Consultants, Coaches, and Teachers

This past weekend I experienced one of the most profound life-changing seminars I can imagine. I attended a 4-day seminar with a "Peak Performance Coach" (Tony Robbins!) who was able to evoke perhaps every single emotion a human is capable of within 4 days, while sharing some incredible wisdom.

While attending the seminar, aside from actually truly enjoying what I was learning, I was thinking about the actual "business" of coaching - whether it's someone who is a tennis coach, Performance Coach, or speech coach - and how it differs from other seemingly similar professions like Consulting and Teaching.

The similarities between Consulting and Coaching are:

- you generally have a set hourly rate

- you can purchase time in discrete units

- you do have differing tiers of expertise

- the best coaches can charge a lot more for their services

- generally you don't need certification but your ability to deliver results will be very relevant.

But then, what is the difference between a "coach", a "teacher", and a "consultant" ?

Here is what I've discovered:

Generally, it seems that a coach is much more "invested" in a student's success, where a teacher is a much more cut-and-dry professional function - though a very important one. I have been very lucky so far as a student with so many teachers who are also invested in the success of their students.

Any one of these, however, can be your "GURU"...

;-)

©2010. All rights reserved

The Business of Halloween.

As a kid, I always looked very much forward to Halloween. Halloween was a fun tradition that invokes a very sentimental feeling- walking in the dark with flashlights (with my parents and friends) and getting ridiculous amounts of candy is a memory I cherish to this day. Taking it from a different perspective now, I've learned that halloween is becoming a big business- much bigger than I imagined.

Contrary to urban legend that states that Halloween is the second biggest decorating holiday of the year, passed only by Christmas, it's NOT. It's actually number Six.

Winter Holidays: 457 Billion

Mother's Day: 13.8 Billion

Valentines Day: 13.7 Billion

Easter:12.63 Billion

Father's Day: 9.01 Billion

and finally...

Halloween: The National Retail Federation predicts Halloween Spending (at retail - not counting Haunted Houses and Corn Mazes and Pumpkin Patches) will reach nearly $6 Billion dollars this year.

It could be that the reason for this placement is because all the holidays above Halloween have to do with gifting and restaurant visits.

Two things most people buy at Halloween: Candy and Pumpkins followed by Costumes.

In 2006, 85.3% of 18-24 year olds planned to celebrate Halloween.

In 2007, men between 18-34 were planning to spend the most per person on Halloween - $72 per person.

The Haunted House business is also growing - with between 3,000 and 5,000 Haunted Houses this year -up from 500 just a decade ago.

Corn Maze popularity is growing - in 1998 there were between 50 and 100 corn mazes in the United States. In 2008 there are an estimated 800, but an exact number is difficult because many mazes are privately designed.

The Most Popular Halloween Costumes:

Boys: Spiderman (Pirate is second)

Girls: Princess (including Disney Princesses)

Halloween Candy Sales will be at a record in 2010 - When sales will reach nearly 2.1 Billion dollars !

Here's an interesting list of the favorite (most popular) candies throughout the years (source: walletpop.com)

1896: Tootsie Roll

1898: Candy Corn

1900: Hershey's Chocolate Bar

1923: Milky Way

1928: Reese's Peanut Butter Cup

1930: Snickers Bar

1941: M&M's

1981: Skittles

1992: Dove Chocolate

2010: Surprise !! It's Tootsie Rolls again ! (followed by Hershey's Chocolate and Nestle's Crunch)

All this talking about candy is making me hungry !

Casual Fridays as a Business Tool

I can't help but think about how many times I've heard working people say "Thank God it's Friday" !

It seems that people who work (Blue Collar / White Coller or any Color Collar) always look forward to Friday, and the difference between a Monday Morning in an office and a Friday Morning in an office is dramatically different. Mondays you'll see people somewhat on the edge -- looking to kickoff and "get ahead" on their work week.

The difference is evidenced by various little observations on indirect behaviors.

Here's a completely unscientific view of Monday Vs Friday at the Office.

_________________________	Monday_____________	Friday____________________
Parking Lot	Full Early	Not Full
Coffee Machine	Busy Early	Not so overused
Lunch	Work at Desk	Desks Empty
Conference Rooms	Jam Packed	Available
Elevators	Long Wait Time	Waiting for you
Coat Closets	Full	Extra hangers
Greetings	Good weekend?	Any plans for the weekend?
Receptionist	Frazzled	Tetris

Large companies have noticed that people very much look forward to their Fridays - it's an unavoidable fact.

Companies also surely saw a dramatic dip in workplace attendance on Fridays when people would take a vacation day to start their weekends early.

While shirts, ties, and dress shoes are the norm in a formal business environment from Monday through Thursday, many companies allow a behavior we are familiar to be known as “business-casual” wear on Friday.

Companies, in order to assuage people's desires to "just completely bug out" on Fridays and not show up at all, decided to allow employees to "be themselves" and work in a slightly more relaxed environment. While some people feel business casual attire may cause an overly relaxed environment, companies have a strong logic behind this idea. Friday night has traditionally marked the beginning of a weekend- representing relaxation, peace, and an environment in which work is not the prominent focus.

