Maurilio Amorim

Author: Maurilio Amorim

Expose Yourself Out of Business

“We priced it low because we wanted the exposure.” Every young, and even some seasoned entrepreneur can fall on the trap of the “exposure” temptation. In the search for legitimacy and clout, entrepreneurs want to have the recognizable “big fish” names in our portfolios. After all, that means great PR and lots of new clients, right? Wrong.

There are several traps of such reasoning:

It sets the wrong expectations. You will enter an organization at the wrong level. Your first job defines what level of player you are. You do not want to be the “cheap” guy. Trust me on this one.

It’s not sustainable. Even if your project is successful and the client loves the results, you have set an unrealistic expectation of cost, timelines, and services. When your next bid comes in at twice the price of your first, your new client will balk. “They’re good but not that good.”

It prevents you from doing your best work. When you’re scraping to get things done, working late hours, and doing things on “the cheap” you cannot do your best. Lacking margins and the budget to get the job done properly will hurt you later. The client will not give you grace because of all the extra effort. More likely they will give you grief for the extras they expected you to do.

The law of inversion always applies: The least profitable project has the most demanding client. This happens to me all the time. The project that you are doing mostly as a favor where you have very little or no profit turns out to be the project from hell. You end up losing money, patience, and your religion by the time the project is finished.

Next time you feel the urge to lower your prices or compromise on your timeline just to “get in,” think twice. Better yet, don’t do it. If your work is good and you’re worth it, win the business on your strengths and not by creating artificial, unsustainable, unreasonable expectations. That’s often a lose-lose situation

Have you been burned by trying to take on a project or client in order to can exposure?

November 15, 2012
Start Over or Start Again?

The appeal of a new beginning to all of us is the opportunity for a “do over,” to wipe the virtual slate clean. But what often happens is quite the opposite. Recently I talked with a friend who is starting over. It’s a complete new start: a new career, a new town, a new perspective in life. My advice to him was simple: make sure you start over and not start again. I think a lot of people miss the point of the start over and find a way to repeat the same mistakes in a different environment, different business, or different relationship. We didn’t learn the lesson we should have learned, so instead of starting over, we start again. It’s just a matter of time before we find ourselves in the same predicament that caused us pain before.

But with every start again, the price we pay gets higher. The second start again is often more expensive than the first. We are older, more cynical, and often less energetic. And in the world of search engines and social networks, a complete fresh start is virtually impossible.

At one point we all have considered a fresh start. Maybe you’re thinking of a career change, ending a long-term relationship, or even both. But before you pull the plug and pay the price that your new beginning requires, you should do some soul searching. A sober look at how you got so far from where you wanted to be and your part in getting there will help you avoid the next chapter of your life look like the last one only with different characters.

Have you had a fresh start before? What have you learned from it?

November 12, 2012
Know Your Audience and Improvise: A Lesson from a Restaurant Server

Understanding your audience’s motivation is key in finding opportunities to reach them. That point was driven home a while back during dinner at J. Alexander’s in north Atlanta. Our server, Jimmy, did something I haven’t seen done much lately in a restaurant. He assessed the situation and improvised, getting our gratitude as well as up-selling us another course.

Jimmy Kiblere understands his audience

As I looked at the description for the sea bass special, the words “puddle of brown butter sauce” got my attention. I told Jimmy I was trying to eat clean and if there were an alternative to my butter dilemma. Shortly after our exchange he asked if we wanted an appetizer. Since our options were fried, cheesy, or fried and cheesy, I declined. Thinking on his feet, literally, Jimmy asked, “What about our seared Ahi tuna appetizer?”

Interestingly there was not an Ahi tuna appetizer on the menu. “It’s not there, but I can make a special one.” Sold.

Not only did I feel special and cared for, but Jimmy quickly up-sold me when I was already determined not to have anything that was high in calorie or high in fat and had decided to bypass the first course.

