Katie: Welcome back to chapter 2 of the BusinessMakers Overtime Show, heard here and online at TheBusinessMakers.com/Overtime. I'm Katie Laird and John and I are here in the studio today for an exciting and adventurous Overtime Show without Esther.

John: Ahhhhh

Katie: Ahhhh. But luckily we miss her so much and she is always doing amazing things for us that we actually have a really great interview that is all setup for us.

John: Who is the interview with?

Katie: It is with former CMO of Kodak, Jeffrey Hayzlett. Who is also the author of The Mirror Test and has some really interesting things to say to Esther.

Esther: Your book is really about how to help small businesses scale and grow and how to avoid some of the pitfalls of just starting a business in the first place. There's so much to consider. What would you say are the main things that small business owners when they say yes, I'm starting this business; now what.

Jeffrey: Well it's that passion. The passion gets in the way of really thinking. I've gone out and tried to start pheasant farms. I was gonna -

Esther: Pheasant farms?

Jeffrey: Pheasant farms; it's in the book. I tried to corner the market on pheasants till I figured out there wasn't one because my passion for loving pheasants, eating pheasants, hunting pheasants, seeing pheasants, I thought they were beautiful, led me to a big turkey basically. That's what it is.

Esther: Ah.

Jeffrey: So a lot of businesses they actually listen to everybody, which is important, but they put too much emphasis on what their family tells them or what the people around them tell them. Get out and really talk to the audience that's gonna buy and find out will the dog eat the dog food, will they buy it, will they want to use it, will they pay the price that you think. You get in your old little story about that as a small business and not even a small business, even big businesses. I've even done that where I've gone out and launched mobile campaigns in movie theaters till I realized why wasn't that working. Well, that's because you turned your phone off in a movie theater. Well duh.

Esther: No one's gonna be texting during the movie -

Jeffrey: No one's gonna be texting during the movie. So you learn, but you get yourself into these stories and that's what happens. We get this Johnny Vegas syndrome. We're doing deals to do deals or we're doing things because we think it's right and we don't always know what's best. So it's good to stand in front of the mirror and really ask the hard questions and that's what the book's about.

Esther: Awesome. So now you're out on your own. We had you on the show once before. You were with Kodak at the time. Now you are out on your own. You're doing your own thing. You're consulting all over the world.

Jeffrey: Carrying my own bags, booking my own plane tickets and doing everything.

Esther: Yeah; it's awesome.

Jeffrey: But I love it. This is what I've always been about. I stayed at Kodak, was the longest period I've ever stayed at any one company.

Esther: How long was that?

Jeffrey: Four years. Four years and about a month -

Esther: That's a long time in this new changing world.

Jeffrey: Well in the CMO world it's a very long time. The average life of a chief marketing officer is like 18 to 23 months. So to be in a job for four years was a big thing. So I was part of the turnaround. I was getting antsy. I went to the boss and said, 'Hey, I gotta get out of here. I've done my job. We've turned Kodak around. We've raised the profile of Kodak. Now everybody remembers who it is, what it is and what it's best known for in the innovation, the new products. I need to go back out and restart something. So The Mirror Test was a way for me to do that. I thought businesses were gonna be ready for growth and they wanted to get out there and start growing their businesses again because we were in this nasty depression and economic recession. So I said let's start doing something that's positive, upfront for businesses and really force businesses, ask hard questions about yourself and get out there and start running your business.

Esther: That's so cool and I see that you're using all the new tools that a lot of businesses are using. You've been really successful through Twitter and Facebook and all kinds of social channels. So what do you think has been the reason for that? What's your main reason for big success there?

Jeffrey: Well I think the biggest thing is using the tools in your toolbox. So finding the right tool at the right time. I'm selling books through ads on Facebook. I'm selling through Tweets and people are Tweeting about it. It's wonderful to open up an open up a Tweet deck or Seismic or whatever I'm watching and to see people talk about my business. Talk about me, talk about the book. I love it and wouldn't small businesses wanna have that, too? So why aren't they using it. About one-third of everybody gets it, one-third eventually get it and one-third will never get it. That's just the nature of anything. So as your listeners and the watchers who are paying attention to the show know, it's the same thing for them. So Twitter is a new tool. It's not a fad. It's gonna be around for awhile. Microblogging and blogs are gonna be around and Facebook and other tools. There'll be even more tools that come, but utilize those to your advantage. I call it OPM, other people's money. So use it. It's free.

