Across the Desk with Elizabeth Plouffe: Recent Episodes
Elizabeth Plouffe
Keep it short they say: entrepreneur, teacher, communications professional, superhero enthusiast, lifelong learner, tea addict, book lover and movie watcher. I take what I've learned and help businesses save time, money and craziness for their communications.
Did you know that execution comes down to 3 main things? People. Strategy. Operations. Not those on their own but how the leadership abilities in charge of the organization engage with those three components. Is your leadership style to delegate and then completely step away? Yikes. Are you a micromanager who builds distrust and angst within your team. Oy vey. Or do you take the time to have real conversations, give honest feedback and encourage debate and idea generation. Yeah! Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan deliver a book on leadership and how it impacts an organization's success or failure on project execution. We're talking a few thousand dollars to a few billion per project. Either you have what it takes or need to learn it quickly if you want your organization to succeed. With this book in your tool kit, I think you've got a better chance of less butt-covering, more authentic engagement and an even greater chance of becoming a better leader.
Ursula the Sea Witch knew what she was talking about. In the absence of our real voice, our body language will reveal many things we might not expect. Subconsciously you could be leveraging your assets or you could be influencing decisions being made about you without even realizing. Those assets can be problematic when you aren't aware of what they're up to. Eye contact, your chin up, stance, what plane are your hands in and staring someone down when you thought you were just paying attention. All of these can add up to more sneaky shit than you realized ...
Selling doesn't come naturally to many people. In fact, to be a downer, it can be freaking hard. Why? Because people break the laws. The laws of behaviour. value, building brand, building trust and believing in yourself. There are more laws, but from my point of view these are probably the top ones that people are just busting all over. So maybe it's not selling that's crazy hard: maybe you are making it harder by not reading this book. If you're short on time, as most people are, this book breaks it down for you as fast as possible. Just like building trust and branding, you have to put the time in. I'll confess that I ended up having to read this book over several weeks as I started right in the middle of a huge event. But that's not the only reason I'm going to read it again. It's just that damn good. It provides value, helps you believe in yourself, makes you want to read more of Jeffrey Gitomer's books (which I already have) and gets you to trust this guy with more sales experience than me and 10 of my colleagues put together.
The Behavioral Revolution: How to change culture and behavior with 21st century science – Paul Gibbons Changing behaviors matters – what people say and intend has value, but without alignment of actions with words, results don’t happen. I provide insights from 21st century science (nudges, habit change) and offer leaders tools they can use to drive change – in business, and in society. Paul Gibbons is an author, speaker, and consultant. His “beat” is helping business leaders use science and philosophy to make better strategic decisions, implement change, innovate, change culture, and create workplaces where talent flourishes. His most recent book, The Science of Organizational Change has been hailed as “the most important book on change in fifteen years.” Between writing projects, he consults, coaches, and speaks with businesses such as Microsoft, Google, HSBC, KPMG, and Comcast.
Meet Sarika Kharbanda who is a globe trotting scrum master who embraces technology as a means of building teams, attending events and training organizations. How? Well for the purpose of this podcast, she uses a Kubi :) Find out how to use tech to create engagement, build opportunities and laugh with your full face and have it mean something to who your talking too!
Meet Katy who is one of the fabulous speakers for Spark the Change Toronto 2017! Katy Saulpaugh is an expert agile practitioner who has implemented culture and technology change strategies at all scales for private, public, and nonprofit clients in the US and Europe. As agile practice lead at Enterprise Knowledge, LLC, she specializes in agile coaching and facilitation and has enabled clients to become more agile at the team and organization level. She has also developed solutions to drive adoption for IT and knowledge management projects using online communications, instruction design, and employee engagement approaches. Outside of her professional work, Katy is active in both the agile and change communities, and is a founding member of the Washington, D.C. chapter of the Association of Change Management Professionals.
