Michael Ciszewski founded Campden Hill International with the belief that it’s essential for us to find ways to slow down and reflect – if only for a moment.  (And boy is this editor feeling that right now!)

“When we make room for these times and spaces, we become capable of transforming ourselves and our work into something that is more integrated and connected,” he says.

True to Michael’s vision, Campden Hill International contributes to this type of transformation by helping teams develop the habit of reflective learning as a core capability for improving results or overcoming operational and strategic constraints.

Connect with Michael on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

What made you decide to start your business?

Shortly after I made the shift into OD work (and before I knew it was called OD work), I knew it would only be a matter of time before I started out on my own.

The beginning was 1995, and the more I practiced as an internal staff member in organizations, the more I saw how my effectiveness was limited.  When working with people on issues related to their effectiveness, there is a huge benefit to being an outsider.  I get to say things I otherwise wouldn’t be able to say, I’m perceived as having my own agenda rather than that of senior management, and I can pursue my professional interests in the way I want.

OK, that’s the philosophical answer.  More pragmatically, I volunteered to be let go from Merrill Lynch when they were looking for people to exit the firm in advance of the downsizing that was coming as part of the 2001 recession.  The payout I received served as seed money that made it possible to move from NYC down to DC to be nearer my kids and to start Campden Hill International.

Tell me about a time your company made a difference

The nature of my work is such that it requires patience to observe a difference being made.  Impact happens gradually, over time, as strategies are implemented, relationships shift, and people interact with each other in more productive ways.

I’ve been working with a DC non-profit for over six years now, and their story has been one of continuous growth and success.  I step into the organization once or twice a year, and that is enough to help them shake things up, ask important questions of each other, and plan for the coming period.

While my part in their trajectory is undoubtedly very small (they are really good at what they do), I am nonetheless a regular part of their process now.  And that makes a difference to them.

What’s the hardest thing about marketing your business, and how do you get past it?

Marketing at all is hard for me.  What’s most challenging is that I’m marketing Michael Ciszewski.  As great as I think I am, most organizations are wired to buy things: products and services.  Not people.  I have a couple of ways around this.

First, I talk about the services I have provided clients in the past.  That’s a lot of what’s on my website (Shout out to Ann Bevans Collective!!!*).

Second, I try to get people to talk to me about what they want and what they are trying to do as a way to see if there is any intersection between my talents and what they need.  This second way works much better, but it doesn’t happen as often as I’d like (see the opening statement above).

What marketing strategy has brought you the most business?

Word of mouth and referrals.

What’s next for you?  What marketing activities do you wish you could do, but haven’t yet found the time?  What do you plan to start doing in the next 6 months?

I need to write a business plan.  I have no idea how to do this.  I’m going to do a Google search as soon as I finish this.  I made a feeble attempt way back at the beginning, but it never went anywhere.  I didn’t know what to do with it.  Kind of what many of my clients do with their strategy documents.  Maybe I need to take some of my own advice on this….

The other thing is I need to keep putting myself out there online.  Blog posts, tweets, etc.  I feel like I’ve made a decent start, and I want it to become more regular.  I hear it’s a good way to attract attention.

Ann says…

Man, marketing yourself is really hard, isn’t it? So many of us wish that we could just sit back and do what we do and let the work come to us.

Not gonna happen.

As Michael points out, you don’t have to be a sales genie.  It’s about having conversations with people.

Where to start those conversations?  Well that’s up to you.  Online, at networking events and conferences, under the light at Starbucks – learning to listen to what people need and talk in non-bragging ways about how you can help is what it’s all about.

* I’m totally blushing.

Photo by MontyAustin

Begin with the end in mind.

This has to be one of the greatest pieces of advice ever offered. Because if you don’t know where you’re headed, how can you possibly know when you’ve arrived?  Or how to get there in the first place?

That goes double for your website.

The success of your website will be determined by the degree to which you ask yourself this one question:

(ready?)

What do I want people to do here?

Ask and answer this critical question and you will have the foundation for a winning site.

