The Patron Way, From Fantasy to Fortune – Lessons in Taking Any Business from Idea to Iconic Brand, is by Ilana Edelstein (with help from Samantha Marshall).   I discovered the book via NetGallery, and thought it would be worthwhile to marketers who work with premium brands as well as business owners associated with the distilled spirits industry.

Patron Means Godfather, So Here’s the Godfather’s Story (Without Al Pacino!)  

This is a passionate narrative about the personal travails of the author, Edelstein, and her business partner/lover Martin.  Martin was introduced to tequila on a business scouting trip.  He brought Edelstein home some samples of the version to be known as Patron to taste.

The rest became a history blending their passion for each other, the business and the drink itself.

“In a way Patron symbolized all that was best in our relationship. We each possessed a unique mixture of characteristics and ingredients that, put together, made magic…There was one key ingredient that made it magic: love.”

The couple worked to raise the brand profile through serving Patron at the finest events attended by titans of industry and celebrities.  Their first event included A-list celebrities like Tom Cruise and Arnold Schwarzenegger.  A few other actors are mentioned, such as Robin Williams and James Coburn.  Edelstein even relates a discussion of hip-hop’s adoption of Patron with Daymond John of Shark Tank and FUBU fame.

These experiences offered some business insights Edelstein sprinkles into the story progression:

“Know who the true tastemakers are and use them wisely. Think about how anyone in your orbit, whether they are friends, members of the media or product reviewers, can be best leveraged to promote your product. In the consumables business, word of mouth from fashionable and hip brand ambassadors speaks volume for…”

Much of the book details Edelstein’s relationship with Martin, but it’s not a tell-all. It also covers the marketing tactics to position Patron as a premium drink and the negotiations that would provide further investment.  Patron was one of the earliest alcohol names to be branded to sophisticated consumers. Its success grew from influential people who could speak passionately about the drink.

Edelstein does get into relating the Seagram deal to purchase Patron.  A later chapter explains decision details such as packaging.

Chapter 2 will educate the reader about the tequila business. Distilled in a specific region like whiskey and bourbon, tequila experienced bust and boom demand cycles that mirrors Mexico’s history.  The agave, a plant whose juice is fermented to produce tequila, became more industrialized when the Mexican government decreed all tequila distilled must contain at least 51% of blue agave sourced from Mexico.

The couple’s true guidance came from Francisco Alcaraz, a Mexican aristocrat who was “at the forefront of the modernization and standardization of Mexico’s  Tequila industry.”  Edelstein explained the couple’s admiration for Alcaraz:

“Watching Francisco is like observing a true artist in action. He studies the contents of his glass, staring down the center to determine its color and gently turning the tequila around to see how it clings to the sides…Francisco stood out as a connoisseur with an acute appreciation for life’s finest, just like Martin.”

In addition to Alcaraz, there is a highlight on John Paul “JP” DeJoria. An “impoverished street kid” in his youth, JP becomes a trusted business partner who helped land the first Patron distributor. The Patron Way does not reveal much about other employees. It’s just as well, given the volumes of books written on large corporations with memorable leaders such as Apple (see Ivana Taylor’s review of “Inside Apple” and “The Apple Experience” for an example).

What Kind of Reader Will Enjoy The Patron Way?

This book is not filled with research about business couples. If that’s what you are looking for, read You and Your Partner Inc.

Rather — like Guitar Lessons and Beam Straight Up, The Patron Way tells mostly a personal story.

Yet the book’s perspective can be valuable for couples starting to work together.  Those who are working with a partner or spouse will have an interest in how this couple face their business challenges.

There is an appendix section with short direct insights.  But outside of that you are reading a narrative, not a how-to guide.

There’s a pleasant aspect about the author’s tone.  Edelstein conveys everything with a grounded while carefree spirit, all despite the celebrities she met and success attained along the way.  That keeps a good, never-dry tone that makes you want to invest in the couple:

“In many ways, I was still the girl from South Africa who grew up without a television. Often I found myself talking to celebrities without having a clue who they were until pointed out to me afterward. But I enjoyed being in those exclusive environments. It felt like we arrived.”

No matter what industry your business is built upon, you’ll appreciate the perspective in The Patron Way. Read it, or better yet, share it while enjoying your favorite drink. Cheers.

The post Becoming a Business Icon “The Patron Way” appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Are our lives better now with the technology that has become widespread?

Are we “better people” because we can share information so readily and instantaneously?

Those questions are particularly poignant when we think about the potential usage of gadgets and capabilities developed just in the last year. Google Glass.  The spread of mobile apps.  The anticipation of an automated driving car.

You can even look at the Amy’s Bakery Company debacle. Despite the eruption of opinions in that instance, one has to ponder the gigantic effort a small business can face when its reputation is in the combined hands of new tech (social media) and established tech (television).

The book’s author Douglas Rushkoff (@rushkoff) has more than a light interest in tech-induced behavior. An award winning social critic, Rushkoff has written numerous books examining societal views of technology. The life questions in his latest book can inspire small business owners to assess their own beliefs on what is making their business and lives better for themselves, their associates, their employees and the family and friends who support them.

Is This the Life We Really Want?

According to Rushkoff, we made poor assumptions about how our lifestyle would change with technology.  We thought we would be “futurists” – making the right predictions that matter.