Meet Luc Galoppin - one of our great speakers at Spark the Change Toronto 2017! Organizational Change Practitioner and Author Luc Galoppin looks at organizations like communities that need development, not as machines that need fixing. He is the co-author of Managing Organizational Change During SAP Implementations, Guest Lecturer of Executive Education in Core Business Integrations of Sustainability (CBIS) at Harvard School of Public Health, and founder of the largest community of Organizational Change Practitioners on Linked In (50,000+ members)
For over 10 years Allison Graham has been helping professionals grow their top line revenue. Her bestselling book, From Business Cards to Business Relationships: Profitable Networking & Personal Branding Made Easy is the foundation for her original work. She’s been featured as an authority on sales and networking in the media and worked with some of North America’s most influential brands. That’s her public Behind the scenes, she’s been dealt a series of difficult blows that magnify the collision between home and work. Her struggles have earned her the moniker, Resiliency Ninja. In her latest book, Married My Mom, Birthed a Dog: How to Be Resilient When Life Sucks! Allison makes people feel less alone in their struggles and gives them tools to ensure that tough times don’t have to dictate their level of success.
Have you ever sat and wondered what your mom might think of some of the decisions you make when it comes to business? We all know moms have the power to make us feel 9 with our hand caught in the cookie jar. Or maybe that's just my mom ;) But ultimately, if we use making our parents proud (or grandparents or favorite aunty)as part of the barometer for decision making, I think things might go differently in some cases. Today we talk about stepping over the line and forcing someone to be the loser in a situation isn't the best way to do business. It might work out short term (cough Trump cough) but it will catch up with you. Your reputation will begin to precede you and people will start to get that twist in their stomach when dealing with you. Like it or not, your shady side isn't as well hidden as you'd like to think. Relationships are not quick deal. They require time and effort and nurturing. You need to have a long term plan in your head ALL THE TIME so that when tempted to be not so awesome, you remember the plan. And that whatever decisions you make will have long term impact on you, your business, your relationships and your life. Consider this the finger wagging that your mom would give you if she knew what you were up to. And if you're keeping everything on the level? Then this can be your cheek pinch for a job well done :)
I have to be honest - this isn't my best podcast for WWW. Further honesty - I had too many homemade Blondies (Think a brownie but without the chocolate. I'm allergic to chocolate. Yes, you read that right.) There's a connection to the book here but you'll have to read the book to put it together. Kirstine Stewart is the current Chief Strategy Officer for Diply. Before that she worked for Twitter, was the head of the CBC and brought us reno and decorating gurus Mike Holmes and Sarah Richardson. Her resume is awesome but not as awesome as how much she will share from her personal and professional experience to help other women become great leaders. I've tried read a few female leadership based books (Sheryl Sandberg, Arlene Dickinson) and they were awful. I know if you don't have anything nice to say, you shouldn't say anything so I'll stop there. It was refreshing and revitalizing to read from an accomplished, successful female leader who didn't hold her personal life up as the hardship story that begat her success. Kirstine Stewart focuses on the innate leadership skills and abilities that all women can tap in to as the chief building block for her success. It's that relateability that allows us to see more potential in ourselves and realize that a kick ass pair of heels might not be the reason we reach the top faster, but it can't hurt.
The older I get the less I use the word hate. I think I stopped liking it mostly because I realized the power of it. The power to demean someone. The power to change the dynamics of a situation. The power to influence decisions and thought processes and personal development. Used in passing, such as "I hate when that happens" isn't a huge deal. It's when it's used in a personal interaction that I shudder. We have no idea what that word might trigger in someone. We have no idea how much of a game changer it could be. Today's chat is about my boobs. Indirectly anyway. And no, I don't hate them. In fact, there isn't a single thing I hate about myself. Not one. I'm not a narcissist. I'm just a decent human being who believes that hate is reserved for a level of society to which I do not belong. I hope you'll take a listen and take hate out of your vocabulary. And even take it a step further to take it out of other people's as well. Once you listen, I hope you'll understand where I'm going with this. PS - I use the F word at the end of this podcast. I have a love / hate relationship with the F word. Mostly love ;) But for my mom who listens religiously - sorry Mom xoxoxo. I know you love me anyway!