When you understand your audience’s motivation, in my case eating clean, and improvise to tap into such motivation, the seared tuna with greens, then you have a win/win combination. I wonder what the growth in sales across the entire J. Alexander’s restaurant chain would be if servers were tuned into their patrons’ motivations, were able to improvise and adjust the menu to offer them what they were really looking for. Not only would the customer satisfaction index go up, the economic impact would be significant, I’m certain.

How aware are you of your audience? In a world of customization, are you able to improvise to serve your clients and your bottom line?

November 8, 2012
What to Do on a No-Win Business Situation

One of the toughest lessons I had to learn as a businessman was to identify and successfully deal with a no-win situation. That’s a very difficult situation for an entrepreneur to navigate because most of us are optimists by nature. We want to believe we can rescue the relationship, deliver on our promise,s and save the day. But with experience and better understanding of human behavior, I have come to believe that sometimes the best course of action is to cut your losses and walk away before the hole you find yourself in becomes your grave. No one wants to admit failure and throw in the towel too soon, but here are a few scenarios that if you find yourself in, you should consider walking away.

Lost trust. Whether one or both side loses trust, it’s time to call it quits. If you cannot trust your partner, an employee, a vendor, or a client, nothing good can come from the ongoing relationship. The day you come to the realization that “I cannot trust that person,” you need an exit strategy. The sooner you do it, the better.

Unreasonable expectations. High expectations help your product and organization grow to the next level. Unrealistic expectations kill the joy of a project and the spirit of a team, no matter how committed it is. Some clients are unreasonable because they are ignorant of what it takes to get the job done: “it should take you only a few minutes to change the ‘skin’ of our website.” They can potentially be brought around through education, but they are the exception. Some are unreasonable because they cannot be pleased. “Yes it’s what I wanted but you should have fought me harder on it because I don’t like it now. And you shouldn’t charge me for the changes because I’m not happy.” And then there’s the deadly demanding-ignorant combination, truly a living nightmare.

Ungrateful taker. Historically, the clients to whom I have given the deepest discounts, often at a financial loss, are usually the ones who demand more and more without much appreciation or understanding for the true value of what they’re getting. It amazes me to see that happen over and over again.

In business as well as in life, we need to know when to say enough. I use to think that walking away from a client or a project was a sign of weakness, the mark of a quitter. But today it’s the sign of a wise person who knows that not every relationship is salvageable.

Have you ever faced a no-win situation? What did you do?

November 5, 2012
How Not to Deal with a Customer Service Fail
Sometimes you are not in your best game. Things go wrong, and you know what just happened is in no way close to your best effort. You or your team fail your customer, client, or audience. So what should you do as a leader?

Recently I ate at a restaurant where everything went wrong. Horribly wrong. From the moment my party arrived to the time we left, the entire experience was a disaster. Sometimes we have an off day. And rarely, an off day can turn into a truly awful day. It happens even to the best. But as I watched my dinner experience deteriorate with every course and exchange, I had hoped that management would at least try to “right” some of the “wrongs,” that in my opinion, were many. But that’s not what happened. After giving the manager a run down of the list of grievances, from poor service to the sword fish that had to sent back because it was drier than the Sahara desert, the best she managed to come up was, “Wow, usually people rave about their experience. I’ve never heard this before.” That was not the proper response.

So what should her response have been? Here’s how I would have approached it:
- I’m so sorry you were disappointed with your experience. What could we have done differently?
- How can I make this right for you?
- Would you give us another chance to make a different impression?
Without having to agree with me that the service and food were substandard, the manager should have asked specific feedback and then tried to remedy the situation by offering to comp the overly dried entree that had to be prepared again, leaving the poor guy who ordered the bad dish having to eat his meal after everyone at the table had finished theirs.

We will make mistakes. Even the best of teams will botch something (just ask Apple about their new map app). But the way we handle a momentary failure will help us avoid creating a culture of excuses that will likely lead to permanent failure.

