Making Rain

I love P.T. Barnum. Yes, he was a bit of a scoundrel and a con man. But very wise and seminal and modern in his practical thinking about business.

One of Barnum’s maxims I recently came across appeared in his essay “The Art of Money Getting or Golden Rules for Money Making” (1880). Barnum says: “When a man’s undivided attention is centered on one object, his mind will constantly be suggesting improvements of value, which would escape him if his brain was occupied by a dozen different subjects at once.” Barnum’s advice is most applicable to my present inundation-of-new-media conundrum.

One of the reasons I write this business blog is simply to clear some contemplative time for myself each week. It helps me coalesce my anomic ideas into something coherent. In a sense, I don’t know what I think till I write it down.

On July 6th I posted about the value of lifestyle and life balance accommodations for my employees. As a boss and a creative entrepreneur, clearing open-ended, spacious time for quiet contemplation without agenda is crucial for my emotional health and life balance.

Which brings me to Nicholas Carr‘s new book, “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brain.” Mr. Carr’s book sounds the alarm about the discomfiting implications of our manic connectivity, our addictive cyber hyperactivity. Carr points to significant neuroscientific evidence suggesting that the Net, with it’s constant distractions and velocity, is turning us into “scattered and superficial thinkers.” Carr states in The Wall Street Journal: “Over the last few years, I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory.” He cites extensive science in support of his thesis.

People who read text studded with links, the studies show, comprehend less than those who read traditional linear text. People who watch busy multimedia presentations remember less than those who take in information in a more sedate and focused manner. People who are continually distracted by emails, alerts and other messages understand less than those who are able to concentrate. And people who juggle many tasks are less creative and less productive than those who do one thing at a time….Only when we pay deep attention to a new piece of information are we able to associate it “meaningfully and systematically with knowledge already well established in memory” writes the Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel.

I will admit to being instinctively a bit of a Luddite. I’m not a techie, though my company, Corporate Rain International, is a cutting-edge technology-driven company. I hire technologists. I hope my instinctive caveats about our accelerating cyber-phantasmagoria are unwarranted. I try not to let the fear of the unknown interfere with a practical business reality. However, for myself it is important not to compulsively try to connect with every magic of the Internet (tweeting, texting, friending, linking, etc.)

The Roman philosopher Seneca said succinctly, “To be everywhere is to be nowhere.” I must agree. Thank you, Seneca.

Our lovely Great Recession has been a boon for my executive sales outsourcing firm Corporate Rain International. Yup. Despite alarming small business trends I’ve discussed lately, Corporate Rain has become a tighter, stronger, more profitable, more effective organization. So, in many ways, I personally feel gratitude for the current economic malaise.

Fear is a useful tool for change. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has famously said a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. That’s true. So here’s how we’ve used the last two anni horribiles at Corporate Rain to become a better company with a steadily improving top and bottom line.

First of all, we’ve brought on an experienced COO with new responsibilities for streamlining and efficiencies, with broad authority to institute change. As founder of my firm I’ve had to let go responsibilities I’m not gifted at, an act made easier through urgency. We have cut inefficient personnel and process. Staff responsibilities have been reviewed and realigned. Our line-up of  executives and associates have never been stronger or more effective. Every expenditure is analyzed, no matter how minor. (My COO insisted I justify a $10 light bulb purchase last week. Annoying, but probably all to the good.)

Second, we have discovered at least two serious new revenue streams, which we had simply not bothered to pursue pre-recession. These new verticals are recession proof and make our long-term financial planning easier.

Third, when we have had extra staffing band-width, we have used our resources and experience on a pro bono basis to support a variety of charities including Texas Voice Project For Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Association, By The Hand Club For Kids, and the Wilkinson Center, helping these institutions with free ongoing business development, research, and planning. We also sit on the boards of some of these organizations. On an individual basis I am deeply proud that most of our employees do active volunteer work individually, as well.

In addition to writing my alarmist concern about the current state of small business, I and Corporate Rain’s President David Downey have had personal meetings with elected officials in three different states and Washington D.C. to discuss both charitable issues and current small business problems. We have corporately committed to active participation with the boards of three different non-profits.

I do have a mystical instinct that karmic reward does follow energy given back to the universe. Without sounding too granola hippyish, bad times offer an even greater opportunity for an open spirit of entrepreneurial generosity. This recession presents a particularly useful chance to walk the walk of principles and ideals. And it’s really ultimately a selfish thing as it ennobles the tone of your company and engenders pride and happiness in employees. If nothing else, a tone of service and helpfulness osmoses into all your everyday interactions. It spawns trust and collegiality in potential clients.

