Today would have been my Dad’s 67th birthday; I think I learned a good chunk about business from him.
Missing my Dad, Tom, lots lately; he left this earth on June 1, 2009. He was – fittingly – born on March First: he had leadership qualities and was one of the guys you wanted on your team.
He never took the time to write a book – but what I learned about business from him would take up more than a few cocktail napkins. Here are a few highlights.
1. Don’t be afraid to reinvent yourself.
It was bound to happen: Northern Indiana’s economy was not doing so well, and the factory that had been the family’s lifeblood decides it want to relocate to Georgia. Not being much of a Dawg, not wanting to uproot everyone with three kids in high school, Dad did what everyone should do at least once in their life.
He reinvented himself.
Always Smiling
Turns out, as is the case, “Quality Control Director” was not as fitting for him as the new life he invented: “Real Estate Agent.”
You may want to (if that industry you picked in college isn’t what it’s cracked up to be in the real world), you may have to (in walks the boss, pink slip in tow). But, at some time in your life, you NEED to. Reinvent. Yourself.
2. Play to your strengths.
We joked that Dad grew up on 7th Street, got married and moved to 8th Street, then, when the kids were grown up, moved to 13th Street.
This was true: the Belgian-American enclave of the West End of Mishawaka, Indiana was his home and, even when he and Mom moved for the last few years to a street without a number, he was still in the same 2 mile radius for his entire 65 years.
Hey, guess where he sold the bulk of his houses as a real estate agent?
Dad would do one deal a year that was outside of his normal zone, but his business was pretty much The Guy on The West End.
While he reinvented himself rather easily, he sure didn’t reinvent himself as something he wasn’t.
3. Show up.
Wish I had a dollar for every time Dad called me from a boring open house. Of course, he would never say that out loud; it was always something like “well, we’re waiting for the crowd to show up.”
He couldn’t just hang up a shingle and expect the business to start coming to him – he had to actually put in the work. That meant a lot of events – not just open houses but rubber chicken dinners and local sporting events – that were probably not ideal places to spend your time then…
But those events paid dividends down the road.
4. Give.
There’s something that is important to you. A charity. An organization. Your church. A club. A cause.
It doesn’t have to be financial – heck, Dad wasn’t rolling in dough – but he sure did give of his time.
I still remember him getting the frequent donor club card from the Blood Bank. As a kid, I thought it was nuts – I mean, who in their right mind would let you take their blood?
It’s not about “my cause is better than your cause.” He found the causes that were important to him. And he gave.
5. Please have fun.
I am 100% certain that my Dad did not take himself all that seriously.
I’m guessing, if Dad were around today, he’d probably chide all the “Social Media Gurus” for being “Guru” first, “Media” second. And “Social” third.
Dad would talk to anyone, and listen to anyone. And drink a beer with anyone.
His last birthday, March 1, 2009, found him at the casino, having gotten his faculties back and being good to go after his first stroke. He had a nice payday at some exotic sounding game – Mississippi Stud or some such – and was thrilled to tell me all about it.
I’m sure my Dad picked up quite a few lessons in business, and life, from his Dad.
So I always wondered, not totally “getting it,” why my Dad made a big deal out of his own father’s birthday, years after his father had passed away.
I get it now.
Notes: since it was a stroke that marked the beginning of Dad’s last days, consider this an invitation to understand the warning signs of a stroke:
Directly from the American Heart Association’s web page, be on the lookout for these signs:
Sudden numbness or weakness of the face, arm, or leg, especially on one side of the body
Sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding
Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes
Sudden trouble walking, dizziness, or loss of balance or coordination
Sudden, severe headache with no known cause
If any of these things are happening, don’t mess around: Call 9-1-1.
Here’s a link to the American Heart Association’s web page. You can learn all sorts of things there and, even though February 28 was the last day of “Heart Month,” well, you can learn tons there. Please do.
On one side of The Free Line is information that you get for free. On the other side, information you pay for. Pretty simple.
Information marketers such as the uber-successful Eben Pagan like to talk about “Moving The Free Line.” Instead of giving away a nickel’s worth of information, give away hundreds of dollars worth of information. Then, the theory goes, you can sell thousands of dollars worth of information. (Or, if you’re Pagan, tens of millions of dollars of information.)
But there are a couple of rockstar types – actual rockstars in this new digital world, not just guys or gals who say they are rockstars – with, arguably, completely different approaches to The Free Line.
Chris Brogan. Most things he touches turn to gold – he wrote a best seller called Trust Agents, and he’s constantly out there speaking and meeting with people. (Gee, he even has a Small Business Newsletter.) (And he gave us one of the more popular posts from the Area 224 blog last year; an interview you can read here.)
A Brogan Approach to The Free Line – a $9.97 a month blog advisory service. Which is interesting because, as someone who has been out there in the blogosphere since before it was called that (1998, according to his site), there is a TON of information out there from Chris, about blogging, that you can get for free.
Here, The Free Line is moved way into the expensive category, and the “Pay Line” is at under $10 a month. So the value here is not just in the how-to you’ll get from the newsletter, but in the fact that Chris Brogan is aggregating his own information, sharing with you the good stuff in regular intervals, and using the service to help “coach” you along.
So, when we learned that Ferriss was coming out with a new book called “The 4-Hour Body,” we pre-ordered it. So, apparently, did about a zillion other people, as the book is now number 4 on the Amazon best-seller list.
A Ferriss Approach to The Free Line – One concept in his newest book is called “The Slow Carb Diet.” Given my own age and newfound need for middle management, I am diving in with both feet and giving this diet a whirl.
