“The Role of a great leader is not to give greatness to human beings, but to help them extract the greatness they already have inside them.”
A Leader’s quote
As we rise into leadership roles, it’s not always easy to walk the talk. Of course, we want to be wise sages, counseling our charges and inspiring them to greatness. But that’s easier said than done. The challenge was particularly acute for Karl Allen, co-founder and CEO of Planet Jockey, a company that creates management courses in the form of online games. He knew it would be a sad irony if the head of a company selling leadership games wasn’t much of a leader, himself. So he vowed to step up – and here are the lessons he learned through playing his company’s games and vowing to become the right kind of CEO.
Recognize where you’re starting.
Planet Jockey’s game teaches the principles of “buoyant leadership” – what Allen describes as “a concept whereby, as a leader, you float [on top] because the people you lead believe you deserve it.” (The concept is discussed in depth in a book called The Case of the Missing Cutlery by Kevin Allen, Karl’s partner in business and life.) But Karl recognizes that while buoyancy is the goal, he won’t always be perfect. “I can do it at times,” he says. “But sometimes [negative] instinct takes over, and it takes over really fast.” These days, he can recognize when he feels his temper rising at work, and can guide himself back into a more inspirational mode of leadership.
Say what you mean.
In evaluating his leadership style, Karl Allen recognized that sometimes in the past, he’s prioritized being ‘nice’ – which has driven him to avoid saying what he really means. That doesn’t serve anyone, he’s concluded. He recalls one incident where he felt one of Planet Jockey’s Udemy classes wasn’t gaining traction fast enough. The best possible reaction, he says, would have been to tell his staffer, “You’re doing an amazing job, and I’ve got a great idea for all the ways” we can grow further. He also could have directly discussed the critiques he had of the marketing. Instead, he recalls, “I phoned her up and said, ‘I think we’re really dropping the ball.’ It’s passive-aggressive, because when I say ‘we,’ I mean ‘you.’ And that’s terrible and destructive.” Planet Jockey’s games have helped him to realize where he went wrong.
Meetings are critical. One of the areas where Allen knows he fell short initially was in running staff meetings. “Before, I’d just get everyone into a meeting and start chatting and people would shout at me and I’d shout back at them,” he recalls. “What I learned after playing the game is that you need some rules. It’s not just about inspiring people; meetings need to be structured. For instance, you need smaller meetings, so you should try to limit it to 6-8 people. That way you know you can get to hear everybody’s point of view and everyone gets a chance to talk.” Overall, he says, “You need to know what needs to come out of the meeting, and have a clear sense of who’s there and why they’re there.”
At Skylabapps , our CEO & Leader, Dean Grey, has deeply understood that a very clear meaning and structure are essential for the optimal communication between the Skylab Team’s member.
Search for hidden talents.
Early on, says Allen, he would sometimes take too narrow a view of what others could contribute. “The game taught me that people within your team have a lot more to offer than sometimes you realize,” he says. As a result, he started a team practice in which staffers sit down and share what they’re doing outside of work. That’s how he learned about one employee’s side calligraphy business, which she was pursuing with a friend who worked at a company Allen was targeting. Allen had always thought of his staffer as being expert in “digital marketing, not face-to-face sales.” But with a little coaching, she was able to persuade her friend to make an introduction at her company. “I realized she has an amazing sales persona,” says Allen. “She built that skill and we got a huge piece of business.”
The conversation is what matters. When it comes to a topic like leadership, there will never be 100% agreement about the best approach to a given situation. That’s how Allen came to realize that the real value of the game is in the conversation it sparks. “The learning from the game wasn’t even so much from the game itself,” he says. “The learning is from the reflection on the game – how well you did, or thought you did…You learn because you have to fight it out and discuss it [with colleagues]. The answers are ambiguous and part of a learning process.”
MindMovies is one Skylab’s Client. Through the Channels section, you can access to great content about leadership and entrepreneurship directly on the app. Each Skylab app provides great training and learning section related to the appropriate business sector.
Becoming a great leader isn’t easy. It’s especially challenging when you’re running a company that’s predicated on teaching others how to lead. As Karl Allen shows, opening up about your mistakes and the learning process along the way is part of what it takes to truly succeed. You win or you learn !