I've spent years networking. Years I tell you. At first on behalf of my employer but for the last 3 on behalf of me. That's scary for some people. It was for me. So I went to countless networking groups and events. This had its benefits in helping me craft my message, hone my offerings and getting my face in front of a lot of people. But it also wasted a lot of time. Time my business doesn't have to waste. Now I network smarter and make opportunities happen out of that. One of the things I've learned is the strength behind routinely evaluating the networking that you are doing. If you've been going to a group for a while and not got a stitch of business, that should be telling you something: either your message is off or the group isn't right for you. Regardless - it's time to make a decision. Continue going or find new opportunities. My business is important to me so I went seeking new opportunities. It was through this decision that today's podcast came to be. I hope it encourages you to make the most of your networking time, take chances on meeting people you might not otherwise get to meet and build your reputation by networking smartly. After all - your business is counting on it.
Can you whip off a white lie and not even blink? Do you commit to events or meetings and then bail? If your word is your bond, is yours crazy glue or sticky tack? If this got you feeling a bit cringe worthy, then take a seat. I did a poll a few years ago to find out what people thought of me. I was happily surprised to find that the top 3 consistent words were: Loyal, Trustworthy and Honest. Sounds boring to some but to me it was music to my ears. I broke a fibbing habit by age 24 that most people probably weren't aware of and have spent the rest of my days making sure that those 3 words are what I'm known for. If you think lying won't bite you in the ass at some point, you need to stop kidding yourself. And if you are over the age of 18, you need to grow up. Liars suck. I have stopped being friends and won't do business with people who prove to be liars. Even fibbers and story stretchers go on the shit list. My advice? Take a listen and see if your honesty habits need a tune up. If so, AWESOME! Get off your butt and make a commitment to a clean slate of honesty. If you listened and said Bah! I will never get got. Well karma can be a card carrying bitch my friend and I suggest you keep one eye opener for all the people you've screwed over. They might be listening to this podcast and thought of you ...
I will bet quite a bit of money that if you ask any business owner what their number one struggle is, 98% will answer the same damn thing. Sales. And if you are a solopreneur, you're not only the entire production team, communications team and admin assistant, you're also the whole sales force. That's a lot of hats and most people only have one head. Today during Ballsy Women In Business, we talked about sales. The experience you don't realize you have and the experience you don't realize the person in front of you has had. Both are very important to your bottom line. We touched on that tricky limbic brain and how the wrong messaging or rushing the sales cycle can trigger that fight or flight response faster than you can say used car salesman. If you're in a position where selling is your hairshirt, then this might be the podcast for you. Sympathy will always sit between shit and syphilis in the dictionary, but we've all been there and are happy to give a little to the fellow entrepreneurs making their way through the sales cycle. Remember: you're selling to solve a clients' problem not shiest them. So buck up and get out there!
Entrepreneurship can be challenging for anyone. For women? Sometimes you need other women to get a better understanding of what you might be going through. Carrie Green, founder of the Female Entrepreneurs Association, has developed a community that women can find business resources, emotional support and the ability to take action for your business that you might otherwise struggle with. I stumbled upon the FEA when looking for local business building groups for women. I started to learn about FEA because of my own group Ballsy and wanted to learn all I could to make it successful. Carrie Green offers workshops, webinars, online resources and community forums. It was the opportunity to take the goal setting workshop if you bought She Means Business that gave me the experience the FEA truly provides. Take a listen and learn how She Means Business might just be the book you need to kick your fears over, your business in to high gear and your life in to reality you've dreamed of.
People can get caught up in the myths and legends surrounding entrepreneurship. We see Oprah and Richard and Steve and Arianna and all the fancy folks and figure that will be us in a year. Nope. Nope it won't. Downer right? But wait! All of these people have something else in common - education. Continuous learning. Determination. Smart teams. Processes. All the behind the scenes stuff that we don't know about until we start looking. While we might think it's the present day business gurus like Tony and Simon and Gary who have cornered the market on success, they're actually standing on the shoulders of giants like Peter F. Drucker. Haven't heard of him? You need to. This week on WWW, I'm sharing the wise words from Druckers' famous book, "Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Practices and Principles." If you plan to be an entrepreneur and haven't read it yet, get it. I wish I had when I started and am so glad I have now. Knowledge is power peeps ;) And we all need more of that.
What is there to not love about Monday's? New ideas. New week. New opportunities. Oh that's right. Your boss sucks. And they suck the fun out of Monday's. My boss is awesome and that's because I'm the boss. In this episode of Entrepreneurial Entrails, I chat about saying yes to change, putting the fun parts of you (don't be dirty) in to your business and making Monday's suck a whole lot less than they do right now.
