Denver/Boulder BBB is Seeking a CEO

Better Business Bureau Serving Denver/Boulder
 CEO Job Requirements

Background
The Better Business Bureau (BBB) Serving Denver/Boulder is recruiting for the position of Chief Executive Officer (CEO).  The CEO reports to the Denver/Boulder BBB Board of Directors.  The BBB Serving Denver/Boulder is a member of the Council of Better Business Bureaus (CBBB) and is an authority on trust in the marketplace.  The BBB sets and upholds high standards for ethical marketplace behavior and is a valuable resource for objective, unbiased information on businesses and charities.  The BBB is also a significant distributor of consumer and business education, information, and alerts about marketplace scams.  The office offers dispute resolution programs for consumers and businesses.  Balancing the needs and priorities of different constituencies requires a solid understanding of each unique perspective matched with a firm focus on the organization’s mission, its primary strategic goals and commitment to ensuring the Denver/Boulder BBB’s expanded relevance and success in the future.

Organizational Profile
The Denver/Boulder BBB has a dues-paying membership of over 8,000 Colorado corporations and charities (accredited businesses, or ABs), a staff of 45 employees, and an annual consolidated budget of $4 million.  It is a nonprofit business membership organization under IRS Code 501(c)(6).  The BBB Foundation is a supporting 501(c)(3) organization committed to education and governed by its own Board of Directors.  The principal office is located in Denver, Colorado where the CEO is stationed.  The Denver/Boulder BBB Board of Directors is comprised of area business leaders with BBB accreditation.  Information on the Board of Directors, key staff and Foundation/Advisory Boards can be viewed at http://denver.bbb.org/staff/.  The organization’s annual report is available to interested applicants at http://denver.bbb.org/denverboulderannualreports/.

CEO’s Overall Responsibilities

• Strategic direction and leadership for the entire Denver/Boulder BBB organization
• Public spokesperson for marketplace issues of concern to the BBB, ABs, the public and the corporate community
• Oversight and accountability for performance of the BBB’s programs and services
• Management of the BBB brand
• Capacity-building for the BBB and the Foundation
• Financial health of the BBB and the Foundation
• Staff management and administration functions

CEO is Primary Liaison to

• The Denver/Boulder BBB Board of Directors
• The BBB Foundation Board of Directors
• The Council of Better Business Bureaus (CBBB)
• The executive team (currently a team of 5)

Expectations

• Strategic leadership to the Board, the Foundation Board, Board committees and the executive team
• Ability to proactively develop revenue-generation and fundraising initiatives, and deliver against solid financial goals
• Proactive identification and development of new programs and services
• Leadership in the improvement and expansion of existing programs and services
• Execution of initiatives that improve consumer knowledge, increase AB participation, and boost community involvement with the BBB
• Brand management and promotion of the BBB brand throughout the Denver/Boulder community
• Media relations and public communications
• Overall supervision of Denver/Boulder BBB employees through a senior staff
• Budgets and financial oversight
• Managerial strength that promotes continuous high performance and builds a talented, motivated and goal-oriented organization

Personal Qualities and Characteristics

• High integrity and strong personal values
• Strategic and visionary thinker
• Change agent with the ability to combine prudence with risk-taking
• Action-oriented consensus builder
• Seasoned collaborator with other organizations across all sectors (consumer, business, government, nonprofit)
• Ability to interact successfully with and command the respect of ABs, BBB staff, corporate leaders, Boards of Directors, government officials and the media
• Effective and judicious delegator who constructively inspires others, encourages innovation and solves problems
• Excellent communicator, advocate and brand champion

Education and Experience

• Bachelor's degree from a four-year college or university required, advanced degree preferred
• Corporate, association, government and/or non-profit experience of at least 10 years
• Track record of delivering exceptional financial results operating complex business organizations with full financial accountability (P&L and balance sheet)
• Experience with marketing and new media, including social media, the web and diverse communication platforms
• Proven track record in fundraising, including experience in assessing, planning and implementing initiatives
• Reasonable experience with advanced technology, information/service industries and advertising
• Proven ability to build vision, collaboration, consensus and performance among diverse constituencies

If interested, please forward your letter of interest, resume, and professional references to jobs@trishthomas.com no later than October 10, 2012.  We will contact candidates selected for interview directly and make a formal announcement once the process is complete.

