New Blog Site

Friends, please join me over at my new blog site chrisgattis.com.

The new site is effective on May 25, 2015.

Tribute to a Soldier

Stephen Kees is an American Hero.

My step-son Stephen Kees was killed in a car accident on February 1, 2014. I didn’t realize how deeply moved I would be this first Memorial Day since his death. It didn’t hit me until last night during my annual tribute to our lost hero’s by watching Saving Private Ryan. Stephen’s untimely death hit me hard. I’ve been feeling the pain of that loss especially heavy today. I haven’t been able to write about it, or write about anything else, since his death. It’s time to pay tribute to a soldier.

Stephen served three deployments in the U.S. Army. He was a good soldier - not perfect, but good.

He struggled a bit in High School; partially due to heredity, but more due to bitter disappointment from high expectations. Much of the high expectations came from me. I held Stephen to a high level of personal performance for which he could never pass. For the most part, he did his best to live up to those high expectations. He expected me to perform at that same high level. But when his mother and I divorced, he was crushed. I let him down. The disappointment from that event coupled with an entire lifetime of disappointment, was more than he could take.

But in the Army, he thrived. Where some rebel in the controlled environment of military service, Stephen excelled. He moved up the ranks rapidly, quickly became a leader of soldiers in an official capacity, and a leader of men in an unofficial capacity. He was frequently given special assignments and special consideration, many times, just because he was Stephen.

One of my favorite memories of Stephen is depicted in a photo of him with his mother and sister. It was taken at this graduation from Basic Training at Ft. Stewart, Georgia. The smile on his face was the old Stephen smile. It was a smile that opened doors and opened hearts. Stephen was proud to be a soldier and looked good in his uniform – and he knew it. He didn’t yet understand what it meant to be a soldier. He was blissfully unaware of what was to come. He was on top of the world. He was thrown into a high pressure situation with lots of men and women all trying to stand up and stand out. He stood at the top of that group with a smile as big as his wonder.

Back at the barracks Stephen introduced us to his 1st Sergeant, an ‘offense’ for which he paid the price of 20 pushups. Apparently, the 1st Sergeant has warned the soldiers that making an introduction would be cause for ‘punishment’ of 20 pushups. Stephen made the introduction and immediately fell to the floor to start his pushups before the 1st Sergeant even commanded them. He had a huge grin on his face the whole time. He gladly paid the price for the introduction. During the pushups, the 1st Sergeant gave us a wink and a smile out of Stephens view. He had his whole life ahead of him and he was primed and ready to go.

One of my proudest days was when Stephen was selected to carry the wreath for the 60th D-Day Memorial Ceremony at Normandy. He walked to the center of the improvised stage area with the memorial wreath side-by-side with President George W. Bush. How did he get that gig? Stephen was in Germany at that time and a call went out to his division to provide a soldier for the job. The commander picked Stephen. His get-it-done attitude and engaging smile made friends at all levels of the military.

Stephen never failed to make a good impression. Three stories come to mind:

Not long after his mother and I started dating, we made a Sunday morning trek over to Auburn to meet and have breakfast with my parents and youngest brother who was still in school at Auburn. We met for our usual Shoney’s after-game-day breakfast. We were barely seated when Stephen, who was sitting by my mother, turned to her and said, I think I’m going to throw up. The ‘p’ was barely across his tongue when the event erupted into the waiting hands of my mother. They went scurrying across the restaurant to the rest room with Stephen leaning over my mother’s cupped hands. They got cleaned up and came back to the table. With that, introductions were no longer necessary.

We moved to Indiana when Stephen was about to start middle school. When we first arrived in town, travel basketball season was in full swing in the basketball-crazed state. My boss had two kids playing and let Stephen tag along. After a Saturday away game, they stopped at their usual burger joint for supper before heading back to town. All the kids ordered burgers or chicken fingers, except Stephen. Having properly asked if he could order anything he wanted, he proceeded to get steak. Twelve year olds know nothing of protocol. My boss let him order the steak, mostly so he could harass me the next Monday at work.

Finally, during the above mentioned D-Day Ceremony, after dutifully placing the memorial wreath at the designated spot, he grabbed President Bush by the arm and nudged him to his proper spot for the ceremonial pictures. With his trademark smile, Stephen said “No Mr. President, you stand here.” The President never questioned him, and moved to the spot and began the ceremony.

