Posts Tagged ‘Business’

Bo Burlingham

Bo Burlingham is the author of Small Giants: Companies That Choose To Be Great Instead of Big (Portfolio, 2006) and an Editor-at-large of Inc. magazine.

My story in brief: I joined Inc. in January 1983 as a senior editor and became executive editor six months later, a position I held for the next seven years or so. In 1990, I resigned and became editor-at-large for a number of reasons, including my desire to go back to writing. I subsequently wrote two books with Jack Stack, the co-founder and CEO of Springfield Remanufacturing Corp. and the pioneer of open-book management. One of the books, The Great Game of Business (Doubleday/Currency, 1992), has sold more than 300,000 copies. (It explains what open-book management is and how it works in practice at the company that does it best.) The other, A Stake in the Outcome (Doubleday/Currency, 2002), has also done pretty well and gotten great reviews. (It’s a book you should read if you want to know what it really takes to run an employee-owned company.)

Before joining Inc., I freelanced for various publications, including Esquire, Harper’s, Boston Magazine, and Mother Jones. I was also managing editor of Ramparts magazine for a while, if anyone can remember back that far. In 1982, I joined Fidelity Investments, where I wrote for Peter Lynch, Ned Johnson, and other honchos until coming to Inc. From 1992 to 1997, I served on the board of The Body Shop Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of the international cosmetics company. I was also a founder, with Tom Peters, of PAC World, a weird international networking group that gave me a chance to meet a lot of zany—and brilliant—people from around the globe.

What else? I’ve been married 35 years to my wonderful wife, Lisa. We have two children and one fabulous grandson, with a granddaughter on the way. We live…well, that’s a long story. Let’s just say I’m always at large.

Dr. Eric Flamholtz

Eric Flamholtz is Professor of Human Resource Management & Organizational Behavior in the Anderson Graduate School of Management and a Faculty Research Fellow in the Harold Price Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He is also President of Management Systems Consulting Corporation, which he co-founded in 1978.

His major interests are: strategic organizational development (organizational success and failure) and the transitions and transformations required at different stages of growth; 2) the measurement and management of organizational culture; 3) organizational control systems such as the Balanced Scorecard; and 4) Human Resource Accounting. His approach is based upon what he terms “practical management theory,” i.e.; management theory, which is empirically based and sound but which is relevant and useful to managers.

His educational background combines organizational behavior and human resource management with accounting. He has taught and done research in each of these disciplines as well as interdisciplinary work combining all three.

Since 1976, Eric Flamholtz has focused on two fundamental questions: What does it take to continue to build successful organizations over the long term? and What is required for managers to continue to be successful throughout their careers? Answering these questions led Dr. Flamholtz to develop a series of frameworks and management tools that enable organizations and individuals to transition successfully from one stage of development to the next. His ultimate aim is to develop a holistic approach to managing growth successfully over the long term.

Eric is widely published in academic and professional literature. He has authored several books, including Growing Pains: Transitioning from an Entrepreneurship to a Professionally Managed Firm,Third Edition, (with Yvonne Randle, Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000), The Inner Game Of Management (with Yvonne Randle, American Management Association, 1987), Human Resource Accounting, Third Edition (Kluwer Academic Press, 1999), Changing the Game: Managing Organizational Transformations of the First, Second, and Third Kinds (with Yvonne Randle, Oxford University Press, 1998), and Effective Organizational Control: Theory and Practice (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996). He has also authored many professional and academic articles.

His clients have included: Amgen, Starbucks Coffee Company, Neutrogena, PowerBar, Countrywide Credit Industries, Tommy Bahama, Pardee Construction (a Weyerhaeuser company), Mövenpick Gastronomy International, The Disney Store, Wolfgang Puck Food Company, Baskin Robbins, Navistar International, PacifiCare Health Systems, American Century Investors, Jamba Juice, Bugle Boy, Chart House Enterprises, City National Bank, Citation, Cendant Mortgage, Guilford Pharmaceuticals, Mortgage Information Corporation, Unitech Systems, IBM, Kemper Insurance, General Dynamics, United Technologies, Meredith Publishing, Simon Properties, Touche Ross, LifeScan (subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson), Mileage Plus (subsidiary of UAL Corp.), Surgitek (subsidiary of Bristol-Myers Squibb), Republic Pictures, U.S. Filter, New World Entertainment, and Tekelec as well as many others.