Facebook IPO Reality Check

Come on, people... stop complaining about the rapid decline in value of your newly purchased Facebook stock.  I have so many friends who invested in this over-hyped company, and they truly have no right to cry over the resulting losses. 

Did anyone even look at the history or statistics backing the IPO?  Or read the prospectus?

Here's a quick reality check:

1. Facebook was grossly overvalued.  No company in history has ever been worth 60 times it's projected annual earnings.  Even glorious Apple trades at 14 times (or less) it's annual revenue.  The valuation is even more fishy when you examine some of the other factors at play:  growth rate was already in decline, profit margin was inordinately high at 50% with nowhere to go but down, and user base was migrating to unprofitable mobile devices. 
2. Facebook had already reached it's zenith and was beginning the slow decline toward it's nadir BEFORE the IPO happened.  Zuckerberg only acquiesced to the IPO (which he didn't want to do) because there was never going to be a better time to cash in.  Something substantial must change with the business model - which thus far has not happened - if Facebook is to uncover new ways to monetize the user base.  Otherwise it will remain what is has been: a product development collective where 'business' only exists to fund more important activities.
3. Mark Zuckerberg made it crystal clear that he doesn't care at all about sharing power or building shareholder value.  He intentionally set up the company so that he has total control and can ignore everyone's opinions.  He's been perfectly candid about valuing Facebook's social mission and services over profits, so no one should be shocked that he's making good on his promise to focus on the long view.  Now shareholders are questioning his leadership, but he's only following through on his stated plan (and deflecting your barbs beautifully while doing it).  Stop whining everyone - you should have seen this coming.
4. Other insiders had to wait just 9 short months before selling 2 billion shares of Facebook stock, which would naturally flood the market.  Unless you could capitalize on a short spike (which didn't happen anyway), this influx of insider shares would devalue the stock shortly after the IPO.

The first sentence of Zuckerberg's open letter to investors said this, "Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission - to make the world more open and connected." 

Sorry folks.  I think he meant what he said.  It may take decades to see how his grand scheme plays out, and most of you probably don't want to hold onto your shares for that long.

Transformation Marketing Workshop: February 7th at the University of Denver

On February 7th I'm going to be co-hosting an ABLE Experts Workshop at DU with Kimberly Smith of AvenueWest.  Lunch will be provided, and the content on transformational marketing combined with an expert panel discussion will be fantastic.  Try to join us if you can.

February 7, 2012 11:30 am -1:00 pm

TRANSFORMATIONAL MARKETING
Move Beyond the Science of Promotion to Achieve Real World Impact

For the February session of ABLE Experts, learn from two ABLE Advisory Board members:  Trish Thomas, Founder and President of Trish Thomas Consulting, LLC, and Kimberly Smith, CEO/Founder of AvenueWest Global Franchise.  They will be joined on the panel by Abbie Kozik, award winning graphic designer, and Jennifer Finke, business growth specialist.

The panel luncheon event is in two parts:  The Strategy & Science of Marketing, followed by Real World Applications.  Lunch is included.

For more information, or to register: able@du.edu
http://womenscollege.du.edu/able/events.html

How To Negotiate Non Compete and Non Solicit Agreements

Thanks to Joyce and Rob at Colson Quinn in Boulder!  Visit their blog: Lawyers you can Love.
 
As business competition heats up and the economy (not to mention Colorado weather) cools down, we are being asked to review non compete and non solicit provisions for executives and companies.

Companies don’t want valuable information walking out the door and business professionals want to know they can earn a living elsewhere.

Whether it is a non compete (you may not go to work for a competitor for a specified period of time) or a non-solicit (you may not solicit customers, clients and employees from your former company or client) or both, you should be wary of such provisions.

