CEOtoCEO participant awarded National SBA Young Entrepreneur of the Year

I recognized that confident smile immediately.  It was CEOtoCEO Breakfast participant Dan Price, Co-founder of Gravity Payments.  Dan was recerntly recognized as the National SBA Young Entrepreneur of the Year.  Dan's company works as an intermediary between merchants and credicard companies, has 50 employees and more than 5,000 customers.

I asked Dan to share his experience with the rest of us.  Congratulations and thanks for your thoughts Dan

"It was awesome," said Price of his meeting with Obama. "It was the coolest thing I've ever done."

I am just very proud to be a part of the Gravity team. Even though it is technically an individual award, it was clearly presented because of the accomplishments we have made supporting small businesses as a team. I was afforded 45 minutes in the Rose Garden with President Obama, two Governors, and members of congress. I found everyone engaging, open to my ideas, and appreciative of our work. The President emphasized that he sees small business leading out of the recession and recognized that 2 out of 3 new jobs created come from entrepreneurs like me.

In the meantime, not a lot changes…we still need to focus on providing merchant processing at half the cost of competitors, keep our focus on transparency and honesty, and continue to provide world class customer service. It was a great award, but full steam ahead…we haven’t quite arrived yet!

Congratulations Dan.  Look forward to seeing you at the CEOtoCEO.

Corporate Citizenship: From the inside out

As business leaders we are approached by a number of community organizations to help support their cause.  Most provide worthwhile services that benefit the communities we do business and the needs have escalated over the past few years.  The “asks” are made from members of numerous charitable organizations, our employees, clients and trade partners. 

You can’t say yes to everybody and it doesn’t feel good to say no to anybody.  Scott Harrison, CEO of Barclay Dean Environments shared his company’s corporate citizenship strategy at the May CEOtoCEO Breakfast Rather than reacting to every request made for assistance Barclay Dean uses proactive approach by incorporating corporate citizenship into the company's strategic thinking and planning.  The company corporate citizenship focus is children, health and education.

The results of Barclay Deans approach speak for themselves.  The company has been selected as the 2009 Corporate Citizenship of the Year Award for consistently supporting over 20 non-profit organizations each year.  In addition being actively involved in corporate citizenship allows Barclay Dean to build valuable relationships with other businesses in the community.

CEOtoCEO provides helpful advice from peer leaders

Jeanne Wintz of Gilmore Research Group is a regular at the CEOtoCEO BreakfastCEOtoCEO Breakfast in large part because of the valued input she gives and receives from other participating business leaders. 

A few months back Jeanne arrived at a  with a heavy heart and looking for advise and support from other business leaders. After a rigorous budgeting process evaluating the impact of the economic turndown, the decision was just made to layoff a number of employees throughout the organization. The decision had been made carefully and seemed to be the best move to make for the long-term viability of the company, but it wasn’t a comfortable choice for a company with a 60-year history and a strong reputation for loyalty to its workforce.

As with other business leaders she was concerned about how the layoffs were going to impact productivity and morale of the surviving staff. Sharing her situation with other leaders seated at her table she received great advice from these empathetic and experienced colleagues on how to go about implementing the layoffs and keeping remaining employees engaged. In a meeting with Jeanne last week she commented that the input she received at the breakfast enabled her to carry out the plan with confidence and be more effective while leading the organization through this difficult time.

To help solve your problems with solutions from other leadership peers plan to participate at one of our CEOtoCEO Breakfasts soon.

Improving Employee Engagement and Productivity Using Social Media

An old-timer once told me that there is only one way to kill a rumor….make it a fact. Easier said than done in this period of uncertainty and anxiety in today's workplace. As leaders we have all know that harmful rumors become "facts" if we do not communicate with employees on a regular basis to keep them engaged and productive.

At the March CEOtoCEO Breakfast speaker Richard Law, CEO of Allysis, shared the following examples of how he keeps employees informed and involved in whats going on in the company using social media tools.

“You Ask, We Answer” Forum Hosted on Intranet
• Anonymous Post Option
• 24 Hour Turn Around Commitment
• Ask Anything … Management Has to Answer
• Deeper Understanding of Company Direction
• Shared Decision Making
• Two Way Conversation

Kudos Program
• Clients & Employees Encouraged to Call Out Exceptional Performance
• All Kudos Posted Monthly; Top 3 Get Awards Quarterly.

