When you win there is no recrimination, no “what if”. You bask in the sunlight of success, and there is no need to analyse why you got it right. People you never knew claim to be your friends, and strangers dream of following in your footsteps.

On the other hand, when your life falls about you in ruins, there is more than enough time to inspect your effort in the very harsh halogen of hindsight. Especially if you cannot find a job. Your friends claim never to have known you, or that they always knew you were flying too high. And strangers remain just that. “What-if” becomes a refrain that will not leave you, not even for a moment.

As an older person this is the aftermath of the hubris of entrepreneurship. As a younger person, this is what happens after that first romantic rejection, when you find the goddess of your dreams in the arms of your best friend. And both seem to have lost their clothes.

And it has a deep, searing impact on your psyche.

But, here is the thing. Failure is the diploma you must gain before you can achieve any lasting success. Failure teaches you so much. More than anything it teaches you that success, like failure, is always temporary. Of course, in the cold throes of failure, temporary is a good thing. In the warm arms of success, the thought that it might not last long is one better avoided.

Almost every one that we put on a pedestal has a few lapses they would rather not share. Experience cannot grow without being fertilised by mistakes.

Yet, when those mistakes happen, the person who has just seen his experience quotient leap also finds that the rest of the world looks upon him as if he is wearing said fertiliser, and it is a premium brand from the local pig farm.

Why do we so despise those business owners who close their firms when things implode? Why do we look down on them when they lose their homes, the result of signing papers to grow their ventures, and making sure that their staff do get paid.

A bunch of the people who have consulted me had spent the final year of their venture borrowing more and more money in a vain effort to reach the light at the end of their tunnel. Much of that money was spent on paying salaries. Yet that effort carries no weight when the firm closes. The owner is pilloried, no matter how great the sacrifice.

Each staff member simply needs to find a new job. While the owner faces at least five years of court appearances and judgments, each opening another vein. Yet each document is an intense learning experience, and frankly, should be on your power wall, just like a diploma or degree.

Almost twenty years ago, I promised someone that if I could help anyone for free, I would. At that time “´free” was impossible. Teaching, training or meeting cost money. But,with the advent of webinars, an almost free resource, I can help.

So, on Tuesday 28 February, at 8pm SA time, I will be running the first Failures Anonymous online gathering. You are welcome if you are in the throes of such a growth experience. Or if you’re sick at heart about business. Or if you’re finding it too heavy. Or if you have survived it, but still find it nagging.

You will be anonymous. Only I can see names and I won’t use anything other than first names. And even then, if you have a unique name, I won’t use it. So no chance of bumping into anyone you owe money to.

The most empowering thing for me was the realisation that I was not alone, that the problems I was facing were shared by a heck of a lot of people. The more folk I spoke to, the more stories emerged about common behaviours by banks and big players – and it was great to get perspective.

Join me, and maybe we will have enough momentum to do this every month. And if you know of anyone who is in this boat, please put in a good word for me and get them to come along. Or at least to get a stiff glass of whiskey and listen in.

Don’t expect it to be all plain sailing because I have a bunch of advice, tactics, strategies, and words for those of us wallowing in self pity. Been there. Done that. The T-shirt is in tatters, but I still keep it close by.

Book your seat here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/468443529

And so I got lost in the computer world, before life jolted me back into consulting in 1992, and soon after  my teaching life took over. I am embarrassed to admit that I have just one qualification. It is not in the teaching arena. So it has been a long, mistake-strewn path I have followed.

But, and here is the point I am aiming for, I have been teaching via webinars for almost four years. More than 1000 hours worth. And every teacher I meet assures me that it won’t work.

This strong opinion comes usually without ever having seen one. It has something to do with not being able to see the kids. I was shy and withdrawn at school, and didn’t much want to be seen, let alone to raise my hand and offer a wrong answer so that my peers could roll on the floor in mirth. This webinar approach allows us introverts to blossom.

