Thanks, life123.comIt has arrived. That wisdom that comes with a birthday that is divisible by 10.
What’s crazy is that I find myself ruminating on the past 10 years – thinking back to how turning 30 made me “legitimate,” and started a decade of, well, lots of stuff.
Is ruminating the right word?
Well, the very last thing I want anyone to do is be subjected to a load of crap on this site. So, instead, here are a few things I’ve picked up in the past decade:
Your significant other is likely definitely smarter than you.
Trust your gut.
If you have to choose between two or more opportunities: take the job (or gig or client engagement) that pays more money.
Some people will never get what they deserve. Get over it.
Often, the job that no one else wants is the job that provides the best opportunity for you.
Don’t be afraid of failure. (I ran a startup called U Sphere; it went under. People still ask me about it, want to know what I learned.)
Ideas are like water: the only way you’ll know if your idea is worth anything is to try to do something with it.
Remove toxic people from your life.
Working by yourself has its pluses and minuses. Consider both.
Don’t get hung up on what you name the product or service or business. Give it thought, sure, but there are more important things to worry about.
Avoid companies that are traded on the pink sheets.
Pick up the phone.
Don’t leave a voice mail message unless you absolutely have to.
Don’t read your own press clippings, if you have any.
When launching a business, think about sales cycle. If you call a prospect and they ask you to call back “next year at this time,” you are in the wrong business.
Put the Blackberry down when you’re eating dinner. (Kid #1 told me this in 2005. Stuck with me.)
The direct route is the best.
Being a Cubs fan is torture. Think long and hard before subscribing.
Being a Bengals fan means you don’t have to worry about watching the NFL playoffs.
A plus for someone in your circle does not necessarily mean a minus for someone else. Happiness is not a zero sum game.
If your business card is not a conversation piece, then you probably don’t need to hand it out.
Guys: on a two-button sportcoat, button the top button. On a three-button sportcoat, button the middle button.
If the boss asks you to lie, don’t do it. You may well lose your job, but you’ll be able to live with yourself.
If the other side in a negotiation won’t tell you who they are, who they are working for, or what they want with you, move on. It’s not a negotiation, anyway.
Adoption is just another way to build a family. Doesn’t make adoptive parents or kids any more or less special than anyone else. Just different.
Corporate America loves to say they’re “entrepreneurial.” However, at the end of the day, Corporate America hates hiring “entrepreneurs.”
Empathy is a nice trait.
So is politeness.
Belt and shoes should match.
You can wear an inexpensive suit – but if you add a pocket square, you’ll make it look much more expensive than it is.
Socks are an extension of the pant. Same color is best.
Your children may think someone else has a cooler job than you. That’s okay.
The best emails are sometimes the ones never sent. Ditto for tweets and Facebook posts.
Some people don’t want to have kids. Asking them why they don’t have kids is not cool.
Ditto people who are single.
The best way to build a business is to actually build a business.
Never turn down a chance to sit with a VC person, even if only for 10 minutes. And don’t waste their time: be succinct.
Life’s about way more than business. Maybe your passion is business, maybe it’s something else altogether.
Faith, Hope and Love are very important things.
The greatest of these, without a doubt, is love. (Yes, that’s Biblical.)
I’ve made connections, made friends, learned a ton, and am so very grateful for your time, your thoughts, your comments, and you just being you. All of you. You know who you are.
Pareto, while brilliant, forgot one important point.
If you’re familiar with the 80/20 rule – credited to Vilfredo Pareto, the 20th Century Italian economist – you’ve probably committed that line of thinking to memory. 80 percent of the money is made by 20 percent of the people. 20 percent of your clients will bring in 80 percent of your revenues.
And Larry’s a smart guy, so I won’t argue with the basic premise – and how it applies to social media marketing. There’s also something to be said for how it applies to Holistic Social Media, too.
But here’s the thing: just because one column is “80” – doesn’t mean the other column is “20.”
It’s not a requirement that the two columns add up to 100. In fact – they often don’t.
