Content Crooner

Don’t you love simplicity? It’s easy. It’s clear. It’s inarguable. It’s helpful. In fact, it’s just about everything we strive to be. Just ask The 9 Words.

What’s so great about simplicity? It’s honest. Honesty is your greatest ally in business. When weighing two services, how do you choose one? Assuming the features are similar, it’s probably how each one makes you feel. This is why honesty and simplicity are so important. You want sales copy that feels light. By “light”, I mean you’re looking for good Karma, good intentions, and clarity. That’s because complicated copy can easily be hiding bad vibes.

Your service is best when it’s simple. Your copy is best when it’s simple. YOU are best when you’re simple. In the spirit of simplicity, this is all I have to say.

The Oatmeal can describe it further.

Taylor Vogt is the Operations Director at Content Crooner. “In support of The 9 Words, Crooner is Clear. Let’s be simple.”

I had an interesting realization recently. It’s been my vision to help Crooner Labs transform into a higher caliber service. I wanted it to be known for its professionalism, for getting real results, and for being an industry leader. What that translated to, though, was that I didn’t believe we were there yet. That scored points for intention, but damaged us and held us back.

This is the problem with planning ahead. Short, foreseeable goals are useful, but be careful with the backhand. The hidden agenda of your goals may be to keep yourself where you are, because you secretly fear success.

I now believe Crooner Labs is a high caliber company. We are useful, we bring real traffic to our customers, and we are indeed a professional industry leader. This change in belief has completely reformatted how we behave, work, and comport ourselves. The tangible evidence of this transformation is 10 minute resolutions to customer queries, higher and more inspiring employee productivity, and a strong feeling of confidence and excitement in our company.

Now for the important part. NOTHING changed inside our company until we accepted that we had reached what we were striving for. All the evidence listed above came AFTER we changed our attitude about our company. In other words, we didn’t have better customer support and higher productivity and THEN realize we’re a high caliber company. All that happened afterwards.

So what changed in our company that brought about this transformation? Nothing. We offered the same service. That means that the transformation brought itself about. We transformed our attitudes and then the company transformed.

What have you been striving for that you’ve never quite felt you’ve achieved? You can’t make your company better by working on improving your service. There will always be something new to fix that’s keeping you from being as awesome as 37signals. However, if you change your ATTITUDE about your company, the rest falls into place.

So what policies would you change if you already reached your seemingly unreachable goal? Then change that policy because you’ve already reached your goal, you simply haven’t accepted it yet.

Taylor Vogt is the Operations Director at Content Crooner. “In support of The 9 Words, Crooner is Intuitive. Let’s be aware.”

None can deny the power of light. By “light” I mean any number of interpretations like Karma, good intentions, positive attitudes, and so on. Take your pick.

So what are you doing to ally yourself and your company with light? We’ve done this in a few ways. First off, there are those companies which we have modeled ourselves after, namely 37signals and Cafe Gratitude. 37signals is just plain good. Those guys get it done, and their productivity suite has kept our company on track. In fact, 37signals has a book called Rework. Well, in the spirit of its message, we have a blog called Watch Us Rework. The blog’s purpose is to chronicle our journey in making our company small, agile, and open to market change. And Cafe Gratitude is incredibly holistic. We’ve adopted their attitude and work ethic, embracing the power of intention.

Now we have a newcomer, Assistly Inc. We came across them along the way and are now fully tooting their horn. We use their customer support system, and it’s helped us in all aspects of our company. We offer live chat for our customers, and now during normal business hours, we have 10 minute resolutions to customer issues just like 37signals.

This is why I ask who is in your crew. Your company can do quite a bit by itself, but if you allow some outside influence it can breathe life into your company and it’ll become far more than the sum of its parts. We love 37signals, Cafe Gratitude, and Assistly. Their work ethics have helped Crooner Labs become so much more than it would have been otherwise. Who can do the same for you?

Taylor Vogt is the Operations Director at Content Crooner. “In support of The 9 Words, Crooner is Reliable. Let’s focus on growth.”

Have you heard about working at Google? No doubt you have. Frankly, it sounds awesome. Unfortunately, not everyone can work at Google. But you can adopt their policies. Check this treasure out.

Sounds fun. So do it at your company! We sure are. In fact, for us, it’s far more than just 20%. I’ve talked about this before, but that’s because it so revolutionizes the work environment. If you feel like you can’t let your workers run free on company time, you may have hired the wrong people. You shouldn’t have to be constantly policing the actions of your employees. It’s a waste of valuable time and it’s a vicious cycle in that your employees never learn to manage themselves and growth is stagnated.

If an employee could convince me that their time is best spent playing Second Life, I’d let them do it on company time. What we’re really interested in is bettering our company. The means aren’t really as important as one would think.

If you’re a manager or you run your own business, how would your workday transform if you knew that all your employees were capable and willing to do everything themselves? What if you KNEW that you could trust them to do that? No doubt it would be a weight off your shoulders.

