JustinMcCullough.com

Growth Catalyst, Leadership Development and Team Builder

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An Alternate View of Personal Branding

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I’ve been considering an alternative approach to personal branding – one that is true to people instead of products and companies.

To me, a personal brand is easier to understand as the descriptors that fit you. Forget about the brand itself, but the “take away” feelings and emotional connection.

For me:
Human, Optimistic, Wise, True, Willing, Professional and Experimental.

While that doesn’t wrap up neatly in a unique positioning statement, I think it allows you to create a brand essence that makes sense to you, more so then the one I define for you.

Sharpen Your Edge

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What others are doing is irrelevant. Really. The real concern is you. What are you doing? That’s what matters most and it’s the only one thing you can control.

Edge Sharpening 101

  • Read books focused on emotional, spiritual and professional development. if you don’t read books, start reading for 10 minutes a day in a silent place. (increase to 60 minutes a day within 90 days – blogs and social media do not count).
  • Curb negative discussion. Everywhere. At home, at work, with friends. Eliminate it. Negative discussion drains your emotional strength and deflates your output. It also reinforces a negative mindset and thought process.
  • Push positive thoughts, actions, and discussion. Your mindset controls your actions. Coming to a challenge with a positive outlook is far better than coming to the same challenge in a negative, already defeated, mindset. Learn, yes learn to be positive.
  • Take action and do things. Make the call, write the letter, extend the olive branch, create the missing chapter, fix the broken process. Do it. And increase how often you do things. Nothing happens until you take action.
  • Network and reconnect. Most likely your lifelong friends, coworkers, and family members are of no use to a committed life of edge sharpening. It’s probable many of them are sheepwalking too. Do not go with their flow. Network and reconnect with people who are advancing emotionally, intellectually, spiritually and or physically. Find new friends to have healthy conversations that lift you up instead of pull/keep you down.
  • Turn off the noise (or at least change the channel). Talk radio and Pundit TV can be substituted with an audio book or paperback. Long chats with negative influences can be shortened and eliminated. The point is to see things that make you zone out, come down, or don’t give you joy or knowledge as an area to focus on and bring in a positive influence.
  • Stretch. Every day. The edge sharpening efforts are uncomfortable but they are fruitful. Lean into the challenge and expect to stretch a little. If you aren’t stretching, you aren’t growing.

No Kidding!

Don’t weasel out. These are things you can control and you owe it to yourself to have a healthier and happy life. These things are part of your basic tools to improve the 24 hour cycles you repeat daily. If you can pick one or two of these and start there, you’re doing better than most.

Promise me you’ll stop complaining and start doing. Promise you’ll start sharpening your edges.

Original photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/dionhinchcliffe/

Fear or Confidence – Unclutter Your Mind

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuant63/2255781557/sizes/z/in/photostream/

The mind is the most powerful computer in the world, but it’s vulnerable and hackable. If you are feeling overwhelmed or having problems “shutting off”, change the way you are thinking about things. Try running a personal defrag on your biological hard drive and separate your cluttered mind into black and white sectors – free up your mind for good.

The things on your mind are like the people in a crowded room, you can’t really think with all that noise, but you try. While you may feel like you have many things on your mind, most of it can be grouped into these 2 categories: Fear and Confidence.

The Looming Buzz of Fear:
Things that you fear will gnaw at you like a fly flitting around your food or a mosquito in your ear. These fear clouds tend to hover over you, raining on your actions, ideas, and goals often producing a double negative impact by locking up your mind and also interfering with the things you have confidence in. Your fear factory includes these things:

  • New ideas or concepts you don’t understand but want too
  • Problems (work, personal, intellectual) that you don’t know how to solve
  • Statements you want to say but are unsure or wish you said, or regret saying
  • Something you did or didn’t do that you regret

The Funhouse of Confidence:
Things you are confident in tend to be more like a pinball game in your mind often beeping, bumping, and bouncing around in constant action only limited by your time, energy and circumstances. It’s your confidence in these things that keeps your mind playing with them, juggling them until you can deal with them. These things are labeled as “easy” or “fun” items but often flood your mind and chew up brainwidth until you act on them. Your cockpit of confidence includes these things:

  • Tasks and to-do items of all shapes and sizes and priority
  • Problems (work, personal, intellectual) you have a solution for
  • Ideas you want to develop
  • Statements you want to say or will say in the future
  • Good intentions

Once you know that crowded room in your mind is really just full of fear clouds and pinballs of confidence then you’ll see that crowded room take shape to something manageable – very manageable.

