This summer I had the opportunity to work with Erica and David as one of their interns.  I would say our main focus of the summer was Social Media.  I definitely knew how to use Facebook to keep in touch with my friends, but was clueless on how to use it as marketing for a business.  Luckily, Erica was working with a company (The Grand Traverse Pie Company in Troy) as a project to see how Social Media would influence their business.

I started the Social Media project by reading the book Groundswell by Li and Bernoff.  A quick summary would be: watch out, social media is about to take over and you better catch on… and fast, or else you’ll get trampled over by everyone else who already gets it.

We first created a Facebook Fan page for their company.  The main franchise (in Traverse City) had their own site, but we wanted to set this location apart in hopes of recruiting more local customers.  In a month and a half over 350 became fans of the GTPie Co in Troy.

We also decided to tackle the twitter project.  I was totally against twitter accounts and I refused to get one myself.  I didn’t understand why people wanted constant updates of what their friends were doing all day.  Too much information for me. However, one day I caved in and got a twitter for myself to try and figure out what this site was all about.  Well, as much as I hate to admit it, I love it.  So many companies are using this site to keep customers informed, and I have noticed many businesses are often offering special deals.  I’m a girl that loves her coupons, so twitter and I quickly became good friends.  Grand Traverse Pie Company now has almost 300 followers on twitter.

Along with learning more about social media, I was able to pick up a few very important pieces of information applicable to any business.

1.    You must have a tangible description of your services to show people what you can do.  If Erica and David told potential clients “We can fix your business problems, just give us some money” I’m not sure many people would hand over the cash.  We were able to work on a document specifically outlining how DHall Ventures would assist you with Media, Online Media, Public Relations and general Consulting.  Once people see this information they can visualize how their company has the potential to grow and expand with these new resources and changes.

2.    The importance (and coolness) of Google (specifically analytics).  Google is a crazy company.  They have everything, and I’m pretty sure we haven’t even discovered 5% of their resources.  We connected the DHall Ventures website with Google Analytics to see the traffic of our site.  We were able to track days that we were doing well, and days where we had to work a little harder to get people to come to the site.

3.    Ask and you shall receive.  When working on bringing more people to the site we had to give them an incentive.  David and Erica post a blog that includes useful information and insight for anyone in the working world.  We were looking for more traffic for the site so we wanted to reach out to some connections.  Once we asked them if they wanted to be subscribed to the blog, they were super excited and interested to see what David and Erica had to offer.  Some connections even turned into potential clients, and the rest is history.

4.    Execution and determination is key.  We had a few potential clients that had great ideas but never did anything about them (or only did half of what they should’ve).

I got more out of this internship than I ever thought I would.  I definitely learned things this summer that I would’ve never learned in a textbook.  I thank Erica and David for being able to work with them on projects and allowing me to use their company as a model for how a real world business functions.

FYI:  Key words of the summer: insanity, out-of-control, and wack-job.

Does it get any better then Al Pacino’s speech from Any Given Sunday (watch here)? I know we’ve all seen it a 100 times but I still get the chills when I watch it!

So many great lines in that speech. I compiled a few of our favorites and included a link to the speech below.

“The margin for error is so small. I mean one half a step too late or too early and you don’t quite make it.  One half a second too slow too fast you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They’re in every break of the game, every minute, every second. “

“When we add up all those inches that’s going to make the f@!%ing difference between winning and losing. Between living and dying.”

“In any fight its the guy who’s willing to die that is going to win that inch…I know If I’m going to have any life anymore it’s because I’m still willing to fight and die for that inch.”

“That’s what living is-the six inches in front of your face.”

“We heel now as a team or we will die as individuals.”

Isn’t it great?!

Our careers really are about the inches-choosing to attend the networking event, re-reading the proposal for the 4th time before you send it, sounding happy when you answer your phone, having business cards on you at all times-you get the idea. It’s NOT 1 or 2 big things that separate the “living from the dying” its all the little things. Keep the inches in mind as you get your week started.

Watch Video:

Al Pacino, Any Given Sunday

For sports fans there are few times better than early to mid June. The baseball season is heating up, golfers are hitting the links, and the NBA and NHL playoffs consume the airwaves. As is often the case in life, the difference between winning and losing is a matter of inches. So close is the distance between being crowned a champion versus joining that long, forgotten list of second place finishers that it sometimes comes down to one bad bounce, one missed shot, or one half revolution of a golf ball.