Employee Blogs
• All Topics Allowed
• Encourage Sharing of Knowledge
• Quick Insight into Departments, Leadership, Employee Development Opportunities

Benefits of being a 'Best Company to Work For'

Eric Overton, President and CEO of Sparling Electrical Engineers, the largest specialty electrical engineering firm in the country headquartered in Seattle. I asked Eric what does Sparling do to be selected and recognized as being a 'Best Company to Work For', and what benefits does his organization realize from this effort? Read on for Eric's response.

Sparling being rated as a best company to work for is a recruiting edge as potential recruits want to work at companies that are progressive, have happy employees, opportunities and so on. I think it demonstrates that a company is progressive and cares about its people.

I believe my employees find Sparling a great workplace for many reasons. We offer a great environment that supports collaboration, team work, progressive office space design, the firm’s graphic image and brand is all over the offices, we utilize technology a lot as a part of our culture. We offer very competitive benefits and compensation, based on performance based incentives and we are delivering. We aspire to be a fun place to work, a very strong culture of open communications, risk taking is celebrating when the focus is on innovation or client satisfaction.

As CEO I preach honest, open and transparent communications. We publish our KPI's monthly in a dashboard environment so everyone can see firm performance, right down to each design studio and practice area of the firm, and we talk about it regularly. We do a lot of the same things other companies do, hold quarterly company update meetings and serve food and drinks, we engage in outside activities and encourage our staff to get involved. We have a very strong Corporate Social Responsibility program and actually pay every employee an extra day of leave when they go volunteer at a charity. We make our CSR program a big deal because I realize that people really desire to give back, not just monetarily but with their time. Our younger staff don't always have the money but they have the desire to contribute and have the time to give, the young Gen Y's want to change the world, money isn't as important in many ways.

In the end, we do what we say. We are a business centered practice and we return firm profits to our staff in the form of performance bonuses, leadership bonuses for our shareholders (when we do really well) pay a dividend to our shareholders and fund our 401K, annually. We have done this for 25+ years and I am committed to this as part of our commitment to our staff. We watch our business very closely.

Sometimes I think it isn't that difficult, but it is hard work. One of the very unique benefits of our culture and being a Best Company is that it attracts great talent, Sparling is considered one of the premier engineering and consulting firms to work for on the West Coast, and we attract talent from all across the US and even abroad. I guess it works.

My "Journey" continues...

As many of you know by now, I have thrown myself into the "social media fray" and have become fully engaged in learning, understanding and using this revolutionary new media.  It has been an eye-opener to say the least.

When I first met Blaine Millet and Clay Loges, my consultants and coaches, I realized the world was changing for me and for every business out there.  If you haven't been to one of their presentations, I would highly recommend it.  You can get more information out about them and what they do at WOM¹⁰ .  They will open your eyes to an entirely new way of thinking about your business.

What I am realizing as I get more and more involved is this is a huge "mind shift" for me to make - away from "promotion" and more toward "sharing useful information in real-time".  Everyone wants something of value and fast - exactly what social media offers.  Because of this, one change you will see me making is away from the larger, more formal Breakfast "e-mail newsletter" to shorter, summarized e-mails you can read in less than 30 seconds and decide if you want to know more.  If you do, there will be links to a brief story.  This will "help" my audience get more without having to sift through information that might not be as relevant to them right now.

Let me know what you think when I send some of these out to you over the next several weeks.  The beauty of social media is I can react to your comments and make changes immediately - how cool is that!

Social Media - Inside and Outside

We all know Social Media is one of, if not the hottest topics of conversation today.  So what?  Why should we, as business owners and leaders, care?  Great questions and EXACTLY what we are lively presentations and discussion are going to be in the next CEOtoCEO Breakfast Series.

As a business owner, there are some questions you might want to be asking yourself in regard to social media.  How is this going to help me increase sales?  How is it going to bring in more of the "right" customers instead of wasting our time with the "wrong" customers.  How is it going to replace my expensive traditional media I have used for years - even though the results are going down?  How can I use it to increase employee loyalty?  How can I use it to create a better "teamwork" environment inside my company?  How can I use it to attract the "right" employees?  These are just a few of the questions that are being asked and will be answered in March.

If  you have thought about social media at all for your business - whether it is thinking "outside" the organization to increase your sales and build more business or whether it is thinking "inside" the organization on how we can use it to improve internal communications and teamwork, we will have some great discussions about BOTH these topics.  Blaine Millet and Clay Loges of WOM¹⁰ will talk about how this will "change your business" in regard to sales and Richard Law of Allyis will talk about "changing your business" on the inside.