Mike Figliuolo – Page 93 – thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World

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Entries by Mike Figliuolo

Hate Presenting? That’s Okay – They Hate Listening to You

April 26, 2010 /5 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications /by Mike Figliuolo

This might sound mean but we don’t want to hear you present. The thought of you inviting us to your 2 hour presentation on “Budget Variances and Optimized Value-Added Opportunities for Synergies” makes us want to barf. Why? Because we’re terrified of watching you present. I’m going to be a little snotty in this post (okay… maybe a lot snotty). First, you kind of expect that from me. Second, if I’m nice and polite, you won’t listen. I’m like your best friend who tells you you’ve been drinking too much and wearing lampshades too frequently. It’s not pleasant news but it’s definitely constructive and helpful. Let’s break it down. There are three reasons we don’t want to hear you speak. Your presentation is awful. You’re boring and stiff. You talk down to us. Because of that, we hate you. I know presentations are the lifeblood of every corporation. Without PowerPoint you guys would shrivel up and blow away. The thing is, you don’t have to be so terrible at it (although part of me is very thankful it’s such a rampant problem otherwise our Structured Thought and Communications Course wouldn’t be in such high demand). I won’t go into why it’s critical for you to get better at building compelling presentations and having powerful meetings. If you haven’t figured that out yet, you need to stop reading this blog and head down to McDonald’s and pick up an application. I will go into why we think you’re awful, boring, and condescending. And don’t worry, I’ll offer some suggestions on how to fix the problems. Here goes…

5 Steps to Entrepreneurship With Zero Risk

April 19, 2010 /8 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Career, Entrepreneur, Sales /by Mike Figliuolo

I’m sick of people asking “Do you know how crazy you are for making the decision to go out on your own as an entrepreneur and taking on all that risk?” I’ve barely taken ANY risk as I’ve pursued my entrepreneurial ventures. You can take this (almost) risk-free approach too if you plan carefully and deliberately. First, let’s dissect the kinds of risk you typically take as an entrepreneur then we’ll get into making entrepreneurship (almost) risk-free. There are a few discrete types of risk you’ll take as you set forth on your own: financial risk, career risk, brand risk, and lifestyle risk. Financial risk: you have the potential to blow it all. Or you can simply run out of cash and face foreclosure. This happens when you build a business that can’t sustain the cash demands you’ll face as an entrepreneur. I recently explored this risk in the 4 traps that destroy entrepreneurs. Career risk: you can derail your career progression because you spend a few years out of corporate America pursuing your dream of building www.BoogerSculptures.com (by the way, that URL is available in case you’re interested…). Personal brand risk: you become known as the guy who “couldn’t cut it” as an entrepreneur. Lifestyle risk: your family hates you because they forget what you look like since you’re working 94 hours a day. You also become such a stress bomb that everyone around you develops a nervous twitch. Now that I’ve scared off the lily-livered posers from pursuing the entrepreneurial dream, I’ll tell all you real want-to-be-my-own-boss types how to de-risk entrepreneurship:

5 Keys to Being an Outstanding Team Member

April 14, 2010 /7 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

This post is courtesy of Maureen Metcalf (one of our thoughtLEADERS instructors). Enjoy her perspective. Here’s Maureen: It is not enough to be an exceptional individual contributor; you must also work effectively with others. Even super heroes work together just like Batman and Robin. A key differentiator for professional growth is how well you work with others. We can all think of times where we could have accomplished a task easier alone but still needed to work with others. We can probably also see where there was some benefit to the organization by our working with someone else, like they got to learn from us and from the experience. I worked with a client who saw himself as the expert at everything he did. He was frustrated by working with teams because it got in the way of doing the real work and no one knew as much as he did. This team stuff slowed the work down and frustrated him. He also thought he should be promoted because he could certainly accomplish the work more effectively than anyone around him. If only he knew and focused on the 5 key behaviors that would have made him a better team member. From his perspective, he was forced to work for leaders who were not as competent as he was. From where he sat, his leaders had all kinds of stupid requests and changed their minds regularly. They could not pick a path and stick to it. He was a great individual contributor but got a complete FAIL for team effectiveness and it was getting in his way. He was not moving forward and others disliked working with him. He remembered when he liked going to work but that time had long passed. He was frustrated and unhappy and did not […]

Want a Powerful Business? Take Your Own Medicine

April 12, 2010 /2 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Entrepreneur, Leadership, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

