“If you’ve read about social media or been to any marketing conferences, you’ve probably heard tons of advice like love your customers, engage in the conversation, be yourself, and make friends. I call this unicorns-and-rainbows advice. Take a couple of time-honored adages, add in the unquestioning awe of an unaware audience, and pretty soon you’ve got an entire industry based on easy-to-agree-with but unsubstantiated ideas. But there’s a problem. Myths aren’t real and superstitions often do more harm than good.”
-Dan Zarrella, Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness

So many people think “if I just get a Twitter account and Facebook Fan Page I can grow my business.”

Really? I hope you have a prescription for whatever it is you’re smoking.

The irony is most people are neither sociable or knowledgeable when it comes to marketing but somehow two wrongs make a right when it comes to Twotting and Facetubing and Youbooking.

(There are also no unicorns. There is no pot of gold or little Irishmen at the end of rainbows. Mermaids are only in the movies. There is no prince in Uganda that wants to share $10,000,000 with you just for helping him cash a check.)

If you want to grow you need to focus on the message, not the medium.

You need to focus on the “Who” and then it will become much easier to focus on the message.

You can’t sell to or service everyone. Choose who to lose and shout it from the top of a mountain.

There is power in stating what you are not, what you won’t stand for, what you leave out, thus “gluten-free,” “Zero Calories” and Dan Kennedy’s “No B.S.” series of business growth advice.

Ask yourself this question: How persuasive, powerful, influential and interesting am I?

If the answer is somewhere between “not very” and “kind of” you’re just spinning your wheels and self-medicating as you goof off (that’s what you’re really doing) on your social media accounts.

Until you get a backbone of steel and tell the world what you stand for and what you don’t stand for and deliver this powerful message in a powerful manner you’d be better off waiting for Santa Claus to bring you that golden list of willing and able buyers. At least you wouldn’t get sucked into worthless debates on Facebook about whether or not global warming is caused by humans (it’s not), who has the best conference in NCAA football (the SEC) or whether the all-loving government can save the economy with more taxes (are you stupid or what?).

To really grow you need to work hard, do the right things and have the right tools to attract, capture, nurture, convert, deliver & satisfy, upsell and get referrals from leads and clients. My secret weapon is InfusionSoft. What’s yours?

What My Mother Taught Me

1. My mother taught me RELIGION.
   “You’d better pray that will come out of the carpet.”
2. My mother taught me TIME TRAVEL.
   “If you don’t straighten up, I’m going to knock you into the middle of next week!”
3. My mother taught me FORESIGHT.
   “Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you’re in an accident.”
4. My mother taught me IRONY.
   “Keep crying, and I’ll give you something to cry about.”
5. My mother taught me about CONTORTIONISM.
   “Will you look at that dirt on the back of your neck!”
6. My mother taught me about WEATHER.
   “This room of yours looks as if a tornado went through it.”
7. My mother taught me about ENVY.
   “There are millions of less fortunate children in this world who don’t have wonderful parents like you do.”
8. My mother taught me about ANTICIPATION.
   “Just wait until we get home.”
9. My mother taught me about RECEIVING.
   “You are going to get it when you get home!”
10. My mother taught me HUMOUR.
    “When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don’t come running to me.”
11. My mother taught me WISDOM.
    “When you get to be my age, you’ll understand.”
12. My mother taught me about JUSTICE.
    “One day you’ll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you.”

I love you, Mom!

“I don’t feel like prospecting right now. I’ll go check out LinkedIn and network there for an hour or two until I get that tingling feeling for the phone.”

“I’ll finish my marketing campaign later. I’m just not feeling it right now. I’ll go sort through some Tweets for an hour or two and get inspired.”

“Things are just hard right now. I’ll work on building my business later. I have to get my taxes done anyway.”

“I’m not alone in feeling this way, you know? Don’t think I’m wimping out. I’ll get my head back in the game next week. I’m sure things will work out fine. I have a little cold. I think I’ll take a nap.”

There’s a reason martial artists deliver a battle cry / yell (Kiai or Kiyop) when they deliver a blow. There’s a reason you don’t mess with the Texas Aggies 12th Man. There’s a reason LSU fans and players go nuts when they hear this song (wait for the horns to kick in at the 18 second point.)

