CenterBrain Partners

As an independent consultant, the way I feel every morning is a little bit scared and excited. I think that’s the emotional description of properly balanced risk. It hasn’t always been this way—there were times, particularly in the early years of my practice, CenterBrain Partners, that my fear was pretty strong, mostly when I encountered things for which my MBA and corporate experience hadn’t prepared me. For example, I didn’t expect to need an intimate understanding of the accounts payable system of every single company I worked with.

If you are considering leaving your corporate job, I’ll say that I fully believe the grass is greener on my side of the fence—but there are some bald spots you need to recognize. Here are a few of what I consider myths about the world I work in.

1.   You are going to make a lot of money.

I always started a New Venture Creation course I taught at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga by saying something like this: “Welcome to America, where you can make as much money as you can.” Pay attention to the words in that statement. It is not so much one of encouragement as it is one of caution. Some people can’t make much money—I hope you’re not one of them.

2.   You’ll get to focus your work only on things you enjoy.

I hope you really enjoy selling, because selling accounts for 90% of the work you’ll do in the first five years, 75% of the work in the next five years, and at least 60% of the work in the five years after that. If you can’t sell you’ll be among the 80% of consultants who fail in their first year in business.

If you can’t sell, find a partner who can. And split your profits equally because no matter how talented you are, your partner’s selling talent is at least as valuable as yours.

3.   Your life will be more balanced.

Yes and no. In the first few years you will need to work incredible hours. I used to tell people that my consulting job “gave me lots of flexibility, the flexibility to work all the time!” If you are passionate about going out on your own the long hours won’t bother you—but they will bother your loved ones. Prepare them ahead of time. I wish I had.

4.   You’ll get to choose the people you work with.

Again, yes and no. In the first years of business I took any assignment I could find, which helped me formulate two hard and fast rules:

1. Only work with nice and ethical people, life is too short.
2. Don’t accept catfish accounts.

The first rule was one I started applying after I encountered businesspeople so insecure they made an art of torturing “suppliers and vendors,” a couple of really denigrating terms. “Vendor” is one I particularly abhor. It puts my services on par with the guy who manages the contract for the corporate cafeteria. If you aren’t considered and called a partner on a project, move on. It’s a simple matter of respect.

The second rule, “Don’t accept catfish accounts,” applies to times when business is slow. A catfish is a bottom feeder—in business, catfish are level C, D, and F clients you might be tempted to take work from in slack periods. You’ll be eager to help, maybe discount your services, and overpromise. I know, I did all those things. Catfish clients are easy to spot. They have unclear or no objectives, their business issues go far deeper than what they want you to do, and they’re slow-pay. Or no-pay. Plus, at the end of a project, because they have a weak business model and weak project objectives, they’ll always be disappointed. Their disappointment, in my experience, will often be partly the consultant’s fault, because you overpromised to get the business you thought you needed. What has frequently happened to me is that I take on a catfish and a whale shows up at my door. I end up resenting the catfish because he is taking time away from my money-making accounts.

5.   The people who encourage you to follow your dream will be your first clients.

Some of my friends and colleagues were so encouraging during the time I was considering going out on my own that I felt I couldn’t let them down, so I took the leap. Since many of them were decision makers who could easily throw me a project or two, I thought I’d instantly have the business I needed. That isn’t exactly what happened.

There’s a big difference between friendly support and the willingness to risk a career by dealing with an untried new business. Over time, however, the people who encouraged me did become my clients, and not just because they liked me. It was because by then I had a track record of success—something you can only build if you get out and sell, sell, sell!

Some parting thoughts

Yes, the economy has been in a very bad downturn and many clients, especially the young ones, have adopted a “deer in the headlights” look. My experience is that fear, especially in business, is not a productive emotion. A lot of those “deer in the headlights” get hit by trucks.

Tough times may not seem like the best time to launch your own consulting practice—but for some of you, it will become the only option you have. I encourage you to give it a try. Position yourself, perhaps using some of the methods in my book, CenterBrain Thinking©, (http://www.amazon.com/CenterBrain-Thinking-practical-positioning-ebook/dp/B003RWS5BY ) and get passionate about your success. I have never regretted the decision I made 20 years ago.

“You don’t blog enough.” I heard this yesterday from a nice and knowledgeable friend. I don’t actually agree. I never was much of a memo writer back in the day, and I don’t write a lot of emails. I actually like talking to people and getting things done over the phone. If that makes me old-fashion, well okay. I like humans and human interaction, but the world is changing. So, I’m writing a blog today about something I am working on with my friend Gary Lumsden right now. I call it the “3 M’s for 2012″.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the virtuous cycle. Most of us have heard the term. It just means that something starts and continually gets better. It’s a cool concept and I’ve seen it work a few times in my life. With the the 3M’s for 2012 I can see it working again. First let me tell you what the 3 M’s are.

1. Media-As in traditional and social. There is no difference now. You have to deploy both simultaneously with solid positioned brand content. Please go to (www.centerbraininc.com) to learn more about positioning.
2. Mobile-As in lots of people with smart phones and pads engaging your content and your promotional activity.
3. Mining-As in all the data you receive from that engagement being mined by professionals for real insights (beliefs and behaviors), so you can improve the content of your media, and your mobile engagement.

See how the virtuous cycle starts happening. Conceptually your marketing and promotional activity just gets better and better and you drive more sales. No, not conceptually it really does work. Let me go into some more detail.

