Interpreting criticism

Heartfelt criticism of your idea or your art is usually right (except when it isn’t…)

Check out this letter from the publisher of a magazine you’ve never heard of to the founder of a little magazine called Readers Digest:

But, personally, I don’t see how you will be able to get enough subscribers to support it. It is expensive for its size. It isn’t illustrated… I have my doubts about the undertaking as a publishing venture.

Of course, he was right–given his assumptions. And that’s the except part.

Criticism of your idea is usually based on assumptions about the world as it is. Jackson Pollock could never have made it as an painter in the world as it was. And Harry Potter was rejected by just about everyone because for it to succeed the way kids read would have to change.

The useful element of this sort of criticism isn’t that the fact that people in the status quo don’t like your idea. Of course they don’t. The interesting question is: what about the world as it is would have to change for your idea to be important?

In the case of Readers Digest, the key thing that changed was the makeup of who was reading magazines. Most of the people (and it was a lot of people) who subscribed to the Digest didn’t read other magazines. And so comparing to other magazines made no sense, except to say, "this is so different from other magazines, the only way you’re going to succeed is by selling it to millions of people who don’t read those magazines." And Starbucks had no chance if they were going to focus on the sort of person who bought coffee at Dunkin Donuts or a diner, and the iPad couldn’t possibly succeed if people were content to use computers the way they were already using them.

Keep that in mind the next time a gatekeeper or successful tastemaker explains why you’re going to fail.

Not Labor with a capital L, as in organized labor unions. I mean labor as in skilled workers solving interesting problems. I mean craftspeople who use their hands, their backs and their heads to do important work.

Labor was a key part of the manufacturing revolution. Industrlalists needed smart, dedicated, trained laborers to solve interesting problems. Putting things together took more than pressing a few buttons, it took initiative and skill and care. Labor improvised.

It took thirteen years to build the Brooklyn Bridge and more than twenty-five laborers died during its construction. There was not a systematic manual to follow. The people who built it largely figured it out as they went.

The Singer sewing machine, one of the most complex devices of its century, had each piece fitted by hand by skilled laborers.

Sometime after this, once Henry Ford ironed out that whole assembly line thing, things changed. Factories got far more complex and there was less room for improvisation as things scaled.

The boss said, "do what I say. Exactly what I say."

Amazingly, labor said something similar. They said to the boss, "tell us exactly what to do." In many cases, work rules were instituted, flexibility went away and labor insisted on doing exactly what they had agreed to do, no more, no less. At the time, this probably felt like power. Now we know what a mistake it was.

In a world where labor does exactly what it’s told to do, it will be devalued. Obedience is easily replaced, and thus one worker is as good as another. And devalued labor will be replaced by machines or cheaper alternatives. We say we want insightful and brilliant teachers, but then we insist they do their labor precisely according to a manual invented by a committee…

Companies that race to the bottom in terms of the skill or cost of their labor end up with nothing but low margins. The few companies that are able to race to the top, that can challenge workers to bring their whole selves–their human selves–to work, on the other hand, can earn stability and growth and margins. Improvisation still matters if you set out to solve interesting problems.

The future of labor isn’t in less education, less OSHA and more power to the boss. The future of labor belongs to enlightened, passionate people on both sides of the plant, people who want to do work that matters.

That’s what Labor Day is about, not the end of a month on the beach.

Shanke off the cobwebs. . . this is a new way of looking at things. . . By Seth Godin!

One way to start every morning with your team is to have them check in. Go around in a circle and let people update and contribute. It’s not a silly exercise, in that it helps people speak up and it communicates forward motion.

Another way, probably a better one, is to have each member of the team announce what they’re afraid of. Two kinds of afraid, actually. Things that might fail and things that might work.

What are you, chicken?

Yes, we’re chicken. We’re afraid. The lizard has us by the claws.

So, tell us. What are you afraid might happen that would destroy, disintegrate, or dissuade–that would take us down? And what are you afraid of that might work, thus changing everything and opening up entirely new areas of scariness?

What’s included?

This is the pricing question of our time.

First, from the buyer’s point of view: when I buy this car/boiler/phone, how much are the services that come with it going to cost me every month, forever?

We stand at the Verizon store agonizing about the extra $34 in posted price for one phone over the other, then sign a contract for $2400 in fees.

We are attracted to a car with a rebate, not caring about the $2000 extra in lifetime gas costs.

More and more, the thing we buy isn’t a thing, it’s a subscription. The thing might as well be free.

And from the seller’s point of view?

When you sell me that low-cost email service, did you also just get yourself on the hook for a lifetime of free support? What’s that going to cost you?

