Is your workplace environment crimping brain power?

The standard work environment is not very conducive to great thinking.

Most great ideas don’t occur while hunched over a desk in an ape-like pose, back rounded, shoulders shrugged, head down, sitting there hour after hour.

Sometimes the best ideas occur while jogging or showering or when you step away from the problem and come back to it with a fresh perspective.

Maybe that’s why a lot of progressive companies today look more like a recreational facility than a cubicle city. Maybe, just maybe they’re on to something.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ you say. You’re too busy to leave your desk. You have problems to solve.

Does the Hoover Dam harness energy from a trickle of water or a gush of water through the dam?

The brain is kind of the same way. It works best when supplied with plenty of oxygen. And sitting there, hunched over is like crimping the hose to the power source.

You sit at your desk.
You sit in meetings.
You sit at breakfast, lunch and dinner.
You sit in your car commuting.
You sit watching your kids play sports.
You sit watching TV or perhaps reading.

So lets see how may hours is that – just sitting?

Go ahead, take a moment.
Actually calculate how many hours in a day you spend sitting.

Surprising, huh?

Our kids do it too.

Sitting in class
Sitting doing homework
Sitting watching TV
Sitting playing video games
Sitting texting
Sitting while on Facebook

Perhaps, you do get your exercise in daily. You can subtract an hour from the daily sitting total.

You got all your blood pumping. You got your oxygen fix. Ideas are popping into you head like corn kernels on a hot stove. You’re ready to take on the busy workday. Sitting.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but studies show the health benefits of all that exercise is negated by sitting all day.

Don’t get me wrong, exercise is good for you, as you already know.

Exercise has these incredible benefits:

• Controls weight
• Boosts energy
• Boosts HDL – the good cholesterol
• Decreases risk of heart disease
• Decreases physical effects from diabetes and arthritis
• Increases bone density
• Improves muscle strength
• Prolongs the life of some cancer patients
• Improves sleep
• And more…

Here’s what I know from my own experience:

• I have all my best ideas when I am going absolutely nowhere, really fast, on my stationery bike? All that extra blood pumping through my veins must make those synapse fire!
• My kids do better in school when they are active in a sport or just get out and move.
• My husband is not a happy camper until he gets his exercise ‘fix.’

Recent studies also prove exercise is good for the brain:

• Cognitive flexibility improves
• Test scores improve
• Mood improves
• Stress is reduced

In fact, exercise is as effective as certain medications for treating anxiety and depression.
(Read Spark by John Ratey)

So now where we? Ahh, yes – back to sitting. Where am I going with all this sitting talk? The question is where are we – collectively, as a society – going with all this sitting?

Sitting is not what we were designed to do. It doesn’t just prohibit great thinking.

Sitting:

• Increases the risk of diabetes
• Increases the risk of being obese
• Places thirty percent more stress on lower back than standing
• Is a third the calorie burning rate of just walking
• Decreases HDL – the good cholesterol

My husband, a physical therapist, sees patients every day that suffer aches and pains from sitting too long. Bad backs and stiff necks are just a few of the maladies. Of course he tries to fix them. But if you don’t change what causes the problem, well, you’ll never be ‘fixed.’ When he tells them stop sitting all day. They say, ‘how? I have to be at the computer.’

So we’re supposed to stand all day? A standing desk, that’s the solution?

Standing desks in classrooms have proven to show increased positive cognitive and behavior results. But, another study states standing still for too long isn’t great for you either, it increases the risk of carotid atherosclerosis, and it increases the risk of varicose veins.

OK, now you’re getting mad.

You shouldn’t sit too long.

You shouldn’t stand too long.

What’s a person to do?

Create a workplace environment that mixes things up.

Options are:

• Sit to stand desks. They’re expensive, but you can just have a variety of desks available. Some sitting and some standing height, so people can move from place to place.
• Treadmill desks are even more expensive, and they’re tricky for the uncoordinated.
• Standing meetings. Makes for shorter meetings and certainly prevents those that are long winded form pontificating.
• Walking meetings are even better.
• Recreational space. Basketball courts are expensive, I know. Just try to figure out what you can do in your limited space that is conducive for thinking while moving. Outside space works too.