Although, I still recall Mr Nel inhaling a fly and showing us some strenuous dance moves as he tried to cough it out. Sadly, that kind of experience is rare in real life, and almost impossible in webinar life.

But teachers are looking at it from a very narrow perspective, an all-or-nothing one. Integrating a webinar approach early would add immense value, increasing the reach of great teachers, while easing the impact of bad teachers.

Each time a new idea arrives that is obvious to the rest of us, the incumbents ignore it. They seem so fixed in their views that they cannot see it. Kodak was one of the most memorable, going into chapter 11 bankruptcy a few weeks ago.

I actually consulted with a couple back in 1998 who wanted to spend R2million on a Kodak franchise. I told them how untimely an idea it was. They went ahead anyway. And two years later I consulted with them about saving their home from the fallout.

A webinar is just such an obvious idea for adult trainers. Let me tell you why I love the concept.

Prepping for a live event is arduous and costly. The event must have ‘heft’ – be long enough for you to want to spend an evening in my company – even if the idea I want to share is just one hour long. Then there is the cost of the venue, hotel stay, printed notes, air ticket, car hire, food, and loss. (Each time I travel I return home without something that I really liked. Items include my passport, credit cards, laptop, insulin, power supply, and the like.)

Then there is the opportunity cost, time missed with my family. And the risk that Eskom won’t play ball on the day. And, of course, the risk that I won’t sell enough seats to pay for all of the above. In other words, for a speaker, the risks are daunting.

Contrast that with a webinar. Zero risk. The service costs about R500 per month, which allows me to run as  many ‘classes’ as I want to, 24/7. No notes are needed, because the service lets me record and share a video of each session a few hours later. (That lets me build a library of content that I can share or sell.) There is no risk or cost to delegates. The recording takes care of broken connections and family emergencies.

I don’t have to make an event longer than it needs to be. It can now stretch from 30 minutes to three hours (or all day) – as long as the material needs it to be.

No travel, and my cost per ’seat’ is down to less than R1, from R400 (in JHB). Maybe I am too stupid to see why it won’t work, but in the meantime I love my ignorance.

I am an introvert, almost in the extreme. Maybe that is why I enjoy the process of writing so much. Writing is not a shared activity. It is a chance to inspect the flotsam littering the edge of your brain.

As you can imagine, being an introvert makes it tough to sell. I enjoy cold calls as much as I enjoy proctological procedures. (Hint: Once you have tried one you don’t want to do a second lap.)

Yet, I love the process of selling. I love to listen to folk talk about their problems. I love to hear their ideas, their dreams, their experiences. And at some point in each call, after they have cleared their souls, each will ask: ‘Why are you here?’ At that point, if I have an answer that adds value to any of the problems they have raised, I share it. Usually they want to buy my solution. No hype needed. It seems that the mere act of listening is so unusual that it is all that is needed for enough trust to build up. I rather like that.

So why is it that the world thinks salesfolk must be brash fast-takers? It is, I think, because people who talk fast and make quick decisions (often without enough data) are regarded more highly than people who prefer to think awhile. In a brain storming session, some of us are still thinking after the session is over, while the extroverts have filled the walls with ideas. (Research shows that brain storming with a bunch of people in the same box does not work.)

The Web has been a godsend for introverts. We have time to think. We can switch off the chatter. And we can brainstorm slowly, the way we like it. Instead of competing with the noise, we can type the beginning of an idea knowing it cannot be shouted down.

Regarding that public speaking issue, I stink. That is why I don’t do it much. What I prefer to do is to gather a group of people together, each wonderfully unique, but all sharing a specific problem that I understand. And then talk to one of them about that problem, usually someone in the fourth row. And in talking to one person, because they all share the same challenge, I am talking to all of them. Now that’s fun, and I hope it shows.

This introversion is one of the reasons I love the concept of interest-based marketing. Instead of pushing your product in front of all and sundry, hoping that it might resonate with one of the sundry, I find it so much easier to wait for people to look for what I sell. Then when they enquire, replying to their question is not a cold call. It is a chance to chat about a problem that I can usually help with. That makes it pretty stress-free, and most of those calls end with a ‘sale’.

