Ian M Rountree

Copywriter, Project Manager, Digital Marketing

A Open Letter To Retailers On My Exit From The Industry

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Dear Retail,

I feel I need to begin by saying I could have learned very little of what I now know about business and retail anywhere else but The Source. My experience here under the managers with whom I’ve worked – there have been nine stores in total, under eight managers in my nearly five years, and I’ve been exposed to now five District Managers, including the two whom I met before coming on board. Some of these managers have been their division’s greatest asset. It would be unlikely that I would be moving the direction I now am without the mentoring I received from two specific managers, for example. Other managers with whom I’ve worked have not been effective. They are, uniformly, no longer with the company. I was one of those managers. I am no longer with the company.

Let me sum up how I see my term here, in case this letter makes its way to anyone not familiar with my careers. I’ve worked in nine stores in four and a half years. Three times, I’ve been nominated for the Star Service award, and I’ve earned two personal sales awards. Had I remained with the company until the end of this month, I would have won my third. I’ve earned, in four and a half years, four hundred thousand rewards points. This means six formal awards and numerous positive citations in four and a half years. If there’s anyone remaining in the company with that high a density and consistency of recognition, no one has been able to find them for me. I spent ten months as a sales associate before spending two years as an assistant manager, then five months as a store manager before being moved back down to sales associate – where I remained for just over one year before leaving the company in favour of a role far better suited to my skills and talent, for much better pay, nowhere near a retail sales floor. I’m not just leaving the company, I’m leaving the industry – The Source is the last company I will ever work retail in. [Read more…]

Good, Fast, Cheap; Pick Two, Abandon One (Redux)

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I had a meeting earlier this week which has caused a lot of fallout in my personal and professional life, in the best possible way. I’m not at liberty to discuss a number of the subjects, much as I’d love to (because it’s exciting, but confidential) but there are a number of things that seem worth sharing.

This meeting was a rather big milestone for me; it put me in front of a goal that I’ve had for ages, and really showed me how little I know about what I’m doing – and also given me some hope that my approach to life will be absolutely perfect for what I plan. Have you ever had that kind of reassurance? It’s powerful stuff.

It’s also made me reconsider the way I phrase a number of my common arguments, and the angle from which I present some facts about myself and my history. Verbiage has a lot of power – anyone who writes knows this, but how much credence do we give phraseology in speech? The unfortunate truth is that fact doesn’t always cut it, and even worse, the very words you consider to be great presentation of fact can be thoroughly misleading if you don’t speak the exact dialect of the people you’re talking to!

If you’ve watched any of the videos I’ve posted, you’ll see fairly clearly that I like to shoot from the hip. I can’t rehearse, I’ve tried. When I recorded my video review of Six Pixels of Separation, I did two takes before the one that posted – and the one that made it was literally begun in the middle of a rant explaining to my wife what I thought of the book.

I’m better at being reactive when in person. When the delay of text exists, I come off strikingly different because my words, my actions – all of my lexical body language has a wonderfully delayed, considered flavour. Even in text messages. Even in instant messages. I look extremely good on paper (or screens) for reasons not accounted for by external qualification. I used to lay it down to being just the way I’m wired, but I’m starting to realize the power in laying claim to expertise in this respect.

But how much benefit does this reactivity actually provide?

Acting in a reactive manner lets me do some superb things. It lets me produce two thousand words of blog and novel a night, in about an hour each at most, and keep up a certain level of quality. Being reactive also lets me respond to tense situations with a little more grace than many people of my temperament (INFP) and keep my head when people get on my nerves.

However, it also means that I miss things sometimes. Like tone. And verbiage. This is important, because I try hard to stick to facts, but unfortunately, fact is difficult to quantify when stuck in a reactive posture. And if you can’t quantify, or qualify your facts, then your verbiage will suffer. And if your verbiage suffers, your arguments will too.

Where did this lesson come from? Simple; I answered a question in a way that placed all responsibility on someone else’s shoulders. The facts, as I presented them, did this for me. The trouble was that I was reacting to the question, rather than responding (which is more powerful once you get the hang of it). The reaction was to drop dead facts about what directly affected an important event in my life about a year ago. It sounded like abdication of responsibility, and it was – sort of.

