TELUS challenged entrepreneurs on the TELUS Business Facebook page to share their best to-the-point and convincing elevator pitch for a chance to win one of two business productivity prize packs. With more than 100 submissions, Carmen Mason was one of the finalists.

“Anything you need we can do it,” says Carmen Mason, art/creative director and founder of Fuel House of Design in Vancouver. The company specializes in creating branded websites, posters, handbills, logos, merchandise, boxes, banners, and billboards, for clients including Joe’s Apartment on Granville Street, 99.3 CFOX-FM and bands of all genres.

How did you come up with your elevator pitch?

I ask my clients on a day-to-day basis, what is it that you are trying put forth with your product? What is the first thing you need people to know about your brand? I got to a point where my pitch came naturally: “What is it that I do? How can I help people?”

When did you start using social media and how did you pick which social media tools to use?

Years ago when I started, it was the era of MySpace so I started a profile and stuck to my genre, which at that time was music. A band would post your profile on the comments section and automatically everybody would add you. I had more than 1200 friends. Then Facebook (FB) came out and I decided to stick with a profile [rather than a group page] because it gives you the opportunity to chat with clients about future or current projects.

How do you measure the success of social media initiatives?

Facebook has been a vital part of my business and so has Twitter. The yardstick [of success] is that 90% of people who contact me via FB become my clients and have me on contract within 48 hours.

Many businesses struggle to build their customer base and attract new customers with limited funds and resources. Your advice?

Use social media to the best of your advantage. Search out businesses, follow the links on FB, look for flaws in their marketing and advertising. Is their website up to par? Do they have social networking links? Contact them, don’t push but let them know you are there. Stick within your niche and beat the pavement because everything is possible.

What do you regard as your greatest success as a business in 2011?

I came in second out of 3,200 applicants in the Edward Burns poster contest for his new movie Newlyweds. He sent a message out on Twitter and said anybody could join this contest. Every time I Tweeted “Go vote for me”, Edward Burns would retweet it. I jumped 800 people in three days. Now I have Ed Burns and Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) following me.

How do you motivate your team to keep them focused on business goals?

I don’t have to do very much. I respect and trust the team.

I have 16 contract employees, some in Scotland, some in L.A. I have a guy in Florida and Hawaii and three here. An example, heavy metal music is not my thing. So I have a guy in Australia who lives and dies by that music and I will forward the clients directly to him. I don’t play middleman.

What are your business goals for 2012?

We’re opening a storefront in September. I’d like to compartmentalize the company so one division is music and then there’s everyone else. I want to become known for being able to help anybody who has an idea or product and bring it to street level where it has great marketing and advertising behind it. I love music but I want to branch out.

Amber Nasrulla is an ex-pat Canadian writer based in L.A. who specializes in profiles from business leaders and scientists to Hollywood celebrities. Her work has appeared in North American and British publications including L.A. Times, The Globe and Mail, Los Angeles Magazine, ELLE Canada, Chatelaine and London Weekly Times.

To follow TELUSBusiness on Facebook go to facebook.com/telusbusiness.

TELUS challenged entrepreneurs on the TELUS Business Facebook page to share their best to-the-point and convincing elevator pitch for a chance to win one of two business productivity prize packs. With more than 100 submissions, Jeff Fung was one of the finalists.

Jeff Fung knew the key to successfully launching mylawbid.com was people. He networked at his alma mater, Queen’s University and, later, sponsored the annual conference of the Federation of Asian Lawyers. “We are referral based and relationship-based and that is crucial to our success, even though we are online,” he says. The service allows lawyers to bid on consumer jobs (at no cost to the consumer. No more random, frustrated Googling.) The site, launched in July 2011, is in beta phase, meaning lawyers can sign up for free. (Fung hopes to institute a monthly or annual pay structure by Q2.)

In December, The Globe and Mail’s Small Business LinkedIn group ranked mylawbid.com in the Top 10 “must have resources for entrepreneurs.”

How did you develop the elevator pitch?

I wanted to demonstrate the value of the company to everyday users and I targeted them rather than investors. I believe I can provide services that are useful to individuals and small business that, maybe, aren’t plugged into the legal community and need help finding a lawyer.

When did you start using social media?

We’re still working on our social media strategy. I’ve been using Facebook and LinkedIn since I started. I was experimenting, joining groups on LinkedIn, and I’d post interesting legal articles on FB. I can’t say we’ve perfected it as I’m still learning how to properly approach users. I also joined Twitter last fall. And we’re trying to create instructional and promotional videos for YouTube. I haven’t figured out user acquisition so if you have any ideas I’m all ears!