Actions create feelings. If you don’t feel like prospecting or marketing or writing or doing whatever is necessary to build your business do these four things:

1. Shut up and do it anyway. Babies need their diapers changed. Clogged toilets must be unclogged. The Sun must revolve around the Earth (at least according to 20% of stupid Americans that I hope don’t work for you). Businesses in a capitalistic economy must advertise, market, prospect, promote themselves and close sales to grow. (See “How Well Do You Do What You Do When You Don’t Feel Like Doing What You Do?“)
2. Once you did what you needed to do analyze why you don’t like doing whatever it is that’s holding you back.
   1. Are you lacking the skills to do it?
      1. Can the skills be learned in a timely manner?
      2. Can you affordably and effectively outsource it? Whatever you suck at should be outsourced every time, all the time.
   2. Are you lacking the energy to do it?
      1. What is your pre-work routine?
         1. Do you allocate enough time to do what needs to be done?
         2. Have you given enough thought and focus to what needs to be done? (Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance)
         3. Do you have the right tools to do what needs to be done?
      2. What is your daily / lifestyle routine?
         1. Do you sleep enough or do you stay up late watching movies and 90210 reruns and playing video games?
         2. Do you eat right or do you still think Doritos and Oreos with light beer is a complete meal?
         3. Do you exercise 3-5 times per week or have you let yourself go with the excuse “I’m not in bad shape for a 30 / 40 / 50 / 60 year old”? (My second favorite is “I’m not out of shape. Round is a shape.”
      3. Are you following your life’s purpose?
         1. If not then you’ll be faced with these challenges forever.
         2. Figure out how to do what you love or at least enjoy, even if it means you’re making less money.
3. Develop a plan to outsource that which you truly hate and suck at.
4. Implement a plan to create a business, not a service.
   1. When you own and run a “service” you have to be there all the time to do it. Doctors, dentists, attorneys, CPAs all provide a service and while most are paid well to provide that service they must still be there doing what it is they do to keep the money rolling in.
   2. When you own and run a business you can implement processes and systems that run for you day and night to free you up to do what you want to do. Check out “The Edge of Success” for some inspiration on getting this done.

Now that you’ve read this post what will you get done in the next hour? Today? This week? Start small. But start. Just like going to the gym or eating better, you’re always glad you did it after you got it done.

Make your list and attack that which you hate the most first, even if you don’t feel like it. Like Zig Ziglar says, “If you gotta eat a frog, there ain’t no use staring at it.”

This is a quote from Alan’s book on page 93, “…growth is a function of growth, not reduction. You cannot cut your way to success.”

While I’m all for living within your means and eliminating debt I am NOT all for scrimping on things you need to grow your business. We all have fundamental tools for keeping up with and surpassing our competition.

What are you doing now to grow? Where are you spending your time, attention and money? Did you hit your goals this year? Will you hit them next year if you keep spending your time, attention and money the same way?

It’s time to get busy growing. Let the losers cut themselves down to nothing.

You have two choices in business and in life:

1. Watch and scream and hope for the best.
2. Compete and run the risk of getting bloodied along the way to making your own destiny.

A hard rain is upon us. Our nation is under attack. Families are under attack. Businesses are under attack.

In light of this I’m amazed at:

1. How much energy people put into watching sports.
2. How much money people put into watching sports.
3. How little energy people put into learning their faith.
4. How little money people put into supporting their faith.
5. How little energy people put into improving their job skills.
6. How little money people put into improving their job skills.

If everyone that painted themselves blue and green and purple and gold and screamed and yelled and tailgated and road-tripped for hours and days at a time on a weekly and even daily basis put just 15.7% of that energy and money into their faith and their jobs and their personal development how much stronger would our nation be?

The hard rain will continue. What holes in your roof have these rains exposed? How will you respond to those holes?

1. Watch and scream and hope for the best?
2. Compete and run the risk of getting bloodied along the way to making your own destiny?

Noah survived the rains just fine by learning a new skill and and applying a lot of focused effort ahead of the storm.

