Below is a section of an E-Mail that I wrote the day after Maëlle Ricker won her Gold Medal for the SBX on Feb 16th 2010. As one of her sponsors, we at Blenz Coffee were under very specific VANOC guidelines regarding any discussions and promotions regarding an Olympian, so we felt it was in Maëlle’s best interest to wait to post this for the world to see. Now that we have passed that date, we can share some of our thoughts and excitement around Maëlle’s great accomplishment.

March is Maëlle Ricker Month around the Blenz World. We have re-introduced the Maëlle Ricker Cup and we want to share with you a really cool online Map we have posted with comments about Maëlle and well about being Canadian. Check out:

http://www.blenzevents.com/canada/

Here is a piece of an E-Mail I wrote to the Blogging Team I am working withat Metro Blenz News Squad. (I will post about this great group of folks later).

http://www.metroblenznewssquad.com/

My Personal Thoughts About Maëlle Ricker and Winning Gold:

“Yesterday started very early, and we worked our way to Cypress thru the pouring rain to watch the Ladies’ Snowboard Cross event – we were one of Maëlle Ricker’s main corporate sponsors. Imagine 4000 people huddling under cover made for 100, but we did and we were able to fight off the contenders until the rain stopped. At one point we called it Survivor Cypress! But we were a tough group and we made the cut. Between the rain and the fog, there were many delays, but we sure learned how Snowboard Cross really works.

We were up on the mountain with Adam & Kev, Maëlle’s official photogra- phers, and they did get some amazing shots, but I had to keep an eye on them – they were so hyped, I thought they were going to stroke out.

What you don’t get from TV is the drama. Maëlle fell on her first quali- fication run. You don’t just get the one shot, though! Her second quail- fication run did the trick. Then she had to go thru heats after she made the cut. So we came down to the final race, and Maëlle grabbed the early lead. It was funny – time just stopped and I had a 1 min 25 second “Zen moment”. (That’s the length of a fast race.) I was glued to the big screen following Maëlle, and I kept repeating “Don’t Fall – you have the Gold.” She crossed first, then we all lost it, celebrating with High-5’s and Oh, Canada, and then came the realization that Maëlle had become the first Canadian woman to win gold on Canadian soil, and she will always have that.

When you sponsor an athlete, particularly one with Olympic aspirations, you first consider the business aspects – how is it good for the Brand?
Then you work thru the rationalization of the investment. Then you really learn what it is all about. Alexandre Bilodeau, when interviewed after his gold medal win, said “no Olympian gets there on their own”. It takes a team to do great things.

At that point it became clear to me. We participate because we should when it comes to this type of program. Great things take great teams – like what we are doing on Metro Blenz News. This project is off to an amazing start.
We have the Gold when it comes to Social Media. We at the MBNS are really capturing and telling the story in a way the world has never seen before. Real People, Raw and Relevant. (Thanks, Ms B.)

Thank you, Maëlle, for taking us on your Golden journey. It is one memory that I will never forget…”Whatta Ride!”

George!

I had coffee with my good friend, David Hutchison, today. The ” Hutch” and I go back to the early 1980’s when he was selling radio time and I was President of Sandwich Tree. He came in to Vancouver today from his home in New Westminster, and he pointed out that he was surprised at how easy it was. He felt that there has been too much made about traffic issues, etc., and from his perspective – and the all media he has consumed over the past
few months – he is certain people are avoiding Vancouver.

I did not think too much about it until two other things dawned on me. My usual parking lot was only half full when I left this afternoon… it is never 1/2 full. Further, went I got to Yaletown, where midday parking near our Blenz coffee shop at Hamilton and Helmcken is usually a nightmare, today it too is 1/2 empty.

I get the fact that we will have some real traffic issues over the next several weeks, but Man! Someone pulled the trigger too soon. For those who are fearful to come downtown, it is a non-starter. It feels like a Sunday! – Well almost… but it’s sure not crazy yet.

George Moen – President Blenz Coffee

As Maryse Lalonde, Publisher Metro News Vancouver, says, there is just something natural about a cup of coffee and a great newspaper you can hold in your hand as you get ready for your day. I could not agree more. Blenz Coffee and Metro News have had a great relationship for several years now. We wanted to make sure our customers had the ability to grab the latest news when they visit our Blenz stores so we selected Metro as our daily choice. Metro is available at most Blenz stores.