Many businesses struggle to build their customer base and attract new customers with limited resources. Your advice?

Figure out what you need on your website to attract people and then focus on that before you start spreading the word. We really needed lawyers to respond to people’s inquiries, so our first phase was reaching out to them. We are province-wide and have 100 lawyers in the GTA. (Including Devry Smith Frank LLP, Gardiner Roberts LLP in Toronto and Borden Ladner Gervais LLP in Vancouver.) We also have lawyers in Ottawa, Kingston, Kitchener-Waterloo and Smith’s Falls. We’re working on building a presence in Vancouver.

What technology was crucial to building your business in 2011?

It’s not about technology for us. The way we built our network of lawyers so far, besides through social media, has been by building relationships – with legal organizations, or organizations that service small businesses, or channel distributors like real estate agents.

What was your greatest success in 2011?

As a business owner who is just starting out it was really exciting to get the validation that the idea was going to work and that people valued it. That really happened after we were profiled in The Globe and Mail in December. We got a lot of traffic on the website.

Imagine you’re considering starting a new business. Given your experience, what are two things you’d advise yourself?

I’ve learned patience. There aren’t going to be 1,000 lawyers signing up for your service; even if you think it’s a great idea, you need to sell people the value. It’s about working hard and putting in the hours.

I could have fleshed out the business plan. I knew how I would acquire lawyers but was less clear on how I would acquire non-lawyers. And having an SEO strategy when we launched, so we would have older web pages and appear in search results in a better position.

What are your business goals for 2012?

The main one is to transition from beta testing to the revenue-generating phase. And to expand into other cities, Vancouver and throughout B.C.

Amber Nasrulla is an ex-pat Canadian writer based in L.A. who specializes in profiles from business leaders and scientists to Hollywood celebrities. Her work has appeared in North American and British publications including L.A. Times, The Globe and Mail, Los Angeles Magazine, ELLE Canada, Chatelaine and London Weekly Times.

To follow TELUSBusiness on Facebook go to facebook.com/telusbusiness.

In last week's post Standing Up on the Job: New ergonomics for the mobile worker?, we started talking about the work changes Toronto-based entrepreneur Evan Carmichael is making. Among them: standing up on the job.

Carmichael – an international speaker who has consulted with companies including Microsoft, Xerox, and Google – is feeling little pain in his knees and lower back, compared to what he suffered throughout his 20s while working long hours at a desk to establish his business. “My doctor would say ‘You’re young, you shouldn’t have these issues,’ I saw chiropractors, tried orthotics and inserts. And nothing really worked.”

Ditch the desk?

You can ditch your desk. In a manner of speaking. For the last five months, Carmichael has perched his laptop on a bookcase and worked while standing. He says, “I don’t have a love/hate relationship with my chair. But I’m always testing new things personally and in my business.”

You don't have to stand up the whole day to get your blood to circulate and oxygen to your brain. His advice: “Work into it. Don’t go crazy and try to stand eight hours straight the first day. Slowly increase your tolerance.” Carmichael stands to takes phone calls and walks about his 3rdfloor office, which overlooks a condo and a residential street. The notion is about embracing motion. But he’ll sit down if someone comes into his office for a meeting. “I’m not that strict about it.”

He recently ordered a height-adjustable table from Teknion.com, which will allow him to sit or stand. He laughs as he recounts that, “There was an office pool to see how long I would last [standing]. I think the longest was three days. People think I’m crazy [but] it got rid of a lot of problems for me so I’m grateful for that.”

I wonder what Carmichael's colleagues would think of the office workers whose desks straddle treadmills, which are set to move 1 km/hour, so they’re barely moving.

I ask Pam Grills, a certified professional ergonomist (CCPE) with ErgoPrime Inc., in Ottawa, if it matters what’s beneath your feet. (Carmichael’s office has granite tiles.)

“Standing on a hard surface such as tile or concrete can increase fatigue and discomfort,” she says. “A more cushioned surface such as carpet will help increase comfort and standing tolerance.” And she adds, “If your feet need arch-support to be comfortable while standing, then wear supportive footwear.”

Move it or lose it

Not everyone is convinced that standing up is a good idea. Alan Hedge, an ergonomics scholar at Cornell University is quoted in the Washington Post as saying that standing at work for eight to 10 hours is "one of the stupidest things one would ever want to do. This is the high-heels of the furniture industry."

Hedge’s concerns are that standing too much at work will cause more long-term back injuries similar to what factory employees, fast-food workers, nurses, and surgeons experience. (And, I suspect, rockstars.) And more women will suffer varicose veins. Plus your heart has to pump harder to circulate blood.