So when it comes time to design or redesign your workplace. Think about making it more conducive to harnessing the brains full potential. Get the blood pumping. Get the synapses firing and you’ll get better solutions from your employees.

Ahhh, but you don’t have time for all that. You have to get back to work.

Sitting.

What gear is your company in?

Vision, organization, and tasks with deadlines drive a company forward.

Are you lost?
Have you lost your drive, your passion? You forgot why you put your key in the ignition to start the company?

Are you so mired in the day to day that you can’t even see the road ahead?

Are you driven just by numbers and data?
Day in and day out you stare at the numbers, hoping they’ll speak to you and answer why you’re not where you should be?

What keeps you from getting where you want to go?
The absence of deadlines.

Ahhh, but you hate deadlines. They loom over you like a dark cloud that rains stress down on you.
You just prefer to avoid setting deadlines, things will just eventually get done.
You’ll get around to creating that roadmap for your company, with a vision for growth.

You’ll get around to delegating that task list.
You’ll get around to the marketing plan.
You’ll get around to organizing and prioritizing all those sticky notes with great ideas.

Oh heck, isn’t there someone you can hand off the above proactive list to….so you can spend all your time being reactive?

Sound effects: tires squealing

Let’s replay that sentence above.

Does that make sense? You’re spinning out of control. You started this company. You had the roadmap. Now that roadmap blew out the window.

Make a roadmap!

• Schedule time for the important tasks, just as you would schedule a meeting.
• Every day or week or month, block time to just figure out where you are going and how to get there. Evaluate where you perhaps took a wrong turn.
• Get organized, so you can be more efficient with your time.
• Make time to PLAN, rather than just be reactive.
• Delegate your weaknesses.
• Organize your tasks by priority of importance.
• For every large task, break it down into small tasks.
• Give those tasks deadlines. Without deadlines, nothing gets done.
• Put the deadlines on a calendar.
• Set tasks to repeat each day or week, until they are done.
• Make sure everyone knows what task he/she is responsible for. Don’t assume they know.

Or find another method of organization to track your tasks. Use programs like WorkFlowy or Evernote. My favorite is FileMaker, because it is totally customizable. You just need to see what works for you.

A vision becomes reality only if it has a deadline.

Now go make that roadmap.

Business. The way it should be.

There are two types of companies or organizations:

1. Companies who utilize old business models.
2. Innovative companies who do things the way they should be done. They assess the consumers needs and develop a vision for what could be possible. They’re driven by a passion. And they don’t stop when someone says, ‘you can’t do it that way.’ They find a way. Status quo is unacceptable.

Chances are you’re probably more aware of the innovative companies. Everyone knows Apple.

Today, I salute two health care institutions. Cullather Brain Tumor & Quality of Life Center and The Robert Preston Brain Tumor Center at Duke. They both are driven by a passion to help those diagnosed with brain cancer.

I speak from first hand experience. It was 2007 when my husband was diagnosed. When you first hear the word ‘cancer’ lobbed in your direction, your world comes to a screeching halt. The life you envisioned for you and your family implodes. You try to grasp the words the doctor is saying. Then ‘poof’ the doctor is gone and you are left reeling.

Hospitals just provide the skilled medical staff to treat the cancer or the disease or the organ.

They can tell you:

• What you have.
• Statistics of survival.
• How to treat it.
• When to treat it.

That certainly doesn’t answer all the questions we had. But that’s all you get. Hospitals have bottom lines, and insurance reimbursement is limited. What about the patient and their family?

Perhaps it takes someone who has been on the receiving end of the cancer diagnosis to see what is woefully needed and missing in the cancer experience.

Two separate families experienced a brain tumor diagnosis. One is the Cullather family and the other – the Tisch family. Both families decided to turn their tragedy into a positive. They saw a large gap in the medical community of how things were done and how they should be done. They chose to fill that gap. Isn’t that how a lot of great companies and organizations start?

