I saw it coming.

Now it has happened.

As foretold in my recent open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) has again abruptly halted accepting new requests for support. Unfortunately, IRAP program suspensions are becoming regular annual affairs.

Only back in business for just a couple of months now, this innovation support program’s shutdown comes only days into the Government’s and IRAP’s new fiscal year that started April 1st. Why you may ask? Well, the straight answer is:  they quickly ran out of money once again because of Federal Government under-funding.

What Happened to the Money?

This may seem surprising because the Government of Canada’s March 4th Budget 2010 said how they were, for a second year now, confirming a C$100 million investment coming from the Canada Economic Action Plan (CEAP) to be made through NRC-IRAP which would “help the Government build a competitive advantage for Canada based on excellence in science and technology”. But, given the aforementioned development, I suggest that this C$100 million in funding is either fictional or it’s being siphoned off to pay for Government overheads or social infrastructure costs like Universities and government departmental and affiliated organizational payrolls. The result is that this announced (but maybe not to be spent) funding will not, therefore, make its way into the bank accounts of small and medium sized business (SME) where it could have supported new wealth and tax base creation R&D.

Canada’s Federal Government Under-Funds SME R&D

In comparison to the US, Canada’s Federal Government declared support for SME R&D is half what it should be. This is because, as Canada is 1/10th the size of the US in terms of both population and GDP, our spending here should be C$200 million, not the above mentioned C$100 million, for the US Federal Government website reports “their Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs award $2 billion to US small high-tech businesses” every year .

From my own first hand experience, and from second hand stories I have heard, I know NRC’s IRAP program is vital to many of the early stage innovation companies in Canada. From their ranks will come our technology superstars of tomorrow. That is, if they can find a way to survive until then. And in today’s post-Great-Recession tough business climate, NRC IRAP support today is all the more vital.

Description of NRC IRAP

For those companies that qualify and are judged of sufficient potential to get approved, IRAP offers refunds up to 75% of incurred project R&D costs for a three year period to a maximum of $500,000. Eligible IRAP refundable expenses are those internal and external R&D project-related costs that include employee salaries, materials, laboratory and consulting expenses, but no travel or capital expenses. To be considered for funding, businesses in southern or urban Canada must have no more than 500 employees whereas no workforce size restrictions are applied to companies in remote communities.

Interestingly, the grant and tax credit application assistance firm INAC Services Limited of Guelph Ontario reports that IRAP discourages SME companies from hiring consultants to help them prepare their IRAP applications even though neither English nor French is the first languages for approximately 80% of all Canadian business owners.

Based on INAC’s experience with IRAP common practice, they expect this program’s 250 employees will only start taking in new proposals again in December, some seven months from now. For those deemed best qualified and most promising, they will have to hold on somehow until NRC gets more program money at the beginning of the Federal Government’s next fiscal year, which starts April 1, 2011. Of course, that is unless someone in Ottawa opens up the Government’s purse sometime earlier (not much chance of that I fear).

What Should You Conclude & What Should You Do?

What should we take from all this? I suggest these are your take-home conclusions:

1. Canada’s Conservative Party doesn’t really care about stimulating innovation, particularly if it is in non-natural resource industry sectors;
2. Canada’s Conservative Party doesn’t really care about encouraging SMEs to be more successful, grow or increase employment; and
3. Canada’s Conservative Party doesn’t really care it they spend $25 million to have 250 IRAP program employees sit around doing nothing much for 9 months each year.

If you care about this situation, I suggest you support my March 19, 2010 open letter appeal to Prime Minister Harper. To find it, use the following link:

    > Dear PM Harper: Help SME Business Now!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 Article by –Tony Johnston

© Blog.TonyJohnston.biz & Compass North Inc. 2010

[NEWS FLASH] According to the announcement posted on the Bloggertone website on March 24th, 2010, Biz Money Matters has been declared one of the winners of the Sugartone business article contest having submitted the article ‘Timely FREE Advice for Biz Owners: DO IT!’ which received 32 votes on the B2B social media site BizSugar!

Here is a copy of this award winning article:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Yes, times are tough for sure. Many people everywhere are struggling all trying to deal with the consequences of the 2008 – 2009 Great Global Recession (curse those stupid / greedy people who caused this economic disaster).

But even though lots of customers have run off looking for cover and many of the rest of us are so shelled shock we just want to hide in a bunker, we can’t waste time bemoaning our fate or the current state of the world. The only way each of us can start improving things is if we get focused on:

• How to make our future better?
• How to start making better things happen some how? And
• How we can get early results now?

Well, here is a simple, easily-executed 5 step game plan for how you can do just that:

1. Get Optimistic

If your business is not dead-and-gone now, odds are likely it won’t be later.

Remember, the future includes you, so best you focus on where and what it is.

2. Pause / Think / Plan

Action without objective leads no where – eventually – so take a bit of time to pause, assess, and work out how you can best get somewhere important.

Let me mention how this step is not about finding or envisioning perfection.

If you feel stymied, move on to points 3 – 5 before cycling back through points 1 – 2 again later.

3. Just Do It & Count Your Beans As You Go

Like how Nike’s slogan is all about action in a sports context, you need goal-oriented activity that’s energetic, timely, savvy, focused and efficient too.

So keep in motion and remember to keep score as you go.

4. If You Can’t Do It Yourself, Get Someone Who Can

It would be easy and simple if we could survive and thrive by doing everything ourselves but invariably getting business results requires we partner up with other people, be they our customers, our co-workers or our supporters (sometimes consultants as well).

Too many business owners fear collaboration but that may risk their company’s very survival. Please don’t be short sighted or overly self-interested. That’s why I suggest you pay whatever reasonable price you must to get others central to your business success on your side pulling where you need to go.

Remember, business is a social game of survival first, so sharing your ‘pond’ with others should be your first priority before you go and get fussed about how to become the biggest ‘frog’ there.

5. If You Can’t Get Someone Else (For Whatever Reason), Reprioritize

Flexibility and adaptability are keys to avoiding the same fate as dodo birds and dinosaurs. So, if you are finding the food your business lives on has gotten up and gone somewhere else and/or if you find yourself lacking the help or resources necessary to get done what must be done, it’s time to rethink your game plan and reprioritize your goals.

When you find yourself in this situation, what you need to do is go back to step 1 and start the process all over again. Otherwise, you just might find your ‘pond’ drying up on you without you knowing where to go when.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 Article by –Tony Johnston

© Blog.TonyJohnston.biz & Compass North Inc. 2010

March 19, 2010

The Right Honourable Stephen Harper
Prime Minister of Canada
Leader of the Conservative Party
Member of Parliament for the riding of Calgary Southwest AB
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa  K1A 0A2
  [Sent by email to: pm@pm.gc.ca]

Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

Re: Please Help iSME Business Now!

Canadians have now heard your Government’s recent Throne Speech and Finance Minister Flaherty’s 2010 Budget. And yes, times are tough and the deficit is astronomically high, something I acknowledge is likely to continue for 5 more years.

Furthermore, I understand how Canadians ideologically against taxes expect you to not reverse the GST reductions your Government enacted a few years ago by any amount, even though that could ease our country’s strained financial situation quite a bit.

Despite the above, let me raise an important point with you because effectively you are the person who determines what gets done and not done in Ottawa these days. This matter relates to the real backbone for jobs, wealth creation, and tax revenues in Canada: innovation oriented small and medium sized businesses (iSMEs).

Canada’s Job & Wealth Creation Engine is Sputtering and at Risk

Due to the problems in the economy and the capital markets, iSMEs all across Canada are REALLY struggling, particularly in Ontario. Many, if not most, have eaten through their reserves of cash that came from reinvested past profits or early rounds of capital investment. Additionally, new customers, new orders, and critical new sources of financing are all in extremely short supply to those at the base of Canada’s business totem pole.

Today, it is abnormally hard to get loan financing, venture capital, angel capital, or new equity of any sort. What is going to give? Is your Government going to stand by while many of these early and growth stage companies lose hope and the ability to carry on? Many more people will be put out of work if this happens, only to be memorialized in bankruptcy ads that their court appointed receivers place in local newspapers.

I respectfully ask you to extend a modest amount of critical grass roots encouragement to this vanguard economic sector on whom much of our near and mid term future prosperity depends, namely innovation oriented Canadian SME companies. Canadian iSME businesses NEED help from your Government NOW, not later. Support coming a year or more later such as how the Government’s recent stimulus package has rolled out won’t do if we are to benefit to a material degree from growth in this key bell-weather sector!

Different Canadian Regional Realities Exist

I believe it is important for you to appreciate how here in central Canada iSMEs innovate, develop and manufacture high value goods and services in order to create their income, secure their future, and employ lots of people.
 
This is a different reality from what many SMEs in Western Canada do. There, in the part of the country that you have been calling home for a long time now, the majority of SMEs enjoy the relative luxury of having their living tied to our country’s indigenous natural resources. Lucky them / poor us.

The reality of our future here in Ontario and Quebec, where 2/3s of Canadians live, depends on finding new ways to innovate and do business at home and abroad in a rapidly changing, increasingly complex world where interdependence is exponentially increasing year after year. This is also true for innovation-oriented commercial, industrial, manufacturing, technology and health science companies in other parts of Canada.

That is why I encourage your Government to extend critical support lifelines NOW to innovation oriented SME companies to foster (a) real, grass roots Canadian job creation and (b) the nearer term iSME led revival of Canada’s economy.

Here is how I suggest your Government can do that: support two iSME oriented business initiatives.

