November 7, 2010
Great Past Two Weeks... 11/7/2010
Well, we’ve had a good (dare I say, Great!) past two weeks.
Two weeks ago, we started the week off strong by traveling to Boston (Guy, Brad and I). We were with the CIO, CFO and Asset Manager (CEO in REIT terms). Guy and Brad are working to bring in a 6 year, multi-million deal that help Lexington Solutions transform their business and drive new revenue streams. The solution will be built on Oracle’s HFM product. Can you say “going mid-market Revenue Oriented with an EPM solution???”. Look for this deal to come in soon.
We left Boston and headed to Denver to kick off a “Crown Positioning” all day session which Kyle Priest led. This is an offering that Kyle was introduced to at Ogilvy and honed with PepsiCo, EADS and RadioShack. The end result will manifest itself in a tighter positioning statement and clarity around our Technology Enabled Sales and Marketing focus. Kyle is leading PetSolutions through this same exercise next Wednesday...
The Executive Team spent Thurs and Friday at the Inc500 Leadership conference learning from current and former entrepreneurs. Many of the notes from this session are out on my blog (www.RichardHearn.com). It also gave Kyle an opportunity to fully indoctrinate himself with the Executive Team. Saturday after the conference, we got together to talk through our Company Values, Colleague Promise and further work on our Positioning. You will start to see this on our website, revised collateral, revised business cards, email footer, and other areas – in November. Many of the Values and Culture effort will be reviewed with you in an upcoming Crown Town Hall, and in more detail at our Crown Camp (yes, we’re bringing back the Crown Camp... Mark your calendars for Jan 6 and 7 and maybe the 8th in Indianapolis).
This past week, started with an early trip to Portland for Rob Miller, Kyle Priest, John Moerer and me. It was our first Executive Steering Committee meeting with a new client. Nearly their entire executive team was present to review Evans Hunt’s creative mood board and Information architecture. The meeting was positive and is serving well to position Crown to truly help them drive digital advantage in the marketplace. Afterwards, Kyle and I went to dinner with their CEO, while Rob and John went to dinner with, their CIO.
Tuesday, I flew with Kyle to Dallas to meet with one of Kyle’s clients, Inches-a-Weigh. We met with their owners and discussed the transformation they would like to go through. I believe that we have the opportunity to make a difference for IAW and hope to be able to support them in the near future.
Wednesday we flew back to Dayton to meet with MJ, Rob and Bill Hunt of Evans Hunt. Kyle went with us to dinner and we talked about our partnership with EH and finished up with our plan for Longaberger the next day. Evans Hunt truly does great work and we look forward to engaging them on future deals.
Thursday we all went to Longaberger to meet with their management team. The room was filled with almost 15 people in total (including us) and we walked them through a “Digital Therapy Session”. It started with us introducing ourselves, providing some background experiences that might be relevant to Longaberger, and then Kyle went to the board. In short order, we had excellent insight into their interest in leveraging the digital world to gain advantage with their existing business. We discussed our positioning at the intersection of the CSO, CMO, CIO and CFO, and how we sit at the intersection of eBusiness Strategy, Marketing and Technology (“Think McKinsey, McCann and Accenture”). I believe we made a good impression and were really in the FLOW; and will have the opportunity to help Longaberger transform their business, Digitally.
Friday, I spent the morning with the City of Dayton, County of Montgomery, Downtown Dayton Partnership and several other folks. I took them through “who we are and what we do” -- see the attached PPT, and we talked about the possibility of Crown staying in Dayton. They seemed truly interested in keeping Crown in Dayton and are working with our Realtor and attorney to see if there is a location that would serve us proud as a Global HQ. Afterwards, I met with an architect so they could plan out rough building plans for an approximate 50k sq ft building (this is part of the process with the city). Stay tuned on this. You all will have the opportunity to provide recommendations for what the new building will look like...
That’s all for tonight. Let’s kick off the next week with a bang!
