Born Entrepreneur - Stories, Thoughts & Analysis

You probably can’t tell it (from my lack of posts about him), but Seth Godin is one of my favorite authors. I was I Godin follower when I first read Permission Marketing for one of my advertising courses in college. He has a knack for bringing to the foreground some interesting ways of looking at business marketing, growth, and maintenance. Here’s an interesting post, the Top 10 Secrets of the Marketing Process, from his personal blog.

1. Don’t run out of money. It always takes longer and costs more than you expect to spread your idea. You can budget for it or you can fail

2. You won’t get it right the first time. Your campaign will need to be reinvented, adjusted or scrapped. Count on it.

3. Convenient choices are not often the best choices. Just because an agency, an asset or a bizdev deal are easy to do doesn’t mean that they are your best choice.

4. Irrational, strongly held beliefs of close advisors should be ignored. It doesn’t matter if they don’t like your logo.

5. If it makes you nervous, it’s probably a good idea. If you’re sure you’re right, you probably aren’t.

6. Focusing obsessively on one niche, one feature and one market is almost always a better idea than trying to satisfy everyone.

7. At some point, you’re either going to have to stick to your convictions or do what the market tells you. It’s hard to do both.

8. Compromise in marketing is almost always a bad idea. Extreme A could work. Extreme B could work. The average of A and B will almost never work.

9. Test, measure and optimize. Figure out what’s working and do it more.

10. Read and learn. There are a million clues, case studies, books and proven tactics out there. You can’t profitably ignore them until you know them, and you don’t have the time or the money to make the same mistake someone else made last week. It’s cheaper and faster to read about it than it is to do it.

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For the longest time I had ignorantly convinced myself that I could operate a successful business all by myself. I would be the marketing guy, the finance guy, the web guy, the product guy, the sales guy—the everything guy. Eventually, though, I realized that it is necessary to involve others in your ventures. Why? Because it helps like crazy! It’s difficult to find good people, but when you do, you have got to stick with them through everything. Make it work. After all, there’s a reason you brought them on-board in the first place. When the team dynamic starts to get less than perfect, take action. Here’s a collection of tips/notes from the book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, that will help to keep your organization’s dynamic staying strong. It’s all about trust.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
by Patrick Lencioni

1. Team members must trust each other — share their weaknesses, admit their mistakes and concerns. (essential to good teamwork)
2. Why is trust so important? When there is no trust, there is fear of conflict which helps to sustain a false level of harmony in a group. You need to be able to practice constructive criticism.
3. If you truly want everyone behind an idea or strategy, EVERYONE needs to have offered their opinions and feel like they’ve been listened to. Then, they’re more likely to fully buy into the idea and commit.
4. Full consensus is not necessary. It creates too much conflict. As long as everyone has weighed in their views, they can buy in.
5. Don’t disparage someone behind their backs–ever. It degenerates trust among the people in the room. If you are talking about someone else, then those you’re speaking to thinks you may talk about them as well.
6. Trust definition - confidence that team member’s intentions are good. There’s no reason to be protective around the group. Trust makes you comfortable enough to open yourself to vulnerability.
7. How to build trust?

1. Personal History Exercise - Discuss siblings, hometown, unique challenge in childhood, fun hobbies, first job, worst job. Going around and having everyone share allows the team to relate better on a more personal basis which naturally translates to a better work dynamic.
2. Team Effectiveness Exercise - Each person identifies the single most important contribution they can make to the team.
3. Personality and Behavioral Preference Profile - Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) helps group understand the different ways in which each person operates.
4. Leaders must risk losing face in front of the team—demonstrates vulnerability.

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This book was written a good while of time ago and was a business bestseller for years. It looks at managing as an almost scientific process—a series of simple praises and reprimands. While some would assume that its age has made it less relevant in today’s business world, I beg to differ. Its beauty is in its simplicity of approach. Here are the authors’ key points: 

