Born Entrepreneur

An old friend of mine contacted me out of the blue one day and we chatted about what we’ve both been up to. It was a great conversation and a memorable chat. Afterward he sent me an email and said he wanted to send me a business book that was very valuable to him. He said, “it’s like having a $300/hr consultant sitting by your side.” So, being the avid reader that I am, of course I said, “sure, send it my way!”

Reading it is like opening your eyes to a new way of looking at old things. It challenges some preconceived notions, which is certainly a good thing. Here’s some notable quotes from the book that I’ve read thus far. I’m on page 133 of 360. Will post a follow up with the next installment:

Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got
by Jay Abraham

• Instead of giving the salespeople 10% of the profit on a sale to a new first time client, give them 100% of the profit on the first sale.
• Clothing stores, auction houses, jewelry stores, and others hold private “by invitation only” sales events for preferred clients
• If in your field these people are referred to as customers, that’s fine. But whatever you call them, always think of them as a client.
• Determine who in your marketing area is already selling to the clients you want to be reaching, and who has their trust, respect, and goodwill.
• If you sell software for a company, you could contact a salesperson who works for a corporation that sells the computer hardware to the same client base and develop a mutually beneficial relationship.
• Tell your clients that you enjoy doing business with them and that they probably associate with other people like themselves who mirror their values and quality. If you acknowledge your client’s value and importance to you, they’ll be eager to reciprocate.
• Willingly offer to advise, talk to, or meet with anyone important to that client. In other words, offer to consult their referral without expectations of purchase, so your clients see you as a valuable expert who they can put their friends in touch.
• Why do clients stop buying from you?
  • Reason one: They stop buying temporarily and just never get around to dealing with you again. Out of sight, out of mind.
  • Reason two: They become dissatisfied. The important thing to realize, though, is that rarely did you intentionally offend or dissatisfy that client
• When you recognize that over 80% of all lost clients didn’t leave for irreparable reasons, you can instantly take action and get many–even most—of those clients back.
• I want you to stop accepting your present-day business circumstances as the way it has to be. You’re going for major breakthroughs.
• The Strategy of Preeminence is quite simply the ability to put your clients’ needs always ahead of your own. When you master that your success will naturally follow.
• The Strategy of Preeminence is a powerful yet simple strategy that almost single-handedly can transform your business or career.
• If you use the word customers, that’s fine. But always think of them as clients. And when you start to serve clients rather than sell clients, the limits on your business success will disappear.
• One of the biggest mistakes, probably the biggest mistake, people make in any business is that they fall in love with the wrong thing. They fall in love with their product, service, or company. You should believe passionately in your product, service, or company. but you should fall in love with your clients.
• Falling in love with your clients means taking responsibility for their well-being. Putting their best interests ahead of your own.
• It means following up after the sales–not just to patronize but to contribute, acknowledge, and assure that client that you care about them.
• I guarantee that when you practice the Strategy of Preeminence the rewards you will accumulate with astonish you. And I don’t mean just financial rewards. There is no question that you will generate more money than you ever imagined when you start putting your client’s needs first. But it won’t stop there.
• Acquiring clients at a breakeven or a slight loss and making substantial profits on back-end repurchasing is one of the most overlooked and underutilized methods of client growth and generation available to you.
• It’s important to get clients into the buying stream as quickly and easily as possible.
• Most businesses and people make it far too hard for clients and employers to start a relationship with them. They make it too difficult to get prospects to start using their products or services to the maximum advantage. If you lower or totally eliminate the hurdle in starting a relationship, far more people will begin one with you.
• They want to do everything possible to make it easy and attractive to get you started buying and using their service in the first place.
• Make a list of every product or service you or your company sells. Then figure out how you can lower the resistance barrier to a prospective client, employer, or prospect by lowering the entrance fee you ask.
• Picking a USP: speedy service, a longer and more comprehensive warranty or guarantee than the norm.
• The bottom line is this: Develop a USP and extol it in everything you do. It can put you head and shoulders above your competition forever.
• One of the biggest “competitive-edge” advantages you’ll ever gain is to always make it easier for the client to say yes than it is for them to say no. You do it by taking away the financial, psychological, or emotional risk factors that are always attached (stated or unstated) to virtually any decision-making proposition you ever ask a client to make.
• Assume the risk in every transaction you have with your clients. Let them know that, if they are ever dissatisfied, you will give them their money back, redo the job at no charge, or whatever else it takes to demonstrate your total, passionate commitment to their satisfaction.
• You must totally and completely guarantee the purchase for your client.
• Offer them an exceptional money-back guarantee, but allow the client to keep the bonus if he or she asks for a refund.
• Their biggest discovery is that the primary reason people don’t buy is that they don’t want to look bad in the eyes of their peers, and they don’t want to make a mistake.
• If there’s no risk in doing something, a lot more people tend to give it a try. Once they try it out, if your product or service performs as you say, most people will continue buying again and again.
• Usually a sixty-day guarantee will outproduce a thirty-day guarantee by 20-100%.
• Sample guarantee: “No Questions asked, 100 percent money back guarantee anytime within sixty days if my product fails to perform exactly as promised.”
• a tv set distributor offers to back any sets not sold by his retailers in the first 180 days
• I’ve seen strong risk reversal double and triple sales while only adding .5 to 3 percent in additional refunds to a company’s numbers.
• Look at your business, products, services, or employment skills and talents. Make a complete list of every obstacle to your clients or employers that might prevent them from purchasing, dealing with, or choosing you over your competition. Mitigate them or even better—Eliminate them!
• Instead of simply selling cars, most dealers offer their clients the opportunity to add on a stereo system, convenient financing, security devices, a sunroof, car phones, an extended warranty, and all kinds of other options to the basic purchase.
• Watch what people themselves do with your service or product after they buy it, and offer to do it for them for a fee.
• Can you offer a client a larger unit of purchase–perhaps a family size month’s supply, or  a three month, six month, or a year’s supply?
• Put in add-ons when they go up to the next step - ex: receive an extra business building report
• By merely offering people three different choices, 2/3 of the buyers bought a higher unit of sales.
• “Since we don’t know exactly what you have on the shelf now, we’ll send over one hundred books on consignment. Just send back those you don’t want”
• The important point here is to always focus on the increased profit–not lost profit—that an add-on transaction brings you.
• Consider offering three times the average volume being purchased now for two and half times the price. Offer three month, three year, etc.
• Bundle your products together to achieve the end result. Clients will thank you for it and you’ll profit tremendously by doing it.

