The Benefits of Belonging to a CEO Group

BY Christopher Hann

Q: What is a CEO group, and should I join one?
A: If you're a business owner or chief executive who wants honest (sometimes brutally honest) feedback on how to do your job better, you could be a prime candidate to join a CEO group.

Also known as an executive peer group, a CEO group typically consists of eight to 16 senior executives who get together for frank discussions on how they can better manage their businesses and, often, their lives. But as Peter Parker learned on his way to becoming Spider-Man, with great power comes great responsibility. Brian Davis, who chairs three CEO groups for San Diego-based Vistage, the nation's largest facilitator of such groups, says members must be willing to divulge their company's biggest challenges and make their own candid contributions to the group.

"I think of a CEO peer group as a gym--it's not a spa or a hospital," says Davis, whose day job is CEO of Leadership Catalysts, an executive coaching firm in Minneapolis. "They all need to be working together."

Davis screens applicants to his groups to ensure that they'll be active participants--his roundtables are for doers, not just listeners. He asks applicants to reveal decisions they wish they could take back, to disclose what's working--and not working--in their businesses and to discuss where they'd like to be in three to five years.

"If they're not willing to talk about those things, we don't need them in the group," Davis says. "If you're not willing to roll up your sleeves, you're not going to be that helpful to other members of the group."

Under the Vistage format, Davis convenes his CEO groups for daylong meetings once a month; he also meets individually with each group member once a month. "World-class athletes have regular meetings with trainers," he explains. "Why shouldn't entrepreneurs?"

Six times a year he'll bring in a guest speaker. The meetings abide by rules of engagement meant to ensure a robust dialogue: No group members are direct competitors, and all discussions are kept strictly confidential.

Davis says CEO groups often serve as a salve when entrepreneurs find themselves singing the lonely-at-the-top blues. "As CEOs you're not always going to hear what you need to hear from your employees or your board," he says. "They come here because people will tell them what they need to hear, not just what they want to hear. They really like having an objective sounding board of CEOs whose only agenda is to help you and your business get better."

Ultimately, Davis says, the power of a CEO group stems from the willingness of its members to share their cumulative experience and expertise. "Collectively, there are no blind spots," he says. "Some are great at sales. Some are great at product development. Some are running global businesses. Some run a local family business. What you need to have is diversity in that peer group so that everybody has someone who has been where they are going."

Christopher Hann

Christopher Hann is a freelance writer in Lebanon Township, N.J., and an adjunct professor of journalism at Rutgers University.

Why An Equity Crowdfunding Site Could Become The Largest Marketplace In The World

Ryan Caldbeck,

What do Airbnb, Etsy, OpenTable, Uber, and Kickstarter have in common? Well, to begin with, each of them are relatively young. Each of them also followed  the heavyweights Amazon and Ebay, and each of them share something else in common:

Their success stems from the simple fact that each one removed friction in a market by aggregating supply and demand in a user-friendly way. And there is something else: Each of these platforms have reaped the massive benefits of network effects—that is, as more people use the platforms, more people want to be on the platforms. All of this leads to improved quality of goods/services, which in turn leads to dominance. Competitors are left behind, whether online (Kickstarter, for example, was not the first crowdfunding site.), or offline.

While these now well-known marketplaces have already gained significant scale, I believe that the equity crowdfunding marketplace that ultimately comes out on top could be even larger than many of the great marketplaces of today. To understand why, it’s useful to look at an example.  Lets take some stats we have from CircleUp, an equity crowdfunding site, and OpenTable, the world’s leading online reservations marketplace.  According to OpenTable’s 2012 SEC filings, the Company seated approximately 120 million diners in 2012, driven through its own platform, through affiliates (i.e., Yelp) or directly through the restaurant (i.e., on the restaurant’s site using OpenTable). If you divide OpenTable’s $91 million in reservation revenue by its 120 million consumers, that comes out to $0.76 per consumer. Not bad for many internet businesses.