Have you ever wanted to attend a conference or event but the cost didn't work for you? Either what you would get out of the conference wasn't worth the price or your budget just wouldn't allow it? Consider volunetworking. Just about every large scale event you can think of depends on volunteers. Hiring staff to man all the areas of an event makes the budget near impossible to maintain and takes away from other things you could be offering. I guarantee you that event organizers are interested in getting free help. But the difference? How you treat the experience. If you decide to reach out and create an opportunity, make the most of it. Be willing to go the extra mile if needed. Somebody else cancelled? Pick up the slack. Don't have your own business cards? Make sure you collect from everyone you meet and then connect on LinkedIn with a personal message that includes how you met. Make sure that you keep your social media posts professional and to a minimum. Check in at the location, a quick "it's great to be here" and a photo. Maybe one or two during the day while on a break. Add the event to the project section of your LinkedIn profile. And follow up with the organizers after thanking them for the experience! There's a lot more ways to make an event work for you but the best is to remember to provide value to the organizers!
We can all have some challenges when it comes to personal development. For example - if we don't think we need to work on it at all. If we think it's too touchy feely. Or girly. Or a waste of time. Or all of the above. To be honest - that's kind of where my mind usually goes. But in the spirit of going outside my comfort zone, I went with an author that I've grown to know and respect through watching her TED talks, chats with Oprah and Chase Jarvis and the general community consensus that she's awesome. Brene Brown is a Phd and researcher in to a lot of the touchy feely stuff that most touchy feely people won't even touch: shame, vulnerability and fear. Those are topics that don't inspire a lot of warm feelings but they are also the ones we need to deal with to get ahead in our business. I jumped in to The Gifts of Imperfection and really enjoyed it. Even had some aha moments that made me glad I got over myself and my narrow views of personal development. If you want to dip your toe in to the PD world, this research backed, fact driven, personal narrative just might having you jumping in to the self help pond with both feet.
Winning is about negotiation versus capitulation. You may or may not agree with that but the truth of the matter is this: at the end of the day, what are you trying to accomplish? Part of setting up a win/win in business is having a clear idea of what your goal is going in to the negotiation. If you are wishy washy, it comes across. In your ask, your body language and your spoken language. Those are the times where knowing the sneaky shit of the win/win would save you aloooooot of trouble.
Today the focus was on obstacles to our goals and how we overcome them. We roundtabled and came up with quite a list of obstacles and avoidance techniques we all have used at one time or another while working on our business. 1. Cooking and domestic duties 2. Paralysis by analysis - overplanning and getting too caught up in detail to move forward. 3. Social media 4. Office chatter 5. Dabbling in a variety of goals vs picking a few goals and focusing 6. Busy brain 7. Excuses - shifting blame to outside interruptions (darn kids) 8. Fear of success / Imposter Syndrome 9. Negative influences. One of the chief ways we all agreed we overcome these obstacles is by recognizing them for what they are in the first place. If you are heading to a go-to stress reliever / time waster (such as FB ;) ) then seeing that for what it is helps to put boundaries around the time spent. That was another solution - scheduling time to plan. Scheduling time for office chatter. Scheduling time for social media. If you put it in your calendar and see it as a reward for getting work done, it might help you overcome the urge to delay the work you need to do. Biggest of all, I think, is recognizing that goal setting and the work to achieving those goals, is hard work. It might be considered another thing on your to-do list which is already long enough. Here was a suggestion I got from the Carrie Green work I've been doing: Write out ALLLLL your goals. Big. Little. Audacious. And then choose 5 to achieve over the year. Yup: 5. Why? Because once you write out the five, you're going to add action items to the goals and the people who can help you reach the goal. That, my friends, is doable vs overwhelming. In the meanwhile, as Oprah says, know that we are rooting for your rise! That Ballsy is a group to grow your business with and know that you aren't alone in the face of challenges. If Oprah can admit to being afraid and using a team to succeed, so can we! Thank you everybody for a great conversation and learning opportunity. You all inspire me to continue to rise :)
Celebrities can create some interesting opportunities for themselves but it's not all easy peasy. They fall in to some traps where they might rely on their name to push a crappy product just for the sake of pushing a product. (Kardashian's anyone?)Or they aren't taken seriously even though the product IS worthwhile because they're a celebrity. That isn't fair either. Then there are the celebrities that fall in to the 3rd group where they decide to do things their way to promote a great product and won't go for the shameless exploitation. Paul Newman was that guy. A celebrity who happened to have a great idea for a high quality salad dressing but who initially refused to use his celebrity to make it happen. He believed enough in the product to try and make it on quality alone. Reality proved to be more of a challenge than movies and he eventually had to resort to a bit of shameless exploitation in order to get his product out. The game changer? He didn't do it for himself. He didn't do it to add to his bank account. He was willing to put his face and name on a product for one reason: kids. The altruistic and philanthropic focus of helping kids dealing with life threatening illness go to camp and forget about being a sick kid for a time. If there's any good reason to go for shameless exploitation, then his Hole in the Wall Gang camps would be it. This was a great read and provided some insight in to a celebrity that has left a legacy far beyond his movie roles. For any business owner, you'll find inspiration and ideas in this book to help you stick to your vision and deliver a product worthy of your name and, if you choose, face.