Wanna know who’s professional sales training material I’m studying now to ensure I’m prepared to take advantage of this storm?

What makes people like you? You getting them to think and believer that you possess the utmost of good judgment to be thoroughly interested in them.

How do you do that? By asking good questions. Thought-provoking questions. Questions that they want to answer. Questions they can answer. Questions they enjoy answering. Questions that allow them to pontificate and show just how smart they are.

Some of my all time favorites include:

• The Warm Up
  • How long have you been in your line of work?
  • How did you get started?
  • What do you like most about your line of work?
• The Intermediate
  • Why do people choose to do business with you and/or your company?
  • What would you do with your business if you knew you could not fail?
  • What tips / advice / recommendations would you give someone just starting in your field / industry / business?
  • How has your field / industry / profession changed over the years?
  • What’s in store for your field / industry / profession in the coming years?
  • What’s the strangest or funniest thing you’ve encountered in your business?
• The Advanced
  • What are your most effective tools for promoting and growing your business?
  • When it comes to describing the way you do business, what one sentence would you like people to use?
  • How will I know if someone I know or run across is a good prospect for you?
• The Killer Ice Breaker Questions
  • “If you had to relocate to a foreign country where would you go to and why?”
  • “What is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done?”
  • “What is the worst / best business investment you’ve ever made?”
  • “Who do you think would be most receptive to hearing the story about your business, men or women?”
  • “Other than someone in your family who would you say is your biggest role model? biggest fan? biggest supporter?
  • “If you weren’t in your current profession what would you be doing?”
  • “Where were you born and raised and how do you think that has affected your outlook on life and business?”
  • “What’s your favorite movie and why?” (Journalists love “The Godfather”)
  • “Which competitor, client and partner do you like best and why?”

Master asking more and better questions (and then listening to the answers) and you’ll be the life of the party, the richest household on the block, the big Kahuna, the…person everyone wants to be around.

On page 20 of the September 2010 issue of “Fast Company” they mention that September 12 is the date of this year’s “KaraokeFest” in Pomonoa, CA.

In the short article it is noted that annual sales of karaoke music and karaoke machines in the U.S. “have fallen a whopping 80% off their…peaks to just $40 million.”

This is where the inspiration for this post enters the picture. Rick Priddis, president of the-soon-to-be-defunct (in my opinion) Priddis Music inspires readers with this little gem,

“It’s gotten a lot worse because of the rise of the Internet. But we’re all just continuing on and hoping for the best.”

So let me get this straight: This dude, Priddis, says the Internet has hurt his business (it is 2010, right? The internet has been a viable business platform for at least 15 years and he’s been open since 1984.] and his solution is to HOPE FOR THE BEST?!!!

Are you kidding me? This guy has 25 years (actually 26 years. He hasn’t bothered to update his logo from a year ago) and his plan to get through these tough times is HOPE and he blames his tough times on THE INTERNET?

Sure, piracy has gotten worse over the years but if there are 100,000 people willing to come down to Pomona, a.k.a., the armpit of Southern California, and compete for trophies for karaoke singing then there are at least 10 times if not 100 times more people (that’s 1 million to 10 million for those of you from Pomona) willing to spend $1.46 per week for a new track for their machine.

Doing some back-of-the-napkin math shows that if just 1 million people download just one track at $1.46 per week then this is a $72.8 million a year industry just in music alone for a simple $75.92 per year hobby, not counting the machine.

So poor ol’ Rick’s response is to hope it gets better. Well, Rick’s hoping has paid off. Here is a brainstorming list of things that are streaming out of my brain as I sit here this Sunday afternoon pondering the business that could be Ricks if he’d stop hoping and start doing!

If business is down 80% I’m sure a heck of a lot of his competitors have gone out of business. How many did he contact and offer to buy their domain names / websites? If their domain names have expired he can just buy them on GoDaddy or any other big registrar.

What about buying the phone numbers of past competitors and having them forwarded to his office? (I use VOIPO.com and got my phone number for $99 for two years. That’s a good investment to buy your competitor’s phone number when they go out of business. It won’t take many sales to make back a $4.13 per month investment.)

