Archive - June, 2010

Emulate the Amish

June 30, 2010 in Books, Business, Life with 10 Comments

I read an interesting post on BrandAutopsy this morning. John Moore reviewed the new business book Success Made Simple – An Inside Look At Why Amish Businesses Thrive.

As John says,”According to a recent study, less than 5% of Amish businesses fail within their first five years. That’s astounding considering 50% of (non-Amish) small businesses fail within their first five years.”

One of my favorite parts of John’s short review is the following statement about what makes the Amish so successful, because it’s something I’ve been harping on you about for months now….

The Amish Maintain a Learner’s Attitude

The Amish businessman is always seeking knowledge. Their learner’s attitude begins early in their business life. The Amish gain hands-on experience in their chosen trade before they start their own business. From there, the Amish will seek out mentor relationships with respected community business leaders to continue their business education. The successful Amish entrepreneur views every learning opportunity, including learning from competitors and customers, as vital sources of business knowledge.

It reminds me a lot of a great quote I read in a book the other day.

“The reason why most people are so pathetic is that they will not take the time to develop and refine their skills.” ~ Stuart Wilde

I’ve heard it said in so many other ways…

Someone once remarked,

“How can you call yourself a _____ salesman, if you’ve never read any Zig Ziglar?” (insert any of the following before the word salesman: car, boat, carpet, furniture, ice cream, hot dog, life insurance, etc…)

I’d like to take that a step further.

How can we take your marketing skills seriously, if you’ve never read any Seth Godin?

How could we possibly hire you as our copywriter, to write and create our ads, if you’ve never studied Claude Hopkins, or Gary Halbert, or Dan Kennedy?

How could I possibly hire you as my “life coach” when you’ve never studied the works of Napoleon Hill?

How can you call yourself an investor when you’ve never read anything by Warren Buffet?

What would you add to the list?

I read another book recently where the author said,

“During my first business I read 7 business books and the business failed miserably. During my second business, I read over 700 books and the business was a huge success. It’s not hard to figure out what made the difference.

Be like the Amish and never stop learning. It’s clearly working for them.

How To Quit Smoking

June 29, 2010 in Misc with 10 Comments

If you’re a smoker, I know you’ve probably done it.

You’ve gone to Google and typed in “How to quit smoking“.

If you’re overweight, you’ve probably done a search for “how to lose weight“.

There’s a simple little trick to ensuring your success when it comes to “how to do something.”

The trick is this:

It’s realizing that it really has nothing to do with the HOW you do it, it has everything to do with the WANT to do it.

How to = Hoping someone externally will tell you how to do it. We’re willing to spend money on this. Usually we’re hoping the how is quick, easy, pain-free, and fast. This is the reason the world will never have a shortage of “how to” products and diet pills.

Want to = Internal motivation. This is the force inside you. Think Star Wars.

Stop looking for the “how.”

When you truly want to quit smoking, or change a habit, it’s easy.

Yup, I said it. It’s easy.

Question: How do you quit smoking?

Answer: You stop smoking, if you want to. Your internal strength is stronger than the addiction. It comes down to want.

The desire, the thirst, the inspiration, the motivation, all come from deep down within. It’s not about finding a method, or buying another information product, or paying for hypnosis. It’s all about getting that desire’s temperature up to a boiling point. When it reaches the boiling point and you truly “want” to quit, the how part is easy.

No Fun – Worst Job In The World.

June 28, 2010 in Career & Work, Life with 5 Comments

I heard someone say recently, and I quote, “my job is no fun. I literally have the worst job in the world.”

Now we can almost all assume that by reading the above line, and not even knowing exactly what that person’s job is, or who that person is, they don’t really have the worst job in the world.

I know from when I used to watch TV and would occasionally catch an episode of “Dirty Jobs,” that there are far worse jobs, and far less fun jobs, out there.

Unless, of course, this girl was really an Alaskan crab fisherman on break in Ontario? I might have missed that part.

Here’s my take on it.

If your job isn’t fun, you must quit.

I’m not talking about singing and dancing in the workplace type of fun. I’m talking about “making a difference – making a contribution” type of fun.

Deep down, you do actually know the type of fun I’m referring to.

The type of fun when you finish a job and actually get something out the door.

The type of fun you experience, because of the autonomy, you get to make your own decisions.

The type of fun you experience is when you see a problem and find the solution.

In the variety of stuff I’ve been reading lately, there’s a clear lesson repeated over, and over, and over again.