One Minute Manager

by Ph.D. Kenneth Blanchard and M.D. Spencer Johnson

1. Praise people when they do something almost right.  Don’t wait until they do something exactly right before you praise them.
2. Don’t’ just introduce a new member into a team and then leave him/her alone and expect quality or quantity.  You must give them goals, and praise when they do well.
3. The purpose of setting goals is so that workers know what is expected of them.
4. As soon as something happens wrong, you must confront it immediately.  Be sure to attack the action/behavior, but not the person.
5. The key to the “reprimand” is to be tough on the action, and then reinforce what’s good about the person.  “tough on the behavior -> then supportive of the person”
6. It’s recommended to physically touch people when you’re give them reassurance, support, or encouragement. 
7. Managers should view themselves as not being in charge of someone else, but instead having a job to encourage people to work better, which in turn benefits the organization.
8. Shake hands after a praise or reprimand
9. In a praise or reprimand, it is important to say how you feel about the behavior
10. People that work for an organization are the most important part of the organization
11. People who feel good about themselves produce good results.  That is why it is essential to always keep your people in good moods.
12. Let people make decisions for themselves.
13. When saying good things, look them in the eye and be sincere.
14. When setting goals, make them short and on one piece of quickly read paper-so it’s always quickly referenceable by both you and them.
15. It is the manager’s job to make sure everyone knows their responsibilities and what they are to be held accountable for.
16. In the beginning stages, the manager should sit down with the worker and help make their goals together.  After a while, they can do it themselves.
17. In the beginning stages as well (after setting goals), try and catch someone doing something right so you can praise them.  This is important.
18. Remember to look at their goals frequently and see if they’ve accomplished them.  Or at least check their performance. 

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I just love reading books that people claim “change their life” and “move them to success.” Really, I do. In fact, presence of these positive testimonials is one of the things I look for before taking on a new novel. Anyone that has read these types of business books before knows that many of them say the same types of things, but with slight variations. It’s an over-saturated category indeed, but there are gems out there that share useful concepts and rules that you appreciate the author brings to light. No one single book in this “you too can achieve success like I have” category is a full-proof, step by step system. However, if you can learn a few things here and there from these authors, then you’re a little more equipped to be on your way.

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Millionaire’s Notebook: How Ordinary People Can Achieve Extraordinary Success

by Steven K. Scott

1. Finding the perfect partner is one of the key steps to success. Find someone who makes up for your areas of weaknesses.
2. “My strengths are in the areas of sales, marketing, and persuasion. My weaknesses are int eh areas of administration and follow-through on details. I see the upside opportunity in almost any situation but I may be slow to see its realistic downside. In the infant and adolescent stage of our business, therefore, I really didn’t’ need a partner with marketing or sales ability. I needed a partner who could identify and manage the millions of details necessary in administering th areas of our business other than sale sand marketing. As our business grew, a need did arise for an additional partner who could duplicate what I could do because our marketing opportunities were far greater than one person could handle.”
3. Law of Respect: The more you respect your buyer, the more your buyer will buy.
4. Law of Testing: Survey for “ballparks”; test for “home runs.”
5. Artistic swells. Logic sells.
6. Shoot for the moon, because if you miss you’re still high!
7. Go for it.
8. The five actions in striving to excel:
1. Dream or visualize.
2. Convert the dream into goals.
3. Convert your goals into tasks.
4. Convert your tasks into steps.
5. Take your first step, and then the next.

9. Strategies and tips for building more enjoyable relationships
1. Realize that every single person you encounter during your day wants to be noticed, appreciated, and treated like a friend instead of simply used to perform a service. For example. When you place a call to someone in another company (or at your company) and a secretary answers the phone, don’t’ just ask for the person you’re calling for, take at least a moment to acknowledge the secretary by name. Ask how her day is going and so forth.
2. Take the initiative to be thoughtful at times when it is not expected. Write a note, give a word of encouragement, ask a question about the family, or do any of a hundred things you can do to show you care—and do it sometimes when it’s not expected when there’s no discernable reason to do it.
10. On making commercials : Use the commercial to give the viewer the basic information needed to make a decisions to request a free information kit instead of trying to use the commercial to actually make the sale.
11. “Grand slams” can be created by having a celebrity endorser who has so much credibility that you don’t have to waste any time in the commercial establishing the credibility of the company.
12. When you have direct response products, always include an upgrade offer. You would be surprised how many people take it.
13. “salting your communication” : “salt” the last line in your sales pitch to keep everyone thirsty to hear what you have to say next
14. A successful sales system begins with an attitude of respect for the potential buyer. Your buyers are intelligent. Treat them that way.

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You still haven’t read this yet? Well, the basic premise of this novel is that word of mouth is one of the key sources for success in today’s marketplace. Gladwell explains how to systematically engineer a word of mouth epidemic—control that no one thought was possible. It’s genuinely fascinating. I’ve boiled it down to its key points and enlightening realizations. Enjoy.

