Successful Blog

Did You See the Netflix Movie that Bombed?

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As a business owner, you oftentimes have to put things out there and see what sticks.

What does stick can prove profitable, while other attempts can fall on deaf ears. Anyone remember the new Coke?

For business owners, effectively communicating with your customers and potential customers can mean the difference between turning a profit, breaking even and even going under.

Upset Customers are bad for Business

As many of you know, Netflix alerted subscribers a few months back that it was going to employ separate prices for its DVDs-by-mail and streaming video plans.

The end result would be a significant price increase for its customers, with the least expensive bill for customers who sought both services going from $10 to $16 a month. While $6 a month doesn’t sound like much, that is $72 a year that could go for other indulgences.

With the price increase kicking in this month, many Netflix subscribers indicated they would be turning elsewhere for their DVD and streaming video needs. Upset customers bombarded the Netflix site with countless comments, along with a barrage of tweets via the hashtag #DearNetflix.

According to the most recent data, it appears a significant number of those subscribers are holding true to their word.

Netflix recently trimmed its subscriber forecast for the present quarter, reporting it now expects to conclude the period with 24 million customers, some one million less than it had forecast just a few weeks back. When Netflix ended its second quarter at the end of June, it reported having 25.6 million global subscribers.

So, how did Netflix respond to this issue in hopes of righting the ship?

In yet another public relations nightmare, the company said it was separating its DVD mail rental and video streaming services, renaming the new DVD service Qwikster (the streaming service will remain under the Netflix name). Individuals who choose to both rent and stream videos will be required to log in to a pair of different sites and get two different credit card charges.

Research Ahead of Time Potential Fallout Issues

Not only have many subscribers expressed their dismay with the price increase, but they also were probably left scratching their heads as to the new name for the service.

As it turns out, Netflix apparently did not do enough research on the name Qwikster ahead of time, or officials would have known that the Qwikster name on social media venue Twitter is currently held by a male whose avatar is that of Elmo displaying a joint. Oops!

So not only now do you have a company upsetting many of its subscribers by hiking the costs for its popular service, but now you leave them confused with the name change, not even apparently taking the time to check and see who might hold that label on one of the most popular social media sites. Again, oops!

Due to the company’s recent gaffes, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings issued a statement to customers upset with the price increase for the service in recent weeks. “I messed up,” he remarked on the company blog and in an e-mail to subscribers. “I owe everyone an explanation.”

Running a successful business takes time and effort, but above all, the ability to always be one step ahead of the game.

In this instance, it appears Netflix and the changes it enacted, are getting tuned out by a large percentage of customers.

Photo credit: benzinga.com

Dave Thomas writes extensively for business.com, an online resource destination for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses. Among the topics he writes about is business cash advance.



Irresistible Consistency: Are You Suited Up for Soccer When Golf Is the Game?

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Right People, Right Positions, Right Game

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In the NYTimes bestseller, Good to Great, author Jim Collins laid out the foundation of an outstanding enterprise class organization. When I heard him speak, last October he said that the winner is the one with the best team. To achieve the best team,

  • A leader has to identify the right people who are the smartest.
  • A leader has to put them in the right positions.
  • A leader has to value, reward, and celebrate teamwork.

Those who change the world are enormously consistent in how they do it. The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency. – Jim Collins, World Business Forum, 2010

It’s my experience that Mr. Collins’ short list brings constant improvement in situations where the game never changes. The hidden assumption is that the playing field, the conditions, the climate, the trends, and rules of business remain the same.

They didn’t. They don’t. They never will. They won’t.

Are You Suited Up for Soccer When Golf Is the Game?

I don’t doubt for second that Mr. Collins knows that and chooses his people to match the game that’s currently in play. Yet, when I work on strategy with big corporations and small business, too often I find their still suiting up and running the plays for the game that was on the field yesterday. It doesn’t work if you’re suited up for soccer and golf is the game.
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The Internet has moved the field, changed the rules, disrupted conditions, upset the culture, sparked new trends, shifted the playbook with new models and more flexible teams, and relocated the executive locker room.

The consistency that was a strength also built silos, sales scripts, and standard procedures that has lead some of those “smartest people” not to see what they see and not to know what they know in deference to rules build to ensure one-size-fits-all consistency.

Those companies suited up for a highly consistent playing field are finding their sales numbers and their service reports frustrated by customers who value responses that are custom-made for what they need. Because to over-value consistency is to focus on process, when it’s people who help a business thrive.

So how can we use Jim Collins’ Good to Great research and insights to leverage the opportunities of the new people-focused game — the social business culture, changes in the way companies and customers communicate, constantly moving metrics and toolkits, trend shifts, and elastic team dynamics of the 21st century online and off?

