When you look at financial services firms, the first thing that comes to mind is accounting, financial planning, legal and management consulting firms. Although the breadth of professional services firms is much greater than that and includes marketing and recruitment, it’s our financial and legal counterparts that really struggle to stand out from the crowd.

Whether you are a team leader, external third party, or marketing manager, running a marketing strategy workshop can be quite daunting – especially if you are unprepared.

The benefit of a marketing strategy workshop is that you can understand the entire marketing operations in your business and how it influences key stakeholders. It’s a great opportunity to get your team together and understand the various goals of your management, sales, and marketing team, and if necessary, how it applies to your product or service development strategy.

By having a checklist in place, and getting your team fired up for an invigorating exercise that will help your business achieve goals.

Since the start of COVID, so many things have changed about business and the way employees are working in their organizations. Leadership and management of employees' performance have been tested and new 'norms' have arrived in post-COVID employee performance measures especially when it comes to what makes a good employee.

Only recently, I came back to manage the Marketing Eye business, something I haven't done in more than 6 or 7 years.

It's a daunting task because all of a sudden you have responsibility and there are new ways in which you need to navigate how you lead the team, and take them where you want to go, but also, where they want to go.

So, a young guy applies to be the Director of Sales and Marketing for a fast growing startup in the Fintech space. His name is John Doe. He had experience as a sales manager and he wants to test the waters in the fast-moving environment of the startup life. He’s a natural born salesman. He’s very charismatic and outgoing and seems to just say “yes” to every opportunity he comes across. So, John doesn’t think twice when taking on new challenges. He applies to that job with the prospects of huge earning potential and a great learning experience. When he gets called in for his interview, the entire team loves his energy. The hiring manager pretty much makes up their mind the minute he leaves that they’ll offer him the position.

They say that jealousy is a curse. I tend to agree. It hinders your judgement and affects your ability to see clearly - and that's just the start.

The green-eyed monster is a mental cancer (B.C. Forbes quote), and can be a huge culture killer, leaving employees that are affected by it disengaged and unproductive.

It's our first quarter conundrum that is making me scratch my head, and is starting to create some sleepless nights. In 5 years, we have never had a month where our sales figures didn't meet our projections.

I'm shocked, concerned, worried and trying to rack my mind as to why. I find myself looking for answers.

In life as a normal rule, I do not reward bad behavior and have spent a lifetime being disappointed by people because of it. But the truth of the matter is that sometimes, you have to, and as painful as it is, choose not to be the one to set the example. You have to make a choice to let something make you or others miserable or to move on gracefully.

When we reward bad behavior a few things happen:

We all set goals, and strive to make the most of our time. You however, you exceed expectations. You are organized, you are punctual, a true hard worker and then your car shuts down. Your identity gets stolen during the peak of tax season, the plumbing in your home is depleting uncontrollably and your love life conveniently decides to crumble.

Oh how tempting it is to lay in bed in fetal position and compose symphonies of self-pity, but your boss just texted to inform you that your deadlines just got moved forward.
It’s easy to call this a series of unfortunate events, but in all reality, it’s just called life.

Chaos is inevitable but manageable nonetheless.

First step. Stop everything.

When you have travelled the world as much I have, there is one thing that you know is always going to be a given – that hotels are a must.

Now, if you must stay in a hotel, then you usually either looking for your normal comforts or for something different to what you already have at home. Something better, sometimes something just different.