Now that you have them in black and white, or rather categorized as fear of confidence, get them out! Process the demons, write the tasks, schedule the activities, move the ideas to goals and goals to task items and take action on the good intentions and things you want to say or already said.—- just start doing it – don’t think about it, get it in motion from inside of you to outside of you… This purge will free up your mind and make you more productive and more focused. I call it “buffering” once you move the simple stuff out – on paper, in a note, in an email, whatever, your brain no longer has to buffer it. Your mind can just let it go, trusting the note or activity of getting it out will be enough and it will move on to other things.

In short, brain dump on paper or the white board, or whatever is best for you as often as possible. That stuff, the stuff you are juggling, really doesn’t need to be stuck inside your head chewing up your brainwidth.

Take action – do it today and feel better and be better.

Project Management for Normal People

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Project Management for Normal People

While at SOBcon in Chicago, I was talking about project management with the folks at my mastermind table and I went on a quick riff about how I essentially project manage all my projects from book publishing to website launches and marketing plans to business plans and nearly everything in-between.

The discussion was quick, but it’s a great topic to elaborate on.

This article is about project management and includes:

  1. A video on what I believe makes a great project manager
  2. A basic outline of what a project manager does
  3. A few resources to really dig deep and learn about project management processes

This article is based on the past 15 years of launching websites, books, newspapers, magazines, and managing video and photography shoots as well as the management of advertising campaigns among other things link events, business plans, marketing plans.

NOTE: I am not a “Project Manager” by title.  I consider myself to be a Champion for the project and if you are trying to turn ideas or projects into a reality, you should be a Champion too.

This (almost) short video opens up on some of my fundamental ideas on Project Management and sets the tone well for the rest of this article. Watch it to learn about my thoughts on Human Capital.

What Makes a Great Project Manager from Justin McCullough on Vimeo.

In the video, that was not a direct quote from Seth Godin. In Linchpin, Purple Cow, Free Prize Inside (affiliate links) and his blog he talks about championing projects and shipping and I guess I just wanted to name drop :)

10 Things Great Project Managers Do:

1 – Champions the project.
This includes accepting the responsibility of success or failure of the project from the very beginning. Accept the responsibility right off the bat because you’ll be the first one blamed for it if there are problems or failure, so may as well own it from the start so its easier for you to deal with.

2 – Facilitates communication and becomes the info hub.
You will always be the center of the communication for all internal and external constituents.  Use good judgment and common sense in your communication, maintain a “can do” attitude and always be the first to check in or follow up.  Always be the keeper of current information and share it freely. It helps people understand what you are about and if you offer to help, not just criticize or enforce objectives, you’ll be a friend and ally to the project.

3 – Defines, interprets and shares expectations. Often.
Even the best and most talented minds can be paralyzed if they are unclear on expectations.  This includes responsibilities, process, timeline, tasks, deliverables, budget and PAYMENT for services.  Some of the biggest issues I’ve ever had with experts on a project have stemmed from their incorrect assumptions on when they would get paid or the intent of the project all because I trusted “they were the expert and would know what was expected”.  Appreciate the expertise, but honor the client and the project by clarifying the details and setting expectations.  Those connected to the project will appreciate you for it and know that you run a tight operation that sets the project on the path of success. We all want expectations, so give them.