You dine, rather than consume.

It’s a one hour cup of soup and a glass of red wine at a local bistro. It’s not a four minute, thirty second frozen dinner and diet coke consumed at your laptop in less time than it took to heat up.

You sit in silence and listen to your breathing.

You don’t text message back and forth or look at your watch or be uncomfortable that you’re in public at lunch by yourself having a good time. You put your cell phone on mute (not vibrate) and turn it upside down.

You walk slow, with your head up, proud and purposeful, but with a curious nature about you.

You don’t walk fast, head down, shoulders hunched, thinking about your destination and the imposition the walk is causing you.

You think, “right now, my walking is the destination.”

You are proud of the small things you have accomplished today, instead of beating yourself up and feeling guilty for those you haven’t had a chance to get to yet.

You know that, not only will happiness find you, but that it is right here in this moment.

You try not to get too excited about the future because, not only is it almost always different than you imagine, but you realize that the present is where the actual experience exists.

You imagine a moment and a feeling the way you want it to be. You attach a firm picture in your mind to it, and then you let it go, comfortably knowing how the energies of the universe will shift and shape to allow it to come to fruition.

Relaxation is not being so serious.

Relaxation, most importantly, is not being so hard on yourself.

Life is too short to feel regretful. Life is too short to not enjoy the present. Life is too short to be afraid. And certainly, life is too short to be anxious, uptight, and in a hurry. Life is too important to forget this.

You look at people in the eyes and be with them because you realize they are not a distraction from your moment. They are the key piece to it all.

Some comments of interest so far:

• time zone changes are frustrating. In the beginning I thought it would be helpful to have such a dramatic time change between Sydney and Austin, thinking that I’d be able to knock stuff out and have it show up in my colleague’s inboxes when they wake up. Not so easy. I’ve started going out more at night (naturally) so it makes it near impossible to wake up at 5am or 6am as I was before. This morning I woke up at 9, checked the local time in Austin and it was already the afternoon—which kind of deflates my personal motivation—their day is already almost over.
• unexpected interruptions of flow. Whether it’s broken suitcases, discussions about what to do for lunch, or doing laundry, it’s all an interruption. If anything, it is training to be able to leave and then re-enter a solid state of flow. Difficult indeed, but a necessity in this environment. The only way I can think of that would counter all the distractions would be to wake up super early in the morning (which I was doing before) or having ‘closed door’ office hours. I do not want to do that, though, as it really is shutting off other people. But then again, maybe if they understand it’s for the best and only for a limited amount of time, that would be okay. Still debating the best method…Ah, perhaps a good alternative to an actual closed door is for me to put on headphones. I still feel a little guilty about that, though.
• fear of opening my inbox. I’m sitting here without having opened my gmail inbox because last time i was in there it was 276 unread messages. That was after a 4 day hiatus of not having internet access because I was staying at a lakehouse hundreds of kilometers outside of Sydney. Last night when I checked it after coming in from a night out I guess I COULD have processed it all and gotten it down to zero, but I tell ya that’s frustrating just thinking about. I guess the trick is just setting out the time and knocking it out. Not sure how to conquer it otherwise. My 3-4hrs/day of working are quickly dwindling due to extra distractions (mainly my parents have now arrived in Sydney, so there are 6 of us all staying together in a small 3 bedroom apartment.
• Hmmm…Okay, time to start processing so I can close some/all of the open loops. Speaking of, I wonder if this segment of my trip is teaching me to be more comfortable with having some open loops out there…time will tell.