Instead, we have found no zen state with the events that occur through technological usage.  Instead, Rushkoff notes, we have constant distractions, presuming that the information we have immediately before us is urgent.

The end result is a narrative collapse — losing a linear progression of events that forms a story.   We use narratives to tell the story about important events in our lives, let alone our business.  Today, our environment assimilates bits and pieces of information, producing outcomes that demand personal vigilance and management.

In addition to narrative collapse, Rushkoff summarizes other tenets to our digital environment:

• Digiphrenia: How technology lets us be in more than one place and be more than one “self” at the same time.
• Overwinding: Condensing large time periods into much smaller ones.
• Fractalnoia: Making sense of our world entirely in the present tense, by drawing connections between things – sometimes inappropriately.
• Apocalypto: The intolerance for presentism leads us to fantasize a grand finale.

Within these titles, Rushkoff makes relatively good distinctions on the core symptoms of his societal diagnosis and notes the offshoots from the outlined tenets.  Digiphrenia is meant to distinguish value from fragmented waste – the pay off is to not treat “data flows and databases interchangeably,” for example.

That ability to distinguish value flows well into topics about our society as a whole.  Check out how Rushkoff cites the Occupy Wall Street movement as a parallel to narrative collapse – with no goals from a narrative collapse, societal movements appear more frantic and extreme, sending a seemingly never-ending message stream instead of establishing an achievement.

It is not about winning some debate and going home. Rather, as the product of decentralized networked-era culture, it is less about victory than sustainability…. Occupy Wall Street is not a movement that wins and ends; it is meant more as a way of life that spreads through contagion and creates as many questions as it does answers.

As I see today’s analytics adopt more real time features, I do appreciate what Rushkoff sees. He outlines consequences that business can use as a starting point to understand if personnel are unnaturally aligned or if goals to integrate technology are unsustainable and unattainable.

Read Rushkoff’s citation of jet lag as an early example of an advancement impacting physiology:

But no matter how well technology overcame the limits of natural time, our bodies had difficulty keeping up….  Back in the 1950s, for example, when jet passenger service was still quite novel, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles flew to Egypt to negotiate the Aswan Dam treaty. His minders assumed he would sleep on the plane, and they scheduled his first meeting after they arrived. He was incapable of thinking straight, his compromised perceptual and negotiating skills were overtaxed, and he failed utterly. The USSR won the contract instead, and many still blame this one episode of jet lag for provoking the Cold War.

In its own way Present Shock extends the dialog highlighted in Against The Machine by Lee Siegel, but with less cynicism about how information is created. Siegel cautioned on the internet’s destructive nature to obscure promises of free expression and independence. Rushkoff counters by having the reader note the tradeoffs, bullish that the reader will pick up the alarms:

Instead of attempting to retrain the body to match the artificial rhythms of our digital technologies and their artifacts we can instead use our digital technologies to reschedule our lives in a manner consistent with our physiology…. Technology may have given us the choice to defeat our natural rhythms, but we then built a society and economic order around these choices, making them seemingly irreversible.

Much of the content is meant to appeal to readers who are not accustomed to reviewing code or software development, so a developer may not feel the book speaks to them.

But if you are reading other business books on technology you will imagine some useful parallels. Rushkoff’s discussion on reduced critical thinking parallels cautions being on customer service “autopilot” as Chris Zane warns in his book Reinventing The Wheel.   He highlights the always-on philosophy that works well for “many businesses” , while “our digital selves are distributed across every device, platform, and network.”

Rushkoff is a proactive critic – he shuttered his Facebook page, critical of its sponsored stories feature and subsequent data usage.   I think after reading this book you’ll become pretty proactive in setting your own technological strategy.

The post Present Shock: Taking A Moment to Review the Future appeared first on Small Business Trends.

In fact, pricing is just one of the traps along the way to developing professional services.

For those who need to break the traps, rejoice.  Leading Firms: How Great Professional Service Firms Succeed & How Your Firm Can Too by David Kuhlman offers tips to improve your professional services beyond smaller jobs and services.

I received a review copy the book from the publisher SelectBooks, and I was pleased with Kuhlman’s blend of insights and supporting material.  Kuhlman has advised numerous senior leaders at prominent professional firms for over 25 years.

When Your Perception of Professional Service Grows Up

Kuhlman’s approach to the material is applicable to small businesses growing up. He examines the operations in a professional firm, highlighting opportunities.

The chapters particularly highlight fallacies and truths. If you are running a professional firm, you’ll quickly learn why some ideas may not be all that they are on paper.

Take strategic advantage, for example. Professional firms believe that their people provide a strategic advantage, but Kuhlman cautions on how and why such assets can be really difficult to develop, noting:

“Most professional firms are good at creating professionals, particular in the process of forming principals, but not as good at creating ‘business people’ …. The process of becoming a complete, fully functioning Actuary or Forensic accountant or Lawyer leaves little time and energy for breadth of knowledge.”

Kuhlman works to broaden the reader’s knowledge, to put mere ideas into workable outlooks that lead to workable solutions.

With a textbook-like tone, Kuhlman reveals graphs, charts and terms that shows the value service firms can bring to customers.   The end result is a better plan for strategy, from execution of customer service to pricing fees.

