Well, we’re green-lighted to launch Reston Limousine’s Make It Better blog next week. Final changes to the menu bar are in process, plus an permission issue for images on the server. It’s close enough to “leak” here on my blog. I’m very bullish on Make It Better as it touches an issue that affects everyone in the Washington, DC region: Transportation difficulties resulting from traffic congestion.

Loaded up for March on biz. Until I hire someone I can’t take anymore on. It’s really important to focus on maintaining service right now. As much as it pains me to let opportunities go, clearly it’s a time to act with humility and accept my limited capacity, or risk serious humiliation. Got to make the ones I have happy.

Here’s the weekly round-up from the blogosphere:

The PR nightmare known as the NBA All Star game continues. Well covered by Urban Grounds. It’s too bad, because Pacman Jones, the NFL player involved, really caused this public image of thuggery. In fact, in my mind I feel the NFL has a much higher percentage of actual criminals per roster spot. Nevertheless, the NBA is the league that has the worst image. And this really highlights the still strong culture of prejudice in our country. Fox Sports’ Randy Hill has another take on the All Star issue.

The Bad Pitch Blog highlights horrific PR teams taking advantage of Anna Nicole Smith’s death. Britney, Lindsey, Anna Nicole Smith…. Man, we are bored this winter.

How low does PR go? How about it being the bail out industry for hedge fund flunkies? Check out Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed, and how ex-analyst Steve Milunovich, who turned would-be hedge fund manager in October of 2005 has now decided to move into public relations.

Those of you looking for the weekly blog links, please come back on Thursday morning…

I actually thought this week was going to be slow. There were hopes of taking a day off. Yeah, nice try. It’s 11:10 p.m. and I’m at the office working.

My top candidate went to a competing firm, not surprising, but still disappointing. Now I am figuing out which contractors to use for particular pieces of work. Good times.Definitely ruling out M&A at this time. We’re going for another couple of years bare minimum. To move forward with a transaction would be too soon. I’d be selling myself short, plus I like the freedom.

Some of the Carnegie class materials made me revisit my mission (the old one is on the web site). Based on what I know today, it’s apparent to me the old one was too long and unattainable. While idealistic in nature, it could not be met in reality. Here’s the new one, “Develop superior outreach campaigns that deliver results.” Short and sweet.

I am engaging with a firm to redo my my web site through eLance. We will have new positioning ready for 2Q. That will be great! I’m looking forward to it.

Toby Bloomberg, author of the very successful Diva Marketing Blog, asked me to write up my story for an online collection, dubbed Blogger Stories. Blogger Stories chronicles the stories of how the blogosphere has touched people’s lives and, in doing so, opened the door to new way of creating relationships and opportunities.

Here’s an excerpt, “Starting a new business is always a challenge. When Geoff Livingston launched his new marketing company the information he found on blogs not only guided him on his new path but inspired him to start his own blog. He began his blog as a way to chronicle the challenges of a small business owner. Soon he found his posts were helping people make their dreams come true, too!�

You can read the whole entry and many other blogger stories at www.bloggerstories.com. A seriously, random act of kindness and an honor from Toby.

Dale Carnegie continues. It’s been great so far, with last week’s class focused on creating idea innovations with processes that assure individual safety. In short, how do we create environments where people can be inspired and free to create. This need is a little alien to me, as I am a big risk taker and would rather fall down and get up, than not try at all.

Of particular note was a repository of ideas, which may not appeal to the situation, but are “parked� there until the exercise is over. In theory, the validated ideas could always be drawn back into the discussion for further dialogue.

Last week was a hard wearing one, so mercifully this weekend arrived. Rest and relaxation. I hope to catch a movie later today.

I’m actively looking at resources, and determining which ones to deploy. Hopefully, one of my candidates will work out, but one cannot assume anything. Nor should I move just to ease the workload, so if the right one doesn’t come on board, then the search continues.

One must be ready for all possibilities. As one of my board members likes to say, “Always be prepared for the worst.� And so chess pieces are getting aligned, with client service at the top of mind.

Monday’s quotes:

We have a responsibility to make sure that the limited resources we have are spent efficiently and effectively and that programs achieve their mission,� James T. Walsh.

“The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but deliverance from fear,â€? Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Yes, the title suggests professional suicide. But it’s true. According to the PRSA, PR pros aren’t reading blogs.

The study, conducted by Kent State University and BurrellesLuce, states that 72 percent of PR pros don’t have a sytem for monitoring blogs. Only 19 percent monitor proactively, and only 18.5 percent work for organizations that use blogs for communications with stakeholders.