During his first deployment in Israel he only got a taste of war and soldiering. He ended up spending much of his time driving dignitaries and generals around to their various meetings. It was a great gig. Why did he get selected for such a primo job, well, mostly because he was Stephen. One of my favorite pictures of Stephen during his U.S. Army service was taken in Israel. He talked to some local soldiers and convinced them to take a picture of him holding up their 50 Cal. Machine guns. These guys are serious soldiers. Nobody takes their weapons – except maybe Stephen.

Stephen was happy, and made others around him happy. I will never forget putting him to bed in his red cowboy boots. He would not take them off. We’d come back in after he fell asleep and take to boots off. He wore them around the house and yard with his basketball shorts. His favorite birthday party was having his little friends over to run around the yard, through the sprinkler, and down the hill on the Slip ‘n Slide all the while firmly grasping a grilled chicken leg. It didn’t take much to make him happy. He was almost always happy.

His needs were simple back then and his delights many. He was a happy kid with a huge heart. He couldn’t stand a hurt feeling of others and always tried to do the right thing as it related to other kids. As an adult, he was a dichotomy. One minute he was playing John Wayne, charging a hill, clearing bunker, or kicking down a door in search for the enemy. The next minute, he’s convinced some Israeli soldiers to take his picture with their machine guns.

During his second and third deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, he learned what soldiering was all about. He earned his pay and our respect.

I’ve always held military service in high regard. I never had honor of serving. I was too late for Viet Nam and way too early for the first Gulf war. I’ve always been amazed at the courage of men and women who serve in battle. How do you charge a hill or kick down a door when you know there are bad guys waiting to shoot? I can’t imagine how scared one must be to do these things in the face of likely death. But Stephen had courage of ten men. While his M.O.S. was chemical spill detainment and cleanup, he routinely volunteered for difficult missions. I think he was bored and scared and a little afraid of the real world that awaited his return. He did things that young men shouldn’t have to do and saw things that young men shouldn’t have to see.

I tried to talk to him on numerous occasions about these missions and how he felt and like most of his contemporaries in previous war’s, he had no interest in talking about those details. He’d talk about some prank or the pickup basketball games in which he was constantly playing, but never the scary and ugly stuff that went along with soldiering. When I pressed him on one occasion, he finally responded by saying “Chris, you don’t want to know about that.” Of course, I did want to know about it. But it was clear that he did not want to talk about it.

That service changed Stephen. It left him with demons and scars that were way deeper than any of us knew. He just wanted to keep those things in a little compartment in his brain where he thought he could keep them safe. In reality, they came every day to haunt him. Once you see and do those things, the only way to rid your mind of them is to get them out and talk about them. You have to cry and scream and face the terror head on or it never goes away. It’s easy for me to say, I can’t even imagine demons of that ugliness.

He fought back against those demons every day. He battled the only way he, and thousands like him, know how. He battled with drugs and alcohol. He tried to clear the ugliness from the recesses of his mind. He tried to get back to a place carefree happiness. He tried hard to enjoy his family and friends in the light of day. But eventually the ugliness would take over and he was ultimately unable to keep it in that box.

In the end, Stephen’s country let him down. We don’t provide enough assistance to veterans returning from war. We send honorable men and women to other lands to do our dirty work. We spend years and millions of dollars training them to be non-thinking, killing machines. Then, when their time is up, we expect them to go back to their old lives. We assume they can go back to their families and jobs; like war was just another business trip.

In the end, I let Stephen down. We talk about helping soldiers with PTSD in the Generic. I talk about ‘brave men and women who fight for our freedoms and then need our help to readjust to civilian life.’ But too often, when one of those brave men is standing right in front of us, we say ‘just grow up’. We seem to believe if they would just stop behaving badly, everything would be good again. If we pretend that the demons are safely locked away, we needn’t worry about them. In most cases, men and women who face this kind of ugliness face-to-face on the battlefield are never the same. As much as we, and they, would love to have the ‘old Stephen’ back, it just isn’t possible.

While I’m exceedingly proud of Stephen’s courage and valor as soldier, I’m even more proud of his heart. What I learned about Stephen during the days leading up to and at his funeral blew me away. I learned about another dimension of a man I called my son, but that I clearly didn’t know. I was so honored and humbled by the messages from fellow soldiers and friends he met during his various trips to rehab. When I visited Shelbyville where Stephen and his sister Aimee and their family’s lived, Aimee and I would often comment about the frequent phone calls he would receive and then go outside to take. We assumed he was arranging for some nefarious activity. In reality, many of those phone calls were from other soldiers who were struggling with their own demons. Many of these calls were from friends he met in rehab who were trying to keep their own ugly memories securely locked in a little compartment in their brains. I was completely blown away by the stories from fellow soldiers and friends who said things like:

            “Stephen encouraged me.”