What will it take for your company to reach that level? You already have professional workers. Just let them BE professional and manage themselves.

Taylor Vogt is the Operations Director at Content Crooner. “In support of The 9 Words, Crooner is Engaging. Let’s pursue new goals.”

Here at Crooner Labs, we’re big fans of Cafe Gratitude. Cafe Gratitude is in California, with a handful of restaurants from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The two creators are Matthew and Terces Engelhart. They have a book called Sacred Commerce, all about how they run their business.

Something different about practicing Sacred Commerce is that it ties together business and spirituality. Part of this process is a practice called “clearing”. Clearing is a basic technique for distinguishing how the past is impacting the present and then presenting the opportunity to create something new and shift one’s attention to something empowering.

This is done for each employee in the company every day when they come in to work. It’s just a short series of questions. The first question brings the person present to what they are being right now which is getting in their way. Then the next step is critical, as it involves listening. The person asking the questions would repeat verbatim with, “So what I hear you saying is…” The second question brings them present to something that they can choose to enjoy being right now. The third question, which is optional, may generally be “What do you want to be acknowledged for today?”

Something amazing about it is how quickly it cuts past all the barriers we put up around ourselves, helping us really get to know those who we work with. Plus, it’s called “clearing” for a reason. It helps you clear away your mental baggage. It gives you perspective about what’s going on in your life, and helps you deal with it. Of course, when you’re happy, you’re productive.

This is how beneficial it is to have a spiritual workplace. Humans are spiritual creatures. So we’ve adopted Sacred Commerce into Crooner Labs. We clear everyone every day they come into work. We’re a little different than Cafe Gratitude in that all of us work virtually, so we use Skype to give each other brief calls.

Here’s an example of me being cleared by our CEO.

Ken: Are you ready to be cleared?

Me: Yes.

Ken: What are you trying to control?

Me: I’m trying to control the writing process of our blog. The times that I’ve been most inspired to write were times where I let it flow. This is different from self-starting. I’m trying to so tightly control this that it’s hampering my creativity. (A day after admitting this, I was on fire writing about 6 posts in one day.)

Ken: Ok, second question. What gift can you give today?

Me: I can give 10 minute resolutions in Customer Care.

Ken: I’d like to acknowledge you for being the driving force behind instituting clearing in our company. You’ve kept this in front of me for a while now and it’s finally here as a result.

As you can see, it’s quite simple. After you get into the groove, it can all happen in just a minute or two. We’re completely embracing this and it’s transforming our company.

Taylor Vogt is the Operations Director at Content Crooner. “In support of The 9 Words, Crooner is Clear. Let’s trade negativity for empowerment.”

How can virtual companies stay united? Out of our typical staff of about 7, I’ve met 3 face to face. However, the 4 that I have not met haven’t met anyone else either. The majority of our staff are flying this practically solo. How can a company function in this way?

One answer, and the one I’ll focus on, is your hiring process and how you empower your employees. For one thing, no matter what the position, hire managers. There’s more on that subject here, which is actually the inspiration for this post.

After reading that post, I realized how I was hampering the productivity of my team by not giving them the power to fully do their jobs. Not only was not giving them power, but I wasn’t giving them clarity, either. So I wrote a message to our staff describing that I was no longer their manager, but their director. They are now managing themselves.

What that did was free up my time a little bit. People are perfectly capable of managing themselves, if they’re simply given the authority and the freedom to do so. This is a total paradigm shift in our company, as our staff is now expected to be professional enough to take care of their responsibilities independently. Of course, I still have systems in place to make sure everyone is productive and doing what they need to be doing, but I’m less inclined to use it now. We’re actually seeing higher productivity now that I let the staff be their own bosses. It’s a breath of fresh air for everyone.

Essentially, the message I sent out to the company was that everyone is expected to work like professionals. For the most part, my team’s normal duties only take up a portion of their time at work, so I gave them blank checks about how they want to spend the remainder of their time. It’s somewhat similar to Google.

As long as the staff is spending their time benefiting the company, they can do whatever they want. And I trust that they will do so, as our internal systems are quite transparent. They can easily share anything they do with the rest of the company via the 37signals suite.

If you want your company to reach a higher caliber than where it’s at, expect professionalism from everyone. But even more than that, get out of the way enough that each staff member has both the authority and the freedom to make their job their own according to their personality. Productivity comes from someone owning their job and making it fit who they are. Each person may do that differently, but don’t sell your staff short. They are capable of finding a balance. Your company won’t be the same after you decide to stop micro-managing and let your staff work uninhibited.

Taylor Vogt is the Operations Director at Content Crooner. “In support of The 9 Words, Crooner is Engaging. Let’s motivate.”