It’s that the extrinsic rewards that might come from a “job well done,” such as more cash, or a bigger bonus, aren’t really what you’re really looking for. It’s not really what’s motivating you.

Admit it.

The problem is, you have to keep slugging away because you have bills to pay, credit card debt, and stuff to buy.

Bummer. Because if you could get rid of the stuff that’s forcing you to keep on slugging, you might be able to find a job that’s actually fun.

And if you can’t find that job, you could create one.

As much as you want to believe that more cash and more money might be what you’re looking for, you’re most likely fooling yourself.

Stuff as a motivator is short-term. It’ll get you through life though, but you’ll always be missing something.

Now don’t get me wrong. I LOVE new toys just as much as the next guy, but if you’re telling people you’ve got the worst job in the world, it might be time to start looking at what’s really keeping you there.

Just saying…

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P.S. I’ve got a simple request.

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Thanks, Noah

This call may be recorded for quality service…

June 25, 2010 in Business with 6 Comments

It must be Friday.

I just spent the past twenty-five minutes on-hold listening to elevator music.

The funny thing is that when the call was first answered, I was told this call might be recorded for quality service purposes.

When I finally managed to get through, the service was pretty lousy.

Aside from the 25 minute wait, the person on the other end was unwilling to help, or budge, or break protocol, or reason with my requests. The answers were canned and rehearsed. I felt like I was talking to a robot.

After I realized I would get nowhere, I decided to cut my losses and move on. Yet she still had the nerve to try to sell me on an “exclusive offer.”

I wish at least the initial message had been honest.

These calls are intended to waste your time, but make you feel like you’ve accomplished something. Later tonight you can tell all your friends how firm and demanding you were with us. You can tell them how we bowed down to your requests and gave you some extra credit, or took a few bucks off your bill. (which wasn’t really credit by the way, it’s junk we give away to anyone like you. And we’ll tack a few extra bucks on your bill for this type of thing anyways…”system access fees” (It’s part of our contingency plan). We honestly don’t give a crap about you until you stop paying your bills. Screw off and have a pleasant day.

So are they really recording or monitoring the calls? Are they busting them out at staff parties? Who’s the joke on here?

The whole experience got me to thinking about Zappos. Zappos is known to be the leader of exemplary customer service. I wrote about Zappos a few weeks ago.

Just for fun, I called Zappos shortly after my first call. I wanted to see how their phone process works.

Press 1 for help with clothing.

Press 2 for help with shoes.

Press 5 for the joke of the day.

Or, just stay on the line. This call may be monitored or recorded for quality assurance.

I decided to stay on the line. In less than 10 seconds, I was greeted with a happy and cheerful voice.

“It’s a great day at Zappos, you’ve reached Kalina. How can I help you?”

I told Kalina that I didn’t want to buy anything; I just wanted to hear how they answer their phones.

We had a laugh, a quick chat about what I was doing. She proceeded to ask me if there was ANYTHING else she could help me with, and then with another giggle, she told me to go have myself a great weekend. I wished her the same, and we parted ways.

It was a genuine human connection. I felt connected to the person on the other end.

Ten seconds or 25 minutes?
No Script or Script?
Humans or Robots?

The business lesson is huge, and the time invested is minimal. Sure, you could read a hundred books on “how to improve customer service”, or you could make two phone calls and compare them for yourself. Once you’ve done that, the solution is simple – strive to be like the second one.

Or even simpler, just show you friggin care.

Snakes and Ladders

June 24, 2010 in Creativity, Life, Success with 0 Comments

Snakes and Ladders originated in India as a game based on morality called Vaikuntapaali or Paramapada Sopanam (the ladder to salvation) (wikipedia)

snakes.gif

You’re right at the top.

You’re almost there.

Only a few steps to go.

And then you hit that damn snake, and you’re knocked all the way down to the bottom.

As a kid, it was just a fun game. But when I think about it now, I realize just how close it resembles real life.

Occasionally we hit a ladder, of good luck or fortune, and up we go.

Occasionally, we hit a snake of bad luck or misfortune, and we experience a setback.

The problem now is that each and every day, we hear about more and more people near the finish line and then suddenly, out-of-nowhere, they hit that big mother of a snake. You know the one I’m talking about, the one that knocks you right back almost to the beginning.

You might as well start over, or give up entirely. You can’t catchup.

It seems to me, though, the actual game board has changed. There are more snakes than ever before, especially in that last row. There might be the odd spot here and there with an opening, and if you make the perfect roll of the dice, you might just make it. If you roll anything but a 4, you’re screwed.