Throughout my experiences of school, and my limited but studied understanding of offices, Casual Friday gives employees a small incentive to show up at work, allows employees to have a greater comfort level, and also mends the disconnect between formal attire and a lenient environment.

Whether Casual Fridays were intended to reward employees for their hard work throughout the week, or to reduce the level of absenteeism on Fridays is debatable. In either case however, I believe it's a win-win for both the employees and companies, since employees who are allowed to dress down on Fridays usually end up with less stress, and are more likely to get to work. Also remember, "dress down Fridays" also applies to colleagues who run the HR department and the corner office, so I don't believe anyone is really complaining!

What is a Case Study ?

Many times you'll visit corporate websites and they'll mention case studies and even offer pdf's of them within their web pages.

A case study is a research-based method used to investigate an individual, group, or event to explore what caused something, and to find the underlying principles that drive that cause.

Case studies involve an in-depth, long term examination of a single event - a case.

There is usually a systematic way of looking at events, collecting data, analyzing information, and reporting the results. Case studies are great for generating and testing hypotheses.

An example would be a consulting company that has a website and is trying to sell their services to another company. The consulting company can perform a "case study" on one of their previous projects to show how their contributions helped to achieve some defined goal of their client.

In keeping with our GM example, here is a case study that can be used to understand the electric vehicle marketplace.

The Importance of Strategy in Business

Recently, I had the privilege of going to Stanford University to study topics in Business at one of the esteemed programs. I was honored to meet so many great leaders, including my professors, managers at Apple, Tapulous, and other Palo Alto luminaries.

Many of these folks I spoke to were very intently focused on the Strategy of their organizations. They wanted to make sure that the right decisions were being made, and the correct paths were being pursued to grow their businesses.

What is Strategy, exactly, and why are the executives of a company so concerned with it ?

Simply stated, strategy refers to a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. If a business were continually reactionary in its activities -- simply reacting to daily events, then you can see how the company would only be chasing "operational viability" and not controlling its own destiny.

Strategy for a business is in its simplest form:

1. Knowing where you are NOW,

2. Knowing where you want to BE.

3. Knowing and having a plan on how to GET THERE.

The first part is relatively simple, but not always. A good leader knows his / her company strengths and weaknesses and general capabilities. We'll use the auto industry, and specifically General Motors, as an example.

The GM leadership knows how many cars they can produce, what kind of cars, and the general costs and features of those cars. That's part 1.

Next, knowing where you want to be is tricky. It involves some ability to know where trends are going, and where the marketplace in general is going. To achieve this, Leaders use the skills of Research specialists, and Competitive Intelligence colleagues. They can slice and dice any industry data, generate surveys, and come up with an Answer.

Our GM leader could (for example) hire a Research specialist who would be able to determine that based on research, the world's demand for electric vehicles is coming to a critical tipping point - people are getting ready to spend big time on alternative energy vehicles. The Competitive Intelligence colleague would be able to determine that competing companies like Toyota and Honda are spending considerable money on research as well, clearly indicating an interest within the industry. The decision is born and GM leadership's "aha moment" is to decide to spend money on creating an electric vehicle.

The third component - knowing how to get there - is a straight line role of a project manager. The project manager can bring in Business Analysts, and other team members to lay out the plan to "make it happen". A skilled project manager is critical to any company, and a new discipline called "strategic engineer" is emerging.

GM leadership would hire one (or multiple) project managers to set up a "Program" for creating electric vehicles. The Electric vehicle Program would consist of many different Projects all leading up to an Electric Vehicle STRATEGY for GM !

Strategy for any organization is critical, because it allows leadership to control the destiny of a company, rather than to continually play victim to shifting trends and competition.

Summer Visit to a Silicon Valley Dream Factory

Over the summer, I was fortunate enough to travel to Palo Alto, California for a three-week residential program (EPGY) in Stanford. Recently, our class visited a company called Tapulous. Tapulous is an American software and game developer headquartered in Palo Alto, California. As soon as I entered the relaxed atmosphere of Tapulous, I was welcomed by the vibrant colors and playful ambiance. The employees seemed like they thoroughly enjoyed their jobs- and with Nerf Guns, bean bag chairs, and a ping pong table, nobody could blame them. We met four very influential people at Tapulous- Bart Decrem, Andrew Lacy, Jessica Kahn, and Tim O’Brien. Visiting the company taught my several things:

First, I learned that passion and believing in one’s product is an important part of any start-up business. If one has passion, they have a willingness to work hard, go deeper in order to advance a company, and invest time in their product. Passion attaches a person emotionally to their product, which ultimately helps to grow the company. The welcoming employees at Tapulous seemed to thoroughly love what they did, which really left a positive, lasting, impression on me. The rare but ingenious combination of fun but professional environment was a great combination.

Secondly, I learned that if a given technique doesn’t work, one must be ready to change direction. The end product will rarely reflect the starting idea exactly. Although one may start a company based on one notion, this focus can change within a moment’s notice. Adaptation is essential for not only a person, but for a company’s ability to evolve. The customer’s needs or wants will never be consistent, and the downfall of a company can often be blamed on the company’s inability to move on with their target market’s needs. Specifically, the goal of Tapulous was originally to create a wide market for apps- but the more they researched, the more they realized they would want to narrow their focus to a specific ‘tap-tap” type of game.

