Category: Blog

I’m pretty sure I never envisioned the day when my son could ask a small electronic device to honour the day of my birth with a song. But that is just what happened in my house.

Birthdays in today’s world are weird.

There is no way to hide the fact that you’ve just done another lap on planet earth. Thanks to social media, digital profiles, and electronic networks, everybody knows. It’s that simple. There is no hiding.

I’m one of those people who declares that their birthday isn’t a big deal to them. But the hypocrisy in that statement went up in Californian smoke the minute I started crafting this blog. Yet I’m still going to defend my position and declare it really isn’t a big deal.

There is no need for a big party or a fancy dinner with lots of people. I don’t need a surprise or a hat or balloons. There is no internal desire to take the day off work, although that is a perk we started offering to the team a year ago.

But I have to tell you this social media thing makes you feel kinda good on your birthday. You get to spend the day being feted, in small morsels and bites, every few minutes. People you haven’t heard recently from, family in distant lands, and people you enjoy daily all chime in.  You would have to be the coldest dude in the land to not enjoy it.

So I did.

But not solely for my benefit. As I looked at the greetings and notes, it made me realize that most people love their birthday. I am not suggesting they are being disingenuous in sending me greetings. But each one gives me a little glimpse into them. People like to celebrate their special day. They also like to celebrate others’ special days.

That’s why I donned a fun t-shirt I found online a few months ago and posted a rare selfie. I wanted to ensure that I signaled my never-seen-before openness to birthday greetings. If people want to enjoy a birthday – mine or theirs – I wanted to help them.

It was worth it.

Not because it fed into some cliche about getting better, not older. Not because I’m so vain that I was repeatedly counting the posts and comments throughout the day. No, because as a business contact reminded me during an afternoon meeting, human beings are happiest when they feel love and a sense of belonging in this world. (BTW he didn’t know it was my birthday or perhaps he forgot my gift).

Happiest when loved. Happiest when you feel you belong. Perhaps that is the real meaning behind the words Happy Birthday. It’s an extra special message of friendship and connection that each of us deserves, at least once a year.

Even if that message is delivered by Google.

The world doesn’t need another ‘sport is a metaphor for life’ blog post, but I absorbed some powerful thoughts at the American Football Coaches Convention that I do need to share.

Yes, they are words of wisdom espoused by college, pro, and high school football coaches and therefore shouldn’t automatically be accepted as life lessons. But they just as easily could have been words of wisdom from business, government and societal leaders. By extension, they would have similar transferability to the sports arena.

Certainly, the coaches presenting and attending at the AFCA Convention feel they contribute to the world much more than just fun and games. The unofficial theme of the event was that football and the military are the last remaining bastions of American society for young men today. Their pitch to their fellow countrymen is that without football, their country is at risk of a weakened backbone. That football provides the role modeling, discipline, and maturation that young men in America need so desperately today more than ever.

I have long suggested that businesses should also take a role in nation building. Business executives (female and male) should be role models for their current, future, and former colleagues. Businesses should provide opportunities to teach, train and develop young people. Businesses need to be prepared to help in times of financial need, small and large crises, and unexpected disasters.

In order for businesses to be able to act as a guiding force in our communities, they may consider approaching their culture building based on some of the principles that lead to successful football teams.

Let’s examine three.

1. Culture
Culture drives behaviour. It needs to be established at the outset and worked on every day. The leader must be clear on three things: 1. Here is our plan; 2. The plan is infallible; 3. Follow the plan.

2. Competitiveness
Competing is all about maximizing your abilities. This requires a relentless focus on preparation, hard work, and effort. Tell your team that they are the hardest working in the league. Tell your staff they are the most prepared. Push them down the stretch not to punish, but rather to prepare them to handle adversity late in a game, a project, or a sale. Expect adversity. It’s part of the game.

3. Accountability
It is the job of the coach and the business leader to hold their people to a high standard, to stress accountability, and to communicate clearly with people when they are falling short. As an individual in an organization or a team, you need to do your job so your colleagues can do theirs. As a teammate, you show your love for your team based on how hard you are willing to work.

Sports and Business share a common trait. The ability to measure success and failure. Wins and losses, Profits and losses. The results are not hard to see.

I am shocked, appalled, and mortified.

I just found out that a very well known major sports organization in this country pays their interns seventy-five dollars a week. Yes, the equivalent of $3,900 a year if they were employed for fifty-two weeks. I also discovered that a major sports league in this country provides their interns with an honorarium of $500 per month. That’s $6,000 a year or 35% more than the first organization I referenced. A third organization I heard about recently, a sponsorship consultancy, is paying their interns with tickets to major league events. But while in attendance (by themselves because they only get one), they need to audit the sponsor signage and promotions at the venue.

