Charleston….The First Seven Questions of Effective Marketers….Cyber Checklist….A First Impression Business….Econ Recon: Liar, Liar (Unemployment’s NOT Higher?)

“Grief is the price we pay for love.”

Queen Elizabeth II
Queen of England

The horrific events of last week in Charleston must not go unnoted. Like most of us, I have no answers and only questions that none can answer. How do we stop this? How do we move past it? How do we heal? How do we move away from the polarizing hatred coming at us from all directions – from overseas, from the media,  and from within our own neighborhoods: 9-11, Ft. Hood, Boston, Newtown, Baltimore, to now Charleston?

If you are feeling grief from what has occurred, then you must have felt love before it occurred.  That could be a place to start. And help someone else feed their good wolf.

An old Cherokee tells his grandson that there is a fight between two wolves inside everyone, one good and one evil. The good wolf represents qualities like love, kindness, and truth, while the evil wolf represents qualities like anger, greed, and arrogance. The grandson asks which wolf will win, and the grandfather replies, “The one you feed”

“To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business, and your business in your heart”

Thomas Watson, Sr.
Founder of IBM

The First Seven Questions of Effective Marketers

The late, great Peter Drucker once remarked that “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” Great advice…but how do you do go about knowing and understanding the customer? Marketing guru Seth Godin says you start by understanding that every marketing challenge revolves around these seven questions. Print these out, have a staff meeting, and find out what how well you and your team “know and understand the customer.”

Cyber Checklist

The entire Federal employee database was recently hacked; including those with security clearances. You may not be a target, but that’s no reason to avoid taking some basic, effective precautions. In the wake of the recent hacks, Vistage IT Security Speaker and Consultant Mike Foster has updated his basic security checklist for both companies and the home computing environment. Download his terrific guide and give it to your staff today!.

A First Impression Business

I once asked a very successful entrepreneur what she found to be the most effective best practices in building a business which she eventually sold for quite a sum. Without hesitating she said, “Presentations. Life is a “first impression”  business. There is nothing with more leverage than a good presentation to the right audience…the larger the better. The investment I made in honing my presentation and speaking skills did more to build my business in less time than anything else I could have done.”

Here are two great resources for you in this regard. One is an article by Matt Abrahams of the Stanford Business School. The other is Mikki Williams, who is a Vistage Chair and Speaker and runs her own speaker school. More than one successful Vistage speaker owes his or her success on the Vistage circuit in some measure to her tutelage. Even if you don’t make presentations, someone on your team probably does….make sure they’re representing you well.

Econ Recon:

Liar, Liar,  (Unemployment’s Higher?): The recession ended six years ago in 2009. While GDP has grown since then, unemployment in general and the unemployment RATE in particular, has grabbed most of the economic news spotlight with many complaining that the job market is not sharing in the recovery.

It’s important to realize that unemployment can be measured in absolute terms (number of employed) and in terms of an unemployment rate. Sometimes these two measures tell two different stories as Brian Wesbury makes clear in his Wesbury 101 video  “Liar, Liar, (Unemployment’s NOT higher)”. This will be five minutes well spent for any executive who wants to know more about a fundamental aspect of the economy.

Does Revision Mean Recession?: Many are not aware of this, but the US Census Bureau contributes to the national database relied upon by economists. They recently published their annual revision to a key statistic and, as ITR Economics President Alan Beaulieu states, “The resulting revision was one of the largest we have ever seen, and many sectors were dramatically affected.” Is yours one of them?  Find out more by reading Dr. Beaulieu’s brief blog article at the ITR Website.