“What do I want people to do here?” gets at results.  Here are some possible answers:

• I want people to fill out this form.
• I want people to pick up the phone and call me. (Are you sure?)
• I want people to attend an open house.
• I want people to register for a class.
• I want people to make a donation.
• I want people to buy my book.
• I want people to gain confidence that I am the right resource for them.

Combined with a clear understanding of your target market (“What do people want to do here?”), you have everything you need to create a website that gets results.

Careful!

Uh oh.  Is this you?

Ann, spot on as usual!  Brilliant!  Yes, I want people to do ALL of those things!

Danger, Will Robinson.

One objective per audience.

Websites get clunky in a hurry when you ask them to do too much.

Yes, it’s likely that you have more than one audience.  And you want to appeal to all of those audiences.  But you can’t do it all on your homepage.  (Really, you can’t).

Example

Say you’re building a website for an educational institution.  You have prospective students, current students, alumni, faculty, and parents all visiting your site.

Consider:

• For each of these audiences, what is the one thing I want people to do right now? (Yes, of course it can change later).
• Which of these things is most important to my institution right now?
• Are there one or two others that are almost as important to my institution right now?

The most important call to action goes on the homepage. Maybe there’s a secondary call to action in a sidebar or near the bottom.  Everything else goes inside.

And I do mean everything else.

For this to work, you’re going to have to be very tough. Because everybody’s going to think their thing is the thing that should be put right on the homepage.  Don’t do it! Stand your ground.

You will be rewarded with a website that does exactly what it’s supposed to do and generates results everyone will be proud of.

Photo by Baha'i Views / Flitzy Phoebie

I’d been wracking my brain for hours, trying to think of something to blog about, when the universe finally threw me a bone.

My relationship with the mailman is just like a video game.

You know how, in games, you get rewarded for doing stuff, but it’s not always the same reward?

Say you land on Community Chest in Monopoly.  Sometimes you get a Get Out of Jail Free card.  Sometimes there’s a bank error in your favor.  Sometimes you even get penalized and have to pay some ugly ass player $10 for winning a beauty contest (as if!).

Same thing in Super Mario Bros.  Sometimes when you break the brick, you get a coin.  Sometimes you get a 1-Up mushroom.  Sometimes you just get a nasty knot on your head.

Just like the mailbox.

Sometimes there’s a big check.  Sometimes there’s a small check.  Sometimes there’s a check where most of the money is owed to someone else.  And sometimes there’s the gas bill and a Pottery Barn catalog.

Don’t judge me.  They have good deals on curtains.

Anyway, the random reward is one way that games keep you playing.  Or, in my case, returning to the mailbox.

So tonight, I’m standing in my garage with the door open, tucked away from the cold rain, waiting for the mailman to finish loading the mail into my community mail station, and I’m thinking about how it’s after 6 and I should already have my mail.

Also, I’m thinking about how waiting for the mail reminds me of game theory. And how I should write about that so you can think about all the ways you’re going to use this knowledge to make your customers do stuff.

The verdict? A bank statement, the L.L. Bean Christmas book, and another freaking Pottery Barn catalog.

I can’t wait til tomorrow.

Chandra Wright has two decades of experience in apartment and planned community development, asset management, and entrepreneurship.

As a thriving Commercial Realtor®, Chandra is dedicated to helping her clients realize their financial potential through real estate investment and to building their wealth through strategic decision-making in today’s thriving marketplace.

Chandra’s contribution to Seven Sisters Group rests with her vision for constant improvement, and she facilitates a cutting edge environment that anticipates change.  Connect with Chandra at www.sevensistershomes.com or at chandra@chandrawright.com.

What made you decide to start your business?

I want the fulfillment of starting and running a successful real estate sales and management business.

Tell me about a time your company made a difference.

Vilas, my partner, helped a woman short sell her house after her husband left her, and then find a small rental where she lives wither her sons and mother. This woman, Gita, is the primary support for her family and a single mother. She works full time at a bank. Later, inspired by Vilas’ help and guidance, Gita decided to take up real estate part time to help make ends meet. She studied, got licensed, and began working with our team.

