CEO Time Allocation by Mark Juliano

One of the hardest things for a President & CEO to do is properly allocate time. Goodness knows I’ve had these problems at all my startups (FORE Systems, Vinomis, Brava Fashions, Avidia Systems, MediaSite, Haley, etc. etc.). We all seem to spend TOO much time on small firefighting issues, and too little time on the truly important things like: SALES, Marketing, Products, Business Planning, Hiring key employees, Finances, and yes — CUSTOMERS!!!

So what’s a CEO to do?

Here are some suggestions that I’ve found helpful:

1. Keep a ToDo list and get that stuff done. Prioritize each ToDo (including voicemails, emails, etc.) on a 1-3 scale. Make sure all the 1’s are taken care of, do something on the 2’s. And ask yourself if the 3’s are really that important. And if you can assign any of this ToDo list to someone in your company, then do it.

2. Make another ToDo list of Big Picture things with headings like strategy, products, marketing, etc. These are generally very important for real change in an organization, but CEO’s never seem to get them done.

3. Be sure to do SOMETHING on the Big Picture list every day, and keep track. If you’re not making progress — you’re not making progress.

4. Shut your office door! And do the Big Picture things without interruption. Even put a Do Not Disturb sign on your door — for an hour. Really.

5. Have less long, worthless meetings. One company I know actually had their meetings with no chairs standing up, so they were shorter.

I know this all sounds kind of fuzzy, but the Big Picture stuff is truly the important things to change your organization.

Read Full Post »

How to build a Good, Fast Website by Mark Juliano

I have finally built a website about my life and times. Got my name URL at GoDaddy. www.markjuliano.com. If you can’t get your full name try things like markjuliano1.com, markjulianowebsite.com, markjuliano.website.com, markjulianopittsburgh.com, etc. Make sure your name is in contiguous letters.

EXAMPLE:

Mark Juliano Profile – Career, Life and Times

I used WordPress (Free) to build it, which was very straightforward and I highly recommend. It’s way more than a Blog website these days. You can build a FULL WEBSITE, link to all your social networks or any website, use templates, etc. I built the website in less than a week! Has about 20 pages so far and growing.

Advantages to having your own website with YOUR name: 1) really helps to keep your Social Networks up to date, 2) when people search your name, your website will get good rankings on Google, 3) easy to copy/paste info to social network sites, 4) can link FROM your social networks to your website instead of constantly updating every social site.

Anyway — you can check it out as an example of what you can do.

Mark Juliano Profile website — www.markjuliano.com which forward to WordPress at www.markjuliano1.wordpress.com

I’ll post more about how to build this type of website easily and quickly.

Read Full Post »

Back in the Old Days

This post relates to junior employees taking direction from senior employees. Back in the old-old days, work life was pretty straightforward in terms of decision making. Senior employees (managers) made decisions, and junior employees carried them out. This was a very efficient system, although junior employees didn’t always buy into decisions. If a junior employee didn’t listen, it was considered insubordination.

In the old days (my generation), senior employees weighted advice from both senior and junior employees. Senior employees ultimately made the decisions, and they were carried out by junior employees. But junior employees had the right to disagree, but in the end everyone still realized who was boss. If a junior employee didn’t obey the decision, it wasn’t considered insubordination, but it wasn’t a good thing over the long term.

Today, things have changed again. It seems that senior and junior employees negotiate equally and openly. Junior employees are generally not afraid to speak their mind. In particular, at TalkShoe, since we’re focusing on social networking, junior/younger employees still  have a say. Now we must reach consensus. If a junior employee doesn’t carry out the decisions made by the senior employee, it’s more the senior employee’s job to once again try and reach consensus. This can be very inefficient if decisions have to continually be revisited; however, ultimately it’s great when concensus is reached, and all employees feel ownership of the decision.

Read Full Post »

Carnegie Mellon student project

TalkShoe has just begun doing a project with students from Carnegie Mellon University MISM program which is a joint technology-business masters degree. The students will be looking at methods and best practices for marketing into social networks, especially MySpace, Facebook and Ning. This is part of TalkShoe’s new thrust into getting social networkers to use Talkcasts for discussions, conversations, and of course live podcasts.

Check out the students’ blog where they’ll be making their findings public and soliciting feedback. http://twelve300.com/

Read Full Post »

Deciding to Blog as a REAL person

I’ve been maintaining TalkShoe’s company blog for over a year now. The decision to create on was simple — everyone’s doing it, and it’s a great way to build a community. Currently, we get about 2,000 hits on our blog per week which isn’t bad. Basically, I write all the posts, but they show up as being from TalkShoe, not me. Over the past few months, I’ve become convinced that I should also maintain a personal blog, that is associated and linked to, yet separate from the TalkShoe blog.

I decided to make the blog about life in a startup. This is my 5th entrepreneurial venture, so I have a lot of experience. I will be talking about a wide range of activities including fund raising, product development, marketing, general management, etc. This will allow TalkShoe users, and general Internet users alike to come along as I cronicle the company.

Read Full Post »