each candidate significantly improves if whatever information they find on-line is positive. (Source: Execunet.com 2008 Executive Job Market Intelligence Report).
So relevant is this subject that there are now plenty of really good specialists on Personal Branding who, like Dan Schawbel have generated an excellent series of lessons and advices on how to successfully exercise your Personal Brand.

However, I’m convinced that in order to really leverage all those great lessons and suggestions, there are a few steps we need to take before we actually start to exercise our brand.

1-   Understand that no matter what our level of involvement on line is, each and everyone of us already is a brand. In the words of Tom Peters: “No matter how old we are or what position we have nor in what industry we work; we all have to understand the importance of a brand. We ourselves are the CEOs of our own company: Me, inc. To do business today, our most important job is to be the brand manager of the brand call ME”.

2-   Understand that like so, most of the rules commercial brands abide to, apply to us too. So we must make sure that our brand is clear, unique and different from the others. And to do so, there is nothing better than honesty and authenticity, that is, ensuring that all our words, actions and behavior (on & off line) reflect our values, principles, strengths and priorities as human beings; and yes that includes not hiding our areas of opportunity.

3-   Deeply knowing our own brand. How can we be authentic and unique if we don’t really know ourselves? Before we move forward we need to do a huge job of reflection and retrospective. An analysis of ourselves. We need to define and call out our values and principles, our passions and callings. We have to identify all that matters the most to us in life.

4-   Understand our current context: Once we’ve done this introspective work, we should be able to know how we see ourselves; however that might not entirely be the way other people sees us, so we need to ask ourselves: With whom do I interact with these days? What kind of relationship do I have with them? And tougher questions like: What perception do they have of me? Do they think of me as an expert on any given subject? Do I really have credibility among them?
Now, please remember to be cautious when asking these and remember that not everybody will appreciate you the same way and that you cannot be everything to everybody; and don’t forget that just like any other brand you’ll have your detractors and your ambassadors, the important thing will be to know who is which so you can determine how to interact with them.

5-   Define in what context you want your Personal Brand to live in. Meaning, defining with whom we want to interact and through what channels we’d like to do so, while determining from whom do we want to learn and to whom do we want to be related and in which media.
In fact this is precisely one of the greatest gifts of Social Media: The possibility of connecting and interacting with very diverse people from very different places and backgrounds; people like oneself or great thought leaders, entrepreneurs or celebrities, which does take that old saying that goes: “Tell me who you hang with and I’ll tell you who you are” to a whole other level. And like they say: “If you want to be very good at playing tennis, don’t always play with those you can beat every time, play with some like Rafael Nadal”.

Well, there you have them, 5 previous steps to take to successfully launch and exercise your Personal Brand. Now as for actually exercising it, well that is subject for a whole other post.

 

How good a partner are you?

Surely you have heard it before, maybe even said to yourself a few times, especially if you work directly with clients, vendors, sales forces or re-sellers and distributors.

That beautiful, simple, short and definitely empty and over used phrase that goes: “Don’t think of me as your vendor or client or dealer, see me as your partner.”

Come on! Be honest, you’ve said it, right? Practically every single business person I know, including myself, has used this phrase when working on a sale or to close a deal.

The problem is though that we’ve used those words so much that they’ve lost their meaning, or even worse its meaning has changed so much that for some people today, when they listen a sales rep saying it they really end up hearing “I’m only interested in your money and as soon as you sign I’ll move on to my next “partner” who might pay me more than you”

Don’t get me wrong please. I’m not saying we shouldn’t focus on generating revenue to our business; the issue I’m talking about is how.

A real business partner is not worried about how much revenue his “partners” will generate for him. A partner (be it a client, a vendor or a re-seller) is not a profit farm or a never ending fountain of money for us to drain.

Having a partnership requires a huge commitment on our part, a commitment to put, in the majority of the occasions, the interests of our partner before ours. Being a great partner means that we are always looking for new ways to help our partners, their partners and us too, win.

Being a great partner requires us not only to sympathize with our clients and that we tell them that we “understand” how they feel; it demands that we empathize with them completely! It requires that we make ours their objectives. We need to understand their goals, their strengths and opportunities, etc. so that based on these we come up with proposals and solutions to help them meet their goals, even if doing so does not generates an instant financial gain for us, because in the long run (and the not so long really) being a great partners will bring a whole lot more benefits to our business than just the frequent closing of a sale. It will bring us loyalty, affinity, understanding and even ambassadors of our company too.

Mekate Thursday: An Agency Story

Note: Those who have been reading me for a while, might remember that I also collaborate with

the blog mekate.com, where we mainly discuss subjects that have to do a lot more with

Communication and Advertising. But since it is written in Spanish, I like to post its entries in English

here at The daily and the not so.

Well then, here is the first post of the year in Mekate.com

 

An Agency Story.

