Face to face has its place and webinars are great

The irony of my presentation last Friday was not lost on some of those present. I had travelled several hours in stormy weather to present to a group of business people on the subject of Webinars. "If this technology is so great why are you here" asked one attendee, "Why didn’t you just beam in over the Internet" he continued. From my perspective this was great dialogue because he had got the point of what made webinars so useful. 

Yes, I could have done just that, sent a link and been there at the appropriate time to display images and make my pitch over the speaker system. Having said that, and to use the comparison of the telephone, if there is no-one at the other end to pick up I’m not going to have a very productive phone conversation. My purpose of being there was to represent the value of webinars and our organisations services. The other reason I made the effort to be there so willingly in person was to re-establish some old relationships and cement some new ones.

 Over the ages new forms of communication have emerged to keep pace with technology and the needs of the few. Cave painting would have been a real conversation piece to several clans of cave people in 10,000BC; the pony express connected the elite in new frontiers, the telegraph made it possible to unite the affluent in expanding empires covering several continents. Commercial reality means modern technology is servicing the needs of not just the few but the many. Telephones, mobiles, skype and email are mainstream communication methods, yet have not, and should not replace the face to face meeting. 

Human interaction and relationships are built on more than just information exchange. There is a lot to be gained from looking into someone’s eye and shaking their hand. More evolved individuals will be able to sum you up quite accurately in that moment and know if they will do business with you into the future.

Having said that there is a great case for increased use of new technology, some, like the pony express are made redundant by newer more efficient information delivery. This is usually because its replacement is faster and safer, today’s highway robbers are called hackers and pirates are called, well pirates. Webinars will be replaced one day soon with 3D interactive holographic images simulating more efficiently the face to face experience, the technology exists today so don’t hold your breathe. Webinars or teleconferencing is affordable and relevant to our businesses now. Implementable without huge infrastructural costs they save time, money and reduce our environmental footprint. 

A cure for Mondayitus at last.

Do you suffer from Mondayitus and is there a cure for it? If the best answer you can come up with is Tuesday then you had better read on. If you get excited about the weekend and dread the start of the working week the great news is there is a very simple solution, and that doesn’t mean you have to start hating the weekend too. Like most conditions that are created via a state of mind the best cure is an adjustment to our thinking.  

What is it that makes you dread Monday? Hate your job, loosing control of your world, feel like you are going nowhere? The very reason you look forward to the weekend is you have made a plan, you’re off to visit friends, doing some gardening or spending some time with the kids.  It maybe in your head or a discussion with your partner but it’s still a plan. Have you done the same for the rest of the week?

Because you have no plan in place for the working week ahead you are achieving everything you have set out for yourself, nothing. Psychologically that’s the kiss of death for motivation and self esteem. You don’t have to be the business owner or CEO to have a business plan in place that you can use, call it a life plan, or even better an avoid Mondayitus plan.

To get started you need to keep this simple. One of the most effective tools for planning is a piece of paper and a pen. Use your diary or a note pad and make a to-do list. Have it prepared the night before and add to the next days list as new ideas or tasks come up. If you don’t achieve something on the list that day don’t beat yourself up, reprioritise it and move it to a day when it can be attended to. You will feel less stress, and importantly you can see what you are achieving and celebrate the milestones. Make big jobs a list on a separate page and break them down into bite sized junks then spread them across your to-do lists. 

This may sound a little ho-hum but it works. The challenge for you is to keep at it and make it a habit. You will be blown away by how much you get done and how much more in control you will feel. Leave me a comment if you have a similar or better system that works for you.

Do you have what it takes to Blog?

Our company is called MondayMorning. This has no direct relevance to our working timeline apart from that it represents the start of the working week, for some a burden and to others a complete joy. Given it is Monday Morning right now it is appropriate that we should post a blog to recognise its arrival and within the hour, its departure. 

Blogging is about posting information that is relevant to your target market. It is a great medium because it can be more relaxed and conversational than other forms of business writing, but that is no excuse for being unprofessional, discourteous or too controversial (unless that is your goal in life then disregard everything I’ve said and go away). We have to be aware that this is a public forum and therefore accessible to known and unknown readers. This comes with certain responsibility and risk

This risk is not just to your personal image, but that of your colleagues and your brand. Just because it’s your opinion, or you think you are being clever doesn’t mean it’s acceptable to make it public (Remember the very recent incident with the Pizza franchise and the YouTube video). The great thing about Blogs (and most other forms of Social Media for that matter) is you do have the right of reply, administrator’s permissions and authority may apply of course and in some cases thankfully. If you like what someone says, tell them. If you disagree then say so too.

We are seeing evidence that Blogs are replacing traditional newsletters, and in time perhaps newspapers and other media. I follow about a dozen blogs currently. I use Google Reader to keep track of them so it saves time having to visit each one individually. I choose blogs because their content is relevant to me. I learn new things, I am entertained because I like the writers style, or I am keeping track on what a person or an organisation are doing from day to day. When they are no longer relevant I will remove them from the list and move on. 

If you’ve got something to say and you want to share it, start a blog now. Try to keep it populated with regular updates (once a week is fine). You will grow in confidence, and find your unique writing style, and eventually someone may even read it.

Facebook Manners And You

I've had a bit of a love-hate relationship with Facebook. I'm looking at Social Media for ways to improve on my, and on others business - I'm just not convinced Facebook can deliver any real purpose.

I guess that may be the point, Facebook is about having a bit of fun, there’s certainly lots of time wasting ways that you can dump in your friends inbox or on their walls. Perhaps I should just relax and let it be what it is.

On that theme, given it is the weekend and all - take a look at the fun video on Facebook etiquette, Getting it Right

Synergy and Teamwork Expedited by Web 2.0 Tools

I'd like to share my experience of the last few months working with the MondayMorning Team, Helen, Craig and Rus. I'm the least computer / web literate of the team, (although I'm good with certain software life Project and Excel) in a previous life I was a Civil Engineer and also project managed large capital intensive projects. I've spent the last 8 years working with business owners, helping them to earn more money, enjoy more free time and create valuable assets. I'm a really lucky guy, I live in a wonderful country, have a great family and fantastic friends and I've worked with many outstanding individuals.

I have never been part of such a strong team, let me take a few lines to explain why... We have four individuals who have totally different backgrounds and skill sets, we share a high trust relationship without ego and most importantly we have the same values. I'm sure you will all agree that this is great in theory, well for the first time in my professional life I know what it really feels like to experience true synergy and teamwork. It is exciting!

Well you may say that's all well and good but so what! This is why MondayMorning is able to add so much value to our client's businesses and lives. Or in marketing speak some of our competitive advantages are...

We are children of the sixties although Helen isn't quite a baby boomer like the rest us, this means that we have been around for a while and remember life without computers and cell phones. Conversely we are young enough to have worked with computers and the internet since they were invented without fear or reservation.

We have had several diverse careers and understand change. We have all owned and run our businesses and also worked in management positions for large companies. We understand both bigger business and SME needs.

We have all had significant challenges in our lives so we don’t sweat the small stuff.

Craig and Rus are the web and computer experts ( a term I don't use indiscriminately) and have the ability to work in this dynamic environment, Helen and I are bring the project management and hands on approach to business training and we are indicative of our target market so all the MondayMorning products are self tested on us first.

Finally using whatever personality testing model you choose we are all different and to tie this whole blog together please ask yourself if you have ever been part of a team where four different personalities really did work together? If the answer is yes then you’ll know, see, understand and feel the same way as I do... if not we have webinars and workshops to help create this for your business. Don’t get me started about the huge range of training that I’m itching to roll out.

MondayMorning is not just about Web 2.0 training, it’s about using Web 2.0 tools and the most effective business training to build business capability and increase profits.

Come along with us, I’m sure you’ll enjoy the ride!

PS if you really want us to prove what we say set up a face to face meeting with the four of us! We are real people, really.

Just what your business needs right now is a dose of Social Media

I’m falling in love with technology again thanks to Social Media. My first affair started with a green screened Omega that had about 250 kilobytes of RAM, about 1/4000th of what the standard desktop ships with today. It was expensive, it was frustratingly difficult to operate and it lacked any real functionality – I loved it.

My next great moment came when I got my first Mac, any Mac user will know what I mean so no further explanation needed. I embraced desktop publishing using Photoshop version 1 and have been an advocate for the World Wide Web since it was commercially viable, all those years ago.

As a business person today you need to embrace technology not by choice, but because your business will struggle to survive. And yes, I am aware there will always be exceptions to the rule, these will be few, and not in my field of interest, and chances are not yours either, and therein lies my point.

Technology comes in many guises, much of it now so integrated that it is now invisible to us. Hardware, software and emerging cloud forms are the pulse of business, its the way we manage our systems, it is how we communicate, and now, how we are perceived by out communities, whether that be our peers or by our customer base.

In the early days of the World Wide Web, pre and post bust, I invested a good portion of my professional life teaching and guiding business people in the benefits of email and websites even at a time when modem speeds were just barely topping 14.4k (that was when WWW meant World Wide Wait). It’s hard to believe that even today people are still using dial up connections and our business owners are still trying to decide whether their business needs a website. Quick tip here, get broadband now, and yes, even in the web 2.0 era, you must have a website.

As business folk we now have the dilemma of catching up to and embracing the social media wave. Sure you’ve got this far without it, why not stand back and see what happens you might say. It’s just not going to work that way; this is not some youth fuelled novelty we are witnessing in Facebook and Twitter and in the growth of the Google empire. Stand back too long, you and your business will miss out on something incredible, oh and you’ll potentially have the angst of watching your competitors sail off into the sunset with your customers in tow.

My message to you is this; start now in creating a social media presence for your business, the timing is perfect. Watch others and learn from their success, establish yourself as an expert in your field and be a positive contributor to the global community so others can learn from you. It is then you will start to see the time and energy convert to cash and opportunity.

In an age when we think everything has been discovered and there’s nothing left to do we can become idle and distracted. Before we know it we are left standing in the dust of the “on to it” crowd and we start justifying that we are happy with the simple life. I’m sure the same was said for the pony express, the telegraph, the telephone, the fax, email, websites and now Web2.0. It is just progress and nothing to be feared, as business people we need to keep pace with change and embrace and adopt new ideas.

Finally there is one thing I’ve found true in all successful business people, they cannot and don’t do it alone. Learning about and understanding Social Media is no exception, some things will work better for you than others and the way we use them will vary. MondayMorning is a community of real people sharing real experience. The choice is now yours - stand back, or be the global contributor.

Our free introduction to Webinars is a perfect starting point, click here for a date that suits and register today.

To be seen or not to be seen

Social media is out there, really out there. The great advantage of a good online profile and ensuring you manage your content effectively is obvious, people see you, and if they like what they see they will do business with you. If you don’t manage your profile and content people will see you, and, well, see for yourself in the clip below …

This comes from a social experiment in attending an interview “22 ways to nail an interview".