Last time I checked minimum wage was $11.60 per hour in Ontario. If you asked an intern to work a forty-hour week, you should pay them $464.00 a week. I don’t need to teach you how to do math, but clearly somebody needs a math lesson since these organizations are paying people a fraction of what is legal. In fact, a $75/week stipend is 16% of what minimum wage calls for.

Are they only expecting 16% effort, 16% productivity, 16% accountability, and 16% responsibility? I doubt it. In fact, I bet it’s the opposite. I suspect they are expecting 116% of the intern’s life.

You don’t need a math lesson and you don’t need a lesson in fairness. But someone does. How is a young person who has tuition to pay, rent to find, food to scrounge, and probably debts accumulating supposed to survive on these meager wages? It is not enough to suggest they are being rewarded through training. That is crap. Total crap. I am fifty-two years old and I am learning about my job every day. Does that mean I should make slave wages? Hell no – Abe Lincoln solved that for me a long time ago!

We used to underpay our interns, years ago we only paid a $2,000 per term honorarium. But we soon realized that was rampantly unfair to both the interns and to us. They were not getting a fair financial return and we were not attracting the best talent. So when we increased it and then late began to follow minimum wage, I falsely believed everybody else was doing the same. Guess I am wrong.

This came to light for me recently when a friend’s daughter asked for advice as to what internship they should choose. Her first criteria was to find something flexible so she could keep her non-internship, part-time job, which pays quite well. It was only then that I discovered the facts!

Our industry needs interns, not the other way around. They provide a pool of talented short-term labor which is crucial for busy times. They form a pipeline of entry-level talent that you know well through extended exposure. They bring ideas, energy, and enthusiasm. They become ambassadors of your brand for their professional lives.

If you can sleep at night supporting a system where you take advantage of interns than more power to you. But I can’t – and I believe many people are on my side of the bed on this one. I think that the colleges and universities who pitch their students to companies should begin to freeze out those that won’t provide fair compensation, regardless of their profile.

I am really excited about our T1 Speaker Series event next week. I would have used the word “stoked”, but after posting it three times yesterday people have told me that my quota is up.

But I am stoked for a bunch of reasons.

Our panel wasn’t assembled by accident. That’s pretty obvious. It’s a bit of a sneak peak of our lineup for sponsorshipX 2018.

Darren Kinnaird is the General Manager of Crankworx and our partner event for the first edition of sponsorshipX, happening this August 2018. (Yes in case you have been ignoring me for months, CSFX is now called sponsorshipX and we are going global with content, speakers, delegates and an international event soon). David Zimberoff is the VP Marketing of SRAM and one of biggest partners of Crankworx. Micayla Gatto is a professional mountain biker, artist, online host, and brand ambassador.

Micayala Gatto is the panelist I know the least because we haven’t actually met yet. I have been spending some time this week learning about her in the way we learn about most people in 2017 – online. But as vast as the interweb is, I have a feeling that it is only telling me a fraction of the story. I am excited to have her share her story of juggling her multiple roles, endorsement deals, appearances, and content creation. Here is a link if you want a sneak peek, though I think meeting her in real life will be the real deal.

I know David Zimberoff the second best. But that may be a slight exaggeration since our relationship to date has consisted of one evening together at the Crankworx partner dinner, and one phone call to discuss his speaking at sponsorshipX 2018. But it only took a few minutes at that dinner to realize I had met someone who not only has an unlimited insider’s knowledge of the biker world & community, but also a unique and savvy approach to business building. Plus his stewardship of the World Bicycle Relief Program is reflective of the type of difference we should all want to make in this world.

Darren Kinnaird, I know the most from his attendance and involvement in several past CSFX events. For years he prodded me about hosting our conference in tandem with Crankworx. To be candid, I had dozens of misconceptions as to what Crankworx was really all about. Turns out, it’s the world’s largest mountain biking festival – attracting thousands of affluent, influential and engaged consumers – and Whistler’s most lucrative event of the year.

That is a great segway to our the discussion we will hold next Tuesday during the Speaker Series. As consumers shift away from mass to mass customization, properties become increasingly globalized, and affluent customers seek experiences over collectibles, we as marketers are faced with many questions. How do I reach unique and targeted consumers? How do I connect with authenticity? How do I uncover the many layers of my customers and understand what makes them tick?

See you next Tuesday!