Now let’s look at equity crowdfunding. I’ll use CircleUp as an example, and I welcome others in the comments section below.  On our platform, investors can invest anywhere from thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars per investment (the minimum investment is determined by the entrepreneur on a deal by deal basis). Additionally, across the 21 companies that we have helped raise more then $21 million for, we have seen a large portion of capital come from “repeat investors”—that is, those who have made multiple investments on the platform.  Our average investment depends on the deal but is typically five figures—for this post lets assume $10,000.  If the average investor only invests $10,000 per year on CircleUp (note this is not the actual average, just a hypothetical), it would be worth somewhere between $500 and $1,000 in revenue to CircleUp (our fee structure is based on the size of the raise). Given the repeat investment rate, investors are often worth several thousands dollars per year to CircleUp.

There are currently 8.6 million households that qualify as accredited investors, but only a few hundred thousand that today consider themselves angel investors.  And the amount invested into private companies ($50 Billion in the form of equity) hasn’t changed in a decade. Why isn’t it growing? How could it, given that there has been no innovation (until the JOBS Act and equity crowdfunding) for 80 years? Before platforms like CircleUp existed, investors would have to spend time sourcing quality deal flow, which can (and often is) a full time job in itself. If you believe these marketplaces have the chance to supplement other parts of private investing (more broadly- Reg D investments), then it is important to note that the entire Reg D market is $1.3 trillion. While our sample size is still small and equity crowdfunding is in the first inning of what we hope is a long game, when I look at the average size per transaction on CircleUp + the “repeat purchase” rate + the total amount of investable capital, the total market potential for equity crowdfunding is many times that of any online marketplace out there today.

Now here is why I’m wrong. By a lot of measures, equity crowdfunding may have the dynamics of great marketplaces.  It is attacking a huge market that has massive inefficiencies.  In the case of consumer and retail, CircleUp’s focus, there are 700,000 consumer and retail companies with $1M-10M in revenue- almost all of which will need to raise equity to grow at some point.  By most accounts, the average company takes 12 months to raise money offline, as compared to 2-3 months on CircleUp.  There are also huge reasons an online marketplace will make private investing, and fundraising, a much better experience than the status quo: less travel, more efficient deal screening and investor screening, increased transparency and data, etc. Naturally, these advantages should  expand the size of the current market even more.

All of this is great. Unfortunately,  equity crowdfunding won’t capture that trillion dollar market that’s out there. Why? First, because equity crowdfunding is not a better experience for all forms of Reg D offerings.  That $1.3T market mentioned above? $1.1T are pooled investment vehicles. Sure, many of them will be replaced by online investing platforms, but many actually do add value and won’t be cut out.  Equity crowdfunding will blossom when the market is broken, but that’s not the case for all private investing.  For tech investing, as an example, it’s simply not broken.  Any decent tech entrepreneur can raise money on Sand Hill Road.  In consumer and retail, CircleUp’s focus, the status quo is broken- which is why we are growing so rapidly (The number of investors on CircleUp making investments—compared to the total number during the previous 15 months of our existence—grew by 75% in just the last 90 days).

The second reason I’m wrong, and why equity crowdfunding won’t be the largest, is because of frequency of investment.  The purchase cycle in private investing for most investors is infrequent. Successful angels typically make 7-10 investments, but that can occur over several years.  So while each individual investment is worth hundreds, or thousands, of dollars to an equity crowdfunding site in revenue, that investor may only invest a few times a year. That’s fine from a revenue standpoint, but it makes it more difficult to build word-of-mouth customer growth.

I’m not sure if I’m right or wrong.  There are quality arguments on both sides. I do firmly believe, however, that equity crowdfunding will massively disrupt the existing broken markets.  And that should be a great thing for the investors and entrepreneurs who use the platforms in those markets.

Why Email Marketing Is Vital To A Brand's Health

Steve Olenski, 

Just a few weeks ago I wrote an article entitled As If They Need It, Another Reason Brands Need To Be Mobile which essentially spelled out the fact that the most powerful brand ambassadors in the world, moms – are a very mobile demographic and if marketing & advertising folks want to succeed, they better be mobile as well. Literally.

In fact one of the things I used to make my point was this chart, courtesy of eMarketer which spells out what the activities moms most like to do via their smartphone. Pay attention to the first two. Then hold that thought.

  

Not long ago I received the results of a survey entitled Shopping with Social Media which was conducted by Ryan Partnership, a behavioral marketing agency. In the online survey of primary household shoppers, which yielded over 10,000 results, consumers were asked which digital tools they were aware of and which they used in the past year.