Personally, I’m stunned. I find this to be a sad commentary about our business, a demonstration that we really don’t understand communications and how quickly it is evolving. The inability to effectively work within social networks will create capability shortfalls for PR firms throughout the country. In fact, if I were conducting an agency search, the inability to successfully navigate blogs and social networks would be a show stopper.

Agencies that are using blogs according to the study, find unique uses for the technology:

• 63.2 percent use them to enhance branding efforts
• 57.1 percent to facilitate two-way communication with key stakeholder groups
• 46 percent to improve trust between those groups and the organization

One must wonder when it will be too late for some firms to get on board with this trend. 2008? 2009? Will it be like the office worker who refused to give up his typewriter? Change is scary, but sometimes it’s inevitable. At this point you can’t say blogging’s even cutting edge. It’s time to get on board before it’s too late.

Some great articles in todays Washington Post. The first story of note is a “Read Any Good Ads Lately” describing the strengths of new advertising approaches that try to provide the end user a real product experience. An interesting case study features Lexus using a short story to create the experience. This is one of the stronger Post articles I’ve seen on ad trends.

Story number two was on net neutrality. Bloggers fight the war for a free Internet. If you are not up to snuff yet on net neutrality, you need to be. You may not be happy to see what your local telecom and cable companies have been trying to do to your Internet content.

On the weekly blog round up, here’s a great one for you. Toby Bloomberg’s Diva Marketing features an outstanding list of Social Networking conferences on her Friday post, including the BlogHer conference in NY (love that title). If you’ve got time, check out the overall blog, it’s pretty good.

Lots of write ups on the Jet Blue PR disaster out there. It’s never good to have a meltdown in public. Of course, if your CEO has a blog, you may actually want to use it for crisis PR in a time like this. Woops, no entries since Feb. 1. If you can’t acknowledge the tough times, even in a general way, then why have a Jet Blue blog? It just lacks authenticity.

Check out Michael Phipps blog entry on the Secret of Successful People. Two quick summaries: Get up early, and make quick decisions.

Also, local writer and marketing entrepreneur Andrea Morris argues the case for Cha Cha over Google. An interesting read. I also love the link preview technology use via Snap.

I recently read a story from Peter Drucker on the key elements of leadership. One of the five critical components of a leader was creating a system of performance reviews, “Performance review must be honest, exacting, and integral part of the job.”

This is a common theme in the Dale Carnegie reading and class. Accountability is the key element that must be instilled upon employees. Unfortunately, this is not something I am very acquainted with. I can’t remember a company I worked at that really had serious performance reviews. And I abhor red tape.

But now I really realize the importance of establishing these accountability measures, and so the company must create mechanisms for successful development, for the progress of all. So we will have clear job performance measures, monthly team meetings where we meet to discuss what the company is doing right and what we want to do better, and semi-annual check-ins on progress. Nothing in these check-ins should be a surprise.

Also, we’re implementing our time sheet program in the next month (ah yes, the dreaded agency time-sheets). This is to measure billable hours. Usage rate should be in the 80-85 percent range.

I don’t have to have those rates when I do my sheets, but that’s because I work a lot of extra hours. But I also have an equity stake. It’s different for partners. A straight employee with no equity stake will not work more than a 40-45 hour week unless there’s extra incentive. And so you want to make them effective hours.

Ton of work on the plate today and tomorrow. So much for a long holiday weekend. It will be good when we’re back up to speed. We wrap up round 1 of interviews tomorrow, and move to round 2. Per the Carnegie class, the interview process has gotten much deeper to ensure the right candidate is found.

Since Peter Drucker was such a well respected business leader, Monday’s quotes are all from him:

“Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.”

“No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.�

“Leadership is not magnetic personality/that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not making friends and influencing people /that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.â€?

As I am writing and codifying suggestions for client relations, I figured it’d be a good thing to throw out on the blog. After all, if my competitors steal it, who benefits? The profession as a whole. Plus, I may get some good feedback.