            “Stephen counseled me.”

            “Stephen told me not to give up.”

            “Stephen told me I was almost there, not to quit now.”

            “I may not have made it if it weren’t for Stephen.”

He counseled other soldiers, both professionally and personally. He took their calls like an AA Sponsor talking an alcoholic out of ordering a drink at a bar and blowing a 10-year sobriety. He talked them off their own personal ledge of terror. He took their calls and just listened. He loved them and comforted them and in some cases, saved their lives. The words of those men gave me a comfort and pride in Stephen that I never knew. I will be forever grateful for their words, for sharing part of the good stuff that made him who he was. I had never seen that side of Stephen. I’m pretty sure that the rest of the family hadn’t seen that side of Stephen either.

During his life, I rarely told Stephen how proud of him I was. I let the day-to-say struggles of drugs and alcohol mask the beautiful person hiding underneath. I let the tiny inconveniences of my own life keep me from knowing and understanding his enormous pains and herculean-struggle to overcome them. I let my own life get in the way of seeing an American hero standing right in front of me. We can never go back and do what was left undone. We can never go back and say what was left unsaid. I just hope Stephen knows now how proud of him I am. Throughout our history, men like Stephen stood against our enemies without regard to their personal safety. Men like Stephen had the courage to say “I’ll go.”

On Memorial Day, when I talk of ‘brave men who fought for our freedom’, I’ll be talking about Stephen Kees.

I love you buddy. I hope you know how proud of you I am. 

The Power of LinkedIn

Are you using the power of LinkedIn to promote your professional career or your business? LinkedIn has the highest lead generation potential of any of the social media platforms.

According to research conducted by HubSpot, the MIT based inbound marketing company, LinkedIn is 277% better than Facebook or Twitter for lead generation. So, are you’re not using LinkedIn, what are you waiting for?

Not all industries are fully bought-in to the power of LinkedIn. But frankly, I can’t think of a single industry where ignoring LinkedIn is a smart idea. Whether you’re looking for a job, looking for a promotion, or looking to increase your business, LinkedIn is one of the best resources around. And for networking, there’s really no better tool for professionals than a well-prepared LinkedIn profile.

You really can’t afford miss the potential of LinkedIn. If nothing else, make sure to complete your profile and create your vanity URL (that’s the LinkedIn.com/IN/yourname internet address rather than using the useless string of numbers and letters you get as a default). Getting the most out of LinkedIn means tweaking your profile to include your keywords, joining and participating in groups, and getting recommendations and endorsements. If you aren’t doing these basic things, you’re leaving money on the table, so to speak.

If you're on LinkedIn, connect with me. Tell me you saw my blog. You can find me here:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisgattis/

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Crunching Numbers vs. Analytics

We talk a lot about ‘analytics’ in digital media. In fact, that’s one of the really cool things about the digital age, we can measure, track, and analyze every single visitor that comes to our site or receives our email pushes.

Ad4! Interactive was launched as the interactive web division of Ad4! primarily to take advantage of the KISS Metrics analytics package as an integrated feature in our web offerings. And while there’s more to it than just metrics, the metrics drive the SEO, the design features and certainly the copy and graphics. So what are we doing with all this data?

I’m afraid in most cases, we’re crunching numbers for the sake of crunching numbers. Especially here in North Alabama where we have more Ph.D’s per capita than any place in the U.S., it’s only natural that we would crunch the numbers way past their prime.

Analyzing the metrics to draw the proper conclusion is like most parts of social media. It seems easy on the surface, but it’s really difficult once you dig into the details. Looking at your analytics to see how many people visited your site, what keyword was most effective in getting them there, or what page had the highest bounce rate is easy. How do you use this information to make your site better and more importantly, to create better engagement with your customers?

It’s the phycology of the behavior that’s really interesting. Knowing how many people behaved in a certain way is one thing, knowing how to get people to behave in a certain way, is quite a different story. This is what separates effective campaigns from wasted money. 

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Great Stories Sell

We’ve had a little fun with Super Bowl ads this week. All the water cooler talk has been “Did you like the Clydesdale?”

While no ad will ever please every viewer, I think there are at least 5 things we can take away from this year’s crop of Super Bowl ads.

1. Puppies and Clydesdales still pull at our heart-strings.

2. Even though we pull for the underdog, a sloppy wet kiss with sound affects is just too much information, even if the nerd IS kissing a supermodel.