A little while ago I was searching for the hashtag #cancer on Instagram. It was that time of year and I wanted to see what conversations and images people were sharing. What came up? A lot of crap. A lot of unrelated, trivial, full on crap that should never have come up at all. And it made me angry. Why angry? Well, I take communications seriously. For many personal reasons, I take cancer seriously too. When I see someone abusing the tag purely to drive traffic to their pitiful content, my inner crankypants comes out in a big way. Why share this? Because if you are trying to drive engagement with your audience or get new followers, you might be tempted to try this nasty troll trick not realizing the damage you're doing. To your business, your reputation and your online profile. Or if you do realize it's a troll thing to do that and are doing it anyway, I'm here to tell you to stop. It sucks. It's rude. It's going to bite you in the butt. Here's a few tips and tricks for using tags the right way and some choice words for those of you choosing the troll way ;)
Building your business is hard. Long days. Lots of grey hair. Maybe that's just me. But what I do know is what money I do earn with my business has been because of my hard work and hustle so when I go to spend it? I want to make sure I get the most bang for my buck. Take tradeshows. If you've never done one before then I'm here to tell you something: there is NOTHING worse than putting in the time, energy and effort for a tradeshow and having it suck. And by suck I mean the producer has done one step up from squat to promote the event and the attendance is everybody you've seen before. As I've said before, I don't have guests across the desk that I don't believe in. It's my rep on the line when I bring someone on and promote them. So it's not lightly that I sat down with James Burchill last week to discuss the upcoming SFN Tradeshow. Why this guy? Why this tradeshow? Why should you listen? Because if you're in the GTA and are trying to build your business, then I'm telling you, hand on heart, you need to learn more about this event. And if you suck at networking and making the most of opportunities like this? Well, stay tuned for the next episode with James because we're going to discuss a fantastic new way to fix that. www.sfntradeshow.com
Does your gut every give you a message? Run? Don't trust that person? Some signal that you sometimes ignore? Don't. Trust is something that requires honesty on both sides. Honesty for you listening to your gut and what it's telling you to do and honesty from the person trying to connect with you. If you live in a head space where being a schmuck is the only way to operate, you have a different take on trust. You use it as a means to get what you need. You build it to your advantage. You have no idea the damage that you are doing not only to yourself (in the long run) and to others in your industry. When you are a schmuck in a certain industry, you end up painting so many people with the schmuck brush that don't deserve it and they then pay the price. We focus today on the right way to build trust. Some things to look for when your gut is stamping it's foot and why you should listen. Don't be a trust schmuck!
Why Now Is the Time To Crush It is a question most entrepreneurs ask themselves in various ways. I think to both talk themselves in to the adventure and when they are having complete WTF moments about why they started in the first place. Crush It - Cash in on Your Passion is a book that I will be re-reading and soon. Not only did it provide solid advice for how to engage and grow your business but it also was very realistic about the level of hustle required to make it happen. If you've got rose colored glasses on about the fancy schmancy life that entrepreneurs lead, then being brought up to speed on reality is one of the many reasons you should read this book.