When you take her reservation at your hotel, are you prepared to do all the work and attention you need to get a decent review on TripAdvisor? Ready for your CEO to take a call in the middle of the night, ready to comp meals, scramble teams of reps or engage in months of correspondence with that customer? Because that’s all included in your marketing costs now, isn’t it?

I recently hired someone to do some research and brainstorming. The first stage of what might become quite a bit of work. I was sort of amazed at the end of the short project… he asked me if I was happy with what I got, and I said, ‘no.’ He said, ‘sorry’ and walked away.

On one hand, this is dumb marketing, because he’d already done the hard work of establishing a customer, and wasn’t particularly interested in turning that customer into a happy referral.

On the other hand, the old school decision to view a transaction as a transaction, time to move on to the next, is getting more and more rare. Perhaps it’s an intentional act on his part, a way of doing business in the moment, without investing in or worrying about what comes as a result.

And this is the problem with just about every lame speech, every overlooked memo, every worthless bit of boilerplate foisted on the world: you write and write and talk and talk and bullet and bullet but no, you’re not really saying anything.

It took me two minutes to find a million examples. Here’s one, "The firm will remain competitive in the constantly changing market for defense legal services by creating and implementing innovative and effective methods of providing cost-effective, quality representation and services for our clients."

Write nothing instead. It’s shorter.

Most people work hard to find artful ways to say very little. Instead of polishing that turd, why not work harder to think of something remarkable or important to say in the first place?

Your business has a core, a goal, a challenge and a deliverable. There is probably one thing that would transform your project, one success that changes things, one hurdle that’s tougher than the others. What’s difficult, what would respond to overwhelming attention? That’s the core.

Getting from here to there involves making sales, delivering on promises, overcoming the Dip and shipping.

Along the way, there are supporting tasks you can engage in, things you can do to make the goal easier to achieve.

A popular blog might gain attention and then trust and ultimately help you sell more widgets.

A lot of followers online might give you permission to tell a story that gets you better employees.

A vibrant party at SXSW can create buzz that gives your salespeople entree to important meetings.

These aren’t trivial activities. In fact, they’re part of what marketing means today. But…

But if they give you and your team an outlet to avoid the difficult work of achieving your goal ("I can’t go to that sales call, I’m busy uploading pictures of last night’s party to the blog and then tweeting out the url") then you’re not building, you’re hiding. Rich calls this playing with turtles. The thing is, the turtles are alive, and they’re going to demand a lot from you.

There’s a huge downside here: once your side activity gets going, it will lead to crises (we have an urgent email we have to answer), to feelings of abandonment (hey, you haven’t been on the forum lately!), to irresistible offers to have the CEO speak or get people involved. There will always be a feeling of sunk cost, of opportunities missed and of things on the verge because these are human movements, not paid ads.

Two choices: 1. find a way to make your goal completely aligned with the tactics you use to achieve it. What’s good for your blog is good for your business. or 2. Now that these approaches are working, and working incredibly well, it’s time to come up with boundaries so the tail doesn’t end up wagging the dog.

this list was amazingly acquired by:http://www.ezmarketing.com/classifieds.shtml

So mad props and a little link love deserves to go this way!

So here it is, the holy grail to both riches and Google page rank juice!

Most Internet marketers don’t appreciate the pulling power of classified ads.
They think classifieds ads are for selling cars or finding jobs not for promoting an online business.
While it’s true a classified ad is a good way to sell a car, or find a job, it is also true that online classified ads can be used to launch and promote your online business and by adding the link to your web sites in your ads you may also help improve your page rankings.

Here’s a list of online classifieds that offer free ads. I have used most of these over the years and the ones highlighted in yellow are my most productive sites. If you have others that work well let me know about them and I’ll add them here for others to use. Contact me…

Craigslist

1 Class Ads
1 America Mall Classifieds

AR-Auto Classifieds

Able Wise Classifieds
Ad Net! Classifieds

AD-Line Classifieds
Ad An Ad
Adland Pro Classifieds manages over 3700 of the Web’s classified sites. Place a free ad about your website and you are linked to all these sites. I have been using Adland Pro since 1999 and it is the best classified ad site around.
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Alaska Classifieds Ads

