San Diego Business Consulting
The Perfect Climate for Business
San Diego has it all when it comes to an advantageous business climate – strong per capita income, lower than average violent and property crime statistics, and a business growth rate significantly higher than the national average.
For these reasons, and many others, businesses have a better than average chance for success in the San Diego area. This phenomenon has motivated a large number of business owners to seek a competitive advantage over their contemporaries.
Consulting Takes On Many Forms
Business consulting can take the form of management consulting, human resources counseling, IT consulting, and include strategies around marketing, government relations, and legal considerations. For the business owner, president, or CEO, these can be helpful, if not costly options to help improve the health of the business. Human resources consulting is a popular topic, yet the impact of HR consulting may not be felt immediately.
Building strategies around marketing and sales tactics is an important topic of discussion, yet there are typically in-house employees who can manage these important areas. As the business owner, president, or CEO, to whom do you turn to discuss some of the more personal or private aspects of your leadership role? The answer lies in a peer advisory group.
Peer Advisory Groups Provide a Competitive Advantage
Imagine sitting in a room with ten to twelve highly successful business owners, presidents, or CEO’s. You seek their advice on a variety of topics and draw upon the diverse experience that each peer brings to the table. All the while, your personal experiences in the workforce are valued by this peer group and provide a conduit for you to be able to educate and guide others. This is the fundamental benefit to a peer advisory group – the ability to confidentially bring issues to the table that might be difficult given your position as leader of the company.
The role of CEO is a difficult one. Decisions must be made, accountability is absolute, and there is little empathy for a leader when issues arise.
How Tapping Into Your Brand’s Personality Can Encourage Engagement
Online eyewear retailer Warby Parker is full of personality and has attracted almost 140,000 social media fans.
By Tenaya Wickstrand, Zenzi Communications
As CEO of your company, have you ever thought about how you would describe the personality of your brand?
This may seem like a simple question, but it is also one with which we see many brands struggle at Zenzi Communications. And one that I got to thinking about more personally after buying a pair of glasses.
Why do consumers gravitate toward particular brands over others, beyond the basics of product, price, place and promotion? Why does Southwest Airlines have more than 3.5 million likes on Facebook, while many competitors are only in the tens or hundreds of thousands at best? Why would some people prefer to meet at a Starbucks over other coffee shops and swear by their “grande” latte each morning? Could it be that some brands are more tapped into their own unique personalities and consistently better at presenting their images—from their products and services to their announcements and interactions on social channels?
What makes a brand’s personality stand out is encompassed by a single word; its personality must be “authentic.” To be successful, a brand’s unique persona must be conveyed in a sincere, honest and consistent way and interwoven into each aspect of the way the company does business.
Having a strategy behind your brand’s persona can help to make or break customer loyalty and the success of your business. We’ve all seen social media posts from major brands pointing to funny videos or current events, but if there isn’t a strategy behind what the brand really is about, these efforts fall short in creating a complete, lasting impression.
One brand that gets this and knocks it out of the park is Warby Parker. This New York-based company is changing the eyewear industry through its “rebellious spirit and lofty objective: to create boutique-quality, classically crafted eyewear at a revolutionary price point.”
Why do I, and several of Warby’s 138,000 fans, actively follow and engage with them on social media? It is the uniqueness and overall persona portrayed as if Warby Parker is a single person rather than an emotionless company. Warby Parker expresses a personality that is based on excitement, something I’m drawn to along with thousands of others. Through social media and marketing campaigns, Warby Parker conveys a team and brand that is carefree, spirited and youthful. For example, they share outrageous pictures of team costume days, which exemplifies their lighthearted nature and makes the brand appear more human.
As mentioned earlier, consistency is another key component to being successful when it comes to brand persona. One-off social posts won’t create lasting relationships. Consumers want to feel connected to your brand just as they feel connected to their friends. Consistency allows you to stay engaged and keep them curious about what you are up to, where you’ve been, and what’s new in your world, just like they would any other friend on social media.
There were many business-related aspects of Warby Parker that immediately got me hooked such as price, unique offerings and great customer service, but it’s been the personality that keeps me engaged and checking back even after my initial purchase. Even their job postings page illustrates their personality. I’ll admit that I became a big fan when I saw that last Halloween they decorated their conference room after a “kill room” from the Showtime show Dexter, one of my favorites. This is just one example of how visibly showing your personality can resonate with your audience and connect them in a way that just pushing out new products never will. Also, did I mention their Buy a Pair, Give a Pair program that gives a pair of glasses to someone in need with each purchase of a pair? This gives them extra kudos!
As an executive of your company, are you carefully considering what your brand represents and how each of your actions as a company is either supporting or breaking that persona? Your customers are. Tapping into “who you are” and developing a strategy around brand persona can help to further the goals of your business. That strategy should then extend into all aspects of your business, from product offerings, pricing, promotion, and media relations to social media, content development and other online channels.
The Behavior of Successful CEOs
Who is the typical CEO?
Countless studies and articles have tried to pinpoint the CEO personality.
A recent Duke University study found that CEOs are more likely to be optimists and risk-takers than are members of the general population. According to New York Times columnist Adam Bryant, author of The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons From CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed, CEOs are curious, confident, fearless team players who prefer simple, concise information. But how do these abstract characteristics translate into action? How do successful CEOs behave?
Here’s one thing studies tell us about those at the top: They are social—very social.
A joint study by professors at Harvard University, the London School of Economics, and the European University Institute found that CEOs spend 85% of their time working with other people – attending meetings, on the phone, or at work events – and only 15% of their time working alone. Of time spent with others, nearly half of that time included people outside of the CEO’s organization.
Whether by nature or nurture, CEOs are collaborative individuals.
As our world becomes increasingly interconnected – spurred on by the ever-expanding social media universe – it is clear that the collaborative nature of business is here to stay. A 2012 IBM study found that more than two-thirds of corporations plan to partner with other corporations this year – up from only slightly more than half in 2008, according to Forbes.
“People used to talk about competition, about protecting industry secrets and shutting out competitors. Now we talk about cooperation and coordination,” explains Jerry Rollins, Co-Founder of Sage Executive Group. “‘Coopetition’ is the new competition. CEOs who learn from other companies gain more knowledge than they ever could if they limited their interaction to their own firm alone,” he says.
So how can a busy CEO ensure his or her company is not functioning in a vacuum?
- Read industry newsletters to keep abreast of industry trends.
- Implement a social media strategy. Take note of other companies’ social media strategies in order to learn from their strengths and weaknesses. Do not underestimate the power of virtual and digital communication.
- Join a CEO peer advisory group to gain the perspective of CEOs outside your organization.
While the personality traits of successful CEOs may vary, evidence suggests collaboration is one behavioral trait successful CEOs have in common.