What about buying the contact lists of former competitors? Offer them 10% of every sale for life.

What about making them affiliates of his when they go on to their new careers and paying them 10-50% of every sale they help generate through their affiliate links?

What about partnering with other business owners that serve the same market but don’t sell karaoke-related devices or music and having them become affiliates and they then cross-promote for one another?

What about offering free karaoke machines in return for a 2 year subscription to his music-of-the-month club? If this model works for printers and coffee machines why not karaoke?

What if this guy sold a hand full of machines each week, leveraged the internet to promote his music and machines world wide, maybe offered a membership / subscription program, kept his website up-to-date rather than posting events that are over a month in the past (not to mention his logo, which is a year out of date), offered tips and suggestions on how to throw a fun karaoke party for special occasions such as:

• kids birthdays
• retirement parties
• reunions (DUH!)
• sales meetings
• trade shows
• county fairs

Instead, he has a static Joomla website with broken links, no way to capture visitor information via some sort of free report and web form, poor SEO (search engine optimization), which is evident in his source code, which shows – I kid you not – 127 keywords with no commas separating them including neutral words such as “free,” “pdf” and “with.” Furthermore, the page Title and Description are terrible and neither mention his MONEY WORD, karaoke!!

No wonder this dude is relying on HOPE to carry him through these tough times.

This guy is a classic example of the danger of thinking small, looking backwards and focusing on the obstacles instead of the opportunities in the business world in general and in his particular industry specifically.

If you need to think bigger about your business, talk to Steve.

If you need to optimize your website and generate traffic, talk to Roger.

If you need to grow, take action. Motion beats meditation now and for always. Now stop reading and start doing.

I have a consulting client on my Private Monthly Consulting plan (he gets 30-minute private sessions with me weekly) who is getting cold feet after working with me just one month. A WHOLE WHOPPING MONTH!

He maxed out his credit card so his monthly payment didn’t go through and this is how he responded when I asked him what was going on.

Couple reasons,

1. Not sure I can become the sales person you are accustomed to being and/or consulting. I am a customer service/marketing person that does sales on the side. (What nonsensical, happy-talk bullsh*t this is!) I need a marketing program that will drive people to respond without me making telemarketing calls all day.
2. Wanted to make sure I’m not gong to get sucked into your web and have you lead me down a path to financial destruction by charging me for additional services once you’ve got me hooked into your little consulting scheme.  (You better smile when you say that!)

If we do anything, I need to spread the time out to two one hour sessions. I need first to structure a website for response to a mailer, and then structure the message/mailer/offer for maximum (first hour). This will have to be done in front of a computer to make sure I can make changes as we speak.

Secondly, I need a follow-up meeting to finalize it all before printing/sending/selling and bring some continuity to the whole program.

I need practical solutions, ideas and marketing help, not generalizations (no offense). I have a million ideas and messages in my head but deciding what will work within the parameters of the industry is my problem. No time or money to make mistakes.

If we can continue under these conditions, lets do it but I need you to work within my capabilities and what I can do right now. I have a pure sales guy to handle visits and telemarketing. May want to spend some time with him in an additional meeting to help him have some continuity.

Let me know what you think.

WARNING: DON’T EVER ASK ME WHAT I THINK IF YOU’RE NOT READY FOR THE BRUTAL TRUTH!

I consult with CPAs and architects and Realtors (both new and experienced), life coaches and IT owners and everyone in between.

We’re all in sales. A sale happens in every interaction in life. Either you sell the prospect on why they should work with you or they sell you on why they shouldn’t work with you.

“Marketing Programs” is a nebulous phrase. There is internet marketing, email marketing, telemarketing, direct mail, workshops, webinars, press releases, article marketing, podcasting, video blogging, and sky writing to name a few.

All take time. All take money. All take effort. All fit into a bigger picture that must work to elicit a specific call to action.

To jump down to your “practical solutions” vs. “generalizations” I would contend that I gave you specifics in the form of reaching out to existing clients for referrals. I gave you an exact script to follow. Even better it was free to do. You didn’t do it.

