Tim McCarthy and the Business of Good

Newsletter - "The CEO’s Marketing Tool Kit" by Tim McCarthy

Sep 30, 2015 3:27:00 PM / by Tim McCarthy

I’ve made the cut as a speaker on the national Vistage circuit. With no small thanks to my son and promoter, Kevin, we have ten presentations scheduled and that number is climbing. Vistage is a peer group concept with over 2,500 groups in the USA of 12 to 18 CEOs who gather once a month for a full day to work on their businesses together.

Vistage is a target-rich environment for those I seek to share and motivate: financially secure people who want more from their life than yachts and second homes. I like to call sharing my life and motivating these types my “last rodeo.” Spread the virus, as my marketing comrades would say.

First, I must prove to them that my journey will help them improve their business. I do that by sharing my learning from starting five businesses, three of which are succeeding. It’s only then that I can spend my last hour with them working on a chart Kevin titled “My Life Plan.” The question we contemplate together is, “was there something I meant to do with my life that I haven’t?”

So, I’ve decided to share the toolkit and the life plan in this blog. There will be four blogs on the things I think make or break organizations. Then, as with Vistage, we’ll do a life plan together.

  • List Power: The most underutilized asset of ANY organization is their database. Next month, I will share how I’ve learned to build and leverage lists of current customers, prospects, employees, candidates for employment, associations of like-minded people, donors. 
  • Offer Billboard: Of 100 organizations 100 have a theme. Less than 10, however, have a meaningful one. Words like “quality, dependability” and “serving the poor” can be said by anyone. Every smart organization instead chooses 8 to 15 words that no one else can say. 
  • Boston Consulting Matrix for Dummies: For my own purposes, I demystify BCG’s decades-old discipline of creating four quadrants for every product and service your organization provides. Every business and organization needs to do less, better and this is a great starting point.  
  • The Three Legged Stool: Here again I use a simplified version of something I learned from Jay Barney and the Brickley textbook on Organizational Architecture. Don’t let the long words scare you, it’s simply gauging who in your firm makes what decisions, how they are rewarded for making the right decisions and how to know if right decision was made.  
  • Life Plan: Said simply, connecting our daily activities to strategies that are focused on the most important thing in our life creates INTENTION. So, the life plan exercise starts with “what is the single most important thing to me in the world”? A second set of circles is for strategies to address reaching your goals. The third set sets your weekly “to do” list. The knee bone’s connected to the femur, the femur’s connected to the ankle, the ankle...

Okay, I’m psyched. Let the writing begin. And, as always, email me if you wish to discuss things earlier.

Peace,

Tim McCarthy

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Tim McCarthy

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