Each year, the Portland Business Journal recognizes 25 “women of influence” for their business and [...]]]> The Portland Business Journal’s Annual Women of Influence Awards Luncheon is coming up later this month on April 25th, 2012.  The VelocX team is incredibly proud to have Founding Principal Holly Files honored with an Orchid Award.

Each year, the Portland Business Journal recognizes 25 “women of influence” for their business and civic contributions. From these 25 outstanding women, one winner will be selected from each of the following categories as “Woman Executive of the Year”.

• Woman Entrepreneur of the Year
• Woman Executive of the Year (Small/Medium Business – less than $25 million)
• Woman Executive of the Year (Large Business – over $25 million)
• Woman Executive of the Year (Nonprofits – not limited to 501c3 organizations)

Last year’s luncheon brought together 800 people to honor the recipients.  This year’s luncheon will be held at the Hilton Hotel’s Grand Ballroom in downtown Portland from 11:30 – 1:00pm.  To join in the celebration of the outstanding women who influence our local business community, you can register for the lunch through Portland Business Journal.  A full list of the Orchid Award winners is also available on the site.  Hope to see you there!

Register for the event on Portland Business Journal’s Website 

“Energy Management” is [...]]]> The VelocX team’s next free seminar installment will be held this Wednesday, March 21st and feature the subject of maximizing performance and energy levels.  The seminar will be given by Al Lee, VelocX Principal and author of the book: “Perfect Breathing: Transform Your Life One Breath at a Time.”

“Energy Management” is a cutting edge program that has 3 objectives:

1. To shatter limiting beliefs as to what is possible
2. To show you how to access untapped energy and realize your full potential
3. Provide strategies for getting better results while working and living in a balanced, healthy, and sustainable fashion

That may sound like a tall order, but there is now a mountain of scientific evidence and real-world research that provides us with a clear roadmap to achieving both consistent optimal performance, and a sustainable, healthy, work-life balance. You don’t have to choose between living a healthy life and achieving success in the workplace. In fact, they are inextricably linked!

This entertaining, fast-paced, and content rich program will both open your eyes to the tremendous untapped potential within you, as well as provide you with powerful practices and techniques that you can start using immediately. It will show you how to create more energy, use that energy more effectively by focusing it on your key priorities, and avoid the most common energy drains.

Companies like Sony and Wachovia have implemented these same principles to create dramatic improvements in productivity, engagement, and overall job satisfaction. In fact, Wachovia found in a controlled study that loan officers who practiced Energy Management (one of the core concepts of this training) outperformed a control group by 20% (measured in bottom-line revenue) over the course of a year.

March 21st, 7:30-9:00am at SunGard 1233 NW 12th Ave, Portland

Have questions?
results@velocx.com

Research on business failure consistently shows that poor marketing and leadership are among the chief culprits.

But what exactly are the marketing mistakes that business leaders make? What specifically are they doing that hurts their [...]]]> Every year hundreds of thousands of American businesses close their doors; tens of thousands in Oregon do the same. Why?

Research on business failure consistently shows that poor marketing and leadership are among the chief culprits.

But what exactly are the marketing mistakes that business leaders make? What specifically are they doing that hurts their businesses, and what aren’t they doing that could help?

I’ve been asking that question for years as a marketing executive with domestic and global companies, and as a consultant to emerging businesses. More recently, I’ve been focused on researching this, and interviewing investors, board members, academic leaders, and CEOs.

Sin #1: They don’t understand what marketing is, or what they should demand from their chief marketing officers.

This sin, like most of the others, is particularly acute in high technology companies, and especially those that sell into business (B2B) markets. Countless executives view marketing as the part of the organizations that “does the brochures and trade shows.”

Thinking that marketing is about data sheets or trade shows is like equating the development of a movie script with typing. Marketing is about driving profitable growth. It’s about figuring out who you’ll target, who you’ll ignore, and then what you can do with your products, services, pricing, sales channels and brand to create more customer value and loyalty than your competition delivers.

In “The End of Marketing as We Know It” former Coca Cola CEO Sergio Zyman argued that marketing is everything we do to get more people buying more of our products or services more often for more money. The operative word here is everything. Here’s a great example:

Author James Drummon tells the story of a company looking to buy an enterprise software solution and a site visit to a prospective supplier. When the company’s team of executives visited XYZ Software, one of the finalists from the vetting process, it was pouring rain on a cold December day. “All of the parking spaces within a reasonable walking distance of the front door were reserved for XYZ’s executives,” Drummon notes.

The buyers circled the building, finally locating a spot about 200 yards from the entrance. One of them recalls, “As we were gathering up our umbrellas and buttoning up our slickers one of my partners said, ‘What are we doing? If these blokes care so little for their customers that they will not even provide convenient parking, what kind of service can we expect if we buy their software?’