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The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

by Malcolm Gladwell

1. Definition – The tipping point is the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point.
2. Epidemics tip because of extraordinary efforts of a select carrier
3. stickiness – means message makes an impact
4. 3 rules of the Tipping Point: (Law of the Few, Stickiness Factor, Power of Context)
5. connectors are one of the few –people who have a special ability for bringing the world together : they have mastered the “weak tie” which is when you have lot’s of friends by casual social connections
6. when it comes to finding out about new ideas “weak ties” are always more important than strong ties. Because our friends occupy the same world that you do.
7. Word of mouth – it’s not me telling you about a new restaurant with great food, and you telling a friend, that friend telling a friend, etc. Instead, word of mouth begins when one of those friends tells a connector and the bam! Word of mouth requires connectors.
8. Mavens – a person who has lot’s of information on different products, prices, or places – like to be helpers in market place, distribute coupons. They take you shopping, has the inside schoop on the marketplace.
9. Mavens are not persuaders. Their motivation is to educate and to help.
10. Salesman – what makes someone persuasive?
    - small things can make as significant a difference as big things
    - non verbal cues are as important/more important than verbal cues
    - *persuasion works in ways we do not appreciate or realize *
11. Emotional contagion – emotion goes outside in. Ex. If I can make you smile, I can make you happy. Make you frown, make you sad.
12. One critical factor in epidemics is the nature of the messenger. The messenger must have credibility and reputation (like Paul Revere)
13. It’s possible to systematically engineer stickiness into a message
14. The line between hostility and acceptance, between and epidemic that tips and one that does not, is sometimes a lot more narrow than it seems. Ex. Adding Big Bird to Sesame Street, or adding a map to a pamphlet
15. Ideas have to be memorable and move us to action.
16. Crime is contagious like fashion—broken window can turn into an epidemic
17. Minor things can be tipping points for huge spread
18. power of context – says what really matters is the little things
19. good substance -> makes it sticky ->salesman ->context
20. people want inclusion—want to be part of a group
21. If you want to bring change in beliefs and behavior you must create a community around them, where beliefs can be practiced and expressed and nurtured.
22. Rule of 150 : once membership in a community surpasses 150 it is no longer as effective.
23. Better off to build lot’s of little communities, rather than one big one (or two big ones). Because crossing the 150 line is a small change that can make a huge difference
24. When making a community, structure it like a family—builds intimacy and trust. This will help to naturally create delegation more effectively.
25. To create one big contagion, must create many many small movements.
26. Early Adopters & Innovators – are visionaries.
27. Following the ride of success requires you to help show benefits of product to early majority because they may not be attracted to the same aspects as an early adopter.
28. The early majority takes the product the early adopter liked and tweaks it to fit their own wants—to change it and make it okay for them. It is key that you help them see it can be changed to fit their needs—to get past the style of the innovators.
29. How mavens and connectors and salesman make an idea contagious- they alter the idea so that extra details are stripped and others are exaggerated so that the message comes to acquire a deeper meaning.
30. Trendsetter kids – they pick up on bigger things. Mainstream kids are thinking about being overweight, their grandparents dying, etc. Trendsetter kids are typically activists, people with more passion.
31. What Airwalk did was find the trends in their infancy and then associate their products with these trends and then assimilated the trends into mainstream—in a pair of shoes.
32. The way Airwalk kept from losing the coolness factor of the innovators was by segmenting distribution so limited edition went to certain places. Made consumers feel special. Make sure to promise stores the exclusive and then keep that promise.
33. People need permission from others to jump onboard. So, they need to see other people liking it. The people who give permission are the salemen.
34. The tipping person can be the Maven, the Salesman, or the Connector.
35. Get the cool people to give permission to everyone else—(ex. Smoking was never cool. Smokers just happened to be cool kids. So, everyone wanted to mimic the cool kids.)
36. Contagion is a function of the messenger. Stickiness is primarily a property of the message.
37. Be Smart. Change context of the message. Change messenger. Change the message.
38. The cure for immunity to marketing your message is finding mavens, connectors, and salesmen to do it for you.
39. Find mavens by creating “maven traps.”

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Many people run online stores because the overhead is low and the time commitment is flexible. One thing to worry about, though, is neglecting to place importance on high-quality customer support. I look forward to reading more books about customer support in the future as I’ve begun to realize that it’s not just being nice to your customers. There’s a science to it. Some of these notes may seem like common sense, but if they’re not in your arsenal, then you may be hurting yourself more than you realize. Just like Gladwell wrote in The Tipping Point, “small things can make a HUGE difference.” Maybe amazing customer support can be your tipping point.