Clearly, life as an office potato isn’t healthy. So how about movement in moderation? And variety? Cornell University’s Department of Design and Environmental Analysis has an exceptional ergonomic resource site. Its researchers recommend that you sit when working on the computer but, every 20 minutes or so, stand up for two minutes and move. You don’t have to do jumping jacks; the important thing is to change your posture. Go to the water fountain, the printer, walk around the building and get the blood flowing through your muscles.

After that, what are you waiting for? Get back to work.

Amber Nasrulla is an ex-pat Canadian writer based in L.A. who specializes in profiles from business leaders and scientists to Hollywood celebrities.” Her work has appeared in North American and British publications including L.A. Times, The Globe and Mail, Los Angeles Magazine, ELLE Canada, Chatelaine and London Weekly Times.

What ergonomic changes have you made / are thinking of making to increase your productivity & reduce your aches and pains at work? Share here via comment.

During the age of enlightenment in the 17^th century, writers and artists, nobles and bourgeois mingled in Parisian salons to exchange ideas, read poetry and discuss politics. Two hundred years on, the Beat generation was born. In the 1950s, a group of post-WWII writers from New York City ended up in San Francisco where they proceeded celebrate spontaneous creativity and non-conformity (and ok, experiment with various ‘substances.’) What the French artists and American writers had in common was a super-charged community for brainstorming. Collectively their ideas changed the society around them.

Fast forward to 2011. We live in the age of the multinational corporations and virtual offices, where opportunities for face-to-face interactions is diminishing. Without the benefit of multiple voices and the clatter and din of conversation and debate, is it possible to come up with great ideas?

Yes, says bestselling author Steven Johnson, you can make a difference. In this intriguing presentation, “Where Good Ideas Come From,” Johnson explains that chance favours the connected mind. He says that if you have a hunch, your hunch needs to collide with other hunches to become a great idea, which can then be put into action.

Hunch or no hunch, if you’re anything like me, public brainstorming makes you nervous. I’m reluctant to speak up and offer up suggestions that could be publicly (or privately) criticized. I’d rather write my awesome ideas down and email them to the team leader. I also dislike it when a type-A person in our group hijacks the conversation and doesn’t let any of the shyer people – on occasion the most articulate and intelligent – in the group get a word in.

If you’re part of a team that is scattered across provinces, states, various time zones or an ocean or two, here are my suggestions for generating ideas during virtual brainstorming sessions:

1. Obviously use as many tools available to you - web conferencing, webinars with something like GoToMeeting. There’s Mindjet, software that allows workers to brainstorm, plan and implements projects as well as Mindomo.

2. Designate a facilitator to keep everyone focused.

3. Encourage wild ideas, there should be no ‘wrong’ ideas at phase one; the more the merrier.

4. Have a point person write the ideas down so the team can see them online as you go proceed. Don’t forget, you want your hunches to bump into other hunches and build into a terrific idea. Or several ideas.

5. Take breaks. A burnt-out team won’t be any use even if everyone is fueled by coffee.

Since I never know when I’ll get an idea, I keep notepads all over my house and one in my car. I also carry a digital recorder and there’s a voice recorder on my Smartphone, so if I get an idea while I’m driving or stuck L.A. traffic I can just start riffing. At home when I’m blocked for ideas, I go for a run in the hills, take a swim, or a long, hot shower.

I admit sitting in your virtual office waiting for a webinar to begin isn’t as romantic as, say, lounging in a salon in Paris. But with preparation, brainstorming a virtual room can be dynamic, fulfilling, and productive.

How does brainstorming work where you are? Share tips for productive brainstorming by leaving a comment here, I'd love to hear them.

Amber Nasrulla is an ex-pat Canadian writer based in L.A. who specializes in profiles from business leaders and scientists to Hollywood celebrities.” Her work has appeared in North American and British publications including L.A. Times, The Globe and Mail, Los Angeles Magazine, ELLE Canada, Chatelaine and London Weekly Times.

Today we join Michael Murphy, Vice President and General Manager of Symantec (Canada) for the conclusion of our 15 Minutes conversation.

4.            If you could invent a technology to solve a current business problem of yours, what is the problem and what would the technology do?

