"...out-learning the competition"
HEADLINES:
Driving Top Line Revenue Growth and Market Share -- what could be more important than this in the coming decade...but first,
Daylight Savings Time Warning -- for those in Europe and Asia looking to view Stanford Professor Chip Heath's LIVE online seminar this Thursday March 25, the time will be an hour earlier for you since the U.S. switched over to Daylight Savings Time sooner than most of the rest of the world (which switches over this coming weekend). Please check your time conversions carefully. The Heath seminar is noon - 1:30pm Eastern Daylight Time. And the seminar will be archived within six hours after the finish so you can view it anytime after that.
Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos -- just finished reading his new book Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose yesterday on my flight to London to visit the EO chapter (it's a book you can read in a couple hours). Though not published until June, 2010, Tony was kind enough to send me a galley copy to read in preparation for his keynote at the Sales & Marketing Summit in Vegas (April 20 - 22). After co-founding and selling LinkExchange to Microsoft for $256 while still in his mid-20s (and just 2.5 years in business), he invested in Zappos and 26 other start-ups, becoming CEO of Zappos shortly thereafter. 10 years later, in July 2009, Amazon purchased Zappos for $1.2 billion. If you do the math, Hsieh has averaged over $100 million per year in value creation!
Never About the Money -- though he was always trying to make money as a child (his money making schemes are fascinating, like his button manufacturing business that made him $200/month for many years as a teenager -- I'm reading them to my children when I get home tomorrow), in the end LinkExchange and Zappos were never about the money. In fact, Tony put his last penny into Zappos to keep it going in those early years, a company that almost closed several times. It was always about building a "tribe" and culture into which he could pour his passion and soul. And early lessons from LinkExchange helped shape how the culture at Zappos would be nurtured, what became the key to their success.
Always About the Learning -- an avid book reader himself, one of the three key emphases' at Zappos is learning. Early on in the company, they amassed a library of books. To encourage learning, they listed all the employee's names down the side of a white board and all the books across the top and then kept track of which employees read which books. Still today, at over $1 billion in revenue, learning is a huge key to their success -- seminars, workshops, training, reading, etc.
One of the Three Most Important Books all employees must read during new employee training is Chip Heath's book Made to Stick. The other two are Mark Sanborn's classic The Fred Factor and Fish! A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results.
My Favorite Zappos Story -- after reading the book (I can't say much more until it's published) I'm juiced about hearing Tony speak in Vegas. He's one of a handful of huge entrepreneurial success stories of our time. And he promises to be as specific in his keynote as he is in the book, on how Zappos has driven revenue, maintained and built a powerful culture, and built a strategy around delivering an outstanding customer experience -- including my favorite story from the book (p. 99) about his deus ex machina moment in Zappos that was THE do or die moment in the company's history -- when he and his partner Fred went for a drink to figure out a last ditch effort to save the company and ended up outlining a radical new direction that did just that. Some of you might be facing the same moment.
Driving Top Line Revenue Growth and Market Share -- we're a month away from the Sales & Marketing Summit. Registrations are running twice what they were last year this time, so it's obvious many of you understand how critically important it is to drive, hard, your top line revenue growth and grab market share. Eight of the top sales, marketing, pricing, and customer service thought leaders of our time will be in one place for 48 hours. Get someone there to glean the ideas (a leaders MOST important job -- generate ideas!) and stay ahead of the competition and your market.