3. Goats, should be limited to 3 bags of Dorito’s a day.

4. Old people getting tatts and having midnight munchies is pretty funny. And

5. Telling an authentic American story will win us over every time.

While there’s a little post-game blow back from Black’s and Latino’s for their lack of inclusion in the imagery, you have to admit, if your demographic is middle-aged white men, Paul Harvey reading his essay “So God Made A Farmer” captured the resilience and determination of the American spirit. Dodge tried to pull the same rabbit out of a hat twice with the Oprah voice-over. But there’s just no connection between American Heroes and Oprah. She spent her glory years telling soccer moms what to read and how to think. And middle-aged soccer mom’s aren’t Jeep’s demographic. 

But Ram was careful not to sell trucks. In fact, you barely knew it was a vehicle ad until the end. What they did, was remind us a lost heritage. For 2 whole minutes, we relived the values of the Greatest Generation. And in a time of high unemployment, fiscal instability, and disintegrating families, Paul Harvey selling us Americana to the tune of Yankee Doodle, was pure genius. 


If you need help telling your story, contact me at 256-425-8787 or chris@ad4group.com.

Is your brand working for you?

Is your brand working for you? Business owners are generally reluctant to change or update their brand, and rightfully so.

But is your brand a good reflection of your company vision? Maybe the better question is do you know what your company stands for? Can your articulate your values? If you can’t answer any of these questions easily, or you have no idea what we’re even talking about, then the answer is probably less important than the question. 

In order for a symbol to represent your vision and values, you have to be able to articulate your brand promise. And here’s the important part, you have to operate your company according to that vision and treat your customers, vendors, and employees according to those values. If you don’t do that, then no flowery logo or fancy-sounding tag line will convince the market that you are a great company. 

It’s not about having the best product or the lowest price. It’s about treating your customers like you really appreciate their business. It’s about treating your vendors like partners. And it’s about treating your employees with dignity and respect. If you can do these things, you create an environment where employees will clamor to work, and where vendors line up to help you create value for your customers. And, instead of widgets at 5 cents less than your competition, you can start selling magic. 

If you need some help getting your brand in order, give me a call at 256-425-8787 or email me at chris@ad4group.com.

Smart Web

Are you smarter than your website? If you are, then it’s time to get a new website. The digital age continues to usher in capabilities for small businesses that previously never existed. I’ve spoken several times about the 3 Pillars of Digital Promotion. The interactive pillar is maybe the most important, because the tools not only track every single visitor, they also help you test campaigns for design and copy, and help engage customers for brand promotion. The bottom line is these interactive web applications drive more traffic to your site and convert that traffic into sales.

What’s different about A4! Interactive’s Smart Web is that these tools that previously had to be bought or licensed individually and then programmed into your site, are now all built in. You get some of the industry’s best tools for search engine optimization, visitor analytics, and customer engagement already neatly integrated into the package for optimal performance. You don’t have to worry about inserting code into your site or whether Andriod will talk to Apple. Rich has already taken care of all those concerns and put a pretty face on it that’s easy to use.

 If you’d like Smart Web for business, call me at 256-425-8787 or email me at chris@ad4group.com . Rich, Felica, or I would love to talk about using Ad4! Interactive’s Smart Web to improve your bottom line.

The New Marketing Order

The role of video in the digital marketing age is undeniable: if you don’t have video, you’re missing a huge piece of your potential audience. In 2013, video has become arguably the most important of the three pillars of digital promotion: social, interactive, and video. 

Each of the 3 Pillars becomes more complicated not just to implement, but to get a return on investment that’s measureable in objective terms. Big agencies and big business alike are trying to create metrics that cater to the ‘C’ suites and give analysts something to hang their hats on. 

However, the joke is on all of us. Our collective chains are being pulled by a tiny group of math geeks and programming nerds who sit in dark rooms in Silicon Valley with their pale skin laughing their you know what’s off at us flailing away trying to understand Panda #23 and why a ‘tall’ Starbucks is really a small. 

But here’s the thing, if you’ve understood marketing from way back, you’re in trouble. We’re in this gray trend area where some of the old marketing strategies still work, but they’re being replaced by new ways, which haven’t completely taken over. Only time will tell how long this gray area will last. Then it will be Johnny B. Goode meets Marty McFly time. And if you haven’t traded your VHS tapes for streaming movies from a chrome Apple, you’ll probably find yourself out of business.

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Success Consciousness

We talk about making plans and setting goals frequently here on my blog. That’s all very important for achieving success.

For many entrepreneurs, the real key to their success is not making a plan or hiring good people. They’ve already made a great plan. It’s not hiring good people, they’ve got highly motivated people with exceptional skills. The real key to success is mastering their own minds.