What’s the worst customer service experience you have had lately?
October 28, 2012
How to Impact the Emerging Generation

Impacting an emerging generation is not easy work, especially if you want to create a shift in thinking and attitude that lasts a lifetime and not merely create an emotional experience that is only remembered but has little impact. My son Marcus has been part of the Student Leadership University (SLU) for the past 3 summers and the experiential program has had a profound impact in his life. He has spent a week in Orlando going behind the scenes at Sea World and Universal Studios, a week in Washing DC learning about how our nation works and the faith of our founding fathers, and a week in England and France discovering how leadership and faith have transformed that continent. He’s looking forward to going to Jordan next summer to finish the program.

For the next few weeks SLU is sponsoring a webinar featuring some of SLU’s staff. Dr. Jay Strack, the organization’s visionary leader, is the first speaker in the series. These videos are up for one week only, so if you want to learn how to communicate with the emerging generation, you will want to watch them.

Here’s what you need to know:

Who: Jay Strack, Matt Lawson, Brian Mills & Brent Crowe
What: “Think Bigger” webinar series hosted by Student Leadership University
When: October 22-November 18
Full schedule available at http://webinar.studentleadership.net

This four-week webinar series is designed to equip youth leaders, teachers, administrators, and others influencing youth to reach beyond the average youth program and challenge young people to think bigger, develop a Christian worldview, and awaken their potential.

The series kicks off this week with Dr. Jay Strack talking on “Managing Present Demands While Leading for the Future.” Each session will be available for one week only, with a new speaker each week, so be sure to check back and experience the entire “Think Bigger” series.

What event or experience had the most impact in your life?

October 25, 2012
An Immigrant and the Best Political Commercial

A few days ago I saw a very effective political commercial. I have grown tired of attack ads where the opposing candidate is depicted in black and white while the foreboding music plays in the background and the ominous voice-over tells of his or her evil plot to ruin our lives. This commercial was different. It was created and financed by self-made billionaire Thomas Peterffy.

Mr. Peterffy, who pioneered electronic trading practices in U.S. markets and now leads discount-brokerage giant Interactive Brokers, embodies the rags-to-riches American dream. Born during World War II in Hungary, he spent his childhood behind the Iron Curtain, where he says the country’s national spirit was eroded by a system that took away the drive of its people to work hard, build businesses, and create jobs. He left for the U.S. as a young man and today his net worth has been estimated at more than $4 billion.

The ad is powerful because it is not only Mr. Peterffy’s perspective, it’s narrated by him in broken English and shown on TV with subtitles. He doesn’t attack the current administration but makes his case from the heart and from personal experience.

Whether you agree with his conclusions is not important. What’s important is that you are compelled to listen and try to understand what he is saying. He opens the commercial by saying, “I grew up in a socialist country, and I have seen what that does to people. There is no hope, no freedom, no pride in achievement. The nation became poorer and poorer. And that’s what I see happening here.” One of my favorite lines is: “in socialism the richer will be poorer but the poorer will also be poorer.”

Just in a few seconds you hear the word poor mentioned many times. While it might not be great writing or very subtle, it’s quite effective in driving his message home.

This is the first political commercial I’ve seen in years that has got my attention and spoken to me. Perhaps because like Mr. Peterffy, I came to America to pursue my dream and, like him, I want to preserve what has made this country a place I chose to call home for the past 30 years.

What is your take on this commercial?

October 22, 2012
Your Talents Could Hurt Your Organization

The more talents and skills you have the more likely you are to take something from nothing to up and running. Talented people who can learn quickly, adapt, and grow are the heart and soul of start-ups. But unless you learn to let go of most of those things, the organization you serve will not be able to grow beyond your incompetence level. Yes, incompetence.

No matter how talented you are, you cannot be an expert on all the skills that your business or non profit need to grow and thrive. The skill set that got the organization from ideation to reality are not the same skills that will take it to the next level of growth. Early in my career as a business leader, I used to spend hours learning how to use software so I could design marketing pieces or edit videos. I had to come to grips with the fact that, regardless of how much I enjoyed the design process, I should not be doing it for the sake of the organization.