However close the final scores may have been this playoff season, the sportsmanship displayed by various teams and players proved to be the glaring difference. Watching the Red Wings lose game 7 on our home ice was tough on all Wings fans. However, the city of Detroit can be proud of how our team handled themselves afterward; with dignity and without excuses. To a man, each Red Wing shook the hand of their opponent and bravely faced the media and all the difficult questions that come with losing a game in their own building that they were expected to win. What a difficult thing that must have been, to face 12 microphones right after you lose the game of your life. We have seen others run from the spotlight after losses that aren’t nearly of the degree of a game 7 in your own building.

Compare the professionalism displayed by Chris Osgood, Nickolos Lindstrom, and Henrik Zetterberg with Lebron James’ decision to skip post game interviews and to leave the court without congratulating the Orlando Magic after their upset victory. James is a unique, once-in-a-lifetime player, yes, but is he above acknowledging a job well done by his opponent once the final buzzer has sounded? In the previous playoff series that James and the Cavaliers had won this year, James eagerly accepted the praise of his opponents after the game and basked in the media glow that followed his each victory. How ironic that he is unable to give out the affirmation to others that he himself seeks when the ball doesn’t bounce his way.

I couldn’t help but to notice the enormous emotion displayed by Chris Osgood as he so obviously held back the tears during the media session after what was the playoff run of his life. Already holding multiple Stanley Cups, no one shined brighter in these playoffs for the Wings than Osgood. He was assuredly going to be the MOST VALUABLE PLAYER of the playoffs, the Conn Smythe trophy winner if the Wings had come thru. Losing both of games 6 and 7 by scores of 2-1, you can only imagine he must have been thinking “why couldn’t my guys put the puck in the net the way they did all season”…..but he didn’t say it…….and he didn’t show it. He answered the questions like a humble professional and that was more of a lesson to me than anything else during the playoffs. Throughout this post-season there has been this debate, “should Ozzie be a Hall of Famer if the Wings win this cup”………in my mind, by both his play and his sportsmanship, he answered that question decisively.

Twitter? Digg? Facebook? Delicious? Wordpress? If you think I’m talking about cooking terms-don’t worry you’re not the only one. But you are part of a shrinking audience. Many of us are becoming familiar with social media-most likely through Facebook or Linked In or My Space type services. We all love these services to spy on our ex’s new fling or share pictures of our family or talk about ourselves but here’s what we want to know…

Who’s getting business from social media? Have you made a business connection as a result of these sites? Did you get a job? Do you use it for recruiting? Is it helpful in finding vendors?

We know what response we would find if we googled this question…Every blogger in the country is saying a business cannot afford to NOT have a presence on Twitter but we want to hear from the non bloggers of the world. Is this web 2.0 thing a reflection of our voyeuristic nature or a sign of the changing way of business?

Give us a little snippet of how you use it to grow your Just hit “comment” at the bottom and tell us your story.

Back in the day I was big on the importance of ASSUMING THE SALE.It may quite possibly be the most powerful sales tactic available in a salesman’s arsenal. To choose to not assume is to cut down on your percentage of successful sales.

Yesterday, I was reminded of the importance of assumption during a presentation for a client. We had been interviewing a new web hosting/marketing company. We narrowed the decision down to 3 prospects and met with all of them face to face over a 10 hour day. It was a long day. Listening to very long presentations can be very draining. By the time the 3rd prospect arrived we were thinking of how to cut it short before we even met with them. They were our least favorite after just reviewing the initial proposals over email….. and we thought we had already made our decision. Obviously that would have been very rude of us, so we sat down and got ready for our 3rd presentation.