Think about a consulting firm that brings in 1 Million a year, and has 3 big clients and, let’s say, 22 small ones. And the 22 small clients are each tiny engagements – $1000 each. The rest of the revenue comes from the other 3.
Revenue: 1 Million. Revenue from 3 big clients: $978,000. Revenue Percentage: 97.8. Percentage of firm’s clients: 12%.
This is a classic “97.8/12” business. (That adds up to 109.8.)
And just because 12% of your business brings in 97.8% of your revenue – does that mean the other 2.2% should be abandoned?
What if the 2.2% serves as a proving ground for junior staff? What if the tiny revenue stream is also insanely profitable, high-margin work – perhaps something that can be replicated, scaled, sold again and again?
Something to think about…as you build your business.
Clarity around objectives can make your “social” time much more palatable. Seriously: if the boss knows why you need to do this – or if YOU are the boss and you know why you need to do this – you can better justify the hours spent blogging, tweeting or updating the world on Facebook.
So how DO you set objectives? And can those objectives be purely social?
Some thoughts from here…
1. Awareness – good place to start. But knowing where you want to increase awareness is an even better place to start. Local? Hyper-local? Industry-focused?
We’ve met folks who said, simply, where they are right now is “eyeball acquisition.” Some tweets on a regular schedule, a hundred Facebook “likes” so they have an audience to speak to. Actually, not a bad objective.
2. Measuring can be a soft science. The obsession to measure everything – the obsession with the word “metrics” – has taken a lot of the “social” out of social media.
We made a concerted effort beginning October 1 at Area 224 HQ to blog regularly. By regularly, we said “once a day during the week, give or take.” We missed a few days, we double-posted a couple other days. But the result was a traffic spike – but also an awareness spike. In that we got calls, we got emails, and the inbound marketing machine was, well, working.
3. You work for the boss. If you’re inside Corporate America somewhere, you need to find out who that boss is. You might be in corporate communications, but if it’s the CEO who gets to be the social face of the enterprise, then your objectives are gonna be different.
And you may have to have a heart-to-heart talk with your actual boss: executive positioning and industry thought leadership have just become your objectives as a team.
4. Being social can be an objective. Reconnecting with friends, old classmates, old colleagues – strengthening your actual social network – this is a great use of time. And you can be up front about it to the boss: “having a better LinkedIn network helps us showcase our organization’s expertise, and opens us all up to more business opportunities.”
Setting social objectives need not be totally stressful. Start small and ask the right questions.
Back some 20 years ago, I was returning from college for Thanksgiving weekend. Took a plane, and we left Syracuse bound for Cleveland, then Northern Indiana. The first half of the flight was fine. It’s that second half that was rocky – something about the weather conditions, flying over Lake Erie, and a choppy, choppy ride.
Then: a bolt of light and a nice, loud, explosion on the right side of the plane.
It wasn’t until maybe 10 minutes later when the pilot came on and said “this plane was hit by static discharge, but all planes can handle static discharge, so there’s nothing to worry about.”
It wasn’t until I landed about an hour later that I was finally able to get the real story:
The plane had been struck by lighting.
Lightning is scary stuff, it’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature, and all that…but this has stuck with me for years – a not-so-pleasant experience for us, but the pilot in charge had everything under control. And the system in place – the plane and its engineering marvels – handled the lightning strike as if it was another day at the office.
So, are you prepared?
Is your Marketing Plan capable of withstanding Static Discharge?
We’ve pointed back, again and again, to the value of the SWOT Analysis in any business planning. Strengths. Weaknesses. Opportunities.
THREATS.
Your business might not get struck by actual lightning tomorrow – but you could run into a bump in the road, positive, negative or just plain goofy.
The book is a standout – for a variety of reasons, but mostly because, with all of the “Social Media For Goofballs” books you can buy, here’s a book that doesn’t ram social down your throat.
Timely find, too: we had a Saturday morning chat with a client, and there we were, talking about things beyond social. Things addressed in the book, and things addressed in the “Canvas” the book helps you build.