It’s easy for entrepreneurs to get caught up in the creation zone. People are throwing great ideas at you all day long. We love to build new products, new teams, new organizations. So, you have to have a system in place to allow you to quickly evaluate new ideas and determine their value in relation to the current project you’re building. Sometimes these ideas have to be put on the back burner, or filed away for another time.

It’s really easy to get caught up in the Alice in Wonderland Syndrome. That’s where we spend our days chasing shiny objects down rabbit holes. Someone sends you an email or gives you a call about an interesting idea and next thing you know you’ve spent four hours researching and evaluating an idea that has nothing to do with what you had planned to spend your day doing. You’ve wasted all your high-level energy doing what amounts to non-productive work.

It’s not that you can’t consider new opportunities. If your organization is going to grow and thrive, you have to consider new ideas and learn new things.

However, I think the real key to success is having a success consciousness with a singularity of focus. We create a success consciousness by having a team of positive people who have the same values as us, and who will constantly support each other and encourage each other to do exceptional work. We hold a singularity of focus by having a plan that we work every day. We have higher aspirations that cause us to continually reach for those things just beyond our grasp. You don’t accomplish great things by reaching for things in front of your nose. Everyone can do that. You achieve greatness by continually trying to work a little harder and to reach a little farther.

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Brand

We kicked off our first week of Ad4! Radio: Communication That Counts last week. We’re going to talk a lot about BRAND on the show. It’s the foundation of your company’s reputation and how the world views you.

If you don’t know how to market your company, brand is a great place to start. If you think you know how, but aren’t sure about your brand, perhaps you should take a step back.

Your brand represents your promise to your customers and your market.

What are your customers saying about your brand? …about your promises?  Think they aren’t talking about your brand? Yelp! is filled with bad reviews of restaurants that don’t know Yelp! exists. And Twitter is filled with bad reviews of local businesses that don’t think social media is important to their business.

You see, it doesn’t matter if you’re Joe’s Car Wash or Bank of America; your customers are talking about you. That talk will affect your brand. Left alone, that talk may become your brand.

If you’re not sure what to do about all this talk, then join us each Thursday on Ad4! Radio. We’ll explain how our secret sauce works. We’ll have some guests who can bring special expertise to small businesses marketing and we’ll highlight some cool stuff our clients are doing.

We’d love to hear your feedback and your questions. Email me at chris@ad4group.com. If you have a question that’s of interest to a wide audience, we’ll even talk about it on the show.

WTKI Huntsville 1450 AM / 94.9 FM
WEKI Decatur 1490 AM / 94.7 FM
Listen Live www.wtkiradio.com

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Join Me On The Radio...Tomorrow!

The Ad4! Radio Show begins. .  . tomorrow at 8:00 AM CST. Why not join us tomorrow from 8 - 9 AM on WTKI 92.9 FM/1450 AM Huntsville, WEKI 1490 AM - 94.7 FM Decatur, or listen live at www.wtkiradio.com.  We'll talk all things small business marketing. We'll introduce the who team tomorrow and give an overview of some of our in-house specialties. Then, next week on January 10th, Lori King-Taylor will be my guest and we'll talk visioning success. We have a great lineup of local experts on marketing, web, social media, video, SEO and lots of other good stuff lined up. 

We hope you'll join us. If you have a question that you'd like us to address on the show, send me an email at Chris@ad4group.com.

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‘Debt Peonage’ for Small Business Owners

A recent article in the Huntsville Times by Paul Huggins discussed ‘lending’ practices for small businesses during the depression. The banks weren’t interested in making loans to small businesses, so small businesses (farmers) had to depend on trade creditors (equipment & feed and seed dealers) to get them through cash crunches. UAHuntsville associate professor Dr. Stephen Waring referred to the loans a “debt peonage.” This is where everything the farmer owned was pledged to the lending merchant as collateral for the trade account. Debt Peonage is the practice of holding persons in servitude or partial slavery to work off a debt, in this case. Secret store prices lead to the small business being cheated by hidden fees and high finance rates.

Sound familiar? It should, we’re going through a similar time today. Most banks will not grant loans to small and start-up businesses. For them to even consider making such a loan, they require the business owner to pledge all his personal assets as collateral for the loan.

The article example was a very extreme case where the farmer ‘financed’ $5.57 in feed and seed product and had to pledge his entire farm as collateral. That’s pretty extreme.