It’s pretty risky to place everything on the roll of the dice, don’t ya think?

The new option is to just not play the game anymore. I’m not.

The Success Measuring Tape

June 23, 2010 in Life, Linchpin, Success with 3 Comments

Last night I was driving down the road and passed a lawn sign advertising a local business. The sign read, “come watch the World Cup on our 50″ Plasma screen!!!”

I guess they missed the memo. Is the “50 inch television” really a draw, considering most people have similar sized TV’s, if not bigger, in their own homes? My friend Gavin said it best, “maybe the sign was left over from the last world cup.”

There was a time, when a big TV was a material possession that showed your friends you were actually making some money.

Today, anyone with a credit card can whip over to Best Buy and pick up a 60″ 3D-Ready TV, and pay the $27 bucks a month until that sucker is paid for. The instant facade of success. Instant gratification.

There was a time when the car you drove was seen as a symbol of your success.

There was a time when the size of your house was seen as a symbol of your success.

There was a time when the type of clothes you wore were seen as a symbol of your success.

Success was once largely measured by the total value and number of material possessions you could acquire and stuff into your home or garage. Many people still view success this way.

My view of success has changed. Here’s how I view success now. I use a combination of four simple questions.

1) How happy are you?

I don’t mean dance around like a fool happy. I mean the type of happy where you wake up each morning energized and ready for the day. The type of happy where you don’t dread Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, for that matter.

You love what you do, and you do what you love.

The type of happy where you can look one or three, or five years down the road and picture yourself doing the exact same thing you’re doing now.

If you can’t, you need to quit.

2) How much debt do you have?

There’s nothing worse, in my opinion, than debt. Good debt and bad debt aside, I’m referring to debt incurred to buy things you can’t afford.

Debt is so tempting. I remember a recent trip to Bass Pro Sporting Goods Store. I could have walked away with a gorgeous fishing boat for only $175 bucks a month. Nobody needs to know how I’m paying for it, right?

3) How healthy are you?

I’m talking about physical health here. I’m talking about the successful person who has the personal drive and motivation to take care of his/her most valuable possession – oneself.

And I don’t mean freakish, or obsessive physical health. That can actually be unhealthy.

Oh, but he drives an 2010 Escalade and owns the giant house on the lake…His job is stressful… He’ll start exercising someday……

Sigh.

Finally…

4) What are you doing to make the world a better place?

My wife and I were driving in our car last week, and the guy in front of us tossed his McDonald’s garbage out the window. No shame. Fries and Big Mac containers spread across the road as he sped off. He gets a failing grade in this regard, even if he does tend to sick puppies at night.

It doesn’t mean you have to be dressed as Santa collecting donations at Christmas,  or wiping oil off pelicans, but how are you personally contributing to making the world a better place?

Something tells me it’s not just me who’s trading in my old measuring tape for a new one. Everyone’s measuring tape is different.

What’s yours look like?

Hairy Nipples

June 22, 2010 in Business, Marketing with 0 Comments

Warning: I make no guarantees in regards to your gag reflexes after you scroll down.

This morning, I stumbled over to our local classifieds website and saw a sponsored (paid) advertisement along the top banner for an “upscale spa 4 men.”

I kid you not. Somebody’s advertising budget paid for this ad. I wish I could make this stuff up.

What interested me about the ad was the tiny thumbnail photo that went along with the ad. I couldn’t make out what it was. So my curiosity got the best of me, and I clicked through.

Upon clicking through the ad, I gagged a little bit. As I realized, the picture was a closeup of a half-shaved man’s nipple. I don’t know about this. But what I do know, is that it’s not a pretty picture.

OK, let’s have a little discussion about this.

The Problem:

I’m happy your spa offers the services to deal with the sometimes rather gruesome task of manscaping a manzilla, but I’m confused at to just exactly what’s upscale about this?

Sure, your spa may have some leather chairs. You might even have flat screen TV’s for me to watch the ball game. But I’m not seeing it.

It seems to me that we’re mixing two very different messages here.

If you’re promoting and adverting your “Upscale Spa,” and using this photo to do it, you’re totally missing the mark.

Screen shot 2010-06-22 at 11.52.11 AM.png

The headline doesn’t fit. There’s nothing upscale about the half-shaved gorilla nipple photo.


One Simple Solution:

Rewrite the Headline.