During the month of Feb, there will be lot more traffic through Blenz stores and much of that will be from folks from all over the world. So we put our heads together and came up with the concept of Metro Blenz News Squad. Simple really! We have teamed up with a growing list of bloggers, videographers & photographers, including some of the top local social media people, who will join forces with us to provide a continuous flow of great news and pictures/video of what is happening, and to share “Real Stories of Real People”.

We will be posting this content first to the Metro Blenz News Squad Blog:

Check Out: www.metroblenznewssquad.com

Metro will then take selective content and post it online to their websites and blogs, and some of the contributions will find their way into the print newspaper.

Check Out: www.metronews.ca/vancouver

We @ Blenz Coffee will do the same (post to our blog) and also provide continuous in-store content on our digital screens. See the sample in this link:

Check Out: www.blenzgallery.com

This is so Blenz customers can be kept in the loop while sitting in our stores. I have provided a link to the press release on this project (here). So if you are around, check out the site. Find out where you can connect with one of our Squad members – maybe your story or comments will find a much larger audience. We are having a lot of fun putting this together and we think you will really enjoy the team’s posts.

Okay! Ready or not world, here comes the Squad.

George Moen

On January 27, I had the privilege to talk to FWEBC or the Forum For Women Entrepreneurs BC.

I do quite a bit of speaking to a wide variety of groups, but this gig was different. By this time in my life, I get the fact that men and women are wired differently and approach both opportunity and challenges from different perspectives.

I spoke for about 20 mins about forming strategic partnerships, and some of other core business philosophies, etc. Then the real value of the FWEBC organization kicked in. The group really jumped into a conversation both with me and other members with a candour I rarely see at any networking event.

These businesswomen ask really great questions. It’s clear they are on learning curves and had no problem asking for or sharing quality advice. Generally, us guys do not do that – I know I don’t.

I do get asked by businesswomen if I know of quality networking organizations I would recommend. I just found the one that tops my list. If you are a businesswoman, want to grow your business, get ongoing and – most importantly – genuine support and advice, FWEBC is a Must-Do!

So, I would like to thank Cybele Negris (@cybelenegris), co-Founder of Webnames, for encouraging me to clear my schedule. Mackenzie Biggar, Program Manager of FWEBC, for helping me get organized, Jill Earthy, for the great introduction, and Lisa Colls-Simpson of Wardell Professional Development, for the big thank you and the great bottle of red wine (Quails Gate Merlot – one of my faves).

To all of the businesswomen who attended and participated, thanks for a great evening. I had a blast.

And all you guys, if you get a chance to speak at the FWEBC, take my word for it, it’s a Must-Do

for you.

Check Out FWEBC http://www.fwe.ca

Follow Them On Twitter: http://twitter.com/FWEBC

George Moen – Out!

You have all heard about the Big Bang Theory, the theory of the beginning of our universe… Well, that will probably remain a theory to be proven or disproven by some future generation well beyond mine. However, I am excited that I do get to see where Legacy Media and New Media merge, a kind of “Big Bang For Media” which was announced this AM with a little story about the strategic alliance between Metro News and Foursquare

Foursquare joins With Metro News

Blenz Coffee (@blenzcoffee) has a strategic distribution agreement with Metro News – Vancouver where Metro provides Blenz with free newspapers for all our Blenz customers distributed through a good portion of our British Columbia retail footprint. It continues to be a great partnership. (Hint: Watch for another BIG announcement coming very soon.)

In mid 2009 when Foursquare came onto the scene, I tracked down one of early mayors, Chris Breikss (@chrisbreikss ) of 6S Marketing in Vancouver. Frankly, I did not get it at first, but Chris was a patient fellow and walked me through what it was and how it worked, and I had one more of those rare “A-Hah Moments”. The last one was .tel. So we at Blenz jumped onboard and offered a weekly award for our one of the many Foursquare Mayors that are continually popping up and battling with each other in our Blenz Coffee outlets. Each week we announce the winning Foursquare mayors on Twitter and post them on our Blenz Community customer site. The ROI is huge. See: www.blenzsweepstakes.com/foursquares As a long time marketer, I have always been attracted to advertising and media that make it easy track the ROI to determine if it is working. That is the great appeal here. We at Blenz can see how many check-ins and visits in Foursquare, by location.

