The Art of Communicating

One of our day-to-day business challenges is communicating effectively and efficiently. There is a real art to distilling complex ideas, organizations, methodologies or concepts into some format that is easy to understand while making it look easy, especially when it is not. If you want to differentiate yourself, learning to communicate those complexities so that anyone in your audience can understand it will win you fans and a lot of business because we all know it is more difficult to teach something than to merely “understand” it, and by conveying complex messages easily you will become a teacher and an adviser. It’s also a great way to build confidence and trust.

When communicating keep a few things in mind:
1) Don’t try to overwhelm them with buzz words and fancy phrases, no one likes feeling like they are being talked down to, especially when they already know what they don’t know and that is why they have called you.
2) [paraphrase] It is wasteful to say with many words what can be said with few. -Unknown
3) Making other people feel smart and get it makes you look good and makes them feel good about you.

While we are pretty much all sick of the ubiquitous Powerpoint presentation, diagrams are one of the easiest and best ways to take those complex ideas and make them easy to communicate, though you have to put some serious thought into those slides to make them effective. Your challenge is to get as much info into one slide of a presentation as possible (and as necessary for the point you are trying to make) with as few words and as little explanation as you can get away with.

A few things to keep in mind or ask your self as you are creating a presentation slide/graphic:
1) If I don’t “know” the subject matter in detail could I still get the concept without explanation?
2) Are there ways to convey multiple related pieces of information on a single graph or chart?
3) How can I show how seemingly exclusive things relate to each other?
4) Basic shapes can convey a lot of information and imply the degree of connectedness in relationships.
5) Color and gradients can also be a powerful way to show importance, position or imply other aspects of a relationship.
6) *Look at examples of what other people have done and think of ways to utilize those ideas and improve upon them.

My personal goal is to keep most of my presentations to 10 slides or less. I have had some of my most successful presentations take only 4 slides (not including the title slide and thank you slide at the end).

Finally, it is important to have the right tool for the right job. You have likely already read about my affinity for MindJet MindManager but there are others as well. Below is a list of tools I found through some convoluted trail of links I was following yesterday. There are some good tools and examples listed here so it’s a good link to book mark for future reference (FYI some of them are free).

Tools (Gliffy is one in particular that looked interesting to me).

*Not a recommendation to steal or infringe upon anyone elses intellectual property so be careful, just learn to learn from what is there and try to improve upon it.

Busy or Productive

We all have those days where we busy to the point of exhaustion (today was one for me hence this blog entry). But how often do you stop and ask yourself if you are being productive or just busy? In 4 Hour Work Week Tim Ferris intelligently suggest that asking this single question several times a day can work wonders in keeping you on track if, when you find you are simply busy but not productive, you stop what you are doing and get back to doing whatever it is that will move you toward your goals. It’s entirely too easy to get distracted doing things that seem important; but if they aren’t positively impacting our success they are likely more of a distraction than necessity (as always there are exceptions). It’s important to ask the “Busy vs. Productive” question of everything you do. I’m less concerned about the 10 minute game of solitaire at lunch than the one hour conference call you have to endure, accomplishing nothing. If you can, find a creative way to get out of it and get back to doing something productive. In a business context ask yourself whether your current activity is helping you make money or get closer to doing so, if not, it’s probably time to shift gears. Of course making money isn’t the only goal, or even the ultimate goal of many businesses though it is an essential one. But we’ll talk more about that tomorrow.

Write It Down

It never fails to amaze me how many entrepreneurs fail to put things in writing and I’m not just talking about contracts. The act of writing down your ideas, documenting processes, writing a business plan, template sales letters and everything else forces us to view things differently than if we just “think” about them. The process engages different cognitive skills and parts of the brain which will in turn bring about new perspectives, ideas and realizations about what we are doing which we may not come to as easily, if at all, when we don’t write things down.

A few benefits of writing things down include:

1) Business continuity: Even if you are the business, it makes it easier to recall things, especially after an extended happy hour the night before.
2) Gaps in the business or process will be much more evident allowing you to fill them in. The single biggest “mystery” why your business is struggling may be right in front of you and documenting things may help you see it.
3) It gives you a chance to view your business from the top down from big picture to tactical details so it can become repeatable. How else will you improve your business and make it truly turn-key?
4) It shows investors and potential partners that you are serious about what you do.
5) You will develop new ideas in the process.

A few thing to make it easier:

1) Most of us hate watching someone thumb-tap away on their Blackberry at happy hour, but as an entrepreneur we have to be light on our feet and you never know when ideas will come to you so be prepared to tap them out in an email to yourself so you’ll remember later.
2) Use diagrams. The ubiquitous PowerPoint can be annoying and overused but there is an art to taking your complex ideas and processes and distilling them down so they can be easily understood by anyone (including you). It takes time but is worth it and by doing so you will often be developing your own intellectual property (IP) which can add a tremendous amount of value to your business.
3) Do it but don’t over-do it.
4) Leverage from others and learn from what they have done. Sometimes what you need is a variation on what someone else has done so look before you leap. You might just improve an existing process and give yourself a competitive edge with less effort to you.

There are a many other benefits and techniques but the point is to get the ball rolling. The biggest reasons we don’t do better with documentation is because we are lazy, it isn’t glamorous and it takes time. But if you are truly serious about your business you’ll find the balance between documenting as needed without letting it consume you and becoming a distraction from running your business. Writing things up is an essential part of moving from working “in” your business to “on” your business.

Tools of the trade: I have taken to documenting everything I reasonably can in MindJet Mindmanager. It makes the brainstorming, organization and distribution of notes, documents and almost everything else not only easy but (believe it or not) kinda fun. Not inexpensive but it will save you loads of time and really help you capture a lot of information in an easy, intuitive manner.

Using Market Forces to Your Advantage

In conjunction with a long time friend, business partner and physician, Dr. Brad Bichey, M.D., we recently released a whitepaper entitled “Using Market Forces to Drive a Competitive Edge.” While the paper is targeted at medical and life sciences companies, the principals can be applied to almost any business. When markets turn down belt tightening begins; it is in that down turn that we have the best opportunity to explore creative ways to market our companies. For small business, creative marketing techniques are often a necessity. We just don’t have the dollars the big guys do but in many ways, not having a lot of money to work with can be a blessing because it forces us to think of new and more efficient ways of accomplishing what we have set out to do. In the paper Brad and I briefly introduce the concept of using market forces that already exist to your advantage by restructuring relationships and leveraging the higher volume and higher ROI channels that are often overlooked. If you are interested in more read the paper and let me hear your thoughts on how you might apply the concept to your own business. If you would like to hear more about our ideas on applying this to your business feel free to reach out.

Start Up Business Tips: The Law

I recently had an opportunity to attend a breakfast meeting sponsored by NTEC (North Texas Enterprise Center for Medical Technology). The breakfast was an opportunity for start-ups and entrepreneurs to learn about the legal considerations when forming a new company, including the preferred types of corporations, handling intellectual property and being prepared for your exit strategy. I’d like to share with you just a few thoughts which came out of the presentation that you might find interesting. All of the main presenters were attorneys and even though NTEC’s focus is on Medical start-ups, the information was general and could apply to any start-up business. (Disclaimer: these are just some notes of mine from the breakfast, NOT legal advice. Depending on what you are doing your needs may be very different).

1) Before quitting your job review all relevant agreements with your current employer. Contrary to popular belief non-compete agreements ARE enforceable.

2) The type of corporation (LLC, LP, S-Corp, C-Corp, …) of course depends on your tax profile, risk profile and whether or not you will be seeking investment capital or an IPO. VC’s will prefer C-Corp’s but you will have to deal with the double taxation. Angel investors will prefer pass-through entities (S-Corp, LLP,…). Note, it is not difficult in most case to convert another type of corporation to a C-Corp when necessary. I personally use S-Corp and LP right now. I’ll deal with C-Corp when the time comes.

3) Unless you are doing business almost exclusively in or have a major client in a specific state, it is preferred to incorporate as a Delaware corporation. This particular consideration is particularly applicable to those who will seek funding, and IPO or to eventually be acquired through a ,mergers and acquisitions (M&A) transaction.

4) Stay away from boilerplate Internet incorporation and forms. Get it done right or you’ll end up redoing it.

5) Don’t use stock as currency to pay everyone you do biz with. Keep your shareholders as few as possible. It causes too many problems down the road.

6) If you have partners be very clear (document) who owns what and what happens if someone leaves (create capitalization table).

7) On the formation and exit of your company, ALWAYS use qualified advisers. Namely attorney’s, accountants and if appropriate an investment banker. They really will make your life easier and keep you from making mistakes that could be catastrophic down the line. They can also smooth out a lot of processes for you such as complex things like setting up your company for an IPO or protecting your IP. Don’t think you can do it all.

If you sell your company expect a portion of the purchase price to go to escrow (10% is standard). This is standard practice to cover additional expenses/legal matters that can come after the transaction. This protects you and the buyer.

Those are just a few things to ponder but should get you thinking. My advice (and I drink this Kool Aid too) is to hire professional, seasoned attorneys. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can’t afford it. The truth is in this complex business environment and litigious world, you can’t afford not to.