These organizations understand and cater to the cancer patient’s needs.

They treat the patient as a person, not just a disease. They understand the patient’s need to become knowledgeable on the disease, the treatment options and treatment side effects.

These families formed centers to provide the extra staffing to:

• Translate the medical jargon for the patient.
• Advise on how to talk to children, of different ages, about what the patient is going through.
• Inform patients on what to expect in the treatment process, and what services are available to them.
• Be an advocate for the patient.
• Offer support.
• Offer compassion. Even hold a hand, if necessary. (Thanks Sherry)
• Implement collaboration between hospitals and doctors, where previously there was no collaboration, just competition.
• At Duke – research finding a cure.
• And many other services…

Of course there are so many other organizations and foundations like the two I mentioned.

Livestrong put together an incredible detailed guide for cancer patients and caregivers and they continue to raise awareness, develop programs and fund research.

For these organizations, I am grateful. Thank you.

All companies should understand their customers needs, value the customer’s intelligence, time and desire for knowledge.

Keeping customers in your bucket.

You’re walking along with a bucket full of customers, both current and potential.

You look down and, whoa! Now the bucket is only half full. What happened? Where did the customers go? At first glance you can’t figure it out. No big holes.

The holes are tiny but numerous, and if you don’t plug the holes, expect a continued decline.

Here are just a few possible holes that customers can slip through. You’ll have to assess your own bucket.

Re: Accessibility

Hole 1: Inaccessibility on the web.
A potential customer Googled your company name. Your company doesn’t come up at the top. Your competition’s name popped up, because they paid to be there when your customer searched for you.

Solution: You need to pay to be at the top, at least for your company name. Bare minimum. You should also be at the top for your specialty. Go to Google Adwords and set up an account. You’ll need to pay for the keyword of your name. Or hire someone knowledgeable to do that for you. Info is also available at Lynda.com > Software > Google AdWords.

Hole 2:  Inaccessibility on the phone.
A potential customer got fed up waiting on hold so long that they hung up and called your competition instead.

Solutions vary by what phone system you have. It could be as simple as establishing a ring policy – if the front desk is unavailable, establish who is next in line responsible for handling a call. If you’re a larger company, then maybe the whole system of routing calls needs to be re-evaluated.

Hole 3: Inaccessibility at your location.
Is your location near your target audience? Or do customers lose their patience driving around forever looking for a parking spot.

Not an easy solution, but an issue for future planning. Think MCV, an inner city hospital. One of several reasons MCV opened their Stony Point office, a location in the suburbs, was because they were landlocked. And they wanted to broaden their target audience.

Re: Use

Hole 4: Bad experience.
Perhaps it’s the customer who will never come back because the front desk staff was rude to them. Or another customer was happy with the whole buying experience – at least until the delivery. They just posted their bad experience on Facebook for all their friends to see.

Solution: Do your employees know how to handle complaints? Do they know what power they have to address issues, and when they need to go up the ladder? Is a log of complaints kept to see what is recurring? Do you do a customer satisfaction survey?

Hole 5: Difficulty of use on the web.
A potential customer found your website, but found it difficult to navigate. They went to the next site.

Solution: Check your ‘bounce rate’ on Google Analytics. Info is available at Lynda.com  > Software > Google Analytics. Then think about redesigning the website.

Hole 6: Difficulty finding what they need at your store location. Does your store flow?
Is the signage simple and visible? Aisles too crowded? Does your store say chaos or clean?

Solution: Take a fresh look. Watch customer flow.

Re:  Product or service

Hole 7: Pricing vs. value.
If your prices are the same or higher than the competitions, is your customer aware of any extra value they receive?

Solution: In marketing, and with every sales call, inform the potential customer of the extra value. Is there a price guarantee offer?

Hole 8: Staleness.
You’ve always done business the same way, and haven’t adapted to the fast changing business environment.