You’ve all been to the doctor at some point. There’s always that moment of truth where he tells you to change your bad habits, eat better, and exercise more. It all makes sense and is sound advice. But how likely are you to follow his advice if he’s wheezing it out because he weighs 350 lbs. and you keep getting distracted by the piece of Ho Ho hanging off his lower lip? Not so much, right? As a trainer, coach, and communicator I dispense more than my fair share of advice and guidance. A lot of it even makes sense. Occasionally. But there’s something I find more difficult than just about every other aspect of my job: taking my own advice. The weird thing is I regularly advise leaders on how to improve their businesses yet I sometimes get lazy about doing the same exact things I tell them to do. Why do I demonstrate this shortcoming? Maybe it’s pure sloth. Maybe I run under the misguided belief that all the things I advise others to do I must naturally do myself in my own business dealings. Then one of my friends proves me wrong. When you surround yourself with incredibly smart people, they tend to ask some really smart questions. Needless to say I get asked smart questions quite frequently. If you stop and listen to those questions though (either from others or the ones you’d ask yourself if you were dispensing advice to you) you can make your business exponentially more powerful. Here’s how:

Do You Know the Difference Between Leadership and Management?

April 8, 2010 /8 Comments/in Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

I recently had the honor of being asked to provide my perspective on the difference between leadership and management as a contributor to a great document called Lead(or) Manage. The architect of this work is David Burkus over at LeaderLab. Here’s my contribution to that great work (my entry is on page 14 of the PDF) but you HAVE TO go read the rest of it – the perspectives therein are fantastic. You’ll get a great taste of fantastic leadership perspectives from folks who are exponentially smarter than I am. This is deliberately a short blog post because I want you to use all the time you save to go download and read the rest of the document here. I encourage you to share this post with your friends and colleagues so they have access to the same great content you do. So here’s my take on the difference between leadership and management:

3 Steps to More Cash: If You Want a Raise, Plan Now and Ask Later

April 5, 2010 /0 Comments/in Career /by Mike Figliuolo

The bad news is, last year economically sucked. The good news is, this year seems to be sucking less. There are signs of life out there in the economy. People are starting to crawl out from under their rocks and spend a dollar or two. Portfolios have recovered somewhat. This might be the year to get that raise. The problem is, if you’re not planning for that raise right now, you’re almost guaranteed not to get it later. Raises are uncomfortable topics. Why? Because your boss is immediately in a position where they have to delicately say “no” which inherently tells you you’re not worth what you’re asking for. This dynamic occurs even if you’re doing a great job and the reason she can’t give you a raise is because budgets are locked down. It’s also uncomfortable because you’re going into that conversation expecting that nauseating sense of rejection just like the junior prom. So what are you to do? How can you increase your chances of getting a little more cash this year especially in light of how brutal last year was? You have to plan for the raise now and ask for it later. There are three simple steps in this process.

If You Want to Close the Deal, Go Naked

March 29, 2010 /7 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Entrepreneur, Sales /by Mike Figliuolo

No one will deny business has become infinitely more complex and exponentially more efficient. Kind of. The challenge we face in the information age is there’s too much frickin’ information. Even worse, you’re usually trying to cut through the clutter to make your sale. It can be you’re selling a product, a service, or an idea to internal customers but the point is you’re always selling something. Well I have news folks. I found a new trick for cutting through that clutter to make the sale: go naked. I know how important clarity of communications is to making these sales. Heck, a huge part of my business is based on clear, concise communications training. You wouldn’t believe how much demand there is for tools to help us persuade and influence people more effectively and efficiently. One of the first blog posts I ever wrote was about getting to the “so what?” in a compelling way. I try to practice what I preach. I try to make my communications succinct and punchy. I don’t always succeed. I’m always looking for new ways to get to “yes” with my audience. The other day I tried a new one. I went naked to two separate and hugely important meetings. And it felt so good I plan on going naked much more often. Since you all know I kept my clothes on for those meetings (really being naked would be kinda creepy) let me explain what I mean.

Two More Traps that Destroy Entrepreneurs (Part 2)

March 22, 2010 /2 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Customer Service, Entrepreneur, Sales, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

In my last post I talked about the traps entrepreneurs face with respect to cash (not planning it well enough or managing it rigorously enough) and being your own boss (which means you might not have coworkers to help you make decisions). If you missed the post, go read it here. Today I’ll cover two more traps that can ruin your business faster than Takeru Kobayashi can destroy a Nathan’s hot dog. If you’re an entrepreneur you likely have a cool idea for a product or a service. That knowledge and innovation is the core of what you’re about. You somehow intuitively understand a market need and that’s the source of your success. Or failure depending on how you play it. That’s the third trap. The fourth trap is that as the Big Cheese, you don’t need to sweat the small stuff. You’re the king of rock. There is none higher. Sucka MC’s better call you sire. Well guess what your majesty? You DO have to sweat the small stuff. All of it. Let’s explore these two traps, shall we?