Top Grade Ideas for Top Professionals

Three aspects of a business model are outlined and are well worth a read if your business plan needs adjusting.  These are introduced early in the book:

• Client Value Proposition (essentially what is the deficit the client experiences without the service)
• Client Service Model (the delivery of service)
• Performance Envelope (the environment in which a firm is best equipped to compete — and my favorite term in the book)

As you can tell from the phrase  ”Performance Envelope,”  you can expect the terms throughout the book to inspire meaningful concepts, not just sales-speak or overly technical jibber-jabber.  Readers from professional firms undergoing growth and who have some years of experience will not read a dumbed-down thought.

The chapter “Resource Deployment” was among the most applicable material. It offers pragmatic approaches to managing people and time.  There are graphs throughout, but the terminology introduced in the chapter explains what can happen as a professional firm operates.  The concept behind leverage, for example, is that value from firm operations varies according to who performs the tasks.

Processes in Leading Firms are also explained against what a client can experience, so the reader can understand why some practices may not be all that they are on paper. There’s also a game theory sensibility with respect to workplace concerns. The chapter of meritocracy notes what can be encountered despite principal claims that merit is a factor for workplace success.   Read how Kuhlman applies his experience to note a potential challenge to senior principals:

“Senior principals represent a unique challenge to the firm’s sense of meritocracy.  In this sense “senior” does mean oldest or closest to retirement rather than senior in terms of status or contribution — and therein lies the problem. Different principals follow different paths toward their inevitable departure from their firm. Some principals begin to slow down and contribute less in current economic terms.…  Other principals continue to deliver big results, commanding large clients and significant revenue streams. These principals play a dominant role in the firm’s economic and client life, influencing the fates of a large proportion of the firm’s personnel…. Senior principals who remain dominant represent a different sort of cultural challenge: they soak up opportunities that could more productively be used to enable other up-and-coming principals.”

The viewpoints made this book a really enjoyable resource. A lot of phrases were just eye-catching such as this one:

“No major initiative can be so fully specified that it will survive a collision with actual facts and circumstances on the ground.”

Comments like this are linguistically interesting – a few were a challenge to digest, but not overwhelming on the second read.  But overall every suggestion supports the main thesis:  assets can take time to develop.

Who Could Benefit From Reading Leading Firms?

Legal and financial professionals with dreams of their own firm are certainly the audience for this book. But its appeal does not stop there.

Other businesses whose clients receive professional services can gain insight.

Startups with the latest B2B software-as-a-service application can gain some sensibility about the conditions experienced at professional service firms it intends to sell to.    There is no silver bullet, but your strategy for working with a professional firm can be better refined after reading Kuhlman’s views.

A quick aside:  Those professionals having launched a professional service should also consider reading the book Service Innovation.   It provides some ideas on how to frame service plans to match what you are seeing in the field. The combo can give you some ideas on not only how to be innovative, but what business skill sets your firm would need to deliver the result.

Read Leading Firms to explore how your professional service firm can avoid most traps and to understand what it truly means to lead.

The post Is Your Professional Service Among “Leading Firms?” appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Authors Viktor Mayer-Schroenberger and Kenneth Cukier have set out to answer that and more in Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think.  Mayer-Schroenberger is a professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University, and author of several books.  His most recent is Delete the Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age. Cukier is a prominent commentator and the data editor at The Economist.  Both authors have produced numerous writings and articles on the subject of analysis from the perspective of many industries, organizations and situations.

I picked up a copy of this big data book at Barnes and Noble. I wanted to see how well the authors sum up today’s digital data environment.

Adding to the Big Data Discussion in a Simple Way

Mayer-Schroenberger and Cukier attempt to simplify the background behind the book’s theme. Essentially, Big Data is a perspective on the “datification” of things – processes that can be recorded as data, helping society to understand how data is growing and being collected.  Ten chapters are named with one word titles, such as Now, Correlation and Messy.  These, along with the stories contained within the chapters, are meant to illuminate the impact data has on societal problems and business opportunities.

Data is no longer just to confirm or disprove a hypothesis.  Instead, organizations must accept some messiness with data – i.e. being less concerned about exactness and instead, broadening what events influence causality in an occurrence:

“Big data transforms how we understand and explore the world. In the age of small data, we were driven by hypotheses about how the world worked, which we then attempted to validate by collecting and analyzing data. In the future, our understanding will be driven more by the abundance of data rather than hypotheses.”

This “no-more-sample-size” idea is similar to Wired Editor Chris Anderson’s assertions about the “end of theory.” In fact, the authors do look at the debate Anderson raised when he declared that hypothesizing and modeling from small data sizes were becoming obsolete.

Other takes on the data revolution include some twists on well known subjects, such as Steve Jobs’ choices of treatment for his cancer and Amazon’s investment in data to understand customer purchase behavior.  Avid technology readers may have read these examples before, but they may be new to those with cursory familiarity with tech happenings.  There are some interesting data applications, such as Con Edison’s effort to prevent exploding manhole cover incidents in New York City, as well as FlyOnTime.us, an open data application.

The enormity of the data created certainly permits new solutions, but it also yields new challenges.  At first blush, small business owners reading this book may feel they will bear the lion’s share of challenges (reading the chapter on Amazon may not bring warm and fuzzy memories to local bookstores).