It is the third year they’ve conducted this study and according to Kim Finnerty, SVP Research & Insights at Ryan Partnership, this year they saw continued increasing penetration for newer, more mobile tools like Load to Card coupons, product reviews, and mobile payments.

No real surprise there as far as I am concerned given the mobile world we live in, of course.

In speaking with Kim, I asked her if should could break down the results to show just one particular demographic. A demographic which accounts for anywhere from 80-90% of all household decisions. A very powerful and influential demographic. Of course I am referring to moms.

The reason I asked for this breakdown is I wanted to see how moms fared compared to the national averages and lo and behold, it seems good old email, the medium many predicted years ago would go the way of fax machines, is not only popular among moms, it outranks other mediums in the eyes of this most sought after demographic.

Go back and look at the eMarketer chart above, then look at this:

Do you see it?
The question posed was “When have you used X to help you shop or plan to shop?”

Retail emails

• U.S. average – 13%
• Moms – 16%

Brand emails

• U.S. average – 17%
• Moms – 19%

Retailer texts

• U.S. average – 29%
• Moms – 31%

So, moms are mobile, we know that. They check email and texts on their smartphones but they are also checking email via other sources as the chart above is channel agnostic.

In other words email marketing is extremely vital in engaging with moms and potentially impacting their buying decision. The words “help you shop”  and ”plan to shop” are the key phrases here kids. Anytime you use and hear the words “help” and “plan” that tells you that whatever topic you’re discussing carries with it an inherent value either in the positive or negative.

Go back again and look at the chart above from Ryan Partnership see how email scores compared to social media and shopping apps. In each instance, moms come in under the national average.

Yet for email, the opposite is true.

Finnerty, in speaking about the results of the survey from an overall perspective says that the biggest surprise that came out of the findings was how high email ranked. “Email is still a very strong tool for changing shopper behavior and satisfying shopper needs,” she said. “While it seems like an old-school tool compared to things like shopping apps and mobile payments, marketers have had years to perfect it so it achieves objectives.”

She very well could have been speaking about the mom demographic only.

Improve Employee Engagement By Boosting Management Support

Adrian Swinscoe,

Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing Peter A. Hunter, an author and authority on employee engagement 

During the interview, Peter shared a story of how he built an engaged team. The story revolved around his time in the Navy when he was put in charge of a team of very experienced people. On meeting them, he realised that there was no way he could take a ‘traditional’ approach to managing them, ie. telling them what to do, as they knew much more about the job in hand than he ever could. Rather, he worked out that the best way for him to ‘manage’ the team, and get the best out of them, was to find out what they needed to complete their work and then get it for them.

The result was a team that produced incredible results, cared about themselves, their work, their colleagues (inside and outside of their team), and the wider organisation.

I really like Peter’s approach as it focuses on management as facilitation rather than management as control.

In the interview, he then went onto suggest steps that any manager could take to help improve engagement in their team. These include getting your team together, on a regular basis, and asking them a series of questions:

• What have you just done?
• What went well?
• What went badly?
• What can we do to ensure that things continue to go well? and
• What can we do to avoid things going badly next time?

Now, this part of the interview reminded me of another conversation, one I had with a global HR Director of an international financial services firm. We were chatting following a talk I had just given at their firm about the link between customer and employee engagement when she:

“I believe that if we could make all of our managers better managers then we’d have a more engaged workforce”.

I think she is right and this builds on the idea that one of the main influencers of engagement in the workplace is the relationship an individual, or a team, have with their immediate boss.

This could be helped more and better management training. But, before going out and commissioning lots of extra training, how about another approach? Could we not better support managers by helping them focus a little more on engagement as part of their regular management duties? Could that not be done by the managers of managers asking the following questions of them on a regular basis:

1. Is your team engaged?
2. If yes, why do you think that?
3. If no, what can you do to help them do their make their jobs easier?

When it comes to employee engagement, rather than more training or more surveys or other responses, could we not generate better results by spending more time helping our managers help their own people succeed? As Peter says:

“The culture we want to create already exists. We just need to let it happen.”

And

“People, generally, want to show up for work and do a good job. They want to be proud of what they do. They want to use their education, creativity and imagination to do work that they are proud of.”