Additionally, Eric has presented seminars and workshops for a wide variety of firms and organizations, including FedEx, Nike, Colgate Palmolive, AT&T, Hughes Electronics, Young Presidents Organization (YPO), Forbes Presidents Forum, Fortune Growth Conference, Fortune Human Resources Forum, Fortune CFO Forum, General Motors, PepsiCo, Abbott Laboratories, ARCO, Allergan, the Hyatt Corporation, Borg Warner, CIT, Computer Sciences Corporation, TRW, United Overseas Bank (Singapore), Warburg Pincus (Singapore), and Reuters (Switzerland).

Dr. Flamholtz has served on the faculty at UCLA since 1973. Previously, he served on the faculties of Columbia University, and the University of Michigan where he was also on the Staff of The Institute for Social Research (ISR). At UCLA, he currently teaches courses on “Managing Entrepreneurial Organizations” and “Human Resource Management & Organizational Behavior.” He has previously taught courses on Financial Planning & Control Systems, Managerial Decision-Making, Behavioral Accounting, Human Resource Accounting, and Advanced Management as well as the basic core course in Financial & Managerial Accounting. He is a member of the Personnel Round Table.

He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, an M.B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis, and an undergraduate degree in from Hunter College. His doctoral dissertation, “The Theory and Measurement of an Individual’s Value to an Organization,” was co-winner of the McKinsey Foundation for Management Research Dissertation Award.

Kerry Patterson

Kerry Patterson is a prolific writer who has coauthored numerous articles and award-winning training programs. Kerry taught at Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management and then cofounded Interact Performance Systems, where he worked for ten years as vice president of research and development. Kerry is coauthor of the New York Times bestsellers Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High and Crucial Confrontations: Tools for Resolving Broken Promises, Violated Expectations, and Bad Behavior. Kerry has completed doctoral work at Stanford University. He is a recipient of the Mentor of the Year Award and the 2004 William G. Dyer Distinguished Alumni Award from Brigham Young University.

Kerry Patterson is one of the cofounders and leaders of VitalSmarts, an innovator in corporate training and organizational performance that has taught more than two million people worldwide and worked with more than 300 of the Fortune 500 companies.

Kerry Patterson is also Professor of Econometrics at the University of Reading. He was previously Economist and Consultant Senior Economic Adviser at the Bank of England.

Some of Kerry’s books include:

• Influencer:  The Power to Change Anything
• Crucial Conversations:  Tools for Talking When Stakes are High
• Crucial Confrontations:  Tools for Taking About Broken Promises, Violated Expectations and Bad Behavior
• Better Than Duct Tape:  Dialogue Tools for Getting Results and Getting Along
• The Balancing Act:  Mastering the Competing Demands of Leadership

Lou Adler

Lou Adler is the president of The Adler Group, an international training and consulting firm helping  companies find and hire top talent using Performance-based Hiring^sm. He is the Amazon best-seller author of Hire With Your Head and the Nightingale-Conant audio program Talent Rules! Using Performance-based Hiring to Hire Top Talent (2007). Adler is a noted recruiting industry expert, international speaker, and columnist for a number of major recruiting and HR organization sites including SHRM, HRPA, SMA, ERE, Kennedy Information, EUCI, HR.com and ZoomInfo.com.

The Adler Group helps companies around the world make hiring top talent a systematic business process. As the originators of Performance-based Hiring^sm they are able to offer a full range of training and consulting services for recruiters and hiring managers. For those critical and hard-to-fill executive positions they also provide a unique executive search capability.

Their client base includes Fortune 500 clients like Yahoo!, Wells Fargo, and AIG as well as diverse organizations like the YMCA, Broadcom, HealthEast Care Systems, Lloyd’s of London, and Red Bull. The Adler Group is an acknowledged leader in sourcing strategy development, recruiting and hiring process reengineering, and recruitment training.