Amcho Classifieds Ads

American Classified – Free classified Ad Online
AdsOMatic
Atlantic ClassifiedsAtomicbot Classifieds
AZ Family Free Classifieds
BCT Marketing 4 U Ad Post Classifieds
BestHost Classifieds
Best Mall
BMI’s Free Classifieds
Buy & Sell Classifieds
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Buy & Sell Online
Cashscripts Free Classifieds
City News Classifieds
Citisale Classifieds Online
Classifieds 1000 Free Ads
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Classifieds Network
Classifieds Worldwide
Commerce Classifieds
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DEW Agencies Classifieds
Direct-Go Classifieds
Domestic Sale Classifieds
EPage Classifieds manages over 28800 of the Web’s classified sites place an ad and you are linked to all them.
EC E-Classified Ads
EzClassifieds & Everyday Business Ads
Excite Classifieds
Find It Free Classifieds
Flea Market at FUW
For Sale C1
Free Classifieds
Free Classified Ads
Free World Classifieds
Gateway 2 China Classifieds
Gems 4 Friends Classifieds
Global SIC Classifieds
Health Shopper Classifieds
HGG Group Classified Site
High Desert Computer
Hotel Online Classifieds
InfoSpace Classifieds
Jo’s Hope Classifieds
Junk Mail
Kick Ads
Kingdom Classifieds
Loot Classified Ads
Marketing Resource Classifieds
MGA Web Submissions and Classifieds
Mjmls Classifieds Free Advertising
My Town Ads Free Online Classifieds
Net Classifieds
Net Nickel Classifieds
Net Trader
NetScape Classifieds
New Quest City National Classifieds
OZ Free Classifieds
PC Adz Classifieds
Post A Classified
Potter County Classifieds
Quick-Checks Free Classifieds

RLAJ Classifieds
Route 6 Classifieds Online
Salem County Classifieds
Santa Barbara Classifieds
Sell Buy or Trade
Selling Ads
Showroom Today
Sula Small Biz Classifieds
Software 4 Profit Classifieds
The Classified Page
Three Sisters Classifieds Network
Torontonian Classifieds
Totally Free Ads
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USFreeads has been providing high traffic, high response Free Classifieds since 1999. They also offer a lucrative 2 tier affiliate program. Earn Money from Free Classifieds.
USA Shopper Classifieds
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VMG Classifieds
Victoria B.C. Buy N Sell
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WWB City
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Webmaster Tool Central Classifieds List
Web Zone Classifieds
Yahoo! Classifieds
Ziply

Giving away a magician’s secrets

Steve Cohen makes more than a million dollars a year doing magic tricks.

I will now tell you the secrets of this magic:

1. He sells to a very specific group of people, people who are both willing to hear what he has to say and able to pay what he wants to charge them.
2. He tells a story to this group, a story that matches their worldview. He doesn’t try to teach non-customers a lesson or persuade them that they are wrong or don’t know enough about his art. Instead, he makes it easy for his happy customers to bring his art to others.
3. He intentionally creates an experience that is remarkable and likely to spread. "What did you do last night?" is a great question when it’s asked of someone you entertained the night before, particularly if you can give the audience an answer they can give. That’s how the word spreads.
4. He’s extremely generous in who he works with, how promiscuous he is about sharing and in his attitude.
5. He’s very good at his craft. Don’t overlook this one.

I guess it comes down to this: if you’re having trouble persuading people to buy what you sell, perhaps you should sell something else. Failing that, perhaps you could talk about what you sell in a different way.

Important clarification: I’m not telling you to sell out or to pander or to dumb down your art. Great marketers lead people, stretching the boundaries and bringing new messages to people who want to hear them. The core of my argument is that someone’s worldview, how they feel about risk or other factors, is beyond your ability to change in the short run. Sell people something they’re interesting in buying. If you can’t leverage the worldview they already have, you are essentially invisible. Which is a whole other sort of magic, one that’s not so profitable.

This cutting edge article was written by Nick S of Brickmarketing on March 25, 2010 2:49 AM

i seed it here for your review:

I look at the process of launching a new website really fun and exciting. Maybe that is because I have been in the industry for so long and I find it thrilling. For some it could be a task of freight and overwhelming emotions. The online space is getting more and more crowded each and every single day. To launch a new website in today’s market place really does require a business to hit the pavement running, and fast.
Website: Starting with the website it has to be functional and interactive. At the end of the day aren’t you sending everyone to your website? Shouldn’t it cover all the bases that it needs to cover and present itself in an appealing fashion? Your website should be fully optimized for search and conversions right out of the gates with nice sticky optimized website content to get your pages moving around.
Link Building: Almost immediately after you launch your website you will want to have some sort of online marketing plan in place to help you build links and drive traffic to your website. Depending on how savvy and experienced you are you could go aggressive or you could take a very conservative approach to get things started.