Every aspect of us is affected by our environments and our environments reflect every aspect of us. Each of the 9 Environments of You are connected…they touch each other and are woven together.
Skylab CEO, Dean Grey knows all about anchoring a decision. from his humble upbringing living off the grid on a boat in the Florida Keys to traveling around the world tasked with teaching and mentoring tens of thousands of people; Dean deeply understands how to make that monumental change.
It wasn’t long ago when the idea of the Skylab Apps platform would was simply a figment of Dean’s Imagination. He had a big dream, and grand vision, but so do thousands of people every day. The difference is that when Dean made the decision to step in to a new role and start Skylab Apps he dropped the anchor, put his head down and got to work. a couple years later, the vision has become a reality. Ultimately, it was a culmination of Deans 9 environments that led him and Skylab to success.
“Individuals learn better when they are learning in engaging social environments.”
Understanding the 9 Environments and how they work in your daily life will give you a clear understanding of how each elements plays and incredibly important role in your life short and long term.
The Physical Environment: Skylab HQ
The physical environment includes the very tangible aspects of our lives…our home, office, car, furnishings, artwork, toys, boats, and accessories. The physical environment provides visual clues to what is going on in our lives. Clutter, noise, broken equipment can be visual clues to looking deeper to discover our thoughts, energy and behaviors.
The Skylab Apps corporate office is a collaborative and creative working loft. Everything from the music, office space and food is hand selected to make sure you have to best experience to help you thrive in the work place. We have a gym onsite so you can take care of your body and give your mind a mental break.
The Spiritual Environment
The spiritual environment includes our connections to a higher power, to God or Spirit, the invisible connection we feel to others and the universe. It includes methods of connecting to spiritual aspects of life such as meditation, prayer, and places of worship. We wanted to make sure that our workplace was situated in a beautiful place. Lucky for us, we are right next to the ocean with lots of quiet places where you can go and get spiritual.
The Memetic Environment
The memetic environment includes ideas, values, thoughts, beliefs, paradigms, styles and habits that are passed down from generation to generation. The memetic environment also includes information and knowledge (books, websites, magazines, television, and radio)
The Body Environment
The body environment includes the body, hair, skin, nails, health and energy. This environment touches the network environment, as it includes physicians, skin care consultants, massage therapists, hair dressers, physical therapists, dietitians, personal trainers and other professionals who support your physical body and well being.
We understand that it you want top performance out of your body, then you have to treat your body well!
The Self Environment
The self environment includes our strengths, talents, personalities, feelings, emotions, values, passions and skills. The self environment includes the intangible aspects of our beings.
The Nature Environment
The nature environment includes nature, parks, bodies of water, the seasons of the year, pets, plants, the seasons of life, and the outdoors. As humans, we are a part of nature, so access to this environment is crucial for our survival and ultimate well-being. A great place about where we work is that its open, inviting and blended well with the elements
The Relationship Environment
The relationship environment includes those people in our lives who are closest to us and with whom we have an intimate connection. This includes family, close friends, close colleagues, co-workers, mentors and neighbors who are in our lives on a daily basis. It has been said that a team that plays well together works well together. Our professional life is personal, so we make sure to take time to develop relationships with our co-workers and clients in and out side of the office.
The Network Environment
The network environment is an extension of the relationship environment. It includes people with whom you are on a first name basis, yet you may not have a deep and intimate connection. The network environment includes business associates, community organizations, support groups you belong to. The goal of the network environment is usually to provide an exchange of information and to build bridges to people who can support you in enhancing both your business and personal life.
The Financial Environment
The financial environment includes bills, credit cards, money, investments, insurance, stocks and bonds and the people who support your financial well-being (accountants, financial planners, stock brokers). This environment also includes any tools or support services you use to achieve your financial goals files, computer programs, budgets, banks. When exploring the financial environment, it is also important to look closely at the relationship a person has with money and their beliefs around money and prosperity/abundance.
“It is important to take stock of these environmental factors and make sure that they come together to work for our benefit and maximize our productivity towards our individual goals.”
All of the work being done at Skylab Apps is with the environments in mind. When a client is met, they go through a process called ADG, which stands for Appify, Gamify and Design. Skylab doesn’t just build mobile apps, they create worlds for their clients! Each one of these worlds combines the essence of the clients culture and ultimately the 9 elements can be seen through out the flawless design of the native mobile platform.