Now if you read the article and some of the strategies these two companies are plotting, then you can see why today is also a great day for Blenz. As my friend Shane Gibson (@shanegibson) of sociablebook.com says, “Sometimes you just need to show up!” As a consumer of both companies’ products/services, I do get it! So, yes, we are showing up, and our plan now is to tuck in behind the Foursquare/Metro juggernaut and surf on the draft.

Congrats to whoever figured this equation out: Social Media + Legacy Media = Really Smart Media.

Below I have grabbed the piece in case you missed the announcement.

“Metro and Foursquare announce groundbreaking partnership”

Lots more posts coming soon!

George

Banning Social Media In The Work Place Is Just Stupid!

As a President of a company with a growing staff, the topic does come up where we have had to look at the impact of Social Media in our work environment. The fear that many have is that it will cut into productivity or that something may be said that could be damaging to the brand. Real concerns, to be sure.

I did think about how I wanted to deal with it within the Blenz organization. The answer really came pretty quickly when I took a long hard look at the kind of place where I would want to work. I really like the team I get to work with every day – you build a natural trust when you see them put in the effort day in and day out, so why not trust them with how they spend their time?

I imagined having a “meeting with myself” where I would try and inform me that we are going through some amazing and complicated technical feat that would be required block all major social media platforms from our network. How does that make me feel? Clearly, it sucks.

So, the real answer was to let them do whatever they were going to do, but do it for the company. We at Blenz are real proponents of social media as a way to build real and genuine connections with our customer. We are active on Twitter, Facebook, Dot Tel ( .tel ), Foursquare, Youtube, Flickr, and Myspace, and we have a blog, and the list continues to grow. And Wow!, has that activity been a boost to our brand! Heck, I am having a blast, and as President, I get to connect directly with people. It does not get better than that.

Keep in mind that our world is changing, and how we interact with each other is changing also. Every member of my team has a smartphone, so if for any reason they cannot do it on the computer, they are going to connect on their phones. Just watch your own family or the young folks within our world. Trying to stem that tide is, well, just a real waste of your time.

Speaking for myself, I want to challange people to think and grow. Give them total access to information; engage with them in the conversation; and ask yourself if you want to be told how to think. I know where I stand on that one!

Key Success Strategies For Any Entrepreneur

I had the pleasure of being the “featured speaker” at the BC Small Business
Entrepreneur Showcase and networking event on Oct 7th 2009 in Vancouver.
Oct. is small biz month and these folks have an annual event where they provide
access to seasoned entrepreneurs and a platform to learn. What I have done
in this article is to provide a overview of my presentation. I started my first
business in 1978 and have learned many lessons and have been influenced by
a wide variety of mentors over the years. I have paid a very a big price for these
truths both in study and money. Enjoy!

ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Presentation to Entrepreneur Showcase, Small Business BC, October 7, 2009 by George Moen, President, Blenz The Canadian Coffee Company.

These are the lessons I’ve learned (so far) in my 38 years of entrepreneurship:

Pursue Your Passion

Work to a Plan

Have a Mission

Fail Forward

Pursue a Debt-Free Life

Diversify

Always Be A Student

Network

Mentor

Protect Yourself and Your Family
………………’Nuff said.

Never, Never, Never Quit

My Success is all because of the network I built. So what do I do about it? Or, Dot Tel (.tel): Why I bought www.georgemoen.tel and why you will get yours!

I can remember the first time I was asked if I had an EMail address on the Internet. I was at a Christmas party hosted by a Fortune 500 company and the biggity-wiggities were all going to a training session in Europe (BTW: It was Nestlé). I grasped the concept fairly quickly and wondered if this thing called EMail over the Internet was going to catch on. It was about 6 months later I got my first email address, and within a few months I was involved in my first Internet-related business. I have seen a lot since then: the Dot Boom & Crash, Web 2.0, mission-critical net-based applications that my companies and I could not survive without.

