Meetings are very beneficial for growth in any organization. However, it can sometimes suck, especially when it does not cover the right topics. In this episode, Ken Courtright shares his opinion about why meetings suck from a very linear-specific perspective. He states how many meetings companies need to have in order to grow and what topics should be discussed. Ken also shares other interesting things that meetings should cover and why it should not actually suck when you are on the right track.
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Meetings Suck
This episode is called Meetings Suck because the book I’m reading is called Meetings Suck by Cameron Herold. I wanted to do a podcast before I read the book because I’m intrigued to see my thoughts after I read that book. My current number one favorite business book of all time, which just supplanted Psychology of Selling by Brian Tracy is now Cameron Herold’s book, Double Double. If Double Double is as good as it is, it’s changing our company as we know it now. I cannot wait to dig into Meetings Suck. I’m going to hit meetings from a very linear specific perspective. Let’s get started.
You have maybe heard in the past that Bill Gates at one point took all the doors off Microsoft so they had an open-door policy, so anybody could interrupt anybody at any time if they needed an urgent meeting. Many great leaders have said the best meetings are standup meetings. It keeps people on their toes, keeps things short. You’ve heard often, “Keep meetings comfortable, coffee, food. Don’t let people get distracted with hunger pains and things like that.” On the flip side, I’ve read more in the last few years about keeping meetings a bit uncomfortable. It’s back to the standup situation, keep them short. Here’s something I have never heard. I’ve never seen written. I have never even remotely heard a mention of it. “You don’t need meetings,” you’ll never hear it. I’m going to give you an exciting growth nugget, “A company’s growth is in direct proportion to the number and quality of its meetings.” This can be very exciting or for many, it can be terrifying. The challenges in different companies, they have different sizes. Some companies are a one-person shop, some companies have 8,000 employees. The question is, how many meetings should you have? What should you talk about? What if you’re only one person? Do you have meetings with yourself? The answer to that one is yes.
The growth question becomes at a minimum, what three meetings should be held monthly to ensure growth in any size company? The key is monthly, not weekly, not quarterly, monthly to ensure growth in any size company. I’m going to give you what’s called a Q-tip moment. A Q-tip moment means this is part of the podcast where you might want to get a Q-tip and not miss anything that is soon to follow. Nobody is so special that the following three meetings won’t help them grow. Nobody has a self-image solo. Nobody’s companies in such disarray, nobody and no company is special that if you institute the following three meetings, they won’t help you grow. You’re too much of a train wreck.
The best meetings are stand up meetings that keeps people on their toes. Click To TweetIf you add the next three meetings that I’m about to share with you to any company of any size, and you give these six months, you are going to be doing the snoopy dance of joy. These meetings fly under the concept of what’s called sunlight is the best killer of bacteria. If you want to kill bacteria, put it in sunlight. Do you ever deal with a Petri? The first thing I’ll tell you is to pull the shades down because sunlight kills bacteria. David Corbin wrote an incredible book called Illuminate. It’s all about illuminate the negative. Do you know what’s negative in most companies? They don’t hold enough meetings. The meetings they hold are improper. They’re not on the right concepts, the right principles. They’re on what they think will make their company grow. They’re on what they think will shrink expenses. They’ve never reached out and asked someone that has grown a massive company. “What meetings do you hold? What meetings do you have on a regular basis?” That’s why I can’t wait to read Meetings Suck.
The three meetings that must illuminate negative in your company to ensure growth and remove entropy are the following. Number one, what five to seven advertising channels are we using? Part A of number one, do we have a third party or a second set of eyes verifying their numbers? Which two of the five to seven advertising channels are getting rotated out January 1st and July 1st? Picture your company. You’ve got 150 employees. You sell mattresses, it doesn’t matter. What five to seven platforms is your message being delivered on a regular basis in which they’re driving you traffic and leads every month? You can’t have less than five to seven now. A couple of these channels don’t cost you anything. Let’s move on to the next one.
Number two, what is the total number of impressions last month? How many people heard or saw your message? Let me explain how easy this is. Subset number one, website analytics. Open your website, go to analytics and go last 30 days and click unique visitors, not page views and start tracking the number of new versus returning. Number two, pay-per-click. Most companies can do some decent pay-per-click for under $100 a month. If anything, it will give you a data. Sales presentations, how many sales presentations is your company doing? How many meetups live is people in your company delivering? You want to count the total headcount of people in those meetings and the number of business cards people asked you for.
Number five could be Facebook ads. Number six, it could be direct mail. Number seven could be radio. Number eight, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I’ve got an episode where we drew a cool infographic of a path of growth with a rocket ship on it. I list out twenty different channels people could pick from at a very low cost. The third meeting that you’ve got to shine a light on and illuminate is sales. The meeting starts what were last month’s sales. Why did we do that much? You’ve got to come up with three answers every month. What are next month’s sales going to be and why? You have to ask the why. You can have every one of these meetings with yourself.
Let me go through them. Pretend you’re a one-man shop. “What five to seven advertising channels am I using? Do I have a second set of eyes? Can I get an accountability partner? Which two are getting rotated out that isn’t working?” The second one, what’s the total amount of impressions? You can read the analytics yourself. You can have any company that you use their services to give you the numbers and see. Ask yourself, how many sales did we have last month? Why? What’s next month’s going to be? Why?
If you’re a one-man shop, get an accountability partner, somebody you trust to review these numbers and these three meetings. If you’re a ten-person shop, you better have two of the ten focused on this. If you’re a 100-person shop, four sets of eyeballs minimum looking at this stuff, looking at it doesn’t mean doing it. Watch this. That’s just people crunching the numbers. Most companies put 20% of payroll towards marketing. Here’s something to think about. Did you know that a $3.82 box of Kellogg’s cereal has only $0.18 of cereal? The bulk over 70% of the $3.64 remaining goes to marketing. Most of that goes to marketing. Kellogg’s has to make sure you see the raisin jumping off the spoon into the bowl of milk. They spend so much money on the cover of the box, on the Facebook ads, on the Facebook Live commercials, on the YouTube videos, on the radio, the TV, so much money. Because if you don’t see that raisin jumping off the spoon physically or figuratively, you’re not going to buy Kellogg’s. They need TOMA at the highest level and so do you. Hold these three meetings and watch your company explode. Take care.
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