Sorry I skipped a week in my HR entries of how to work with your boss, grumpy or otherwise. But I’m back.

Thought I would take a slightly different tack today, though it’s consistent with my messages of the last couple of weeks. This one is inspired by both my recent posts and a presentation I just gave to the board of a sports-related national organization. But the topic at hand is not about working for a boss – it’s about working with clients, customers, sponsors, etc.

I love to ask my audience this simple question: what business are you in? Invariably we all fall into the trap of sharing our business’ mission or vision statements. If you take Peter Drucker to heart, you know that the purpose of any business is to make a sale. For example, the board I was presenting to last week was very tightly aligned on their organization’s mission, but I would argue they were wrong to think that way. In reality, they are in the Fundraising Business. Because without resources they cannot provide the opportunities and access that is so strongly articulated in their values.

Truth be told we are both right. They are in the Opportunity Business and they are also in the Fundraising Business. But if you scratch the surface you will also realize that we are both wrong.

This organization, your organization, my organization are all in the same business. It’s easy to forget sometimes and when we do, or at least when I do, we all pay a heavy penalty for it. The business we are all in is the People Business. Whether you are a tech company, a service organization, a rights agency, or an entertainment provider. Our customers are people.

Understanding we are in the People Business is key to selling programs, ideas, campaigns, sponsorships, media, innovations, investments – you name it. In my book (which yes I am still writing); it’s a point I keep trying to make. So much so that it may become the subtitle.

The business you are in is the People Business. If your business or organization isn’t hitting its sales targets, if you are not winning enough RFP’s, or if your channels of distribution are drying up – perhaps it is time to stop looking at the numbers and look at the names.

Who is it you are selling to? What motivates them? How are they evaluated in their job? What is their true role? You can ask yourself a hundred and one questions about this person and I think you should. Creating a clear picture of who your customer is and what their needs are is the easiest path to success.

So why don’t we do it more often? I’m not sure, but let me ask you this: in the last forty-eight hours, how many times have you thought about the person on the other side of the desk (your customer) as a person? Not in a butt-kissing or sappy way, but in a pragmatic and thoughtful way. It can start with a deeper evaluation of what they are asking of you and your company. This more in-depth understanding is much more valuable than the specifics of the ask, and should be dimensionalized around parameters such as problem-solving, providing confidence in your solution, or, inspiration from your ideas. In short, you need to understand what fears that person has and how can allay them.

Have you heard the expression that nobody ever got fired for hiring XYZ big-name supplier? (I removed the actual company name because it actually delegitimizes the expression.) But it’s true. Your customer doesn’t care whether you can provide the specs. They care whether hiring you will get them fired.

If you think that they are the same thing you are wrong. Because every one of your competitors, including you, can provide the specs. But who can assure the client they won’t get fired? The one who takes the time to understand how the internal machinations of the company work. The one who learns the risk tolerances of your customer’s bosses. The one who learns the true issues impacting their company.

Getting to know your customer is no different than getting to know your boss. Out the time in. Shut your flytrap. Open your ears wide. Take lots of notes. Do your homework. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

I have had some interesting conversations since my last blog post published last week.

One of them went something like this:
Them: “You didn’t talk about how to deal with a moody boss.”
Me: “Yes I did.”
Them: “No you didn’t.”
Me: “Untrue. My advice was all about how to deal with any boss.”
Them: “But moody bosses are different, you don’t know what to expect from them.”

I thought about this for a while and shared it with another friend who also runs an agency. They almost fell out of their chair as they exclaimed: “I am so tired of being accused of moodiness!”

“I am NOT moody!”, he yelled as his eyes sprung out of his head, froth erupted from his mouth, and the blood turned his skull red. Eerily I felt like I was starting in a VR mirror. Once he got out of the get-this-man-a-defibrillator zone, we sat and chatted about it.

Do you know it’s scientifically proven that the easiest way to put someone in a bad mood, is to ask them if they are in a bad mood? Try it! Or ask someone to try it on you. Now, do you believe me?

Perhaps your boss is a moody person. Perhaps they have a good reason to be, or perhaps they don’t see themselves as moody at all.

So let’s try to figure out your moody boss by looking at the following three scenarios.

Scenario #1: They arrive at the meeting in a particular mood. I can only speak to myself, as I have no ability to be a mood reader for anybody else. It would be foolish for me to pretend not to be perceived as moody in the conventional sense. Or in any sense. But I would also posit to you that much of what affects my moods is often not seen by people I deal with. As a business owner, you often have to deal with issues in isolation. You don’t necessarily have peers who you can share your issues with. Perhaps if you are experiencing moodiness from your boss right from the meeting outset, it is the result of some bigger issue to which you have no visibility. You may not like it, but you don’t have the right to demand otherwise.

Scenario #2: During the meeting your boss goes from a decent mood to an unexpected bad mood. The second driver of mood changes isn’t really mood-related, it’s situational. In this case, you should take stock of what is happening. Perhaps the work or information being shared is not meeting your boss’ expectations. Perhaps they are now creating scenarios in their mind, where this sub-par work is going to affect a larger initiative, or a sales campaign, a client pitch, or the management of another project. While you may be thinking about the specifics at hand, perhaps a pause and consideration of the overall scenario will help you understand the shift in tone. You may not like it, but you aren’t the first person who has been told by their boss to improve their output.

Scenario #3: Your boss is upset with themselves, not you. I can attest to being one of those people who gets more upset with himself than anyone else in my universe. It’s not a mature quality, but at least I am aware of it. Perhaps this is the same for your boss. It may be hard for you to believe this, but it’s not always about you!

So if you spend more time observing the person or people you work for, you might learn how they are going to react in certain situations. Put the knowledge to work and I bet you will both end up in a better mood.

I am often asked by job-seekers what I think about the culture at Company X or Company Y.

My consistent answer is that you don’t go to work for a company, you go to work for a person. Your boss. How she/he and you engage will ultimately determine your happiness at that organization. So what do you do if you are working for a bad boss but you actually want to stay with the company?

Thinking about how YOU work with your boss should be a mandatory requirement for everybody at every level in your organization. Even a CEO has a board, a banker, a list of key customers who are their de facto bosses. People like to blame their boss, or hate on their boss, but have they taken a step back and thought about how to work with their boss?

You may feel that, as a business owner, I don’t have the credibility to comment in this area. Well, I have had many bosses in my life – ranging from my first newspaper route, to my summer jobs, to my role in a failed dot-com startup. More importantly, I have had many people work for me, many of whom get me, and many more whom don’t. So my advice is informed by a combination of working with direct reports and my own experiences reporting to a jerk board member, an uneven business partner, and a dominating entrepreneur. As well as working with an incompetent resort manager, a life coach sailing school director, a true mentor university athletic director, and a hands-off account director.

I am going to keep this simple, because as a boss that’s what I like in my team. So here are a few critical tidbits to guide your working relationship.

1. Find out how they want to work with you. Do they like meetings or conversations? Do they want to have regular 1:1’s or meetings on an as-needed basis? Are they a morning, midday, or late day person?

2. How do they like to receive information? Are they a visual learner? Are they a muller? Do they want everything in a deck the day prior? Do they like email? Do they prefer conversation? Do they want presentations or charts or word documents? Do they work at a desk or remotely from a tablet? (Just sixty seconds ago I had to ask for a PDF to view on my tablet after someone sent me an internal server link.)

3. What sort of relationship do they want to have? Does small talk pain them? Do they want to know about your weekend or your sick cat? Perhaps they don’t care (and that doesn’t make them a bad boss). Or do they want to retell their life story to you before every business discussion…

4. What can you do to make their life better? Do you understand their mandate and who they answer to? Do you understand their ambitions within the organization? Popular business writing focuses on servant leadership, but you should focus on serving your leader. Make it a two-way street. In turn you should be able to communicate to your team the critical issues on the mind of your boss.

5. Communicate. Commit. Complete. I hate chasing people. I hate having to follow up on their work. I hate having to ask when something will be done, and I hate a job half done. Research may show that a significant percentage of people dislike their bosses, but since when is delivering on a commitment you made a reason for this anger?

You may not believe this approach will work. Which is fine, because that will lead me to believe that you have never tried it.

It didn’t take Dannon Yogurt long to sign Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott as their spokesperson, following their sacking of Carolina Panthers pivot Cam Newton.

Newton, in case you don’t follow football, was slammed for making sexist comments when a female Charlotte Observer reporter asked him a question about receiver routes in a press conference. Newton somehow thought it was funny that a female reporter would ask such a question. He later tried to brush off the comments by saying he should have said that any reporter asking that question was funny – the intimation being reporters don’t know football.

Newton, unfortunately, has a history of immaturity and stupidity. His latest actions are even more unthinkable given he has two daughters of his own. Imagine how he would feel if someone spoke to one of his daughters in the same manner?