Just when you think nothing new could come along to grab your interest, .tel comes along. I have to admit I did not quite get it at first, but within a few days of my first introduction, I had one of the rare A-Hah moments.

The domain .tel is unlike any other domain on the market for a number of reasons. First, it is optimized for the cell platforms (Blackberry, iPhone, etc.) Second, it comes already hosted with an Admin.

It may not be too much of a stretch that we may have seen the end of the traditional business card. In fact, I think I will be printing my last business card, and all it will say is “www.georgemoen.tel”. At this domain, I maintain all my contact information, and as I make changes, the updated contact information becomes instantly available to anyone who knows my .tel domain. So, if you want to contact me, all you will need to do to go to that site to connect with me the way you want. Connect with me at Blenz, High Output, Twitter, Facebook … the list of ways to connect with anyone is constantly growing.

There are a lot of very cool aspects to the .tel concept, but the one that got my particular attention is the Sync feature. No matter where you keep your contacts (I use Outlook and Blackberry), .tel will keep your record of me current. So when I update an E Mail or phone number, for example, the information in your Blackberry or iPhone is automatically updated. Further, it is a way to organize all your online and offline information in one area. You are in control of who sees what. There is also a “social media” aspects called “Telfriends”.

I have to thank the folks over at WebNames.ca (Cybele Negris, Matt Lane and Lisa Wills) for reaching out to us at High Output and being great teachers about this emerging technology. We at HOBN think this will be a great tool for our network but also for anyone who can use the internet for their business or career. It did not take long for us to set up a “re-seller” agreement with them. If connecting with quality folks is a benefit to you, this program will be a great fit, and the cost is a mere US$19.95 per year.

There are a lot of other aspects to this program, and I know everyone probably has Dot/Net/App fatigue, but I recommend that you at least protect your name or brand and be positioned for the time when .tel gains “killer app” status.

Here are a couple of .tel’s that will give you a flavour:
George Moen: http://www.georgemoen.tel
Blenz Coffee: http://www.blenzcoffee.tel (note that, with unlimited pages, this is a big site)
HighOutput: http://www.highoutputnetworking.tel
Webnames: http://www.webnames.tel

Check out your name. Many great names are available

For a better overview of .tel (with videos, demos etc): http://hobn.registertel.com
Most URL registration organizations do provide .tel registration. We have gone with WebNames for a bunch of reasons, including new developments coming shortly to help promote .tel’s and build traffic to all your internet-based properties.

To wrap up, I have a growing sense that .tel is one application with huge leverage potential for my brands and business interests. The one thing I am running out of is time and this has the potential to be a huge time saving tool. For anyone like me that has spent a good part of their business career building a contact database this one is “out of the park!” Bring it on… It’s the world’s largest Rolodex and I get to slip my card into it – how cool is that?!

George Moen…. Gone .tel!

Where to start! Just a few months after the Liberal Government gets elected they announce we are to get the HST July 1, 2010.

First, a tax that has this much of an impact clearly should have been a topic during the election. Question–do you think the election results would have been different? Now Hansen says it was not on the table.

OK lets buy that one for a moment… so in the span of just a few months the political leaders changed their minds, and without any consultation. I spoke to an MLA that I may name later who told me that he was just told when it was announced to us BC’ers. So it comes down to a few fellas make a big multi-billion dollar call… I’m not sure I feel comfortable with that. We live in a democracy and if they are afraid of me, the voter, then maybe this should not be on the table.

I am a Biz guy. I know how to read a balance sheet and I also understand we are in a downturn in the economy and we need to make some changes. But when I see this kind of unilateral policy-making, I have to tell you, I was pissed. I voted for this government and I may have voted for them even if they had told me about the HST.

Next time I will NOT be voting Liberal no matter what! That is the first time since I began voting I have ever publicly declared my voting history or preference. Frankly, it will not matter due to the fact that most of the back benchers (who probably got screwed also) have already started to spruce up their resumes. I have my contact information on this site and have a great rolodex, so give me your info and I will pass it around my network. I don’t want any of you to be burden on the UIC system… fiscal responsibility, you know.