Now, Ferriss has always been a proponent of “the companion site” – where anyone with a copy of the book can login and get so much more information than is found in the book. Worksheets, tools, links, those sorts of things. NOTE: “anyone with a copy of the book” meant, in the case of The 4-Hour Workweek, a password would be something like “the fifth word in the third chapter.” If you can’t find that somewhere, you probably don’t deserve all of the “free” content.
What intrigues this cub reporter about The Free Line for The 4-Hour Body is the Slow Carb Cookbook. Cookbooks are a unique animal – and another one that has changed because of the onset of the Internet. This one, available via instant, free, PDF download, is one that could be dressed up in hardcover and sold in stores for $20.
What he’s giving you is less of a cookbook and more of The Manifesto to the Slow Carb Movement.
Your Own Free Line
Where do you draw the line? How much do you give away? How much is free?
Maybe you’ve got a $30 E-Book, but you need to explain to the world that you can deliver on $3000 worth of content first.
Maybe you’re a high-priced consultant and you charge hundreds an hour – but you need to demonstrate that you are indeed worth that much.
In any event, don’t be afraid to draw The Free Line – and figure out when to move it, what to hold back, and how much to charge for your expertise.
Thanks, hucksters. (Image: The Mysterious Marketer)
Snowtorious BIG will pass away, but Social Media Hucksters…
Half my time here at Area 224 HQ is spent planning, strategizing, executing. (Writing is part of that mix. Creating, too.) The other half – yes, that much! – is spent on the web: interacting, surfing, “engaging” – learning.
It’s the learning – since I don’t have all the answers – the LEARNING that is the most valuable.
Part of this learning takes me to the far corners of the Internet. The outer reaches of craptastic marketing, of poorly planned and even worse-executed Social Media Hucksterism.
For every good guy – like Jim Alexander, whose path I first crossed two years ago, while discussing the spambots who tried to sell us all Multi-level Marketing schemes – there seem to be literally hundreds of, well, not-so-good guys. (And not-so-good gals, either.)
And Guess What? The not-so-good guys are the ones who will sell you tactics, disguised as strategy, not fulfilling any business objectives whatsoever.
Wanna know something else about the not-so-good guys? They will gladly take your money. AND they will buy your business – they’d rather undercut everyone out there and use the pre-wrapped Social Media In A Box solution to shoehorn into your business needs. If they ever ASK about your business needs.
One of the far corners of the Internet gave me this quote – pulled from the comments on a legitimate site’s post about monitoring your social media presence:
“There’s been a lot of buzz surrounding social media in the past decade. Social media marketing can be a powerful tool if used correctly. It can contribute to Search Engine Optimization and it can be used to keep a relationship with existing clients.”
What. The. Facebook?
Time to go viral on their @$$es.
Is there any wonder that Ad people think Social Media Gurus are a bunch of slick know-nothings? And that PR people think Social Media Ninjas are full of crap? And Social Media Rockstars – don’t get us started on them…
The point? Be Careful Out There.
Don’t fall into the trap. We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again:
Going Social Without Business Objectives is a Recipe for Disaster.
I’ll leave the advice on “finding a publisher” to the others. I’d rather share a one-two-three punch – some things you can do like, right now.
1. Lulu. Big-Time Advantage – Getting an actual copy of your stuff. For some people, tangible is great – hold it in your hands, dog-ear the pages. Some people like to read on a bus or a train.
For me, getting an actual copy of my stuff was done for THIS REASON:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dfd_8Gp-kgo
Tangible Proof of Expertise. Positioning.
Not done for the sales numbers – checks are nice to cash, but that’s not the real reason for writing this particular book. This one was all about a means to position me in front of more real estate industry clients as someone who knows what I’m talking about.
2. Kindle.Big-Time Advantage – Selling Your Content Lickety-Split. I hang out from time to time in Internet Marketing circles – but not with the Social Media Tools but with people who share information that can actually help me do my job better. One such guy is a James J. Jones, and his techniques for putting together content that can be sold on the Kindle Platform are rather cool.
I’m not gonna talk about his techniques, though. Instead, I’ll share this bit of advice:
If you have written a book, or have even written a few chapters of a book, get it on the Kindle Platform NOW.
How easy is it? I sat in on a one-hour webinar from Mr. Jones and multi-tasked. While he was sharing his grand strategy, I was signing up to publish my book.
3. Nichification.Big-Time Advantage – There’s a niche you’re already in. Still a big fan of the term “Nichification.” Still eventually going to write a book on that very topic – Jim Alexander and I are still talking to people about it, doing interviews, blah blah blah.
But, while we went down the path of “write a mass market advice book on niche business marketing,” I would encourage you to take a look at “writing a niche-focused book on a niche topic that you know something about.”
It’s a big world out there – 400,000 Kindle titles published last year alone. And, if you’ve read the classic “The Long Tail,” you’ll know full well that there’s an audience for just about anything.
F’rinstance…real estate social media marketing.
Publishers – the types who want the next The 4-Hour Workweek – will need to see Social Proof these days. If you’re a Scott Stratten or an Amber Naslund and Jay Baer, your social proof is already evident in the last few years of, well, being you.
Your Social Proof can be – and, in this world, should be – seen in the fact that you can put your thoughts to digital paper, and put that digital paper into people’s hands. You don’t have to sell a million. Or even a thousand.
Do you have a publisher? No? Doesn’t matter – best way to prove your mettle as a writer is to actually get out there and write something. And use the three tactics above to, well, change your title from “writer” to “Author.”
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