One of these is directed at helping innovation companies more easily find market-sourced financing, which can be done by extending an existing tax program to this sector.

The other is directed at providing them with two critically important financial and non-financial forms of direct government-sponsored business support.

Both of these suggestions are aimed at stimulating new innovation development today AND in the very near future. That means more job creation NOW and more net increased tax revenue SOON.

I suggest strongly that both need to be done TODAY for they are reasonable, relatively cheap and affordable ways to help preserve Canada’s iSME business resource base and appropriately cultivate its future growth and global competitiveness.

Proposal 1:
- Increase Market-Sourced New Funding for Innovation Development

My first suggestion focuses on helping SME innovation companies better finance themselves.

This could be done within established precedents if you direct Finance Minister Flaherty to extend the existing Flow-Through Share Program from where it is now, only available to mining, oil and gas, renewable energy and energy conservation companies, to where it could and should be, available to all capital needy new innovation development corporations including tech & biotech companies in all knowledge based industry sectors.

Importantly, your Government’s already in place SRED tax credit qualification program could be leveraged to determine who qualifies and who does not. So you see, this is all about extending proven-to-be-successful programs to help these iSME companies attract vitally important equity capital from public and private market investors, not setting new precedents.

Proposal 2:
- Provide More Business Support for Innovation Oriented Companies

In the same vein, I suggested there is a critical need to re-establish proper funding to the already established iSMEs business support programs run by the National Research Council (NRC), most particularly NRC’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP).

I say this because I have witnessed first hand how iSME businesses have and are being increasingly cut off from critical but minimal financial and business advisory supports by your Government. How has this happened? Well it has happened because of the decision to increasingly cut down funding to the NRC which in turn has forced them to underfund IRAP.

IRAP is a highly successful, well received, multi-dimensional business support program which has helped cultivate many of Canada’s successful companies. But now, it regularly runs out of its program funding early on in the Government’s fiscal year. This stymies iSME new initiatives and I hear that the situation in the 2010 -2011 fiscal year will be significantly worse.

Please arrange that NRC’s IRAP programs get an ultra-quick return to adequate funding so they can encourage worthy Canadian iSME businesses to innovate, grow and fight harder in the global economy to survive these tough times.

Examples of the good work IRAP has done in and around the Greater Toronto Area can be found in the numerous companies here that have received (i) life saving small grants from various IRAP programs and (ii) vital business mentorship support from not-for-profit, IRAP-supported organizations like the Innovation Synergy Centre in Markham.

Why NOW is the Time to Invest in SME Innovation

In tough economic times, businesses of all sizes tend to hunker down by cutting jobs, delayed-payoff activities, and discretionary spending. Much of this is understandable but some is incredibly short sighted.

An example of the latter is cutting back on support for sales and marketing even though it takes sufficient sales to make it through the short term while getting more growth requires somehow finding more new customer needs to serve. Sales and marketing is a particularly strategic area in all companies, one where it takes money (i.e. making new investments) to make more money (reaping future profits). Not investing in these activities when revenues have been negatively impacted by the economy is like tying one’s shoes together. That same truth goes for Canada as a country too. In terms of new job and wealth creation, we need more investment in the iSME sector because Canadians depend on this sector and it is where much of the Government’s tax revenues come from.

Conclusion

Prime Minister Harper, seriously and respectfully, please provide more stimulus support to Canada’s iSME business sector starting TODAY. While many of these companies in locations across this land are in bad shape now, this sector is our economy’s vanguard and what happens there will define much of our country’s GDP future. All of us highly depend on iSME business for a significant portion of total new job and wealth creation.

There are savvy, practical and highly affordable things that can be done quickly. These have been mentioned above. For the sake of Canada and all Canadians, stimulate continued iSME innovation NOW for this is the time to act.

Sincerely,

Tony Johnston
President
Compass North Inc.
Management & Advisory Services
that help companies get more:
   sales / profits / cashflow / capital / valuation

cc The Honourable James M. Flaherty, P.C., M.P.
     Minister of Finance for Canada

     Related & supporting information posted on line with comment requested
     at http://blog.TonyJohnston.biz

Related & Supporting Information:

OECD March 2009 Turin Round Table on the Impact of the Global Crisis on SME & Entrepreneurship Financing & Policy Responses

Globe & Mail March 15, 2010 Editorial: High time to aim higher

Globe & Mail Simon Avery March 12, 2010 ROB Front Page Article: Lessons from the tech bust

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 Letter by –Tony Johnston

© Blog.TonyJohnston.biz & Compass North Inc. 2010

Now I have your attention, let me tell you what’s remarkable about this article.

It’s not the controversial title or any suggestive pictures. Rather, it’s in the practical advice about how you can best stand up, stand out, and be vital to those you need to get passionately excited about what you have to offer – your customers.

With times as tough as they are now, at least economically for most, there is a pressing need for practical and effective ways to find more new business prospects to ‘seduce’ and ‘satisfy’ in ways so positive that they just can’t wait to sign up as fans on the company facebook page.

But how can your company do this?  

I say: get naked! (Figuratively speaking that is.)

In and of itself, this advice may not seem remarkable, for I am not the first consultant advocating people do this. Indeed, one company was advised their staff should literally bare all to improve office morale. It was just a year ago that it was reported David Taylor, a business psychologist, had convinced workers at the design and marketing studio onebestway in Newcastle upon Tyne, northeast England, to start having Naked Fridays as a great way to boost their team spirit. If you are keen to see the staff’s sexy calendar-like picture, check out the following blog article on this reported news item:

  > Calvin Palmer’s Weblog: Staff Bare All to Improve Office Morale

Nor is what you are reading the first online article to use the term ‘Get Naked’ figuratively, for Wired magazine’s front page shouted out three years ago that ‘Get Naked’ was the way to rule the [business] world. If you want to check out Wired’s sexy front page picture back then, click on the link to their archived edition below:

  > Wired Magazine Mar2007: Get Naked and Rule the World

But before you get too ‘hot n bothered’ reading my article here, let me get to my point.

The best way for you to (i) win new customers, (ii) get more business, and (iii) make a lasting positive impression on others is not by taking off all your clothes in public or by ‘letting it all hang out’ when you are around others you want to impress. Both of these only have momentary sex appeal, it any, for most.

Rather, the best way for your company and your offerings to attract attention and cultivate robust customer relations is if you:

1. Be Remarkable,

     and

2. Be Passionately ‘Other-Interested’

The first point is about getting noticed for the right reasons, not the wrong ones.

What you and your offerings need to do is be seen as distinct, indeed outstanding, both in the figurative and literal sense of both of these words. Not convinced? Well then, listen to Seth Godin talk about this is the following 17 minute video clip from 2003:

  > Seth Godin’s 2003 TED video talk: ‘on sliced bread’ and standing out

The second point is about how to build vital customer relationships that stand out, which is something you can do by distinguishing yourself from the 80% or so of other businesses that are all too self-interested. How can you do that? Well, by being other-interested.

When you build ‘other-interested’ relationships with your customer, you are being authentic is the way customers most appreciate. You can do this is by leveraging advice that Patrick Lencioni outlined in his recent book Getting Naked which for him means putting the client first and allowing yourself to be more exposed by dealing with client issues and needs in more open and honest ways.

For a quick synopsis of the key points in Patrick Lencioni’s book, check out the following review:

  > Globe & Mail Newspaper book review: Getting Naked

So, there you have it: some simple, straight forward advice you can execute on without delay. Now, with the direction to go in, it’s your responsibility to tackle the challenge of making it happen, making it cashflow positive, and making it profitable or bringing in help that can.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 Article by –Tony Johnston

© Blog.TonyJohnston.biz & Compass North Inc. 2010

SETH GODIN was the BIG DRAW at The Art of Marketing Conference held in downtown Toronto on March 2, 2010. Sponsored by Microsoft Dynamics CRM, this Conference drew an audience of 1,600 people to to hear six internationally renowned thought-leaders and bestselling businessbook authors talk about critical cutting edge marketing issues

What Seth Godin DID there was WHAT he has been doing oh so well for the last 15 years: – helping us ALL do a ‘Screen Refresh’ on our Business Brains, this time by sharing his views on Leadership & Creativity in marketing today.

EXEC SUMMARY: SETH GODIN on LEADERSHIP & CREATIVITY

NOW is time to re-appreciate your marketing fundamentals.

MARKETING going forward will be all about focusing on Creating Value for individual customers in individualized ways that are relevant, specific, and special to each.

To do this requires individual and organizational Freedom, Creativity and Courage. This is the only way to commandingly Connect with People today, get them to WANT what you have to sell (if they find it wantable), buy your offerings, and join your TRIBE of loyal followers.

To marketing people and organizations: do this and you will SUCCEED; don’t do this and you will get FIRED!

[* The enduring value Seth Godin delivered at the Art of Marketing Conference was NOT in the 'WHAT' of WHAT Seth Godin said but in the 'WHAT' about WHAT Seth Godin talked about. In this I encourage you to think along the lines of Marshall McLuhan and his statement that “The Medium Is The Message” because marketing success today is not to be found so much in doing what Seth Godin says but in doing things like Seth Godin does. Baffled? Well then I invite you to read on for there is an explanation in the assessment / evaluation commentary section below.]

SETH GODIN in Profile

Hailed as "America’s Greatest Marketer" by American Way Magazine, Seth Godin is best known for:

• Promoting emarketing terms and popularizing concepts like permission marketing among many others;
• writing the most popular marketing blog in the world;
• being the author of numerous bestselling marketing books including All Marketers Are Liars;
• speaking to large groups on marketing, new media and what’s next;
• and being the founder of Squidoo.com, a fast-growing recommendation website.

Seth Godin first gained recognition in his work as a brand manager for Spinnaker Software. Then in 1986, Godin used $20,000 in savings to found Seth Godin Productions. This book packaging business, that operated out of a studio apartment in New York City and published a variety of books written both by Godin and other authors, became best known for publishing the Beardstown Ladies Investment Guide.

In 1995, Godin launched Yoyodyne which used contests, online games, and scavenger hunts to market companies to participating users. In August, 1996, venture-capital firm Flatiron Partners invested $4 million in Yoyodyne in return for a 20% stake. The site gained significant traction by getting over one million viewers annually visiting the site and by getting companies like America Online, American Express, H&R Block, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, Sony Music, Sprint, and Volvo to use its services. It was here that Godin made his name by developing the principle of permission marketing and by authoring the books eMarketing: Reaping Profits on the Information Highway in 1995 and Permission Marketing: Turning strangers into friends and friends into customers in 1999. In 1998, Godin sold Yoyodyne to Yahoo! for $30 million and became Yahoo’s vice president of direct marketing, a position he held until 2000.

In total, Seth Godin is the author of 14 books to date. Notable have been how his Free Prize Inside was a Forbes Business Book of the Year in 2004; how in its first two years of release, Purple Cow sold over 150,000 copies in more than 23 printings; how The Dip was a Business Week and New York Times bestseller; and how Godin, in publishing his FREE ebook Unleashing the Ideavirus produced the most "popular ebook ever written" according to claims made.

Marketers should take note of how, beginning with Permission Marketing, Seth Godin has consistently used the concepts he promotes in his books to promote whatever latest book he has out. For Permission Marketing, Godin gave 1/3rd of the book away for FREE to anyone who sent an e-mail. For Unleashing the Ideavirus, Godin this time released the entire eBook on the internet for FREE, which led to eventual publishing deals in 41 countries and a public speaking career. For Purple Cow, Godin crated a milk carton container for his book which generated significant attention. For Tribes, Godin launched an exclusive online community for the first 3000 people who pre-ordered the book

Seth has an irrepressible speaking style and no-holds-barred blog, both of which have helped him create a large following around the world. You are invited to read his wikipedia bio, check out reviews of his seminars and see what Google thinks of him.

SETH GODIN on LEADERSHIP & CREATIVITY – ‘WHAT’ He Had To Say

Seth began his presentation by immediately challenging the audience about the nature of the world today and their notion of marketing.

In lamenting how marketing has been far too much about promoting ‘average products’ to ‘average people’, he asked “Where’s the ‘ART’ in that?!?” And because that doesn’t work any more, Seth was clear in saying we need to change and look at our world in a significantly different way. He stated that the goal he had in his presentation was to help us to do just that – CHANGE OUR VIEWS & CHANGE OUR ACTIONS – and he challenged us by asking if by the end of his talk: will we have done that?

Traditionally, Seth said, TV has been the best way to market and reach the MASS audience. But companies can’t advertise enough today because there are TOO many channels all sending out endless SPAM, which makes TV no longer the way to succeed.

“Advertising hasn’t and can’t build a brand today”

The better example for how to achieve marketing success today, Seth told us, can be found in the story of the Candy Shoppe that located on Ontario’s Highway #11, a bit north of Orillia, on the road that leads to the Muskoka cottage country.

There, you can find this nondescript small retail outlet that found a way to stand out from the crowd and succeed despite all the competition coming from the dozens of similar looking stores that dot both sides of this busy north / south major route. How did they do that? Well, they did it by developing an idea that SPREAD, namely offering an incredible range of nostalgic and contemporary candy and treat items from all around the world.

“Ideas that spread, WIN”

As a result, the owners have been able to earn $150,000 a year by creating two stores on either side of the highway where the average sale per customer visit is $60. This they achieved by providing visitors who stopped in to see their shop with a trip down memory lane, for everywhere they turn, shoppers are tempted to buy from a vast, truly visually-overwhelming assortment of candy treats. The Candy Shoppe offerings includes Betty Boop, Elvis, John Deere, Disney, Nascar and other character tinware, American and British candy and chocolate bars, Dutch and salted licorices from Britain and Australia, collectible PEZ dispensers, gummies of all colours and shapes and an incredibly large range of treats that appeal to sugar lovers and diabetics alike, such as black balls, mojos, Thrills gum, wax tubes with liquid, gold mine nugget gum, chocolate cigarettes, and pink elephant popcorn. And you can even buy online too at www.candyshoppe.ca.

“People in North America have all they NEED today /
 We need to sell them what they WANT”

The key today to selling more is the strength and value of the customer connections we make, not the numbers. This is why what you need to do is create and build your own TRIBE, which means you need to show up and lead those interested in what you are interested in.

People want to interact with and buy from BRANDS that STAND for SOMETHING. Your job is to decide what you want to stand for.

To illustrate this point about the tremendous motivational and transformative power that can come from people who decide to stand up for something communities value, Seth told us the story of Nathan Winograd. This former California district attorney with a special passion for feral cats joined the San Francisco SPAC (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) as Director of Ethical Studies in 1995. There he soon became appalled to learn just how badly the American animal shelter system had lost its way. Over time they had morphed from having a mission of compassion to becoming an organization bent on coldly enforcing public order by killing almost every abandoned or stray animal they took in.

In response, he found a way to revive the concept of showing compassion to stray and abandoned adoptable pets by winning over political authorities through harnessing social networks to get the community to rise up and rally behind him in support of the “No Kill” movement he organized and led. Since then, he went on take over the leadership of an SPCA in upstate New York where he similarly turned things around, eliminating the killing of adoptable pets virtually overnight. Lately, he provides consulting services to animal shelters, rescue groups, and municipalities that embrace No Kill Solutions

Seth said that if Nathan could mobilize communities to once again show love and compassion for abandoned and stray animals, you should be able to do something similar for donuts or whatever you have responsibility for by finding ways that get interested communities to really care for these products once again.

This led Seth to emphasize how marketers need to realize that marketing today is about individuals and about showing leadership. To see this reality, Seth reviewed how we got here. He said that 100 years ago, Henry Ford succeeded by building a revolutionary new business system, one that was beyond any one person and which became in time the foundation of America’s wealth. Ford’s modern factory was based on the concept of standardized, interchangeable parts being continuously assembled into products by interchangeable people doing standardized, repetitive work.

“marketing was invented to insure factories could continuously produce
by getting people to continuously buy.”

Today, we are at a fork in the road. This is because things today are no longer like what we were taught, or what we grew up with

Human history has been a developmental progression:

• Hunters;
• Farmers;
• City Factory Workers;

      >  to where we are & need to be today >

• ARTISTS.

What is an ARTIST? Well, take Pablo Picasso as a prime example. Picasso painted what he saw, not what was, and people loved his work and bought a lot of it.

To be an ARTIST worker, the key is in being able do something that is a first, and to do it without needing or being forced to resort to a manual. ARTIST workers must have FREEDOM and be able to act without instruction if they are going to be able to succeed. This is something that does not fit well into today’s factory concept of work where the focus is on controlled production while constantly cutting costs. The problem is: once you focus on making a standardized product for average people, anyone and everyone can and will make it cheaper!

Because of that fact, we need to focus on creating work and work products that cannot be measured or replicated because otherwise, the competition can start to challenge you.

It used to be in that the old times there was Battle of IDEAS between people who backed Adam Smith who argued how it was best when you owned a machine and people who backed Karl Marx who argued how it was best to looked after the needs of the workers. Now, a third group has emerged. One that works AND owns their own machines – computers. These people are no longer hostage to big money capitalists who own the factories.

Because of that, the reality now is that factories – and the factory mentality – no longer rules the day and leaders can’t rely on worker blind obedience any more. Unfortunately, however, for a majority of workers and Chief Marketing Officers today, too many companies still expect them to follow a predefined set of instructions. But the true needs today are for workers who can focus on and have the latitude to Create and Invent for this is the ART of Business, and it is where the highest Business Rewards are.

“be an ARTIST”

No one can give you – the worker or Chief Marketing Officer – a road map that can tell you how to become an ARTISTin your own right in your own world. If it was available, then someone else would either be already doing it, doing it better, or doing it cheaper than you.

What WE need to do is teach ourselves and our organizations to: (A) solve interesting problems; and (B) lead people. This is the WAY to become a good marketer by becoming an ARTIST. Don’t fear failure. Best you start off by giving yourself either an ‘A’ in order to boost your confidence or a ‘D’ to eliminate your fear of failure by eliminating all your down side risk.

You better start making ART now because not doing so will cause you to loose your job, that one you were bound to loose anyway sometime sooner or later => better you STAND UP & BE A LEADER and see the world as full of opportunity even if we are in a recession.

“just because the tide is out doesn’t mean the ocean has any less water!”

Seth told the STORY of one person who was allowed by their organization to do ART, not just what they were told. “A woman whose mother died leaving lots of unopened shoes from Zappos called to the company’s call center to ask about returns even thought she didn’t have all the purchase receipts for the items. Happily for her, she spoke to a woman there who decided on her own to send this grieving woman a large Zappos box to help with the returns and a bouquet of flowers with a condolence card. Now, that is a prime example of WORK ART.”

Seth also told the STORY of a coffee shop owner who sent his customers a Dis-Loyalty Card that offer them a FREE coffee if they sampled nine different competitors’ offerings and got their card stamped each time. Another great example of WORK ART and how to build your own TRIBE

Seth cautioned the audience that acting in such ways is HARD, for the Lizard part of our Brain will often kick in, causing us to become scarred by inciting FEAR. This is why the traditional COMMAND & CONTROL organizations can’t handle ARTISTS, ART, and ART creation well. They tend to get too scarred and kill off any initiative going in this direction.

As an example of doing MARKETING ART, Seth told the story of a truly REBELLIOUS new product idea called ‘socks that don’t match’ from MissMatched Inc. of New York. To Seth, LittleMissMatched Socks is a fine example of an ARTIST PRODUCT, one that found a new and controversial way to get people taking about it and interacting around it, both online and in the real world. He said that because this product so outrageously broke the rules on conformity, if someone in a traditional marketing organization had come up with this idea, surely they would have been quickly killed it early in the planning stage. Of course, its appeal (and its market) is in its NON-CONFORMITY.

The reason why ground breaking concepts and product too often get killed off before they get a chance to fail with the only audience that matters is: RESISTANCE. Resistance gets in the way of ART and it comes from the fear of ridicule (and of risk). What this causes is pressure on most people to try to be AVERAGE and FIT IN. But what we need to do is, focus on:

“NOT being SHEEP”

Seth’s view is that it is vital we replace fear of the unknown with CURIOSITY because the only people succeeding today are those who are trying to do things differently and better, even though they get booed off the stage every once and a while. This means we need to manage our ANXIETY, the emotional response that is nothing more than our experiencing failure in advance. In this we will NOT find salvation in reassurance. What we all need to do is FIGHT our Lizard Brain on its own terms by learning to accept that work has changed and does change. Furthermore, we need to react by working find and solve INTERESTING problems. When as a part of our work we connect with people and try to solve their interesting problems, we are doing what modern workers should be doing and get paid to do => undertake EMOTIONAL LABOUR. If you are finding you are not engaged in and expending emotional labour, then you’re just keeping the office seat you have warm for the person who will replace you!

Seth encourages you to embrace your FEAR and put it into proper perspective. What organizations need to do is focus their offering so that it solves an interesting problem in a novel way. Don’t fear alienating some people. Rather concentrate on those who appreciate what you do offer. If you are ONE doing this, great, because it is THE way to get you started on the ROAD becoming an INDISPENSABLE LINCHPIN in to your TRIBE and to your organization.

So, if you want to get paid WHAT you think you are worth, then you need to find ways to STAND OUT, exert EMOTIONAL LABOUR, and use the following 7 WAYS to become a LINCHPIN.

1. Make connections
2. Be really creative
3. Manage projects of great complexity
4. Be good at teaching customers
5. Inspire staff
6. Build deep domain knowledge (Google your way to this if need be)
7. Work with passion and vision while not worrying about or aspiring to be the best

Doing these 7 things to become a LINCHPIN will help you focus on your SHIFT POINT by concentrating on BIG issues first, not last.  And if you were wondering what a LINCHPIN looks like, consider this example: the best sports person the world has ever seen, Australian cricketer Sir Donald Bradman. Bradman’s career Test batting average of 99.94 is claimed to be statistically the greatest achievement in any major sport because his batting average is 4.4 standard deviations above the average of other Cricket players, with the great Pelé coming in second on that list at 3.7 standard deviations above the mean for goals per game. That’s staggering. That’s indispensable. That’s a LINCHPIN.

Importantly, don’t be just warming up your seat at work for your replacement. Avoid that by creating ART by treating your WORK as a PLATFORM for ART CREATION. In Seth’s eyes, a GENIUS is a human being who either solves a problem for others that has never been solved before or finds a new, creative, different way to solve it that adds value and options. The world well rewards Geniuses who can do this. As for the others, they are just hanging around waiting to be led (and / or to be replaced).

The QUESTION Seth concluded his presentation with was this:
 
WILL YOU BE THE ONE TO STEP UP TO THE ‘MAKE ART’ CHALLENGE ??

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

SETH GODIN PRESENTATION – Assessment / Evaluation:

Seth Godin’s March 2, 2010 presentation at The Art of Marketing Conference in Toronto March 2, 2010 was GREAT – BUT it left me scratching my head for days wondering:

WHAT did I LEARN?
HOW can WHAT I heard CHANGE my WORK LIFE for the BETTER?
and
WHAT should I DO differently NOW?

Ultimately I came down to this question: WHY should I be paying attention to a short, bald guy from the US with a name that’s from somewhere else, no matter how great the following he has among the social media generation today?

The ANSWER to that is: the VALUE of Godin’s message is not in the realm of the ‘HOW TO’ even though he did give some great direction in that way – rather, the GOLD in the Seth Godin message is in the ‘WHAT about WHAT’ he had to say about marketing. Let me explain.

I encourage you to see Seth Godin for what he is (and says he is), a MARKETING GENIUS with offerings to sell – one who sets a great example about WHAT we need to do to enjoy success similar to his in today’s social media dominated world. Certainly, ‘WHAT’ I saw Seth Godin do in his presentation at The Art of Marketing Conference in Toronto was DEMONSTRATE the ‘WHAT’ about WHAT he has been doing with great success for years now:
 
   1) marketing Seth Godin ideas, and
   2) marketing Seth Godin.

In this, Seth Godin SUCCEEDED WILDLY because:

• He got people to eagerly put their BUMS IN the conference hall SEATS,
• He got people to happily PAY money to the conference organizers,
• He got his audience to eagerly GOBBLE UP WHAT HE HAD TO SAY,
• He got people to BUY SETH GODIN BOOKS so they could get them autograph by him then and there, and
• He attracted more new followers to the SETH GODIN TRIBE helping it to grow even more.

SETH GODIN on MARKETING: The ‘WHAT’ about WHAT He Had To Say

The main reason 1,600 people attended The Art of Marketing Conference in Toronto on March 2, 2010 was this: to be led in marketing by Seth Godin. But the Conference take home question is: did they learn enough there to become leaders in their own right?

Certainly, Seth boldly challenged them to do so, BUT he really DIDN’T tell them HOW TO DO IT. No, WHAT Seth Godin did was DEMONSTRATE ways people can wildly succeed in marketing today.

However, I wonder WHO in the audience really absorbed this lesson? Will the audience become better, more successful marketing leaders in their own right now that first hand they have heard what SETH GODIN, ZEE BEST eMARKETING GURU TODAY, had to say, or will they continue to be SHEEP, mindlessly following him in whatever direction he goes?

Drawn from Seth Godin’s body of presentation material, his ideas, his books, and the hallmarks of his success to date, here is what I see is Seth Godin’s SEVEN STEP GOLDEN RECIPE for marketing success in today’s social media dominated world:

1. Determine what you can produce or do for others (your ‘offering’) that could help them be better off,
2. Determine the most compelling relevant needs others have today or will soon have that are related to your offering,
3. Rework your offering as needed to closely align it to what are most compelling evolving needs others have,
4. Find vital, compelling terms, descriptions, concepts and stories to describe your offering and what it can and will do for others in practical, situationally relevant terms so they engage with you and your offering,
5. Start communicating about your offering in every effective personalized way available, trying to connect with others and turn them on to the point they BUY what you have to sell,
6. Keep working and reworking your communication methodologies to enhance and project the power and benefit of your offering so your legion of fans grow into a TRIBE of loyal followers all eager to buy more of the offering(s) you have to sell,
7. And above all, keep producing, delivering and reinventing both your message(s) and your offering(s) so that they stay fresh and relevant to your TRIBE’S evolving interests, concerns, needs and wants.

WHAT Seth Godin has done to create the tour de force in marketing that I think YOU can and should learn from. Look to replicate it in your own way if you want your own success. Certainly, this is WHAT I am and will be trying to do going forward. Hopefully, others will see and value my WORK ART and BUSINESS ARTISTIC ABILITIES allowing me to sell more and build my TRIBE of followers who REALLY appreciate of WHAT I can do and do for them. God willing, I’ll SUCCEED thereby. I encourage you DO THIS TOO.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Related Material:

Seth Godin’s 2003 TED video talk: ‘on sliced bread’
– an excellent, entertaining talk about how to stand out from the crowd

Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce
– another excellent, entertaining talk about why average products fail today and why asking people what they want in a product won’t get you the information you really need

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 Article by –Tony Johnston

© Blog.TonyJohnston.biz & Compass North Inc. 2010

Want more revenue? Well then, make your offerings stand out more, so much so that your customers and prospects see what you have to sell as head and shoulders above the competition. You can do this if you harness the power of focus, clarity, simplicity, and utility, for these are the hallmark aspects of so many great things. Harness them in your business and you will enjoy no end of success. But you need to appreciate how doing this can prove quite a challenge. That’s because strengths like these cannot be gauged effectively on their own (or by you looking just starring at yourself and your company in the mirror). No, these are aspects that require a benchmark to be judged.

Tiffany & Co. presents a powerful and readily accessible benchmark for gauging your offering’s sales and marketing strength, one that B2C and B2B businesses can both use.

If savvy business owners and top executives pay attention, they can learn a lot about how to thrive on the lengthy road to success from this world renown manufacturing and merchandising company, particularly in the realm of brand focus and how to craft high demand offerings. Started with a $1,000 loan by two entrepreneurs almost 200 years ago in New York City, Tiffany’s products and iconic brand have long stood out, winning a legion of loyal customers in the highly competitive arena of the jewellery business.

Tiffany’s Mission Statement & Brand Promise

To quickly put the above comments in perspective, let’s have a look at a Tiffany & Co. advertisement that appeared in the front section of the Monday February 22, 2010 Globe & Mail newspaper. I invite you take in the Focus, Clarity, Simplicity, and Utility conveyed in this ad, as well as its marketing message and what it powerfully has to say about Tiffany’s mission statement & brand promise:

 
Doesn’t this minimalist ad command your attention? Doesn’t the imagery of the ad make you believe that Tiffany has the breath-taking products you and your loved ones will treasure for your whole life. Heck, I bet you didn’t even pay much attention to how the ad doesn’t show any lifestyle visual imagery or a picture of their products.

Now, can you write a similar ad for your business? The advantages of trying to do this will help you reassess the fundamentals of your market and re-articulate the appeal of your portfolio of offerings. And revisiting your company’s marketing basics is a great way to help strengthen your business. Really, when was the last time you gave serious though to these matters? While it may take some inspiration and time, this is a powerful exercise in boosting the clarity of the customer value add you provide by simplifying your message and focus.The product of your labour should be a more relevant mission statement for your company that straight-forwardly states why your customers believe in your company and need and want it to continue in business, all based on what your offering means to them every time they buy from you.

Tiffany & Co. History – How They Became an Iconic Brand

For over 170 years, the name of Tiffany & Co. has been synonymous with romance, style, quality and luxury. Few American companies have such an illustrious history. Their story is one that tells of celebrities and heads of state who have worn their designs of gold, silver and precious stones on many important occasions; of ground breaking designers who lent the company their visions and creations; and of the growth of a New York City legend into a worldwide jewellery phenomenon.

New York City in the 1830s was a time of dynamic growth, extravagant tastes and golden opportunity for anyone with a little capital and an abundance of imagination. And in 1837, New York became the proving ground for twenty-five-year-old Charles Lewis Tiffany and John B. Young, who opened a “stationery and fancy goods” store with a $1,000 advance from Tiffany’s father.

On their way to the new Tiffany & Young emporium at 259 Broadway, fashionable ladies in silks, satins, and beribboned bonnets faced a gauntlet of narrow streets teeming with horses and carriages and the hurly-burly of city life. At this store that has since grown into what we know as Tiffany & Co. today, they discovered a newly emerging “American style” that departed from the European design aesthetic that was rooted in religious and ceremonial patterns and the Victorian era’s mannered, ornate opulence. The young entrepreneurs found inspiration in America’s New World natural beauty, which they interpreted in exquisite patterns of simplicity, harmony and clarity. These became the hallmarks of Tiffany design, first in silver hollow-ware and flatware, and later in jewelry. Tiffany first international recognition was achieved at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1867. The company was awarded the grand prize for silver craftsmanship, the first time that an American design house had been so honored by a foreign jury. Tiffany was also the first American company to employ the 925/1000 measure of silver purity. Largely through the efforts of Charles Lewis Tiffany, this ratio was adopted by the United States Congress as the American sterling silver standard.

Tiffany & Co.’s silver studio was the first American school of design and, as one observer remarked, “a teacher of art progress.” Apprentices were encouraged to observe and sketch nature, and to explore the vast collections of sketches and artwork assembled by Edward C. Moore, the head of the studio. By 1870, 33 years after they first opened their doors to the public, Tiffany & Co. had become America’s premier purveyor of jewels and timepieces as well as luxury table, personal, and household accessories. By the turn of the 20th century, the company had more than one thousand employees and branches in London, Paris, and Geneva.

In 1878 Tiffany acquired one of the world’s largest and finest fancy yellow diamonds from the Kimberley diamond mines in South Africa. Under the guidance of Tiffany’s eminent gemologist, Dr. George Frederick Kunz, the diamond was cut from 287.42 carats to 128.54 carats with 82 facets (most brilliant-cut diamonds have only 58), which gave the stone its legendary fire and brilliance. Designated the Tiffany Diamond, the stone became an exemplar of Tiffany craftsmanship.

In 1886 Tiffany introduced the engagement ring as we know it today—the Tiffany® Setting— an innovation that lifts the diamond above the band with six platinum prongs, allowing a more complete return of light from the stone and maximizing its brilliance. Today the Tiffany Setting continues as one of the most popular engagement ring styles and shining symbol of the jeweler’s diamond authority.

Tiffany prospered as never before during New York’s Gilded Age, the 35 year period following the US Civil War until 190 when there was a substantial growth in population in the United States and extravagant displays of wealth and excess of America’s upper class were quite common. This was a time when the world embarked on the Age of Expositions, the era of show-stopping extravaganzas that took place in the last decades of the 19th century and into the 20th in Paris, Chicago, Buffalo and St. Louis. At every venue, Tiffany won the highest honors and recognition as the undisputed leader in the world of jewels. The company’s exhibit at the 1889 Paris fair was heralded as “the most extraordinary collection of jewels ever produced by an American jewelry house.” Tiffany produced an equally praiseworthy collection for the 1900 Paris fair, along with magnificent silver pieces based on Native American pottery and basket designs. The unprecedented commendation and number of awards bestowed on the jeweler led to Tiffany’s appointment as Imperial Jeweler and Royal Jeweler to the crowned heads of Europe, as well as the Ottoman Emperor and the Czar and Czarina of Russia.

With the death of Charles Lewis Tiffany in 1902, Louis Comfort Tiffany, the founder’s son, became Tiffany’s first Director of Design. An entire floor of Tiffany & Co. was devoted to merchandise crafted in the Tiffany Studios, Louis Comfort Tiffany’s atelier. His position as America’s leading designer was well established by 1882, when President Chester Arthur invited him to redecorate the White House. By 1900 the younger Tiffany was a world leader in the Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts movements. The famed artist created a remarkable range of designs, from technically brilliant leaded glass to colorful Tiffany favrile glass, and enameled and painterly jewels based on American plants and flowers.

Throughout the jeweller’s history, the most prominent members of American society were frequent Tiffany customers. Vanderbilts, Astors, Whitneys and Havemeyers, as well as J.P. Morgan, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Paul Mellon, commissioned Tiffany to produce gold and silver services. Admirers of Lillian Russell ordered a sterling silver bicycle. President Lincoln purchased a seed pearl necklace for his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. And a young Franklin Roosevelt purchased a Tiffany engagement ring in 1904.

As the twentieth century progressed, Tiffany designs captured the spirit of the times, from the extravagance of the 1920s to the modernism of the 1930s and the aerodynamic age of the 1940s and 1950s. Tiffany china set the stage for White House dinners and Tiffany jewels accented the elegant clothes of the world’s most glamorous women, including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Babe Paley and Diana Vreeland. Very often world-renowned jeweller Jean Schlumberger created their jewelry. Hired in 1956 by then Tiffany chairman Walter Hoving, Schlumberger’s lavish, nature-inspired jewels remain the pride of Tiffany & Co.

Throughout Tiffany’s history, the United States and foreign governments have called upon the company to create special commissions. Among them are the Congressional Medal of Honor, the United States’ highest military award; and the 1885 redesign of the Great Seal of the United States, which can be seen on official government documents as well as on the one-dollar bill. As well, business and professional organizations have also called on Tiffany design expertise through Tiffany Business Sales. The most famous of these commissions is the Vince Lombardi Trophy for the National Football League Super Bowl Championship. Tiffany has had the distinction of creating this original and well-known design since the first Super Bowl in 1967.

Tiffany & Co. Today – Success Built on Clarity of Brand

Today, Tiffany & Co. is a public company worth about US$5.4 billion, whose stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol NYSE:TIF. As of fiscal year end 2008, it operated 208 stores across North America, Asia-Pacifc, and Europe and did robust business via the internet that produced US$220 million in profits on sales of US$2.9 billion with 87% of its sales coming from jewelry.

Tiffany & Co. success today is the product of a strong business. They have long been a legend in the jewellery business enjoying a strong, well defined brand based on offering premium goods, especially in the jewellery category, where they enjoy enduring popularity based on offering jewellery well earned reputation for stunning classic design, excellent craftsmanship and very high quality. 

How Tiffany & Co. Maintains Its Brand
 
In the eyes of its management, the Tiffany & Co. brand (the Brand) is the single most important asset of the company. The strength of their Brand goes beyond the trademark rights they have to their name, the distinctive blue ‘robin egg’ colour of their product packaging, the Tiffany Blue Jewellery Pouch, and the Tiffany Blue Box. Inherent to their company’s brand strength is the ongoing management of the ‘Brand’ through the regular monitoring of consumer perception and evolving preference using focus groups and survey research.
 
Tiffany’s management believes that consumers associate the Brand with high-quality gemstone jewellery, particularly diamond jewellery; excellent customer service; an elegant store and online environment; upscale store locations; “classic” product positioning; distinctive and high-quality packaging materials (most significantly, the Tiffany & Co. blue box); and sophisticated style and romance.
 
Tiffany’s business plan includes many expenses and strategies to maintain the strength of the Brand. Stores must be staffed with knowledgeable professionals to provide excellent service. Elegant store and online environments increase capital and maintenance costs. Display practices require sufficient store footprints and lease budgets to enable Tiffany to showcase fine jewellery in a retail setting consistent with the Brand’s positioning. Stores in the best “high street” and luxury mall locations are more expensive and difficult to secure, but reinforce the Brand’s luxury connotations through association with other luxury brands. By the same token, over-proliferation of stores, or stores that are located in second-tier markets, can diminish the strength of the Brand. The classic positioning of Tiffany’s product line supports the Brand, but limits the display space that can be afforded to fashion jewellery. Tiffany’s packaging practices support consumer expectations with respect to the Brand and are more expensive. Some advertising is done primarily to reinforce the Brand’s association with luxury, sophistication, style and romance, while other advertising is primarily intended to increase demand for particular products. Maintaining its position within the high-end of the jewellery market requires Tiffany to invest significantly in diamond and gemstone inventory and accept reduced overall gross margins, and accept that some consumers will view Tiffany as beyond their price range.

All of the foregoing requires management to make tradeoffs between business initiatives that might generate incremental sales and profits and Brand maintenance objectives. This is a dynamic process. To the extent that management deems that product, advertising or distribution initiatives will unduly and negatively affect the strength of the Brand, such initiatives have been and will be curtailed or modified appropriately. At the same time, Brand maintenance suppositions are regularly questioned by management to determine if the tradeoff between sales and profit is truly worth the positive effect on the Brand. At times, management has determined, and will in the future determine, that the strength of the Brand warranted, or that it will permit, more aggressive and profitable distribution and marketing initiatives. A key part of maintaining the strength of the Brand requires that Tiffany make superior customer service a top priority, which it achieves by employing highly qualified sales and customer service professionals and maintaining ongoing training programs. [emphasis added above to draw readers attention to important lessons for management - article author]

How & Why I Know About Tiffany & Co.

You may wonder how it is that I (as a guy) know about and appreciate Tiffany & Co. Well, that because my wife, my daughter, and my daughter-in-law are and have been their loyal, repeat customers for some time now. Beyond that, my father (a longtime lover of fine things including jewellery) liked taking my mother to Tiffany’s famous store on 5th Avenue when they made frequent trips to New York on business and to see my Grandmother there. So, as you now know, I grew up seeing the famous Tiffany Blue Box and the smiles and atmosphere of elegance it could produce.

Related Web Links:

Tiffany & Co. Web Site
– where you can shop on line

Tiffany & Co. Investor Information
– check out where TIF is trading at today

Tiffany & Co. March 2009 SEC 10-K Filing
– detailed business overview of company

© Blog.TonyJohnston.biz & Compass North Inc. 2010

Article by –

Tony Johnston, CMC, CGA, MBA, BA (Econ)
President
Compass North Inc.
18 Balding Court
Toronto ON
M2P 1Y7
Office:  416-342-5652
Mobile: 416-346-4140
www.CompassNorthInc.com
www.CNiRapidResearch.com

Tony Johnston is a business results specialist, top level executive and management advisor. Having successfully led 4 turnarounds and with many significant operations, deal making and finance oriented accomplishments to his credit, Tony helps companies drive:

› top line growth (revenue)
› bottom line improvement (profits)
› cashflow management (credit line control)
› growth strategy (more / new)
› financing & stakeholder relationship management (debt / equity)
› enterprise value maximization (mkt price)
› acquisition planning & execution (find / close)
› divestiture preparation & execution (prep / negotiate)
› information gathering (competitive intel / market research)
› crisis control (turnarounds & wind-downs)
› enterprise leadership (CEO / CRO / CFO)

Compass North Inc. is a management & advisory services firm that helps companies achieve important, challenging operational, financial and transaction oriented goals. Examples of what we do include helping companies and their owners:

– make better decisions by providing customized competitive intelligence,
– grow by crafting strategic plans and implement them,
– get turned around by dealing with their debt or other business problems,
– borrow more money and/or raise more equity, and
– plan, prepare, negotiate and close acquisitions, divestitures and ownership
   transitions.

Bottom-line: The benefit that Tony and Compass North Inc. deliver is helping company owners maximize both what they earn while they own their business and what they bank when they sell.

> Follow me on Twitter @CompassNorthInc

It’s hard finding ways to beat the competition let alone keep up with them, especially in the challenging economic times we have today. So, if you get a chance to hear about key business strategies that ambitious companies intend to follow in the coming year, I think it’s well worth the time and effort to pay attention to what gets said.

And courteously of Ernst & Young LLP, that’s exactly what I got to do a week ago when I was in downtown Toronto attending the Financial Executive International Canada breakfast seminar called “Managing the upturn: Key strategies for sustained profitable growth”.

Today’s Key Strategies for Sustained Profitable Growth

This February 19, 2010 seminar was held to report the findings of a January 2010 executive research project undertaken by CFERF (the research foundation of FEI Canada) and sponsored by Ernst & Young. Their report presents the consolidated survey results from more than 200 Canadian senior financial executives that identified key strategies they will be using in 2010 to position their companies advantageously for the emerging recovery as well as detailing what are their current main issues and key concerns. 

Here is a summary of the report’s main findings:

~ 60% of those surveyed expect a return to normal growth in mid to
   second half 2010
~ 70% expect inflation to be the biggest concern
   (but this is expected to become problematic only in 2011 or later)
~ 38% felt declining profit margins was their most significant financial risk
~ 50% see IT systems as their number one capital investment priority

And of particular interest to me was the following -

~ 80% have ‘grow revenues’ as their prime 2010 corporate
   strategic objective!

This ‘we-want-more-sales’ statement really jumped out and caught my attention. That was because the specifics on how such results are expected to get delivered were not provided, other than the vague suggestion made that such would be achieved by providing better customer service. But the logic that providing more customer service can generate more sales doesn’t work for me. I think this because I see customer service as being fundamentally a post sale activity. When it is a pre-sale activity, I view it as nothing other than an expected component of the sales solicitation process.

In tough economic times, saying your organization is going to drive more sales by providing more service sounds suspiciously like nothing more than politically motivated corporate messaging ‘coded’ by executives to divert attention and deflect potential criticism, not manage expectations.

Too Often Typical Sales Growth Strategies Don’t Work

So, what’s the ‘real’ revenue growth strategy these companies intend to use?

Well, here’s the answer if we take as typical the sales management approach one major US based consulting firm I know in the productivity & cost improvement space will be using to attack their revenue challenge: most companies will use the same strategy to get out of the downturn as they used going into it, which is expecting their sales force to ‘just sell harder’.

This sales strategy is where you expect your typically down-sized sales staff to successfully sell more than they have done recently without their having the benefit of any additional marketing supports or other changes or improvements while you simultaneously fire or demote anyone deemed at fault for not delivering on management’s too often overly ambitious expectations.

If you think this reactionary, myopic strategy is too illogical to be true, it is not. And if you don’t believe me, I suggest you check out the Red Wheel Marketing survey results that I reported back in August 2009 in my Biz Money Matters article Recession Cures: What & What Not to Do. Unfortunately, despite how seeming appropriate this type of brutish approach is for these tough times, it is important to understand that it doesn’t deliver anything more than what could otherwise be achieved, and often, it delivers less.

From the logical point of view, the above noted ‘just sell harder’ strategy is misapplied management practice for it is unrealistically dependant on ‘beating up’ on sales staff typically working to and beyond their abilities trying to meet ill-conceived for the times revenue goals.

Now, didn’t someone once say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting better results?!? Such managerial approaches only become understandable if viewed from the self-preservation, emotional, political and/or ego motivated perspective.

Beyond the favoured ‘sell harder’ sales blitz approach mentioned above, other tactics and strategies that often get used in tough times to drive more revenue are:

1. Craft sales incentive campaigns
2. Increase advertising spend or frequently or both
3. Launch new marketing communication campaigns
4. Change the sales compensation program to emphasize results
5. Increase training to upgrade sales staff skills

The problem with all these sales growth strategies is that they often don’t work because they are either:

• unrealistic,
• ill-conceived,
• inappropriate
• misapplied and/or
• too simplistic.

The reasons why these initiatives cause more revenue growth disappointment than success occurs because too often, such sales tactical and strategic reactions get invoked:

• before sales fundamentals get re-assessed,
• before sales strategies get retooled for current circumstances, and
• before sales expectations get recalibrated for current times.

Now, if you are a business owner in a lifestyle company, I can understand but not condone an emotional reaction to your income level coming under threat from adverse market conditions. Similarly, I can understand but not condone executive emotionally motivated reactions in response to when your job or advancement comes under threat by factors outside your control when influential stakeholders have no perspective or patience to appreciate the reality of a situation. But there are better, more appropriate, more effective ways to deal with chasing growth in challenged times.

Lesson: ‘When the Ducks are Quacking, Feed Them’

Let me share with you the most memorable sales & marketing lesson that I learned outside business school.

It came during my early days as an entrepreneurial biotech CEO when I hired an investment banker to help me raise a first round of venture capital back in the sector’s tough financing days in 1996.

Now the fellow I brought in to get us our money was an old hand in the securities business. He had seen countless good markets and bad ones, as well as countless deals come and go, many that sold and many that didn’t. As a result, he was somewhat cynical and rather indifferent to the nuances of our or anyone’s offering. He summed up the essence of his approach to selling securities with the philosophical phrase: ‘when the ducks are quacking, feed them!’

Here is what I take took from this:

1. Selling never fundamentally succeeds as a supply-oriented push process
2. Successful selling comes when you tap into your buyer’s emotions, situation, and aspirations (the better you do this, the more you sell)
3. If your offering isn’t in much demand, which happens from time to time, being savvy means choosing to do one of three things, namely either:

• change the offering in some fundamental way so it appeal better to buyers’ wants and wishes today, or
• patiently wait for demand to return (it usually does), or
• move on to something new.

Use these insights to help you achieve sales growth success. Here’s how.

Your Keys to Getting More Revenue Growth

My mother taught me to think before I spoke. And what I’m suggesting you do is make sure you have the right thinking in place supported by substantiated understandings before you go and drive your company to chase more sales.

It is definitely scary and often more work to reassess and, as appropriate, revise your offering’s fundamentals. But having these properly calibrated and finely tuned is the real key to your maximizing your offering’s sales results for, in my sales & marketing experience, achieving a target sales revenue is 80% or more dependant on your offering’s fundamentals, not on that ‘icing on the cake’ stuff like brand packaging or the nuances of marketing communications.

So, to maximizing your revenue growth, always concentrate on optimizing your business’s fundamentals by focusing:

• FIRST on knowing what’s getting your ‘ducks quacking’ today and what will drive their quacking tomorrow, and then

• SECOND on feeding them those offerings of yours that you’ve specially tailored to meet their identified current and evolving needs.

In this you will make sure your company is absolutely focused on your business’s true  fundamentals for you will know and can prove your company has its ‘ducks’ properly all lined up. Doing otherwise runs a high risk of seeing your actions end up being nothing more than ineffective less-thoughtful reaction, which is what I call the ‘fluff response’.

How to Tune-Up Your Company’s Offering Fundamentals!

All companies have access to a range of means they can use to find out what’s getting their ‘ducks quacking’ today and what likely will drive their quacking tomorrow.  In suggested order of priority, here are 5 simple, specific and easy-to-execute things you can do to find real answers in your situation:

1. Cultivate organizational awareness: just starting to look for answers and paying attention to signals and feedback from your market is the best way to begin.
2. Solicit customer feedback and opinion via surveys, etc: following up to find out why your customers buy, why they choose not to, what experiences they had, and what suggestions they can offer you is a great second step.
3. Contract third-party competitive intelligence gathering & assessments: to insure your organization is not filtering out messages it does not want to hear or suffering from some other form of bias or market myopia, use a third-party CI service provider like CNI Rapid Research and put getting their input on your yearly activity calendar.
4. Create & regularly update archetypal customer profiles by market segment: doing this will help you and your sales team better envision the business and human issues that drive sales in each of your key market areas.
5. Compile & regularly update offering profiles & SWOT assessments: based on all the great information by now sourced in steps 1 to 4, preparing and regularly updating offering profiles and offering SWOT assessments will be a snap to do.

These suggestions are not rocket science, so you can do this stuff with help if need be.

Bolt-on Help Can Help You Drive More Success

All too often in today’s tough economic conditions and really lean organizations, management’s focus is only on ‘production’. But ‘smart money’ managers know that the best corporate returns come from regularly spending at least some time and resources on making sure their ‘productive capacity’ is still strong and up to the job at hand.

Due to the challenges I wrote about in my article Why CEO’s Are Blind To Trouble!, when you’re running hard in tough time times, it can be near impossible to know if you and your inner circle truly are seeing both your company’s situation clearly and your customers’ current and evolving needs and wants correctly.

That’s why bringing in expert help on contract can make perfect sense.

My firm, Compass North Inc. provides companies like yours with affordable help that can ensure you get the independent, unbiased information you need to learn if and how strong and well focused your company is and what you can do to maximize how to get the ‘ducks’ in your market place loudly quacking for what you can feed them today and tomorrow. I invite you to email us or give us at call because we would be pleased to talk with you about these matters for no charge or obligation.

Information Links:

- "Managing the Upturn" FEI Breakfast Seminar – presentation slides

- "Managing the Upturn" – Jan 2010 CFERF Executive Research Report

© Blog.TonyJohnston.biz & Compass North Inc. 2010

Article by –

Tony Johnston, CMC, CGA, MBA, BA (Econ)
President
Compass North Inc.
18 Balding Court
Toronto ON
M2P 1Y7
Office:  416-342-5652
Mobile: 416-346-4140
www.CompassNorthInc.com
www.CNiRapidResearch.com

Tony Johnston is a business results specialist, top level executive and management advisor. Having successfully led 4 turnarounds and with many significant operations, deal making and finance oriented accomplishments to his credit, Tony helps companies drive:

› top line growth (revenue)
› bottom line improvement (profits)
› cashflow management (credit line control)
› growth strategy (more / new)
› financing & stakeholder relationship management (debt / equity)
› enterprise value maximization (mkt price)
› acquisition planning & execution (find / close)
› divestiture preparation & execution (prep / negotiate)
› information gathering (competitive intel / market research)
› crisis control (turnarounds & wind-downs)
› enterprise leadership (CEO / CRO / CFO)

Compass North Inc. is a management & advisory services firm that helps companies achieve important, challenging operational, financial and transaction oriented goals. Examples of what we do include helping companies and their owners:

– make better decisions by providing customized competitive intelligence,
– grow by crafting strategic plans and implement them,
– get turned around by dealing with their debt or other business problems,
– borrow more money and/or raise more equity, and
– plan, prepare, negotiate and close acquisitions, divestitures and ownership
   transitions.

Bottom-line: The benefit that Tony and Compass North Inc. deliver is helping company owners maximize both what they earn while they own their business and what they bank when they sell.

> Follow me on Twitter @CompassNorthInc

Motivation (yours, mine and everyone’s) is ‘the’ bedrock issue when it comes to business. That’s because in capitalism and the study of it (economics), there’s nothing more fundamental.

As business people / managers / owners, we’re all focused on motivation: how to motivate ourselves? / how to motivate staff? / how to motivate customers?

But isn’t the way to better motivation management to be found by knowing more about the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ of motivation, ‘the why’ of motivation, and ‘the science’ of it? I think so which is why I invite you to join me now in an exploration of the ‘why’ dimensions of motivation — particularly as they apply to entrepreneurial and family owned business situations.

Maximized Happiness: I Want It But How To Get It?

So why do we or our companies do what we do? Check any basic economic textbook and you’ll find economists saying what drives people is the pursuit of utility maximization. But what really are they talking about? Heck, when the subject is nothing more than an abstract concept, how can you go about maximizing it?!?

Push an economist to explain ‘utility maximization’ and what they’ll basically tell you is: it’s all about getting better off by doing what makes you or your organization more happy! Now, even though in behavioural economics, the new social science mash-up of psychology and traditional economics, emerging research is starting to reveal just how complex and often non-rational our motivations are, at least some of the time, the above statement gives you have the baseline truth on decision making: the apparent rational pursuit of happiness is what motivates us. But that said, there is a critical underlying question here: what is it that really or truly makes people happy?

So if you allow me to duck the complex, challenging question of whether or not chasing more profit is what drives decision-making in multi-shareholder corporations (too often ‘not!’ I say), what is it that drives your average business owner’s decisions making? And how is it that they can realize greater happiness?

‘King vs. Rich’ or ‘King & Rich’?

It turns out that the answer to these two questions can best and most easily be understood if we investigate why entrepreneurs decided to go into business on their own in the first place. So, to explore the range of possible motivations behind that, let’s consider the following question: “Mr. or Ms. Business Owner, what reason or objective drove you to start-up your own company?” 

Was it :
– to be your own boss? (you wanted independence)
– get rich? (you sought wealth)
– a reaction to being out of work? (you were searching for survival)
– pursue a dream? (you had a compelling vision)
– fill a pressing market need? (you wanted to be a problem solver)
– turn a vision into reality? (you were chasing achievement)
– because you clashed with others? (your personality needed space)? or
– so you could be the one ‘calling all the shots’? (you wanted control)

Well, the actual answer according to recent Harvard Business School research is this: 80% of all business owners have entrepreneurial dreams driven by two, it turns out, conflicting desires, namely (a) the desire to make lots of money and (b) the desire to run their own show (based on research by Professor Noam Wasserman published in the February 2008 Harvard Business Review).

The conflict in these desires unfortunately for entrepreneurs is that this same HBS research tells us how in almost all cases what entrepreneurs actually get is: one or the other and sometimes neither of these desired outcomes. This is because only an exceptionally lucky, very small minority find themselves in circumstances that turn out to be the unusually favourable so much so that they can stay ‘King’ of their own castle and get seriously ‘Rich’ at the same time too. Most entrepreneurs, because of an all too typical unwillingness to share ownership in order to attract important additional talent, end up only earning what they might have otherwise earned if they had worked for someone else. And, when you think about this in straight economic terms, it is clearly a sub par return when you take the associated business risks involved into account.

Show Me ‘The Money’!

So I think it is fair to say that, bottom line, however you cut it, this HBS research reveals that the number one reason why entrepreneurs go into their own business is for the money, at least so that they can get enough to make the venture a worthwhile use of their time and effort.

Still, if you are the business owner, once you’ve covered off the family bills and can pay for all the groceries and the other essentials of life like that daily hit of Starbucks coffee you need, the kitchen reno your wife wants, the three vacations a year your kids expect or whatever, why push to keep making more dough? What’s the motivation for that? Will having even more money make you happier? How much more do you need? And is this a ‘good’ or ‘right’ motivation or a ‘misguided’, ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ one?

Because all of us can get too caught up in making money, I suggest a quick way to get some perspective on this matter and on what money means to you, is by considering your reaction to the following famous quotes to find out which ones, if any, reveal your core truth attitude toward money and the priority it has your life:

“Whoever said money can’t buy happiness simply didn’t know where to go shopping.”
- Bo Derek -
 (American Actress, b.1956)

“Money is not the most important thing in the world. Love is. Fortunately, I love money.”
- anonymous -

“Money can’t buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you’re being miserable.”
- Clare Boothe Luce -
(American Diplomat and Playwright, 1903-1987)

You absolutely don’t need money to be happy, and having money absolutely won’t guarantee that you are happy. But it sure helps.
- Andrew Tobias -
(American Journalist and Author of: The Funny Money Game, b.1947)

Now, I bet that despite how humourous, even cynically so, you found all of these quotes, none were truly correct or comfortable for you. Because of that, let’s turn to an expert in the field of Positive Psychology, someone who can help us better understand what is the true path to greater happiness for all, entrepreneurs included, and what are some specific actionable ‘good’ or ‘right’ ways or means we can use to get it.

Prof. Tal Ben-Shahar & The Science of Happiness 

Here’s a trivia question for you: based on enrollment, which Harvard University course has been the most popular? Well, with 1,400 students attending lectures twice a week, it’s Psychology 1504, the "Positive Psychology” course taught by Prof.Tal Ben-Shahar.

Students flock to Ben-Shahar’s course for insight into important life secrets about how to find greater happiness, or as he describes it, to learn "how to get happy."

7 Easy Steps to Increasing Your Personal Happiness

Boiling down Prof.Tal Ben-Shahar’s message to its core components, what he offers are seven tips for how you can achieve greater personal happiness, which are:

1. Give yourself permission to be human. When we accept emotions, such as fear, sadness, or anxiety, as being natural temporary or transitory states, we are better able and more likely to overcome them. Rejecting or hiding from our emotions, positive or negative, only leads to frustration and unhappiness, and like how over-eating is not a healthy way to deal with emotional upset, over-consuming money is not a healthy way to deal with such issues either.
2. True happiness lies at the intersection between pleasure and meaning. Whether at work or at home, the goal is to engage in activities that are personally rewarding, significant, enjoyable and which challenge you to stretch your abilities and learn. When this is not feasible, make sure you have happiness boosters, moments throughout your day or week that provide you with both pleasure and meaning, and provide a break from what concerns you.
3. Keep in mind that ‘healthy happiness’ is a product of our state of mind, not on our status or the size of our bank account. Barring extreme circumstances or illness, our level of well being is determined by (i) what we choose to focus on (i.e. the full or the empty part of the glass) and (ii) by our interpretation of external events. For example, do we view failure as catastrophic or do we see it as an opportunity to learn or change for the better?
4. Simplify and focus to increase your happiness! Generally we are too busy, trying to squeeze in more and more activities into less and less time. Quantity influences quality, and we can seriously compromise on our happiness by trying to do too much.
5. Remember the mind-body connection. What we do, or don’t do with our bodies influences our mind. Regular exercise, adequate sleep, mindfulness or meditation and healthy eating habits lead to better physical and mental health.
6. Express gratitude whenever possible. Too often, for a myriad of reasons, we take our lives and those of others for granted. Learn to appreciate and savor the wonderful things in your life, from your connection to other people to the taste of good food, from pleasures of nature to the pleasure of a smile.
7. Cultivate Personal Relationships. Seek to be valued, known, and loved, rather than validated. This is most easily done when we spend regular and meaningful time cultivating happy times with our loved-ones, family, friends, and associates.

Before we move on, take a look at this 7 step list again. Did you see any reference there to how having more money can make you happier? No, you didn’t. That’s because money, or you’re having more of it, can’t and won’t buy you happiness!

However, there is an indirect way money can buy happiness for you. Here’s how.

The Secret 8th Step to How Spending $’s Can Make You Happier

There is an extension of step 7 – ‘cultivating personal relationships’ above – that provides a non self-oriented way money can buy you more lasting happiness.

That is when you spend money on someone else, especially those you care about or who are close to you. According to new research, giving other people even comparatively small amounts of money leads to increased well-being (happiness) for the giver.

That insight into the secret of how money can buy you happiness comes from HBS professor Michael Norton and his two colleagues from the University of British Columbia, Elizabeth Dunn and Lara Aknin. They published these findings in the article, "Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness," which appeared in the March 21, 2008 issue of Science. This is a special type of personal economic activity that they call "pro-social" spending.  

Dr. Alan Manevitz, a clinical psychiatrist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City talked about "pro-social" spending and its benefits when he said: "Reaching out and doing things for other people allows you to kind of create a larger community for yourself. Social networks, we know, make people happier. It’s all about creating social networks and community ties and having a [positive] sense of self that makes you feel [more] worthwhile, so money therefore can be used in service of that."

"While most research has looked at the relationship between how much people make and how happy they are," Dunn said. "we examined what they did with it. It’s an obvious question but it hasn’t been tackled." What Dunn and her colleagues found was that:

1. most people spend much more money on themselves than others (partly understandable given the influx of bills most households experience)
2. those who pro-socially gave away comparatively more of their income, especially the portions that are generally considered to be windfalls or bonus extras, ended up being happier than those who didn’t and this was true no matter how little or how grand the give away amount was
3. conversely, they reported that while hikes in income can help boost happiness, but the effect is weak, for prior studies have found that as the average income rises within a society, people’s reported levels of happiness remain relatively static

Ways Business Owners Can Enjoy Increased Happiness

So now that you have learned conclusively how making more money as an end in itself won’t make you all that much happier even if you do spend so much of your time trying to make more of it, what can you do, prudently and reasonably, to achieve greater happiness?

Do I suggest you should give away all you’ve got or be a big spender doing everything to please others? No, I don’t.

Do I suggest you file this psychological information and insight away and do nothing different? No, I don’t.

What I do suggest we all do, particularly business owners, is:

1. Value and look after the current and future health of your business income; it’s both a source of comfort and security and a nest egg that’s important to you and the special other ones in your life, like your family, your friends, your staff and your customers.

2. Think a bit less about yourself and your self-focused interests (you’ll be happier for it).

3. Think more about others, particularly those close to you, those you care about, those who care about you, and those who helped you along the way.

4. Spend some money, even a small amount or whatever you feel comfortable with, making life better in some way for those special other people in your world, no matter how small the sum might be.

5. Take some time first to reflect on your life, the future, and how things might go well. Then second, consider how things might or could go badly, not only for you, but also for those who depend on you and those you consider special. Next, take action to do something material that will begin and carry-on the process of prudently-but-reasonably protecting everyone’s better interests. This you can start to do today by setting up for:

1. those ‘What-Ifs-in-Life’ like ill-health, disability due to something like a possible car accident, or the potential for an unexpected early death; as well as setting up for
2. those ‘Absolute-Certainties-in-Life’ like mental and physical decline and eventual death, tax payments on death such as probate, capital gains, and possibly estate tax, and the various needs your special other people will have as they struggle to carry on with their lives and your business once you are too incapacitated to run it or you are gone.

Ways to Help Increase Your Happiness? –> It’s Available!

Here are two things business owners can do today to start contributing more to their and their loved-one’s increased happiness.

One way is to prepare for potential ‘What-Ifs-in-Life’ is by having a customized ‘Corporate Will’ in place to regulate how and who is to run their business in such circumstances and how and when any ownership change should be managed. We at Compass North Inc. can help you here. To see a one-page description of our service offering, double click here: CNi’s Your Corporate Will Preparation Service pdf

And a way to prepare for the ‘Absolute-Certainties-in-Life’ is by figuring out, documenting and initiating preparatory action on your Ownership Transition Plan’s Scenario A and B, which is where you set out when and how control over your business can and should shift to someone else (a desired party A in your most favoured scenario and alternative party B in your fallback plan scenario). It’s important to recognize that in the majority of cases private companies do not pass-on to the owner’s next generation or some other relative even though that’s what most business owners want and hope will happen. Because of that, you and your company are best advised to prepare things such that a range of viable ownership succession alternatives can happen. We at Compass North Inc. can help you here too – to see our service offering one-pager, double click here: CNi’s Ownership Transition Preparation & Execution Service pdf

If you think you might benefit from some third party help setting things up to deal with a possible or planned ownership transition, or with any other business or family enterprise challenge you face or have concerns about, call us at Compass North because we are experts at maximizing business performance and valuation and we would welcome the opportunity to be of assistance.

Related Articles:

- Happiness wards off heart disease, study suggests [BBC Report]

- The Happiness Business [Forbes magazine]

© Blog.TonyJohnston.biz & Compass North Inc. 2010

Article by –

Tony Johnston, CMC, CGA, MBA, BA (Econ)
President
Compass North Inc.
18 Balding Court
Toronto ON
M2P 1Y7
Office:  416-342-5652
Mobile: 416-346-4140
www.CompassNorthInc.com
www.CNiRapidResearch.com

Tony Johnston is a business results specialist, top level executive and management advisor. Having successfully led 4 turnarounds and with many significant operations, deal making and finance oriented accomplishments to his credit, Tony helps companies drive:

› top line growth (revenue)
› bottom line improvement (profits)
› cashflow management (credit line control)
› growth strategy (more / new)
› financing & stakeholder relationship management (debt / equity)
› enterprise value maximization (mkt price)
› acquisition planning & execution (find / close)
› divestiture preparation & execution (prep / negotiate)
› information gathering (competitive intel / market research)
› crisis control (turnarounds & wind-downs)
› enterprise leadership (CEO / CRO / CFO)

Compass North Inc. is a management & advisory services firm that helps companies achieve important, challenging operational, financial and transaction oriented goals. Examples of what we do include helping companies and their owners:

– make better decisions by providing customized competitive intelligence,
– grow by crafting strategic plans and implement them,
– get turned around by dealing with their debt or other business problems,
– borrow more money and/or raise more equity, and
– plan, prepare, negotiate and close acquisitions, divestitures and ownership
   transitions.

Bottom-line: The benefit that Tony and Compass North Inc. deliver is helping company owners maximize both what they earn while they own their business and what they bank when they sell.

> Follow me on Twitter @CompassNorthInc

]]>