A lot of threats today are to information data because that’s where that the lifeblood of humankind is now. The biggest challenge customers have today that isn’t easily solvable – although there is work being done on it – is context. Being able to assess and analyze the context and relevance of information we are creating today. There’s obviously an explosion of information, a lot of unstructured data that we create at social networks, or volumes of data at home at work, digital media, photos…and we share all that. That data doesn’t sit in databases in a structured form. Very little categorization is applied to it. As humans our brains can easily classify information based on its sensitivity or its risk i.e. this is important and is something I might not want to share with my family or with my neighbours or with colleagues. In the business world, there are context engines that we have. Data-loss prevention technology does its best to looks at words or words in sentences, to be able to suggest that this information needs to be treated differently, but because we haven’t advanced very far on artificial intelligence in being able to make computers do what the human brain and experience and rational thought can do, that’s a piece of technology that could go a long way.

5.            In your position, are you aware of – or even an early adopter of – technology that has yet to come to mass market, but that you believe will surface eventually and change lives?

There are filtering engines that exist in software that prevent bad things from coming in to networks or households and there’s filtering capabilities that prevent certain data from going out. But they’re not foolproof because they have a hard time keeping up with the context. I have three young children and they spend loads of times on the Internet and I have concerns. You take the physical world, the world of the playground and the community street and we’re good at street-proofing our kids, but how do we street-proof them on the Internet? You can spend a lot of time talking to your kids, saying don’t talk to strangers [or] if somebody approaches you or gives you something because in the physical world they can touch, they can see, they can experience. In the electronic world it’s a little harder. It’s anonymous. How do you know the 10-year-old on the other end isn’t a 40-year-old?

6.            So technology is created to be more insightful?

Yes, and it’s an incremental milestone of achievement. I’ve seen that. I’m talking about defensive technologies that prevent less social engineering of individuals, whether it be older people getting swindled out of their retirement funds or whether it be people being duped for identity theft or children being bullied in the playground or even younger children being exploited by online predators. It runs the gamut from the young to the very old. They’re no different than the physical world scams of yesterday, they’re just anonymous now and remote because of the Internet.

7.            We've seen an incredible wave of innovation over the past 20 years. How do you define innovation and its current role in the business world?

Fostering an interest in developing new things, new ways, new processes that move the needle on our progression as a society. You always need that forward momentum. Innovation has to be the fuel by which a business grows.

8.            What do you both envision being added over time (2-5 years) to your core products or services that will expand its market potential?

The next generation of reputation-based security technologies; the next generation of adding the contextual and relevance part; and the cloud is talked about a lot today. The cloud is a new paradigm in offering the services that are currently available today but providing them in a new delivery or form factor…and that form factor is outsides of your network. It’s just a new service delivery mechanism or model.

9.            What techniques do you employ to foster a culture of innovation in your workplace?

The ideas don’t all come from inside Symantec. We have such a wide and varied customer base including single individuals at home to the largest corporation and governments. Customers aren’t shy about sharing their opinions, both when things are good and when things aren’t working so fine. They talk about what they’d like to see, like what companies they think Symantec should acquire.  So, some innovation comes from acquisition strategy. Often the company is smaller and they don’t have the scale, the reach and the financial capability to take their technology to the next  level. They need the investment, the maturity of a Symantec to grow that company. The acquisitions have been between 5 and 7 a year.

10.          Social media has grown exponentially in a very short space of time yet business owners are unsure how to optimize social media. To what extent has your company invested resources in social media as a communications tool, or are you waiting for a more robust success model?

Syamantec is very active on Facebook and Twitter. We have active discussion groups and it’s not just for marketing. We use some of those mediums to provide support for our customers; things that we’re working on or maybe issues with a particular technology that are widespread. On some of the Symantec Connect blogs you can dialogue with our support and research teams and it’s become a communications vehicle. So we have blogs and newsgroups and forums. And our partners also contribute. It falls across the gamut of public relations, to support of marketing. It’s a good way to get feedback that would not otherwise come to us unless it was face to face.

11.          What book are you reading for business?

Getting Naked: A Business Fable About Shedding the Three Fears That Sabotage Client Loyalty written by Patrick Lencioni.

12.          Based on what you learned in 2010, what will you do differently in 2011? Based on what you learned in 2010, what will you do differently in 2011? What are your goals for business this year?

Sounds like a coaching question! There are some refinement that needs to occur but it’s more of the same which is focusing more on our customers, reaching more customers, which is getting more scale and reach, whether it’s directly or through our partner ecosystem. It’s helping customers with the new challenges that they are facing. Listening to their new challenges, understanding their new challenges and helping them with new technologies. We have great customers but they have one or two of our technologies versus ten of our technologies.

