Archive for August, 2008

Calling all sports fans. Calling all hockey fans. Calling all entrepreneurs.

This weekend, Robert and I have a very special BusinessCast podcast guest: the former President and CEO of the Calgary Flames and the Saddledome, Ron Bremner.

Ron is a gifted and compelling storyteller as well as an accomplished businessman who took on a monumental challenge a few years ago. Specifically, he was charged with: turning around a hockey organization that faced financial ruin, dwindling sales, competing visions, and extremely high expectations. But, Ron was up for the task!

Ron shares the glory and the dirt through his down-to-earth and entertaining stories. He also highlights many valuable lessons and practical insights that any entrepreneur can learn from, about how to:

• Deal with multiple and conflicting stakeholders
• Manage and lead highly-skilled/highly sought-after employees
• Manage the media during difficult times
• Close ‘big deals’

We were so wrapped up in Ron’s stories that we ended up recording two podcast episodes with him!

If you’re any kind of sports fan, hockey fan or entrepreneur, listen to these episodes – and you’ll find lessons that will help you to score your goals!

 The first episode will be posted on in the BusinessCast archives page on August 24th, 2008.

Remember: Subscribe to the BusinessCast Podcast at iTunes

In the August 11th blog entry, Robert and I reviewed the 13 Steps to Perfect Public Speaking. These are the essential actions any entrepreneur needs to take to become a compelling and memorable speaker.

But, we also want to highlight that the BusinessCast podcast show #70 - 13 Steps to Perfect Public Speaking actually extended the content by identifying four specific types of venues where special attention is needed to ensure your public speaking engagement is a resounding success! These important speaking situations focus on:

1. Raising capital for your business (i.e. presenting to bankers, venture capitalists and angel investors);

2. Building new business (i.e. presenting to prospects);

3. Resolving client issues (i.e. presenting to clients who are upset); and

4. Raising your public profile (i.e. presenting at conferences, workshops and tradeshows).

After listening to BusinessCast show #70, you’ll have what you need to speak to any size crowd and for any purpose — with confidence and impact.

Remember: Subscribe to the BusinessCast Podcast at iTunes

Robert and I are always interested to see which BusinessCast podcast topics — and related blog entries — hold most interest for our entrepreneurs. So, we solicit feedback, review our fan email and analyze our listener and readership stats.

Here’s a quick summary of the most popular BusinessCast podcasts and related blog entries from the last few weeks:

How to Make Sense of, and Leverage, Social Media

Blog Entries:

• Relevant Social Media Resources and News for Entrepreneurs
• An Overview of Social Media
• Using Social Media to Build and Protect Your Reputation

How to Create Incentives that Increase Sales

• Podcast: BusinessCast #68 – Incentives that Sell
• Related Blog Entry: Speed Up Your Sales

How to Tackle Entrepreneurs’ Most Common Financial Challenges

• Podcast: BusinessCast #69 – Business Success By the Numbers
• Related Blog Entry: By the Numbers (includes financial ‘calculators’)

How to Build Your Public Profile

Podcasts:

• BusinessCast #67 – Building Your Public Profile 
• BusinessCast #70 - 13 Steps to Perfect Public Speaking

Related Blog Entries:

• Using Social Media to Build and Protect Your Reputation
• Building a Media Kit That Works
• 13 Steps to Perfect Public Speaking

How to Build Business…One-on-One

Podcasts:

• BusinessCast #62 -Talk Yourself Into Busines (includes “Conversation Starters”)
• BusinessCast #61 – The ’Perfect Pitch’ 

Related Blog Entries:

• The ‘Perfect Pitch’ – Part 2 (includes how to prepare)
• The ‘Perfect Pitch’ – Part 3 (includes how to conclude conversations)

Let us know which BusinessCast podcasts and blog entries have been most useful to you.

Remember: Subscribe to the BusinessCast Podcast at iTunes

Every successful entrepreneur is a life-time learner. And, its easy to understand why: learning new ideas means being better equipped to anticipate and leverage any challenge that your business is going to face. So, one of the surest ways to ensure your success is to build learning into your company’s way of operating.

Mentoring can help you achieve that on-going learning because it compels you/your company to constantly re-examine your business and evolve. The folks at BNET have developed a very good primer to help you in the early stages of pulling together a mentoring program.

Also, keep a look-out later this Fall as Robert and I will devote an episode of the BusinessCast podcast to help you determine:

• When you should begin your mentoring program
• How to keep a mentoring program on track and;
• How to repair mentoring programs.

Remember: Subscribe to the BusinessCast Podcast at iTunes

You’ve got some creative people. You’ve got some loyal people. And, you’ve got some great “worker bees”. If you’re truly fortunate – and you’ve done a lot of hard work – you’ve got the right balance of all of them.

But, every now and then people leave your thriving business for any number of personal or professional reasons.

One of the ways that entrepreneurs use to control employee turnover is by introducing or enhancing “employee perks”. And, these are also the areas that are placed on the “chopping block” during tough economic times.*

But, regardless of what you offer by way of employee perks, you’ve got to think carefully before eliminating them — not because they are necessarily valued — but because of the message it sends.

Employees will interpret your scaling back of perks in one of three general ways:

• “The company doesn’t care about me as much…”,
• “The company is on its last legs…” or
• “The company is punishing me…”.

None of these messages are ones you want your employees to have at anytime.  And, the results can be dramatic when employees do feel this way. In fact, you will experience: lower productivity, employee anxiety, employee churn and longer (i.e. more expensive) recruitment.

Keep in-mind that this is not to say that once an employee perk is in-place that it needs to stay forever. However, if you are going to eliminate, reduce or change employee perks, be open with your staff and explain the reason why they need to be changed. Also find some way to send the message that employees continue to be a truly vital part of your business success. 

*Note: This Autumn, Robert and I are devoting several BusinessCasts to employee perks and retaining highly desirable employees.

Remember: Subscribe to the BusinessCast Podcast at iTunes