Always Be

The line from “Glengarry Glen Ross” is “Always Be Closing.”

It’s an awesome movie. Alec Baldwin’s performance is amazing. Watch this clip, pulled from YouTube, if you haven’t seen it a million times before. (NSFW – that means “Not Suitable For Work.”)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-AXTx4PcKI

A wonderful spend of 7 minutes. Baldwin’s character spells out a couple acronyms in his NSFW diatribe, including AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action, part of the sales funnel that we think is dead) and the most famous, or infamous, ABC. Always. Be. Closing.

ABC should be replaced, though. As this very 80s clip from a very non-PC workplace will show you…this stuff doesn’t work anymore. Some alternative suggestions:

ABR. “Always Be Recruiting.”

Tech Entrepreneur and Venture Capitalist Mark Suster pulled out a can of awesome yesterday in his TechCrunch advice to startups. And that was his point: if you as an A-List Tech Exec are not out searching for more like-minded people at all times, your business will stagnate, you’ll be relegated to the B-List, and you’ll recruit C-List players.

We have seen this time and again – and not just in technology and startups, but in all types of businesses.

The “Turf Warriors” are, IMHO, the worst – their mission is to protect their own empire, and you can see it in the type of people they hire. You may have worked for one before, you may be working for one now. Most of the time, the people they hire are lacking gravitas, or might not have top-notch skills.

Don’t go there with your own business, your own department. If you’re not hiring somebody who is, to borrow Suster’s term, “punching above their weight class,” you need to take another look at your own hiring practices.

Always. Be. Recruiting.

ABL: “Always Be Launching.”

I have been accused of having ADHD – not because I’m all over the map, but because I seem to be working on the next thing all the time.

I don’t have ADHD – I’ve been checked out for that – but I do have an addiction (of sorts) to product launches.

This is borne out of two things. One is necessity – I need to make a living, and having something new to offer clients and prospects helps me do that. Two is constant improvement – I want to see people in my circle (clients, friends, associates, whomever) make more meaningful connections that improve their business.

As a result, I am always launching.

Your next question is “what about failure?”

The beauty of having multiple product lines, service lines, things to offer clients and prospects, is this: some of them will not work. Not all of them are for everyone. But being in constant launch mode leads to more (gasp) innovation – because this thing may not be what they need, but the next thing very well may be.

Always. Be. Launching.

ABY: “Always Be Yourself.”

I have seen some awesome things happen to online friends of late – things that could never happen to me. There’s Erika Napoletano, Redhead Writing, who will be penning for Entrepreneur Magazine. There’s Paige Worthy, whose “Hire Me” page led to a gig with YouSwoop.

These particular things could never happen to me – because, well, I’m not the kind of person who writes in Erika’s style, and my story and Paige’s story are pretty different.

But other things could happen to me. And to you.

You have a voice – read this awesome post from Danny Brown – and your mission is to find that voice. You could be like the woman who digs gaming so much that you do your own web show. (Not the famous one, but a different one. One that’s more, well, you.) You could be the guy whose food truck rocks, or the gal whose jewelry rocks or the rock band that actually does rock.

But you can’t get there if your aspiration is to be somebody else.

We just went through this exercise as part of our launch (natch) of 12 Minute Marketing. We revisited our own mission statement – which keeps evolving, but it’s pretty true to the “voice” that we’ve developed over the past six months of daily blogging, and over the past 4 years of being in business.

To provide training and consulting in new media, digital media and social media that helps business owners and managers to better connect with people and sell more stuff.

Which, I think, is pretty much what we are good at doing over here at HQ.

Always. Be. Yourself.