But Mayer-Schroenberger and Cukier expect the middle-sized companies to be on the chopping block – either scale by data or staying small and nimble.  Along those lines, the subject matter expert has become less influential in many industries:

“In media, the content that gets created and publicized on websites like Huffington Post, Gawker and Fobres is regularly determined by data, not just the judgement of human editors…. Jeff Bezos got rid of in-house book reviewers at Amazon when the data showed that algorithmic recommendations drove more sales.  This means the skills necessary to succeed in the workplace are changing.”

Small business readers may not feel that the material relates actionable ideas to their environment. The book gives a short historical context to the big data subject, with notes indicating references within the past 10 years or so.  But there’s no IT-level discussion on databases and nothing on planning management – at least in relationship to technological features. Readers expecting noSQL vs SQL debates should look elsewhere.

The most thought-provocative perspective the book gives to small business owners is an alert to how the utility of technology has evolved. This differs from any age-old debates on the viability of a technology, a debate that can hinder budget considerations.   Instead of focusing on whether email is better than social media, business strategists should be more alert to trends in their marketing to develop useful associations between a marketing medium and customer response.

It’s this kind of thought process Big Data encourages. Thus the book’s ultimate value lies in stories told about how organizations are accepting data and modeling solutions that improves operations.

The chapters on Risk and Control take the concepts to further realistic scenarios. These chapters cover the topic of privacy with the latest outlooks and are probably the most actionable in discerning what to do with tech.  Mayer-Schroenberger and Cukier outline a definition of profiling vs. selecting suitable predictors of customer behavior. But they take the right step in outlining societal complications, such as “penalties based on propensities”, which they call “nauseating.”  The authors also note the rise of the algorithmists – professionals with math, science and computer science backgrounds to help assure accountability for the very systems we create:

“We envision algorithmists as providing a market-oriented approach to problems like these that may head off more intrusive forms of regulation…. To ensure that people are protected at the same time as the technology is promoted, we must not let big data develop beyond the reach of human ability to shape the technology.”

The authors convey a hopeful tone in their writing, as well as pragmatism tone for potential future outcomes from big data research.

But for today’s business climate, reading Big Data will help innovative small businesses to think differently about the causation of human behavior and how that behavior is recorded.  Improving services or unleashing new ones can be better considered.  There are other books that go deeper into the debate about sample size and correlation, but as a primer for business, Big Data works to make a misunderstood topic more understandable.

The post The Revolution with Big Data appeared first on Small Business Trends.

One entertainment concept that has spread through the last few years is gamification – connecting to customers through implementing design concepts from games and loyalty programs based on behavioral economics.  The concept is the study of a new book The Gamification Revolution: How Leaders Leverage Game Mechanics to Crush The Competition.

The authors, Gamification.co CEO, Gabe Zicherman, and Joselin Linder, wrote the book believing that long term customer value awaits those business that make engagement rewarding for the customer.   I discovered the book via NetGallery and requested a review copy.

This book is not meant to explain check-ins and game app code planning. But the book is an opening round in understanding how to engage a company and customers with gamification techniques — techniques that have arisen with the age of mobile computing and app development.

The process of implementing these games and strategies into business is called gamification.  With it you can build experiences that will provide built-in meaning and trigger the motivation of employees and customers.

The cost for not developing interest can be severe. Zicherman and Linder outline an example from Fox Meyer, once the fourth largest drug distributor in the United States:

“Without employee and customer engagement, the best laid strategies and tactics are doomed to fail…. [Fox Meyer] began a project with the software management firm SAP and the business management firm Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) for the purpose of transitioning to a new enterprise resource plan (ERP), which would serve as the back-end system for the automation of its warehouses. Despite an aggressive 18 month rollout program, the company did one major thing wrong. It forgot to engage its employee base…. By 1998 the $5 billion company went bankrupt.”

The value derived can be significant as well.  Companies are using gamification to change their businesses and to drive behavioral economics. In fact, the best businesses figured this out even before the dawn of jQuery.  A mention of McDonald’s success with its Monopoly reveals the author’s penchant for context from history:

“According to the company, the game itself was responsible for 5.5 percent same-store revenue lift in a single month for the 4th quarter of 2011. This equates to approximately 350 million dollars in incremental revenue over 60 days of the promotion.”

Jump to today’s gaming environment, where even console games are being challenged (my Atari 2600 is weeping as I write this!);

”What’s more, mobile games, especially social and casual games (like Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, and Tiny Wings), are rapidly taking over where consoles and MMOG once were king. A recent study from MocoSpace found that while 80 percent of social gamers play while commuting or waiting to begin appointments, 96 percent admit that they are playing these games at home from their couch, bed, or front porch…. These hundreds of millions of players and their numbers are growing all the time — are changing the way we think about games and the gamers, and they are demanding a more games like experience from the rest of their world.”

The World According to App

Game terms such as game mechanics, points, badges and leaderboards are introduced.  But do not look for code or discussion about best programming development.  Instead the book focuses on ideas best meant for brainstorming.  You’ll learn why rewards are popular – they lead to status, access, and power.

The main process that makes games possible are laid out in six motivations – desire incentive, challenge,  achievement, reward, feedback, mastery.  To make these motivations real, goals are established in the game, but most games are now designed such that winning is not the main objective.

