Blog Author Mellissah Smith - Page 70

An extraordinary thing happened yesterday. I arrived at a client meeting and was greeted by their inhouse / incumbent agency and felt like I had walked into a one-woman war zone.

It was suppose to be a meeting whereby both parties worked together on different projects to accelerate the growth of a company, working on the strengths of each agency - but it didn't quite go to plan.

Firstly, this woman walked into the room, didn't acknowledge me at all and sat down and started typing away on her computer. After 10 minutes, she was faced with having to be introduced to me and as she shook my hand, she nearly broke it. I hear men say that this happens with people who try to make a statement, but in 14 years of business, this has never happened to me. I have never met a woman who has shook my hand so aggressively that my fingers turned blue.

My first thought was about how the meeting was going to unroll and whether it was worth me being there.

It's Friday... and most of us are in need of a motivational talk. Watch this video by Kid President for a dose of Friday morning inspiration!

As business owners and managers in an ever evolving world, our jobs become more challenging every day – every hour – to cut through clutter and make consumers notice our message.


How many times do we find ourselves repeating what we say to co-workers to get a message across?  For most of us, this isn’t a reflection of how we’re gauged as professionals or individuals but 95% attributable to the ‘151 rule’.


They say a person needs to hear new information at least three times before it registers into his/her mind for immediate recollection.  This has been taught over and over again to us and you can test it by saying aloud a new name you come across three times consciously.


When you target a market with a specific message the same rule applies, all except your target isn’t one person and those three times won’t cut it.  It’s all about repetition.  You have no control over which people are listening at what time of the day - so the logical bet is to be accessible and available 24/7/365.

It's only Tuesday and I am incredibly tired. I have been a week back in the US from international travels and all of a sudden it has all hit me like a tonne of bricks.

I arrive early to my hotel room, my place of residence until I make time to find a home in Atlanta, and I plonk all my bags down on the carpet, just by the door. Reluctantly, I reach for my bag and pull out my laptop case. As I unzip the case, I walk towards the small table in the corner, with a light beaming into the triangle of the wall.

I grab my Apple MacBook Air, flick open the screen, type in my password and stop for a moment. I am tired. So, tired that my body aches and my shoulder blades feel like I have a knife edged into bone. This is the life of someone who travels.

Four minutes. That’s how long it took for the first Twitter advertiser to bid on “power outage” as a search term after the lights went out at the New Orleans Superdome.

It also didn’t take long for cookie giant Oreo to respond to the now-infamous #superbowlblackout, spawning more than 13,000 re-tweets and nearly 5000 favourites.

Do you have plans to grow your business in the next 12 months? If you do, then we should talk.

There are many compelling reasons why businesses don’t achieve their goals; finance, people and marketing to name a few.

In the past 12 months, my business has embarked on global expansion. In that time, I personally have gone through everything from over the top excitement in signing a new deal, to dreading opening my emails - just in case something doesn’t go to plan. It’s part of the journey of any entrepreneur or businessperson that is on a high growth path and willing to take a risk.

Don't be fooled to think that in 2013 you have time to waste. Everyone is now faster, smarter, better - all with extraordinary tools at their disposal.

Embarking on global expansion has been the most fascinating experience and in particular, working in what is one of America's most untapped entrepreneurial hubs of Atlanta has not only been rewarding, but also very invigorating.

Atlanta isn't the sleepy town that some of the cities counterparts seem to think it is. In fact, it is quite the opposite. The city is full of promise, spirit and an attitude that is less ruthless than say New York, Chicago, San Francisco or Los Angeles. Behind the politeness and accomodating attitudes of Atlanta's business folk are smart, determined, ambitious and thoroughly capable people who drive small businesses in an endeavour to become big businesses.

Capitalizing on an ability to cap salaries and deliver products and services to a national and international audience with America's most proficient transport hub at its disposal, Atlanta entrepeneurs are dreaming big. You heard it right - they are dreaming big. Not too dissimilar to their New York small business friends who have inspired a national through a carefully executed tabloid and magazine advertising campaign that let's the world know that in New York "This is no place to dream small."

What strikes me about the people of Atlanta is their attitude to helping others and in turn, helping themselves. It seems that those who don't come from here, tend to be the one's to watch, whereas if you do business with a true Atlanta local, you are guaranteed that the good old fashion handshake on a deal is exactly that. 

Today I had lunch with two talented mergers and acquisition partners at Deloitte. They both are very busy people but were kind enough to take time out of their day to have a chat about business, tax and the run of the land in setting up in Atlanta, buying a home and a motor vehicle.

Let’s start this blog with a simple exercise. Go to your Facebook page and look at the last 10 statuses you posted. What are they mostly about? You may want to think before posting if most of your statuses revolve around work complaints, drunken weekend antics or overstate political opinions.

A study by University of Scranton and UC San Diego researchers found that Facebook status updates stick in the minds of readers for longer than you think – one status alone is 1.5 times more memorable than sentences from books, and 2.5 times more memorable than faces of strangers, representing a remarkable difference in memory performance.

Insert question marks here…  Sometimes even the odd exclamation mark for frustration’s sake.

You spend all your time on your business, client relationships, communications.  You’re investing a lot in your marketing to spread awareness and build a reputation.  Where’s the conversion?  Where’s the new business?  Where’s the Twitter following?  Where are the likes on Facebook?

Know.  Like.  Trust.

No matter how big and experienced you may be, a lot of people don’t know about the X-Factor of communication - that recent Chanel ad featuring Brad Pitt is a great example (making it to the ‘Business Insider’s 10 Worst Ads of 2012’ list).  Before you sell anything, you need to get known, you need to be liked and you need to be trusted.

How?