eROI Days Email Agency

Considered one of the most powerful women in the world (and certainly in business), Marilyn is CEO of Carlson Companies, and has grown the company from $12 billion to $40 billion during her tenure. She recently wrote a book showing the more human side of how business is just one aspect of life. Here are my notes from her Inc. 5000 speech:

What deeply cared for, fight for, of what personally mattered to her

Sunday School Story – if you don’t like it, fix it -> her Dad

Financial Collapse- Similar to performance enhancing drug for athletes. Performance was pushed (artificially) over stewardship. We are all suffering from this financial economic collapse.

9 days ago (1 week before Paul Newman’s death), his business partner, A.E. Hotchner brought over a thousand CEOs to their feet w/ tears in their eyes at the Inc. 500 conference. Here are my notes from his talk:

“Paul Newman’s Own” Companies:
Great product testimonials of Neman’s Own Salad Dressing, Spaghetti Sauce, and hilarious story of a 70-year-old man with erectile dysfunction for 20 years. In the past, this man had tried Viagra many times, natural supplements, everything, yet nothing worked. Until one day, he ate Newman’s Own spicy mango salsa, and it shocked his system into a frenzy - he and his girlfriend are very satisfied with the product and he keeps a pouch of spicy mango salsa on him wherever he goes.

Over the years, Newman’s Own has given almost $300 million to charitable causes.
– Over 25 years of camps for Kids with cancer. At the time only 30% kids survived the year after.
– Now, 119,000 Kids have attended these camps, 70% survived now, investing in cure for cancer.

– Don’t just give to charity, start your own charity.

– Story of 10-year-old girl who held his hand and thanked him – she lived all year just for 8 days of camp.

STANDING OVATION – SNIFFLES AND INTERNALIZING FOR NEXT 20 MINUTES

The Right Stuff – doing wrong stuff, re-examine, fix it, and get it right.

Numbers run the business, not people.
• Share numbers with your people
• Teach your people how the numbers related to their job
• Teach anybody anything

We DON’T train our employees well enough (which is why we create needless rules)

Practice learning, Practice courtesy

Speaker, Norm Brodsky, greeting people at the door
Hand-written note

Exposing entire life & numbers -> Share with employees – profit sharing culture is huge

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Reduce the Job of leadership to 3 Words:
1) Strategy
2) People (We need to optimize these 3 categories)
3) Execution

1 Man Band- all infrastructure, resource, run through 1 decision-maker, risk is too great.
• Start up or crisis

Tribal Band- strong leader with helpers

Sovereign Organization- leadership creates a hologram of the minds of people

Strategy- (Strategic Planning) a collection of ideas of how we’re going to web

Psychology of Routines- Strategy helps you breakthrough the routine

1) Most companies think about Strategy too seldom -> Should do it every 90 days!!!
a. What are 3 most Strategic important accomplishments we’ve had in last 90 days? (some element of how we’ve changed the field of play)
b. What are 3 most important strategic ways we fell short of our strategic potential?
c. What are 3 most important things we’ve learned about our strategy?

You could build a strategy in 48 hours that is 90% as good as 3-month planning. (more…)

TOM PETERS - A self-described capitalist pig, but a big fan of distributed taxes
SETH GODIN - Not accepting status quo

(GODIN): When asked about the next president, said it’s important to consider:
• How you live the Earth for kids and grandkids
• Amount of debt
• Level the playing field

(PETERS): Small Business leaders should focus in the personal financial issues and microfinance, NOT macro. Everything is ambiguous as hell. Most of the time you could be lying and don’t even know it.

(GODIN) Contract between leader and who is being led.
->Certain things a leader should NOT tell about stupid things said by a board member.

(PETERS) “The Manager’s Handbook of Decency” (Loves that word and word GRACE)
• Caring

(GODIN) Temptation to take a shortcut is so overwhelming because we feel like we deserve it, but we as Inc. 5000 entrepreneurs didn’t take that shortcut – so damaging for taking the easier path.

(PETERS) Engineer, Practical “The Dream Manager”
Everyone has a dream, and as CEO, we are the enablers of our people’s dreams.

(PETERS & GODIN) Great camaraderie, but not afraid to disagree.

(GODIN) There will always be a reason of some catastrophe on front page of Wall Street Journal for me not to reach my goals. We create our own destiny no matter what happens in the outside world. Must be aware of what’s going on, but it can’t change your character.

(PETERS) 100 year flood in financial world. Absolutely floored by crisis, but glad for our leadership in Washington. (more…)

This is my second consecutive year in attending the Inc. 5000 Conference, and I’m absolutely honest when saying it is the best conference of the year for the following 6 reasons: entrepreneurial energy, dynamic and entertaining speakers, approachability and access to those speakers, strategic and contrarian content, networking with other entrepreneurs from around the country, and Inc. staff is very cool and real.

