One of the things I’m trying to accomplish with this blog (and with my life at this point) is improving the way in which entrepreneurs are trained.  One of the core elements of entrepreneurial training is coaching.  I’ve had a fair amount of experience with coaching in different contexts.  I’ve coached improv teams (at IO and the Playground in Chicago), and different entrepreneurs starting businesses (Go Comedy, and various entrepreneurs at Bizdom U), and I’ve picked up some tips from some great coaches.  So here are some tips for coaching people.  BTW, these tips can apply in almost any context where you’re helping someone.  If you’re working with someone to help them – then essentially you’re coaching them.

Sympathy for the Devil

Before launching into it, a few words on Mike Leach.  Unless you follow college football (and if you don’t you’re a communist), you may not know this, but Mike Leach was the Head Coach at Texas Tech.  Generally praised for innovative pass-oriented schemes, he was somewhat of a maverick among coaches.  He recently got fired for mistreating a player.  I’m not here to defend his tactics (although I’ve dealt with my fair share of people whom I thought were faking it when they claimed they couldn’t do something).  Rather I bring it up to simply say that coaching is a tricky business.  When your mission is to maximize someone’s potential, you often find yourself doing weird things that you barely understand, much less trying to justify what you’ve done in the court of public opinion.  In other words, being a coach, I feel your pain Bobby Knight and Mike Leach.  Also, your mileage may vary.  These tips have worked for me and helped me.  They may strike you as a bit nuts.  But listen to a Knute Rockne speech.  Coaches are nuts.

3.5 Guideposts for being an effective coach

1. It’s Not About You

It’s very important to focus on your goal as a coach – to maximize the potential of your players/coachees.  It’s not about buffing up your glory, making you feel good, validating your worth, etc.  It’s about them.  Be willing to do anything to achieve your goal – even if it deflates your ego, takes you down a notch or look like an idiot.  You also need to be willing to be thought of as an asshole – and play the part of asshole when necessary.  Some people are motivated when pushed. Some people are motivated to prove somebody wrong. You may need to be an asshole to motivate these type of people.  Be willing to be hated, despised, and the object of scorn.  Everyone loves success – and if you can help people achieve success, it won’t matter whether they love, like or respect you.  Your job is to put them in the best position to win.   Do that because nothing else matters. If you need unconditional love get a dog, don’t look to your players.

1B. Don’t cross the streams

Don’t become friends with your coachees.  It’s okay to like them, and when you’re no longer in the coach/coachee relationship, you can be their buddy.  That doesn’t mean you can’t be friendly with them.  But don’t forget the essence of the relationship.

2. The first pulse you take is your own

While you may occasionally need to take on the demeanor of an asshole or screaming lunatic, internally you’ve got to keep your pulse in check.  This is along the lines of not hitting your kids in anger (really – never hit your kids – but you get what I’m saying).  It’s okay to be angry, frustrated and even incensed to the point of blinding rage – but you always need to make sure the choices your making in your coaching behavior are coming from a space of maximizing performance – not venting your spleen. If you need to vent your spleen, kick the dog you bought back in tip #1.

3. Know your role, and shut your mouth

Your role is to maximize performance.  By focusing on that, and remembering that, you’ll realize that you needn’t coach everything that’s coachable.  I see rookie coaches absolutely destroy people’s motivation by criticizing everything that can be criticized in a performance, game or business plan.  If you call out every single thing that needs improvement, you’re not coaching, you’re showing off how knowledgable you are, and how observant you can be.  That makes it an ego driven process – and – tip #1 – it’s not about you.  You’ve got to say and do just enough to motivate maximum performance, then shut the fuck up.

Got any good coaching tips or experience with coaches you’d like to share? That’s what the comments are for friend!

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I wrote the following tips for my current batch of entrepreneurs, but thought they might have more general application here.  Email is like a hammer: it’s a great tool when used effectively, and f*ing painful when it isn’t.  Enjoy!