Sergio Zyman

Sergio Zyman is the Chairman and founder of Zyman Group and the former Chief Marketing Officer of The Coca-Cola Company. Over the course of 30+ years of hands-on marketing experience, Zyman has conceived a revolutionary set of principles that are proven to translate marketing strategies into positive business results. He rejects the old rules of the industry that conceptualized marketing as an art form with vague commercials and awareness messages. Instead, Zyman passionately advocates a vision of scientific, process-based marketing as the driver of sales and profits and the centerpiece of business. The only definition of marketing success he upholds is “selling more stuff to more people more often for more money more efficiently.”

From major food and beverage companies to industrial manufacturers to popular retailers to global telecommunications powers, a diverse group of clients has sought out and received Zyman’s marketing expertise. As the driving force behind Zyman Group, he is able to reach even more diverse businesses in need of marketing guidance. Zyman Group has helped businesses ranging from the largest of the Global 1000 to high-tech growth companies improve their marketing results by providing the guidance they need to move their marketing efforts from hoping to planning, from art to science, from guessing to knowing, and from random success to planned success.

Zyman’s unparalleled marketing career also includes tenures with Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Procter & Gamble. He is best known for his bold actions as the outspoken CMO of Coca-Cola, where he re-conceptualized the company’s marketing strategy and boosted worldwide annual sales volume from nine to 15 billion cases–the most explosive growth period in the company’s history. This success led TIME magazine to name him one of the three key pitchmen of the 20th century.

His passion and knowledge have been transformed into texts that constitute the core curriculum of results-driven marketing. His best selling book, The End Of Marketing As We Know It, clearly lays out Zyman’s ground rules for marketing success. In his second book, Building Brandwidth: Closing the Sale Online, Zyman turns his expert eye to the e-marketing revolution, and explains the futility of Internet marketing that fails to close online sales. His third book, The End of Advertising As We Know It, examines the one segment of marketing where the most mistakes are made and where the most money is spent, and wasted–advertising–and provides actionable recommendations for improving return on advertising investment. Sergio’s latest book, Renovate Before You Innovate, details time-tested principles for accelerating sustainable organic growth.

As a highly-experienced marketing professional and an extremely charismatic communicator, Sergio Zyman is sought after as a speaker by companies and organizations throughout the world. He energizes audiences with his creativity and dynamic, unpredictable style. In addition, his acute insights have been featured in every major business publication, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week and Fortune.

Zyman launched a consulting firm called the Zyman Group that he sold to MDC Partners Inc., a Canadian investment company, for around $ 60 million.( 3) He was replaced there as Chairman by Scott Miller, formerly with McCann Erickson and the Sawyer/Miller Group and is no longer part of the Zyman Group’s management team – though he is listed as the founder of the company. He is currently listed as the Vice Chairman of Broad choice ( 4) a marketing firm focused on behavioral analytics and can be seen in a video-clip on Youtube promoting the firm. He has written 4 books to date on his experiences in marketing and advertising. He is also a professional public speaker charging rates of around $ 25,000 to $ 30,000 for an appearance. He can be booked through Leading Authorities, Inc., Premiere Speakers Bureau, Washington Speakers Bureau, and Speakers.com (5)

Sergio Zyman is a native of Mexico City. He holds an Executive MBA from Harvard University and has attended graduate schools in London, Paris and Jerusalem. When he is not immersed in the world of marketing, he expends his spare energy as an enthusiastic runner and an avid reader. He also enjoys golf, skiing and cycling.

His other titles include The Expectant Father: Facts, Tips, and Advice for Dads-to-Be, The New Father: A Dad’s Guide to the First Year, and A Dad’s Guide to the Toddler Years. He lives with his family in Oakland, California.

Gary Vaynerchuck

Gary Vaynerchuk has captured attention with his pioneering, multi-faceted approach to personal branding and business. After primarily utilizing traditional advertising techniques to build his family’s local wine business into a national industry leader, Gary rapidly leveraged social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook to promote Wine Library TV, his video blog about wine. As his viewership swelled to over 80,000 a day, doors opened to a book deal, several national TV appearances, and a flurry of speaking engagements around the world. Gary’s dual identity as both business guru and wine guy has made him the “Social Media Sommelier.”

