La crise, quelle crise ?

Auteur/autrice : marc

  • Telling your story (Part 6) – Deliver Results

    Telling your story (Part 6) – Deliver Results

    “Everything will be alright at the end”. This is one quote from the film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. And this is what almost all audiences expect from a good story: a happy ending! To the point where you are, the tension is there. The audience wonders what will come next, they may be scared, but they want you to deliver the expected results.

    And the time has come to do it! The biggest trap is to paramount on the tension point and let the soufflé go down. All the cooks know that a soufflé cannot wait. It needs to be eaten very hot, just as it goes outside of the oven! If you have done your job well and have followed the four previous steps:

    1. Grab the attention
    2. Set the scene
    3. Relate to your audience
    4. Increase tension,

    the soufflé is hot and your audience needs to eat it now.

    To revert to the examples described in the previous parts, this is the right time to tell your investors how much you want and how much they will make. If you are selling a product, picture the company or the users delivering benefits to their own customers by using your product, and ask for the order through a direct question (a bad salesperson never asks for the order).

    And stop! Yes, stop! Do not overdo it! Delivering your results should be five percent or less of the entire presentation. This does not sound natural? That’s true, and it’s because you have done your homework, have prepared well and have followed the magic five steps. Have you ever wondered why a book or a film seems to accelerate at the end? Have you ever noticed that the last chapter is shorter? All this is because the author has “manipulated” you.

    I dislike the word manipulation because it has a negative connotation. However a good presenter or a good writer knows how to write a story in a way you wait for the end, do not expect it and are relieved, with this feeling that you knew it would end this way. And by the way, sometimes the end is not happy, but you knew it.

    In the business world, we are manipulated every day. I shall say every hour. However, if your intentions are good, your story will be good, your audience will feel this and they will agree on the manipulation. Nobody forces an audience to stay in the room if it feels the speaker is phony.

    But if you deliver your results quickly and have followed the previous steps, two things will happen:

    1. You will feel the excitement in the room
    2. The audience will ask positive open questions

    Do not feel challenged. Answer with short and precise statements, and shut up. The tension has fallen on your shoulders, since you expect an answer to your grand finale, but you should not let that show, and continue smiling. And you know what will happen? Everything will be alright at the end!

  • Le guide minimaliste du succès financierThe minimalist guide to financial success

    Le guide minimaliste du succès financierThe minimalist guide to financial success

    Êtes-vous le PDG de Moi SA ? La question peut sembler étrange, il est cependant important que vous vous comportiez comme un dirigeant d’entreprise si vous voulez avoir du succès dans la vie. Qu’est ce qui définit le succès d’une entreprise ? Un marketing brillant, des produits géniaux, un service client incroyable et surtout, surtout, un compte de résultat et un bilan équilibrés. Tout bon PDG sait lire ces états financiers et pilote son entreprise avec ces nombres à l’esprit.

    Dans tous les cas, c’est l’argent, et en particulier le cash, qui permet à une entreprise de croître et de créer des emplois. Le point positif d’être le PDG de Moi SA est que vous ne pouvez pas être licencié. Vous pouvez cependant faire faillite et mettre votre famille en danger si vous faites des erreurs financières, que vous auriez pu éviter avec un peu de connaissances et de travail (et oui, pas de travail, pas de résultat).

    Si vous ne contrôlez pas votre argent, vous mettez votre équilibre financier en danger. Suze Orman.

    Prenez conscience du fait que vous êtes une mini entreprise. Vous avez des entrées financières (vos revenus) et des sorties (vos achats). Votre objectif est d’équilibrer ces flux afin d’avoir une variance positive, c’est-à-dire de dépenser moins que ce que vous gagnez. Cela semble une évidence ? Si ça l’était autant que ça, moins de personnes seraient submergées de dettes, mais c’est un autre sujet.

    Nous n’allons pas rentrer dans les détails d’un compte de résultat ou d’un bilan, mais suivre une liste de principes financiers simples.

    Le haut de bilan

    En haut d’un compte de résultats, à droite en comptabilité française, se trouvent les revenus. Il s’agit du chiffre que vous devez absolument connaitre: combien d’argent gagnez-vous par mois et par an ? Votre salaire vient à l’esprit, mais vous pouvez avoir d’autres sources de revenus comme les dividendes d’actions que vous possédez ou les intérêts générés par vos placements. Un de vos objectifs doit être d’augmenter la ligne de vos revenus.