Social Media: Social media is not just a phenomenon anymore it is a reality. To be successful online you absolutely need to dive in and start swimming. As soon as you launch your business online you have to slowly start building up your online social community in order to build your brand. This will help you build your brand following and over time it will generate new clients and customers for yourself.
Blog: When you are in the process of building your website get your blog installed at that time. It will be much easier to integrate since it is being built then and you will want it down the road to help grow your business. Even if you are not a big writer you will want to slowly start thinking of ways to fill that blog with content. Each blog post you will want to funnel into your social networks along with some of the social bookmarking websites to get them out there a bit.
These 4 areas are very important to apply to your business. This should be all started right from the initial launch of your online business. Don’t wait and mull things over and contemplate what you should start. I know it sounds like it could be a very scary task but it is something that every business needs to ramp up almost immediately.

This article was written by Nick Stamoulis, President and Founder of the search engine marketing company, Brick Marketing

What do you folks think?  what here has worked for you. . .what hasnt, please leave your comments below!

Tevis

Seeded from: http://askdirectmarketers.wordpress.com/2008/09/15/sales-and-marketing-differences-defined/#comment-205

Your question: Selling and marketing are used similarly–they’re interexchangable terms in many people’s minds.  Can you explain the difference?

Our answer: In a perfect world, sales and marketing are aligned so well, that it truly is hard to understand where marketing ends and where sales begins. At its most basic, Marketing develops sales leads, by a combination of some of the following disciplines:

• Creating a reputable brand. Creating the right product perception.
• Nurturing leads that are not quite ready to buy.
• Understanding the life-cycle of a prospect, so that sales can close the lead once they are ready to buy.
• Maximizing channels such as advertising, public relations, branding, social marketing and direct response techniques.

Then, sales is responsible for closing the sale–getting that contract signed. The sales process relies on one-on-one relationships. Sales relies on meetings, cold calls, and networking. Sales engages with the prospect or customer on a personal level rather than at a distance.

Personal selling is the process of putting a human being in contact with customers and allowing the relationship that develops to result in a sale for the business. A good salesperson is an excellent listener and always attempts to meet client needs, and match their company’s capabilities to those needs.

When sales and marketing work together, you’ll see the best results. Too often, we see a huge gap between marketing and sales, and oftentimes it’s only a communications issue. Marketing believes that sales are lazy because they’re not working the leads that Marketing worked so hard to acquire. Conversely, sales thinks that marketing’s leads are junk–that they’re not qualified and not nearly ready to buy.

It truly is key to get sales and marketing on the same page. Hold meetings so that each group understands what the others’ goals are. Marketing really needs to listen to sales because they’re closest to the customer. Sales needs to understand what the corporate objectives and overall strategies are so that they can drive to the same strategies. When you can get your sales and marketing teams to work together, you’ll win by having a better pipeline and more closed sales.

by ANDY JENKINS on MARCH 22, 2010

Ready… Fire! WAIT! No, Aim… Ready… WAIT! FIRE! No, wait…

If you attended the webinar I had with Frank Kern last week, you may have heard me say this, but I think it bears repeating:

“Failure is just a test result.”

I try to think that everything in business (and life in general) is a test of one kind of another. Meaning that if you don’t get the outcome you were trying for:

1. Think of a possible reason why it didn’t work.

2. Implement a test that eliminates that possible reason and try again.

3. If it didn’t work, go back to 1.

I guess that’s just my usual “maximum verbosity” way of saying “Practice makes perfect.” One of my heroes said it best:

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Thomas A. Edison

Now, as much as I love that attitude, I have to admit that I’d *rather not* have to fail *10,000 times* in order to find something that works. There’s got to be a better way, right?

It turns out that we actually use Alternating Current (AC) to power the most of the modern world, contrary to Edison’s designs. AC was actually championed by Edison’s biggest rival, Nikola Tesla.

And in fact, Tesla actually worked for Edison early on and thought his trial-and-error process was B.S. too.

“If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search.

I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor.”

Yeah! Now we’re onto something. If I can eliminate 90% of my work by applying a little theory and calculation, that means I only need to fail 1000 times. THAT’S do-able.

It might sound like a lot, but consider that with the internet, you can spend $100 on AdWords and get 1000 clicks to test nearly ANYTHING.

Failure online is a LOT cheaper than it was for Edison to try to make light bulb filaments out of every element known to man.

So how did Tesla do it?

“My method is different. I do not rush into actual work. When I get a new idea, I start at once building it up in my imagination, and make improvements and operate the device in my mind.

When I have gone so far as to embody everything in my invention, every possible improvement I can think of, and when I see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form the final product of my brain.”

Man, wouldn’t THAT be awesome? There’s just ONE little problem. Tesla was dealing with harnessing little particles called electrons.

They move according to entirely predictable laws of physics and electromagnetism. So any electrical engineer can make a
*pretty good* guess about how they’re going to behave.

That’s the whole reason it’s even possible to harness electricity at all, and how we use it to keep the lights burning and wheels turning across the globe.

But as marketers, we deal with a much more UNPREDICTABLE force: human nature. If electrons were as unreliable as people, we’d still be cooking on wood burning stoves by candle- light.

The fact is, when you’re dealing with homosapiens like us, you don’t know ANYTHING until you do live testing. You can use the best theories and make a good GUESS, but you can’t ever truly predict.

Every single launch I do surprises me in at least some small way. BUT I learn a little more each time and that informs how I do the NEXT launch. And guess what? I do better EACH time.

That’s why I hereby recommend to you the hybridized Edison/Tesla/Jenkins method for solving the problems you find in your business.

You’ve got to be like Edison and be ready to test stuff right away and either proceed or fail and move on. But you want to waste as little time as possible, so you need to plan ahead like Tesla.

However: If you spend TOO MUCH time in the planning phase, it can make it hard to identify exactly why it’s failing because you’ve over-thought things. That’s why you need BOTH!

Get WHATEVER it is you’re testing in front of REAL prospects and customers as soon as possible. See how they react, then use your noodle, think of something to test and then adjust accordingly.

MAD SCIENTIST DEGREES NOT REQUIRED:

Now, all this talk of electricity and eccentric geniuses and entrepreneurs might make it seem like a big convoluted procedure you need to go through to test like this.

It’s actually REALLY easy.

You just take the time to INTERACT with your prospects, add value to their lives, and try to make em better every single time you talk to them.

Then, every once in a while, if you have an idea to bounce of them and test out, you can just ASK and they are HAPPY to help. For example:

If you feel like you’re failing, or you feel like you can’t fail frequently or fast ENOUGH: leave me a comment below to share your thoughts.

Until next time,
Andy

P.S. If you have just one takeaway from this newsletter, remember that what feels like a failure can really be just one minor tweak away from lasting success. How lasting?

http://www.centennialbulb.org/photos.htm

That’s a webcam where you can watch a light bulb from Edison’s time that’s been operating for 109 YEARS! Answer me this: If they can make them last that long, why don’t they ALL last that long?Conspiracy?
Remove me from this list

Simpler words have not been written. Here is the blueprint on becoming successful on the internet. Period!

Please take some time to read this over, ponder it, and then give me a call if you want to work together.  In this internet game, it is a support oriented concerted effort. . .and all get successful together!

Good Gawd, this is seth godin at his absolute best!

10,000 years ago, civilization forked. Farming was invented and the way many people spent their time was changed forever.

Clearly, farming is a very different activity from hunting. Farmers spend time sweating the details, worrying about the weather, making smart choices about seeds and breeding and working hard to avoid a bad crop. Hunters, on the other hand, have long periods of distracted noticing interrupted by brief moments of frenzied panic.

It’s not crazy to imagine that some people are better at one activity than another. There might even be a gulf between people who are good at each of the two skills. Thom Hartmann has written extensively on this. He points out that medicating kids who might be better at hunting so that they can sit quietly in a school designed to teach farming doesn’t make a lot of sense.

A kid who has innate hunting skills is easily distracted, because noticing small movements in the brush is exactly what you’d need to do if you were hunting. Scan and scan and pounce. That same kid is able to drop everything and focus like a laser–for a while–if it’s urgent. The farming kid, on the other hand, is particularly good at tilling the fields of endless homework problems, each a bit like the other. Just don’t ask him to change gears instantly.

Marketers confuse the two groups. Are you selling a product that helps farmers… and hoping that hunters will buy it? How do you expect that people will discover your product, or believe that it will help them? The woman who reads each issue of Vogue, hurrying through the pages then clicking over to Zappos to overnight order the latest styles–she’s hunting. Contrast this to the CTO who spends six months issuing RFPs to buy a PBX that was last updated three years ago… she’s farming.

Both groups are worthy, both groups are profitable. But each group is very different from the other, and I think we need to consider teaching, hiring and marketing to these groups in completely different ways. I’m not sure if there’s a genetic component or if this is merely a convenient grouping of people’s personas. All I know is that it often explains a lot about behavior (including mine).