“Whereupon we pulled out of the business park, canceled the meeting by cell phone and went on to our next appointment.”

That blunder cost XYZ Software a $1.8 million sale, not to mention the ongoing service and upgrade revenue stream that software companies get from customers.

Was that a marketing mistake? Absolutely. That parking lot was part of the “everything” Zyman mentions. Even if it wasn’t part of the marketing budget, it was part of the customer experience. No doubt the CEO established or at least tacitly endorsed the company’s parking policy.

Peter Drucker, the greatest management thinker of our time, observed that, “Marketing is so basic that it cannot be considered a separate function.  It is the whole business seen…from the customer’s point of view.”

This is Marketing, with a capital M—managing your customers’ and prospects’ experience with you, and the value they get from entering a relationship with you. If you do that poorly, all the trade shows or marketing hype in the world can’t save you.

Long a champion of entrepreneurs, Holly is providing leadership, strategic counsel and her special touch of creativity to this [...]]]> The Oregon Entrepreneurs Network, OEN, is dedicated to providing opportunities for Oregon entrepreneurs. This year, VelocX is proud that our very own Holly Files is leading the OEN Board of Directors.

Long a champion of entrepreneurs, Holly is providing leadership, strategic counsel and her special touch of creativity to this great organization.

Today, OEN announced their Board of Directors, Advisory Board members and Program Chairs. With this group of business leaders, great staff and entrepreneurs, OEN is poised to do great things.

Keep an eye on OEN – and join us in celebrating innovation, leadership and business – in Oregon and SW Washington. And Holly Files!

Starting January 31, 2012 most private sector employers must obtain and post the new NLRB required poster, “Employee Rights under the National Labor Relations Act.”  This ruling came about for a few reasons:

But there is a new approach that is gaining converts and credibility, and that [...]]]> Successful people strive to perform better. Successful teams and companies are driven to perform better. Much energy and capital is spent in the pursuit of improved performance – strategic planning, team-building, time management, communications, leadership, etc, and all are worthy endeavors.

But there is a new approach that is gaining converts and credibility, and that is Energy Management. This aptly named approach looks at the broader issue of how individuals and organizations create and use, and in some, cases waste their energy.

Energy is your most valuable asset. Energy creates, energy inspires, energy motivates. Energy gets things done. All forms of performance improvement are at their core energy management – with the goal of showing us where to focus our energy, and hopefully providing techniques for more efficiently using our energy. In other words, providing a higher “return on energy”.

Much has been written on how you can more efficiently use your energy, and much of it is useful and valuable. But most approaches are focused on using time more effectively. There of course is nothing wrong with that, but time is a limited resource. There are only twenty-four hours in the day, no matter how you slice it.

Energy on the other hand is unbounded. You can create more of it! Shifting your focus to how you and your team are using energy rather than time can provide a very different perspective, with valuable insights along with corresponding performance improvements (regardless of what performance means in your unique environment).

One particularly important insight is our general lack of focus and concern with energy creation. We are very good at focusing on how to use energy, but for most teams and individuals, there is little or no attention given to how we create energy (hint: it’s not Mountain Dew and doughnuts).

In most work environments, when more, bigger, better, and faster results are needed, the most common answer is to work harder and longer. This may work in the short term (I have personally been the poster-child for this approach in the past), but it is not sustainable and the long-term consequences are burn-out, disengagement, and illness.

There is now a mountain of science that shows that when there is a rhythmic balance between energy creating activities (physical exercise, creative activities, and socializing for example) and intense, focused energy expenditure, people and teams perform at a higher level, and in a way that is sustainable over the long term.

Just as muscle strength is increased by short, focused sets that push current limits and are followed by a period of rest and recuperation, mental, physical, creative, and emotional performance is improved by periods of intense focus, followed by some kind of restorative activity. Work marathons, back to back meetings, and work-days that never end result in diminished performance, just as pumping iron in the gym for 10-12 hours straight is more likely to result in diminished performance or injury than stronger muscles.

Take a look at your own work habits. Try committing to focused work sessions of no more than 2 hours, followed by a restorative activity – whatever that means to you. It might taking a walk, going to the gym, listening to music, reading, socializing, or performing the aspects of your job that you really love – you get the idea. Whatever relaxes and/or energizes you. You will likely find that you are more productive, have more passion and inspiration and are more resistant to mood swings, disengagement, and burn-out as a result.

Organizations like Sony, Wachovia Bank, and NASA have put these simple principles to work and have reaped impressive results. Following this simple prescription will allow you to access untapped energy and creativity and give you and your team a competitive edge.