The debt pricing practices today are more reasonable than in the 1930s; consumers are protected by laws that prevent lenders from gouging them with hidden fees and exorbitant rates. However, the things that haven’t changed are the use of trade credit to finance small business working capital and the pledging of all assets, even for a small loan. Most banks require the business owner to pledge all their personal assets to secure a small business loan. This practice can cause a small business owner real financial hardship, especially if they need to purchase a new vehicle, home, finance a college education for a kid or have a medical emergency. I’m not suggesting that we have a debt peonage situation today, just a lack of good financing options for small and start-up businesses. I’ve written and spoken about this for several years.

Entrepreneurs need to think about their financial situation very carefully before getting in a position where they have to make the best of only bad choices in financing their business. Cash flow issues are probably the single biggest ‘cause’ of small business failure. I use quotes around cause because the real cause is operator error. You, as the owner should have taken steps to prevent the condition or should have planned for this in advance. As my friend and mentor, Michael Gerber told me, these are the things small business owners should know before they start a business. Amen, Michael.

Do you have a story of a bad financial situation that you survived or need help getting out of a bad situation? Let me hear from you.

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The Ad4! Radio Show Countdown

Only 1 week until the kick-off of the Ad4! Radio Show. We're very excited here at Ad4! about the show and many of the cool guests who have already committed to appearing. 

If you want to hear discussion about marketing strategies for small business, tune in Thursdays from 8 - 9 AM on WTKI 1450 AM - 92.9 FM Huntsville and WEKI 1490 AM - 94.7 FM Decatur. You can stream the show live on your computer at www.wtkiradio.com/. Once our new website is completed, you'll be able to download the podcasts directly to your smart phone and list to us on the go.  

The show will focus on communication and marketing strategies and using the popular tools available for small business to drive customers and ultimately revenue. It's all about the bottom line. If you're marketing strategy isn't helping you create more customers, more sales, more income, it's not really working for you. We'll talk about the what, why, and how of marketing. We're basically giving away our secret sauce. To get it, just listen to the show. 

We still have a few sponsorship slots available, so if you're interested, let me or Felica know. 

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This Meeting Is Wasting My Time

We’re talking about meetings and using them to efficiently make decisions and manage your business.

So how do you use your time more efficiently during meetings and become more productive? The easiest first step is to have an agenda. Know before the meeting what you want to accomplish. For regular meetings, like a weekly staff meeting, the agenda can become an agenda item. You can determine what will be discussed during the next meeting and how much time you will allocate to that topic. Then, by assigning a timekeeper to keep track of time and a gatekeeper to keep the discussion within the bounds of the agenda, the meeting can stay on track and on time. At the end of the allotted time, the entire group can decide if the topic needs to be allocated additional time or if enough discussion has taken place to move forward.

For less formal meetings, you can effectively do the same thing with the entire group acting as gatekeepers. This function is a key role in making meeting time more efficient. You probably have an individual in your organization that talks on and on about whatever comes to mind once he gets the floor. You can prevent this by having an understanding by the whole group that you’re going to try to be efficient and not allow any one person to hijack a meeting.

Another key ingredient in effective meetings is doing your homework before the meeting. If you’re supposed to investigate a topic and be prepared to present it to your meeting group, then do it. Nothing is more frustrating than showing up for a meeting about a specific topic from someone, who forgot or just didn’t have time to get their research done. That wastes everyone’s time.

Got a thought about making meetings more effective? Why not share?

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The Ad4! Radio Show

We have been working for several months at Ad4! on hosting our own radio show. We've finally worked out the details and are excited to announce that we'll start on January 3, 2013. The show will air on Thursday mornings from 8 - 9 AM on WTKI 1450 AM - 92.9 FM Huntsville and WEKI 1490 AM - 94.7 FM Decatur. You can stream the show live on your computer at www.wtkiradio.com/. We're also working on a new website and will have the broadcasts available for download when the new site is ready. 

The show will focus on communication and marketing strategies and using the popular tools available for small business to drive customers and ultimately revenue. It's all about the bottom line. If you're marketing strategy isn't helping you create more customers, more sales, more income, it's not really working for you. We'll talk about the what, why, and how of marketing. We're basically giving away our secret sauce. To get it, just listen to the show. 

We still have a few sponsorship slots available, so if you're interested, let me or Felica know. 

Here's the official Press Release if you're interested. 