If this is the route you’re set on taking, it could actually work. It could tell a story. It could have actually produced a return on your investment. Instead, we have two very mixed, off-the-mark messages.

Make a story out of the hairy chested man.

Make it fun! Add a little humor to it.

How about something like:

“Living with Big Foot? We can help – The Perfect Father’s Day Gift!”

More Solutions:

According to the 2007 bestselling book, “Made to Stick,” by Dan & Chip Heath, for a message to be “sticky” it needs to make use of the following traits for SUCCESs.

Simple: The message needs to be clear and concise. Upscale Spa 4 Men. Good enough. It’s simple, but it’s incorrect. Better would be, “Hairy Men Rejoice With Opening of New Local Spa!”

Unexpected: There’s no doubt it’s unexpected. The problem is it’s the wrong type of unexpectedness. In this case, we might say something like, “Bet you didn’t expect see a close-up photo of a half-shaven hairy nipple from an upscale spa did ya?.”

Concrete: We want our messages to tap into the senses of our readers. This does, but again, there’s a disconnect here between the senses we’re trying to tap into.

Credible: Messages need to be credible. This is upscale? According to whom?

Emotional: We want our messages to appeal to the emotions of who we’re trying to attract. For example, “Tired of people thinking they’ve spotted Big Foot when they see you on the beach? Come visit our spa, we can help.”

Stories: The most powerful messages are built around stories. Remember Jared from Subway? That’s the perfect example of a sticky message built around a story. Fat guy loses weight eating fast food. P.S. It’s simple, unexpected, credible, concrete, emotional…etc.

For example, here we might say,”Meet Bob. Bob is very hairy man. So hairy that when Bob removes his shirt people mistake Bob for a wild animal. You can see before and after pictures of Bob below. If you’re like Bob, we can help.”

But if you’re really sold on the whole upscale thing, make it upscale! This ad won’t appeal to the affluent one bit.

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P.S. Here’s something new and a simple request for you.

If you like this post, or know someone who might benefit from reading what I’m saying, please pass it along. You can easily do so by using the buttons below.

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Thanks,
Noah

Smurf Cash

June 21, 2010 in Career & Work, Fun Stuff with 4 Comments

Can you really make money doing what you love, or by following your passion?

What if the thing you love is something like The Smurfs?

smurf.jpg

Gary Vaynerchuk was the first to talk about building a business around the  Smurfs. He makes a great point. Here’s my take on it.

If you LOVE the Smurfs, you know every episode like the back of your hand, have a collection of Smurf dolls, secretly have a crush on a Smurfette, and paint yourself blue every Halloween,  you could easily monetize this passion

But here’s what most people miss about what Gary’s is saying.

After Gary made his comment, hundreds will rush out in a mad frenzy to create Smurf websites. They will register domain names, build blogs, and create forums. They’re looking for a quick cash fix.

Dump a little gasoline on the wood and hope your matches aren’t wet.

Unfortunately, this will almost always fail.

The one who will win is the one I mentioned above. It’s the one who comes across Gary’s vision and finally realizes what needs to be done with his freakish Smurf obsession.

The Smurf tribe is already out there looking for that knowledgeable and passionate person to lead them. They won’t be fooled by false leaders, posers, and fakers. They will see through it. They can smell it from a mile away.

And when you really think about it, it’s actually quite simple.

Pick the thing you love most in life, and just do it. Your tribe might just  be sitting around, anxiously waiting for you to show up.

The Linchpin in My Life

June 18, 2010 in Misc with 7 Comments

In the interest of Father’s Day, I wanted to take this opportunity and share something about my father.

When I sat down to write this post, there was one lesson that kept returning to my thoughts.

For as long as I can remember, my father has worked his ass off. I remember while growing up when he’d work the midnight shift, but still be awake the next day to be with the family.

Thirteen years ago, due to a strike and labor dispute, my father was forced to look for a new job. He found one a few hundred miles away. This meant packing up the family and moving away from the place where we’d been born and grew up.

He was our tribe leader. He led us into the unknown and asked us to trust him. It was a pivotal and life changing moment that I’m now extremely grateful to have happened.

I watch my father now and he’s still going. Sometimes I think he’s working harder now then ever before. His career now has him traveling a few times a week and putting in many long hours.

He loves what he does.

He’s one of the lucky ones. But my father has always had a strong entrepreneurial spirit bubbling up inside of him. He has always been cooking up new ideas on the side.