Two days in a row now that I’ve woken up super early. The first time it happened (4am) I thought it was a fluke because of a misaligned body clock, but when I woke up naturally this morning at 5am I realized, perhaps my body is so anxious to “get things done” that I’m jettisoning myself out of bed.

Some people claim that my trip to Australia should be a time of disconnecting and total relaxation. In my opinion, though, that is an old-school escapist vacation mentality. I LOVE my job. I am enamored by the work I get to do, and get paid for, so “disconnecting” for me is not a fun thing to do. I don’t need/want to “escape” from anything, even while I’m traveling.

In terms of workflow a few things I’ve learned thus far:

• very important to get through emails and to-do items just as always. I remember yesterday morning as I was leaving for the day to explore Sydney I had this pain in my gut because I was not taking my laptop with. It was kind of funny as Katrina knew it too. However, it wasn’t because I’m addicted to being connected, it’s because I’m addicted to extinguishing open loops. I had a lot of open loops that morning, despite my waking at 4am. Mainly because I was going through an inbox of 150 emails due to about 72hrs of non-processing—and still didn’t finish. And mainly because I was trying to get through them all–mistake! Point learned: Prioritizing emails responses and to do items is a MUST when traveling.
• I’ve accepted now that I’m not going to be able to do as much as I could before when I was working 8-10hr days. Now, I’m trying to squeeze it all into one 3-4hr block in the morning and a 1hr or so block of casual social networking in the evening. This is forcing me to be okay with not quite being SO responsive to everyone. It’s okay to let a few email fall through, as long as I put them in my to-do list to reply to them later. The anxiety of leaving for the day for exploration is not because of the low priority open loops. It’s because of the high-priority ones, those that I didn’t get a chance to get to because I was focusing too much on the lower ones. So I’m learning priority-level discipline–albeit forced, so that I don’t have that pain in my gut when I leave for the day without my laptop.
• Web based tools. Keeping the clutter low on this little computer is a must, mainly because the hard drive is so small - 12gig. But in all actuality, this is a blessing. I like not having a bunch of applications installed on here—it’s almost like a mental cleansing. I’ve been using Google Docs quite a bit and also instead of installing programs I try and find an web based alternative. For example I always like keeping track of my time I spend doing tasks. This is mainly because when I get into my flow, I totally lose track of time and then find myself frustrated with how many hours I focused on something that was low priority. I’ve been using Online Stopwatch instead of my usual Multitrack Stopwatch. In all honesty, it’s just a small file to download, and I could install it, but it just feels good NOT to.
• Not having a means to digitally capture my life as usual is tough. I normally use twitter and facebook mobile throughout the day to catalog my ongoings. This is impossible here, though, as international rates are a pain with my current cell phone plan. I might change it, but maybe it’s a good thing to challenge myself here. Not sure. It is getting me to blog more after all and post  facebook photos.
• Brainstorming increases dramatically when out of the element. All day—TONS of ideas. Wow, can’t even explain. Just being exposed to so many different elements that only being in a foreign environment can provide is quite breathtaking. My brain impressed me. If anything, that’s a reminder to everyone that we still have the faculties to brainstorm like always, but perhaps we’ve forgotten the path to that synergy. Or perhaps the pathway has changed over the years, it’s just a matter of tapping into it in a new way.

That’s all for now. I’m going to work on a miniature version of a weekly review so that I can make sure that I’m not overlooking anything crucial on my to do list. Lookign forward to it as today will be an AMAZING day of exploration if I can be sure to have closed all open loops. No more anxiety, hopefully.