Here’s the short of it. I put myself in a situation I thought was beneficial, which was climbing the ranks to run a store of my own. I was removed from that position for reasons – which were written into an exit letter – that have since proven to be total bullpucky. But I’m still (for now) with the same company. Sounds like a “Kick me twice” situation, right? It is.

And it’s also not. The hard truth lies in the facts I related. The real truth is that the situation was not beneficial. Managing the store was not like managing a project; it removed me from everything I loved about the job; day to day merchandising tasks, much of the tracking, the teaching of new employees, and above all, interacting with customers. So, in this respect, as much as getting demoted sucks, I found swiftly that I welcomed the return to my previous position, because it was everything I love about being in retail. It sucks being removed when you’re pulling off 30% sales gains in an industry of 10% average losses – but that wasn’t the point I made in the meeting, and it’s not the point that matters to my life, or why I chose to stay on.

There are two lessons here. Can you see both of them?

The first, obviously, comes from how we react to difficult questions. The obvious caution is to remove emotion from the response, and relay fact as-we-see-it. This causes issues, because what we think are pertinent, salient facts often come off as either passing the buck, or a lack of understanding of the situation. The real caution ought to be that we need to consider better what our answers are sourced from; “fact” or emotion and result.

The second lesson, then, speaks to how we perceive the events that shape our lives. The short effect was that I lose a valuable position and regained a joyous one. But I missed most of this, because by now I take that exchange for granted, and as inconsequential to my future endeavours. The long effect was that being removed from the unneeded responsibility (which wasn’t worth the money) freed me up to consider, and wait, and weigh all of the opportunities I put myself in front of, and make sure that the ones I act on are of real benefit, and will provide what the theoretical benefit of being in power did not; joy in my professional life.

And now it’s paying off. My ducks are lined up.

Are yours? And, if they are, how will you communicate that when given the chance?

What is Marketing in 2010? (or) How Meta Can You Get-a?

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I’m still trying to figure this out. I don’t have a marketing background, a technology background, or even a business background. I have a sales background – I’ve been dealing with people, confronting their hangups and counselling them through difficult decisions for most of my life. Solving problems for people is a part of my make-up, a core piece of who I am. When people ask what I do at work, it’s difficult for me to admit I fall into the category of a retailer, or even a salesperson. Retailing and sales are related to marketing, certainly, but it’s more of a kissing cousins relationship than a fraternal twins relationship. The perception, however, is the same of all three; high pressure pitches, manufacturing concept whenever we’re not begging for coerced permission.

That’s not my process. I’m a facilitator. I build a bank of information, contacts and products and then I get people what they need.

So when I see companies purporting to do the same thing I do (whether in the same space or not), but failing terribly at communicating this, I get a bit frustrated. We all get a little freakedout by businesses behaving badly, even people pretending to be businesses, and its worse when I see it locally. Part of this, I’m aware, comes form my lack of understanding of the space – sales is as different from retailing as it is from marketing, after all, and with so many self-declaring experts around, it’s growing increasingly hard to tell who’s legitimate and who’s not.

Is it positioning, or is it posturing?

The first important question to ask if you’re trying to figure out anything about how someone’s acting is whether they’ve got something real backing them or not. Snake oil salesmen talk a certain way, dyed in the wool producers speak an entirely different language. Part of my job as a facilitator is to learn to speak every language there is, and communicate my bank of options to whomever I speak with in a way that matches their understanding and perspective. Still, it gets really easy to tell when someone wants a massive television because they think it’s going to be some kind of social proof for them, or when another person wants the same television because they sit ten feet back and have poor eye sight.

What does this have to do with marketing?

As I understand it, marketing is sales on a macro level. For decades, it’s been a disconnected medium, broadcast and wait. Over the last few years, the gap between people and their brands has been shrinking at an increasing pace, and the process is leaving a lot of brands frightened, stiffening like deer in the headlights of an oncoming locomotive. People are getting bigger than their own skins, and brands are getting smaller as their mass media efforts take more and more of a back seat roll in the sales and business growth cycle. Will these channels ever disappear? Not likely. But we’re certainly seeing other avenues become far more measurable, effective, and ubiquitous. Why? Because everyone’s participating. People are more interested when they can serve themselves.