I don’t measure them that way. It has never been about the money. That is simply a measure of how many people I can help, and how well I help them.

Financial freedom comes from doing just 2 things. And we can do them independently or together. Financial freedom comes from spending less while earning more. It really is simple, just like losing weight comes from eating less while exercising more.

And yet it seems that the moment our income nudges up a smidgen, we find new and innovative ways to spend the money, on things we didn’t need yesterday. It’s worse than that, however, because we don’t just spend the money that we made this month. Rather we commit that increase for the next 60 months on something that we really don’t need, like a new car. (Which isn’t usually a problem in the short term unless, of course, we lose the increase when we lose the job.)

I am embarrassed that I too have bought a car on the pretence that the monthly expenses would be less than the maintenance cost of the older car. After doing that at least 10 times, I think I can honestly say that it is a stupid rationalisation.

This might explain why 97% of us cannot afford to retire.

While I was thinking about this, and thinking about why we need a new car when the old car is but 5 years old, and still has, as my father would say, 20 years of solid life left in it, it occurred to me that buying anything “new” is very expensive.

A new car, for instance, depreciates by about 30% as you drive it out of the garage for the first time. That is probably the most expensive short trip you will ever do.

A mobile phone, if we use it just as a mobile phone, lasts for a decade. A new mobile phone, with Android 3.1, which most of us need like 6 fingers on our left hand, which costs 6000 Rand today, you can buy next year for 2000, and 12 months after that you can get for 200. An old Nokia, which my son will give me for nothing, does the work of a phone rather well, and is not nearly as alluring to bandits.

My personal addiction is technology. The PC that I purchased earlier this year for 20,000 Rand, I will be able to get next year for about half the price. Heck, the cost of the Windows upgrades I have done over the years (along with all of the associated application software upgrade costs) could finance the retirement of all the men in Somerset East.

Even new clothes can be an awfully bad deal. It’s not that last year’s clothes don’t work any more. It’s that the entire industry is designed around making you feel embarrassed that you are wearing clothes from last year. Merely buying your clothes in a different season, maybe 6 months later, can cut your clothing bill in half. (As could keeping this year’s clothes until they come into fashion again in 2019.)

What about all of those folk that you need to impress in order to do business? Rubbish. It’s polite to arrive in clothes that are ironed, appropriate for the circumstances, and clean. And preferably, that you too are clean. Or, at least, don’t smell too bad.

Interestingly, the opposite of “new” is not only “used” or “old”. It’s also “last season” or “last year”, both of which mean “so much cheaper”.

It is only now that I begin to understand why visiting my parents invoked such déjà vu. They had financial freedom. They weren’t rich. But they had no debt. And the Sony TV that my dad purchased in 1974 worked for 25 years. Unlike my last few sets that said goodbye as flatscreen, then LCD, then LED, then HD LED, and then 3D arrived. I can’t wait to see next years model!

Either earn more or spend less. Preferably both. That is the only route to financial freedom other than luck. I like to think that the harder I work, the luckier I will get. As long as I can spend less.

**********

A few days ago I presented a webinar on search engine marketing, comparing Google with facebook, and looking at some incredible results from Google. (7.8 enquiries per 100 impressions, and if you understand that jargon you know how amazing that really is.) You can view or download the video, with all the questions, here. It is 90 minutes of common sense.

Click on the picture to view this video

Today I would like to talk to those of us who have tried.

When I started using Google I was seduced by the apparent simplicity: Something along the lines of that first Wright brothers aircraft. Some canvas and string and a motor just strong enough to power a unicycle with a child on it. Point it due North and press this button, and your products would go as fast as corn during a locust plague.