Last week, Gita’s bank told her banking and real estate were a conflict of interest and she had three days to decide her priorities. We helped her keep her job, without which she wouldn’t have sufficient support for her family, by immediately inactivating her license but offered that she work for us part-time to get more skills and experience in the field she loves.

Gita is still a member of our team. This is an example of how we make a difference by being resourceful, adaptive to changes, and having others’ needs at heart.

What’s the hardest thing about marketing your business, and how do you get past it?

Helping other people understand how we make a difference in every transaction. We haven’t yet established a way to get this across to the public.

What marketing strategy has brought you the most business?

Good relationships and demonstration of our follow-through because right now the majority of our business is referrals.

What’s next for you?  What marketing activities do you wish you could do, but haven’t yet found the time?  What do you plan to start doing in the next 6 months?

Better client contact database management. Better print marketing plan. More personalized website. Blogging. Selling our business and the value we bring more than our product and what we do. (not sure which we’ll do first)

Ann says…

Sound familiar?  Do you also struggle with helping people understand why you’re different?  In a crowded market, the importance of differentiating yourself can’t be overstated.

Like most organizations, Seven Sisters Group has a lot of work to do, and they aren’t sure where to start. Don’t let that stop you!  Start somewhere.  Any of these ideas will improve Seven Sisters Group’s visibility and sales.

Photo by Zach K

A couple of weeks ago, I decided I wanted to take a class at the local community college.  Art 101, Introduction to Drawing.  I’m taking it for my own personal edification.

I am now living in a maelstrom of having to prove who I am.

I called the community college, where I took Accounting 201 about 6 years ago, to find out how to register, since I couldn’t remember my ID number.

I learned that, since my address has changed, I need to come in and present my ID before I can register.  Oops, where is that change of address card again?

Called the MVA.  Oh, since you changed your address in 2009 and have only now lost the change of address card, you’ll need to come into the office to get that sorted.

Meanwhile, to register for classes I also need an unofficial transcript from my alma mater, McDaniel College, which I guess the community college forgot to get from me before I registered for said accounting class.

Requested the transcript.  It came in the mail 3 days later.  With the wrong name on it.

Oops!  You’re divorced?  And remarried?  We’ll need the divorce decree (from 2001 – time flies) and your marriage certificate, and your driver’s license. Are there any other personal documents I can ravage for you? (She really said that).

Is it okay that my driver’s license has my old address on it?  Thankfully, yes.  Bless you Gail, who works in the registrar’s office of a small town liberal arts college that changes lives.

All this so I can take Art 101.

Funny, isn’t it? In an age where your entire personal history is on display on the internet, you still need a 10 year old piece of paper to prove who you are.

Photo by malisonia

Many of my clients buy into the idea of doing a blog, but unfortunately, many of them struggle more than they’d like.  Which results in much pouting.

The truth is, it’s hard to create content consistently. Even if you’re blessed with lots of interesting things to say, narrowing them down to that one idea that will develop into a captivating 500 word post is daunting.

Forget the time it takes to actually write the post and get it on your blog.

The number one question I get from my clients regarding blogging is this: “How much time do I really need to spend on this?”

What they’re hoping for is a magic bullet: here’s the minimum amount of time you need to commit to this to see a return.

If only!

The truth is, it’s all about consistency.

Look, you didn’t gain 20 extra pounds because you put gravy on your mashed potatoes last Thursday. You gained the weight by eating a little too much every day for the past few years (or longer).

The same holds true for your blog.

When you write every day, or three times a week, you build a backlog of thoughtful, keyword-rich content that will make your website irresistible to Google and build an audience over time.

So what if nobody reads your blog today? By creating content day after day, even when you don’t feel like it, you are attracting readers for the future.  Really.

You know how crash diets don’t work?  Content binges don’t work either.  You can’t cheat the process.  You reap what you sow.

A Note on Being Perfect

In a way, quantity trumps quality in blogging.

Don’t get me wrong.  Yes, you absolutely need great quality content.  But the bar is lower than you think.

Not every blog post needs to be Pulitzer Prize worthy.  It’s okay to write about how your clients are driving you crazy, or how you’re overwhelmed at work, or how you really like ho-hos.