Users join a community of like-minded people all on a journey to create Optimal Health and Well Being. The Trilogy represents the 3 key areas of optimal health; healthy body, healthy mind and healthy finances. This app along with the support of a certified health coach can help you integrate simple daily actions that can turn into lifelong habits of health. There are 3 levels of the Trilogy Game you can participate : as a fan, as a player or as a coach.
For more information about Skylab Apps, or to see how appify your world, please get in touch with us at Skylabapps.com
Growth Mindset: 10 Principles to Growth: Skylab Apps Case Study
Many people begin to experiment and fail to see the desired results. They’re often missing on the key ingredient: The Growth Mindset. Let’s apply this method to Skylab Apps.
Skylab Apps was founded in 2015 by Dean Grey. He has the vision of growing a global company motivated by the idea that people would adopt the technology built by his company. Skylab Apps makes a white label community building platform that allows the app owner to track, train, grow and monetize their user, customer, clients, follower or fans.
“Company owners want to grow and they have a vague idea of how to get there. But, they lack the key principles to achieve their goals. They lack of a general understanding behind the practice.”
What if you could increase your Growth rate? What if you could finally start to optimize your processes? Growth is the answer to these questions…
This article is about to give you a few principles to help guide you into your quest for Growth. It is a guide that we have lived by here at Skylab Apps, always testing, poking around and customer/client-centric.
The Infographic : You must be busy. So instead of having you read a ton of text, I distilled the main principles in the following infographic:
1. Learning from experience
Growth is all about testing hypothesis. “Testing hypothesis” means running a battery of tests to see what works and what doesn’t.We test a hypothesis because we believe that no one else has the answer to our questions. What may work in another business, will not necessarily work with yours.
When Dean Grey, Founder of Skylab Apps started Zooplr, his vision was to build a state of the art mobile platform that would allow companies and brands to engage, track and train all of the community member. After successfully exiting Zooplr, and Tags, he continued on with the same vision to build Skylab Apps. Except this time, he was going to take it all the way home
When you test something, you can either validate or invalidate your hypothesis. Most people see this through a success / failure lens. There is no such thing as a failure in Growth because you want to learn. Success happens when you learn, failure when you don’t.
It’s that simple. If your experiment failed and you’ve gained a ton of new insights, that’s a success.Learning allows you to make better educated guesses and to launch even more successful experiments.
Don’t expect to have a lot of success at the beginning but the more you understand your product & customers, the more successful your tests will become. In the case of Skylab Apps, learning from experience didn’t necessarily mean failure. In fact, as mentioned before, exiting the two prior companies successfully set Dean up on the correct pat to launch Skylab Apps with all oh the experience and data from his two prior companies.
2. Data-Driven
Running a digital business enables you to measure every step of the way. You can easily track what everyone is doing on your app.You know more about your consumers than anyone else in business. Use these insights! The best Growth people use that to their advantage. You need to use data in every decision you take.
When we speak about data, most people think about analytics tools such as Google Analytics or KISSmetrics. Never forget about other valuable sources of insights that you have available.
Customer interviews are a perfect source of insights, to help you drive Growth & Product Development.
Make sure that you invest into your Analytics stack early on to avoid learning about the wrong things… (Invalidating the wrong hypothesis will have disastrous impact on your business)
3. Innovative Testing
Growth is all about testing innovative and creative ideas. Don’t limit yourself to what your competitors are doing, you have the freedom to do whatever you want. Be innovative and challenge the status-quo: it’s not because you always had a 3-step signup process that it is necessarily the best process.
Look for flaws in your current processes and improve them until you’re satisfied with the results.
Growth is all about being innovative. If you just copy what’s going on in your space, you’ll limit your potential results terribly.
4. Always go further
Growth never stops. Even if you have a conversion rate from Trial to Paid of 95%, there are always things that you can improve.
When you think everything is optimized, take a one-week break. Go back to work and think again: Where are we losing most of our users? Where can we have more impact?
You should never be satisfied by the Growth you’re getting. You can always go further.
5. Process first
Launching experiments in only one part of the story. The process is what actually makes everything possible.