4 Traps That Destroy Entrepreneurs (Part 1)

March 15, 2010 /6 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Entrepreneur, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

From a glance at early responses to our poll on entrepreneurship (see bottom of this page and VOTE if you haven’t already) it seems like everyone wants to be an entrepreneur. It’s sexy. Startups. IPOs. Be your own boss. Right? Well sometimes it downright sucks. And if you don’t know what you’re taking on, you’re likely tackling much more work and risk than you believe. In fact, in my conversations with other entrepreneurs (man, that’s a big word and it sounds funny) I’ve come across four things that will absolutely destroy your business. We’ve already covered the concept of how entrepreneurs need to bootstrap to win. The traps I’ll cover now go beyond that. They’re so important that I don’t want to give them short shrift so I’ll cover two of them in this post and two in the next. First, let’s look at why being an entrepreneur seems so sexy and glamorous: – you get to be your own boss and no one can tell you what to do – you set your own hours – you get to make all the decisions – you can make gobs of cash and you keep all of it – you get to write a blog with Bozo the Clown pictures without having to run it by corporate communications Sounds awesome, right? It is. I’ve been running entrepreneurial ventures my whole life dating back to selling hand-painted pencils and comic books in 6th grade (they were two separate business units of course). I’ve been a full-time entrepreneur for over two years now (translation – 100% of my income has come from my ventures at thoughtLEADERS, weBuild, and TiXiT). Yes, it’s awesome. I love it. But I’ve seen 4 things that can wipe you out in the blink of an eye and send […]

It’s Okay to be a Social Networking Clown

March 8, 2010 /0 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Communications, Social Media /by Mike Figliuolo

Nothing annoys me more than being told how to do something. It’s okay to have an opinion but to put oneself in a position of authority as an expert and tell others the right and wrong way to do something is a slippery slope. Unless you’re instructing someone on brain surgery, defusing a bomb, or landing a plane, you really have nothing more than opinion. If you’re at all like me you’re probably sick and tired of people telling you the “right” way and “wrong” way to use blogs, twitter, facebook, LinkedIn, and any other communication tool. Heck, I’ve been guilty of telling you how not to destroy your network by using such tools. The problem is we forget one major thing – we’re human and we each have individual personalities that are as unique as snowflakes. All these “experts” telling us the “right way” to use these tools squash that individuality and personality. Conformity breeds contentment, boredom, lack of innovation, and general curmudgeonliness. I’m here to spread a different message today – it’s okay to occasionally act like a clown (and I know clowns can be scary but there’s therapy for that). And if you’re not doing so, you’re really missing out. How dare I say that? Here’s how… Think about three people you love being around (other than your family). Now why do you like being around them? Likely because they’re interesting. They’re fun. They’re different than everybody else (including you). They make you laugh. They make you think. Sometimes they get you pretty upset. But they’re anything but boring.

Trust a Total Stranger With Your Life – Literally

March 1, 2010 /8 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Business Toolkit /by Mike Figliuolo

This post is a set of random musings from about 30,000 feet. I’m on my way to Budapest to do some amazing work with a fantastic client (Holy crap! My company is now an *international* leadership development firm!). Since there’s nothing better to do than sleep, eat, or watch movies, I figured I’d simply write this when I’m in a state of mind that enables some deep thoughts. I’m going to discuss trust, taking care of yourself, and other topics as they pop to mind. If you’re a new reader to the blog, just accept that this randomness happens every once in a while. Let it go and enjoy the ride. Trust Would you trust a perfect stranger with your life? And I’m not asking this as an off the wall question. Would you? Someone you’ve never met before. Would you put your very life in their hands? Would you leave the question of whether you live or die completely up to someone you’ve never even seen? No, right? Wrong.

Leadership… Metallica Style!

February 22, 2010 /3 Comments/in Career, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

If you’ve been a reader of this blog for any amount of time, you already know I’m a metal head. While listening to that driving double bass drum and the fury of the rhythm guitar can be invigorating, there’s also the matter of the wisdom of the lyrics. Contrary to popular belief, metal bands don’t always sing about demons and blood. Many times there are lessons in the lyrics that can be applied to your everyday life. Today I’ll explore some great leadership lessons embedded in the lyrics of one of my favorite bands: Metallica. I’ve listened to those guys for over 20 years and I’ve been to many of their shows (which are absolutely amazing). They put a lot of thought into their lyrics and in a certain context you can apply many of those thoughts to your own leadership style. So here goes – I’ll offer up the song and lyrics then a quick lesson or interpretation of how you can apply them. As an added bonus, I’ll provide a link to the track when available. So limber up your necks, turn up the volume, and get ready to rock out… here we go!