Readers who own small businesses can benefit by paying attention to the behavior shifts mentioned in The Gamification Revolution. The author delves into the behavior economics and gets to the heart as to what is on the customer’s mind.  Cultural attitudes towards automobiles is highlighted here. In previous generations, teenagers dreamt of getting a driver’s license and the perceived freedom that would come with driving where they want. Recent research has discovered that today’s young adults are ambivalent about driving. The fact that automobiles include more technology as a selling point is an affirmation of the shift.

Topics like this are supported with the author’s questions meant to help the reader think about how behaviors are shifting.

Your Move

The text can feel like a word version of the game RISK.  Zicherman and Linder provide interesting historical facts that give context to how gaming has really been a part of how things get done.  Did you know refrigeration came from Napoleon offering a prize for better food supplies for his military campaigns?

“In 1795 he offered 12,000 francs to the invention that could solve the food presentation problem.”

The historical factoids help drive home the point that much of gamification is not brand new – it’s been around for generations in different ways.

Of course, a book about gamification should demonstrate gamification, right?  The Gamification Revolution includes an app that supports the text in the book. It includes video collaboration tools with friends to see your ideas and a social media link for the company’s profiles in the book.

All in all you’ll learn that the best way to beat the competition is to let your employees and customers experience as much fun as possible.  The Gamification Revolution will show the way to what fun works – while still having fun all the while.

The post Get Your Business Game On with “The Gamification Revolution” appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Among the most stellar coverage of small business finance resources is Spank the Bank: The Guide to Alternative Business Financing.  Karlene Sinclair-Robinson (@KarleneSinRob), founding member of finance consultation firm KsR Solution LLC, wrote the book to deter small business owners from pursuing poor business models that never get proper capital.

Her expertise in handling millions in non-traditional financing and research on the subject has crafted a sensational finance guide. I discovered the author through a Twitter chat and asked for a review copy.

A Signpost on the Many Highways of Finance

Spank The Bank covers the latest finance instruments such as peer-to-peer lending and crowdsourcing, as well as traditional financing services such as business credit lines, asset-backed loans and factoring.  What makes the book a unique guide is how it outlines these resources.   With each financing option, Sinclair-Robinson explains the pros and cons, along with what to do in your business prior to selecting a choice.

Using asides called Biztips, Sinclair-Robinson highlights the “so-what” of the information provided. For example, the first chapter details the business structures available, with a reminder as to what is at stake when selecting a structure:

“Many funding sources will not work unless you are formally registered your company. They prefer that you do not operate as a sole proprietor.”

One great aspect of the book is that each option is fit against the kind of businesses that would pursue an examined option. Cost is considered, as well as term definitions associated for each subject.   In fact, a terrific aspect is that the definitions are lengthy enough to appreciate what to expect with a choice.  Take the explanation about Purchase Order Financing (POF); there’s a context about the type of risk being considered with POF:

“When you consider Purchase Order Financing and Factoring, always keep in mind the ‘number line.’ You have a positive and negative side… Purchase Order Financing is on the negative side or high risk, for the main reason that the lender is providing funding for you prior to any work being done or any tangible product delivered.”

Sinclair-Robinson then follows up with key takeaway of what to expect with POF:

“The fee for using this financing service will be much higher than most but the key will be for you to price your product correctly, deliver it in a timely fashion and keep your customers happy. It’s important that we not just look at how much things cost but also at how they can help enhance what we are doing.”

Learn Finance Facts Instead of Myths

Sinclair-Robinson also dispels widely cited myths, such as free business grants or that the SBA issues business loans.  You’ll understand what resources matches to your business.

The chapters are brief, so you may weigh the information value against the nature of the topic. The chapter on venture capital is nowhere near as detailed as David Gladstone’s Venture Capital Investing, for example. But the information would give your business the right starting point for appreciating the difference of VC investment against another financing choice.  Plus, if you are using an accounting system, the topics in Spank The Bank will help you frame what accounting metrics and concepts need scrutiny and potential improvement.  You’ll get an idea of what to work in on. Cases, recommended reading and sample forms round out the guide.

Such comparisons are what Sinclair-Robinson intended.  She succeeds at every effort to make information accessible to all small business owners.  In reviewing each chapter, I felt that the explanations were as straight-forward for the electrician contractor as it would be for a professional looking for a few pointers.  Both business people would make confident decisions after reading this book.

I also liked how Sinclair-Robinson ties other business aspects into the financing decision.  My personal favorite is the reference to an online presence – bet you had not considered how much your website is a factor in finance. Read this 9th myth from the Business Financing Myths and Misconceptions chapter:

“The thought that you do not need a website in today’s technologically and internet savvy market must be reconsidered. If you have operated without one, you could lose potential business, credibility, and more….Bankers might not care too much one way or the other, but unfortunately it is a problem for alternative financing sources.”

We’ve seen a few good books on specific details, such as local investment options in Locavesting or wealth creation in Wealth Creation for Small Business Owners. Few books covers finance details with the scope Sinclair-Robinson has provided.

Spank The Bank is a winning addition to the business library. It will help many small business owners craft one of the most important, sought-after resources and deploy it effectively.

The post Read “Spank The Bank” to Choose the Right Financing for Your Business appeared first on Small Business Trends.

At least that was the thesis for the music business of yore. Without a doubt, the Internet and digitizing the music format has reshaped how music artists garner fans. Witness how YouTube expanded the careers of Justin Bieber or Psy.