4 – Asks questions and is not a no-it-all.
Great project managers don’t know the in’s and out’s of every job required to complete the project, but they do know the people involved know their job.  Great project managers ask the right “why” and “how” questions often in order to uncover real issues, real deliverables, real expectations etc.  The why and how aren’t asked so you can learn to do their job, they are asked so you can learn how they see themselves fitting their jobs into the project on time and on budget.  This is a key part of understanding the work to be done as well as the expectations or challenges of the people involved in the project.

5 – Knows the steps, what’s next, and where things are going.
To successfully champion any project you must always be aware of the deliverables, milestones, tasks and pinch-points or bottlenecks in the project.  While you might think “everyone” understands how important the project (the client, the budget etc) is, none of them will be married to the entire project end-to-end like you are, so always know who’s doing what, when, where, why, how and then what’s next.  When in doubt, remember that you are the map and if you don’t know what’s next it’s likely to cause a pinch-point that will cost time and money. Be the map and know what’s next.

6 – Inspects what is expected.
Plotting dates, budgets, milestones and tasks are essential.  Large projects will have many items – enough to warrant project management software, but regardless of size, the tools you use, great project managers inspect what they expect.  The tighter the project is on time and budget, the closer you have to be with your follow-up (inspection).  See, follow-up is a nice way to say it, so follow-up often.

7 – Eternally represents the solution not the problem.
The best project managers internalize the issues and problems and determine next steps and solutions to the problems. As a champion of the project it’s your place to find the solution proactively and keep the project moving forward.  It’s nice when it happens, but never assume someone else will jump in with a solution to bail you out. Again, you are the champion of the project so it is you who represents the solution so always represent that solution so the project can be completed.

8 – Owns the bad news, shares the good news.
Great project managers take the punches and share the successes.  That’s just the way it works so don’t throw your vendors, partners and employees under the bus to save face.  Always own the bad news personally and share what you are doing to fix it. And by all means, celebrate every victory, every win, everything good with the ones who did it – never take the credit for yourself.

9 – Cares.
Great project managers care about the client, the people involved, the project and it’s success.  If you care, it will be obvious.  If you don’t care, it will be obvious too.  When you care it’s much easier to get results.

10 – Knows how to ship.
You must be results oriented and the best project managers help things get unstuck and ship. Everything ships including the final project. Ship on time (or early) on budget (or under budget) and you’ll have a winning project and a remarkably important role in your organization, your ideas, and your success. Focus on shipping and you’ll do great.

Learn More About Project Management and the Process.

I personally try not to use project management software and I have never received formal training in project management which means there are a lot more skilled project managers (as in skilled in the craft, the software, and the formal process) than I am.

However, I have launched about 200 websites, several newspapers and magazines, several books and many many many advertising initiatives that have all gone well without project management software or certification as a project manager. I think you can too.  This is one area where a desire to succeed and learn means you don’t need to be certified in order to be great at it.

In my experience, most clients don’t care how you deliver on their goals and objectives. They only care that you meet and exceed their goals and objectives. In my opinion that’s all that matters too.  My hope is that this article will help you understand the core aspects required to champion a project and become a great project manager.

If you want to dig deeper into the formal processes of project management, here’s some good content to sink your teeth into.

My personal methods are something of a mashup between the Agile Method and 37 Signals approach mixed with SCRUM and Stage-Gate processes.  These techniques have been folded in over the last 8 years or so, but prior to that I was literally just learning as I went and still delivering so don’t get tied up on ingesting all this at once.

Good luck on your project management efforts and don’t hesitate to share your experiences or ask for help.

Reflections on my Own Business Experiences, War Stories, Lessons Learned and Shifting Focus.

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Smile, life happens whether you are ready or not!

Thud! “Sell this.”

That’s what my publisher said at Hearst one day in 2008 a few short weeks after a devastating Hurricane hit the area my newspaper was in.