I’m unclear about work right now. It’s sort of an odd feeling. And I’m noticing I’m unclear about one job specifically: blogging. I’ve gotten behind and have missed the last several deadlines. Technically, I need to write five posts today. My mind is clouded.

So I was staring at a blank word processor screen wondering what to write about and how to catch up. After a while, I figured I need to talk about why I’m having difficulty writing. After the first paragraph, I knew what to write about and I felt things begin to clear up.

If you’re behind and many little things are blocking your way back to productivity, you need to address the problem. There’s no side-stepping it. No amount of brain-storming will fix the problem. I took the problem head-on by acknowledging it and admitting that it was causing me delays. Once I did that it started to dissipate.

Problems aren’t big and they aren’t bad. The effects of a problem once you give your control to it make it seem huge, but it’s still just one small thing: you gave away control. Admit that you’ve done that and the big ugly problem shrinks and flies away. And now we’re back in the realm of integrity and freedom.

I’m back to blog!

As a part of the sweeping transformations coming to Content Crooner, we’ll soon be offering live support. From Monday – Friday, 9 am – 5 pm Central Time each day, you’ll be able to chat with a live representative about anything you wish. We’re very excited about it!

The problem was that email support was just too slow and tedious. Not only that, but questions and issues couldn’t easily be answered quickly. There had to be too much back and forth communication. Basically, our customer support wasn’t all that great. It was the complete opposite of several of our 9 Words, like Prompt, Helpful, Reliable, and even Courteous. Well, now that’s going to change!

We’ll still offer email support, of course. But now if you’re online during normal business hours, you don’t have to wait for an email to be answered. You can ask us personally! We’re happy to transform our business to serve your needs.

Look forward to live chat within the next week. Preparations are already in motion. This will help us better follow our 9 Words philosophy, and the greatest benefit of that goes to you.

More transformations will come. As we continue down this road, new ways to improve reveal themselves to us. And of course, if you know anything that will help, we’re all ears. You’re as much a part of this as we are.

Taylor Vogt is the Operations Manager at Content Crooner. “In support of The 9 Words, Crooner is Helpful. Let’s live for others.”

We’re big on honoring our word. In fact, I recently had another blog post about the same thing. This time around, though, we’re focusing more on work. How can you honor your word at work?

Content Crooner is transforming. We have a new site layout, new system for customer support, and more transformations coming soon. During this process, it was becoming quite clear that I was biting off more than I could chew. After all, almost all of us at Content Crooner work part time. I personally was agreeing to do more than I had time for, and it was creating problems with how well I was getting things done. In short, I was so eager that I was actually not honoring my word.

Part of being Clear and Honest is knowing how much one can reasonably do. So I started prioritizing what I agreed to do, what I actually had time for, and what jobs were the most important. Now my responsibilities have been distilled down to what’s most important, also factoring in how much time I have to focus on these responsibilities.

For example, I manage our Customer Care Department. That involves reviewing articles before they are distributed and answering support tickets. I have a team to help with that, but of course I need to stay informed of how it’s going. Other responsibilities include updating our Twitter and Facebook pages. Apart from that I blog and will soon be doing video articles and podcasts. I also strive to be active in forums. This is the updated list. Before it was larger. You can clearly see the dilemma, then, as I only work part time.

First of all, skimming down the list feels great. I’m clearer on what I should be doing with my time. I can focus more on each job now as opposed to finishing quickly and running on to the next item on my list. I can breathe more, and it’s more enjoyable.

At the same time, it’s helping my entire team. I have more time to coach and collaborate with my coworkers. There’s more face-time so to speak, even if it is virtual. That’s very important for a company whose employees have almost entirely never met each other face to face.

What can you do to honor your word better? What responsibilities have you too eagerly accepted to do at the detriment of your other assignments? And how do you think honoring your word will help your business? We’d love to hear about it.

Taylor Vogt is the Operations Manager at Content Crooner. “In support of The 9 Words, Crooner is Honest. Let’s honor our word.”

Honesty and integrity are the two biggest allies businesses have. So why would we say we wrote an article when we didn’t?

This is the exact reason why we recently revealed our past ghostwriter. We like Tim Turner; he does good work. But it wasn’t honest for me to take credit for his writing. And we’re all about Honesty.

This isn’t to say that we personally write all of our content. It’s only important that we are clear about who’s doing the writing. If there is any untruth in articles, readers can tell. Falsehood smells bad. So be true, honest, and clear. If we have someone writing content for us, they take credit for their own work. They can still represent us and our company just as well as if we took credit for their ghostwriting, but with the added benefit of smelling like truth.

That’s what we’re doing now. If someone is credited for writing on this blog, it’s the real deal. You’re seeing who really wrote it. It’s clearer that way.

Ghostwriting is not wrong, it’s just not as clear as we’re striving to be.

Taylor Vogt is the Operations Manager at Content Crooner. “In support of The 9 Words, Crooner is Honest. Let’s be trustworthy.”