10 Productivity Tips from a Blue-Collar Genius

by  Demian Farnworth 

Imagine a fifty-something man in a blue long-sleeve shirt, the cuffs unbuttoned, his knuckles thick and coarse. He’s on the side of the road, quibbling over a stack of used cinder blocks with a merchant.

This is my grandfather. And it’s 1980, roughly.

His brother, my great-uncle, shuffles the dirt with his boots beside the white 1953 Dodge van, the one with a hot 5.2 liter block engine in between the driver and passenger seat — an engine they fetched from the junkyard a few years ago and nursed back to life. A 24-pack of Stag warms on the engine case.

My grandfather was a magnificent man.

Father of twelve, husband to one. A carpenter, electrician, gardener, plumber, water skier, snow skier, welder … the builder of both of his houses, houses he built with recycled material, not paying a penny over value.

And there is something about looking at photographs of him, something otherworldly, marginally divine. Not quite the aura that comes with a photograph of Ernest Hemingway, Kurt Cobain, or Carl Sagan …

But a reverence and awe in its own right.
He was a blue-collar genius.

To say he had an influence on my life would be an understatement. In fact, a good part of how I work — how I get things done — I owe to him. Let me explain. 

1. Teach yourself everything
My grandparents were staunch Roman Catholics. That meant a lot of things, but most visibly it meant they had a large family. Twelve kids to be exact. And it’s something that motivated my grandfather to no end.

Each time my grandmother told him that she was pregnant, he would go out and learn a new trade: how to operate a boiler, roof a house, frame a room, run plumbing, rebuild cars.

You name it, and that former city boy learned it.

For me this has meant to have the guts to discover how to write, negotiate, code, install WordPress, understand SEO, get usability, and so on.

Fortunately, the resources are out there to help you learn: the books, the blogs, the videos. Even hundreds of free online academies that can make you smarter in an afternoon. 

2. Boil down your to-do list to two or three items
I can promise you that my grandfather never had a to-do list, the show piece of every productivity wonk worth his salt.

But boy, did he get stuff done.

His life was simple: work, build his house, eat, sleep, work, build his house. Throw in a baby here, a weekend down at the cabin on the lake with the boys there … and his life has a pretty simple and singular rhythm about it.

That lack of complexity meant he knew what he needed to do each and every day. There were few decisions to make about what to work on. Just get up and do it.

The same is true for a writer: write the blog post, work on the book, do the research. Keep it simple and focus on the most important things each day, day in and day out, 365 days a year. 

3. Recycle everything
I spent several summers on my grandfather’s farm, painting everything that didn’t move: the goats’ fence, the railroad tie wall, the shutters … with a mix of paint left over from twenty different cans (think padded-room blue).

One summer my cousin and I dug a ditch forty feet long and four feet deep, then laid pipe for a septic line. Granddad picked up the pipe from a residential construction company who couldn’t use it because of a flaw.

Once a week I mowed three acres of grass with a push mower rescued from the side of the road.

No surprise, I lost my appetite for manual labor. What I didn’t lose was that appreciation for hard work … and the ability to be resourceful and recycle material. It was in my blood.

For a content marketer this can mean flipping a podcast into a blog series … or yanking that draft and pulling it into a white paper … or turning your best articles into a content library.
Waste nothing, and maximize everything. 

4. Get up early and stay up late
As you can imagine, money was tight for my grandfather. Food was usually bland, clothing was cheap and handed down, and the house was crowded (my youngest uncle often slept in the bathtub or closet).

But they never starved, never went in debt, always had shelter, and always paid their bills on time.

How? My grandfather was a hard worker, honest, but also an early-to-rise and late-to-bed kind of guy. Unless he was sick, he didn’t linger in his bed or the couch. He maximized his awake time and got stuff done.

The lesson for a content creator is this: work when you are at your peak. 

5. Watch television on a small screen
As he got older my grandfather naturally started to slow down. To relax he would often watch television.

However, he didn’t splurge watching an Andy Griffith marathon with a 52-inch flat screen with surround sound. He kept to his tiny black-and-white for years when he could easily afford a bigger one. He simply didn’t want the distraction.

In my own life I have tried to maintain this habit. Outside of professional football and Phineas and Ferb, I watch little to no television. I also limit the videos I watch online and the articles I read.

Of course that means I’m a cultural idiot. But that’s how you master the craft.

It goes back to knowing what has to be done — and getting that done before you reward yourself with the distractions of life. 

6. Have fun
You would think that with how much he worked and the size of his family he would never have time to play. But that is wrong. My grandfather loved to play.

He taught every single one of his children how to snow and water ski. When he ran out of children to train, he taught my cousin and me how to snow and water ski. Not to mention he took tae kwon do with his youngest daughter, and he loved to fish.

He loved to work hard and play hard.

I must confess, this one is difficult for me because I have a hard time relaxing. And when I do relax, it’s usually behind a book. But when I can get out there and play ball with my boy, jump on the trampoline with the girl, or take a long hike with the little lady … it works wonders on me. It’s rejuvenating. 

7. Be generous
My grandfather is probably rolling over in his grave as I say this, but I’m a selfish turd — stingy as all get out with my time. Ask me to help you clean up your yard after a thunderstorm has scattered debris everywhere and I’ll go limp.

“Sorry, I’ve got this rare disease where I go blind and can’t use my hands when I’m around a wheelbarrow. Or a chainsaw.”

My grandfather, on the other hand, wouldn’t hesitate to drop what he was doing to fix the AC unit for the widow across town.

I clearly have work to do in this area. But the lesson I learned from him is that when I do go out of my way to help someone, there is an indescribable emotional reward that follows. Whether it’s giving my time to a budding writer or aerating the lawn for a single mother, I learn that life is not about me … it’s about people.

Speaking of people … 

8. Build and belong to a community
My grandfather bought seven acres on the backside of the city in an area teeming with trees and narrow two-lane roads. His plan was to give away an acre to each child who wanted to build a house. At its pinnacle he had six houses on those seven acres. All his children’s.

My grandfather loved family, his community, his tribe. And being part of that tribe is a magnificent privilege.

This is true online, too: when you find a culture and cause you can put your weight behind you feel less alone, you have purpose, and you become more optimistic about the future. This is definitely the vibe we’ve cultivated in our Authority forums. 

9. Work on a small bit of a large project everyday
Here’s a question for you: when does a man find time to build a house when he has children everywhere and works 14 hours a day?

I really don’t know.

If it was me, I’m sure I would’ve just paid someone else. But not my grandfather.

It didn’t matter if it was only for 30 minutes, he worked on building his house. Installing a window here, pouring concrete there. Over time a house rose out of the earth. And he did that twice in his own lifetime.

For you, this could mean writing one blog post a week. Over time, an authoritative website will rise out of the Internet.

This holds true for any large project, like writing a book or building a business. Be patient, delay gratification, work on a small chunk every day … and in time you’ll have something majestic. 

10. Learn to sleep anywhere
Perhaps this is less virtue and more survival strategy, but when you work 18 hours a day or more, you look for ways to get your rest. Here’s how granddad did it.

During breaks he would climb to the top of boilers and make a nest out of coats, then take a cat nap. Refreshed, he would return to his shift renewed and sharp.

After a long, humid morning of driving beams into the lake bottom to build a thirty-foot dock, granddad would get some shuteye on a lawn chair, his chin resting into his bare chest. Upon waking he was vigorous and feisty.

I’ve clearly inherited this trait. Around 2:00 p.m., I’m worn out. Circling the same task over and over again. Continuing to work is unproductive. I could boil up another pot of coffee, but I’ve found I’m sharper if I crash for five or ten minutes. After that short nap, I feel human again. And ready to go.

Sleep is essential. Get at least seven hours a day. And if you can, grab that nap. It’ll make you smarter. 

Conclusion
My grandfather will never make it into a management book. He won’t appear on a list beside Benjamin Franklin as an efficiency hero. But that doesn’t mean he was any less successful.

He is a patriarch of a large family that I am blessed to be a part of. Every male and female from that family is a hard-working, productive human being. It’s a legacy that goes beyond my grandfather’s seventy years …

And it’s the sort of enduring legacy I wish to create. Not so much with wood, metal, and people. But with words, ideas, and stories. For the benefit of people. And I think that’s something that would make him proud.

What about you? Do you have a blue collar hero in your past?