You can’t really sustain your Growth efforts without a process. You’ll start to launch experiments but you’ll soon fail because you’ll lose track of what’s happening.The process is what allows you to create a repeatable, scalable and predictable machine. Without a process, you’ll fail to show results over the long-term. Design your processes early on. They won’t be perfect but iterate and improve them as you move forward.
6. Authentic & Sustainable Growth
As Brian Balfour said,
“All Growth is not equal”. Are you looking for MAU (Monthly Active Users) or are you looking for long-term customers?
You can’t really sustain your Growth efforts without a process. You’ll start to launch experiments but you’ll soon fail because you’ll lose track of what’s happening. The process is what allows you to create a repeatable, scalable and predictable machine. Without a process, you’ll fail to show results over the long-term. Design your processes early on. They won’t be perfect but iterate and improve them as you move forward. Don’t think about Growth as something that can yield enormous result for the short term. It certainly can. However…
Look at Growth as a way to build your business over the long-term. Launch experiments that can have a long-lasting impact on your growth.
7. Start Small – MVT
You generally don’t have to go through 100 hours of development to test your hypothesis.
If you want to launch several tests per week, you’ll need to launch “Minimum Viable Tests”. In other words: What’s the minimum test that you can launch to test an hypothesis? You need to understand that Growth is an iterative process. Starting small will allow you to build up on your success (or lack thereof). If you launch a small test and it fails, you’ll have a greater “Time to Learning” than if you redesigned your entire on-boarding. Starting small may be be counter intuitive. But it’s the only way that you can create a positive impact on your business.
8. Customer-Centric
.
If you fail to be customer-centric, you’ll only be able to drive short-term. Your customers will be annoyed and you’ll fail to retain them over the long term.
Increasing your Growth is only one part of the equation. If you squeeze out every dollar of your customer’s wallet without delivering more value, you’ll piss off more than a few people. The best way to be customer-centric is to examine their desired outcome. Are your experiments helping them to achieve their mission, their goals?
9. Ethic
Some people really don’t care about ethics and that’s a mistake in terms of brand image.
The dating sector is a quite good example. They’re basically creating fake profiles and generating discussions with you so that you start your paid membership. A beautiful person of the opposite sex will strike up a conversation and show interest in you. You can only chat back if you start a paid subscription. But, wait! There is no one on the other side… It’s just a bot! Even if this trick is increasing their Growth, are they delivering value? What would people think about that? Having some sense of ethics is imperative if you want to seek Authentic Growth and avoid damaging your long-term brand.
10. Company-wide mission
This is a team sport and everyone should be involved. Everyone should be able to contribute their own ideas to your backlog.Relevant people should also be able to get involved into discussions on specific ideas. You’re designing a new onboarding flow? Talk to the person who designed the last one. If you don’t involve people within your company, you’ll get into political issues and they’ll slow down your efforts.Involving them can only be a good thing. The worse that can happen is that they’ll share valuable insights and help you launch better experiments.
Growth. Growth. Growth.
These principles should help you to get started with Growth. Don’t waste too much time and start experimenting as soon as you can. However… Make sure that you set yourself up for success by creating customer-centric, ethical and long-lasting growth…
Skylabapps.com enables to grow your community thanks to the Gamification Engine which uses Gamified features.
Check out Skylab’s Clients websites & apps. They’ve trusted us for growth.
Now Is The Perfect Time To Be A Women Entrepreneur
“Women who walks with purpose doesn’t have to chase people or opportunities. Her light causes people and opportunities to pursue her.”
Dr. Farrah Gray
In Silicon Valley, the percentage of women entrepreneur starting technology companies is astronomically low, at a rate around 3 percent. Of privately held companies, only 6.5 percent have a female CEO, and 1.3 percent have a female founder. How is this the case, when women are earning more than half of all bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees for the first time in history?
Despite these disappointing numbers and the gender issues, there is good news too. Women who are in tech are doing well and getting noticed. Recent data has shown that women-led technology companies are more capital-efficient, achieving 35 percent higher return on investment. Companies founded by women also represented a record 13 percent of venture capital deals through the first half of 2013, up from only 4 percent in 2004. In other words, investors are starting to notice that it pays to have a woman in charge.