AD4! ANNOUNCES RADIO SHOW

HUNTSVILLE, AL, December 20, 2012 - Ad4! announced today the launch of the Ad4! Radio Show on WTKI 1450 AM / 92.9 FM Huntsville and WEKI 1490 AM / 94.7 FM Decatur. The show will air on Thursday mornings from 8:00 AM until 9:00 AM beginning January 3, 2013. The show will be hosted by Chris Gattis with regular appearances from Felica Sparks and other members of the Ad4! Group. The show will focus on communication and marketing strategies. “We’re very excited about the show,” said Gattis, “we’ll be giving away our secret sauce; all you have to do is listen.” 

Ad4! founder, Felica Sparks, said “the show is an opportunity to highlight trends in the industry, teach the techniques of creating and implementing a marketing strategy, and show off some interesting work being done by our clients.” During the first quarter of 2013, the programming schedule will concentrate on the popular promotion vehicles available to business such as video, smart web applications, and social media. “We’re going to start by showing how to use the current tools from PR to social media to ultimately drive revenue. More importantly, we’ll discuss why these tools are changing the way marketing is done in the digital age and why small businesses must adapt their tried and true methods to the new standards,” explained Gattis.  

Ad4! is a strategy and communication services boutique. We work with a network of the best artists, videographers and programmers allowing us to use top shelf talent on your project. From blogs to billboards, Ad4! delivers relevant marketing communications essential in today's dynamic and competitive market. Our emphasis on research, analysis, and strategy will set you apart from your competition and allow better market-based decisions. From start-ups and family-owned shops to multi-national manufacturers and defense contractors, Ad4! helps define and implement a marketing strategy that effectively communicates your brand promise and grow your business. Ad4! Communication that counts!

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If you’d like more information about Ad4! please contact Felica Sparks at 256-426-2718 or felica@ad4group.com or visit www.ad4group.com.

The Meeting Value Calculation

During December, we’re talking about meetings and how to be more efficient with your time and more productive. Sometimes, you just have to meet. Email and texts and so forth can be very effective, but sometimes you need to look each other in the eye and discuss things. However, if you think about the cost of meetings, you’ll hopefully be more sensitive to the true cost of that time.

Let’s say you you’re the president of a company and you have a staff meeting every Monday with your team. You include the VP of Sales & Marketing, the CFO, the VP of Operations, the IT manager, the customer service manager, and your admin who takes minutes. Have you ever thought about the cost of that group of people sitting around a table for an hour or three? Well, let’s do a little calculation. These executive and their annual and effective hourly pay rates are listed below.

Position                                            Annual Salary                        Effective Hourly Rate

President                                $175,000                               $84.13
VP of Sales & Marketing            $150,000                               $72.12
CFO                                        $150,000                               $72.12
VP of Operations                      $135,000                               $64.90
IT Manager                               $115,000                               $55.29
Customer Service Manager          $78,000                               $37.50
Executive Admin                        $42,000                              $20.19

Total                                     $845,000                            $406.25

So a two hour Monday morning meeting costs $812.50, at least from an effective rate. So the president should be thinking about his time and the time of his staff and whether or not the meeting effectiveness is worth $812.50 PER WEEK. If you meet every week, that’s an effective rate of $21,125 per year, just in staff meetings. You’ll need to be pretty darn efficient to make that investment in your business.

You and your team may not make the kind of salaries that this group makes, but you still have a hefty combined hourly rate for meetings of several people. Next time you’re in a meeting at your company, do a quick calculation and determine if you’re getting the best efficiency out of your meetings and if you’re solving problems and making good decisions worth the total cost of your team’s time.

Got a thought? Why not share?

Connect with Chris on  Google+  LinkedIn  Twitter  Ad4!

Oh no, not another meeting!

Meetings can be such a waste of time. You tend to sit around while other people waste your time blowing hot air about things that don’t really impact you. I find that many times, people just schedule meetings so they have someone to listen to them yak on and on.

In one of my previous lives, I spent lots of time training project and quality teams how to be effective, and most of that had to do with how to run meetings. We would take a group of people from the plant, give them some team training, and set them to work fixing all sorts of production related problems. These are the people who are closest to the problem and they frequently have the best solutions for fixing them. The real problem is that the management doesn’t generally care what the line workers think, so these guys are used to keeping their mouth shut. We found that by forming a cross functional team of plant guys, with just a corporate facilitator to keep them on the right track and help them with the process of process improvement, they got all kinds of great work done. We put them in charge of their own destiny and as a facilitator, my job was to keep quiet and just make sure they followed the improvement processes. When they came up with a solution, the facilitator would help them prepare a proposal to the president’s staff that they would then deliver. If their idea made sense, and they usually did, the improvement plan was approved and budgets allocated. It was an awesome process and very empowering for the workers. Of course, you have to believe that your workers are more than just a pair of hands for a process like this to work.

But back to meetings. One of the process improvement tools we taught was to be effective in their meetings. Take minutes, have an agenda, a set time, and all that good stuff. They came to the meetings prepared to discuss their topic in the allotted time, they made a decision, and moved on. The meetings were quick, to the point, and very effective.

For the next few weeks, we’re going to explore some topics relative to meeting efficiencies, cost of meetings, and how to use them to your advantage. If you have some thoughts, please be sure to share.

Connect with Chris on  Google+  LinkedIn  Twitter  Ad4!

Do Connect or Don’t Connect?

Do you connect on social media with only those you personally know or with any real person? I was involved in a networking discussion recently and this topic broke. The group was about evenly split between do or do not connect.

Personally, I connect with most anyone that wants to connect, that I deem to not be a spammer. But I get the side that doesn’t want to connect with people they don’t personally know. I think the real question is why are on social media in the first place? If you’re there to chat with your friends, share family photos and connect with old classmates, then why would you connect with people you don’t know? You wouldn’t. But if you’re participating in social media to meet new business partners, find customers, network, and other general business principles, then you want to be connected with as many people as possible. The more people you know, the wider your marketing message is spread. In addition, if you’re trying to create opportunities for introductions, the more people you know the better the chances you have of getting connected.

So, do you connect?

Connect with Chris on  Google+  LinkedIn  Twitter  Ad4!

Black Friday tops $1B

Black Friday shoppers made lots of business owners happy this year spending an estimated $1.042 billion, according to a report by comScore. In store traffic was down just under 2%, which means that shoppers were opting for cyber shopping in their PJs rather than camping out in them on parking lot asphalt. Amazon was the biggest winner and with Apple coming in 5th. 

So how will this affect Cyber Monday? Estimates are for a bumper day today coming in at $1.5 billion. That's a lot of iPads and eBooks.

Will you shop online today or did you brave the crowed on Friday? I'm unlikely to do either, but I'm not your typical shopper.  

Connect with Chris on  Google+  LinkedIn  Twitter  Ad4!

Connecting with Customers…The Old Fashioned Way

I recently read an article by Craig Chappelow in Fast Company suggesting that, before the internet, we were able to ‘connect’ with our customers without the use of Facebook and other social media gimmicks. Every time he walks into the dry cleaners he is inundated with “Like us on Facebook!” signs and requests from store employees hoping to better connect with him.

That got me thinking about this issue of ‘connecting’ with customers. Does the social media craze make it easier or harder to ‘connect’ with your customers? I keep using the quotes because I’m not sure how connected, really, we ever get with social media. In the best cases, companies post information and hope to receive feedback of some sort from their customer base. If their fans like what they see, hopefully they’ll share with their ‘friends’. If they don’t like, they’re sure to share with their ‘friends’. It can be a dangerous game. We have the same issue with ‘friends’. Are they actual personally known and liked individuals, or just connections? That’s a subject for next time.

Frankly, I’m not sure that interaction with social media is really connecting. I think of connecting as a more personal issue. I had direct interaction with an employee of a company that made me feel good. THAT’s connecting. To the extent that social media engages me directly with a person, I can get that same good feeling. Frankly, I don’t get any warm and fuzzies from a process or computer controlled ‘conversation’. Wow, there’s lots of air quotes in this post. And that’s the point, actually. Does social media really connect us to a business? I’m not sure it does.

If you are a national company with business operations in say Seattle, Houston, and Savannah, how do you connect personally with a customer in Memphis? I don’t know either. It was much easier in 1968 when you pulled into the service station and the Esso man, in his uniform, came out and put gas in your car while cleaning your windshield. He then asked if he could check your oil. And because you went there every week for fuel, you became personally acquainted with him. He asked about your mother after her operation and your son’s baseball team, which he probably sponsored. That was a connection. He took great pride is giving you excellent service. The gas was almost an afterthought.

The lesson here is, connect personally with your customers whenever possible. Duh!  The hard question is, how do we use other means, social media included, to better connect with our customers when we can’t see them eye-to-eye? I’m not trying to suggest that social media is a bad solution, all things considered. I’m trying to get some ideas for helping people get better connections with their customers. The kind of connections that give you a good feeling about the business that makes you want to go back again and tell your real friends how great they are. Posting a sale flyer on Facebook isn’t going to get that done.

If you have some ideas, drop me a line or post a comment.

Connect with Chris Gattis on  Google+  LinkedIn  Twitter  Ad4!