My dear fellow mekateers! It’s been a while since I last posted an entry in Mekate, so I promise to

make an effort to post regularly.

I have to confess though that sometimes the main reason why a blogger stops writing is

becausehe/she feels he/she has nothing really important and valuable to share. 

But now though, boy do I have the perfect material to share with you! t is the thoughts and points of

view of 237 bloggers worldwide who through and enormous collaborative work, participated as 

co-authors of the new book  The Age of Conversation 2: why don’t’ they get it. 

So starting today I will try to frequently share and discuss with you the insights, take aways and

points of view I get from reading each chapter in the book.

Now, please take note that I will not be publishing the chapters here, If you want to read the book

(and believe me, you do) you should purchase it on lulu.com, there are two versions, hard cover and

e-book. 

Plus if you buy it you’ll be participating with a great cause, since all sales are being donated to

Variety International Children’s Charity.

Well let’s get to it! As you might know, from reading my blog The daily and the not so, for me one of
the most important skills in any professional is his/her attitude and ability to connect, sympathize and empathize with their clients, peers and people in general.

So it is no surprise that the first chapter I’ve chosen to share with you I the one written by Cam Beck, titled “An Agency Story” in which Cam narrates a very common but very often overlooked incident that frequently happens in Advertising agencies and organizations in general; specially with the bigger, more successful and famous ones, when the people who work for them, fall in love with their own voice and can’t stop talking about them and their company, some times even making it seem as if they were doing their clients a favor by working for them, instead of really listening to their client’s needs which, more often than not, turn out to be not what we supposed they would be: 

“Thank you, that’s all well and good. You’ve convinced me that you have reached the pinnacle of your industry. You are obviously proud — and you have every reason to be. Agencies, not only in the United States, but in the entire world should be envious of the awards you’ve received.” “But while you prattled on to brag about all the awards you received, you completely ignored my needs. You didn’t even ask what was wrong. A few questions and a little troubleshooting would have helped you make your case…”
Cam Beck, Age of Conversation 2: why don’t they get it. Page 72. 

Want to know what the client’s problem really was? Don’t forget getting AOC2 and read it on page 72.

 

And in the mean time, do not forget that no matter how big, successful or rich your company or the 

organization you work for is, in the end people doesn’t necessarily want to work with the most famous, powerful or richer ones. People want to do business with the people they like to interact with. And the best way to get people to like interacting with you is sympathizing and empathizing with them, having a great attitude that generates value for them, and you can only do this by closely listening to them, paying attention to their needs and not talking just to listen to your own beautiful voice.

 

 

Continental Airlines $8.06 Dollars per person!

Yes, eight Dollars ans six cents was the huge amount we, passengers of the flight 2646 to Houston, received in the form of meal coupons, eight days ago, whed due to electrical failures we had to deplan de aircraft we were in, right before it took off. Less than 2% of what, I least I had to pay for the round trip tickets to the Texan city, which was reimbursed as compensation for the extra 3 hours wait (additional of course to the original 3 we had already been there) so we could have something to eat at a restaurant assigned by them (not the customer’s choice) and in which by the way the less expensive dish in the menu alone, was almost the coupon’s worth (so it did not even cover an entire meal).

I’m not complaining. In fact I’m deeply grateful with the captain of the aircraft who responsibly tool the decision of not taking off, so THANK YOU VERY MUCH Mr. Captain!

That said, to their ground ops team I must ask: How much is it really worth to you a loyal returning passenger / client? Are we really worth less than 2% of what you charge us? Wouldn’t it have in better for you to help us with:

1-     Having a special placer to go to re-check on another flight, without having to leave the terminal and going to the outer check in counters?

2-     Transferring our baggage from one plane to the other instead of having us go to pick up our luggage at the baggage claim, having to go through customs without even having left the country! And then re-checking it?

3-     Providing us with a comfortable place to wait instead of giving us an insufficient meal coupon that doesn’t even covers the total check of the restaurant you chose for ourselves?

Now I think about all this and I cannot help but ask you my friends: How much do you value your customers? When you have and inconvenient, do you seek for ways to add value to your clients, something that really sends out the message “I’m sorry, I worry about your satisfaction and really value your business” or do you just try to put a patch on with a coupon?

You’ll see, most times organizations thing that a reimbursement of any given amount (sometimes even 100% of the cost) is enough to cover our faults, but it really isn’t. Reimbursing what we’ve charged is only what’s fair. It is the minimum expected.

But if we really want to have loyal customers, who keep bringing their business to ours, we must focus on providing them with a great experience, a service like no other that tells them that above all, even our own mistakes; we will always try to exceed their expectations. 

So I ask you again: How much do you really value your clients?

The pics of the week!

As always, here are some shots from my last presentations, this time DDB Mexico and Amipci and a special kenynote at Unitec. Take a look at them and see if you can find you in them!