It’s 4:35AM in Australia and while everyone else (my sister, her roommate, & my girlfriend) are asleep, but my internal clock was aching me to ‘get the hell outta bed!” So here I am sipping tea and writing a blog post.

Before my travels to Sydney I purchased the super tiny Asus eeePC 901 series.

Yes, the thing is tiny. I’ve figured how to type pretty well on it, though!

There are a number of challenges that traveling abroad has already presented and will be presenting soon. I will be here for 6 weeks, so as person who spends about 12hrs/day on the computer (personal + professional) things will be transforming a bit. Hopefully it will teach me to work in a more efficient, productive way. I feel like it’s almost like jumping into the deep end a bit…we shall see.

I will be sharing these challenges and the steps I’ve taken to overcome them over the course of the next few weeks. My girlfriend, Katrina, thinks they sound like boring posts…lol, but I’m really facinated with it anyways.

For the past 1.5 weeks I’ve been adhering pretty closely to the GTD lifestyle. This was all kicked off by a mini gtd seminar I helped organize at Conjunctured. I asked Drew Arnold who I met after being featured in the Statesman a while back about mine and John Erik’s use of GTD in our lives. Drew had contacted John and I in hopes of meeting others who shared his way of “getting things done.” Months after that initial meeting I found Drew at Conjunctured one day randomly and we got to talking and we thought we’d give it a go at having a GTD seminar at Conjunctured led by him. He really knows his stuff—I admire how much in control of his workflow he is. I hope to get to that point someday soon. I feel like I’m on my way.

Anyways, so after that seminar I started getting into it again. I realized the reason I “fell off the wagon” last time was the absence of a weekly review—an integral part to the success of the program. I was convinced that I “didn’t have time to do a weekly review”—apparently I just had too much stuff to do. I’ve since realized this was a horrible oversight and detrimental to the program’s success. I have since had two successful weekly reviews. And I must tell you it helps to provide an endcap to each week’s flow. And it also reinvigorates your trust in your personal system.

So right now I’m writing this post because I’m brainstorming my goals:

• 50,000+feet: Life
• 40,000 feet: Three- to five-year visions
• 30,000 feet: One- to two-year goals
• 20,000 feet: Areas of responsibility
• 10,000 feet: Current projects
• Runway: Current actions

It’s difficult. But I guess something of this magnitude should. I tell ya though, I’m super excited to discover what these goals are and share them publicly.

“Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” - Vincent van Gogh

Sometimes it takes hearing something that takes your breath away to make you second guess yourself about how you measure success.

I encourage you to reevaluate what you’re trying to do in life by looking at the end goal of it all. Is your end goal really money? Or is it simply just happiness and you’ve brainwashed yourself to think that as soon as you get enough money you’ll finally have the time to be happy? I know it seems like hackneyed idea, but really dig deep and ask yourself “what the hell am I doing?!”

I remember several years ago I read a business book that interviewed one particular successful business man and he said the secret to his success was his wife and family. What? I read that at 21, and I thought “what a load of crap.” He said his wife’s support and love for him helped him through the toughest times and allowed him to strive for the highest peaks. Honestly, I thought he was kind of pathetic. I had always subscribed to the thought that “I don’t have time for a serious relationship. I may never get married because I wouldn’t be able to dedicate enough time to the relationship to make it work. I certainly won’t ever have kids—it’s the sacrifice I need to make in order to be ’successful’.” I look back on that mentality and realize how ignorant I was. I was totally missing the point of it all—”it” being life.

It’s not going to be here forever, so embrace every aspect of life that you have already attained–your family, your friends, your significant other, the success in your business thus far. In fact, you might be surprised to find out how successful you already are and that you’re not doing so bad after all. Once that gives you a mental confidence boost, you also might start to realize that the money part might just get a little bit easier and not seem so daunting.

Don’t neglect the loves in your life. Because that’s what got you here. And that’s what’s going to get you to the next step too.

How Come That Idiot’s Rich and I’m Not?

by Robert Shemin (Author)

About a month ago I read this book pretty much cover to cover sitting in Borders Bookstore. Here are the key takeaways I took from it and have tried to implement in my own life. My responses to these points in are italics:

• have one goal only

  To build recurring revenue to sustain myself during a 2month travel to Australia and SE Asia. My plane leaves in mid-December, 2008.

• have a charm to remind of goal

  When my sister was in Vietnam, she sent me this amazing handmade dragon lantern. During the shipment a number of the dragons broke off. Today, I took one of those broken dragons (about the size of a quarter) and tied it to a hemp string and have hung it around my neck as my ‘charm’. Perfect, especially since the Asian dragon is symbolic of power!