Top 10 Non Compete Non Solicit Tips

Here are our tips should you be asked to sign such restrictive provisions whether it is in a customer contract or an employment agreement.


1.    If you sign an agreement with a non compete or non solicit provision, be prepared to live with it as written.  You are likely unable to afford the costs of challenging the clause. And, even if you can, judges vary widely on how they apply them because they are so fact dependent.

2.    Try to avoid signing the contract with such provisions. If the employer wants you badly enough, they may back down. Or they may agree to just a trade secret provision.

3.    If you must sign a contract with a non compete, narrow the scope. The amount of time, the scope of the business and the geographic limitation are usually broad in these provisions.

4.    Make sure that the non compete or non solicit contained in the contract is linked to a business interest, i.e. protection of trade secrets, confidential information and/or investment in training and education for employees. If you are not exposed to such information or don’t get the training, the non compete may not be enforceable. The employer has to protect more than general job knowledge in order for the non compete to be enforceable.

5.    If you must sign a non compete, try to get extra compensation for it if possible, e.g. a sign on bonus or a severance package. If the employer balks, tell that them that such compensation or “consideration” makes this covenant enforceable. You should note that in most state, the signing of a covenant not to compete at the beginning of employment is sufficient.

6.    Do not agree to pay for attorneys fees for the employer should you want to challenge the non compete. The thought of having to pay your own attorneys fees plus the employers fees is enough to keep most employees from challenging a non compete. It is also an effective deterrent to settlement. Why? The employer has leverage knowing you will balk because of attorney fees.

7.    Non Solicit clauses--make sure the contract distinguishes between customers your new employer has vs. your old employer. Agree only not to “solicit” customers. Do not agree to not solicit where your former employer’s customers seek you out or the customers are already customers of the new employer.

8.    You can often change such provisions despite employer’s claim that they have to have the same provisions against all employees.  However, executives often have very different provisions than intermediate or lower level employees. You can often limit the length and the scope of the non compete. You can also have different start dates and exclude from the non compete specified customers and industries.

9.    Keep track of the covenant you signed, including paperwork and emails, and whether your employer is enforcing covenants uniformly. If not, the company may not be able to enforce the non compete against you.  Most employers want to know if you are subject to such provisions—you may not get hired if you have signed one. Good to know if you did and what it says.

10.   You are better off with a non solicit than a non compete. You want to be able to work for future employers. Tell your prospective employer if you are subject to a non compete. Your new employer does not want to get a demand letter threatening a lawsuit.

Steve Jobs' Great Lessons: Permission to Make Mistakes & be an Individual

I was sad to hear of Steve Jobs death.  Truth be told, I'm not a card-carrying member of the Apple fan club.  I still walk around with a Blackberry and use PCs.  For all of Apple's innovation and simplification of technology I have never considered their products to be the holy grail that many avid followers do.  They're great, but not the end-all be-all.

What I love the most about Steve Jobs' impact on the world goes far beyond Apple.  He triggered a paradigm shift in how companies create and revise their products.  He advocated tirelessly for a precious understanding:  that technology should enhance our lives and not complicate them - that design should give us what we need and nothing more.  

I went back to a text version of a speech given at Stanford University a few years ago in which Steve Jobs addressed the touchy subject of death.  I believe that his own words give a great deal of meaning, and perhaps poignancy, to his own passing:

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there.  And yet death is the destination we all share.  No one has ever escaped it.  And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life.  It is Life's change agent.  It clears out the old to make way for the new.  Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away."

Though provoking, huh?

I don't care to use this post to recap Jobs' career, his health problems, or his flaws.  Plenty of other journalists, bloggers and pundits will do that.  

Two things really jumped to mind that I personally learned from watching Steve Jobs' meteoric passage through life.  