Esther: Absolutely. That's such great advice. What do you think about small businesses though?

Jeffrey: It's easier. It's much easier because you don't have attorneys breathing down your neck or HR departments looking over to whether every Tweet's okay. You can do these kind of things on your own. You don't have to check in with all these people and boards of directors. You can just do it. Be yourself and that's what you want. A brand is nothing but a promise delivered. Usually the business owner and the key people that are involved in that business are the ones that really hold the promise. So get out there and start making some promises. Get out there and let people know.

Esther: So I want to know about your failures because I don't think CEOs and CMOs and just people in executive positions really talk enough about how they failed and learned from it. So what would you say is your biggest failure?

Jeffrey: The biggest failures that I have is not doing the proper planning, not thinking it through. Let my passion get in the way. Let me being too busy get in the way and not just really questioning things. I think it's important for people to have a healthy debate and trust of their other people and to say hey, boss, is that the right thing to do. So those are the biggest failures I normally have is not doing those things.

Esther: Is that something you encouraged in your employees or still encourage is to be honest with you and tell you their opinions about things?

Jeffrey: Oh absolutely. In fact, even at a company like Kodak we put that in place with our FAST program and T stood for trust or healthy debate, but you can imagine a hierarchy organization and you're one of the top three or four or five officers in the company. It's like you say this, people start jumping. Well you have to have a culture and at least an operating procedure or philosophy that says hey, just because I say jump doesn't mean you have to. If you think it's the wrong move, question me. Now after we have a debate about it, now this isn't a vote on it. It's not a democracy. Then let's make the move 'cause I want people to question me 'cause if they question me quite frankly I get something better out of it. After a period of time if they can get my mood about don't question me because I know this is the right thing, I've been through this and I've hunted this dog before so to speak, then they need to move on, but those are the kind of things you wanna make sure you have a very open atmosphere. I want people to bring bad news to me. I want them to bring things. I wanna know those things. I don't want them hiding them and shoving those underneath the covers. So yeah, you want that. You want it and you want it bad.

Esther: So something else I've been hearing a little about is this elevator pitch that's coming out of your book. I'd love to hear more about that.

Jeffrey: Well I think it's time to jazz it up a little bit. We're living in a digital world so let's have a digital version of it. Elevator pitches have grown into these 30 PowerPoint slides and then by the end of it I can't still figure out what the businesses do. So an elevator pitch is supposed to be something you can tell somebody while you're riding on an elevator and we've lost touch with that. So I made it easy. Made it specific. This is what it is; 118. That's the new elevator pitch and it's been being written up about everywhere. Eight seconds is the average attention span of an adult. So watching this video, listening to us here this morning or this afternoon or this evening, eight seconds is the average attention span. A hundred and ten seconds is the average elevator ride in New York City from the time you press the button, get on it, ride it up, ride it down and get off of it. So in essence you have eight -

Esther: Did you do that? Did you actually get in an elevator and --?

Jeffrey: I actually Googled it and found out that that's the actual ones, but overall if you ride enough elevators that's what it is by the time you wait and so forth. So basically you've got eight seconds to hook me and 110 seconds to sell me. You've got 118 seconds. That's a tough ride. Eight seconds to hang onto the bull; 110 percent to make sure you can do it.

Esther: And not be praying that you can get off the elevator quicker.

Jeffrey: Exactly. Use the time, but 118 seconds. If Moses can do it in two tablets and five bullet points each, we can do it a lot sooner than that. So that's the way I describe the elevator pitch and it's catching on. People now are writing about it saying yeah, I gotta have my 118. Most business owners don't focus on it. They steal somebody else's mission statement or vision statement and take out their name, put their name. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about give your value in 118 seconds. If you can do that you're a long ways towards being successful.

Esther: Do you think even well established businesses -

Jeffrey: Absolutely.

Esther: -- should be formulating this?

