Category: Uncategorized

Sometimes you have to do things that you don’t want to do. That includes managing staff.

As you know, I’m now a director and shareholder in a construction company.

Recently it became obvious that not everybody understood what I expected of them.

The guys who’ve been working and managing people in this industry for years have a certain way of dealing with people, and it’s a way that will never work for me. It’s just not who I am.

When you’re in this situation, it means that you’ve got to find your own way to make sure people understand what you expect.

It’s not a fun job, but it has to be done.

Personally, I expect people to turn up and do the work they’re paid to do, without anybody having to chase, hassle and cajole them into doing it.

If they don’t, then you’ve got to make sure that they understand they won’t be paid.

Staff are the number one most expensive element of running a business. If they’re not producing a reasonable amount of work in a day, it’s going to start costing you, a lot.

When I first started I used to outsource all sorts of work. After all, you read everywhere about outsourcing and spending your days sipping drinks from a sun lounger.

What nobody writes about, is that the more people you employ, the more you have to manage them.

Never forget that the people working for you don’t own the business. They won’t have the same motivation as you, and they’ll not be as efficient as you.

That means… that if you can do something in four hours, it may take someone working for you six hours.

And that = it costs more to your business than you were planning!

So, whether you like it or not, you need to make sure that the folk you employ work to your expectations or you need to let them go.

Ciao,

Michael

Man, sometimes you’ve just got to hate communication.

Once upon a time, not that long ago, if you wanted to communicate with someone you had two options:

1) Send them a letter
2) Phone them on a landline and, if they weren’t available, leave a message

Then you just had to wait.

Nowadays we’ve got phone, mobile phone, email, messenger services, chatrooms, internet calls and conferencing and social media.

To make it worse… all of that stuff is available on your mobile device, wherever you go, twenty four hours a day and seven days a week.

People now expect you to answer their communications instantly.

Well, in my personal opinion, they can just bloody well wait.

There’s very very little that needs to be answered instantly, in my limited experience.

The working day in the construction industry starts early, usually around 7am.

For some reason, people think it’s acceptable to phone you on your mobile at 7:30am.

Wrong.

Unless they leave a message saying it’s urgent due to a problem with a delivery that’s happening that day, they can phone back on the office phone after 9am.

And I can assure you, 99% of the time when they phone back it’s nothing urgent, and nothing that can’t be done an hour later.

So, if you find your phone is ringing non-stop, then here’s what you need to do…

Ignore it.

But here’s what’s gonna make this difficult… you!

There’s no problem to ignore the calls and leave a voicemail saying you will get back to them as soon as possible.

The folk phoning you will come to accept this very quickly, usually it takes about two weeks, but you have to believe that your business is going to be fine if you don’t answer the calls.

I can assure you it will be.

But psychologically you’re the only person who needs to believe that. And the modern world has effectively convinced you that you need to respond to communications instantly.

The truth is you don’t.

Are you able to change the way you work and go at a slower pace?

I can assure you it’s worth doing 😉

Ciao,

Michael

P.S. If you still haven’t got access to Zuzaman, the free autoresponder service, here’s where you can get it.

That’s the slogan, in the UK, for Frosties. It’s what Tony The Tiger says in every single advert.

And it’s an example of branding perfection.

After all, he’s been saying that phrase now for decades. Since 1952 to be precise.

What you may not know, is that Tony The Tiger came about due to a competition to design a character for Kellogg’s latest cereal. There were two others, but they never graced the front of a cereal box.

The final design for Tony came from a group of former Disney animators who also designed The Jolly Green Giant and Snap Crackle And Pop.

In fact, Tony was so popular in Italy that he appeared on the cover of Italian GQ magazine!

What happened next… was Esso started to use a tiger in their advertising.

Rather than try and file a law suit against them, Kellogg’s maintained a peaceful relationship and between them they spent over 1.5 billion dollars in advertising, and then…

Esso tried to open a line of convenience stores called “Tiger Marts”. Sadly that was one step too far and Kellogg’s then filed suit.

Why am I telling you this?

Apart from the fact that I find it kinda interesting, it’s also a perfect example how something completely unexpected, like a tiger, can make a brand.

Trying to decide what your logo, or mascot, should be can be a huge amount of work and stress.

What I’m saying is… don’t be afraid to think outside the box.

And don’t forget, you can always change it later on if you feel what you have is not quite right. It’s not as big an issue as it seems.

Ciao,

Michael

Not physically or mentally (though some may question that). But by something that happened yesterday.

There’s very few email newsletters that I still receive.

Some folk who work online subscribe to every email newsletter out there so they can see what the competition is doing.

Me… I like to keep my head clear, talk to the competition and, if possible, work with them.

So I don’t subscribe to many newsletters.

In fact, I can count the number of newsletters I subscribe to on one hand.

One of those newsletters is this one.

Yesterday Angela and Kathy were talking about how “you’re only as good as your word”.

And their email was about… yours truly.

I was honoured.

Here’s how they summed me up:

“I truly enjoyed meeting him in London and found him to be 100% genuine. I can’t say enough good about him.

His emails are always a good read and gives some great advice.”

If you want to read the rest of the email, you’ll have to ask them for a copy of it.

After all, it’s not my place to reproduce their content 😉

But here’s the thang…

I personally, 100% agree with them that you’re only as good as your word.

If you’re going to work with people, if you want to build lasting relationships, then you need to do two things (IMO).

1) Be honest.
2) Share.

Sharing what you’re doing, what’s working and your ideas will mean others share theirs with you.

It’s only by this exchange of ideas that you hit something which is really unique and special.

Over ‘n Out,

Michael

P.S. I’m writing this email in my garden, listening to the sounds of the birds. Spring has finally arrived in the UK!

P.P.S. I haven’t forgotten about the free autoresponder, we’re just working on the terms and conditions and it will be ready for those of you who said they’d beta test it to jump on board. I’ll be in touch soon.

P.P.P.S. If you’re looking for stock images, then you can get 5000+ here.

There are lots and lots of rumours that Facebook listens to you.

Louise, sitting on the desk next to me, came in this morning saying that Facebook was listening to her because whenever she spoke about something Facebook started to show ads for it.

So I decided to do a little bit of investigating and discovered… there are loads of people experiencing the same thing.

I have been talking about getting a cat. I didn't post about it anywhere but I DID start seeing ads for cat food.

— kelley bodwell (@kelleyblythe_) October 26, 2017

I was talking to my friend about how I need a phone holder in the bathroom bcause our counter is small and I got this ad an hour later pic.twitter.com/0GB5NH2kkc

— Solidaddy (@MorganCrockett) October 26, 2017

In fact, you don’t have to look very hard to find hundreds of examples.

So is it true?

Well Facebook categorically say that they don’t record audio and they don’t use audio to determine what to advertise to you.

But…

They do have an audio recognition feature in their app which tries to recognise the sounds happening around the phone. In theory this only happens when you’re updating a post.

However, it means that they can clearly turn on your microphone and listen to you whenever they want.

So the question is…

How much do you trust Facebook to do what they say they do. After all, they do have a history of not caring about their users privacy and not being completely upfront about it.

If you don’t trust them there’s one thing you can do… turn off the microphone in your phone and then the Facebook app can’t turn it on even if it wanted to.

Over and out,

Michael
(investigator of Facebook consipracy theories)