The thud on my desk was a soft copy proof – about 200 pages – for a book I did not even know we were making. As the Online Manager and Marketing Manager, my title said I was focused elsewhere, but the reality was much like the Life commercial that says “Give it to Mikey, he’ll eat anything”, I had the “Give it to Justin he’ll make anything work” reputation. In the 8 months before I had launched a 32 page Hispanic Newspaper, a monthly 86 page glossy society magazine and was responsible for training sales staff even though we had two people “doing that” already. Although I have a lot of experience in sales and training people how to be effective in sales, I previously had no experience launching newspapers or magazines from the ground up nor had I ever launched a book.

Great, I’m so excited by this new opportunity. That’s NOT what I said; in fact I was more like… what tha!? Are you serious?! You gotta-be-kiddin me?! Anyway, I treated it the same way I had in the past with advertising plans, television shoots, web projects and the time I sold my soul to a hockey franchise (more on that later)! I just looked at the moving parts and our goals and started working the process.

The success and the reason you care is because my publisher wanted to sell 2,000 books, I put together a few programs and sold 2,000 to one company within two weeks, then went on to sell another roughly 8,000 books four weeks after that. $2750,000 in book sales in six week isn’t too bad is it?

“How’s that working out for you?” What Dr. Phil taught me.

A couple months after selling approximately 10,000 hurricane books, I was hired by a publisher and my first project would be the sales and marketing of a very high quality photography book featuring the likes of Dr. Phil, Cesar Millan, George W. Bush, Owen Wilson, Steve Miller (of the Steve Miller Band), Pat Green, Isaac Mizrahi, Nolan Ryan, Zig Ziglar and about 80 other wonderful celebrities, musicians and business leaders. Unlike the earlier hurricane book experience this was a different level, different process, and different dynamics.

I ended up selling thousands of books, but in unconventional ways and with a lot of leg work – more than the hurricane book. And while I loved the project, the coordinating of the author/photographer, celebrities and fulfillment groups were a huge undertaking. In the end, I had a total of three different book titles I was able to put my thumbprint on before finally asking myself, like Dr Phil, “how’s that working out”. As it turns out the book business was not my thing, but the lessons learned, the publishing process, the scale and objectives are remarkable. The one big lesson I learned and still carry forward is this; in publishing of any kind, if you want to make money doing it you need three things; an audience, a platform to leverage, and a buying/selling atmosphere – ironically, the content only matters as much as the other three variables indicates it does. Great content by itself is simply not enough.

“We Will, We Will, Rock You” and how I sold my soul to a hockey franchise.

I think it was 2002 and my company was dense with a new kind of talent. On staff I had not one but two animators / illustrators, one flash artist, a web designer a programmer, a secretary and me – the jack of all trades doing a lot of account management, client service, business development, project management and a little of everything else. You know, the life of a high strung, probably under qualified owner with lots and lots and lots of overhead. At this time, we were hooked in with all the advertising agencies around town and were getting a lot of great motion graphics work and web dev work. Good times in a small town with less than 150,000 people. Apparently not too small for a Hockey Franchise though.

I remember our original proposal to the hockey team being a jaw dropping $130,000 or so for us to build a custom ecommerce, score keeping, game stats, and audio broadcasting via the website along with a full 2 minute 3d modeled animation video, marketing collateral and assistance with the audio and video production during the home games. Did I mention I was 23 or 24 at the time?

After negotiations and such, we landed at somewhere around $90,000 and I never regretted a project more before nor after – well, except perhaps the 1 year custom CRM we developed for a boat dealer, but that’s another story. In this case, though, it ended up consuming me and my entire shop for months on end and we began playing a dangerous game of resource management, fulfillment, production, client service and vendor recruiting as opening day neared.

I remember we ended up having seven machines rendering Lightwave and 3D Studio Max files for nearly a week – almost 24/7. Just in time to deliver the full 2 minute video for the opening night – it was awesome. And as a part of the deal, I (as the owner of the company) ran the audio board to played music and sound effects throughout the game – all 30 of them.

I learned more than I can possibly say here, but the biggest thing was knowing what I (we) should do versus what we should outsource, how to better scope and better write contracts, and when to walk away from an opportunity that’s not really an opportunity.

“Where is the automated email system” and other questions that can bite you in the ass.

Did I mention that I learned how to better scope projects and better write contracts thanks to the Hockey Franchise? Oops, I lied and it cost me big time. In fact it turned a 3 month project into an 11 month project that nearly sunk me in order to deliver “according to the contract”. Just so you know, “an automated email marketing system” implies a lot of features especially when it’s integrated into the custom site you are developing and is supposed to be easy to administrate in the backend.

In 2004 / 2005 I had the misfortune of meeting a business man who owned several stores that sold items in the $10,000 to $250,000 range. The original inquiry was simple enough. They needed a website redesign and maybe some online marketing and SEO. After talking to them a $3,000 budget turned into something much bigger. The project became a full content management system and customer relationship management tool as well as an F&I tool, sales management and quoting tool and online marketing system.

My hard file on this project is literally 3 inches thick. Over the course of 11 months I met with the CEO about once a week for a minimum of 1 hour sometimes as many as 3 hours as he pulled out of my kicking and scream body, one of the most sophisticated, intelligent systems I’ve ever seen. Of course it was all hard wired around his exact needs, his point of sale system, his finance process, and his sales process – but man it was an impressive feat. This is where I really got to dig in on advanced business consulting and user interface design, information architecture, and intuitive design.

Even though my proposal and contract was more than 10 pages long and backed up by a multipage non-disclosure agreement and a five year non-compete I still suffered scope creep, ambiguously define features, and inconclusive wireframes and mockups of the system. In short, I got beat up during fulfillment. This project, despite having developed our own custom CMS and ecommerce system, lead me to steer away from serious plans at large scale programming projects.

“Fair value for fair value” and other great sales phrases that work.

In 2010, my company began focusing on strategy more so than production. Our promise was to deliver fair value for fair value – which is to say, nothing cookie cutter, nothing ridiculously marked up, and absolutely specific to that companies needs. We wouldn’t recommend something just because we could or just because they would pay for it. It needed to work for their business.

I apply a pretty strict view of consulting at this level. I share more about here on the website, about value (as in total value not low price) and “what’s in it for me” filtering. When you are talking strategy the primary offer is clarity of vision and a proven method of getting results and turning goals into action plans and literally creating opportunities based on market situations or customer needs or both. In short, we create a plan, promise and deliver. Turns out, that’s pretty valuable to executives and busy CEO’s.

Anyway, back in 2010, we went like gangbusters and had client engagements and project engagements as low as $10,000 all the way up to $90,000 almost overnight. Despite many naysayers that challenged our business model informing us that no one buys strategy, they only buy production and project fulfillment – we demonstrated (and still demonstrate) that’s not true at all.

Our biggest successes involve a strategic plan that ultimately included the execution and fulfillment in order to meet the strategic needs of the company. These are things as basic as collateral materials or websites and as advanced as marketing strategies, advertising campaigns and mixed media lead generation.

Turns out, when you ask where people want to go, beyond the thing they want such as a website or marketing program, they will tell you. And when they do, you get to decide where you fit in their vision and how you can best help them. Picking your projects and making big things happen is fun but also very demanding.

This is where I learned how to sell tactics and strategy together while actually facilitating the work over long periods of time and making large profits that were fair. Never before has there been a greater demand for people who know things. Special insights, or how many things tie together for specific business needs.

Video killed the radio star and other insights dad can’t teach us.

Everything we know about relationships, sales, marketing, and behavior has shifted in a new direction thanks to these here interwebs. All the advice my dad gave, no longer applies and it’s questionable if it ever did in the 90’s or 2000’s either.

In the 90’s I knew websites would become the new front door to businesses, the new handshake. I’m happy to say I was right. In the early 2000’s I knew we needed a way for clients to update their own website instead of relying on coders. I spent a few thousand hours on developing a content management system in house that did multi-language support, embedded video (before YouTube existed) and included meta data and title data for page by page SEO BEFORE WordPress was even bits on hard drives. I also knew that video would be important to the future of the web and that someday we would do a lot, if not all, business online. Turns out I was right on that too. I did not know there would be a Google, a Facebook, or an iPhone, iPad and Kindle nor all the open source software and apps freely available, but I do now! I also know the web is already and will continue to be a booming area and will be further neutralized as a place that does NOT require technical expertise to use it effectively.