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Delivering Knock Your Socks Off Service

by Ron Zemke and Kristin Anderson

1. Use “I” instead of “they” or “we” in your communication
2. Never over promise just to get a sale. Service doesn’t end with the sale. It just begins. Keeping the promises you make and only making promises you can keep is what reliability is all bout.
3. People don’t buy because they are made to understand. They buy because they feel understood.
4. Always write to customers on 8.5×11 size paper because it will not be easily lost.
5. Email tips – reread email before you click send. A cold impersonal tone tells customers you think them like a number.
6. How to say thank you – send a follow up note after purchase. Personalize it. Customers hate form letters.
7. When it’s necessary to say sorry, but it feels like saying “I’m sorry” is taking on too much of the blame, instead say “thank you for bringing that to my attention.”
8. Don’t use a scapegoat to take the blame for your mistake — it tells your customer that your company is not working as a tight-knit team
9. Your internet site should have things available within one click
   a.  help
   b.  product availability
   c.  billing
   d.  order confirmation
   e.  delivery tracking

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Innovation is great. Change is great. New things are great. But WAIT! Why are you innovating? Why are you changing? Why are you introducing new things? This book opened up my eyes to a new perspective. We need to always be careful that we’re not changing just for the sake of changing. Sure everyone is “innovating,” but really, is that what your company needs?

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Renovate Before You Innovate: Why Doing the New Thing Might Not Be the Right Thing

by Sergio Zyman

1. Know the difference between core competency (what you know how to do) and core essence (who you really are as a brand) and why a solid understanding of core essence is the heart of any business success.
2. Renovation no longer doing different things with your existing assets and competencies, but doing BETTER things with them instead
3. Innovation pitfalls
   a.  They focus on leveraging their core competencies instead of their core essence
   b.  They grow horizontally instead of vertically
4. Quit worrying about new businesses, new brands, and new customers. Instead, worry about how to make better use of the ones you already have
5. Don’t grow horizontally by chasing new customers and getting into new markets and new business. Instead, grow organically by focusing on existing customers, existing businesses, and existing markets.
6. Studies have found that increasing customer retention a mere 5% can boost profits by 50%
7. Loyal customers are less likely to wait for promotions, so you can charge them more.
8. Ability to grow organically you must leverage:
   a.  core competencies
   b.  core essence (most impt.)
   c.  your assets and infrastructure
9. To develop a renovation mentality:
   a.  Commit before you ever start something new to measuring results of every single dollar you spend on marketing
   b.  get the idea of giving price concessions out of your mind
10. ***The purpose of marketing is to drive sales, and every dollar you spend on marketing should generate measurable results***
11. Instead of asking “what other businesses are there like us?” you should ask “what other choices does my customer have?”
12. Recipe for creating an Experience:
    Offer easy access
       a.  don’t have to work too hard to get what you want
       b.  you can decide on spur of the moment
    Be a social, shared experience
       a.  I can tell someone about it
       b.  I derive pleasure from seeing someone else it enjoy it
    Be interactive
       a.  You can tough it, feel it, move it, shape it.
       b.  Gives you immediate feedback
    Be unexpected
       a.  It surprises you
       b.  It’s not what you expected (in a good way)
    Be personalized
       a.  It can be customized to you
       b.  It’s not the same for everyone every time
    Remove the negatives
       a.  it can distract you
       b.  it makes time go by fast
13. Post purchase: consumers want confirmation that what they bought was the right purchase
14. Try underpromising and over delivering
15. Post purchase goals: encourage product usage and encourage repurchase
    - loyalty programs
    - customer service surveys
    - regular newsletters with tips and articles for how to use the product
    - using marketing and advertising to remind customers of the needs and wants the product satisfies and how using it will improve their life
16. the quality of the post purchase experience is up to you just like the prepurchasing experience is up to you

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You may think this book seems out of place with the others (mostly business-related) in my collection, but that just means you need to look a little bit deeper. What is business if it’s not about the people that are involved? And not just the customers. Co-workers, partners, suppliers—everyone you work with to accomplish your goals. Yes, we’re a technology driven society, but a business is still made a success by the people it involves. So, when you get a bored of reading all those marketing and management books that seem to provide so much guidance, stop for a moment and realize that you can learn just as much (if not more) about making your business succeed by reading a touching novel about real people.