Some ways to think about this:

• George Clooney (in  Up in the Air) and James Bond are both fictional hunters. Give them a desk job and they freak out.
• Farmers don’t dislike technology. They dislike failure. Technology that works is a boon.
• Hunters are in sync with Google, a hunting site, farmers like Facebook.
• When you promote a first-rate hunting salesperson to internal sales management, be prepared for failure.
• Farmers prefer productive meetings, hunters want to simply try stuff and see what happens.
• Warren Buffet is a farmer. So is Bill Gates. Mark Cuban is a hunter.
• Hunters want a high-stakes mission, farmers want to avoid epic failure.
• Trade shows are designed to entrance hunters, yet all too often, the booths are staffed with farmers.
• The last hundred years of our economy favored smart farmers. It seems as though the next hundred are going to belong to the persistent hunters able to stick with it for the long haul.
• A hunter will often buy something merely because it is difficult to acquire.
• One of the paradoxes of venture capital is that it takes a hunter to get the investment and a farmer to patiently make the business work.
• A farmer often relies on other farmers in her peer group to be sure a purchase is riskless.

Who are you hiring? Competing against? Teaching?

Profound  words, by Seth Godin

How can I explain the never-ending irrationality of human behavior?

We say we want one thing, then we do another. We say we want to be successful but we sabotage the job interview. We say we want a product to come to market, but we sandbag the shipping schedule. We say we want to be thin but we eat too much. We say we want to be smart but we skip class or don’t read that book the boss lent us.

The contradictions never end. When someone shows up and acts without contradiction, we’re amazed. When an athlete just does the sport, or when a writer just writes the words, we can’t help but watch, astonished at the purity of their actions. Why is it so difficult to do what we say we’re going to do?

The lizard brain.

Or as Stephen Pressfield describes it, the resistance. The resistance is the voice in the back of our head telling us to back off, be careful, go slow, compromise. The resistance is writer’s block and putting jitters and every project that ever shipped late because people couldn’t stay on the same page long off to get something out the door.

The resistance grows in strength as we get closer to shipping, as we get closer to an insight, as we get closer to the truth of what we really want. That’s because the lizard hates change and achievement and risk.

The lizard is a physical part of your brain, the pre-historic lump near the brain stem that is responsible for fear and rage and reproductive drive. Why did the chicken cross the road? Because her lizard brain told her to.

Want to know why so many companies can’t keep up with Apple? It’s because they compromise, have meetings, work to fit in, fear the critics and generally work to appease the lizard. Meetings are just one symptom of an organization run by the lizard brain. Late launches, middle of the road products and the rationalization that goes with them are others.

The amygdala isn’t going away. Your lizard brain is here to stay, and your job is to figure out how to quiet it and ignore it. This is so important, I wanted to put it on the cover of my new book. We realized, though, that the lizard brain is freaked out by a picture of itself, and if you want to sell books to someone struggling with the resistance (that would be all of us) best to keep it a little more on the down low.

Now you’ve seen the icon and you know its name. What are you going to do about it?

The Future is US. . . . .

The Future is NOW!

"I am the hole on the flute that God’s breath flows through." 
Eckhart Tolle

Team Hoyt is a father (Dick Hoyt, b. ca. 1940) and son (Rick Hoyt, born January 10, 1962) from who compete together in marathons together.  Rick has Cerebral Palsy, a condition acquired at birth because his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck during birth.

Dick pulls his son Rick in a special boat as they swim, carries him in a special seat up front as they bike, and pushes him in a special wheelchair as they run.

Dick explains, that the line is blurred, “. . .between me and my son, I don’t know who is giving the greatest gift. . .”

For most products and services, most of the time, people sign up for the Cheapest Reliable Alternative Plan.

If everything appears to be the same, then of course they’re going to pick the cheapest one that’s good enough.

In the face of this understandable strategy, you have a few choices:

You can be cheapest (difficult to sustain).

You can be more reliable (great if you can figure this out).

You can be redefine the playing the field to be the only one (most preferred).

Buying a new microphone or lights for your DJ business doesn’t do any of these three to your competitive status, it merely makes you feel good. Same with re-organizing your office, painting the parking spaces or buying a new laptop. They merely keep you where you were.

The scalable, profitable strategy is to change the game, not to become the most average.

Seth Godin

First, organize 1,000

Kevin Kelly really changed our thinking with his post about 1,000 true fans.

But what if you’re not an artist or a musician? Is there a business case for this?

I think the ability to find and organize 1,000 people is a breakthrough opportunity. One thousand people coordinating their actions is enough to change your world (and make a living.)

1,000 people each spending $1,000 on a special interest cruise equals a million dollars.

1,000 people willing to spend $250 to attend a day-long seminar gives you the leverage to invite just about anyone you can imagine to fly in and speak.

1,000 people voting as a bloc can change local politics forever.

1,000 people willing to try a new restaurant you find for them gives you the ability to make an entrepreneur successful and change the landscape of your town.

Even better, coordinating the learning and connections of this tribe of 1,000 is not just profitable, it’s rewarding. If you can take them where they want to go, you become indispensable (and respected).