But climbing into the Google cockpit is a lot like climbing into the pilots seat of a new Airbus 320. (That’s the smaller one without the cracks in the wings.) You are surrounded by a dizzying array of switches, toggles, dials, screens. It is so complex you need two drivers. And then, before you are allowed to take off, you need to get a general pilots licence, and then ‘invest’ a few hundred hours in a simulatorgetting qualified for this specific aircraft.

All of this costs time and money, both currencies that we smaller players don’t have enough of. That means that our first Google experience is more like a fiery accident than a fiesta in Ibiza.

The problem is that Google seems want more and more detail when you advertise. So do the folk searching for stuff.

I discovered this while in the UK. My wife was, frankly, grumpy after the birth of the new Carruthers. Her superstructure no longer fitted her bras. We agreed that buying a few new bras was much cheaper than going to gym, at least for a while. I suggested that my new best friend, Google, might be able to help.

“It’s not going to work,” she said. “Search Google for bras and you are buried in drivel.”"Why not search for 34E?” I suggested. (Hint for men: That is a model number, equivalent to a Porsche ‘Boxster‘, or – if you are a nerd like me – an ‘iPad2 3G’.)

She rolled her eyes at me. Grumpy wives exist to inspire men to go angling.

A few minutes later she popped her head into the study. “Got them on the first click.” she said. I was stunned, and not just because she followed my advice. So I tried to buy a few myself, not that I need them, of course. At least, not any more.

In the UK, which is very active on Google with 20 million odd people active on the web at any time, you have to search deeper than in SA. (I tried the same test in SA, and found an online store in SA that was, wait for it, “closed for the holidays”.)

That started Peter Bowen and me on the quest to build some tools to make using Google easier for the rest of us. It has been a fascinating journey.

Most folk trying to market via Google seem to be mixing their knowledge of traditional mass market advertising with their Google efforts. This works as well as cheese and onion ice cream.

Google interest-based marketing truly is unlike anything that has ever existed before. No sane marketer wants us to know that because we would all abandon media marketing as fast as real people abandoned the Encyclopedia Britannica when Wikipedia arrived.

So, next week, at 8PM SA Time on Tuesday, we will host a gratisonline seminar to look at why Google works so well compared to any other form of marketing, including Facebook. We won’t be pushing our products, but we will be showing you how some folk are getting up to7.5 enquiries for every 100 impressions/searches. Nope, that was not a typo. That’s not 7.5% Click-Through-Rate (CTR). That’s 30% CTR and 25% page conversion rates.

Book your seat here. And hold on to your underwear. ]]> http://petesweekly.com/2012/01/google-and-underwear/feed/ 1 http://petesweekly.com/2012/01/we-dont-listen-enough/ http://petesweekly.com/2012/01/we-dont-listen-enough/#comments Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:44:18 +0000 admin http://petesweekly.com/?p=380 On Tuesday night we had a rollicking online seminar talking about selling. May I share some thoughts from that today?

Firstly, I have long thought that we talk too much in sales meetings. Maybe we do it to cover how nervous we feel. Maybe we do it because we think if we bury our prospect in detail, in all the features that our great product (or service) offers, we can convince them to buy from us. The biggest mistake we all make, I think, is that we talk too much, which leaves no time for listening.

By now you know that I have been on insulin since 1971. That means that I am chemically deranged much of the time. Too much insulin creates two challenges. Firstly, it makes you so light headed that you can’t think straight. Secondly, it makes you angry. Neither of these is very good in social situations. I suspect that if somebody were to check, there would be a disproportionate number of diabetics instigating motor accidents and murders.

So I thought that if we were to survey the group to see how attentive they were, it might help prove the point. It did.

As you are telling your victim all your facts, your victim simply isn’t listening most of the time:

• 69% (more than two thirds) of people attending on Tuesday agreed that most of the time they are so worried about money that they’re cannot focus, let alone pay attention to some pushy sales person;
• 26% (one quarter) were having serious relationship issues, and that just sucks the life right out of you;
• 27% (another quarter) had health issues big enough to affect their focus;
• 56% had other issues that got in the way of listening;
• Just 13% felt utterly focused.