• find some heroes to emulate and copy what they do daily

  The way Tim Ferriss lives his life is an inspiration to me. He’s totally changed the way I think about the intersection between business life and personal life. I’ve been reading his blog a lot lately and staying up to date on his tweets via twitter.  I’m still trying to find more ‘heroes’ so-to-speak. I have been a longtime fan of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, which is pretty much led by Ty Pennington. I look up to his zest for life and his urge to help people. So, perhaps I will add him to my list.

• start tracking daily money in and out down to the penny

  hmmm…I don’t know about this one. But i have definitely started to be more aware. I’ve cut the spending on credit cards down to nil, so I’m just using my debit card for everything now. I’ve made an effort to move my auto billing for things like cell phone, internet, and auto insurance to my debit card, because I realize I had just forgot about all those auto bills, and my debt was racking up. This way I can see it all the time.

• a vision without a map is worthless

  I have created an action item list for the 4 endeavors that are in front of me at the moment. I was sure to give myself deadlines for each item, and was especially sure to only put items on the list that help me reach my ONE goal.

• start a plan by first looking at the end goal

  I’ve found that it’s a lot easier to get through a list of tasks when I keep reminding myself WHY I’m doing it. Forgetting the end goal in my experience is the worst mistake I can make. If I do, I lose a LOT of motivation. Otherwise, the tasks seem to fly through and it keeps my excitement level high.

lot’s of good developments in my business endeavors. Was just jamming out to the Killers “All these things that I’ve done” after I received what could be a MONUMENTAL email in my inbox for a very large retail store to carry a selection of some of our t-shirts. Not only that, but I’ve received a couple very flattering emails lately that make me feel like all my networking is really paying off. People are starting to notice that I’m out there working my butt off doing lot’s of stuff, and they’re starting to come to me for advice, and business development type situations…very cool. And then there’s the fact that I just got some great publicity in the “green issue” of Austin Monthly (i just picked it up today actually at Whole Foods)….what an honor to be featured in their mag. It feels so great to see the brand name of my company and a photo of our products in a high quality printed magazine…we’ve gotten lot’s of publicity in online publications, but it’s a totally different feeling to see it in print. This is the first time we’ve been in print since our Daily Texan article a few years ago. Pretty rock’n. What else good as happened??? Going on a business trip this weekend to my first tradeshow. Will be going to the men and women’s apparel market in Dallas with my partner. Especially exciting coming at a time like this. I’m on a high. What else? We’ve almost got our sales rep in Los Angeles up and going. We’ve shipped her business cards, and I just sent her sample tees in the mail today. Super excited to see how that turns out. But I wont’ get my hopes up too much. We have hired 4 sales reps so far and every one of them has flaked. But this particular rep is the most ed experienced we’ve dealt with and we’re paying her a monthly retainer. Excited about the possibilities! What else is good??? Ahhh, so much…what a great feeling.

And then there’s Conjunctured…my other venture. Oh my…it’s moving. We’ve completed almost entirely a business plan…submitted it to a business plan competition, and have been actively having conversations with some pretty badass potential clients. And we’re about to get some wicked office space if all goes as planned…

and then there’s my health…kick’n ass with exercise per my new experiment!

and my relationship with my amazing girlfriend is stronger than ever…it will be 3 years next month— having an amazingly supportive person standing by you all the time, good times and bad…is an amazing feeling.

sorry to get all high on my own self-promotion, but things have been tough lately, so it’s really great to see things really coming together.

Keep all the good stuff coming…

btw, just picked up a new book at the library today…I think I found it at the perfect time.

So, Yahoo rejected the buyout by MSFT.  Interesting.  Very intrigued to see what happens to the Yahoo stock on Monday morning on the trading room floor. Will shareholders start selling their stock, or perhaps will another company (Google perhaps) make a higher bid?  Or even if Microsoft comes back in with another higher bid, that should be interesting.  Glad I purchased a few shares when I did. This could get interesting.

On another note, there is about to be spin-off created in TimeWarner.  They’re about to create a new separate company for their AOL counterpart. So, according to the book I just read on investing,  this is an excellent investment opportunity. I don’t have the extra capital to invest, but if I did I would buy a few shares of Timewarner and also AOL once it spins off into a new company. The idea behind investing in a spin-off company, is that the whole reasoning behind the spin-off is to better support the main purpose of that organization. By focusing more heavily on it, and not having to dilute focus on it to other counterparts of the business, profitability will inevitably skyrocket.