    En regard de la ligne des revenus, sur la gauche, se trouve généralement celle des achats de marchandises. En général Moi SA n’a pas d’achats, vous pouvez donc oublier cette ligne. Ensuite, sous les achats de marchandises se trouvent les dépenses de fonctionnement. Il est crucial que vous sachiez où passe votre argent, car cela a un impact direct sur vos profits. Pensez à inclure vos impôts, surtout celui sur le revenu, ainsi que vos frais financiers, par exemple l’emprunt que vous remboursez.

    Le bas de bilan

    La dernière ligne de votre compte de résultats est votre profit net. Plus la valeur de cette ligne est grande par rapport à vos revenus, meilleurs sont vos résultats. Si cette valeur est négative, vous enregistrez des pertes. Cela indique que vous vivez au-dessus de vos moyens et qu’il faut résoudre cette situation en réduisant vos dépenses et augmentant vos revenus.

    Un de vos objectifs est donc de maximiser votre profit net. Cela enchantera votre investisseur, vous, et surtout remplira votre compte en banque.

    Le cash est roi

    Tout bon PDG vous dira que le cash, aussi appelé liquidités, est la mesure la plus importante. Si vous disposez de liquidités, vous pouvez répondre positivement à un investissement intéressant ou traverser avec succès une mauvaise passe. Le cash fait et défait les entreprises. De nombreuses personnes luttent financièrement car elles ne savent pas de combien de cash elles disposent et se servent de dettes pour faire leurs achats, accroissant de fait leurs dépenses.

    Même si le succès n’est pas que financier, avoir quelques notions de comptabilités est vital. Etudiez les chiffres, apprenez à lire un compte de résultat, établissez le vôtre, et devenez le PDG de Moi SA ! Prenez le contrôle de vos finances si vous voulez réussir votre vie.

    Are you the CEO of Yourself inc.? While this question may sound odd, it is crucial that you behave and act like a CEO if you ever want to be successful. What makes a prosperous company? Brilliant marketing, awesome products, incredible customer service and above all sound balance sheet and income statement. A great CEO always knows how to read these two financial statements and drive her company with numbers in mind.

    At the end of the day, it is money, and particularly cash, that allows companies to grow and create employment. The great thing about being the CEO of Yourself inc. is that you cannot be fired. However, you can go bankrupt or put your family in jeopardy because of financial mistakes that you could have easily avoided.

    If you’re not staying on top of your money, you are putting your financial well-being at risk. Suze Orman

    The first thing to realize is yourself or your family is like a mini company: you have inputs (your income) and needs (your purchases). Your goal is to balance those so you have a positive variance, meaning you need to spend less than you earn. It seems obvious, doesn’t it? Well if it was that obvious, people would not be deeply indebted, but this is another topic.

    We are not going to discover all the intricacies of an income statement or a balance sheet, but to follow a simple series of sound finance principles.

    The top line

    At the top of an income statement is the revenue line. This is the first item you need to know exactly: how much do you make per month and per year? The obvious is your salary, but there may be other sources of income, like the dividends of stocks you own or the interests generated by your savings. One of your goals should be to increase your top line, your revenue.

    Below the revenue line, you normally find the cost of goods sold. Yourself inc. does not generally have goods to sell, you can therefore discard this line. Then, you will find the expenses line. It is really crucial that you know where you are spending your money, because this has a direct effect on your profit. Include your taxes, particularly the income tax, and the interests you are paying to the bank if you have borrowed money.

    The bottom line

    The last line of your income statement is your net profit. This is one of the most important lines, called the bottom line. The bigger it is compared to your top line, the better. Of course, if you end up with a negative number, this is a loss. This tells you that you live above your means, and you should immediately solve this situation by reducing your expenses and increasing your revenue.

    Take as one of your goal to maximize your net profit. This will please the shareholder, you, and will put available cash to your bank account.

    Cash is king

    All good CEOs will tell you that cash flow is the most important financial measure. If you have cash on hand, you can face any potential interesting investment or any challenge. Cash is making or breaking a company. Lots of people are struggling financially because they do not know how much cash they have on hand and use debt to finance their purchases, thus increasing their expenses.

    Although it’s true success is not only financial, having some notions of accountancy is vital to life. Study numbers, learn how to read an income statement, and become the CEO of Yourself inc. Take charge of your finances if you want to live a successful life.

  • Telling your story (Part 5) – Increase the tension

    Telling your story (Part 5) – Increase the tension

    This is the turning point of your story. You know the moment when anything can happen, good or bad. It’s the moment when the hero can die and the bad guy can win. It’s the moment when you bite your nails or lip, when you girlfriend squeezes your arm, when you close your eyes and hold your breath. The moment of truth!