I don't believe that "perfection" or "genius" or "greatness" is ever created. Rather, it is iteratively evolved over many cycles of tearing down and rebuilding. -- Richard Hearn
Richard
Two weeks ago, we started the week off strong by traveling to Boston (Guy, Brad and I). We were with the CIO, CFO and Asset Manager (CEO in REIT terms). Guy and Brad are working to bring in a 6 year, multi-million deal that help Lexington Solutions transform their business and drive new revenue streams. The solution will be built on Oracle’s HFM product. Can you say “going mid-market Revenue Oriented with an EPM solution???”. Look for this deal to come in soon.
We left Boston and headed to Denver to kick off a “Crown Positioning” all day session which Kyle Priest led. This is an offering that Kyle was introduced to at Ogilvy and honed with PepsiCo, EADS and RadioShack. The end result will manifest itself in a tighter positioning statement and clarity around our Technology Enabled Sales and Marketing focus. Kyle is leading PetSolutions through this same exercise next Wednesday...
The Executive Team spent Thurs and Friday at the Inc500 Leadership conference learning from current and former entrepreneurs. Many of the notes from this session are out on my blog (www.RichardHearn.com). It also gave Kyle an opportunity to fully indoctrinate himself with the Executive Team. Saturday after the conference, we got together to talk through our Company Values, Colleague Promise and further work on our Positioning. You will start to see this on our website, revised collateral, revised business cards, email footer, and other areas – in November. Many of the Values and Culture effort will be reviewed with you in an upcoming Crown Town Hall, and in more detail at our Crown Camp (yes, we’re bringing back the Crown Camp... Mark your calendars for Jan 6 and 7 and maybe the 8th in Indianapolis).
This past week, started with an early trip to Portland for Rob Miller, Kyle Priest, John Moerer and me. It was our first Executive Steering Committee meeting with a new client. Nearly their entire executive team was present to review Evans Hunt’s creative mood board and Information architecture. The meeting was positive and is serving well to position Crown to truly help them drive digital advantage in the marketplace. Afterwards, Kyle and I went to dinner with their CEO, while Rob and John went to dinner with, their CIO.
Tuesday, I flew with Kyle to Dallas to meet with one of Kyle’s clients, Inches-a-Weigh. We met with their owners and discussed the transformation they would like to go through. I believe that we have the opportunity to make a difference for IAW and hope to be able to support them in the near future.
Wednesday we flew back to Dayton to meet with MJ, Rob and Bill Hunt of Evans Hunt. Kyle went with us to dinner and we talked about our partnership with EH and finished up with our plan for Longaberger the next day. Evans Hunt truly does great work and we look forward to engaging them on future deals.
Thursday we all went to Longaberger to meet with their management team. The room was filled with almost 15 people in total (including us) and we walked them through a “Digital Therapy Session”. It started with us introducing ourselves, providing some background experiences that might be relevant to Longaberger, and then Kyle went to the board. In short order, we had excellent insight into their interest in leveraging the digital world to gain advantage with their existing business. We discussed our positioning at the intersection of the CSO, CMO, CIO and CFO, and how we sit at the intersection of eBusiness Strategy, Marketing and Technology (“Think McKinsey, McCann and Accenture”). I believe we made a good impression and were really in the FLOW; and will have the opportunity to help Longaberger transform their business, Digitally.
Friday, I spent the morning with the City of Dayton, County of Montgomery, Downtown Dayton Partnership and several other folks. I took them through “who we are and what we do” -- see the attached PPT, and we talked about the possibility of Crown staying in Dayton. They seemed truly interested in keeping Crown in Dayton and are working with our Realtor and attorney to see if there is a location that would serve us proud as a Global HQ. Afterwards, I met with an architect so they could plan out rough building plans for an approximate 50k sq ft building (this is part of the process with the city). Stay tuned on this. You all will have the opportunity to provide recommendations for what the new building will look like...
That’s all for tonight. Let’s kick off the next week with a bang!
I don't believe that "perfection" or "genius" or "greatness" is ever created. Rather, it is iteratively evolved over many cycles of tearing down and rebuilding. -- Richard Hearn
Richard