Just one in 10 people that you talk to is really paying attention to what you are saying!

If your maths is better than mine, you will notice that the numbers add up to a lot more than 100 percent. That’s because a bunch of folk have more than one set of problems to worry about. (They could tick more than one box.)

It seems that most of us would rather talk about our challenges than listen to  your hype. It was a sobering confirmation.

Then I got an e-mail from an old client who was too busy to attend. He thought he had a time management problem because there weren’t enough hours in his day. It occurred to me that there is no point in worrying about listening during sales meetings if you too busy to arrange any.

If you are not actively selling, or somebody in your firm is not actively selling, you don’t have a time management problem. You have a pending closure problem.

Clients are the only source of real revenue for any business. There are more important than anything else. I think that the moment we forget that, it’s only a matter of time before we don’t have a time management problem because when the business closes there is nothing left to do.

On the plus side, however, if you’re not actively selling, then you don’t have to worry about listening either. That’s one thing that you can tick off your list.

And finally, and this is very heartening. It’s not hard to stand out from the crowd. The rest of us do this so poorly that even a tiny improvement improves your sales results.

If you have a spare moment, please check out our brag wall here.

Click teh image to see the current SalesMotor LiveStream

As anybody arrives on one of our clients’ marketing sites, it adds them to the constantly moving list. It lists the last hundred or so searchers. The lines in green are enquiries that those sites have generated. (That’s about 100 sites covering services and products ranging from aerial imagery to wallpaper.)

The sites generate about 250 enquiries each day. I won’t bury you in any more detail unless you ask, but don’t let anybody tell you that Google marketing doesn’t work. It does.

I was faced with starting up again. I won’t bore you with the details. But, marketing back then was a mere shadow of what it is now, and much, much slower. Sadly, most of the books I read still reflect the thinking back then. The single exception is “anything to do with the Internet“. And, frankly, the amount of hype about the web is beyond belief.

I have driven down almost every marketing road, and for a small business owner most of these are cul-de-sacs. I was thinking about this as I meandered through the south of Spain over Christmas. This was not as exciting as you might think. We were, after all, staying at the home of Mrs Carruthers’s mother. You get my drift.

Anyway, a bunch of shops were vacant, on every road, in every shopping centre, in every town. Like me in 1992, they’d run out of clients. And it got me to thinking about how starting a business is almost the same as finding a job. In both cases, all you have to do is find that first client. (Employee is formal-speak for a business owner who sells all of his 160 hours/month to a single, hopefully long term client.)

In essence, about the only difference between starting a business and finding a job is that the aspirant entrepreneur just keeps repeating the process, while trying to produce the actual goods, while trying to employ the staff, while trying to keep the govt happy, and so on. The employee, he with the one client, focuses on doing whatever makes his employer happy.

I browsed around Spain with my trusty wordprocessor – the pencil and notepad version I first learned to use in Mrs Kettley’s kindergarten class in 1963 – and I realised that, for all my focus on writing efficiently last year,  I hadn’t actually written any of those words down in a form that might add any lasting value. (I had dreamt of writing a book on startups and jobs, but hadn’t quite gotten the first page out.)

So, this year, one of my goals is to help you find more clients, even if it’s only one client you were looking for. I am not going to try writing it all down, else it will be Groundhog Year, all over again. So, next week on Tuesday evening at 8:00 p.m. – South African time – I’m going to present a gratis one-hour seminar online – a webinar – on Marketing – the 1992 version versus what you can do in 2012, and how to effectively find one or more clients.

Whether you are looking for a job, looking to startup a business, or really grumpy about the number of new clients arriving at your current business each week – you are welcome to join me. It’s gratis.

When you book your “seat” I will ask just one extra question – whether you are looking for a job, whether you are a start-up looking for your first client, or whether you are an existing business looking for more clients. Just so that I can better tailor the evening. It does not matter what age you are. My clients these past 20 years have mostly been between 18 and 81, however.