Solution: Try bringing in a fresh set of eyes. Always evaluate feedback. Or even poll your employees, they have worked at other places. They may just be full of ideas, if you engage them. See what JCPenney is doing to change their customers’ perception of stale.

As a small business owner, it is so easy to get caught up in the day to day details. It’s so easy to miss the holes in the bucket, especially if you are not looking for them.

You can’t control competition. You can control what you are doing or not doing that leads your customers to the competition. You can’t win, if you are not even in the race. Plug the holes.

Give away free advice?

Give away free advice?

‘Whoa,’ you say. ‘I charge for my advice, why would I give it away? Doesn’t that devalue my advice?’

You’re not giving away all your advice. You are just exhibiting your expertise.

In fact it’s one of the best marketing tools a small business, especially a service business, can do. And it doesn’t cost much.

Deliver that expertise directly to your customers’ computer or smart phone. An email newsletter reaches them directly. A blog works too.

Below are some of the benefits of imparting your knowledge.

1. You reach the customer where they are. How much time do you spend on your computer or smart phone every day? You always have email accessible. Your customers will not always see the TV spot you spent a fortune on, or hear your radio spot, especially if they only listen to their iPod or XM. But they will see your email. You just have to entice them to open it.

2. You are creating a need. There may be a topic you discuss in a newsletter that is an ‘aha’ moment for the consumer. For example, if you are a lawyer and a new tax law affects that consumer, well, you may have just recruited a new customer.

3. You are creating a friend. Repetition breeds familiarity.

4. You stay top of mind. A blog or email newsletter that comes out weekly or monthly is an ongoing reminder. When they need your expertise, they will think of you.

5. You are creating a value. You gain:

• Visibility and traffic to your site = more page views. Keyword searches also increase because the internet spiders find key phrases in all those words you post.
• PR value – from possible press stories about your blog
• Research value – from the customer insight you can glean from the analytical data and comments/feedback

(Groundswell. Winning in a world transformed by social technologies, by Li and Bernoff)

6. Acquaintances will know what you do for a living. How many people do you know on a casual basis, but you have no clue what their profession is. Wouldn’t you like to have known that the Dad sitting next to you on the bleachers at your son’s game is just the legal expert you needed.

Of course, if you have enough funds to be able to run your TV commercials in prime time spots at great frequency – enough to create awareness of your brand, great! But if your budget won’t even pay to run TV spots at midnight on an off cable channel, then maybe you should invest your time and dollars in an email newsletter or blog.

• Start by collecting emails of customers now. You may have to incentivize customers to hand over their email address. There are lots of ways to incentivize. It may take some trial and error to see what incentive works best.
• Email newsletters should be digestible amounts of information – appetizer size, not family size.
• If you are speaking to several different audiences in the same email, make sure each audience type has a small morsel to interest them.
• Don’t talk over your audiences’ heads.
• If you put too much advertising in informational newsletters, expect readership to decrease because the customer will get wise to your ploy.
• Free seminars are also a great way to show and share your expertise. And don’t forget to collect emails at the door.
• We used OpenMoves to send our email newsletter, but there’s also Constant Contact and many other e-marketing sites.

Jump and learn.

You’ve just parachuted off a company jet. You’re hoping to land successfully in your own small business. As you’re tumbling toward earth, you realize that on the jet, you left behind the company Marketing Director, the HR Director, and the CFO, amongst others. You’re on your own. You have to wear all the hats until you can afford to hire more employees. You now have to learn Quickbooks, Outlook, Google Analytics, and Excel to name just a few.

1. Where are you going to find the experts to train you? or
2. When will you have time to sit down with the manuals? or
3. Where and when will the software seminars be?

Well, if you are already familiar with
Lynda.com
You can stop reading here.

If you are not familiar with that website, I am now the hero that just saved you from trying to figure out how to answer the above 3 questions.

It’s the best thing since sliced bread…for small business owners. OK, if you haven’t already clicked on the site to figure out what it is, I’ll tell you. And NO, I am not a paid spokesperson.