This year we have some focus areas: Virtualization and cloud seem to go hand-in-glove with customers looking for scale, economy and megatrends. The third one is mobility. The amount of devices that are coming to the market, the sheer number the form factor and the capability of those devices is astonishing. It will continue thru 2011 but all of those devices are irrelevant - what is an Android? An Apple? A Nokia? It doesn’t matter. The device is somewhat disposable. But people are using them for the same thing - it’s access to information and to share information and their identities and to transact and interact. I mentioned context development and relevance and that’s the other piece around information protection - and how do you secure backup and retrieve that information, so …we’re talking about encryption and back-up and archiving for identity management protection. User authentication. How do you prove who you are during a transaction? I don’t even know if I’m talking to Amber! And you don’t know if you’re talking to Michael or if I sent someone else to do this interview today. We haven’t really established that capability of trust to prove we’re who we say we are. The last one is around device security. The devices are somewhat disposable and they do get lost at great frequency. How do I make sure that the information on the device is not put to bad use… or isn’t easily removed or erased?

About Symantec

Symantec is a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions to help consumers and organizations secure and manage their information-driven world. Symantec’s well-known Norton products protect consumers from cybercrime with technologies like anti-virus, anti-spyware, and phishing protection. The company helps enterprise organizations with endpoint security, messaging security, web security, data protection, identity authentication, and security management solutions. www.symantec.com

What are your best tips for staying current with technology requirements for your business? Do you rely solely on IT as your source of information?

It’s a scary headline: “Can Telecommuting put the brakes on a career?” This intriguing article from futurity.org reports that, “being present at the workplace gives an employee an important edge.” I’d be fibbing if I said the findings don’t make me anxious since I’m a long-time virtual employee.

The article discusses the results of a University of California, Davis study published in the journal Human Relations, which examined how passive ‘face time’ – namely when you are observed by your employer but don’t actually interact with them – affects how you are perceived at work.

According to the study, managers and bosses who see an employee in the office tend to see that person as dependable and reliable. (Researchers say managers don’t do it deliberately but the evaluation is an unconscious one.) If seen outside of office hours –dinner with clients – the employee is considered committed and dedicated.

If, like me, you’re a flex-based worker, maybe you overcompensate for the physical distance from the office, by staying cemented to your chair and computer. Perhaps you respond to emails with lightning speed day and night. You consistently toil for the company long after business hours. You’re showing your commitment and dedication from afar because you can’t show it up close. Commendable, but you can’t keep it up forever because you’ll burn out.

I’ve some ideas to demonstrate your strengths to your manager and to remind employers why they hired you in the first place:

a) Document your tangible accomplishments and wins. Share them with the boss electronically as well as verbally when you’re reviewing your funnel on the weekly call. Consider doing so occasionally with the team. (Or your boss can.) You deserve recognition because you volunteered for a job no one else would touch and spent the long weekend crafting a complex marketing strategy or PR campaign or crunching thousands of numbers.

b) Don’t be afraid to be your own cheerleader. Some employees are quietly tenacious and plug away at their jobs hoping their benevolent leader will shine the spotlight on them. I am telling you now that is unlikely to happen. Few people have a patron saint. Certainly not in a virtual environment.

c) Take a 15-minute walk in the afternoon to, quite literally, clear your head, and stretch your muscles. Trust me the business won’t crumble in your absence. (More on flex work and brain exercises in another post.)

d) Spend time with people whenever possible. A friend who works for a Fortune 100 company was having issues with the manager’s assistant, in another division. Although the two teams were collaborating on a project, the assistant couldn’t transmit sales reports, studies or documents on time, and left my friend scrambling during presentations.

Here’s what she did: She arranged a client meeting in the assistant's hometown (five-hour drive to the next state). On her own dime, she drove there, met with the clients, and then went to meet the assistant. When they were able to discuss matters over coffee, my friend learned that the assistant was anxious about losing his job. She helped the assistant prioritize projects and now they work well together.

I can't say if the face-to-face meeting with the assistant will affect how my gal pal's boss perceives her; but I still feel it’s important to get face time with managers and colleagues when you can. You get better results at work when you build solid relationships. You don’t want to be the poster child of the adage 'out of sight, out of mind.' You want to jump into the virtual driver’s seat and win the telecommuting race.

What do you do to stay connected to your boss and colleagues when you're teleworking? I love to hear your tips. Leave a comment here and I'll get back to you...

Amber Nasrulla is an ex-pat Canadian writer based in L.A. who specializes in profiles from business leaders and scientists to Hollywood celebrities.” Her work has appeared in North American and British publications including L.A. Times, The Globe and Mail, Los Angeles Magazine, ELLE Canada, Chatelaine and London Weekly Times.