99 small things to improve your business - episode 7

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, or goodnight. This is Monkey Mondays at rustymonkey.com. Hi, I'm Chris Goor and this is Matthew Burton.

Hi.

We could do that, like, we could present properly one day. Can we?

We could, couldn't we?

Um, and this is our famous box of, um, 99 things to help your business be amazing.

Let's do all, all of it in a news reader voice .

Well, we can't, can't keep it up. Oh, number nine. I like this. Just effing. Do it.

Just effing do it. Ooh, a swear word.

Well, yeah. There was even a, um, a marketing agency called

mm-hmm.

Effing Do it, I think.

I think there might be. Yeah.

I think so. But it's like we are, we are in marketing and we see a lot of people who get some dopamine hits when they have sort of sessions of, um, like creative days, going, we could do this, we could do this. And then you go back to 'em three years later, go, how many of those things from that creative day did you actually do? Oh, not a lot. We did some, we did, we put 20 pounds behind some Google AdWords. You go, well, well, is that gonna change anything? And just do it. Just get out there.

Yeah. What are you waiting for?

Yeah.

Have that laser focus as well.

Yeah.

Try not to be distracted. Just do the thing, get on with it.

Talking about the thing isn't doing the thing, just do the thing.

And there's, there'll be a certain point, a tipping point somewhere where it's good enough.

Yeah.

Just go for it. Because perfection can be a real blocker in just effing doing it.

Yeah.

Doesn't, not everything has to be perfect. Just, there's a tipping point. A good way to look at this, I think, is launching a website. Is it better than what's there? If it is, just do it. Stuff can improve afterwards. You don't have to wait for that level of perfection before you necessarily release.

Yes.

There will be a point where it's better than what you have, or it's more useful to put this out into the world than to wait. Understanding that's a great thing to do.

Yeah, there you go.

It's me live on Monkey Mondays. Monkey. I still can't do it. Not even in that voice. 52. Energize the team no matter what it takes.

Yes, we need energy in within a team, don't you? If you've got a team of, uh, people who look like this , oh God, then you're not gonna get very far, are you.

So how do you, what's your top tips for energizing a team?

Um, be enthusiastic as a leader yourself. Um, try and do things that aren't, uh, mundane, so don't do sitting meetings around a big table all the time. Maybe go out for a walk or take them somewhere or just, just mix things up a bit. Just try and do things a bit different at times, I think.

Uh, I've heard the first few seconds of a meeting can set the tone of a meeting.

Yes.

So, you know, get that ghetto blaster on.

Yeah.

I've got the power! Straight in.

Yeah. Do some high fives like, uh, when they released, uh, Windows 98, that's those, uh, when they were dancing on stage.

Yeah.

That's a good one.

Play moving on up by the M People like, uh, Liz Truss. Political.

That's so topical.

It's so topical, but maybe by the time this goes out. Uh, no, not really.

No. Right. Next one, uh, 75. Zag.

Ooh. Like, uh, the little kid's puppet thing that used to be on, uh, that TV show.

Ah, it's just like Peter Kay isn't it? Just sitting next to him? Oh, there was that, there was that puppet on a TV show. Great.

I remember when.

Ah, this is just about doing things differently, isn't it? Just...

Yeah.

So many people just do things in a certain way and expect you to do things in a certain way. Just don't.

Yes.

Just do it an opposite way, and that might energize your team or get you a different contract, or might just change your entire business. Just try something different at some point.

When everybody zigs...

You zag.

Uh, Ooh. Is it me?

Yeah. Yep. Yep. It is you.

Give great feedback.

Why was that in a Yorkshire accent?

That was my Peter Kay voice.

Oh gosh.

It's good, right?

I sort of missed that.

Yeah. Oh, did you?

Yeah.

The audience got it though, right? Give great feedback. Um, people sometimes miss this, I think, don't they? Again, this is a, I don't believe this just involves with, uh, you, you, our audience, talking to their, their team there. You know, if you're a marketing manager, a business owner, it, it's important to give your team good feedback. I think where, you know, especially where they can, it can go a long way, I think saying, that's a good job well done. You know, that's, we all want some validation, but I think you can go a little bit wider with your nets of feedback as well. So, um, I mean, for us, sometimes we work with, um, we might do some branding work for, for a company. And I love it when they really embrace that brand and try really hard to make sure they're putting that over all of their touchpoints. And when, if I see it happening, I will go and go, you guys are smashing this. This is really great to see. And, uh, I think that helps people in that position that are trying to roll out that brand. Cause that's not easy. It's not easy for a customer to, to get that brand rolled out over their whole organization. So getting some validation to your customers can be really good too. Say hey, job well done.

Hey. Hey. I, I think feedback's really can be quite tricky in a business, business world cuz a lot of, um, teams just have someone who just complains about stuff and that's not really feedback. That's not really constructive either.

No.

So the time, the way you handle feedback is a tricky thing. I think it more companies need more training on it and yeah, more individuals need help on how to manage that. So yeah, invest in it.

It's good to do retros, I think. Like if you, if you launch a product or a service or something like that, get that team together, do a retro, be really, there's some good formats on how to do it. Our project manager's great at this stuff. Um, the format of your retro is a really safe place to be able to say what went well, what went wrong? What would you change? And then find those things you wanna action. And that's how we improve, right? Because nobody's perfect.

No. Not even us.

Last one.

Yep. Is it me?

I can't remember.

No, no. Uh, no. You've got, you do it.

I've forgotten what that one even was.

The feedback one.

Have a shared office playlist.

Oh yeah, yeah. Well, it's just, um, this is another one about celebrating diversity where if you put music on in your office, you shouldn't just put some crappy radio station on that has adverts for windows all the time. Just put on music that people like, but make that an eclectic mix. So we have a lot of people in our office who like heavy metal, but we also like, uh, disco and. I should just say some random dance music to get you going, but no, it's really good. Just, just have like an eclectic mix and, um, people will broaden their musical horizons and everyone will feel included. I think it's nice.

Yeah, I mean, we, we've got musicians in the office as well, haven't we? So we, we're a, we're a musical agency, I guess we. Uh, we like a soundtrack to our day.

Yeah.

And a diverse soundtrack is cool. We've got some very cool video game music on ours, which is hilarious when it comes on. Uh oh. That's it. Over-excited again.

Good ending. Nice. Always end strong.

Alright, let's end strong. That's it.

Bye.