This blog post is all about who I met and why I’m so encouraged about the future of our country’s industry leaders and innovation. Optimism is the new cynicism and we can’t fixate on the nation’s financial industry woes when we have our own companies to grow, innovative products to build, and value creation waiting to happen.  Who I met:

1. Vance Patterson is a stud. I met him last year at this conference - he and I were garnering a bit of attention with our outfits at the Inc. 500 Awards, black-tie event - he was wearing a dapper top hat, tux, and a staff w/ crystal and blue LED light, and I had my late grandfather’s Buchanan-plaid (bright yellow, orange, red) vest and bow-tie on.  He and his wife, Mary Joe, carried themselves with cool confidence and engaged in great conversation throughout this year’s award dinner.  Of the 6-7 businesses he’s involved in, Vance spends most of his time running an industrial fan company called Patterson Fan Company.  We discussed what we love doing (he and Mary Joe ride their Harley Davidson on long trips), family business issues and my younger perspective on what his kids are probably thinking, employee recruiting and retention, politics, and the conference itself.

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Yesterday, I joined the Board of Greenlight Greater Portland, an economic development group represented by Portland’s private-sector business community.  Greenlight’s goal is to recruit and retain growing companies in the Greater Portland region.  I was inspired by Greenlight’s mission and the approachability and competence of the Board - titans of industry in this town - I was inspired to write a thank you email to them last night. It went something like this:

From: Ryan Buchanan
To: Tim Priest ; Mark Ganz ; Malia Wasson ; Eric Parsons ; Pat Reiten ; Peggy Fowler ; Steve Stadum ; Roger Hinshaw ; Bill Stoller ; Bob Jesenik ; Wes Lawrence ; Jim Mark ; Dennis Rawlinson ; Keith Leavitt ; Lindsay Desrochers ; Wally Van Valkenburg ; Don Krahmer ; Alan Johnson ; Randy L. Miller ; Scott Campbell ; John Bradley ; Jay Platt 
Sent: Tue Sep 09 23:51:47 2008
Subject: RE: September 9 Greenlight Board Meeting: thank you

You’d swear these guys were rockstars with all the attention they’ve been getting for moving their software company from Tulsa to Portland. But, the reality is that it truly is something special with their company, Vidoop, which makes secure password manager software used by banks, financial institutions, and millions of users.  The first thing that makes them cool is that they’ve opened up shop in the heart of Portland’s Social Media center in Old Town - the Technology + Arts Building - between Couch St and Davis St on NW 5th Ave (full disclosure: they are right downstairs from us at eROI. The second cool thing about Vidoop is that there are 45 fully geeky geeks who have embraced their inner-geekdom and absolutely love what they do - I’ve only hung out w/ the 6 or 7 Vidoopians who’ve been in the Portland office the past couple months, but Luke, Joel, Scott, Kevin, Mitch, and Matt are pretty sharp and already involved in Portland software scene.

Third, Vidoop documented their journey to P’town with a blog, dozens of videos, pictures, and incessant tweeting - check it out - Follow their Oregon Trail.

Lastly, Harvey Matthews, friend and President of the Software Association of Oregon, informed me that there is a party this evening at 5pm at the parking lot in front of Backspace.

Time: September 7, 2008 at 5pm
Location: BackSpace Parking Lot
Street: 115 NW 5th Ave
City/Town: Portland
Website or Map: http://maps.google.com/maps…
Contact Info: 503-999-5849

If I can convince my wife and 2 daughters to hang out with 45 smelly software engineers after 5 days on the road w/ no showers, I’ll see you there tonight.  Don’t forget to check out their journey on the Oregon Trail>>

I’m pretty darn psyched about being an Inc. 5000 company for the second year in a row.  Last year, I was so inspired by being around my entrepreneurial peers at the Inc. 5000 Conference in Chicago, I vowed to go back to the conference this year whether we made the list or not.  It’s a little bit sweeter that we actually made the list, regardless of dropping from the #402 position to #1142 fastest growing company in the country (yes, it’s much much harder to grow substantially from a larger revenue number, then when you first start out).

So, here’s what we had to say in our press release:

“eROI Ranks No. 1142 on the 2008 Inc. 5,000 With Three-Year Sales Growth of 327.6%

NEW YORK, August 20, 2008 – Inc. today ranked eROI No. 1142 on its annual ranking of the 5,000 fastest-growing private companies in the country. The list is the most comprehensive look at the most important segment of the economy – America’s independent-minded entrepreneurs. Taken as a whole, these companies represent the backbone of the U.S. economy.