As an example, he told me about the potential of this thing called the “Internet” before most people had any idea what it was. He was building websites and brewing up ideas before I knew anything about the web.

When AOL spammed us with CDs offering “free internet,” he encouraged me to get on the computer and learn what it was all about. “This Internet thing is gonna be big!” he’d say.

After 30 years of watching my father working at his career, you’d think the message he would have taught me was to follow the path of least resistance.

Find a good career, work hard, plug away and aim for retirement, but feel free to dabble on the side.

But rather, my father has always suggested taking the entrepreneurial route.

He’d say things like,

“If you want a big paycheck someday, there’s only one true way of getting it. Make sure you’re writing it for yourself.”

Or,

“If you want a few extra weeks off when you get older, make sure you’re the one writing the schedule.”

The message was always the same. While school and a university education were seen as an extremely important part of the equation, my father always urged us to look at building a career for ourselves instead of allowing someone to build it for us.

It’s no surprise to me that both myself and my brother are now writing our own checks and setting our own vacation time.

As a soon-to-be father, I’ll be passing on a similar message to my kids.

The really cool thing about my dad is, he’s still planning a major ass-kicking even as he creeps closer to his retirement.

He has his fingers on all kinds of cool stuff. I make sure to keep tabs on him so I don’t miss the boat when he starts sailing off.

If you ask my father what his favorite books are, you’d hear titles like “The 4-Hour Work Week,” “Crush It,” and “Linchpin.”

He’s my Linchpin, and still crushing it after all these years.

FathersDay.png

That’s me on the left in the green. My brother Wes on the right. Dad in the middle.

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P.S. Here’s something new and a simple request from you.

If you like this post, or know someone who might benefit from reading what I’m saying, please pass it along. You can easily do so by using the buttons below.

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Thanks,
Noah

Going All-In

June 17, 2010 in Business with 3 Comments

Tomorrow my favourite local restaurant (also owned by a client of mine, in the interest of full disclosure) is moving to a new location.

The move is bold and risky. After twenty years of holding a prominent downtown location, they’ve packed up to move to a new location. For over twenty years, this restaurant has gone through various transformations and succeeded during all of them. This is their biggest transformation to-date.

This past Sunday, they closed at their current location of over twenty-years, and have been working around-the-clock to ensure a smooth transition to the new location.

Tomorrow night, they open for business.

Rumour has it that another restaurant will open in their old space almost immediately. Naturally, this new restaurant will attract some foot traffic. It will also get the handful of stragglers looking for the old place. They’ll think maybe they changed their format or, perhaps they went out of business. For some, it won’t matter. People are always looking for a new place to eat.

Everyone wants to own a restaurant. The building, however, is just a building now. From a few sneak peaks at their new location, it’s obvious that everything that matters in a restaurant, like a great atmosphere, has also packed up and moved.

I really like the owners taking this bold step.

When you look at the success of this restaurant over the past twenty plus years, you see something interesting.

There was no pressure or external motivator forcing them to make this move. Instead, what they saw was an opportunity to better themselves and they’re jumping on it.

99 out of 100 businesses would have stayed in the same location.

99 out of 100 businesses would have accepted the current level of success as “good enough.”

99 out of 100 businesses would have made the safe decision, to not make any decision at all.

This morning, I had a chance to talk to one of the owners about the move.

He said,

“We saw an opportunity where we could not only grow as a business, but we could also create an overall better experience for all of our customers who’ve supported us over the past twenty years.”

I then asked if he was worried or concerned about making such a big move, and he said this…

“We’ve always made business decisions based on looking forward instead of looking back. Sure, we could continue to second guess ourselves, but what’s the point? When you make business decisions with your customers best interests in mind, you really can’t go wrong.”

He continued, “And when you’re betting on such a strong hand, there’s no reason to not go all-in.”

Do you have such a strong relationship with your customers and clients that you’d be willing to go all-in and put all your chips on the table?

If not, that is something to strive for.

They have been video blogging about the entire process. From first announcing the move, to keeping their customers informed of each and every step of the process. You can check out all of the videos on Facebook if you’d like.

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P.S. Here’s something new and a simple request for you.

If you like this post, or know someone who might benefit from reading what I’m saying, please pass it along. You can easily do so by using the buttons below.

If you use Twitter, consider ‘re-tweeting’ this post.

If you use Facebook, consider clicking the “like” button.

If you use eMail, consider sending this to a friend.

If you agree, disagree, or have something to say about this post, please leave a comment.

Thanks,
Noah

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