Email.  We use it every day.  But are we using it as effectively as we can?  Probably not, if we’re not doing the following:

1. Use Reply All: Before I came to Bizdom, I hated Reply All.  I thought all it did was clutter up my inbox.  Now? I realize it’s the reason my inbox isn’t cluttered – it’s informative.  If I’m cc’ed on an email, I want to know how the conversation is going and whether the issue’s been resolved.  When I cc someone on an email, I want them to be part of the conversation.  Maniacal use of ‘Reply All’ helps this immensely.  Do it as a matter of common practice.
2. Informative Subject Lines: There’s a reason newspapers, blogs, and various other forms of media use headlines – it lets the intended recipient know what the communication is about.  It allows them to skim the headline and prioritize.  When you recycle an old email for convenience sake, you’ve made the subject line useless.  And ultimately put your own convenience over that of the recipient, which leads me to my next point:
3. Put yourself in the shoes of the recipient: You want something from them, make it easy for them to give it to you.  You want them to read the email? Make sure the subject matches the content.  You want them to do something after they read the email? Ask.  An email with a document attached could mean “I need you to review this immediately” or “I just wanted you to have a copy of this” or “Hey look at me! I can use attachments!”  Without a direct call to action, you’re making it difficult to get the recipient to take any action, much less the action you want them to take.
4. Use a signature block: If someone wants to follow up on your email, make it easy for them to contact you.  Give them your email address, phone number, address, HAM radio call sign, whatever it takes. Signature blocks automatically added to your email achieve this in a no muss, no fuss manner.

When I was improvising, one of the big moments of self discovery I had was when I realized that everything we do onstage looks like a choice, so we should be conscious of that choice and make it a choice.  When it comes to something as mundane as sending an email, this same principle applies.  Ask yourself – what result am I trying to obtain with this action, and have I done everything to make that result obtainable. Have I given it 100%?

Some of you do this consistently and regularly, and clearly get what I’m talking about.  To you, I offer nothing but praise and encouragement.  Your efforts matter and you will be effective.

Some of you will think I’m an email maniac who’s obsessing about some minor points.   To you, I ask – faced with the choice of communicating effectively and communicating ineffectively, what would possibly justify choosing the ineffective route? Effective people take effective action – that’s what makes them effective.

In the comments, please share your email pet peeves or opportunities for excellence.

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My friend, the incomparable Margaret Hicks, has started her own business giving tours of Chicago.

A Smart Idea for a Business

It’s really a great idea for a lifestyle business.  It leverages her knowledge (she’s trained as a docent, and has done tours for other companies) and her skills (she’s funny, engaging, and smart without being smarmy).  It also leverages the natural resources available in Chicago (interesting sites, stories, and an abundant tourist population) all of which she can access at basically zero cost.  Zero cost natural resources? That’s the type of thing business dreams are made of.

A clever idea to raise money for your startup

Margaret’s really gone from being a smart cookie, to being a whole tray of steaming hot cookies made by your Nana with her fund raising strategy.  She’s having a “Help Me Build My Business” party.  For $20 her guests will get booze, beer and great food (her husband is a pro grade cook).  I was so enamored of the business idea and the fund raising idea that I kicked in $50.  And I can’t even make the party!

Why this is a clever idea

I’m a big fan of bootstrapping, but also calling in all your resources.  By having this party, she’s calling in her resources in a fun way that won’t burn out those resources.  It’s the Girl Scout Cookie Principle:  ask people for small favors and give them something great in return and you can tap those people again and again. Girl Scout Cookies raise funds for the Girl Scouts without tapping out the resource (all those aunts, uncles and people at work).  Why doesn’t it tap them out? Simple, they get a benefit above and beyond the ‘donative’ benefit and the incremental hit is so small they barely notice.  Do you remember how much you spent on Girl Scout Cookies this year? I don’t, except when I tuck my gut into the car, and next year I’ll get hit up by the same tiny Trumps for cookies and willingly fork over my moolah.  Brilliant.

It also taps into the Kid Rock Marketing Method: relentlessly promote your product to whoever will listen – particularly if those people express positive interest in the product.  If you went up to Kid Rock after one of his early shows and told him you liked his music, he’d thank you and ask you if you were coming to the next show.  If you were, he’d ask if you were bringing anyone.  If you were, he’d ask if you wanted to sell T-shirts (giving you a T-shirt in return).  Obnoxious – hell yeah.  But that’s because we live in a world where self promotion is frowned on.  Are you starting a business? Do you want it to survive, succeed and possibly grow? Are you telling people about your business?  If you answered “yes” to the first two questions, why are you answering “no” to the third question? Networking is as much about getting the word out as it is about asking for stuff.  Start getting the word out.

Margaret’s doing a great job of conceiving this business, funding it, and getting the word out to her potential supporters and evangelists in one swell foop. Check it out at ChicagoElevated.com.

Have any clever fund raising ideas? Ever been sucked up into someone else’s promotion efforts? Ever sold a Kid Rock T-Shirt? Chime in on the comments.