So, while I cannot deny alarm and even morbidity in my concern about the current macro small business climate, there are so many daily positives that can come out of economic gloom. At least that has been the case for us.

Though we live in a fraught and difficult entrepreneurial atmosphere, there is really no bad time for doing good business.

General Douglas MacArthur said, “There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.” Thank you, Douglas.

I hate the term “lead generation“, even though my firm Corporate Rain International has been for many years, arguably, the quietly elite US company serving this business niche. (I prefer to call my company an executive sales pipeline company.)

Since I started blogging six months ago, I have gotten lots of lovely responses and calls. It’s really fun and gratifying to occasion dialogue with peers. But I’ve noticed several of these correspondences ending with a variation on, “But what the hell does your company actually do? I can’t quite figure it out.”

I don’t intentionally try to be cryptic, but I admit a wish to not define my firm too restrictively. Simply put, Corporate Rain discretely initiates high-end new business development with a wide variety of corporate decision makers. (It is industry agnostic.) Over the years, this has taken such widely variegated forms as raising venture capital, arranging speeches, putting fannies in the seats at elite seminars, doing due diligence, supporting road shows, etc., but basically we deliver a bespoke, high-level first meeting to clients that is both money qualified and ROI specific.

Corporate Rain creates a systematic, ongoing new business pipeline. We are essentially an insta-presto elite outsourced sales force for the first half of the sales process. We only do this one thing and we only do it with real strategic decision makers.

There are many details to how we do this technically and administratively, but it is beyond boring to describe. What is not boring is to say my firm is institutionally and karmically grounded in a tonality of service, ethics, and truth. In a large sense we don’t first worry about profitability. We assume that will follow if we treat people as we would want to be treated. Which is not to say we are not an aggressive, fierce executive sales organization. We are.

This blog does not pretend to thought leadership nor is it written to market my firm. I write it for myself, my fellow salesmen, my fellow entrepreneurs, my employees, my friends, my fellow travelers. I write it to allay my own entrepreneurial loneliness. My personal interest is exploring how to live an ethical, effective, and full life in the Darwinian testing ground of capitalism.

Hence my weekly thoughts, anecdotes, maunderings, and dreamy conjectures on effective entrepreneurship and sales.

My employees are more important to me than my clients. Yup. Even more important than my clients.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I can almost always gauge the health of a firm when I walk into a reception area. If the receptionist is happy, professional, and can tell you the basics about the firm, it is almost always a healthy company.

Employees are very much the real heart and soul of most service enterprises and, certainly, of my own company Corporate Rain International. This is not to say I don’t love my clients. I do. I work for them with passion and zeal. I worry about them at night. I like them personally. They often become my friends. However, I can get clients. What is harder is developing a cadre of associates that truly brands and inculcates my firm’s ethics, quality, and essence in their very being. That is Corporate Rain’s real value and capital, and why companies hire and stay with my firm.

Ken Makovsky

I was reminded of this in recently reading Ken Makovsky’s excellent blog “My Three Cents” (January 27, 2010 – www.makovsky.com/blog). He states, “Employees are the face of the company.  They are the ambassadors who make a difference.” Makovsky goes on to cite a study in The New York Times that found strong sales growth was closely correlated with employees who thought more highly of their company than did society at large. Ken Makovsky is profoundly correct.  I’ve always believed every employee should be a rainmaker and a P.R. touch point.

Dr. Steven Balder of NYU (In Crain’s New York Business) has noted that great workplaces have in common a sense of community that  is built upon respect for the employee.  He says,  “People are seeking more than just a job.  [Good companies] are validating people and making them feel respected.” He goes on to state that such firms are much better suited to survive the current recession. (I personally  try to be bluntly honest with my own associates in explaining my company’s financial basics, as we work our way through this “Great Recession”.) There is mutual respect and a sense of a communal shared risk in embracing this process. A culture of respect and equality activates the acceptance of entrepreneurial vision and leadership and the empowerment of collaborative, creative, vibrant business enterprise.

If you are interested in reading further on this subject try The Power of Respect by Deborah Norville, the anchor of Inside Edition.  She concludes her useful book with these words:

“If you run a business, why wouldn’t you want your employees to be more creative, to be more loyal, to give that little extra to their job—especially when all it takes to encourage it is to let people do their jobs with a little acknowledgment of what they do and recognition of their efforts….Consideration, deference, and inclusiveness require nothing but a respectful mindset.”

Thank you, Deborah.