Month: December 2016

For the shortest day of the year: a very short post on values.

Yikes! The sun is already sinking. So let’s get right to it.

Know your values. Everything starts with knowing what you care about most.  Both in business and in life. Especially if you are an appraiser. Or an auctioneer (I’ve got one, I’ve got one, I’ve got one value. Who will give me two, two, two?)

At The Weaponry we have 5 core values.  One for each finger.  (My close friend Steve Withycombe has only had room for 3.5 values since his hand had a 30,000 RPM encounter with a shaper in his woodworking shop several years back.)

The 5 Things The Weaponry Values Above All Else:

  1. Creative Ideas
  2. Problem Solving 
  3. Customer Service
  4. Growth (Both business and individual. But not the kind on your neck. Have that removed)
  5. Fun For Everyone Involved

These 5 values help guide everything we do.  I’ll share more detail on each value in a later post. On a longer day. Happy Winter Solstice!  Good night.

The reason to do something unreasonable.

I don’t think Scott Hauser, the pastor at my church, thinks much about advertising, branding and marketing.  But I do.  So he may be surprised to hear how I re-interpreted his sermon on Sunday morning (and now I’m watching the sky for lightening). He told a heartwarming story about two of his friends from Northwest Pennsylvania who drove 10 hours to Western (don’t call me West) Virginia to attend a 2-hour memorial service for his mother-in-law. Immediately after the service, the friends turned right around and drove 10 hours home so they could make it to work the next day. What they did was so far beyond the expected that it was totally unreasonable. He summarized with this simple statement:

Do something unreasonable. And people will never forget it.

In business, brand memorability is everything.  If you are not top-of-mind when someone is considering a purchase, or offering a recommendation, you have lost an opportunity.  And the best way to make sure you are top-of-mind is to do something that people will never forget (it’s a real plus if that thing is also positive and legal).

Too often we focus on the blocking and tackling. The fundamentals. The rational and reasonable. And we forget that one well-placed, well-intended bit of crazy may be more powerful than the rest of our carefully considered efforts. It doesn’t have to be Red Bull-ish either. I once ordered a t-shirt from Ames Bros, and when the package arrived it came with a free sweatshirt!  Not the other way around, which would have been reasonable.  And now look at me. I’m all blogging about Ames Bros (because I’ll never forget that surprise hoodie goodie).

But here’s the kicker. You have to act before you need the results. Do it soon. Do something today if you can. Remember the Ruth’s Chris Steak House promotion this fall?  They offered a discount equivalent to the point difference in the final score of the 2016 Michigan-Rutgers college football game. They didn’t expect Michigan to win by 78 points. But now they have a great, unreasonable story that sets them apart from other upscale steakhouse brands.

Stunts, promotions, customer service. They all have the ability to be highly memorable. As do charitable donations. My friend and fellow Fletch enthusiast, Jeff Hilimire, began a great event called  48 in 48, which helps build 48 websites for nonprofit organizations in 48 hours, for free!  That is totally unreasonable! And totally memorable.

If you haven’t yet considered anything unreasonable, start now. This type of activity should be the most fun part of your job. If you want help thinking of, planning or executing a great unreasonable idea shoot me a note or give me a call. It would be a great and very reasonable reason for us to talk.

 

An easy way to make a memorable impression in the next hour.

 

I’m starting a new series called, “What are you doing with your blank?” I will pick a different blank for each post. You’re probably wondering, ‘What the blank is a blank?’ Blanks are the thousands of things in our lives that we could each make more interesting and distinct with a tiny bit of effort. Just ask athletes Ocho Cinco and Metta World Peace.

Today’s blank is: voicemail message. (So the question is ‘What are you doing with your voicemail message?’) Your voicemail message impacts your personal brand or your business (and probably both) whether you make an effort or not. Yet most people completely ignore these valuable messages. If you have chosen the default setting on your phone, you are hanging up on the opportunity to make a strong, favorable brand impression.

I’ve been having fun with my voicemail messages since they were called answering machine messages. Maybe too much fun. When I was in college, my roommates and I were recording an enthusiastic voicemail message at 4:00am, when Police Officer Buzzkill banged on our door to tell us they had received noise complaints ‘down at the Cop Shop.’

At The Perfect Agency Project we believe there is great value in unique, memorable or funny voicemail messages. Partially because they are so surprising. Our voicemail expectation are so low that it is easier to jump over the voicemail message bar than to limbo under it.