As a women entrepreneur and sole founder and CEO of a venture-backed digital healthcarestartup, I’ve experienced a positive shift in how I’m treated as a woman in tech compared to the horror stories of women who came before me. This leads me to believe that now is the perfect time to make the leap into entrepreneurship as a women.
Women entrepreneur are being recognized as powerful leaders
Heavy-hitting women such as Marissa Mayer, Sheryl Sandberg and GinniRometty are in C-suite roles, running major Fortune 500 companies. Their leadership, and the headlines they garner, have popularized the image of women in high-level roles and opened the door for a conversation about the need for more female leadership in tech and beyond.
Fortunately, women outside of the spotlight are also excelling and being recognized for their outstanding leadership skills. A 2011 study in the Harvard Business Review evaluating men and women in the workplace found that:
“At every level, more women were rated by their peers, their bosses, their direct reports, and their other associates as better overall leaders than their male counterparts — and the higher the level, the wider that gap grows. Specifically, at all levels, women are rated higher in fully 12 of the 16 competencies that go into outstanding leadership. And two of the traits where women outscored men to the highest degree — taking initiative and driving for results — have long been thought of as particularly male strengths.”
Considering it wasn’t very long ago that women were relegated to the home and shunned from the boardroom, that is a pretty amazing and inspiring update. And for enterprising female entrepreneurs, the timing of this shift couldn’t be better.
With strong women entrepreneur at the helm, something interesting (but unsurprising) is happening to their businesses: They are growing at a higher rate than their traditional, male-led counterparts. Over the past 10 years, the growth in the number of women-owned firms with $10 million or more in revenues has increased by 56.6 percent, a rate 47 percent faster than the rate of growth of all $10 million-plus firms.
Women in leadership roles also seem to be key in driving the success of an enterprise. The failure rate of startups with two or fewer female executives is 50.3 percent, but with five or more women in high-level positions, the success rate jumps to 61 percent.
In particular, women are emerging as key players in healthcare, both on the ground and in the C-suite. Women entrepreneur account for 73 percent of medical and health services managers, making them the face of healthcare to the general population. And over the last decade, not only has the number of high-revenue, women-owned healthcare and social assistance firms nearly tripled, but those companies are growing at an impressive rate – 54.9 percent across all healthcare and social assistance firms, and nearly 183 percent for firms with over $10 million in revenue.
With healthcare in the national spotlight, women are emerging as successful leaders capable of shepherding America into a new era of health and wellness. Skylab Apps recognizes this trend and has partnered with healthcare professionals creating “Skylab Medical” a Skylab Apps incubator partner company. See more about this here.
The VC snowball effect
Women entrepreneur firms are succeeding and in turn, attracting more venture capital investment, leading to even higher growth. During the height of the dot-com bubble, venture capital investments in women-led businesses lagged pathetically, receiving less than 6 percent of total funds invested in the U.S. between 1997 and 2000. But between 2000 and 2011, that number shot up to 41 percent.
Combine that with the fact that when venture-backed, women-led technology companies bring in 12 percent higher revenue than male-owned tech companies and you have a Pandora’s box of potential.
As VC firms continue to be positively rewarded for investing in women-led companies, they will be more open to future investments. I’d be hard-pressed – and reluctant – to stop this snowball from reaching warp speed.
The women-supporting-women movement is just starting
There are more women entrepreneurs supporting younger and less-experienced female entrepreneurs today than ever before. For example, I had a mentor who had a huge impact on my growth and success, so I’m paying it forward.
Over the past year, I’ve been mentoring a young female entrepreneur who recently raised $1 million for her own startup and was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 List. The great thing is, 80 percent of female tech entrepreneurs reported having mentors and, in my experience, that bodes well for their future success.
There are more women investors looking for women-led companies, or great companies to invest in and add women to their leadership teams or advisory boards because the numbers don’t lie — the odds of success with women calling the shots.
“It is important to take an active role in shaping our personal and professional networks in order to live the most fulfilling lives possible.”
thoughts, energy and behaviors.
Running a digital business enables you to measure every step of the way. You can easily track what everyone is doing on your app.You know more about your consumers than anyone else in business. Use these insights! The best Growth people use that to their advantage. You need to use data in every decision you take.
