Undercover Boss Meets The Linchpin

The show Undercover Boss on CBS couldn't be a better example of why the ideas inside Seth Godin's Linchpin are so important to businesses and employees. The show takes CEO's of big corporations and puts them on the front lines of their locations to find out what makes their operations tick.

In each of the first three episodes that I've watched (Waste Management, Hooters, and 7/11) the CEO's have found people who are both making and breaking their businesses. One particular story of a 7/11 employee who ran a franchise with the one of the highest volume of coffee sales in the company knew just about everyone who came in by name. So what made that store so successful? It was the employee who went out of her way to do good stuff. It wasn't her job, but she did it anyway and the company was being rewarded for it.

That's why you need to create an organization built on Linchpins and reward them for doing good stuff. People can buy coffee anywhere, but just as the Cheers theme song goes, sometimes you just want to go where everybody knows your name.

Upsell Lessons from Dairy Queen

At my latest Dairy Queen visit they used an automated voice to tell me the day's specials while I waited to order in the drive thru. The video above is my take on how you can apply this upsell concept to your website using online video.

Linchpin Book Review

Linchpin by Seth Godin is a book that will make you think differently about the way you do business - either as an owner or an employee. In this video I touch on the differences between Linchpin and The E-Myth by Michael Gerber and how the ideas in both can be applied to build a business that creates and thrives on indispensable employees.

I think that you still want to turn your business into a system as Michael Gerber suggests in the E-Myth, but the nature of that system now needs to change to enable your employees to become indispensable as Seth Godin suggests in Linchpin. You no longer want to create a system that gives your employees a list of things to do in every conceivable situation. What you want to do is create a system that gives your employees the power to be human so that they can create memorable experiences for your customers.

Instead of setting up your hiring system to train your H.R. people to search out people with certain qualifications on a resume, empower them to search out good people first. Basic skills and product knowledge are easy to teach, but it's not as easy to teach someone how to be a good person. Your H.R. people might ask you what qualities make up a good person. Tell them that's up to them to decide. That's where the art comes in. You can't define a good person, you'll just have to trust that your H.R. staff can identify good people when they see them and find a position for them to do good stuff in.

You can't train your employees how to be helpful in every situation. But what you can do is create a system that enables them to say something other than "that's our policy" when something comes up. Encouraging people to act like human beings can still be a system, the rules just aren't as rigid.

So in closing, I'd suggest that you don't read this book unless you are willing to challenge the way you think about work, giving, art, and building a successful company. If you're not willing to think about things differently and pursue change, this book will just waste your time.

Infinite Horizons - My Take on Regina's New Logo and Tagline

Regina - Infinite Horizons.

Not sold on it yet, but I'm sure I'll come around to Regina's new logo and tagline. But what I'm disappointed in is that the Leader-Post article focused a lot of the attention of the cost of the rebranding and seemed to attribute it all to the logo.

That might be true, but a brand is not a logo. Larry Hiles commented on this, and that's why I'm confident that with his leadership this campaign will be a success.

A brand is all the things that a business does and stands for. A logo is just a way for businesses and organizations to conjure up those things in people's minds.

Mayor Pat Fiacco said that if 10 people come to Regina as a result of the rebranding, it will pay for itself. That's fine math, but the premise is flawed. People don't move to a city because they have a nice logo and a catchy tag line. People move to Regina because of what that logo represents.

I'm not moving to Saskatoon because it shines. I'm not moving to Moose Jaw because it is suprisingly unexpected. And I'm not moving to Calgary because they use a cowboy hat in their logo.

I might consider moving to Saskatoon because they've got a lot of great golf courses and a nice downtown setting that overlooks the lake. I might move to Moose Jaw because it's more affordable and has a lot of great tourist attractions. And I might move to Calgary because of the access Rocky Mountains. The logo doesn't do any of the heavy lifting to get people to move anywhere. It's what the place stands for that gets people here.

So let's hope that the logo is just the cherry on top of a much tastier bowl of ice cream.

P.S. I really enjoyed the editorial piece in the L-P today commenting about the re-branding. Very good insights.

Women Entrepreneurs of SK Presentation

I had the pleasure of speaking to a great group of ladies with the Women Entrepreneurs of Saskatchewan on Thursday, January 28th. My presentation was about an hour long and took a warp speed journey through the process of incorporating the web and social media into the marketing mix.

All the videos are embedded in the player above, but here's the table of contents:

Part 1 - Introduction to Sean and LRS Consulting
Part 2 - What are people doing online?
Part 3 - Google Overview
Part 4 - Google Adwords
Part 5 - Using Content and Video to Drive Traffic
Part 6 - How to Dominate Google with Video
Part 7 - Converting Web Traffic
Part 8 - Facebook Fan Pages and Facebook Advertising
Part 9 - Twitter Basics
Part 10 - Show Up!
Part 11 - Questions and Wrap Up

Need me to elaborate on any of these subjects or on anything I left out? Let me know in the comments!