Jeffrey: All the time. You should be changing and altering - if you have different vertical markets your 118 is gonna be different for each one of those vertical markets. What's the unique selling proposition, your catch. What's the hook? What's the value proposition that you're gonna give each of those target audiences? As we become more fragmented and more digital with social media and everything else, we're becoming much more cocooned. So we wanna feel more like a segment of one; not grouped in with a whole bunch of people. So you need to be able to really fine tune that. That's the new Elevator Pitch 2.0.

Esther: Awesome. So is that something that you would help people formulate? If they were to bring you in as a consultant is that something that you help them do?

Jeffrey: Oh certainly. I had to do that at Kodak. As we moved from a more traditional company to a digital company, which it is. As we move from a film based company now to a digital company, from a $15 billion company to a $10 million now new digital company with double digit growth, we had to reformulate who it is. It was we help make your memories. Film, stock up on film, buy film during your holidays to it's around make, manage and move images and information. Kodak uses emotional technology to make those memories. So in essence you have to define it for different people.

Esther: Clearly you have done a very good job with Kodak in getting that 118 down to a science -

Jeffrey: Really quick. It's gotta apply to Kodak's perspective, both the B to B side and a B to C side. So it's gotta be for consumers as well as business owners. Now luckily most business owners that are listening to this don't have the complexity or the breath that we had to cover at Kodak, but you can certainly cover it in your own business where what it is you're gonna deliver to that customer and how do you say it as succinctly as possible with the greatest value that they want to get off that fence and buy your product. That's what you wanna be able to do. By the way, I shouldn't be able to put somebody else's name in there. It's gotta be your name. It's gotta be your statement. It's gotta be your elevator pitch that only you uniquely own and then you gotta know it and every employee in your company's gotta know it.

Esther: What about actually writing the book? How did you even get inspired to do this?

Jeffrey: Well it's been a 15-year process basically where I've always been wanting to do it. Finally an agent came to me and said, 'You gotta write it and the time's right now. Would you come and do it?' I said, 'You sell it; I'll write it.' So she went out and sold it and so we started. I got a ghost writer with me because he knows how to write well. I know how to tell stories and as you've read the book, you know it's a story. I tell stories in the book. That's the way in which I give knowledge and it's a natural thing for me. So I basically just sit down every night for many months and just dictated. Then next day would look at the stories and then alter them and so forth. So for me it was a pouring out of the businesses that I've worked in and all the experiences I've had and how to show small businesses how to get big, how to do it quickly, how to avoid some of the mistakes and how to ask the right questions by looking at the mirror and taking The Mirror Test.

Esther: Awesome. Well thank you so much for being here. This has been very informative.

Jeffrey: Thank you.

Esther: Everybody please go out and buy The Mirror Test. Phenomenal book. You're gonna see it everywhere. If you don't already know about it just open the newspaper. You'll be seeing all about it. So thank you very much for being here. We appreciate it.

Jeffrey: Thank you.

Katie: So John that was a pretty cool interview.

John: Yeah, one of my favorite parts about that was the elevator pitch, the 2.0, which is basically an elevator pitch; its called the 118.

Katie: Yeah.

John: And the fact that you have basically 8 seconds to hook them, and then 110 seconds is the average elevator ride from when you press the button, ride the elevator, and then get off. And not this huge 3 or 4 minute schpeal that you have, you basically have a set amount of time, just barely under 2 minutes.

Katie: Exactly, so that is kind of setting a more realistic expectations for those entrpreneurs out there, and God help you if anyone starts taking the stairs.

John: Right.

Katie: Actually you will have longer.

John: Yeah you will have a whole lot of time. You will be like (Breathes Heavy) let me tell you about my product.

Katie: I got a bottle of water.

John: So it is a 5 minute walk but only about 2 can get out between breathing. (Breathes Heavy) My product is how to get in shape.

Katie: (Laughs)

John: Take the stairs. (Breathes Heavy)

(Laughs)

Katie: Well with that heavy breathing, John, I think we are going to end this chapter. You're worn out man. You're really worn out.

John: I am out of shaping, carrying this microphone and this gear up my first flight of stairs which is 2 steps.

Katie: (Laughs)

John: Whewwww. On to segment 3.

Katie: (Laughs) Yeah, see you there. You're listening to the BusinessMakers Overtime, heard here and online at TheBusinessMakers.com/Overtime.