Lady Gaga’s success has been outstanding, and she has been named to the Forbes top celebrities list.   A viable business model underscores her fame, a model with tactics that small businesses could adopt on a smaller scale.

Author Jackie Huba (@jackiehuba) examines Gaga’s model in her book Monster Loyalty: How Lady Gaga Turns Followers Into Fanatics.  I was intrigued by how the book came about – a blog post on Lady Gaga garnered the most replies on the author’s blog.  So I downloaded a NetGalley copy for review.

Lady Gaga’s career history is as extensive as a 27 year old singer’s can be. Despite her first singles having achieved 6 number one hits – a record – Lady Gaga does not have a storied musicianship like, say, the Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson or Madonna, an artist she is regularly compared to.  So those artists may have more material for an author to research and draw business concepts from.

But the context Huba sets for Monster Loyalty is worth the study. Lady Gaga’s success is examined against a social media and digital marketing landscape in which the target audience must be constantly engaged and immersed in an experience.  It is a different audience landscape from the one in the heydays of Madonna, Michael Jackson, the Rolling Stones and others.   Small business owners are more likely to identify with Madonna than Lady Gaga, but reading Monster Loyalty teaches a different spin on the value of social media – one that does not require a discussion about a tweet or like.

Take the first chapter of the book, for example. It examines the value of the “one percenters” – that core audience that responds to your product.  The one percenters are your superfans – the “Little Monsters” as she calls them. Lady Gaga spends nearly all of her effort on this highly engaged fan base.

In other words, your marketing should be on those who are responding the most to your product or service. Huba notes this philosophy against 2011 research by Forrester showing most marketers are focused on new customers, not existing ones, and certainly not on such a tiny group as the one percenters:

“Fifty nice percent of CMOs say acquiring new customers is one of their top priorities…Only 30 percent of CMO respondents say they are focused on retaining customers as a top priority.”

With such a deliberate focus on addressing her fan base, you might conclude that Lady Gaga is a manipulator. But she doesn’t come across that way in the book. Instead she just comes across as someone who knows on which side her bread is buttered. When it comes to her fans, Lady Gaga believes:

“I’m not the beginning anymore. I don’t see myself as the center. They’re at the center. I’m the atmosphere around it…I will continue to become whatever it is [the fans] would like for me to be.”

Lady Gaga’s viewpoint could fit into Gary Vaynerchuk’s The Thank You Economy quite easily.  That is the point of business books written about famous people –  to learn more than leadership from sources seemingly disparate from your own past experiences.

Huba deftly enhances her points with a mix of business data and highlights from Gaga’s career.  For example Lady Gaga understands her one percenters – her devoted fans. The book reveals how Gaga developed her own community network.

“In late 2010 Gaga and her team realized they could create their own private place for the superfans, the Little Monsters. Gaga herself dreamed up the idea after seeing an advanced screening of The Social Network….[her manager Carter] partnered with some of the best in Silicon Valley, and created a firm called Backplane, which would build a niche social-network platform that could be used by other artists and even brands. Gaga invested her own money into the venture.”

The suggestions may seem out of reach for the small business owner.  Yet a small business owner can learn the value of Lady Gaga’s choices.  In Thank You, Vaynerchuk refers to the context of relationship and how your brand “must improvise and be willing to go where the consumer leads you.”  In Monster Gaga demonstrates that improvisation, built on the context before her.  She may have certainly had the money to build a social networking platform of her own, but the structure of the idea can be emulated through similar, affordable platforms that you learn about everyday on Small Business Trends.

Business tools alone do not guarantee success.  It’s how those tools are applied to make a sustainable business model.  If you read Monster Loyalty you will learn the right attitude to apply to the numerous digital marketing strategies touted every day.  It will be the winning attitude that will take your business to the next level.

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The author of Black Still Matters in Marketing starts off the book by examining the changes in the past five years, and asks two questions: Is Black consumer behavior much different from Whites? Is it now time to stop labeling, and perhaps limiting ourselves with race?

After acknowledging the many changes, she concludes:  Black still matters in marketing. And then she goes on to explain that the book is not about “targeting” blacks in marketing, but rather about offering solutions to  help marketers understand African Americans and comfortably frame messages to Black America.

Pepper Miller is the author of “Black Still Matters In Marketing: Why Increasing Your Cultural IQ about Black America is Critical to Your Company and Your Brand.” The author’s background lists several significant accolades. She is a regular Advertising Age contributor.  She is Founder of the Ruth C. Hunter Market Research Scholarship Fund, a program to increase market research awareness among Black American Students.  And she heads up her own marketing research group, The Hunter-Miller Group.

Her experiences infuse a terrific sensibility into this book, one that can help businesses frame insightful personas associated with today’s African American consumer segments.

The topic of marketing nuances among African American consumers has been raised over the last few years, such as its treatment in the book “Black Is The New Green.” Miller builds on the topic by examining urban segments that have “come-of-age” economically, such as the multiracial demographic and the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender) community.

This examination is a powerful suggestion, given the geographic shifts in where the Black middle class lives. Such significance is highlighted in the book “Our Black Year“and in the post-civil rights generation now mobilized in the U.S. workforce, also featured in the professional development books “Black Faces White Places“and “Black Business Secrets.”