You will need to be in front of your PC at about 7:40 p.m. This will allow enough time to download the snippet of software you will need which will automagically convey my screen and voice to you. Your PC will need to be connected to the Internet via a connection that is at least 300KB. The event will use approximately 60 MB over the hour. You will need to be running Windows or Mac OSX. We can’t see you, so you may sit in your pyjamas. Heck, bring your girlfriend along as well. (That was not a sexist comment because I am not presuming that you are male. Just so that we can clear the air.)

I think that it is challenging times like these which bring out the best in us. We are inspired to find other, usually better ways of doing things. I’d like to help. You can help too, by sharing this invite with anyone you know who fits the spec outlined above. They will thank you. So will I.

Please book your seat here.

The speed with which this year year hurdled past is matched only by the speed with which the economy worldwide has collapsed.  Except in China, of course.

But as we get closer to Christmas, and hopefully snow, it occurs to me that the single biggest regret I have in life is not that I haven’t yet reached my goal of retiring rich.  Or that I’ve given up on that, and just surviving to retirement age is the new target.

Nope, my biggest regret is that I have spent the past 35 years focused in the wrong direction.  No matter what business books tell you, a client-centric focus is not the right approach for the small business owner.  As one of my clients delicately put it a while back “Don’t ever confuse us clients with your friends.”  Before you get frothy, please bear with me for a moment.

Many of my clients are great friends.  But that’s not the point.  The responsibility, nay the duty, of a small business owner is to be kiddie-centric.  Clients come and go, but your kids are going to be messing up your house for the rest of your life.  (Or messing up your life for the rest of your house, whichever comes first.)

They are a lot more forgiving.  They are unlikely to abandon you when you mess up, or at least for as long as you have money to share.

In my case, until just a few years ago, every waking moment was spent on business.  I rather liked the challenge.  I still do. And frankly, it’s so much easier a challenge than preparing children for life.

But my biggest regret is that I didn’t get to put my kids to sleep every night they would have let me because I was too busy travelling, or too busy coding, or too busy in meetings, or too busy doing a bunch of thngs that seemed more urgent, but were nowhere near as important.  My children assure me that “it’s okay dad”.  But it isn’t really.  Maybe they didn’t miss it.  But I did.

Nowadays, when Mrs Carruthers and I go to any school gatherings with young Ms Carruthers, it is tacitly assumed that Danielle is accompanied by her mother and her grandfather.  When I was about 30 I met a man older than 50 who told me exactly what I’m telling you.  I ignored the best advice I ever got because I was too busy to believe him. In hindsight I think that 30 year old version of me was a prat. (I have no shortage of clients happy to confirm this.)

As I write this I’m listening to some vintage Rolling Stones.  Each song brings back a memory of a person, a relationship.  I have no idea what my bank balance was at the time that I heard each song for the first time.  And I don’t know what business was like.  But the people, them I remember.

So, for this last e-mail of 2011, may I humbly beg you to follow the only real piece of good advice I can give you this year? Take the time to put your kids to sleep over Christmas, and – what the heck – throughout next year.  That investment is safer, more guaranteed, and will generate better returns forever than anything else you could possibly do.

Except, maybe, taking the time to put your partner to bed every now and then as well. That’s also whole heap of fun, it turns out, and you won’t be kicked in the nuts as often.

You don’t actually have to prepare them life. Just loving them is enough preparation – for both parties. And it sure is a lot more fun.

At the risk of cheapening the point, when your family takes strain, when your relationships are in turmoil, you might as well forget about business until you find balance.  Relationships are more important than anything else.

And finally, don’t ever think that your kids are interested in the money. They aren’t. They don’t care, at least while they still want you close by when they sleep. They quite like you, though, so matter how tough things might seem to you, they just want to play. Try it. It’s kinda fun! There will be enough time for clients next year.

God Jul (Merry Christmas) and best wishes for 2012. We’ll talk again in January. Thanks for a fun 2011.