Newton’s current actions are only a small part of the story. Football fans know he bounced from university to university due to academic and legal issues. They also know his father went to the Rick Pitino school of athlete recruitment, and allegedly demanded cash payment for his son’s college commitment. Yet, as a fan, I loved Newton’s play at Auburn, where he willed his team to a national title and at Carolina where he guided the Panthers to a Super Bowl. As a black man, I have to admit he gets my biased support. I want black QB’s to succeed, so they can prove to the league and fans that they are smart leaders, despite not having always been given a fair shake. But as a black man, I also cringe at Newton’s actions.

Clearly, Dannon Yogurt didn’t do their homework on Newton before they signed him. The first time I saw their ads, I thought … what an odd fit, but kudos to Dannon. They are taking a chance on a young man with a questionable past, but unfortunately that decision burned them.

I am also a Dak Prescott fan, admittedly for the same reasons. When he was at Mississippi State he took a program from mediocre to #1 in the polls. When Dallas drafted him I told my Cowboys “friends”, they got the steal of the draft. They didn’t believe me. Thank goodness Tony Romo’s did! So now Dannon has hitched their wagon on another young, and black, emerging star QB.

If you don’t think the American football landscape is biased against black quarterbacks read these media quotes after Dak’s final college game, a 51-28 bowl win over North Carolina State:

“The senior quarterback was superb, completing 25 of 42 passes for four touchdowns, 380 passing yards and an interception. He also rushed for 47 yards on 12 carries.”

“Prescott set a Mississippi State bowl record with his four passing touchdowns, breaking the Belk Bowl record for passing yards in the process. He also helped the Bulldogs break the Belk Bowl record for total offence (569) and most points scored by a team”

“Although Prescott isn’t a traditional pro quarterback, the way he played in the wet conditions was impressive and earned him game MVP honors.”

Not a “traditional” pro quarterback? Four passing TD’s? Super Play? MVP? That’s non-traditional?

So here is my plea to Dak. Don’t throw an interception as the Dannon spokesperson. Don’t mess up. Don’t give the naysayers a chance to hurt you, or even take more shots at Newton. Be mature beyond your years like you are on the field. Be a leader off the field.

Represent your sport. Your team. Your race. Most of all represent your true self.

I love the first week of September!

Back to school. Back to work. Back to football.

The air is filled with newness, energy, hustle, and anticipation. It might be the busiest week of the year, but it’s also one of the best. There is a sense of renewal and revitlization that comes with the Fall – not to mention it also brings the best weather of the year!

This week, when I returned from a thoroughly relaxing end-of-summer vacation to an office buzzing with energy, I realized it’s been ten years since we moved the agency into our then new, now current, offices. I remember being nervous at the time of signing a decade-long lease. Today, I am in disbelief that 2007 is now 2017, and I can’t help but ask myself what happened to the last ten years?

Perhaps a better question is what have I learned since I calmed my nerves and signed my name on that dotted line? If the brick walls of The T1 Agency could talk, what wisdom would they impart?

It’s A People Business
The first and most important lesson is so important it could be the only lesson. It’s so essential that it applies to any business in the world. It’s the oldest lesson in business history, but candidly I didn’t really embrace it properly until the last few years. Our business success is one hundred percent dependent on the quality of our people, their skills, motivation, and smarts. If I reflect on my path in building this agency, I wish today that I had started working earlier and more purposefully on building a great team. In the early stages of my firm, I was too focused on selling projects and executing them. I wasn’t building a business, I was fulfilling orders. Once we realized that our focus should be on attracting, developing, and retaining stars, it was like entering a different business universe.

You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know
I didn’t come up with this expression, but I love it. I think it’s something that you learn as an individual or an organization as you mature. In my case, I intially thought we were an agency that was providing certain services to our clients. But only once I started hiring great people with great backgrounds at other companies (See Lesson #1!) did I start to get educated. This applied to many aspects of our business: creative, strategy, and digital for example. Building a business from scratch can give you a false sense of God syndrome. Having your eyes opened to new religions can make you a true believer.

Practice What You Preach
The shoemaker’s kids probably don’t have tattered shoes, but we certainly had a tattered brand. We had a crummy brand and yet we were preaching all sorts of advice to our clients. Although a brand is much more than a logo, in our case it started with the logo, our agency name, our philosophy, our culture, our own marketing. So over time we tackled all of these issues and you know what? This brand building stuff works! That’s good news for us because now we can preach what we actually practice.

Late last year I signed a lease to keep us in our newly renovated workhome for several more years. The legal document spelt out all of our tenant rights and obligations. Perhaps it could be amended to provide some insight on what new valuable learnings await around the corner.