Over the years, I had to let go of several other tasks in order to allow the organization to continue to thrive. Last year, I gave the presidency of The A Group to Shannon Litton, our then Executive VP of marketing. It was the right call. Shannon is much better at developing business processes than I’ll ever be. We have seen our best year yet because of her leadership.

The blessing of the talents can quickly become a curse of the talents when you hold on too closely to tasks and lose sight of the overall organizational health. Personally, I had to make a shift in thinking: I had to get my satisfaction from the overall success of my business as opposed to the quality of my own work. For those of us who equate productivity with success, giving up control and the accolades that come from accomplishing the tangible is a tough thing to do.

But giving up control is not an option for growth. It’s essential.

You might be a talented person, a life-long learner, and an overall amazing individual, but you cannot be the best at everything–no matter what your mother has told you. Unless you learn to define success as reaching the organization’s goals instead of accomplishing tasks, you will go from being seen as the organization’s builder to its choker, where you thwart growth on the anvil of your own incompetence.

Have you ever been in a situation where someone strangled growth?

October 17, 2012
Body Transformation: 3 Foundations

I have been hitting the gym hard the past year and I have seen great results. I went from roughly 15% body fat down to 8% while increasing muscle mass. There are a lot of nuances to get your body on a full transformation schedule, but as I contemplate my journey, I always come back to three basic foundations.

Weight training. I loved to run, cycle, and swim. But the older I got, the more muscle I lost with a cardio-only exercise routine. While training for a marathon, I got so thin that I looked like a starving zombie. It’s not the look anyone is going for. I found that for a significant body transformation, resistance training with weights is a great way to prevent bone mass loss as well as to increase muscle and give me an overall healthy look. And I feel better than I’ve felt in years.

Proper diet. I see people who work hard at the gym only to waste most of that effort on empty calories later. You know who they are: people you see day after day, year after year, and they don’t look any better, only worse. Maybe that’s you. It used to be me as well. It wasn’t until I started eating to fuel my muscles with the proper nutritional ratios that I started to see results. The right combinations of foods and quantities is important. If you can’t afford a nutritionist, find a personal trainer who can help tweak your diet for optimum results.

Supplementation. Years ago, supplements were seen as a less-than-honest way to achieve your fitness goals. Truthfully, without them it’s virtually impossible for the average person to get all the body needs to fuel growth. After all, our engineered modern food lacks a lot of the nutrients our body needs to perform at its best. I drink 2-3 protein shakes a day in order to get enough protein in my diet. I could not imagine having to eat all my protein intake. Not only is it practically impossible (I consume between 250-300 grams of protein a day), but it would cost a fortune in lean meats, fish, and poultry. Other supplements as creatine and glutamine help build and sustain muscle growth. Good supplements are essential if you are going to succeed in a body transformation program.

Have you gone through a physical transformation? How did you do it?

October 15, 2012
Encouragement: Why I Need More Than a Paycheck

I need encouragement. For someone who sees the glass half full and opportunity during the tough times, I am not a natural encourager. That’s not an excuse, however. If I need encouragement, why shouldn’t those around me need it as well? They do. We all do. Here’s what I know encouragement does for me:

It motivates me. A simple “well done,” a pat on the back, or a nod of the head gives me enough motivation to want to do it again, and better. How many times you and I have done a menial task because we wanted to please someone that matters to us? We do it all the time. Those of us with children do it every day.

It abates my insecurities. I remember feeling defeated in a job that was not going well. “I don’t have what it takes to get this done,” I had reasoned. I was working for a perceptive man, who came to my office and said, “Hang in there. You are where you need to be. Just keep doing what you’re doing.” That was all I needed to continue. He was right. Things got better, much better. I got a raise not long after that.

It reminds me of my humanity. Machines need energy to operate. You give them fuel and they perform. Humans need more than energy. We need purpose, and a reason. An encouraging word will fill my emotional tank when a paycheck cannot. It reminds us that God has created us to be more than machines working towards a goal. We are complex human beings in need of community that supports and encourages us.

How important is encouragement in your life? Are you getting enough?

October 11, 2012