“Our second annual Inc. 5000 continues the most ambitious project in business journalism,” said Inc. 5000 Project Manager Jim Melloan. “The Inc. 5000 gives an unrivaled portrait of young, under-reported companies across all industries doing fascinating things with cutting-edge business models, as well as older companies that are still showing impressive growth.”

eROI provides online resources for marketing strategies–including websites, email campaigns, blogs and social networking sites–to small businesses as well as Fortune 500 marketing managers. Why are they growing so fast? eROI extends itself to work with clients even after the job is done by giving them the online tools to continue their efforts on their own. Oregon Business magazine named CEO and founder Ryan Buchanan one of the 50 Great Leaders for Oregon. Buchanan is also President of the Board of the Portland Advertising Federation.”

Read the full press release on eroi.com >>

See the eROI profile on inc.com >>

The fact that I’m writing this blog post on a Saturday morning just 30 minutes before going backpacking in the Jefferson Wilderness area in Central Oregon says a lot about blog guilt and how crazy it has been in the office the week after returning from vacation (I know - don’t feel sorry for me - I’m stoked to get the longest vacation in my career).

This post is going to be a stream of conscience similar to Holden Caulfield’s rants in “A Catcher in the Rye.” I was actually out of the office for 2.5 weeks with the first 1/2 week at my Grandmom’s memorial service in Maryland. It was a hugely positive trip as different family units between my Dad and his 3 sisters and all of the cousins, nephews, and neices connected in a meaningful way that hasn’t happened in quite a while. My grandmom was the family matriarch and instilled in all of us the importance of family, community, and was the consummate hostess for social and family gatherings.

Basically, the whole 2.5 weeks were 3 separate trips, all with family. Trip 1: Maryland (with an incredible day boating, sea kayaking, and having a huge crab feast on the Chesapeake Bay). Trip 2: San Juan Islands, Washington with my wife, our two girls, and her Mom and Mom’s husband - a week on a cabin cruiser boat with the 6 of us island hopping to San Juan Island, Orcas, Stuart Island, and Lopez Island. It was our first real trip together w/ Shan’s folks and we shared some great memories and awesome discoveries of Dungeness crab, shrimp, fish, sea anemone, starfish, and amazing hikes along the shore. It was a bit chilly, but the kids loved it, and nice to get away from it all. Trip 3: Black Butte Ranch, Central Oregon with my side of the family - 20 of us in 1 house - 9 kids loving it and all the adults doing what each of us are passionate about whether it be the outdoors, golf, or eating/drinking - massive feasts.

I’m realizing that I’ve got too much to say to fit into this one blog post, but some of my realizations from being away from the office and with family for an extended time are this - family is everything and it feels fantastic when things flow smoothly and everyone can go at their own speed.  In a family where all of us are Alpha personalities, we’ve just now figured out how to do that - shocking.

I would be lying if I said that I didn’t think about work at all.  In fact, I got a lot of clarity and focus on what needs to be done at eROI  which are all about execution of 2 main things that we’ve been working on all year:

1. Do a phenomenal job with the roll out of our next generation event registration and database marketing software products over the next 12 months.  This is so critical to the company.
2. Continue to launch websites, community sites, blogs, and email designs that delight and inspire our customers (and us).

If we can do these 2 things over the next 12 months, we will be in a phenomenal position.  As a secondary realization, I also recognized that I absolutely love being part of the fabric of the Portland business community, and the way that I can have the most impact is for eROI to be successful.  As founder and CEO of the company, eROI is a huge piece of my professional identity and, if I’m honest with myself, it’s also a major part of my personal identity.  If we can execute the top 2 priorities above, it will put us in a position where we can have a substantial positive impact on the world.

Ever since we moved into the Technology & Arts Building on 505 NW Couch Street, we’ve loved it - it’s in the heart of Oldtown / Chinatown and 1 block from downtown. It has the coolest, hipest retail (Compound), favorite indie coffee place in town (Backspace), best Steak & Cheese sandwiches (Ford’s Cafe), killer drinks and ambience (Someday Lounge), and coming soon - the first and only upscale business lunch spot in the entire neighborhood (Davis Street Tavern).

However, this blog post isn’t about all the killer stuff currently in our building. It’s about the development happening across the street in the full city block parking lot that’s about to become the hotspot in town for upscale grocery shopping (Japanese + Chinese), retail, farmer’s market, and all kinds of other goodness. Check out this recent Portland Tribune article talking all about it!

It’s not totally a done deal, but it’s looking good. Ain’t life grand.

Jerry Ketel, one of the principals at Leopold & Ketel, was the commencement speaker at the Art Institute of Portland last week and he blew me away. Unbelievably good - here’s a transcript below:

Jerry Ketel’s Keynote address:

Thank you, it is a pleasure to be addressing you, my fellow creative professionals. And thank you for the introduction, although I think I will read to you what the Willamette Week wrote last week about this address, and I quote:

“This graphic designer managed to graduate art school AND get a job. Now he has to convince everybody else there is a future for art majors.”