Everything in moderation, especially ho-hos.

Try to remember that different types of posts appeal to different types of readers. Go for variety.

And, above all, don’t make a hard job harder by writing about something you’re not that excited about right now. Go with your interests and moods, not against them.

My Most Popular Post

The most popular post on Ideabook is from March 18, 2010.  It’s called Compare and Contrast: Twitter vs. Facebook.  Apparently people are wildly curious about that topic, because I get a ton of search hits for it.

The second most popular post is the one called Wearing a Prosthesis, and it was posted on January 21, 2011.  That one is hot because it mentions a blog post by movie critic Roger Ebert, and on the first version, I misspelled his name as Robert Ebert.  Apparently, a lot of people screwed that up on search.  Go me.

My point is, you never know what’s going to be popular.  You never know when our 24 hour news cycle will catapult something you wrote two years ago to the top of the search results.

One thing’s for sure.  Consistently writing about what moves you and your readers will make that kind of exposure a lot more likely.

Here’s a little rule I live by: 7 x 3.

Seven

Each menu on your website should have no more than seven items.

Why seven?  Because, as a rule, seven is the maximum number of items a person can keep in his head at once.  This is why phone numbers have seven digits.

Why does this matter?  When a person interacts with your menu, he creates a virtual map of your site in his head.  This helps him remember where he’s been and where he still needs to go.

“Okay, I’m in the About section now.  And there are six other sections, and I generally know what they are.”

Sure, he probably doesn’t say that out loud.  But he’s comfortable.

When you have 14 items in your menu, danger!  Your user will  forget where she’s been.  She’ll get confused, nay, lost.

Three

Your website should have no more than three layers of navigation:

• Main Menu
  • Sub Menu
    • Sub sub menu

That’s IT.

Again, people like three. They can hold onto three.  Three makes sense.  Four, five or six do not make sense.

That’s not enough pages!

Really?

Seven items in your main navigation.  Each of those has seven items underneath of it, and each of THOSE has seven items underneath of IT.

7³ = 343 items

What are you, Amazon.com?

If you are, thanks for reading my blog!  Tell your friends!

If not, consider this:

Even Amazon lives by this rule.  Mostly.

Nine departments.  I can give them that, can’t you? They genuinely have a really big site.

Each of the departments has a manageable number of items underneath.  Under books, we have six.  Others have more, but they also have dividers in between to help you chunk items together in your head:

13 items, but they’re organized into 4 groups.  Which is almost like a third level of navigation.

All of this is to say that, even if you’re Amazon.com, you still pretty much play by these rules.

You probably don’t browse departments like this when you use Amazon, but if you did, you’d have a reasonably happy time of it.

It’s Navigation, Not Pages

So you’ve got up to 343 items in your navigation.  Remember, this does not necessarily equate to 343 pages on your site.

If you have an ecommerce site where you sell thousands of products, you’re going to have more than 343 pages.  But while your departments may be in your navigation, each product won’t be.

And if your site’s really that complicated, you’re going to need to lean on your site’s search capabilities anyway.

This rule is for you.

I’ve never met a site I couldn’t fit into the 7 x 3 rule with a little creativity.

It’s well worth the effort to give your visitors the best possible experience.

Photo by curtfleenor

Straight up writing advice.  Ready?

Use fewer words.

Sure, there are writers out there who use complex language to awe-inspiring effect.

I could name any number of literary giants, but instead I’ll introduce you to David Thorne, whose hilarious posts send me spiraling into a word candy coma.

Seriously, it’s like a roller coaster ride of brilliance, made all the more compelling by drawings of cats and the Australian accent I imagine while reading it.

Back to my point

For every David Thorne, there are a thousand equally skilled writers who get the job done in the fewest possible words.  Like Ernest Hemingway, for example.

And sadly, for every Hemingway, there are a hundred thousand writers whose sentences look like this:

In an effort to compensate for their individual lack of knowledge on either the IT or Facility requirements, many customers…

How about this instead?

To compensate for knowledge gaps, many customers…

That’s like, half as long.  And twice as precise.