1.  His personal trajectory included failure and gave me permission to make mistakes.

2.  He proved that being yourself was always the best solution.

To illustrate lesson one, Job's had this to say about his painful and abrupt termination from the company he founded:

“I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.  The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything.  It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life,”

I'm also grateful that it gave him a window in which to turn Pixar into a Hollywood powerhouse that changed forever the face of animation.  Wouldn't the world be a bit poorer without Woody, Buzz, Nemo, and many more iconic characters?

Who was Steve Jobs?  A visionary?  A brilliant inventor?  A perfectionist?  Also a college dropout, a failed executive and a risk-taker.  Like all of us, his life can't be elegantly encapsulated in talking points.

Thank you Steve Jobs for packing a powerful punch in a single button, revolutionizing the technology industry.  Thank you for sticking to your guns when it came to your dreams and passions.  Thank you for proving that although we are all flawed, we are perfect in our own way and should be true to ourselves.

Jobs' once gave some great advice to the next generation about being authentic and following their hearts...

"Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick.  Don't lose faith.   I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.  You've got to find what you love.   And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.  Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.  And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.  If you haven't found it yet, keep looking.  Don't settle...

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.  Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking.  Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice.  And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.  They somehow already know what you truly want to become."

Beautiful.

For Growth, New Ideas Aren't Enough

There it was again in the Wall Street Journal on August 29: a beloved and uplifting, but unfortunately not effective, approach to driving growth through innovation. The idea is that companies need to encourage innovation from everyone and at every level in the organization. Ironically, the article cites Apple and Procter & Gamble, two companies that have most emphatically learned that generating lots of ideas is the least of their problems when it comes to growth. The "let a thousand flowers bloom" approach to innovation often leads to frustration at best, cynicism at worst, and is the underpinning of the on-again, off-again approach that most firms take to growth through corporate venturing and innovation.

Consider what happens in a typical, well-intentioned corporate effort of this kind. It begins with lots of enthusiastic cheerleading at the executive ranks. People are told to dedicate a portion of their time to pursuits that interest them but are not part of their day jobs. Trainers are brought in to teach everyone to be an innovator. There are "innovation boot camps." Ideas come pouring forth from every nook and cranny. Many of them are half-baked and impractical. Others are a poor strategic fit. Others will only tick off supply chain partners or important vendors. Many simply don't have enough upside. And so it goes.

In my experience, most companies have far more innovation ideas than they can ever implement. Most of these won't work out — one study found that a company needed to generate, on average, 3,000 raw ideas to find one that could be a commercial success. The real trouble is that, after all those ideas are generated, the innovation process runs smack into the organization. When I ask participants in my executive programs what gets in the way of growth in their companies, the list goes on and on: lack of incentives, power of the existing business, management desire for near-term success, too many silos, fear of failure, "it's no one's job," and so on. That's the stuff that kills innovation-fueled growth, not a lack of interesting ideas.

So what do companies like Apple and P&G really do? Rather than rely on more-or-less random idea generation, they have made innovation into a systematic process, with dedicated, trained professionals to do it. No company would put a mission-critical function in the hands of people with no experience at making it work, yet it happens all the time with respect to innovation. So encourage your people to bubble away. Just don't be surprised when the bubbles burst upon first contact with your own organizational reality.

Rita McGrath:Columbia Business School professor Rita McGrath studies innovation, corporate venturing, and entrepreneurship. Her latest book is Discovery-Driven Growth (2009).

It's Time to Fire Some of Your Customers

As we move into volatile times (again), business leaders more than ever need to maniacally focus on the few customers that matter most to them — and spend much less time on the rest. The customer may always be right, but not every customer is right for you.

Some years ago, when our venture firm was starting one of its first retail ventures, I met with a highly successful CEO in the retail services industry to better understand how he did so well across all of his stores (he had some mind-blowing numbers). It was abundantly clear when you walked into any of his stores that his customers were genuinely delighted. I asked him for his secret. His response surprised me and has therefore stuck with me: "When we open a new location we quickly grow to a database of 8,000 customer names — and then work hard to get it down to 1,500 names."

