2018 Business Excellence Forum - Blinding Flashes of the Obvious Part 1

For the third year in a row I must say, the Business Excellence Forum (BEF) gets better each year, and the 2018 event was no exception.  This year there were more than 700 business owners, executives, team members and business coaches in attendance in San Diego, California.  With that many attendees, there was an abundance of formal and informal exchanges of ideas, strategies, success stories and best practices.

This year’s forum had an extensive list of keynote speakers whose presentations yielded many Blinding Flashes of the Obvious (BFOs) and new ways of looking at things.  The following are some of the BFOs that struck a chord with me, most of which will enhance the value I bring to my clients.  I am sure that some of these will have a similar effect on you.

During the opening session, Brad Sugars, founder, and Chairman of ActionCOACH shared the following during a presentation of the 21 Biggest Mistakes in Marketing:

• Mistake #4 – No Numbers / At ActionCOACH we have the concept of Measure & Test.  For example, in creating marketing materials, such as advertisements, we coach our clients to test multiple headlines and measure the level of response, rather than simply using one headline.  After measuring response, our clients can hone in on an effective headline.  Brad suggested that Google or Facebook are perfect venues to test marketing headlines.
• Mistake #9 – Going for 1 sale vs. 100 / The concept of marketing for multiple sales, rather than going for one sale.  This involves targeting out-bound message, while calling for in-bound response.
• Mistake #12 – Wrong Words/Pictures / Marketing materials must address your target’s values, not your company’s values.
  I will be blogging and tweeting more of the 21 Biggest Mistakes during the next few weeks.

Our first Keynote speaker was Elizabeth McCormick, an amazing lady.  Ms. McCormick was the first female helicopter pilot in the US Army.  In addition to teaching the entire audience how to fly a helicopter, she laid out many gems, here are a few:

• “If you believe that something is hard, it will be hard.  If you believe something is easy, it will be easy … not as hard”
• She demonstrated the “Can you exercise.”  She asked a volunteer to the stage.  The volunteer extended their arm out to the side with their thumb down.  Elizabeth then:

o   Pushed down on the volunteer’s arm while the subject was resisting to establish a benchmark of the amount of force needed to overcome the resistance

o   Next, she had the subject say “I can’t” three times.  When she pushed the volunteer’s arm down this time she was able to easily overcome the resistance.

o   Finally, she had the subject say “I can” three times.  This time she had to apply much more force to overcome the volunteer’s resistance.
Just in case we thought she was faking, the entire audience paired off, did the exercise and came up with the same result.

o   The purpose was to move us from our comfort zone to our Potential Zone.

• “We all have a responsibility to lead from where we are.”

Stay tuned for the next installment of BFOs from the 2018 BEF.