    In movies and good stories, the inflexion point is the result of an almost scientific series of events, put one after the other like the steps of a staircase, to increase the tension. If you have built your stories based on the previous articles, you have grabbed the attention of your audience, you have set the scene with the good and the bad guys, and you have made sure you relate to the people in the room. In most cases, you are now able to guide them where you want, and you can now play with their emotion.

    Emotions are the strongest drivers of human behavior, use them. If you are selling a product, you want your prospects to feel the lack of your product, so they will come to the natural conclusion they need it. If you are looking for capital to fund your company, you want your potential investor to feel this is the opportunity of the year and if they do not jump into it, they will not be able to win as much as they would.

    However, saying it is not enough, you have to build the story so that it becomes an obvious truth in your audience’s mind. Stay calm, there is a simple magic formula to build the tension: step, obstacle, step, obstacle, step, and obstacle. This pair, step, obstacle, at least three times. Do not make it much longer though. What your audience wants to know is how you overcame the challenges that life threw at you.

    The different steps do not need to be in chronological order. The importance is the obstacles seem more and more insurmountable. Let’s explore the capital seeking example. What you want to tell is while you were operating the company, you got an issue with product quality that brought you almost bankrupt. Explain what you did to you went up again. Then, go onto the large customer who did not pay you and closed its business leaving your cash flow in a terrible situation. Finally, go with the competitor who stole some of your ideas and created a pale copy of your products that left you with the duty to innovate more and faster.

    You see the idea. In the case of selling a product to a customer or an idea to your team, walk them through last year’s or other customers’ successes, one after the other, and how you delivered those. Show you can be trusted, that your experience has helped to build a stronger you. Once the tension is at its peak, then you can deliver the results and bring the smile back to your audience. This will be our next week final topic.

  • Comment en faire plus en moins de temps ?How to get more done in less time?

    Comment en faire plus en moins de temps ?How to get more done in less time?

    Que diriez-vous s’il existait une méthode vous permettant de gagner du temps, afin soit d’en faire plus, soit d’avoir plus de temps libre ? De nombreuses personnes me demandent où je trouve le temps de faire tout ce que je fais, comme écrire ces billets et entrainer mon équipe de foot, tout en faisant mon travail, progresser chez Toastmasters, etc. Ma réponse est simple : planification et concentration. Il s’agit d’une botte de Nevers à de nombreuses, si ce ne sont pas à toutes, questions de productivité.

    Dans un monde rapide comme le nôtre, il est facile d’être distrait et le multitâche est devenue la norme. Cependant, si le multitâche nous occupe, il nous fait perdre du temps. Il nous donne le sentiment d’en faire plus, alors que généralement, nous en faisons moins.

    40 pourcents de perdus

    Il existe plusieurs types de multitâches. Le premier consiste à faire plusieurs choses en même temps – en parallèle – comme, par exemple, passer un coup de fil tout en faisant la vaisselle. Le second consiste à passer d’une première tâche à la seconde sans avoir fini la première, puis d’y revenir sans avoir terminé la seconde, et ainsi de suite.

    D’après l’American Psychology Association, de nombreuses recherches démontrent que le multitâche peut nous faire perdre jusqu’à 40 pourcents de temps productif. La raison en est simple : à chaque fois que nous passons d’une tâche à l’autre, nous perdons du temps. Plus nous changeons, plus nous perdons de temps. Et plus les tâches sont complexes, plus nous perdons de temps. Une double taxe !

    Les conséquences

    La conséquence directe du multitâches est donc cette perte de temps. Mais les conséquences peuvent être pires ! Prenez par exemple, téléphoner en conduisant, une pratique interdite par la loi. Une fraction de seconde d’inattention peut vous faire rentrer dans un platane. Envoyer des SMS pendant une réunion peut vous faire perdre le fil de la conversation et vous faire oublier de faire une tâche débattue.

    Il ne s’agit donc pas uniquement de temps. Pensez-y la prochaine fois que vous vous trouverez à faire deux ou plusieurs choses simultanément.

    La solution

    Que pouvez-vous faire ? Commencez par arrêter de faire deux choses à la fois. Une fois stoppé, demandez-vous ce que vous voulez réaliser ? Vous savez qu’échouer à planifier revient à planifier d’échouer. Regardez-donc les tâches que vous exécutez. Quel but ont-elles ? Combien de temps vont-elles vous prendre ? Pouvez-vous réserver du temps pour les réaliser dans votre agenda ?

