After reading our latest study “Use of Testing in Email Marketing” – which concludes by saying “if you’re not failing, you’re not learning” – I began thinking about how, as an entrepreneur and  business owner, it was extremely important for me to embrace this philosophy early on and realize that it expands to every aspect of business.  I’ll be the first to say it, failing isn’t fun! Doing so however, can be enlightening and isn’t something you should fear. If you fear failure, you will likely refrain from taking risks and experimenting with new ideas that can ultimately move you ahead.  I have gone through the “fail, learn and improve” process numerous times and each time I’ve learned more about it. One such lesson is that sometimes “the fail” isn’t always obvious. The below video is comedy and not relevant to my particular FAIL, but it’s a Fail Video worth watching.

There are times when the big FAIL sign isn’t held up to alert you, “the fail” is often something you have to keep an eye out for. This eye-opening lesson came upon me in early 2007 when eROI was going through a big transition period accompanied by lot of growing pains. Going though this period certainly made me stronger as a leader, us stronger as a company and created a culture where my employees have a stronger voice and a bigger influence in the ongoing success of eROI -it however was an emotional and professional journey to get to this point and one that I actually documented in a 5 part blog post back in the summer of 2007. If you are so inclined, the entire series can be found in the eROI Days archive for you reading pleasure but to sum it up:

The Fail

I had assumed that I was connected to the thoughts of each employee and each department because I had a hands-on management approach and frequently interacted socially with my employees.  I assumed that the agency was well aligned internally and that that everyone was happy, felt valued and felt they had a voice, both on a project level and within the agency as a whole.

As I began preparing material for a company retreat, I scheduled short one-on-one meetings with all of my employees where I encouraged them to be candid with me. Through 34 one-on-one meetings over 3 non-stop, emotionally draining days, I learned how wrong many of my assumptions were. Here are a few specific learnings.

The Learnings

As a business owner this particular “fail” taught me…

1. Keep your eyes (and ears) open for “failures” and when you find them… admit them, learn from them and quickly take action to implement change.
2. Never assume that informal socializing with employees is good enough. You must regularly meet one-on-one with your employees in a professional, confidential environment where true sharing is encouraged and rewarded.
3. If given the opportunity, your employees will let you know when the company has fallen out of alignment. If this happens, get their opinions on how improve and let them know you are listening by sharing their suggestions with the whole company.
4. Take a hard look at what and how much you delegate – you may feel like you’ve handed over a substantial amount and given up a lot of control over your company – but often you actually haven’t. If you want your company to soar, embrace delegation on every level and truly give key pieces of control to your employees.
5. Get advice from other entrepreneurs. I was fortunate to have co-founded a group, called Starve Ups, of 18 founders of high-growth startups and I received a lot of trusted advice from the trenches. Additionally, I am part of another group of advertising agency owners called Agency Owner Roundtable which is run through the Portland Advertising Federation. Both of these groups gave me pointers of real-world experiences on employee advice, branding advice, and strategic direction that I couldn’t get anywhere else.

The Results

Here we are 2 years later and as an agency we’ve come a long way from the above “fail”. We have seen some awesome changes, implemented great processes and overall, better aligned ourselves internally to cultivate better communication, collaboration and creativity.

The “Process Team” we created in the summer of ’07, with a representative from each department, continues to be an integral part of implementing ongoing improvements to our process – both between and within departments as well as between us and our clients.

My employees have a voice – and they use it! Although many are comfortable speaking up when they feel there is reason to, we’ve made it a semi- annual practice to schedule a day of one-on-one meetings where employees are encouraged to meet with not just me, but anyone on the management team, and candidly talk about what they’re loving, hating, or frustrated with (i.e. processes, projects, or communication breakdowns). Following these meetings, the management team meets to review and discuss new strategic and performance related goals, as well as create an action plan for any needed change.

On a daily basis I am impressed and inspired by the level of work our team continuously produces as result of the open, collaborative environment we’ve created.  Of everything that resulted  from this particular “fail” my favorite remains this personal one – As a business owner,  I get an enormous amount of pride and satisfaction seeing my employees being truly passionate about eROI and seeing their continuous ability to reach new levels of synergy as a team, resulting in the accomplishment of work I never thought possible.