Lynda.com has infinite, easy to follow video tutorials on most versions of most any software you can imagine. They also have tutorials on such things as running effective meetings.

I wish I had found it sooner. We had searched high and low for a FileMaker expert to teach our employees how to use the software. They could have learned it while sitting at their desk and watching Lynda.com.

And it’s a cheap membership. Far cheaper than sending your employees to a software course.

How to build a brand.

First, since this is my first blog, let me introduce myself, before I get into the nuts and bolts of the how to.

My background is marketing. I was a Vice President, Senior Art Director at The Martin Agency. I was also Vice President, Business and Marketing Manager at PT Works Physical Therapy. Two vastly different fields. My husband, Matt Wren, is the Physical Therapist, and we partnered to open the clinic in 2001. I’ve had the pleasure of working on really big ad budgets, but had to figure out how to work with the limited marketing budget of our small business.

Before we started our physical therapy clinic, I thought what would Steve Jobs do?
How could we make the best physical therapy clinic?
What would make us stand out from the competition?

These steps below apply to most any business.

1. Research.

See what the competition is doing right.

Is it the Apple Store with hordes of happy customers hanging around? Well, maybe you need to rethink competing with Apple.

See what the competition is doing wrong.

What are the biggest complaints the competition’s customers have?

Get to know your target audience and talk to the consumer.

Once you’ve opened your doors, ask customers why they chose you. Ask how you rated compared to the competition. They may reveal differences you were not aware of.

Our patients pointed out our strengths in conversation. We listened and made note to use that in our marketing.

2. Determine what you can to better.

Will your price, product or service differentiate your company?

For example:

If you are a retail or service –

• Are you open at more convenient times?
• Do you offer a bigger selection or more services?
• Do you have more salespeople on the floor to assist than other companies?
• Do you spend more time educating your sales force to answer customer questions?
• Is your customer service hold time less?
• Do you offer a customer loyalty program?

If a product is your business –

• Is your product more durable?
• Is your product made with better materials?
• Do you offer a guarantee that your competition does not?
• Do you offer more product support after the sale?

What does your target audience need that they are not getting from competitors?
Or perhaps, the customer doesn’t know what it is that they are missing.

If you can’t say one thing that you do better than most of your competition, then how do you expect to sway the customer to come to your door or product?

3. Market your strengths.

After all, you can have a great idea, product or service, but if no one knows about it, that idea will fail.

I’ve seen lots of ideas fail because they lack the appropriate marketing.

Clearly communicate strengths everywhere possible – in media, web, sales calls, in office and trade shows.

Don’t just say your product or service is better. Say HOW your product or service is better!

Of course, all your strengths should not be together in the headline, but in the support text.

Do not make promises you can’t keep, you’ll have angry customers.

4. Make sure that the strengths you tout in your marketing are perceived as true by your customer.

Do customer surveys.

Make sure any complaints get carried up the ladder. Make sure someone at the top is always available to hear complaints in order to solve them promptly. Respond to every complaint, and try to turn a negative experience into a positive experience.

If there are recurring complaints, fix the issue causing it.

5. Track your marketing so you can spend your marketing dollars successfully.

Ask the customer how they heard about you.

Use Google Analytics to:

• See what is driving customers to your website.
• Measure what captures the customer’s attention by where they click on your website.
• See if the customer is actually reading the info by how long they stay on a page.
• The program is free and the wealth of info you can get from it is immense.

Most email marketing services also provide tracking data that shows how many people are driven to your website – ‘click-throughs.’ We used OpenMoves for our email newsletter.

For ads and print – use a different tracking number for each.
Or use a dedicated phone number for each campaign or media.

Analyze the tracking data

Customize future marketing based on the interests of your customers.

They are telling you their choices, you just have to listen.

6. Make sure your marketing connects with consumers on an emotional level.

Social media has made the brand a two way dialog. (Read Groundswell by Li and Bernoff) You need to listen to the consumer and let them know you understand them. Find a way to relate to the consumer.