I found the thesis of Black Still Matters to be well supported and explained. The book unquestionably extends the cultural dialog into the topics businesses need to focus upon. It first outlines what marketers must understand about the changing preferences and responses of Black men and women.  Businesses should:

• Understand the importance and impact of portraying Black men in a positive light, and the power of showing Black men as role models in the Black community.
• Recognize the growing power and influence of Black social networks and the Black blogosphere, and how and why engaging Blacks in cyberspace can have a profound positive impact on marketers’ bottom lines.
• Realize how young, single and accomplished childless Black women break the stereotypes about young Black women, and the benefit of looking beyond these stereotypes.

Add to these points an examination of LGBT and multiracial consumers. Both groups appreciate the historic treatment of Black consumers, but bring unique needs that businesses must acknowledge.  Check out this quote as an example of attitudes towards multiracial consumers of personal care products:

Some companies and products target multiracial people directly or with appropriate cultural cues.  New hair-care products, Miss Lessies’s and Mixed Chicks, launched within the past few years, were specifically targeted to Black biracial women to help tame their naturally curly locks. The products attracted many African Americans who also choose to wear their hair naturally.  Today, these multi-million dollar brands have inspired the launch of other “me too” brands and collectively, these products have become one of the new standards of hair care products within the $9 million Black hair-care industry. At the same time, expanded racial classifications like Black biracials also present challenges with respect to policies, social programs and marketing. Therefore distinct values and experience must be understood to develop appropriate appeals.

Another wonderful highlight is the examination Miller offers on Black immigrant consumers.  Economic statistics are punctuated with the successful marketing engagements, such as Publix’s plan in connecting to West Indian consumers.  African American-centric marketing in relationship to the ecological/green movement is also a savvy topic addition.

Black Still Matters In Marketing details some of the issues advertising agencies can face.  Businesses may not be agencies, but they can learn when some actions are too patronizing and can turn off consumers.  The following quote notes how partnerships meant to address strategy can be mismanaged:

Another practice…is the inclusion of ethnic advertising agency partners in the marketing strategy discussions early and often, recognizing the agencies as full partners during the process. “Partner” is the key word here….Few ethnic agencies have the opportunity to sit down and collectively work on the multicultural strategy. They are not even given the opportunity to work on or share their thoughts on the mainstream advertising. Instead, ethnic marketers are given “assignments”—not “the account”—and are often asked to adapt the general-market strategy to ethnic audiences.

Miller writes clear recommendations for successful campaigns. The takeaways are meant to be easily imagined, an augment to the wealth of stats Miller provides. Take Miller’s point about connection, using a scene from the movie The Break Up to illustrate the point about recognizing culture and the nuances that can come with it (which is a favorite move of mine, I’ll admit):

There is a scene in the 2006 movie The Break Up starring Vince Vaughn as Gary and Jennifer Aniston as Brooke, where we see the couple arguing. Gary won’t help Brooke with the dishes following a dinner party in which Brooke did all of the work. After several selfish reasons and snarky comments as to why he shouldn’t do the dishes, Gary reluctantly gives in. But Brooke backs up and declines his help and tells him, “I want you to want to do the dishes.” I love that line and totally get it! It’s the same with connecting with Black America. No group wants to force another group to appreciate their culture and who they are—they simply want that group to want to appreciate it. Just like Brooke in the movie, it is a matter of respect more than actually doing.

Read Black Still Matters In Marketing and begin a journey to understand diversity and the nuances that come along with acknowledging ethnic consumer perspective.

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Sonja Jefferson and Sharon Tanton note the ins and outs of content marketing with their book “Valuable Content Marketing; How to Make Quality Content the Key to Your Business Success.” Jefferson is the founder of UK marketing communication firm, Valuable Content. Tanton is a successful content creator. Both ladies gathered the best ideas that speak not only to the United Kingdom market, but to American small businesses as well.

I discovered the book on NetGalley and felt that its specific treatment of content marketing can teach businesses how to improve their effectiveness using that medium.

The data represented in Valuable Content Marketing supports many social media trends occurring in the UK. Jefferson and Tanton confirm industry sentiment: Many people are responding to the sharing aspects of digital marketing rather than to solely traditional methodologies.

“People are far happier to pass on something useful or compelling they’ve read or seen (it makes them look and feel good) than to hand over a business card you gave them (in fact, they’ve probably lost that already).”

To show how marketing has changed, as asserted in the opening chapter, Valuable Content Marketing offers an overview for each content marketing perspective.

The authors do not spend a lot of time comparing content marketing against the different channels within social media. Yet they do successfully explain how to get past the “what do I say” question that arises from social media. That makes the book a value to those who have just set up their Twitter profile, but are not sure what they should say online.  For example, check out a thought starter on extending the shelf life of a white paper:

“Once you’ve put the time and resources in longer pieces of content there is a lot you can do with them…One white paper or ebook can become 10 blogs, 50 short tips on Twitter, a short series of guides…”

Chapters 9 and 10 get into media formats, detailing the right content to create an ebook or white paper. You’ll also read the pros and cons on content management decisions such as gating or not gating content.

I also found chapter 12 to be helpful. It focuses on sales, adjusting tactics to get to “the ask” instead of creating brochures for the sake of sales only. The book notes,

“Brochures are still useful, but for professional firms they are purely a credibility tool not a door opener.”