Remaining Meta Together.

There’s a power to celebrity that’s universally enticing. We all like to escape, to believe we’re kings and queens. And when we all have the ability to move so far beyond facilities served by others – Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and so on – and build our own platforms, our own brands, and do our own marketing… Well, that’s even more exciting than following celebrity, it’s becoming celebrity. Creating these self-legitimizing personal platforms creates a kind of power for us we could never have had before, and it’s one that corporations aren’t yet equipped to process.

Because they can’t process it, the ball is in the court of anyone who can build that personal brand, and get just savvy enough to fake importance without looking too much like they’re posturing. It’s mostly a bluff. But it’s creating a brilliant, and very different skill set for those willing to explore the space with real curiosity, genuine interest, and an eye toward how the new world of ubiquitous, instant, and most interestingly thorough information exchange.

The place of passion in the land of liars.

As part of a promotion for The Art of Marketing, Mitch Joel ran a contest on his blog, asking for people to define marketing in 2010. Naturally, I tried to weigh in – but on further inspection, I think my answer was a little lacking. It felt like posturing, more than positioning. Mitch was asking about passion, drive, and innovation. Listening in on new channels, and deciphering their value is nothing new. There’s no innovation there. Is it necessary? Yes, absolutely. But it’s also done. Listening at the point of need is an integral part of what any business should be doing. Defining and recognizing new channels is nothing more than adding new sets of ears.

What is Marketing in 2010?

The short answer? I have no idea. So far, it doesn’t seem much different than marketing in 2009. Or sales in 2009, or 2008. What’s different isn’t part of what I’m doing yet. It’s nothing I can, in my daily work, do differently to increase my utility to others, their utility to each other, or my ability to grow the business I’m involved in.

The long answer? A lot more complicated. Whatever marketing in 2010 is, I’d love to find out. Because with all this attention and excitement going into it, I’m sure curious.

Wouldn’t you be?

Stop Acting Like a Fool and Blow Something Up!

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Double Explosion, Lake Austin Fireworks on FlickrWhen I initially made the switch to retail, one of my first managers – a very wise dude we refer to as Yoda – told me that “there is no such thing as a big deal. Anything can be handled, if you have the presence of mind to approach it the right way.” I’ve let this be my guiding principal for everything I do relating to client care for five years, and it’s turning out pretty well so far.

Amber Naslund of Altitude Branding made a very good point this morning with her post about Tough Love. In short, she says that there’s a lot of work to be done in any organization, from the giants to the individuals. We all need to get better at whatever it is we do, and one o the answers isn’t necessarily training or new tactics, it’s as simple as personal evaluation and nose-to-the-wheel effort.

It feels like a big deal, doesn’t it? It’s not, really, if you know where to look for the tools that will help you do better. They’re not the same for everyone, but I do have a few suggestions:

  • Rest up! Make sure you’re taking time for yourself, and make sure it’s on purpose. There’s a big performance gap between people who rest whenever there’s less work to be done, and those who rest actively, taking part in community activities, or hobbies, or even doing hobby style work on the side. While moonlighting is stressful most of the time, having a hobby business loosely or not at all associated with your “real work” can give you something meaningful to do with your time. Active rest means avoiding the Summer Break syndrome at the end of the weekend, keep your momentum going and growing, and leave the lazy in the dust.
  • Stop absorbing so much! Face it, we all love our blogs. If we didn’t, I wouldn’t be talking to you like I am now. But when we notice, forlorn, that our Google Reader unread list grows by a hundred articles a day, and it’s largely passive amusement, it’s time to pare down. Do something with what you’re reading. React to it on a blog, comment on the articles, encourage conversation. If you’re a creative, follow the tutorials and actually do them, don’t just read them. Our problem isn’t search overload, it’s stack overflow. We can only retain so much information in a useful way before it all becomes a blur of meaningless white noise. How much value do you get out of the two dozen blogs you follow then?
  • Read Up! Counterintuitive, I know, given that I just said stop absorbing. But what I mean is, change formats once in a while. If you mostly read blogs, pick up a book. I don’t care if it’s hardcover, soft cover, kindle – fiction, non-fiction, a technical manual. Just read something different, exposure to new things is always a good idea.
  • Blow Up Your Routine! Stop wasting your time! Active rest is a big help for this, but going through your day with intention is bigger. For example, the first thing I do in the morning is spend five to ten minutes outlining. I write much of what I post over lunch break, and edit when I get home in the evening, schedule for the following morning. This broken up routine beats writers’ block effectively because it keeps me engaged all day with a subject, but never allows room for getting overwhelmed. And that’s the trick.