This group did 3 things different then any other group had so far and it made the difference…

1. They had done a mock up already using the clients name and logo to give us a vision of what new website would look like

2. They told us they had already identified who our Account Executive would be and what her name was and her back ground

3. They invited us to come visit them at their place to check them out.

When these guys walked into the room there was a very small chance of getting the business. Half way through the presentation they had us visualizing life with our new account executive and what it would be like to talk to her and what did we think of this design and maybe we could move that there or what about this…Sure, a visit to your facilities would be nice…Oh next Tuesday-ok perfect…All of a sudden without even knowing it we were much closer to doing business with them than we had originally thought. We became very interested and forgot about how exhausted we were or how great that other company was. These guys had a vision for us! And not only did they have a vision but they also excelled when it came to having inflection in your voice while speaking to an audience or doing a dramatic table pound to keep the crowd’s attention. The art of sales is truly a fascinating topic. I applaud anyone who can perfect it as well as these guys.

Has anyone ever been in one of those meetings where you come up with new ideas on how to solve a problem or a strategy to handle a certain situation or ideas on how to drum up more business? Those are fun meetings. They tend to have a lot of energy. People shouting out ideas and feeding off of each other. It feels good. What happens after those type of meetings are what is important. The EXECUTION of ideas.

This seems obvious that execution would be important. You might even be thinking right now-do I really need a blog to tell me execution is a big deal. But execution could quite possibly be the biggest challenge when it comes to business. Most business owners that we come in contact with know what needs to be done to make improvements but they are unable to flight through the challenges of actually making those ideas come to life.

The execution were talking about doesn’t have to be about complex big picture ideas either. A lot of the executives we work with are trying to get execution on the basics done. Call your past clients on a regular basis, make sure your merchandise is clean and organized, being early to appointments and meetings-all these things help a business but how many times do you go somewhere and see it not done? How many times is the Macy’s shoe department a mess or the doctor late for your appointment or your insurance agent checking on you to make sure you’re still in good shape on your policy. We drop the ball on execution all the time.

Why is execution hard? Well for one you have to be the “tough” person. You have to constantly remind people when things don’t get done. And you even have to get creative about your reminders to make sure there is variety and they don’t tune you out! And were all over extended in our own minds so doing that one extra thing seems like a lot of effort. We’re all guilty of it. But execution is what separates the mediocre from the brilliant.

Next time you’re in one of those idea meetings start thinking about whether it’s a good use of time. Should you instead be spending that time making sure you execute or follow up with others on their execution? No one is recommending putting a halt to innovation but the ideas part is easy! If you want to make a real difference have a meeting about how you are going to get these projects started. Who’s going to do what and by what time and who’s going to hold them accountable and what’s Plan B? Execution is where it’s at.

This might seem hard to believe but the world is not crumbling. All the doom and gloom you hear on TV, radio and in the news could give someone a coronary. If you listen to all the negativity and the talk about consumer spending being way down…..you could get frozen yourself…..and maybe for some of us that’s a good thing!  I have been very fortunate to work with several clients who are growing their business-yes that means hiring more people and turning a profit! It is possible! But while it’s possible it is certainly not easy.

Here are the top 5 things I see smart businesses doing right now to stay ahead…

1. Accept nothing but the best from employees-mediocrity doesn’t fly anymore. The stakes are too high to have people who don’t want to work their asses off. There’s a lot of talented people out there right now who are dying for a job. Find them, train them, get intense.

2. Prepare for a turnaround. Start setting yourself up for brighter days. One day the credit markets will loosen up a little and consumers will have confidence again.  When that day happens you need to be ready to snatch up the business.

3. Work your butt off. I know you thought you were at a point where you didn’t have to anymore-but now you do. No point resisting it-just do it. The business is still out there but there is no denying it is more difficult to find.

4. Be Agile. How quickly can you adapt your business to a new market? How quickly can you adapt to change? Someone definitely moved your cheese recently. We can all think of entities that haven’t been quick to adapt……. they are feeling the pain right now for not adjusting sooner. I suspect companies like that will never ever exist again. We will forever be lean and agile.

5. Get into the mousetraps. And get really deep. Question all of your processes. Look closely at all the systems in your business. Why do you do it that why? Is there a better way? Where are the bottlenecks? If you’re not as busy with sales then there is no better time to solve all those big issues you never had time to before.

There are companies growing and prospering-even in Michigan. For a lot of businesses their competitors are going by-bye. Today’s business world will dictate that only the best of the best survive. Regardless of how this economic crisis works out, things will forever be different-and I think that difference is probably for the best when we look back on it in the years to come. In this new market we will be smarter, wiser, and grateful.