If you’d like to bring your sales guy to our sessions that’s fine. I have scripts he can follow and if he does he’ll help you set appointments.

You say you want to spend $250 on a video (with a local videographer)…and do what with it? Put it where? Drive traffic to it how? Measure it how? Capture leads how?

I know what will work in your industry because it works in all industries but I can only do so much for you (in the 30-minute sessions.)

What is your budget? What are you real goals? Two clients a month? A week?

You need to lay things out for me regarding where you want to go and how much you can spend and I’ll tell you how much I can help.

But this stopping payment on a credit card won’t cut it. My program is now more expensive online because it has been popular. If you want to stick with the (current) rate you need to make a commitment and at least let me know ahead of time when you want to cancel because the lower price is meant to reward those that stick with me to grow.

You can grow if you let me help you.

Understand one thing, my fair readers, and that is the marketplace is growing in its competitiveness and our prospects are getting harder to reach.

We’re all in sales and you better embrace it and get good at it and/or learn to automate your sales and marketing or get comfortable living in a smaller house and eating at Denny’s with a coupon vs. Houston’s with a cigar.

If you’d like to see my calendar and schedule a free call with me just follow this link and pick your time.

To listen to your little voice and secure a month of private training with me (and a bunch of valuable bonuses I don’t make public) follow this link and reserve your spot before I raise the price again or take it down completely as my calendar is filling up.

Good selling and Remember, Life is Good. It’s gooder when you’re selling.

Welcome to the Recommendation Age.

Since blog readers are, by definition, are on the computer – and we all spend more and more time in from of our computers – I figured I would let you take a peek at my computer screen to see some of the plugins I use on Firefox to help me be as productive as possible while online.

What brought this about is my discovery of LastPass, which is a Roboform replacement, which I needed to replace since it doesn’t work on my Mac.

For the last several years I’ve used the built-in password manager that comes with Firefox but it was a little lacking.

Lastpass stores all of the passwords from all of my computers and it will work on your Blackberry as well. (I’m still looking for an iPhone version.)

Lastpass lets me know when it has username and password information for me, which is a feature the other programs I tried didn’t do on a regular basis.

For all of you security worry warts here is a little disclosure: yes, Lastpass stores my passwords online. Yes things are probably not as secure as it could be when my information is floating through the cloud of the internet (but Lastpass obviously doesn’t seem to think that is the case), but call me rebel. I’m ok with my passwords in the cloud because I have peace of mind knowing I’ll always be able to get back into their site, no matter what.

Here are some of my other favorites:

• Delicious – because having my bookmarks online and secure and synchronized is the deal!!
• Faviconize – I’m embarrassed to tell you how many tabs I keep open. This little plugin helps me shrink those tabs and free up some real estate.
• LivePageRank – I’m the curious type and like to know the PageRank is for various sites, but I don’t need an entire Google toolbar eating up my toolbar to tell me.
• Session manager – AHHH! Don’t you HATE it when you accidentally lose the 27 tabs open in your browser? That won’t happen again.
• S3 Organizer – This makes putting stuff onto Amazon’s S3 super easy. It sits as a little icon on the bottom right of my Firefox browser. I just click on it and drag my files over. If you’re not familiar with Amazon S3 stay tuned to future posts.

Throw down some verbiage below to let me know what Firefox plugins you use/love/hate so we can all be more productive in 2010 and beyond.

How does your offer differ from the competition?

If your advertising and marketing is “safe” and “just like the competition,” how will your prospects know you are any better or offer any additional value?

If they can’t determine that by your promotional material then they’ll assume you’re the same and then fight you on price…and it’s a race to the bottom.

If you’re ready to race to the top with effective campaigns that generate results check this out then drop me a line.

Thomas L. Friedman describes today’s times as “The Great Recession meets the Great Inflection.” He rightly discusses how the times we are up against now are forcing companies to become lean, innovative and productive.

Anyone can become lean on their own. What are you doing to become innovative and productive? And are you sure you kept the right ones on the bus?

Give me call or shoot me an email here if you’d like a free consultation on how to leverage the opportunities present in today’s Recession-Inflection. Call before your competitors do.