My son, Roger, will be turning 13 in about a month, and as he grows through adolescence and toward adulthood, I often wonder what I can do to help him down the path toward a career in which he is passionate and profitable.
Watching Robert Scoble’s interview with Daniel Brusilovsky, it inspires me to know that my son is very much a technogeek like this kid and could well be heading down the same road.
More than anything, I’d love to teach Roger how to be an entrepreneur… Working for others isn’t a terribly fulfilling way to spend one’s life… especially if you happen to have my blood flowing through you…
I participate in an online forum for internet marketers known as the “Warriors Forum”. It’s an interesting community comprised of all types of people who are at various levels of expertise in their endeavor to become a successful online marketer.
Today, one of the members posted a thread challenging the members to offer their best advice to other marketers in their efforts to succeed online. He also threw in a $500 kicker for the best one.
So I ponied up and offered my two cents worth of wisdom in hopes that it might have a positive impact on others.
Here it is…
My message is fairly simple, but is the most overlooked factor on discussions I read on this forum as well as the mailings and sales letters I read.
Develop a deep, visceral, intuitive understanding of your potential and current customers. Know and understand them as intimately as you do your own family.
Know and feel the deepest pain they feel in relation to whatever your specialty happens to be.
When you communicate with them, speak to that pain. Explore that pain. Empathize with that pain. Demonstrate it that you feel that pain every bit as deeply as they do.
And when you offer your solution, relate it to the pain. Show them how your solution will take that pain and make it disappear. Give them living, breathing examples of people who have taken you up on your offer and have seen that pain transformed into joy. And include yourself if you are one of those people.
But don’t come off like your some fast talking, slick salesman who only pretends to understand, but just wants to sell you their product and move on to the next sucker.
Be, as Frank Kern so aptly puts it, the “Reluctant Hero”.
Speak to them as their friend.
Speak with humility in your voice.
Speak with honesty and true empathy.
Speak in a self effacing manner.
Do so, and you build the trust and credibility to earn their business, not only now, but for the long term.
Do so consistently, and you earn the business of their friends, colleagues and acquaintances as well — not to mention THEIR friends, colleagues and acquaintances.
Through practicing this as your basis for doing business, you build long term prosperity. You earn self respect, as well as that of your family, your friends, and the market you serve.
It’s a positive way to market, and a great philosophy to live by.
It’s been about 9 months now that I’ve been plotting and scheming, planning and designing, modifying and revising and fine tuning the plan for the company for which I have a launch scheduled for September 4, 2007.
The company name has changed since the last time I brought up this issue, primarily because it includes the name of the company with whom I have developed a huge joint venture partnership in order to offer this new service, and we aren’t quite ready to reveal to the public what the nature of this offering will be.
But I’m ready to.
In fact, I’m chomping at the bit.
I can’t WAIT to get this started, but as one of my colleagues in this venture reminded me, you’ve got to wait til it’s READY, and yes, there are still a few things to do.
I’m real excited about the team I’ve assembled for this. Got a great webmaster handling all those pesky details that would drive me out of my mind and I would undoubtedly screw up. Got one of the top copywriters in the country preparing a number of mailings and sales letters which will no doubt deliver the goods (the sales letter he wrote for his most recent client generated over $1.1 million in sales in a single week, so I wasn’t fooling around when I selected this guy for the task!). And I’ve got a real strong, highly organized extroverted (I am an introvert) people person who will be working with the highly talented individuals who will be providing content for this venture.
So I’m in preparation mode between now and September 4th, after which I plan to be working frenetically to keep up with the new business flowing in.
Yes, I’m feeling quite confident.
Stay tuned until September 4th when I can reveal what all is going on with my new company.
Now that it has all blown over, I wonder what all the hoopla was about.
The iPhone, no doubt, is one of the coolest little gadgets that Apple has ever launched. I wanted one. Bad. But reason (and my wife Jeanne) prevailed, and I did NOT go out and buy myself a gadget boasting features I would never use.
As it stands, I have a Razr cell phone which has ONE feature I use: the telephone… and that feature, just barely, as I often do not carry it around.
I remember a time when I carried around a pager and a cell phone and some sort of palm device — all for my work — and I felt nervous all the time that I might actually miss something. I was enslaved to little gadgets all the time and absolutely hated it. As soon as I could rid myself of those devices, I did.
And when I’m real honest with myself, I realize that I don’t even carrying around an iPod, so why would I want an iPhone?
Who knows? There might be a lot of people like me who LOVE the iPhone technology, would never use it, but who nevertheless got in line.
Which brings up another issue…
What’s our obsession with being first in line? About being the first to have the new toy? With the EVENT of being there to get whatever the new thing is?
Fact is, from coast to coast, you could walk in to an Apple store two or three hours after the 6 pm launch and walk out 5 minutes later with a brand new iPhone.
For those who are planning to be in line at their local bookstore for the big Harry Potter launch, you could pre-order it from Amazon NOW and have it arrive conveniently at your doorstep the day it launches.
So it’s not about access, it’s about the EVENT. About being FIRST. About BEING THERE. About being able to say, “I WAS THERE”.
Honestly, I don’t get it, because a) I hate waiting in line, b) I hate crowds and c) I don’t have a need to “be there”.
So I’m never going to be the event groupie that this culture tries to cultivate.
Simply because I love the technology, I may well end up with an iPhone some day, though I’m in no rush. I’m sure I’ll have pangs of jealousy and nudge my wife when a friend whips theirs out, but that won’t force the issue.
I just can’t force myself to do it now. I’m not in a rush. It’s not a priority.
If you ever see me sitting in a lawn chair overnight next to the Apple store, shoot me. It will be proof positive I’ve lost my mind…
I am in still in recovery mode from this past weekend’s Product Launch Formula Live Workshop held in Denver, CO.
It started early and went late, three days running. It was packed full of great information and provided many wonderful networking opportunities, not to mention offer good food for the attendees. All 92 of us.
What really made the workshop great was Jeff Walker himself.
He’s a humble, laid back, midwestern type who loves his family and doesn’t believe his own bullshit. Like me, he’s an INTP on the Meyers Briggs and a 5 on the Enneagram, so he’s that much more likable of a guy — at least from my perspective.
But he’s an incredibly knowledgeable guy about his expertise: launching and relaunching new products and services, which at this stage of my life, is near and dear to my heart.
I learned a great deal from Jeff and the marketing experts he brought on board to speak to our group: Frank Kern, Rick Schefren (these two were the best) and about a half dozen others. I’m having a brain freeze right now so I’m forgetting the other’s names.
I plan to use the total overload of learning I got this weekend to launch my new business in the coming month, which I will announce on this blog as soon as I can. Right now I’ve got to keep it under my hat.
Just in case you ever have the opportunity to attend a Jeff Walker seminar or workshop, beg, bribe, borrow or steal and get there. It will pay for itself many times over.
Jeff is a hero and a mentor to me and I deeply appreciated his taking the time to put on a first class workshop.
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