If you are in Texas and need referrals on Corporate, Transaction or Patent attorneys feel free to contact me. I’m happy to make personal recommendations.

The Danger and Benefit of Living a Multifacted Life

There is a recent book out that I am looking forward to reading called One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success by Marci Alboher about how many of us juggle multiple careers (sometimes simultaneously) and slash our way through multifaceted lives. I can’t officially recommend the book yet since I haven’t actually read it but I will in short order because this describes me, and I would imagine many of you, pretty well.

The reason I felt it important to bring this up, even before I read the book is because so many of us juggle so many things all the time and often feel a bit abnormal for the extent to which we do so. It has long been my belief that we can me a master of many things and that rounded effect benefits us in many ways. However, there is a word of caution in being multifaceted …focus. Focus is a hallmark of all seriously successful people, though they all seem to do many things dot they? The Donald makes a good target for that discussion. He is a Real Estate mogul first and foremost but also a TV personality, author, speaker, … but they all focus back on making his core business even more successful. It is easy, as I alluded to in an earlier post, to be easily distracted by the things we do but I’ll reiterate my earlier point because I think it’s an important concept for “slashes” to keep in mind. You can maintain a multifaceted life while eliminating the distractions which keep you from accomplishing your goals by focusing the peripheral things you do on your main objective. Only you can decide what that main objective is but if you are starting a business then I would suggest it is that. If for some sick reason (like me) you are starting more than one at the same time be VERY careful, it is easy to get distracted and always be busy but never accomplish anything. The best bet is to find a way for those businesses and activities to work together to accomplish a common unified goal. If you are dedicated to very disparate, unrelated activities, keeping focus on your primary objective will be difficult unless you make them work together.

I can’t give away too much about what I am working on just yet but I will tell you that one of my “activities” is actively learning the ins-and-outs of how advertising and marketing really work on-line (side note: a lot of it is common sense, a lot of it is counter intuitive but more on that topic down the road). What’s interesting is that there is a world of people building businesses doing nothing but on-line advertising and marketing (think niche), and while I could pursue it as they do, I can also use that knowledge and expertise to the benefit my other efforts.

That is just one of many possible examples but the point is the same. Find the relationship between the different things you do and the benefit of getting them to work together on will be exponential on all fronts. Are you an amateur/recreational photographer who wants to start a business selling candles? Then apply photography to your business idea. You might come up with some creative and cool photographs for your product which might otherwise not seem that interesting in pictures. Your camera just became a business write off and your creative fun time working (but it won’t feel like working, a HUGE bonus). Now you have a marketing edge and get to be the artist all at the same time. So remember in your pictures that emotion sells (better than anything) and cool pictures which elicit emotional responses will help!

This might sell candles, but this is better.
Add some candles to this and it might be perfect. *Interesting that as I was searching for pictures depicting people and romance and candles I didn’t find squat when “candles” were the primary part of the search. Talk about a niche opportunity. Cool pictures of candles might be too small (though you never know unless you do the analysis) but this is how ideas happen! Of course this isn’t a blog entry on sales and marketing so we’ll end it here.

Last note and little disclaimer, keep a something in your life unrelated and hugely distracting from business because we all need a break from time to time.

The Objectivity Challenge

Many of our best business ideas will come from things we are passionate about or intimately familiar with. As we work our way through the process of narrowing down which ideas to turn into businesses we have to remain objective and turn the old cliche’ “it’s just business” against our selves in the process to realize that not every idea will be a good one, and by that I mean profitable.

The flip side is to realize that some seemingly bad ideas just need a little tweak to become good ones but if we can’t be objective about it how can we expect to know the good from the bad? I’m a big fan of numbers, they are objective whether we are or not and they will tell you a lot so do your due diligence and analyze the business not like a business owner, but like an outsider who is being asked to invest in the business. Depending on the financial and market analysis you do consider this: If based on that analysis you wouldn’t invest in that business if started by someone else, then you shouldn’t be starting it either.

Financial and market analysis don’t have to take along time and don’t have to be onerous. But they are essential to understanding whether or not you have something that will work. There are a lot of great way’s to test what will work too. I won’t rehash them here but Tim outlined them well in Chapter 10 (Testing the Muse) of 4 Hour Work Week so (again), I’ll recommend that book if you haven’t read it.

Give an idea it’s chance and don’t get caught only shooting holes in every idea you have. I can’t tell you how many ideas I convinced myself probably wouldn’t work but to he honest it was all conjecture. I didn’t’ really know because I didn’t do proper objective testing and analysis to find out. However, if you find your ideas really isn’t going to work, ditch it immediately and move on to the next idea. Learning to cut ties when something isn’t working is a valuable skill that will save you time, money and a lot of headache.