What you have to understand is that this tax is shifting the tax burden from business to the consumer. That sucking sound you hear is 7% coming right out of your pocket on things that you do not pay tax on today. The labour saving benefit the provincial government will have will be shifted without fanfare to the Feds. Our PST department will find their way absorbed onto the Fed payroll.

I was in the restaurant business when the GST came in, and we had an immediate drop in sales of 10%. That tax was also implemented during a severe recession – sound familiar? Our reaction in the restaurant industry was immediate. We raised prices to compensate for the drop in sales, and that did not work. Next came the lay-offs, and hours were cut back. Many food services went out of business. It was a bad time, and it took us years to recover. As a voter I helped Mulroney out of office and, quite frankly, it changed the political landscape of Canada. Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia that tracks the rise of the Reform party that was built on the resentment this tax created.

“Widespread public resentment of the Goods and Services Tax, an economic slump, the dilapidation of his political coalition, and his lack of results regarding the Quebec situation caused Mulroney’s popularity to decline considerably during his second term. An ominous sign was a 1989 by-election in the Alberta riding of Beaver River. In this election, called when Tory MP John Dahmer died, Reform Party candidate Deborah Grey won by a hefty 4,200 votes after finishing fourth in the general election just five months earlier. This turned out to be the first sign that Mulroney’s grand coalition was coming apart at the seams; the PCs had dominated Alberta’s federal politics since the 1968 election. Another sign came after the failure of Meech Lake, when Bouchard and several other Tories broke with the party to form the Bloc Québécois, a pro-sovereigntist (i.e. independantist) party.” Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Mulroney

The one thing I have learned in my years in business is that nothing happens in a vacuum. Everything we do counts. I for one can no longer sit and try to keep my opinions to myself.

The internet is wonderful thing. It has the power to organize and share opinions and, most importantly, let those who make decisions get instant feedback. I know this first-hand as President of Blenz Coffee. We have free wireless in all our stores, and that makes it easy for our customers to give us their opinions. I track a cool site that is providing the information about the HST online. See Stop HST http://www.twitter.com/stophst

Get informed, get involved, and, above all, let those who get our vote know that in a democracy they rent that space. If we are to change the widespread mistrust in our political leaders, they need to man up and stand up for their principles and beliefs. They are there to serve us, not their legacy or future board appointments. If you let them get away with it then you will get what you get.

Wikipeida defines Social Media as:

Social media is online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. Social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content; it supports the human need for social interaction with technology, transforming broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers. Social media has become extremely popular because it allows people to connect in the online world to form relationships for personal, political and business use. Businesses also refer to social media asgenerated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM).

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media

Recently, it was the business use of social media that got my attention; and certainly that is what is really starting to take shape in the business world. The early adopters have been in for a while but my sense is that business is really starting to embrace “this whole Social Media thing”.

Expanding on my previous posting, you have to be where the customer is. The recent economic recession has changed marketing forever. Many traditional media names are going or are already gone. We are seeing the beginning of the end of the newspaper as we know it. Internet is killing the economic engine (and by that, I mean the advertising industry) because business has learned that their advertising money is being better spent online. For a couple of hundred years, you designed an ad and then delivered it by the methods of the day (newspapers/magazines/TV/Direct Mail, etc ). The customer did not talk back. Today it is different. What the business world is now dealing with is an active two-way conversation. Or maybe it is more appropriate to say that the customer has started talking and companies are engaging at varying levels. I think that scares the hell out of most senior management. It was a lot easier to have the customer drink the Kool-Aide.

As a senior manager who started to engage in the conversation recently, I discovered that it is nothing to be afraid of. In fact, by participating, I am getting “unfiltered” client intel, and what leader in today’s volatile market would not appreciate that? Sure, there are some folks out there that are thrilled to have a better soapbox, but at least everyone can be heard, and, for the most part, the conversations I am having are enjoyable. I have found that, in general, people who chat in public (through blogs, postings, etc.) usually have something to say; and like all conversations, you may not like what they say but for the most part they are presenting respectful opinions.

So, if you can’t stand the heat, unplug the computer. That is about the only way to avoid customer feedback.

George Moen, President, Blenz Coffee