This brings me to my third point which sit that a target focus is essential. The people working for Tapulous had two things in common. First, none of the employees pretended to have full knowledge of the gaming field – they were open to massive learning, and second, they all had a longing to provide their customers with a great service. The only way Tapulous had to follow their passion was by coming up with an idea and finding any way possible to see it through. A company does not necessarily have to have a strong background, but rather a narrow and common focus point to follow through on. Silicon Valley doesn’t only value who has many degrees from various universities, but also value an individual that is dedicated and has good energy.

The fourth very crucial thing I learned was to allow your focus to give you resolve - if an outside influence gives you advice, take it in account, but don’t let it rule your final decision. The only advice an entrepreneur should take into account is the customer, because they are the people who will support the product and keep the business alive. The founders of Tapulous, Bart Decrem and Andrew Lacy, informed us that many people advised they that this would be a bad idea to start the basis of a company off. Apps… come on, right? Nothing unique, right? Wrong. The visionaries of this company followed their goal though, and ultimately helped to create the most popular game for the Iphone- Tap Tap Revenge. If Bart or Andrew yielded to the nay-sayers, what would have happened? Being passionate and smart, they probably would have been successful elsewhere, but odds are they might not be where they were today.

The last thing I learned is that in order to gain a spot at the top, so a company should never slow down. As a flourishing company, Tapulous understands that growth is necessary for a company to stay alive. It’s human nature to get bored and want something new. There are so many innovative products coming out every day, and unless a company can be always on search of something new and willing to accept every challenge being thrown at them, they will eventually die out. When we visited Tapulous and spoke to Jessica Kahn, an engineer, she informed us that she never stops creating, innovating, and searching for the next big thing.

Tapulous was a refreshing and educational experience, and it’s so stimulating to see people who started only with a dream but succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Congratulations, Tapulous – and thank you so much for the education ! Your contributions go far beyond just the time you spent with us !

©2010. All rights reserved

The Paper Business - What's next ?

The history of paper as a commodity is very interesting and one which really reflects many aspects of our humanity. The fact that it helps us communicate in a variety of ways (including for sight-impaired through braille) is a testament to its importancefor us as humans, because we know humans are social beings and it is "in our DNA" to communicate.

Starting from the ancient Egypt in approx 3700 BC, "papyrus" replaced clay tablets, and gradually perfected -- and we should give a nod to the Chinese during the Han Dynasty around 105 AD for really improving the media.

My dad tells me that when computers first became more prevalent in business in the 1970's, paper companies were in a bit of a nervous quandary because they felt that paper sales were going to drop dramatically since "word processors" were going to eliminate errors and eventually the paperless office would come into full force. Ironically, paper sales actually skyrocketed because the "dot matrix printer" made it so much easier to just reprint and reprint. Paper sales went through the roof !

Fast forward to 2010. The concept of "going green" permeates every part of our lives, including politicians trying to convince us that he or she is "greener" than his or her opponent. People are seeing the advantage of reducing paper use in many ways, and many email signatures I've seen say "Please save the environment - think twice before printing this email".

Adobe's "Portable document format" (PDF) technology has matured - allowing people to fill out applications online with no use of paper whatsoever. Testing centers are now many times taking tests on computer - reducing the need for me to find several "number 2 pencils". The list of paper-reduction efforts is broadening.

Now we have e-book readers like Kindle and the Sony Reader. Publishers are tracking closely the growth of this (sure to grow even more) industry. Ironically, many "ebook reader" metrics I've seen don't even include the grandaddy "iPad" because it's not marketed really as one, though in many ways its the biggest threat to "paper" publishing and the greatest boon to "e-book" publishing.

Here are some interesting graphs: The first one shows paper consumption by country in 2006.

As expected, US is very high , followed by Germany, UK, and Japan.

Keep in mind these are not by any means 100% scientific but still a decent indicator of who is using paper more.

This chart is 2006 - several years before the "true emergence" of the e-book reader wave of popularity.

Next, let's look at another graph -- which shows the general trend of e-reader sales worldwide. I think the juxtaposition of these two graphs can tell an interesting (almost intuitively simple) story about where we can expect paper sales (or book sales) to trend over the coming 5 years. Keep in mind the left axis represents thousands of shipments.

This means that in 2008 approx 1 million e-book readers were shipped, yet in 2013 we're approaching 28 million ! I believe this number can be underestimated, in light of a recent article I read remarking about the potential number of iPad sales in 2011 - potentially 30 - 40 million worldwide !

One must believe there is a correlation between the number of e-book readers that are sold and the reduction in "paper" books, magazines, newspapers, etc that are sold.

Easy conclusion to make -- and one which bodes as another interesting challenge for the paper industry.

Well, for me personally, I just hope this all makes my backpack lighter - I'd much rather carry a backpack with one iPad in it that 40 pounds of books !