You’ll learn the right mix of tools to use, such as incorporating a content calendar to maintain the effort. A chapter on search engine optimization (SEO) is short, but chapter 7 offers an outstanding explanation of the differences between a “brochure-style” website and a “valuable lead-generating website.” The terms may not be universal language among Web designers, but the diagrams will help business owners to know what site improvements to seek without having to understand HTML code. The book ends with a content checklist and questions for a case study.

The arrangement of material reminded me of Digital Impact, with quotes from additional sources. U.K. businesses are highlighted, such as Scottish firms Inkster and SwimTrek, and global names such as Intel are mentioned. But this book introduces American readers to excellent global campaigns to study, such as the highlight of Coke’s Global 2020 campaign that emphasizes “content excellence.” U.S. small businesses will also want to pay attention to the independent firms highlighted.

One detail that left me a bit wanting was the “value tips” sprinkled throughout the book. Some were just too general to provide meaningful guidance. But I found the further reading suggestions helpful, as well as the “take action” questions. Both appear at the end of the chapters.

When well executed, content marketing provides solid branding, augments search engine optimization when paired with a blog and enhances a business presence across numerous social media platforms. The book Valuable Content Marketing will work wonders to help your business achieve those benefits.

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No matter your role in business, your daily schedule can be filled with decisions faster than seats to a Justin Bieber concert.  But if you want to prevent yourself from becoming a zombie numbed by decision after decision, you should read Chip and Dan Heath’s new book, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices In Life and Work.

The Heath brothers (@heathbrothers) contacted me when their follow-up to their last book Switch, which I also reviewed, was close to release. Decisive is certainly an easy read to make hard decisions easy.

Decisive explores the topic of decision making without deeply rehashing Switch’s thesis about change. In Switch, the Heath brothers share the elephant-and-rider metaphor for managing rational thought.  They use it to explain one instance of an emotional short-circuit – “Chances are you know the people with Rider problems … your colleague who can brainstorm for hours but can’t ever seem to make a decision.”

Decisive expands that vision by explaining a set of biases that hinder decision making.  These biases are:

• Narrow framing your selection, eliminating other viable choices.
• Confirmation bias: Seeking support for your own beliefs in a decision rather than question.
• High level of emotional investment in the decision.
• Overconfidence in the answer derived.

The book is divided into four overall segments, meant to explore the solutions to each decision bias. The solutions are, respectively:

• Widen Your Options
• Reality-Test Your Assumptions
• Attain Distance Before Deciding
• Prepare to Be Wrong

Like Switch, the psychology behind Decisive is understandable. Reference ranges from business narratives, like Andy Grove’s decision to change Intel’s memory chip strategy, to more pop-oriented factoids, such as how an Ultimate Red Velvet Cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory has more calories than 3 McDonald’s cheeseburgers and a pack of Skittles candy.

Fast food fights aside, the Heaths assert that “process matters more than analysis” and that “guts can have questionable advice.”  This neutrality towards analysis and guesstimating makes the book an accessible guide for business owners who need to make heavy decisions in life, let alone business.  If you are in business for yourself and striving for life balance, this book will guide without being so touchy-feely that examples won’t impact business decisions.

The introduction alone has conclusive support for why and how we make decisions.  That support carries through the segments, such as multi-tracking, the consideration of many options to prevent narrow framing:

Many executives are worried that exploring multiple options will take too long. It’s a reasonable fear, but researcher Kathleen Eisenhardt…found that executives who weigh more options actually make faster decisions.

Eisenhardt offers three explanations. First comparing alternatives help executives to understand the landscape: What’s possible and what’s not….Second, considering multiple alternatives seems to undercut politics… Third, when leaders weigh multiple options, they’ve given themselves a built-in fallback plan.

For those analytic practitioners concerned about managing analysis, the Heaths wisely footnote a resource that explores the balance between analysis paralysis and being narrowly focused.  (The Heaths have definitely “widened their options” in choosing how to present new ideas.)

Another strategy, called bookending, encourages the reader to imagine two scenarios – dire and rosy. To “spotlight” the scenarios helps to prevent overconfidence in a decision. I felt the approach helps small business owners understand what managing risk really means. An investment analyst’s view of Coinbox, the parent company of Redbox, illustrated how “the future is not a point; it is a range.”  More on that range comment:

In the absence of bookending, our spotlights will lock into out best guess for how the future will unfold…even if we have a good guess about the future, the research on overconfidence suggests that we’ll be wrong more often than we think.

The authors simplify examples, such as noting how pervasive safety factors are. Yet they don’t talk down to anyone or stick with a dictionary-dry explanation.

Decisive narratives are meant to translate suggestions into actionable ideas.  One example of an actionable suggestion is psychologist Gary Klein’s premortem strategy:

A post-mortem analysis begins after a death and asks, “What caused it?” A premortem, by contrast, imagines the future “death” of a project and asks, “What killed it?”…. Everyone on the team takes a few minutes to write down every conceivable reason for the projects failure. Then the leader goes around the table, asking each person to share a single reason, until all the ideas have been shared. Once the threats have been surfaced, the project team can prepare to be wrong by adapting its plans to forestall as many of the negative scenarios as possible. The premortem is a way of charting out the lower bookend of future possibilities and plotting ways to avoid ending up there.

At the end, you’ll find notes and references to a complementary website with exercises.  But even if you choose to read Decisive without the extra material, you’ll find that you’ve made a great reading choice to make your business great.

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