In particular, I found Phil Reilly’s talk to be very interesting. He started off by posing the question, “how many of you have a difficult time dealing with your creatives?” There were many hands raised throughout the room but I was not surprised to see a that none of the ten eROI account executives had a hand in the air. I am proud to say this is something that we do not struggle with as an agency. This led me to ask the question “why?” The rest of the presentation brought up so many parallels, so why does this one piece not apply to the eROI team? What I think it boils down to is our collaborative process. From the kickoff meeting to launch, all project team members are involved; concepting, strategy, creative vision, Q/A testing are all a team effort. This collaboration from the getgo eliminates surprises and keeps the entire team in the know.

I must also give credit to the creative team themselves.  I truly believe I have the pleasure of working with some of the most talented designers in the city. Their ability to take a brief and a meeting with a client and come back with a solid direction that meets every objective, and is also atheistically brilliant, is a skill that one just has to admire. There has never been an “us” versus “them” mentality across departments. We are all on the same team and advocates for both eROI and the client. This gives us the recipe for success – all the ingredients just work together.

I want to thank the Portland Ad Federation for bringing together these respected chiefs to speak to us. Many additional topics were thrown around for future sessions and deeper exploration. I found this workshop to be very valuable and will definitely be attending the next one. I will leave you with the words of Lynette Xanders “Be a cheerleader, not a policeman”- who’s with me?!

2009 PAF Rosey Awards site

I’m not so sure this site would work in most other industries as it is definitely edgy, controversial, and provocative, but I think it’s a shot in the arm that Portland needs.  The true test is to see if agencies from other cities take notice.  Then, an interesting dialog will begin.

You’ll start to see this campaign promoted more on Twitter (I love the “Rosey Smack Feed” section of the ‘Win Tix’ part of the site), Facebook, and other blogs in the upcoming months.  I’ve got to sign off from this blog post to think of some good Smack Talk myself – submit your own here >>

Guy Kawasaki bootstrapping image

Yesterday, Chanin Ballance (founder/CEO of viaLanguage), Mitch Daugherty (founder of Morange Design), and I (the eROI guy) got together to plan what we’d talk about for a webinar about Bootstrapping and our personal experiences with self-induced starvation and endurance thru the early days.  It was like catching up with old friends after a couple years – the instant bond entrepreneurs share in dredging up old stories that weren’t fun at the time, but are great memories in retrospect.  The OEN Webinar is set for June 17 (registration isn’t live yet, but will be shortly) and we’re going to use a different format than the usual put-your-audience-to-sleep-with-powerpoint.  We are going to try to re-create the casual, round-table discussion among entrepreneurs sharing candid stories.  Some of the topics will include:

– Risk vs Reward – How do you know if it makes sense to bootstrap your idea?
– Keep your Day Job – The stress of self funding with no income can sometimes lead to failure
– Cash Flow – How to get a handle on your most important business aspect
– How to market your business on a shoestring budget
– Why most business models don’t need funding as it can be a big distraction

Guy Kawasaki, in his old-school days before Alltop, delivers some awesome advice on this on his 2006 blog post titled “The Art of Bootstrapping”

1. Craft culture is mostly anti-Big which is why #portland has few fortune 500 companies here about 1 hour ago from TwitterBerry

2. Sohrab – branding portland – it has a craft culture. About the work, unpretentious, very real, natural about 1 hour ago from TwitterBerry

3. Tribal love – costco – amazing brand. costco members and employees love that brand. Costco does not care about wall st, but main st about 2 hours ago from TwitterBerry

4. Starbucks is trying to capture its dna that is there but they’ve lost their way. Now, more about efficiency and profit, not the experience about 2 hours ago from TwitterBerry

5. You need to create love with your consumers. All touchpoints need to fully connect with specific target market about 2 hours ago from TwitterBerry

6. Ziba has evolved from product design company to customer experience firm about 2 hours ago from TwitterBerry

7. Sohrab – design thinking is all about making the complex clear about 2 hours ago from TwitterBerry
   
   

8. For agencies – the cultural ingredient mix that is the special sauce. Cultural context of ziba often takes 18 months on average. about 2 hours ago from TwitterBerry