So, if you are not focusing on your voice, your perspective, and your relationships you are falling behind. If you are not learning the web, social media, SEO, ecommerce, lead generation, online marketing you are falling behind – these are the “business basics” of the future, the kind of things that even the kids, hourly employees, and interns will have a working knowledge of. This is big, and you must be diving in now, not later!

In 2011, I had an awakening.

While I am capable of a lot, for years I was still missing out on my greatest good, the thing that most excited me. My ultimate purpose. You see, in consulting and all forms of work I’ve done in the past 15 or so years I’ve made a lot of money for other people, solved a lot of other business problems but was only able to do that in a one-to-one way and only when substantial money was on the table. The dynamics were always around catching fish, not teaching to catch fish.

When I looked around and inventoried my greatest joy, I realized it came from helping people. I like exploring, learning, doing and testing things then telling others about how things work and how it can help them in their business. And that’s where we are now. I’m shifting my future to be focused on helping you and your business in ways I never got from others around me.

So, as a seasoned web and marketing consultant, speaker, mentor, trainer and leader, I’ll now be focused on sharing the greatest gifts and knowledge I can possibly share – my own experiences, tools, insights, and time.

I’ll give it to you straight and without fear of failure. Been there and done that and still pushed on. I’m not always right, but I’m often on the right track and that’s usually far better than others.

What’s that got to do with you?

Well, for one, nothing happens unless you make it happen and you better be able to make things happen – or at least figure it out when you don’t. And that means you may just need the help I can provide here on the site or in the subscribers only area (it’s free).

It also means that I’ve got a track record of unusual (and successful) experiences in technology, marketing, sales, publishing and business that show perseverance, business intelligence, sales methods, processes, production needs, and how to make money. You can and will do all this too – I’ll teach, show, expose or otherwise inform you. That’s my goal.

From the small projects a freelancer may be looking at to the large accounts you may desire to land – I’ve been there and I’ve stood shaking in my boots as I knocked on the door of opportunity. And here I am, still standing, and living my best life now.

The Power of Positive Interaction

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The Power of Positive Interaction

The power of positive thinking – you’ve heard that before, right? What about the power of positive interaction?

Now more than ever we can create and share in conversations in ways that were never possible before the internet. But what do you bring to the conversation? Is it really a contribution? Is it meaningful? Is it positive? Consider the Theory of the Dipper and the Bucket for a moment.

The Theory of the Dipper and the Bucket

Each of us has an invisible bucket. It is constantly emptied or filled, depending on what others say or do to us. When our bucket is full, we feel great. When it’s empty, we feel awful.

Each of us also has an invisible dipper. When we use that dipper to fill other people’s buckets — by saying or doing things to increase their positive emotions — we also fill our own bucket. But when we use that dipper to dip from others’ buckets — by saying or doing things that decrease their positive emotions — we diminish ourselves.

Like the cup that runneth over, a full bucket gives us a positive outlook and renewed energy. Every drop in that bucket makes us stronger and more optimistic.

But an empty bucket poisons our outlook, saps our energy, and undermines our will. That’s why every time someone dips from our bucket, it hurts us.

So we face a choice every moment of every day: We can fill one another’s buckets, or we can dip from them. It’s an important choice — one that profoundly influences our relationships, productivity, health, and happiness.

As conversations become easier to start with tools like Facebook and Twitter consider too, how easy it is to add to or take from someone’s bucket and how that impacts your personal and emotional self (not to mention your personal brand).

The Theory of the Dipper and the Bucket is the foundation for the book “How Full Is Your Bucket”. I’ve mentioned this book in earlier posts and highly recommend it. Put the power of positive interaction in action immediately.

You can purchase this book by following my affiliate link here:
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