Here are some of the concepts I am playing with:

Client Relations
One definition of service according to Webster’s is a) an act giving assistance or advantage to another, and b) is the result of this benefit… an advantage bestowed on the second party. This is an ideal that we are striving to achieve as a company. Though we may not always meet these suggestions, they are a worthy goal. As such, when we cannot meet them, we will get up and try again. Here are some suggestions for execution of customer service:

• Be as friendly as possible. If external circumstances make us less than friendly, be cognizant of it, and be as professional as possible.
• Communicate. Check in calls and emails are a great way to maintain a strong relationship. Call once in a while just to say hi.
• Status reports once a week are optimal for large clients, and reports for implementations such as blogs are also necessary. Coverage reports after each public relations campaign are important, too.
• Go the extra mile to make things self explanatory. A client should not receive deliverables that require extensive explanations in order to comprehend them.
• If the client is going in a different direction than we’d like, make a suggestion with full reasoning behind it. Don’t just say yes, we’re paid for our professional opinion.
• If the client still prefers their direction, agree and execute to our fullest capability and do so with enthusiasm. It’s their business. Our job is to help them, not be right.
• Own mistakes, take measures to correct them and make prompt amends wherever necessary. A client needs to know about mistakes that can hurt their business.
• If deadlines are tight, go out of your way to inform the client. Try to give them 48 hours to approve something wherever possible.
• Don’t sell the client something that won’t benefit them. It’s better to acknowledge a good idea, but inform them the results may not be that great and their money would be better spent elsewhere.
• If a client needs something we cannot deliver, or if we are not the right company for them, let them know and find another service provider that can help them. Try to connect them to an answer.

There are more, but these represent the foundation of my thoughts.

I’m sitting in Barnes and Noble, waiting out the rain storm before a 4 p.m. meeting. Between the funeral and the weather, today was pretty much a shot day.

First night of Dale Carneie was great. I loved it, lot’s on creating processes, and guidelines so that there are roadmaps to success. It was also interesting to see that the approach is to create clear rules of engagement, then build relationships with employees. At the same time it was very GEesque, measuring people’s performance in several ways, and cutting people that don’t work out.

I definitely need to build-out more processes, and the employee handbook. I have already written ethics, as well as guidelines for client relations. Next up, suggestions for PR. Also, I am going to get much more rigorous on the front-end side with some interviewing techniques. It’s all about finding the right people.

elance is an interesting tool that I’ve been tapping into as of late. Very useful. It just goes to show you how powerful these social networks really are. We are on the cusp of many changes in marketing, with only the tip of the iceberg currently visible. One must think that mobile social networks will be even more important globally as most folks lack the computing power that we in the U.S. take for granted… I did my graduate thesis at Georgetown on mobile Internet technologies, and am fascinated by the topic.

In that vein, today’s round up of blogs includes social networking booming in the mobile phone world. This week’s 3GSM show featured mobile social networks galore. Of particular note is Cerkle, a new network that does not require software downloads, says Techsape.

Open Gardens has an interesting dialogue on .mobi and Darwinism in the mobile social networking world.

PrairieLaw highlights the inevitable appearance of dreaded lawyer blogs. God, now you know corporate blogging has gone mainstream.

A very refreshing weekend. Ready to put my A game back on.

One thing about being in biz for a little while, you learn what you’re good at, and what you’re not so good at. Events over the past couple of weeks have made me decide to pull the plug on our design and advertising business. Two bad implementations — and our only two bad implementations — have convinced me that 1) we’re not good enough to get the right results, and 2) getting good enough is not worth investing in.

We want a strong reputation for excellence. This is what being in business, or at least why I went into business is all about. Mediocrity doesn’t cut it. Do what you’re good at, and leave the rest. Therefore, we’ll be focusing strictly on marketing strategy, PR and social networking. We can be comfortably successful here.

The positioning on our web site has been moving towards this anyway, but now we’ll pursue without trepidation. Our staff will be built towards a PR, blogging and writing orientation. Additionally, we’ll be rolling out new positioning and a new web site at some point in 2Q.

I’ve got some design partners working on what’s left on the table to ensure the right results. From here on in, I expect that we’ll just refer folks in or bring them into the deal. Regardless, we won’t get too close to the design & advertising part of the business.

Lot’s of meetings to re-up for the next round of work are coming. Plus a funeral on Tuesday a.m. My Uncle Bernie Passman passed away, which is a bummer. He touched many, many people in his personal life, and through his stores throughout the world. It’ll be interesting to see what our supposed snow event will do to the work week.
Here are Monday’s quotes:

• “You got to know when to hold em, know when to fold em,” Kenny Rogers.
• “To solve the problems of today, we must focus on tomorrow,” Erik Nupponen.
• “Focus on remedies, not faults,” Jack Nicklaus.

No work this weekend. It’s time for some serious R&R and battery re-charging. Next week will be crazy.

A client of mine OK’d blog discussion by name, so look out for the Reston Limousine blog coming soon. We agreed on content, mission, and format. I think this will be pretty hot, a new type of DC blog (perhaps Greater Washington blog is the right terminology) that will look at an issue that touches every single one of us every day.

Looking at a PHP template, which will be pretty robust. More to be revealed later. Onward to a weekend of relaxation.