In addition to the Web 2.0 keynote above, Gary’s remarks on personal branding, social media, and business at FOWA, Strategic Profits, and South By Southwest occasioned praise from established web denizens including Kathy Sierra and earned the admiration of countless bloggers and aspiring entrepreneurs.

Gary’s landmark seven-figure book deal with Harper Studio was featured in The Wall Street Journal.

What motivates this revolution, you ask? Our movement seeks to break down the barriers, stereotypes, and misperceptions that otherwise prevent people from exploring and enjoying the exciting and rewarding world of wine. Gary Vaynerchuk (VAY NER CHUK), the star of Wine Library TV, is Director of Operations at Wine Library in Springfield, NJ. With his unconventional, often irreverent commentary on wine, Gary has attracted a cult-like following of more than 80,000 viewers a day. In the name of “expanding one’s palate”, Gary convinced Conan O’Brien to lick salted rocks and shared samples of dirt and grass with Ellen Degeneres. He routinely pans popular wines (even ones sold by Wine Library). He interrupts his webcasts with rants about his beloved New York Jets. This is not your typical wine expert.

Gary’s roots in wine tasting come honestly – his Russian immigrant parents owned a liquor store when he was growing up. Bored at the cash register, Gary began reading Wine Spectator and Wine Advocate and realized collecting wine offered an allure similar to his previous hobby of collecting baseball cards. As a teenager, tasting wine was legally impossible, so Gary set out to train his palate “backwards”. To study various flavors associated with wine, Gary tasted obscure fruits and vegetables, along with earthly influences, including grass, dirt, rocks, tobacco and wood. “I probably consumed more New Jersey grass in my teens than any lawn mower.” By familiarizing himself with the numerous tastes that contributed to a specific wine, Gary was able to detect subtleties that an ordinary palate wouldn’t recognize.

With a wealth of knowledge and an entrepreneurial spirit, Gary spent every weekend of his college years at his parents’ store, rebranding the family business as Wine Library and establishing himself as a respected expert. As the store’s only wine buyer, he sampled every wine that entered the store. Customers depended on Gary for his advice and within a five year time period, Wine Library grew from a $4 million dollar business to a $45 million business.

But Gary’s career took a new turn with the advent of Wine Library TV. Gary’s key goals are twofold: “First, I want people to try different wines. How can you have a favorite if you only know a few? Second, I tell people to trust their palates. If a wine appeals to your palate, then it’s a good choice. Don’t feel pressured to like popular brands or what experts recommend. Buy what ‘brings the thunder’ for you.”

It always troubled Gary to observe the stuffiness of the industry–conceited sommeliers, snobby shopkeepers unwilling (or unable) to educate their consumers, and seemingly mystical conventions all combine to make wine seem intimidating to the uninitiated. Wine Library TV has reinvented the concept of wine tasting for a new generation. In addition to encouraging straightforward wine tasting, Gary educates viewers about the effects of regional factors (soil, sun, wind) on wine flavors, and how to buy wine. Debunking myths (red vs. white, big name brands vs. independent growers, the pitfalls of wine ratings, etc.) is another ongoing theme of the show. Specific episode topics have included decanting, how to train your palate, the impact oak aging
and barrel fermenting have on wine (Beware of the Oak Monster!), and comparisons of wines made from the same grapes grown in different regions.

WLTV has blossomed into a full-fledged community. The viewers (self-named “Vayniacs”) convene on an extremely active forum, and have organized numerous off-line gatherings. Gary and the viewers have teamed up with Crushpad in the past year to create the first ever community wine, Vayniac Cabernet.

Gary Vaynerchuk has been featured by a variety of national media outlets, including:

National TV

• Late Night with Conan O’Brien – May 12, 2008
• The Ellen Degeneres Show
• CBS Early Show
• Mad Money with Jim Cramer
• Nightline
• The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch
• Late Night with Conan O’Brien – August 1, 2007
• Spike TV
• ABC News
• CNN Your $$$$$

Al Ries

Al Ries is chairman of Ries & Ries, an Atlanta-based marketing strategy firm that he runs with his daughter Laura Ries.   Al is a legendary marketing strategist and the bestselling author (or co-author) of 11 books on marketing including Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, Marketing Warfare, Focus, The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, The Fall of Advertising & the Rise of PR and his latest The Origin of Brands.