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Have ideas.  They’re more important than opinions.  With an idea, you’re open to suggestions.  With an opinion, you’re trying to be right.

It’s more important to think than to be smart.  This is why successful people are always asking questions.  They may not be smart, but they never stop thinking.

Do that; victory will follow.

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While looking for a good definition of a scalable business I came across two great articles.

First, from Sacred Cow Dung, a wonderful explanation with killer graphs.

Then, from Briefing.com, a great explanation.  No graphs, but a brilliant quote:

“Many Internet business models didn’t pass basic tests of credibility. For example, sites with pure advertising models are usually unable to answer the most basic question about growth: how big can you get? The reason is that growth is entirely dependent upon increased page views, either by more users, or more pages, offset by declining ad rates.

Both have upper limits and most companies with advertising models have fixed costs exceeding current revenues. When you try to compute how many page views a pure advertising model needs to generate just to cover fixed costs, it is usually baffling.“

That’s my emphasis added, but the article makes a great point.  The only way to scale an advertising based model is to increase the number of page views.  This naturally has an upper limit, and that upper limit is probably much more shocking than you realize.  I think we delude ourselves when we hear about someone making ‘millions’ off a blog, and think that’s really a business model.  It’s a hobby, possibly a lucrative one, but a business? Probably not.

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I went to Ignite Ann Arbor last night.  Ignite is like a cross between a poetry slam and a geek knowledge dump.  Each speaker comes with 20 slides, which advance automatically after 15 seconds, and has 5 minutes to speak.

The topics ranged from “Keeping Things in Balance: Classic Visual Ratios” (an excellent talk which taught me about Fibonacci ratios in web design) to “Real-time NOAA weather satellite imagery reception from home” (which was mind bottling – with a scanner, an antenna and some free software you can grab data from a satellite).

I highly recommend going to an Ignite event, if you have one in your town. Unfortunately the next one in Ann Arbor isn’t for another 4 months, but they’re everywhere. Check out the Ignite website for more details.

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This week I was a Curbside Consultant at the Launch of FastTrac to the Future, an entrepreneur development collaboration between TechTown, The Kauffman Foundation and the New Economy Initiative.  Bizdom has received grants from the New Economy Initiative and Kauffman, so we’re tangentially part of this.

The final event of the day was  a panel on ‘Entrepreneurial War Stories’.  It featured the inimitable Patrick McInnis (CEO of FatHead), Jane Sydlowski (AMI Strategies)and Randal Charlton (former CEO of Asterand).  The stories were great, as were the lessons.  At the end, the moderator asked each of the three for a couple of tips for entrepreneurs to survive and succeed as entrepreneurs.

Pat McInnis

• Control your control freak
  • relinquish control
  • don’t relinquish accountability
• Culture matters
  • you create a motivated workforce when you focus on people and help them achieve their dreams

Randal Charlton

• Money will be tight
  
  • but get going on the least amount of money you can
    
• Leverage existing resources
  
  • there’s much more in place around you than you realize

Jane Sydlowski

• Consider ‘No’ a ‘Yes’
  
  • you’ll experience more ‘no’s’ than you know
  • don’t accept ‘no’
    
• Show up for yourself
  
  • network
  • share your story with pride

Great tips one and all.

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I emceed the TechNow09 conference last night.  The panel presentation was outstanding and I was glad to be able to host that.  It was also pretty impressive that they landed both Congressman Gary Peters and Oakland Country Treasurer-Elect, and the man behind the Michigan Movie incentives, Andy Meisner.

Apparently my duties were well received, I was even a notable quotable at a few points.

Here are some Tweets (boy I hate that word):

@rsmudge: @DanIzzo good job tonight. You had good stage presence.

@RyanMeray: Had a great time at #technow09! Got to meet @damnredhead, got coffee at Bean & Leah afterwards with @hcwlau, and dug @danizzo’s emceeing.

@RyanMeray: Dan Izzo – “Did they check you for the secret Apple tattoo?” #technow09

@RyanMeray: Dan izzo is awesome. #technow09

@RyanMeray: Dan Izzo drops the #tweetoprahcalypse awesome. #technow09

@RyanMeray: Dan Izzo – “What we have here is a glimmer of light.” #technow09

And my personal favorite:

@Rebeccakim11: I’m the guy with the microphone, stop me bitches! #technow09

Thanks to everyone for coming out.  Remember your assignment: in the next week promote living in Michigan on Facebook, Twitter, your blog, email, wherever you can.

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