After all, it’s all about avoiding the feeling of being overwhelmed, and knowing how to steer your own boat. You have massive opportunities waiting in the five minutes of down time you see three or four times a day. Even if you’re doing things not entirely related to work, building the habit of some kind of productivity, and eschewing the tendency to non-productive activity, is pretty likely to help with whatever it is that you’re doing to pay the bills.

Nothing’s a big deal. Go at it consistently and, most of all, make decisions! No one got anywhere waiting for a committee vote on their own lives. You’re the one who has to pull the trigger.

Photo by Jim Nix.

The Automated Prejudice of Scale

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Real Big FishHow do you approach big problems? You know, the ones you feel – at first glimpse – can never be solved? After you ge over the shock, how do you go about tearing down the mountain? On the other hand, what do you do when confronted with a big project at work? Perhaps liaising with a Fortune 100 company at the C-level to get a contract? Do you treat it differently than working with a local entrepreneur?

Of course you do. You have to. Don’t you?

Apparently, Berkeley High might be cutting out its science labs in order that the massive ethnic gap in its students grades might be levelled. I think these teachers are missing something. The move comes with the aim of diverting resources toward helping “underachieving” students get up to snuff; their studies say that black and latino students are doing poorly, and the science labs only benefit white students. I can’t help but wonder if this is an indication of educational idiocy, or if they’re playing to their audience. It’s hard to tell until the work gets done.

But we’re used to bureaucracy doing this sort of thing. It feels external. Often, we’re unaware of treating things differently because of size, because the prejudice is so ingrained it’s mental furniture. If you go shopping for a TV, you probably want a big one, the biggest you can afford, right? Who cares that if you’re sitting six feet away, a 37″ screen is just on the high end of useful for viewing – that 60″ plasma just screams take me home.

It doesn’t always work in a good or productive manner, but we tend to treat anything bigger than our estimates as better when it’s a perceived benefit, and worse when it’s a perceived threat. I should know – I’m 6’2″ tall and fairly large. My friends treat me as localized security, because without more than five seconds exposure (I’m the goofiest person I know, most days) on the face of it, I look big and threatening. Useful? No. Clothes cost half again as much as they do for anyone else, I hit my head on everything including some doorframes depending on my shoes, and I’m vastly out of shape. Still think being 6’2″ and having a football player’s frame is better than whatever shape you’re in?

As a proving converse argument, I had a friend in school who was 5’10” tall and less than a hundred pounds – and still more threatening than me. Is scale still impressive, putting these descriptions side by side?

One of the things we need to be able to do to combat these clouding assumptions is change our paradigm away from immediate impression toward utility. Often these are one and the same, but in the ever-more-convoluted twenty-first century, we can no longer afford to let first impressions count for anything if we’re given evidence the impression was imperfect. Minds are like parachutes, they work better when we let them open.

Another thing we need to get better at is making sure we’re aware of where scale is of any benefit. I’ve got less than three hundred people following me on Twitter, for example, but those I’ve connected with (and if you’re reading this, it’s likely you’re one of them and know where to find me there) are awesome people, well worth following – and well worth promoting on my part as well. Does this make my stream less valuable to the world than @Scobleizer‘s constant ReTweet storms?

If the small fish is connected to the right big fish, does the small fish need to grow?

Photo by jurvetson