At first I was taken aback, as it seems counter-intuitive to shrink rather than build your customer base. Upon a little reflection, however, it made absolute sense: ultimately, business is not about growing revenue, but about growing profitable revenue with the right target customer. To get that right customer, you sometimes need to start by casting a wider net, figuring out which customers are the most attractive, and then temporarily shrinking the business before you grow it again. With each iteration, you get smarter and more targeted towards the ideal customer profile.

By focusing on customers with the highest potential in terms of repeat purchases and larger average transactions, one is able to create a more successful business because marketing and customer service efforts (and costs) can be allocated where they matter most. But for many CEOs and founders, the mandate for growth creates a bias for quantity of revenue over quality of revenue. At our venture firm, when we evaluate a business model we think very differently about a dollar of revenue with a high probability of recurrence (i.e. a customer who will buy again, making it high quality revenue) versus dollars of revenue that need to be constantly be replaced with new customers. We believe the threshold for a high-quality-of-revenue business is a revenue recurrence rate of over 85%, meaning losing no more than 15% of a customer base each year.

Such businesses have higher predictability in their business model and greater leverage in their sales, marketing, and customer service. A higher quality of revenue means a better long-term business.

If you look hard at who is buying your wares, you can quickly get a sense of where the money is coming from and where your money is being spent. Some businesses exhibit the classic 80/20 rule, with their top 20 percent of customers making up 80 percent of the revenue. We have also seen a good number of firms with even more skewed revenue distributions that are closer to 90/10. Yet organizational efforts and resources are often poorly mapped to, or unaligned with, that revenue distribution pattern. In fact, it is often the opposite. That is, the bottom customer quartiles take disproportionately from a company's sales, marketing, and customer service resources. Some of the most challenging customers are those who in the "low-middle" bucket, buying relatively little, but needing very high touch and maintenance.

Why do so many of us fall into the trap of spreading our efforts evenly across our customer base, or even skewing them towards the lowest-potential customers? It is tempting to embrace every customer equally — and we naturally want to understand why the lower customer deciles are not behaving like the higher deciles.

We want to believe that we can nurture and develop all customers to reach high potential levels over time. However, in the companies in which we have been involved, the data do not support that thesis. It is always tougher to change customer behavior than to find new customers similar to your existing top-buyer profiles.

The top priority for a business that wants high quality of revenues starts with understanding everything possible about the top customers. Drill deep to understand their demographics, psychographic, and purchase behavior preferences of your "super loyalists." Where do they come from? What is their attitudinal profile and what bundles of goods do they like best and at what price? Getting an intimate clustering of your top customer base is the foundation for a high-quality-of-revenue business.

By directing more customer acquisition and loyalty costs towards that top cohort, you will be implicitly de-focusing or "firing in advance" the less valuable customer segments. Yes, the term "fire" is a little melodramatic, but it is a clear reminder that limited resources need to be carefully allocated — and that just because you sell something to someone it does not necessarily mean it is a good thing.

Firing your customer does not mean to literally bar the door, but to set conditions whereby lower- priority customers self-select out and higher-potential ones self-select in. For example, for many businesses, first purchase order size is a good leading indicator of future purchases. If you knew that $50 was the average of your top loyalists and $30 was the average of lower tiers, you could simply raise minimum price on an opening order, or only offer free shipping on orders of $50 or above. As another example, for current customers who spend little but cost dearly in terms of customer support or other costs, consider a new pricing structure where higher support services are only free for accounts of a certain size. In effect, you can offer customers the choice to become profitable cohorts or to leave.

Your top-cohort customers are super fans who have voted with their wallets. They are the ones who will recommend you more often than other customers and would miss you most if you no longer existed. Find more people like them, and spend less time trying to turn others into people like them. Thank your best customers to death for their great patronage and worry less about — or simple "fire" — the others.

Anthony Tjan is CEO, Managing Partner and Founder of the venture capital firm Cue Ball. An entrepreneur, investor, and senior advisor, Tjan has become a recognized business builder.