What’s difficult? What’s difficult is changing your attitude. Instead of speed dating your way to interruption, instead of yelling at strangers all day trying to make a living, coordinating a tribe of 1,000 requires patience, consistency and a focus on long-term relationships and life time value. You don’t find customers for your products. You find products for your customers.

Seth Godin

Prepare to be sethificated by the soothsayer. . .

A friend is building a skating rink. Unfortunately, he started with uneven ground and the water keeps ending up on one side of the rink. Water’s like that, and you need a lot of time and power and money if you want to change it. One person, working as hard as he can, has little chance of persuading water to change.

Consider this quote from a high-ranking book publisher who should know better, "We must do everything in our power to uphold the value of our content against the downward pressures exerted by the marketplace and the perception that ‘digital’ means ‘cheap.’ …"

Hello?

You don’t have the power. Maybe if every person who has ever published a book or is ever considering publishing a book got together and made a pact, then they’d have enough power to fight the market. But solo? Exhort all you want, it’s not going to do anything but make you hoarse.

Movie execs thought they had the power to fight TV. Record execs thought they had the power to fight iTunes. Magazine execs thought they had the power to fight the web. Newspaper execs thought they had the power to fight Craigslist.

Here’s a way to think about it, inspired by Merlin Mann: Imagine that next year your company is going to make 10 million dollars instead of a hundred million dollars in profit. What would you do knowing that your profits were going to be far less than they are today? Because that’s exactly what the upstart with nothing to lose is going to do. Ten million in profit is a lot to someone starting with zero and trying to gain share. They don’t care that you made a hundred million last year from the old model.

If I’m an upstart publisher or a little-known author, you can bet I’m happy to sell my work at $5 and earn seventy cents a copy if I can sell a million.

Smart businesspeople focus on the things they have the power to change, not whining about the things they don’t.

Existing publishers have the power to change the form of what they do, increase the value, increase the speed, segment the audience, create communities, lead tribes, generate breakthroughs that make us gasp. They don’t have the power to demand that we pay more for the same stuff that others will sell for much less.

And if you think this is a post about the publishing business, I hope you’ll re-read it and think about how digital will change your industry too.

Competition and the market are like water. They go where they want.

Seth Godin

Traffic Getting Jumpstart

This is where I will list my step-by-step traffic-getting strategies for getting more traffic to your websites and blogs.

I call it my Traffic-Getting Jumpstart™ Master Plan.

I’ll start by adding a general outline and then I’ll come back and keep updating it with links to new videos and tutorials as I produce them… the videos and tutorials will that walk you through my “traffic getting” strategies one-by-one .

Not all of them will be posted on my blog.

Some will only be sent out via email so make sure you keep checking your inbox for my new and exclusive Traffic-Getting Tutorials.

Once again: This is the general process that I personally go through to ramp up traffic on a new blog.

Some, but not all of the techniques will also apply to static sites, social networking profile pages, or non-blog websites of any kind.

Each of the steps will be listed but not all of them will have tutorials… at least not for now.
But if you guys see one particular step that you’d like me to jump-forward to and “just create the damn tutorial now”… just leave a comment telling me so and I’ll see what I can do.

Here are the basic “Traffic-Getting Jumpstart™ Master Plan” steps that you should follow.

Remember, it’s knowing how to scale this out and leverage both technology and people to scale this out but everything can be done by just one person if you choose to… just don’t expect an avalanche of traffic for two hours worth of work on a site with only 10 pages in a market that no one cares about!

Always learn how to scale things out by leveraging technology and people… and pick highly competitive markets that people are actively searching for.

DO NOT USE THESE TECHNIQUES FOR SPAMMING THE SEARCH ENGINES!

There’s a fine line between using this technology  and techniques to increase your traffic… and using it to spam the hell out of the engines… don’t cross that line.

We are simply trying to increase awareness of, and increase traffic to, our sites leveraging the viral nature of blogs and web 2.0 sites and technologies.

That having been said:

Here’s my quick “2 hours or less”:

Traffic-Getting Jumpstart Master Plan

1. Pick a market

2. Register the domain

3. Install the Free SEO Blog Software

4. Change the blog’s theme

5. Install the banner ads, affiliate program ads, etc

6. Set up the email capture and first few follow up emails

7. Add content to blog

    a. Run a social bookmarking campaign on blog with one group of bookmarking accounts logins and at different times and days.

    b. Create supporting micro-sites mini-network (social profile pages at squidoo, hubpages, bumpzee, and small static hand built sites).

    c. Run a social bookmarking campaign on your micro-sites mini-network with a different set of bookmarking logins and at different times and days.