I see this all the time.

Too many words!  Stop it.

Here are some tips:

1. Instead of using a modifier, think of a better verb. Which is better?  He said softly?  Or, he whispered?  Or, he spat? Or, he sighed?

2. Don’t be redundant. Your readers are smarter than you think they are. If you’ve been talking about IT or Facility requirements for 23 pages, you don’t need to say that again here.

3. Put your ideas in a logical order.  Every time you sit down to write, you’re making an argument.  Treat it as such.

Do you think this rant came out of me perfectly? 

Or do you think I sat here for an hour editing it, testing every idea, reordering things repeatedly, and deleting with abandon?

(It’s the second one).

Bonus personal pet peeve

4. Never say something happened “suddenly.”  Of course it happened suddenly.  Doesn’t everything happen suddenly?  First it isn’t, then a moment later, it is. Suddenly is inherently redundant.

How to write

1. Get it all out on paper.
2. Strike any idea that raises more questions than it answers.
3. Go back to the beginning and reduce your word count by 1/3.
4. Add new ideas as they come to you, but only if they’re brilliant.
5. Go to step 2.

Be ruthless.

Photo by alexanderdrachmann

I’m starting a new series called Conversations.  I’m interested in what makes business owners and marketers tick.

Aside: If you’re a business owner, you’re a marketer.  Deal with it.

Want to participate?  Send me an email with your answers to these five questions:

1. What made you decide to start your business?
2. Tell me about a time your company made a difference.
3. What’s the hardest thing about marketing your business, and how do you get past it?
4. What marketing strategy has brought you the most business?
5. What’s next for you?  What marketing activities do you wish you could do, but haven’t yet found the time?  What do you plan to start doing in the next 6 months?

If I pick you for the series, I’ll include a blurb about your company and a link to your website/twitter feed/whatever.  Which is, like, free advertising. So get right on it!

Can’t wait to read and share all your awesome responses!

Photo by Master of Telxons

Remember when a ringing phone was a mystery? It could be anyone: your best friend, a new prospect, your child’s school nurse, your mother, a secret admirer, an alien life form just arrived on our planet.

Or, it might be a sales guy.

These days, the mystery, and therefore much of the urgency, of a ringing phone has evaporated.

Blame caller id.  Blame our cellphones with their limitless address books. Blame whomever you like, but know this:

If you’re ringing my phone, you are annoying.

I don’t care if you’re Joan of Arc.

I’ll say it again: you are annoying.

After all, I’m in the middle of something.  And you just interrupted me.

The phone is not unlike my four year old. It shouts “MOMMY MOMMY MOMMY MOMMY MOMMY” until I respond.

Believe me, that act is wearing thin.

So you ARE Joan of Arc.

Say you are my best friend, or a new prospect, or a secret admirer, or an alien life form.  Have no fear, my annoyance will quickly be replaced by delight.

However, if you’re one of those other people, watch out.

You know it’s true.

Don’t you hate receiving cold calls?  Would you ever buy from someone who cold called you?

Right, so why are you doing it?

I’ll tell you why.  It’s because you don’t have any better ideas.  You bang out calls because you know eventually you’re going to get an appointment, and if you get enough appointments, you’re going to get a job. It’s a numbers game.

Here’s a radical thought: what if you sold to other people the way you like to be sold to?

How to make friends, via my grandmother.

• Don’t talk about yourself all the time. Find out what’s important to the other person.
• When you do talk about yourself, be interesting.
• Be helpful. Everyone can use a helping hand, and they’ll often extend a hand in return.

Where should you go to try to make friends? That depends on where your prospects hang out.

Maybe you need to join the local chamber, or a professional association.  Maybe you need to hang out on Twitter or LinkedIn. But no matter where you do it, the same rules apply.

Make friends, and watch your network (and your sales) grow.

Coda

I made a log. Bank of America has called me 63 times in the last 30 days.  I’m not late on my mortgage.  The only reason for them to call me is because they want to sell me something.

Guess how many times I answered the phone?

You guessed it: zero.

Make a note: cold calling is for the birds.