Let’s say you have a restaurant or retail brand, or dare I say a Higher-Ed brand. You have a good idea of who your target audience is. For media let’s pick radio, yes radio. It still exists and is listened to more than you think. It is very easy to target with radio, you can buy lots of reach and frequency and if you have good positioned content you can get people to act. So, let’s run some radio directing people to social media with some great positioned content, ask them to opt in to our mobile number, which now can be customized for every restaurant or store in your chain, or every department at your university or college. We gets lots of opt-in because we make it worth the customers while to opt in. You know, a great trial offer…..remember 29 cent trial sizes. Now we have the consumer’s mobile number and we can start “engaging” them, say over a 6 week period, once a week, with promotional offers that get them to act. Let’s try a bunch of promotional offers and see what works. As we collect data and collect “engagement” chatter we can mine it, parse it, analyze it, and look for insights. As we learn more in near real-time we improve our content, our offers etc. and we keep getting better and better about driving sales or enrollment or whatever your goals are. A very simple and powerful concept.

Now here is the good news. My friend Gary Lumsden who is seasoned and cool, but seasoned, not 30 anymore, figured out how to do this as a turnkey operation. Turns out that you have to have a bunch of skills to pull that off, ones that are learned over time. You see, you can learn new things, but apparently it is hard to go back in time and learn the things (like media buying, producing real positioned content etc.), that only come with experience.

Now, some of you will read this and say, “Nothing is new here.” You are right. But innovation is not necessarily about inventing new things, sometimes it is about figuring out new ways to bring several ideas together, and then executing flawlessly. The devil is in the details.

If you want to find out more about how this works, give me a shout at 859.750.7259. I’d love to have a human to human discussion with you.

All the best in 2012.

To really do effective and efficient brainstorming I’ve found that the process can’t be a free for all.  You have to have objectives and you have to have structure.  It almost sounds counter intuitive to the idea of creative exploration, but really it isn’t.   Structure and objectives provide focus and a level of comfort for those important people on a team that may not think of themselves as being creative.  Often those same people who feel uncomfortable have a lot to offer and a big stake in whether some ideas go forward.  So, it just makes sense to include them in the early creative process.

I find that creating the opportunity for intense focus on a problem or a product starts by eliminating variables.  Let’s face it, just by the nature of doing group work there are a lot of variables…personality, background, political agendas.  I use a technique that comes out of  the world of quantitative research and is actually something I learned from my good friend Ron Nelson.  Ron looked at the technique of problem-detection with its ensuing statistical analysis, and thought why not turn it around and evaluate the positive.  He taught me about promise testing and I took it a step further for use as a way to structure brainstorming.  Here is how it works.

First, whatever the opportunity you are working on begin by framing it using the 5-steps I outlined in a previous post.  Here they are again for those of you who missed it.

1. Problem (What problem is the new idea trying to solve)

2. Solution (How the new idea solves the problem)

3. Benefit to you (What is the one major benefit to the buyer, consumer etc.)

4. How it works (What are the features of the idea that support the benefit)

5. Don’t worry (The answer to the one major objection your consumer would have.  Think of this is the lingering doubt we all have about new ideas)

Once you’ve done the framing, now fracture the idea to get the creative juices flowing.  You fracture the idea by using promises.  Promises are simple.  They are sentences that state a benefit followed by a reason why, or if you will a reason to believe.  Here is an example.

This blog post will make you more confident in your next brainstorming session, that’s because it tells you the structure for expressing your idea in over 50 ways.

Notice how the promise is written. It always starts with a benefit (not a feature) and is followed with a reason the reader should believe you can deliver the benefit.  I generally write 50-60 of these going into a brainstorming session, after I’ve had a chance to gather individual input from the project team.  Note I said individual input not group.  Individuals, if interviewed correctly, do a lot less political censoring.

I write all the promises for a brainstorming session, because I can then eliminate one variable…writing style.  When the team comes to the brainstorming session there is a big reveal of all the promises and most people see their ideas expressed creatively, and that makes them energetic about the work ahead.  Even the most pragmatic in the group can see how they have contributed to the creative process.  They all see how the idea has been fractured and feel confident that when we re-frame it we have virtually left no stone unturned.

I won’t get into the mechanics of a brainstorming approach I’ve branded CenterStorm, but perhaps you can see that structurally fracturing your idea helps everyone focus, allowing for better expansion and contraction of ideas and ultimately better creative outcomes.

I want to pass along a tidbit of wisdom that was given to me 25 years ago. It’s about how to know if you have an idea that is even worth positioning. It’s also a tried-and-true way to communicate effectively in just about any business situation, and as I will illustrate it works on Sunday mornings too.

Take your new business idea, your new product, or your new service, and start by writing a sentence for each of the following five steps:

1.      Problem: What problem or problems created a basis for interest in this idea?

2.      Solution: How does this new idea solve the problem(s)?

3.      Benefit: What benefit(s) does the new idea offer to the target user?

4.      How it works:. Describe the way the idea works or how it is used.

5.      Don’t worry: Overcome the one major objection a user/buyer would have.

This template is brilliantly simple in its approach. I’ve never seen it fail. Once on a short flight between Chicago and Appleton I even enlightened a Lutheran pastor about how to use it. He was skeptical at first—he probably viewed marketing guys as something akin to the devil! Nevertheless I won him over with the following example.

1.      Problem: You have sinned.

2.      Solution: Ask God for forgiveness.

3.      Benefit: You’ll feel a burden lifted from you.

4.      How it works:. Get down on your knees and pray.

5.      Don’t worry: If you sin again, you can do the whole process over.

That minister was a quick convert, and I suspect he now has a flock that is much happier with his single-minded, direct, and hopefully brief sermons.