Hey all,
Remember last week’s video about my participation in the Liminal Group event, “The Articulate Executive?” Here is my first take at telling the infoGROUP story. I got about five minutes into it before Granville Toogood stopped me. What do you think his feedback was? You can watch the entire event here.
Don’t work too hard!
StormDawg
Hey all,
As promised! Here’s the first part of my experience with the Liminal Group event, The Articulate Executive. I received coaching from the legendary Granville Toogood. More details about the event are available at JulyEvent.com.
Don’t work too hard!
StormDawg
Hey All,
I am writing this piece on the plane after a week in the Big Apple. As usual it was quite an experience.
On Wednesday, I participated in an event put on by the Liminal Group called the Articulate Executive. It was a chance to tell the infoGROUP story and to get some coaching on communication skills from one of the best communicators in the business, Granville Toogood (Connect with him on Linkedin). It was fun; we were like ham and eggs together, and the result was pretty entertaining and useful as well. Over the next few weeks I will be putting some of the footage from the event on the blog, and you will be able to see the entire event in the Liminal Group’s media center.
Thursday was a very busy day as I honed my interviewing skills. I interviewed Tricia Jung of ORC Guideline, and we had a great conversation about her research about small business. It turns out that she agrees with my take on small businesses and how they act and react to things. One of the biggest problems big businesses have when it comes to selling and marketing to small businesses is they don’t understand small business owners. They actually act much more like consumers than large businesses.
I also interviewed Gretchen Rubin, a successful author that is currently working on a project called “the happiness project.” It was quite interesting… we actually figured out how to tie happiness and success in business together. I like that… it made me happy.
The strangest thing I did was appear on a webcast of Fox’s Strategy room. I knew I was in for it when I saw the other guests. Three very attractive young ladies that were small business women / entrepreneurs in Manhattan. The host had them go in another studio and sit on a couch so the only thing you noticed was their legs. I sat next to the host, the obligatory right winger to my left and the obligatory left winger to his right. The first topic of the day was the stimulus package and porn, punctuated by the six legs on the screen. You can imagine where the conversation went from there… it was awful.
Finally I ended up spending the last few days interviewing Bob Sellert, chairman of Saatchi and Saatchi, and author of the book, “Start with the Answer” and being interviewed Bob Rice, confessed serial entrepreneur, chess addict, and author of the book, “ThreeMoves Ahead.” We talked about their approach to business, how it applies to small businesses, and business in general. I felt very enlightened after I spoke with these very smart guys.
To quote something I learned from Granville Toogood, “it all comes down to this.” My mantra, don’t work too hard, is really all about what I was able to do this week. I was able to get away from the office, talk to people with different perspectives and backgrounds, learn some things, and have a little time to reflect on the plane ride home. I’m rearing to go, to try the things I learned and hopefully help businesses grow.
Don’t work too hard!
StormDawg
Hey all,
I am writing this piece as I am headed to New York for my participation in the Liminal Group event with Granville Toogood. I am really looking forward to it, and I am going to have an opportunity to learn something and to talk to a bunch of very interesting folks about a variety of topics. It’s so cool!
This has all happened so quickly, but I guess in the speed-of-light business environment you have to move fast.
Several months ago, Scudder Fowler called my colleague, Pam and wanted to know if they could interview me and that I would recognize the name as he and I have known each other for quite some time. It turns out I know him and was skeptical about what they wanted to talk to me about. So I called him. He wanted to talk to me about marketing, the recession etc. We had just produced the first of our videos about why you should market in a down economy and so I told him to check it out. He was at his desk so he pulled up the video on YouTube and was pretty excited about us doing some things together. So I invited him to Omaha, to see what we do here and to demonstrate some of our products.
He brought one of his teammates Christina, and we knocked their socks off with everything we do at infoGROUP, and we started thinking of ways we could work together. This event seemed like the perfect starting point. I was looking for cool content for my blog, which I hadn’t really started yet, so we got to work planning our participation in this event.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I started writing some stories for the blog and with the help of Bryan Jennewein and Michelle Macnamara in our marketing department, we put together an editorial schedule and started to get busy. My idea was to tell stories that are relevant to small businesses in today’s environment, to provide business and marketing tips, but mainly to create an environment where a community of small business people could get together and help each other out.
Today I got an email from somebody that read the blog post about my sister-in-law Karen and her interest in event planning. He was taking a long shot but he was interested in talking to her about doing some long distance event planning for a group he worked for. I forwarded the message to her and even though I have no idea if it will work, it truly demonstrated the power of social networking, blogging, the internet, you name it.
I will let you know if anything comes out of the email to Karen but hey it already gave me something to tell you all about. Stayed tuned for more about my week in NYC.
Don’t work too hard!
StormDawg
Hey all,
I’ve been invited to a Liminal Group event call “The Articulate Executive” being held next week in New York City. The event features legendary communications coach Granville Toogood, who will be critiquing my presentation skills in front of a LIVE AUDIENCE! The event promises to teach us how to vastly improve our communication skills, command any stage, and compel any audience to do exactly what we want them to do. I’m very excited to be attending, and you should consider it, too. I hope to come back with a story or two for you small business people… and who knows… maybe it’ll help me tell my stories (and yours) even better than before. So keep your stories coming!
For more information on the event, click here.
Wish me luck!
And don’t work too hard!
StormDawg