What Are the Highest Values of Your Business?

For 21st century organizations to move fluidly and fluently through multiple platforms and cultures, we need to look at the old short list in a slightly new way. The winner will still be the one with the best team, but now to achieve the best team, leaders will ignite communities of like-minded leaders at every level inside and outside the organization — employees, partners, vendors, customers, evangelists, friends, and fans who also want to invest in taking something from good to great.

Long-term, loyalty — trust — is a value-based relationship.

  • Live your highest values.
  • Be able to recognize the people who share them.
  • Invite those people to help build your business.

Consistency will win — a consistency of valuing the people who share your highest values is irresistible business strategy.

What are the highest values of your business?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Right People, Right Positions, Right Game

How to Use Strategy to Build Opportunity into Your Life Now!

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Making Random Decisions Is as Reliable as Luck

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Get up in the morning, get working, solve today’s problems go have fun is that the way life is working for you? Facing each day with a single-day view will get you through a life or a career, but at the end you may find that many of those days might have put to better use.

If you think of it making random decisions probably has about the same long-term results as relying on luck.

Strategy is a longer view, a stronger view, and a more useful way of leveraging opportunity too.

20 Everyday Situations That Strategy Could Turn to Opportunity Right Now!

With a mind toward strategy, you can leverage the opportunity in any situation, fix the problem your facing, open the door that isn’t moving and get things working FOR you. Strategy is not some high-falutin’ sort of thinking that only great minds do.

It’s a method of solving problems. Did you ever want to …

  1. be more visible in your circle?
  2. become the first, trusted source at what you do?
  3. settle a conflict without becoming part of it?
  4. help solve a problem with friend, family or coworkers?
  5. enlist powerful people to your cause?
  6. get sponsors for an event or meeting?
  7. quit a bad habit or change unhealthy thinking?
  8. get out of debt or pay off a loan?
  9. negotiate a new or better position?
  10. get upgraded to a better hotel room?
  11. change how people see you?
  12. raise money for your cause?
  13. get a meeting with someone you admire?
  14. find a new career that fits you?
  15. organize a group trip?
  16. motivate people to join you in something cool?
  17. get a raise you deserve or raise your rates without worry
  18. start doing what you were meant to do with you life?
  19. do damage control?
  20. start investing in a retirement you look forward to?

Too often we walk into all of the above situations without putting together a system for finding success. A clear strategy could turn any of those 20 (or most other) everyday situations into an opportunity rather than leaving the outcome to instincts and chance.

What Isn’t Strategy and What It Is

We use the word strategy as a synonym for the word way or the word plan. It’s not right, but it sounds cool. Bet you’ve heard people say things like this …

  • I’ve figured out how to use two tools to offer a new strategy for making money online.
  • My strategy is to say “yes” and then do whatever I want.
  • Our strategy this year is to focus on growing by 50%.
  • It was a bad strategy to spend money on that vacation.
  • Our long-term strategy is marry well and have a house with a great view.

Those are not strategies. Some aren’t even decisions or plans.

Strategy is more and more useful in our lives than most folks expect.

Strategy isn’t a business tool. It’s not a single goal, or a choice, or good idea, or a description of what we’re going to do. Strategy is a practical system that changes how we view and interact with the world.

Next time you have a situation that offers a change of any kind bring some strategy with you before you respond. Here’s how to do that.

  • Think about the outcome that you want to achieve — your goals.
  • Think about the people involved and what motivates them — their goals.
  • Think about your position and what you bring that adds value to THEIR goals.
  • Think about what you might offer to align your goals with theirs.
  • Think about how you can turn your what you want — your opportunity into a benefit for them.

Start by listening to what you know and asking questions to hear more about what they know. Offer a few suggestions that are unfinished, allowing everyone to participate in defining a great outcome. Call the group to action. Then claim and celebrate the agreed upon result! The hardest part is thinking it through before you begin.

How have you used strategy to build opportunity into your life right now?

Be irresistible!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Beach Notes: The Gathering

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by Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh

It is Swell Sculpture Festival time at Currumbin and as we drove down the street this sculpture stood out for me. When we viewed it close up we found it was the piece that had been acquired by the Gold Coast Council and will have a home somewhere on the coast in some public place.

I liked the name The Gathering and that the artist Col Henry started that he was exploring the ideal of community and it’s importance to a sense of well-being and connection. That’s one of the benefits we get on a daily basis from our participation in Social Media.
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Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh

Thanks to Week 309 SOBs

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Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

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They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

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Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss