I’m taking a course in Kelowna with Community Futures, on Leadership. Sounds relatively straight forward until you compare management to leadership, compare manager to a leader more specifically.

A manager is someone who operationally directs or conducts the business of an organization. I see this as a technical role, a part of a system, measurable and as my Leadership instructor, Anita Bakker, today pointed out, a ‘doer’.  A manager establishes a plan, allocates resources and measures the results to monitor the success or failure of the plan. A manager relies on other people to fulfill and execute his plan.

Enter the LEADER! Read the rest of this entry

What do You Think I am, a Superhero?

I have quite a few followers on Twitter (@gbizzo) so I am often asked to help people with their social media strategies and development. I have my secrets but am willing to share some common best practices with people. But, hey, at the end of the day, I make a living with what I know and Social Media Marketing is a good part of it.

Imagine my delight when a new client calls and says he wants to pay me “big bucks to get me a whole pile of followers on Twitter or Facebook”.  What do think I am, a Superhero? Ok now where do we start, there’s a big difference between FaceBook and Twitter?

I met with this upscale client and found out that he really has no social media presence and has no idea what to do or where to start. I checked him out online before our meeting, a standard practice and was a little put off when his business card didn’t match at all his website and his website was not dynamic. Further, there was no semblance of branding whatsoever. Why was he so prepared to spend an inordinate amount of money to be on Twitter? Apparently, his friends at the club laughed at his lack of media savvy and he wanted to show them up. Read the rest of this entry

Wow, what a conundrum, do I put tons of time in developing a business from scratch and face overwhelming odds at failure or do I buy someone else’s jewel of a business with tons of money.

It’s so nice to setup your own business based on your own dream with your own systems and with all your own peccadilloes. On the other hand you could buy a ready-made business already making money and have a better than average chance at success.

Or do you?

All things being equal, we can assume the latter choice, that of buying a business,  is a well run business, generating good revenues and is a sure bet. Now take away the ‘all things being equal’ notion. You could be buying the proverbial pig in a poke, in other words a bad business that will drown you in a sea of someone else’s problems. Read the rest of this entry

I was talking with my wife last night about being an entrepreneur. She’s glad I have the entrepreneurial spirit because she feels it isn’t for the weak of heart and at the least is a daunting challenge.  My wife, Jo Ann is a woman with good ideas, an exceptionally strong work ethic (starting her working career as a young teenager) and with a strong desire to get ahead,  she is a natural to be an entrepreneur but…

It’s scary and certainly a slippery slope being an entrepreneur wannabe. Many entrepreneurs become one out of necessity, being laid off from a long held job usually from an economic downturn making a job redundant, an immigrant unable to find employment suitable to his qualifications, a youth out of university unable to find a job. Read the rest of this entry