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Tuesdays with Morrie

by Mitch Alborn

Sometimes I’ll read an entire book and get one main point that really hits home. That thought/idea will stay with me forever on. With Tuesdays with Morrie there were two points that made the entire read worth it. The first:

When Morrie was with you, he was really with you. He looked you straight in the eye, and he listened as if you were the only person in the world. How much better would people get along if their first encounter each day were like this instead of a grumble from a waitress or a bus driver or a boss? “I believe in being present,” Morrie said. “That means you should be with the person you’re with. When I’m talking to you now, I try to keep focused only on what is going on between us. I am not thinking about something we said last week. I am not thinking of what’s coming up this Friday. I am not thinking about doing another Koppel show, or about what medications I’m taking.”

So many people are so self-absorbed, their eyes glaze over if you speak for more than thirty seconds. They already have something else in mind—a friend to call, a fax to send, a lover they’re daydreaming about. They only snap back to full attention when you finish talking, at which point they sah “uh huh” or “yeah, really” and fake their way back to the moment.

Since reading this, I have tried to really embrace this technique. It helps me live life in the moment. And remember what life is all about. People.

The second:

“I heard a little story the other day,” Morrie says. He closes his eyes for a moment and I wait.
“Okay,. The story is about a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. He’s enjoying the wind and the fresh air—until he notices the other waves in front of him, crashing against the shore.
“’My God, this is terrible’ the wave says. ‘Look what’s going to happen to me!’” Then along comes another wave. It sees the first wave, looking grim, and it says to him, ‘Why do you look so sad?’” The first wave says, “You don’t understand! We’re all going to crash! All of us waves are going to be nothing! Isn’t it terrible?’ “The second wave says, ‘No, you don’t understand. You’re not a wave, you’re part of the ocean’”

I smile. Morrie closes his eyes again.

“Part of the ocean,” he says, “part of the ocean.

I watch him breathe, in and out, in and out. …

Reading this always reminds me that we are all a part of something bigger. Many times we are too boxed in our own perspectives to realize the bigger picture. Always try and force yourself to think outside of your own world. Because after all, you’re a part of a much bigger world than you can ever imagine.

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There were a lot of great tips in here for writing effective sales letters, etc. I’m not really interested in that type of online sales, but I was able to grab a number of other useful facets from the reading. Like any “success secrets” book, it’s all up to you to integrate a variety of people’s techniques in order to make them fit for you. The good thing to remember in this case is that even if you’re not specifically interested in a certain market, you can borrow techniques from the approach and try and apply it to your own.

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Success Secrets of the Online Marketing Superstars

by Mitch Meyerson

1. successful people act even when they’re afraid or feel fear
2. You’ve got to set goals as simple as “what would your ideal home look like if you had the home of your heart’s desire? You know, what it would look like if you acquired it and it worked for you. And that’s down to what does the front door look like, what doe the entryway look like?
3. Just ask for what you want. The problem with most people is that they don’t know what they want.
4. Your goals should include contribution. Build giving back into your goal program.
5. Share your goals with others so they’ll support you.
6. start each goal with I AM or I WILL
7. There are 12 Principles of Persuasion.  These are the most noteworthy:
   A.  Give Gifts
   B.  Popularity—show that your product is popular and that others have bought it
   C.  Scarcity –they don’t have much to last
   D.  Rapport – build rapport (blog maybe?, articles)
   E.  Create urgency - give people a time deadline
   F.  Belonging – get people to belong to a club or group
   G.  Curiosity – make them curious - “if you miss this you’ll kick yourself”
8. Research has shown that when people are presented with too many choices, they get confused and often leave.
9. Take advantage of the Internet’s interactivity. Involve your visitors. Give them a quiz, let them sign up for a prize or a free e-book or a PDF file. The more you involve people the more they’ll be involved with you.
10. Follow-up. You should get back to emails in 2 hrs or less.
11. Maintenance of website. Keep it fresh and changing, keep offering new things.
12. Headlines. “Do you Make these mistakes in English?” Use the word THESE. Forces the surfer to read on.
13. Not only incorporate a time deadline, but also remind them of what they’ll miss out on if they don’t take action. – “You only get bonuses if you order by X date”
14. Tell a friend script.
15. Take advantage of un-used real estate on the site. Thank you pages and confirmation pages. You can ask people to sign up for the newsletter, post affiliate links, inform them of a product
16. Survey your market. Exit survey. Customized auto responder series.

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