8. Submit site to SEO friendly directories sites using directory submission services.

9. Create video

    a. Distribute video with video sharing software

    b. Run a social bookmarking campaign on the videos sharing pages.

Steps 1 – 9 are enough to jumpstart the traffic to your new blog, static website, ecommerce website… and it only takes an hour or two.

If this is a site or market that you know is worth spending additional time on then you can follow these additional steps.

The following steps don’t take that much additional time but should, and can easily be, outsourced.

10. Every month (or sooner) go back and run the social bookmarking campaign again using new social bookmarking logins at different times and days.

11. Every month (or sooner) go back and create a new micro-site or social profile page to support your micro-sites mini-network.
12. Add posts to the blog that link/pingback to other authority blogs in the market.

13. Pick specific posts on your blog that you’d like to rank higher.

    a. Social bookmark those posts with random bookmarking login accounts

    b. Create a videos specific to those posts and load to youtube

    c. Blast that video out to video sharing sites

    d. Social bookmark the videos on the video sharing sites with random bookmarking logins and at different times and days.

    e. Find other authority blogs in the market and post content-rich comments on their blog with links heading back to the post you are trying to rank higher.

You can do the following steps yourself but I would strongly recommend you simply outsource them.

14. Outsource someone to spin articles for you and submit them to directories

15. Outsource someone to create new social bookmarking login accounts

16. Outsource someone to subscribe to your RSS feed and have them social bookmark your new posts (the RSS feed notifies them when there is a new post so they simply head over.

17. Outsource someone to post high-quality, relevant comments on other people’s blogs and forums (DO NOT COMMENT SPAM). Concentrate on ones that do not use the “no follow” attribute.

18. Rinse and Repeat steps 7 – 18+ for sites that are worth the effort.

How do you know if the site is worth the effort?

I can’t answer that for you… only you can answer that question since it is your time and money involved… what is “worth it” to you may not be worth it to the next person and vice-versa.

Ask yourself this question… “does this site (sites) add money and/or value to my business versus the time and effort it takes to rinse and repeat Jeff Johnson’s Traffic-Getting Jumpstart Master Plan?”

If the answer is “yes” then continue to “rinse and repeat” steps 7 through 18 and beyond.

And do yourself a favor and reinvest your earnings into your business by outsourcing the work that takes up the most time so you can concentrate on finding new markets and making money from the traffic you have.

I’ll keep emailing you new tutorials down the road so be sure to check your inbox for updates,

Jeff Johnson
UndergroundTrainingLab.com

Seth Godin is a gift to us all. He is a soothsayer and visionary of Web 1.1-3.0

He has just released a book, and at last measure the servers are on meltdown, so Im tickled to offer it to you here.

click:  www.tevisverrett.com/blog/library/what-matters-now-1.pdf

Here is the original article:

What Matters Now: get the free ebook

Now, more than ever, we need to shake things up.

Now, more than ever, we need a different way of thinking, a useful way to focus and the energy to turn the game around. I hope a new ebook I’ve organized will get you started on that path. It took months, but I think you’ll find it worth it the effort. (Download here).

Here are more than seventy big thinkers, each sharing an idea for you to think about as we head into the new year. From bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert to brilliant tech thinker Kevin Kelly, from publisher Tim O’Reilly to radio host Dave Ramsey, there are some important people riffing about important ideas here. The ebook includes Tom Peters, Jackie Huba and Jason Fried, along with Gina Trapani, Bill Taylor and Alan Webber.

Here’s the deal: it’s free. Download it here. Or from any of the many sites around the web that are posting it with insightful commentary. Tweet it, email it, post it on your own site. I think it might be fun to make up your own riff and post it on your blog or online profile as well. It’s a good exercise. Can we get this in the hands of 5 million people? You can find an easy to use version on Scribd as well and from wepapers. Please share.

Have fun. Here’s to a year with ideas even bigger than these.

Here’s a lens with all the links plus an astonishing array of books by our authors.

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Here’s one way businesses can profit from a social media presence:

Make it easy to get hurt.

If you’re in a low trust industry (like car sales), a social media presence dramatically increases the opportunity people have to call you out, beat you up, tattle on you and flame you in public. If you have a Facebook page and people can YELL at you there, for all to see, it makes you vulnerable. Do you really think that a Chris or a Guy or Gary is going to risk ripping you off for consulting or wine? No way. Too easy for someone to post a comeback for all to see.

When your staff sees how much power you’ve given random consumers, they’ll freak. And then, magically, they’ll start treating customers differently, because maybe, just maybe, this customer is the one who’s going to use the power. Suddenly, the answer to, “do you know who I am!!” is, “yes sire, forgive me.”

It might not be comfortable, but you can bet it will build trust.

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