9. Designing consumer experiences – meaningful to consumer, strategic to the brand about 2 hours ago from TwitterBerry

10. Ziba other offices are san diego, tokyo, shanghai – I did not know they are so global about 2 hours ago from TwitterBerry

11. What breaks did you get? Sohrab – “you make your own luck” about 2 hours ago from TwitterBerry

12. 25 year anniversary for ziba this year about 2 hours ago from TwitterBerry

13. Sohrab started ziba because of an entrepreneur named sam bosh who gave sohrab royalties for designing a new atm machine about 2 hours ago from TwitterBerry

14. Sohrab, right before college graduation, fell in love with industrial design – a mix of engineering and art about 2 hours ago from TwitterBerry

15. At portland biz journal breakfast with sohrab @ziba – he started feeling the downturn in dec 07, but since feb 09 lots of new small projects about 2 hours ago from TwitterBerry

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:

A dude on the internet referred to Navy Fire Controlman 2nd Class Petty Officer Russell Tavares as “a nerd” in an online trollfight. In one of the more dramatic tales of internet rage we’ve seen lately, the 27-year-old Tavares, who believed himself to not be a nerd, hopped in his car and sped off 1,300 miles from Virginia to Texas, where the name-caller lived.
Tavares photographed road snapshots along his route, and posted the images online, as if to prove to his internet peers that he was not a luzer. When he got to there, he burned the dude’s trailer down. Tavares has been sentenced to 7 years in prison for arson. Snip:

The feud started when Anderson, who runs a haunted house near Waco, joined a picture-sharing Web site and posted his artwork and political views. After he blocked some people from his page because of insults and foul language, they retaliated by making obscene digitally altered pictures of him, he said.
Anderson, who went by the screen name “Johnny Darkness,” traded barbs with Tavares, aka “PyroDice.” Investigators say Tavares boiled over when Anderson called him a nerd and posted a digitally altered photo making Tavares look like a skinny boy in high-water pants, holding a gun and a laptop under a “Revenge of the Nerds” sign.

To read the full article, go to http://www.boingboing.net/2007/07/27/guy_who_lost_online_.html.

An amazing thing happened. I succeeded in NOT checking my email. Here’s how I did it:
1) I kept my laptop closed. An open laptop screen is like the gateway drug to email addiction. Keep it closed. Period.
2) I found a distraction, otherwise known as a healthy activity. A brisk walk accross the meadow with my dog, a lovable but goofy yellow lab.
3) I found another distraction – finishing up a great entrepreneurial book called “Small Giants” by Bo Burlingham.
4) Have an awesome plan for the day – went skiing at Mt. Bachelor with a friend. We happened to have a bluebird day with 11 inches of dry powder.
5) Stretch, relax, find a hot tub and submerge for an hour, then eat well with friends and family that night.
6) Check email the next morning – don’t kid yourself into thinking that you can avoid email forever – this just causes more anxiety of returning to an overwhelming and urgent stack of emails in your inbox.

Email addiction is reaching epidemic levels in America today. Learn more about this issue by Downloading the In-Depth Email Addiction Survey Results here >>

However, there were only a couple hundred brave souls (out of the 150,000 attendees) who witnessed the sick beauty of the TASER booth. Just our luck to know that TASER is introducing its law enforcement, 50,000 volt, electric-pulse guns to consumers so we can all have them in our homes and shoot them at suspicious neighbors.

My associates talked me into being a human gueanie pig to demo the electric shock experience of a TASER simulation. Actually, it was the TASER guy telling me I was going to lose my “Man Card” (whatever that is) if I didn’t step up to the plate (or electric chair). They delivered a 2-second, 50,000 volt shock from my shoulder to my hip and I would have collapsed if the two TASER beefcakes didn’t hold me up to keep me standing. I felt my muscles seizing for 20 seconds after the shock and I cramped up later in the day. I’m still a little concerned that I smelled burning for a minute after it happened. I think it might have been my brain.

My friend couldn’t figure out how to take video of me, but I want to share with you some video of product testing. It’s the best 10 seconds of TASER shock treatment you’ll ever see…