Last night I got a text from Monica Baer, a former coworker of mine from Cramer Krasselt.  The text read:

Hey, I’m going to call your vm so my kids can hear it :). Don’t pick up.

Does that happen to you?  Probably not. Could it?  Absolutely. Offer a message that will put a smile on your caller’s face. Make them feel important, give them a great quote, a piece of trivia or useful information. If you do, they’ll be happy they called.  Maybe they will even be a little disappointed when they get you instead of your interesting recording.

A memorable voicemail message is also free. It costs no more to create a great, value-adding, entertaining message than to leave no message at all. You can also update messages to match the weather, holidays or major events. You can tout business awards and successes. You could even use your voicemail message to tell callers about an interesting blog post you read about voicemail messages.

I often offer a voicemail promotion, offering a faster call back if the caller performers a specific request, like yodeling. I’ve asked callers to sing their voicemail messages. Think,  The Voice: Voicemail Edition.

Don’t be afraid to try. The great thing about unique voicemail messages is that they can be changed at any point. So try different messages and learn what works well for you and your brand. Just keep it relatively brief.

If you would like to hear my voicemail message give me a call. You can always text me first to tell me you want to hear my VM, so I know not to pick up. My number is 614-256-2850. Don’t be afraid to say hi. I look forward to your message.

How Mark Zuckerberg helped me put my life back together.

Some people live their entire lives in one nest. You know the type. You can see the hospital where they were born, their high school, their first job, their bowling alley and their nursing home all from the highest point in town. That’s not me. Life has been an exciting adventure of change from the jump. I lived in five states by the time I started 7th grade. I went to college 1000 miles from home. And I have traded license plates many times since graduation. #WitnessProtectionProgram.

I love my nomadic lifestyle. I have been exposed to traditions, foods, history, religion, weather and sports from a wide variety of angles. This has been a blessing for a creative professional. The one oddity, is that for a very long time, when I changed chapters, I would never see or hear from people in the previous chapter again.

But in 2007 that all changed. Because of Facebook. That thing that we so often take for granted as a silly time waster, quite literally changed my life. It allowed me to reconnect with childhood friends and neighbors from New Jersey, Wisconsin, Missouri, Vermont and New Hampshire.  Then I was able to find classmates from The University of Wisconsin. And coworkers from Cramer Krasselt, and Engauge. (Ohio, Georgia and Moxie/Publicis Groupe were added later).

I reconnected with clients and vendors. Neighbors and distant relatives. And people I’ve met at parties and on planes (I’ve met a lot of people on planes). Suddenly, I stopped losing track of people. As a people collector and connector I no longer have to box friends up and store them on a shelf every time I move or change jobs. Now I can play with them whenever I want.

Of course there is LinkedIn too. Which I love. The great Link-A-Roo has allowed me to reconnect and collect people in another, more quasi professional way. (The quasi is all me LinkedIn. You have been nothing but professional). I recently discovered that my friend Nissa Kubly (UW Track) and Cher Fesenmaier (cousin) both work at the same high school in Phoenix.  One of the craziest connections that I discovered through LinkedIn is that three of my friends, Neil Miklusak (college buddy from Wisconsin), Audrey Lowder (former co-worker at Engauge in Atlanta) and Erika O’Toole (we met on a flight to NYC) all work together, in the Empire State Building, at LinkedIn!

The simple fact is that if it were not for Facebook and other social platforms I would likely never see, or have any interactions with the majority of my friends and Linkys ever again. (I don’t know what you actually call a person on LinkedIn. Linkletters? Linkins? Linklings?

As I have started The Perfect Agency Project, my connections have become even more important. I am always looking for ideas, support and people to join the project.  Over the past few months, thanks to my online network, I have reconnected in person with dozens of people I hadn’t seen in 10 to 30 years. That’s cray.

So thank you to Mark Zuckerberg for allowing me to have my personal “This is your life’ moments every day. It is absolutely mind-blowing to think I may never lose a friend again. Except maybe Alex ‘Big Drawz’ Mautz, my college track teammate who moved to San Diego and must enjoy such perfect weather that he never needs to connect to the rest of us.

As a fun demonstration of the topic of this post, and to see who, if any of my people read this all the way to the end, I would love for you to share a word or a sentence about how we know each other. Thanks for playing.