After graduating from DePauw University, Al worked in the advertising department of General Electric before founding his own advertising agency in New York City, Ries Cappiello Colwell. The agency later changed to a marketing strategy firm, Trout & Ries.

In 1994, Al started Ries & Ries with his daughter Laura. Al and Laura continue to work together consulting with Fortune 500 companies, writing books and giving seminars around the world.

Al was president of the Association of Industrial Advertisers (now the Business Marketing Association) and the Advertising Club of New York. He was also chairman of the Club’s Andy Awards. In 1989, Sales & Marketing Executives International gave him its “Tops in Marketing” award. In 1999, PR Week magazine named him one of the 100 most influential PR people of the 20^th century.

Always one for controversy, Al’s book, The Fall of Advertising & the Rise of PR, has generated enormous interest in the marketing community. The book made both the Business Week and The Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. In addition to being reviewed by these publications, it was also reviewed by USA Today, Harvard Business Review, Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times and many other publications.

Al’s latest release, The Origin of Brands explores “divergence,” the best way to create a new brand. The concept is analogous to the creation of a new species, as pioneered by Charles Darwin in his classic book on the subject.  Al currently writes a monthly marketing column for AdAge.com and is an often quoted expert in many publications. He resides in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife, Mary Lou.

Jay Conrad Levinson

Jay Conrad Levinson is the author of the best-selling marketing series in history, “Guerrilla Marketing,” plus 30 other books. His books have sold 14 million copies worldwide. His guerrilla concepts have influenced marketing so much that today his books appear in 41 languages and are required reading in many MBA programs worldwide.

Jay is the Chairman of Guerrilla Marketing International, a marketing partner of Adobe and Apple. He has served on the Microsoft Small Business Council. His Guerrilla Marketing is series of books, audiotapes, videotapes, a CD-ROM, an Internet website, and an online marketing advancement called The Guerrilla Marketing Association – which is an interactive marketing support system for small business

Jay taught guerrilla marketing for ten years at the extension division of the University of California in Berkeley. And he was a practitioner of it in the United States — as Senior Vice-President at J. Walter Thompson, and in Europe, as Creative Director and Board Member at Leo Burnett Advertising.

He has written a monthly column for Entrepreneur Magazine, articles for Inc. Magazine, and online columns published monthly on the Microsoft Website. He also has written online columns for several Internet websites, including Netscape, America Online, Fortune Small Business and Hewlett-Packard.

But most of all, Guerrilla Marketing is a way for business owners to spend less, get more, and achieve substantial profits. And the man to transform you AND your organization into marketing guerrillas – is the one and only The Father of Guerrilla Marketing — Jay Conrad Levinson.

Vicki Kunkel

Vicki Kunkel is a former television news anchor, published author, entrepreneur, nationally recognized expert on mass appeal and persuasiveness, and an award-winning social anthropology researcher. 

She’s also an award-winning social anthropologist who has been recognized as an expert in mass appeal and “stickiness” by over 200 media outlets.

She’s applied her “Instant Appeal” techniques to products, people and social causes.

Vicki noticed a perplexing phenomenon occurring from Washington’s Beltway to corporate boardrooms:  people with outstanding presentation skills were losing elections, court cases and major business deals to people with less skill but more appeal.

This led her on a multi-year journey into research in neurology, neuro-acoustics, social anthropology and social intelligence.  Vicki condensed this research, which became the basis for her “Instant Appeal” theory of mass influence — a theory based on far more than persuasive communications.  She found that real influence is cemented with anthropological and neurological triggers.

Paul Cherry

Performance Based Results founder and managing partner, Paul Cherry has over 20 years experience in sales training, leadership development, sales coaching and leadership coaching. To date, he has helped over 1,200 organizations in every major industry ranging from family-owned small businesses to leading Fortune 500 companies. 84% of clients report on average a 12:1 ROI from his training programs as the emphasis is on reinforcement and accountability. He is also one of the foremost experts on sales questioning methods and techniques.