    La solution est de vous concentrer sur une seule tâche jusqu’à ce qu’elle soit terminée. Certaines devront être cassées en petits morceaux actionnables, qui ne pourront sans doute pas être terminées rapidement. Qu’à cela ne tienne, vous pouvez les planifier. Cependant, une fois ces tâches planifiées et inscrites dans votre agenda, supprimez les distractions et mettez-vous au travail, en vous concentrant uniquement sur une tâche. Je vous garantis que vous arriverez à la fin de la journée en ayant terminé plus de choses et avec un sentiment unique d’accomplissement.What if there was a way to get things done faster, so you can do more things or get more free time? I have many people asking me when I find the times to do all the things I am doing, like writing these posts and coaching my soccer team, while doing my job, going to Toastmasters, etc. My answer is simple: planning and focus. It’s a silver bullet to many, if not all, our time and productivity challenges.

    In a fast world like ours, it’s very easy to get distracted, and multi-tasking has become the norm. However, if multi-tasking keeps us busy, it wastes precious time. It gives us the feeling that we are doing more, while in most cases; we are doing less.

    Up to 40 percent lost

    There are different ways to multitask. The first is doing things in parallel, for instance, phoning to a friend while washing the dishes. The second is switching from one task to the other without having completed the first, then switching back to the first without having finished the second and so forth.

    According to the American Psychology Association, numerous research papers show multitasking can cost up to 40 percent of someone productive time. The reason is fairly simple: each time we switch, we are losing time. The more we switch, the more time we lose. And the more complex the tasks are, the more time is lost.

    The consequences

    The direct consequence of multitasking is therefore a loss of time. But it could be more dramatic! Take for instance phoning while driving. Losing a fraction of a second of attention can be the difference between life and death. Texting while attending a meeting can lead to not getting an important point discussed and therefore not taking the right actions afterward.

    So it’s a matter of time but can be a matter of plenty of other topics. Think about it next time you want to do two, or more, things at the same time.

    The remedy

    So you should ask, what shall I do? Well first is stop doing two things at the same time. Second, while you stopped, is assessing what you try to achieve. You know that failing to plan is planning to fail. The same goes with the tasks you are executing. What are you trying to achieve? Do you have an idea of how long a specific task will take you? Can you plan it and book time into your agenda?

    Ultimately, the only remedy is to focus on one thing only at a time until completion. There will be tasks that you’ll need to break into chewable bites, and that you will not be able to achieve in one go. This is fine; you can plan that. But once you have planned what you want to achieve and have booked time into your agenda, get rid of distractions and start working, just on the task you planned. You’ll end your day with much more done and a feeling of accomplishment second to none.

  • Telling your story (Part 4) – Relate to audience

    If you have followed the three previous parts of Telling your story (part 1, part 2, part 3), you know how to grab the attention of your public and to set the scene. Now comes the time to ensure you are “vibrating in harmony” with your audience. Actually, one of the biggest mistake presenters are making, if not the biggest, is to present for themselves! If you want your story to be as impactful as possible, relate to your audience.

    A story delivered to a group of venture capitalists will be different from a story delivered to a group of teenagers. Even though, it may be the same story in the end. Imagine you are creating a new social network that will compete with Facebook. You will need investors and users. So, you will tell your story to investors to get their commitment to invest in your company; and you will tell your story to potential users so they join your network, and invite their friends. Member growth will attract more ads and will give more confidence to investors.

    In the end, you will need to explain what your social network is, what are its main characteristics, what are its key differentiators from competition and so on. You are probably now realizing that the story for investors and the one for members will be fundamentally different, although the goal is implicitly the same: get more members to attract more investment. And this will derive a difference in the way you tell your story.

    Let me take a personal example: I love Star Wars, and my wife prefers Dirty Dancing. Both stories are of course completely different. However, in each, you will find the good guys and the bad guys, some love and some action. But, they both appeal to different audiences. Not that I could not like both films, but they will play on different levels of emotions, and therefore will generate different feelings. I can watch fifty times Star Wars (I have already probably watched the six episodes twelve times already), but one time Dirty Dancing was enough. As for my wife, it’s the opposite.

    You should get my point by now. The story you are going to tell has to depend deeply on the audience. Even though you can grab the attention with the same opening and you can set the same scene, you will have to start tweaking your message so that you speak to the heart and my mind of your public. And this means, you need to know them. Nothing’s worse than a speaker who has not done his or her due diligence.

    When you have set the scene, you have defined the environment, as well as the enemies. Your goal is that your audience should feel like being in the good guy’s shoes. Each of the attendees should be able to identify him or herself to you or to your hero. They have to be able to close their eyes and see through yours. It’s not rocket science, one or two examples taken from their life or from their company’s life will do the trick. The aim is to fine similarities between your story and your audience life. A question or a comparison may help.

    Draw parallels between your story and theirs, and you will have create rails on which you are going to guide them. If you manage to do this well, take their hand and increase the tension, which will be our focus topic next week. Stay tuned!