Well, I don’t have to convince everybody that the world needs art majors. I mean, have you been to Gresham? Or Beaverton? Or Detroit? The world needs some imagination, don’t you think?

I mean, look at us (directing attention to commencement faculty all dressed in cap and gown). Can’t we get some help from the fashion designers in the house?

We creative types have a whole world to change!

Willamette Week then suggested that someone who would be more qualified to address you would be servers, personal assistants or telemarketers, (you know, for an approximation of what art school will really be like.)

Well, believe it or not, a former waitperson and bartender IS addressing you today.

OK, I know, I’ve probably shattered your image of me as a demi-god, among the pantheon of artistic greats like the guy who invented paint splattered aprons. The truth is, I was simply the guy who outlasted the competition. My very first job as a creative professional, I was fired. In fact I was fired 3 times in my career as an art director.

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Oregon has been recognized for its leadership in the green, sustainable world, but rarely is it recognized for its state economy on a national level. This Wall Street Journal article does an excellent job portraying Oregon’s surge in employment and flexibility to layoffs from big tech companies with hiring from smaller companies like Kryptiq, Jive Software, Vidoop, and eROI.

Check out the article: Oregon Finds a Counterweight in Software

By JUSTIN SCHECK
June 9, 2008; Page A3

PORTLAND, Ore. — Hardware-manufacturing layoffs in the Northwest’s tech industry echo cutbacks that hammered it early this decade, but this time the blow has been absorbed by the scores of software and online-services companies that have sprouted in the past few years.

Old-line tech manufacturing is retrenching because of global outsourcing and fierce competition — the same factors that shuttered Northwest chip and computer factories starting around 2001. Then, laid-off technology workers in states such as Oregon had few other tech-job options. This time, there is a parallel tech sector, including many small start-ups, to take on some of those skilled workers.

See the full article on wsj.com >>

I had some time to write in my Creative Journal this past Memorial Day and have finally gotten around to going through a great branding exercise - a gushing love letter to my company, eROI. Another great branding exercise is writing an epitath for what it would read on the tombstone for your company. But, that is for another day. Today, it’s about love, so here’s what I’ve got:

My Love Letter to eROI

I love that we actually have some true customer evangelists who love eROI and take pictures of themselves wearing red eROI T-shirts all over the world and send them to us with pride.

I love when employees grow, mature, innovate, create, and design things I never thought possible, and far beyond anything they could do before joining eROI.

I love the camraderie at eROI. It’s a very open, candid, transparent atmosphere where people colloborate, encourage one another and tell it like it is, instead of tip-toeing on eggshells as I’ve experienced working at other companies.

I love that the folks at eROI and the brand of eROI has fun and pushes the envelope (examples include the insanely creative and fun Annual party, annual retreats in the Great Northwest outdoors, karaoke, potlucks, insanely talented musicians and break-dancers in the company).

I love that eROI feels like a healthy, young family (albeit, a large family now), where we work hard and play harder, but we have a similar set of values of putting family first, have lives outside of work, and have ambition in the company to make a profoundly positive impact on the world through design and online communication and commerce software.

I love that eROI maps to the life I want to lead - I can take week-long vacations in the backcountry (and 4 weeks off per year because of a really strong management team that keeps things running smoothly).

I love that we are growing organically, relatively fast and smart. We’ve been recognized as an Inc. 500 company and the 8th most admired company in Oregon across all industries. That means a lot to be recognized both nationally and on the state level by 2,000 other CEOs - only made possible by an awesome team of employees and solid customers.

I love that I am happy with my life and happy with eROI despite a twisted entrepreneurial desire to always push harder and never be satisfied with where we are as a company.

I love Portland and that eROI is emblematic of all the good things in Portland culture.

I love the little things that spark conversations or make people smile and laugh, like our business cards, viral micro-sites, or our company gifts to top clients and partners. I really love how our brand and brand elements have evolved into a strong precense locally and getting there nationally.

I love the creative space we occupy in our building - exposed brick, tall ceilings with old wood beams, and overall cool, non-traditional atmosphere.

I love doing yoga with employees, led by an instructor, on Friday mornings.

I love the creative inspiration I get from artistic conference tables and inviting spaces in our office. I love natural light and clear thinking.

I love eROI’s present state and try to live in the moment, but love even more how far we’ve come from our founding and how amazing the future looks if we hit our goals and milestones.

Most of all, I love the people at eROI and our collective power to have a positive impact on one another and the community as a whole.

Not sure there is much biz there, but that’s really the point. My wife and I are going to a pretty remote area of the country and we’re looking forward to some good outdoor adventure there.

I’ll share some appropriate pics and video upon my return and try to make it somewhat relevant to the online marketing world, but for now, I’m going to enjoy a well-deserved week off blog posts, among others. Did a little research on YouTube, and thought I’d share this one: