When I was growing up I was taught, “Never step in front of traffic.” Did you learn that, too?

Well, if the answer is yes, it’s time to unlearn that rule if you’re trying to sell stuff using the Internet. Don’t think the traffic will find you. You’d better find out where the traffic is and go stand in front of it.

This means showing up where your customers and prospects are hanging out (i.e. surfing), so that you can begin to realize the full potential of your market reach.

More on this in a minute . . .

I’m writing this from Mark Hendricks’ Internet Success System (ISS) Master Mind Conference. This is a closed conference for ISS members only. It’s a great way for people who subscribe to Mark’s ISS home study program to meet each other, network and hear from each other about how they’re developing their business, and to learn about novel Internet developments. Two of the participants – Jack Humphries and Ron Capps – discussed social power linking and social networking. Jack has recently released a free guide to social power linking: 2007Authority Black Book: The Best Web 2.0 Resources for Generating Traffic and Winning Customers.

Jack told us it isn’t enough to just have a blog; you need to set it up with the proper plug-ins*, get onto sites like My Space, create linkbait and spread the word by signing up on sites like mybloglog.com and technorati.com plus 10 more. It also means posting (automatically) to a sizeable share of the more than 50 social bookmarking sites. The 2007 Authority Black Book tells you what you need to do and why and lists all the sites or shows you where to find the rest.

Ron, who has a PhD in communication, and has several sites on My Space, pointed out that social networking in the 21st century has its roots in ancient Greek storytelling. As technology continues to develop to make it easier for us to communicate with each other by multiple means, the volume of conversation and social interaction will continue to grow dramatically because our stories support the connections we make that contribute significantly to our sense of life’s meaning and purpose.

You can get a free list of over 340 social bookmarking sites that Ron has compiled at: http://www.nicheprof.com/social-bookmarking-directory.html. He also has an audio interview in which he discusses the hows and whys of social bookmarking. 

‘Til next time.

Eli

Eli Sadownick
esadownick@y2marketing.com

*Note that WordPress.com does not support plug-ins; you’ll need to have your blog hosted. See wordpress.org for more information.

The presenters at Mike Filsaime’s 2007 Figure Business Workshop held two weeks ago recommended 16 books they thought made worthwhile reading. As it turns out, I’ve read only one of these, and most of them I hadn’t even heard of. Two of them – Pusbutton Persuasion and Secrets of Online Presentation – I couldn’t locate on Amazon or Google, so it’s possible the commentator just mis-remembered the title. In the latter case, I found two books with a similar title that may have been what the presenter had in mind.

I’ve grouped them into 5 categories. Half of these books appear to be motivational/inspirational, and may also have useful information for those starting to build their own business. Three books address issues related to finding talented personnel resources. Two relate to operations and show you how to speed up processes and two show how to deliver effective presentations. The last category – a world view of factors affecting our current situation – has only one book in it.

The category boundaries are not hard and fast. In fact, given that I haven’t read them, they’re based more on the context in which they were raised at the workshop along with my own perceptions based on what I could see about each book at Amazon. My hope is that assigning each book to a category will make it a bit easier for you to explore the list.

I’ve included a brief description of each and a link to Amazon (just click on the book title) in case you want to buy it or just get more information. All but one (Founders at Work) let you peek inside and read more than a few pages.

The 16 Recommended Books

Category A: Inspirational / motivational and of general interest to anyone starting a business

1. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by Jim Collins. Collins explores how good companies can convert themselves into ones that produce great results consistently. He focuses on 11–including Fannie Mae, Gillette, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo. Making the transition from good to great doesn’t require a high-profile CEO, the latest technology, innovative change management, or even a fine-tuned business strategy. At the heart of those rare and truly great companies was a corporate culture that rigorously found and promoted disciplined people to think and act in a disciplined manner. Collins presents the Hedgehog concept as the underpinning reason greatness was achieved.

2. Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days by Jessica Livingston. This is a collection of interviews with founders of famous technology companies like Apple, Yahoo, PayPal, Lotus and Hotmail, about what happened in the very earliest days. One reviewer wrote, “This book makes it easier to see the very first steps to create a successful product and company. The primary themes are an extreme focus on providing value to the customer and an enormous willingness for hard work. You don’t have to have all of the answers or all of the contacts to begin. Just begin, persevere, adjust as needed, and focus. Great book for anyone needing a boost in confidence to develop a new product or build a company from the ground up.”

3. The Power of Focus: How to Hit Your Business, Personal and Financial Targets with Absolute Certainty by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Leslie Hewitt.  This is reported to be a practical no-nonsense guide that shows readers how to reach their business, personal and financial goals without getting burned out in the process. It is built around 10 focusing strategies that include: identifying and changing bad habits; building on strengths, not weaknesses; developing unusual clarity; building excellent relationships; and taking decisive action.

4. The Success Principles(TM): How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Jack Canfield & Janet Switzer. The authors emphasize the importance of taking 100% responsibility for all your actions. They present 64 success principles that they claim “always work”—and draw on their own experience and that of others they interviewed to illustrate them.

5. Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham. How to discover and accept your talents and how to refocus your life around them. The book emphasizes excelling by maximizing your strengths, rather than fixing your weaknesses; instead manage around them. It includes a web-based questionnaire that allows you to discover your five strongest talents.

6. The One Page Business Plan for the Creative Entrepreneur by James T. Horan, Jr. “An easy-to-use process that helps you capture your vision and translate it into concrete results.” Comes with a Toolkit CD that includes templates, forms, exercises and worksheets.

7. Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. This book is a classic parable about the importance of seeking a higher purpose in life, even if your flock, tribe, or neighborhood finds your ambition threatening. Jonathan is a bird who teaches us how to follow our dreams and reach our goals, no matter what anyone else might think. He is a seagull who wants to master the art of flying, even though his flock has told him many times that all seagulls should concentrate on is getting food. Jonathan has tried to be a “good gull,” but he cannot quell his urge to fly. By not compromising his higher vision Jonathan gets the ultimate payoff: transcendence, and learns the meaning of love and kindness.

8. The Reinvention of Work: New Vision of Livelihood for Our Time by Matthew Fox.  Fox envisions a work world in which intellect, heart, and health harmonize to celebrate the whole person. The book helps one go deeper into understanding what we are really all about in relationship to work. It is not a self-help book and does not profess to be one. The book helps us step outside of ourselves and to consider what is important to each of us in our work beyond the paycheck. It creates a vision of what our work life can be if we take the time to listen to our inner wisdom.One reviewer writes, “Although it wasn’t much help in practical decision-making, it did give me a fresh perspective on how my values related to the jobs I’d had (they didn’t), and got me thinking about how I could translate them into work I felt better about.”

Category B: Books you should read before you begin seeking talent to help you with your business – whether as partners, employees or vendors
9. Topgrading: How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching, and Keeping the Best People, Revised and Updated Edition by Bradford Smart. This book provides a process for ensuring you create teams of “A” players (top 10% of those available) throughout your organization.

10. The War for Talent by Ed Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones, and Beth Axelrod. The authors claim,“Talent is a critical driver of corporate performance and a company’s ability to attract, develop and retain talent will be a major competitive advantage into the future.” Based on a McKinsey study of 13,000 executives in 27 companies, the authors identify programs and behaviors that that help today’s foremost firms attract and retain the best kinds of employees. These possess “a sharp strategic mind, leadership ability, communications skills, the ability to attract and inspire people, entrepreneurial instincts, functional skills, and the ability to deliver results.” The authors outline five common “imperatives” that they found these companies employed to strengthen their talent pools and they provide a framework for making it happen in your company:

a. Embrace a Talent Mindset
b. Craft a Winning Employee Value Proposition
c. Rebuild Your Recruiting Strategy
d. Weave Development into Your Organization
e. Differentiate and Affirm Your People

Among the suggestions the authors make: offer mentoring programs; encourage employees to switch departments; and, with senior hires, look for “leadership style and values” consistent with “the company’s culture.”

11. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink. Just published in paperback this month, the book appears to be provocative and controversial in that some reviewers laud his analysis, they feel his solutions are unproven or “half-baked.” The author’s thesis is that we are moving from Information Age to Conceptual Age and power will inevitably shift to people who possess strong right brain qualities – designers, inventors, teachers, storytellers (vs. lawyers, accountants and software engineers). The second half of the book details the six “senses” Pink identifies as crucial to success in the new economy — design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning.

From one review: “He is the first that succinctly diagnosed the major problems the Western countries are facing: Abundance, Asia, and Automation . . .  He said that if we have a whole new mind, we can have an economy and society that are built on the inventive, empathic and big-picture capabilities. He stresses that the main characters now are the creator and the empathizer. He argues that we need to move from high tech to high concept and high touch. These are all great ideas. However, the strategies that the author prescribed through the six R-Directed aptitudes, which consist most of the book, while adequate to battle Abundance and Automation, is hardly sufficient to overcome Asia.”

Category C: Business operations-related: Theory of Constraints
12. It’s Not Luckby Eliyahu M. Goldratt. This is the second of three books by the author in which he applies his Theory of Constraints (for understanding why projects often run overdue and over budget, or finish with less completed than originally specified and the requirements for achieving manufacturing breakthroughs) to business situations in the form of a reportedly well-written, easy-to-read novel. (The first one is The Goal.)

In this one, Alex Rogo, an executive vice-president with responsibility for three newly acquired companies (and two new  teenagers) faces a dilemma when the board shifts policy and orders the companies to be put on the block. If Alex successfully completes a turnaround, the companies will be sold for maximum price; if not, they will be shut down. Either way, Alex and his team are out of jobs.

Goldratt shows how to apply the Theory of Constraints to sales & marketing, inventory control and production distribution “and proves that it’s not luck that makes startling improvements achievable.”

13. Critical Chain : A Business Novelby Eliyahu M. Goldratt. This is the third book in the series — a business novel set in a factory. Genemodem’s products have a life span of 6 months, but take two years to develop. How to cut product development time without compromising quality or specifications is the focus here.

Category D: Making Effective Presentations
14. Secrets of Power Presentations: Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking, Build Rapport and Credibility With Your Audience, Prepare and Deliver a Dynamic Presentation by Micki Holliday. This book is designed to help you overcome the fear of public speaking. It claims to cover all the new multimedia aids to presentations and reveals the key to controlling your fears. It details how to outline and organize an effective presentation, improve your style of delivery, and capture and maintain the attention of your audience.

15. Secrets of Power Presentations by Peter Urs Bender.  This shows simply how to become a strong and productive presenter. He uses a five-part method: speech, body language, equipment, environment and preparation.

Category E: A world view of factors affecting our current situation
16. The World Is Flat [Updated and Expanded]: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman. A world view of how lowered trade and political barriers along with technological advances have made the planet more connected or “flat.” In this updated edition – a year after the original was issued – he has more to say about what he calls “uploading,” the direct-from-the-bottom creation of culture, knowledge, and innovation through blogging, podcasts, and open-source software. And in response to the pleas of many of his readers about how to survive the new flat world, he makes specific recommendations about the technical and creative training he thinks will be required to compete in the “New Middle” class.

I can see myself reading the first six books on the list over the next two months. I’d be interested to know if you find this list helpful and if you actually read some of these books in the near future.

Meanwhile, here’s to your continued success.

‘Til the next time,

Eli

Eli Sadownick
esadownick@y2marketing.com

Some more ideas based on what I learned at Mike Filsaime’s 2007 Figure Business Workshop.

At some point everyone growing a business needs to address questions like:
• How big do I want to get?
• How fast do I want to grow?
• How far can I go on my own?

While there is no question that many people can get a lot done working on their own, it’s just as clear that – at least in most situations – you can do much more and faster if you’re working with others.

I do remember seeing a TV movie recently – I can’t remember which one – where a private eye insisted he was better off working alone: it’s less messy and you don’t have to worry about anyone else’s safety. Of course, there was a character who tried to prove him wrong, and, in the end, the two of them probably solved the case faster than the PE would have on his own.

Mike Filsaime tells the story of how Rich Schefren convinced him that he needed to hire a staff and move out of his home office. Mike protested – recalling his days as an automobile dealership manager — that he didn’t want what he thought would be the “grind” of a staff. Rich told him, “Mike, it’s not that you don’t want to work outside your home; you just don’t want to work for anyone else.” With that realization, Mike was able to make the move – and has never regretted it.

If you’re just starting up, you probably can’t afford to hire anyone just yet. Perhaps you can find people to collaborate with; people whose skills complement yours. Before you start looking for people to work with, think about the extent you need someone to work with.

Multiple options may be available for each need:

Employees could be full- or part-time, permanent or temporary and some could be interns from a nearby college or even people who may have been successful in another field and want to learn your business.

If you use a vendor (an established business) or an independent contractor (often a solopreneur or a very small business), you may have less control and the relationship may tend to be more temporary, but you avoid other potential issues such as payroll taxes, benefits and potentially greater capital risk.

Clearly, you can’t do everything by yourself – and if you try, it will slow you down. So decide which kind of outside resources will give you the greatest leverage, and acquire those first.

To figure that out, it helps to have a good plan in place.

Here is what you need to do to create a plan and have a basis for finding the resources you will need:
1. Develop a vision for your business: This is a thrilling, attention-getting statement of your dream – where you see your future and how it will unfold.
2. Write the mission statement: Why the organization exists and how your vision will be achieved.
3. Articulate your strategic goals: These are the key choices you’ve made about what you will accomplish over the next few years. They reflect your core values and core purpose.
4. Specify your near-term goals: These are what you must accomplish in the next six months or so.
5. Create your action plan: For each goal define the key steps and for each step spell out: what, how, who, when and at what cost. Sometimes it may be useful to add why and where.
6. Identify the skills required to implement each section of the action plan.
7. Specify the skills you have and which ones you will acquire (indicate how) in the given time frame.
8. The balance of skills required are those you will need to get from outside resources.
9. Write a job specification for each related group of skills.
10. Start looking for people who can perform what you need.

Let me know if this post has been helpful.

Watch this space for a report later this week on the book recommendations that came out of the workshop.

‘Til then,

Eli

Eli Sadownick
esadownick@y2marketing.com

Everyone in business measures profits, revenues and costs, at a minimum. You do this both to track whether you’re doing well or poorly, growing, declining or stagnating; and also because the IRS requires it.

But you need a few more metrics than these to understand the results you’re getting and to be able to intervene in a timely way to affect your outcomes. Here are some more ideas that came out of Mike’s workshop.

Stephen Pierce, who made a presentation on the sales process, introduced seven areas of measurement by saying, “There is no effective control without measurement.” He cautioned, “Don’t do what you can’t measure and don’t measure what you can’t change.”

His seven areas of measurement are:
1. Delivery rates
2. Open rates
3. Unique clicks/visitors
4. Opt-ins
5. Sales
6. Up-sells
7. Cross-sells

Other presenters suggested specific metrics they use to track their results:

Mike Filsaime:
• ROI of each visitor to site
• Profits per new customer

Brad Fallon: Return on Capital Expended

Rich Schefren:
• Cost per customer acquisition
• Lifetime value of customer

You will need to develop your own measures to use for your business. The ones suggested above are not a bad place to start, but recall the hedgehog concept and think about the x in profit per x that will propel your business growth.

Next time, I’ll write about working alone vs. working with others.

‘Til then,

Eli

Eli Sadownick

Mike and me at the Workshop 

Hi Folks,

I’m back with more ideas from Mike Filsaime’s 2007 Figure Business Workshop last weekend.

Probably the most important thing you can do for your initial business build-up that will also help with long-term success is to narrow your focus substantially. Mike discussed Jim Collins’ description of the Hedgehog Concept in Good to Great. To be great, you must be more like a hedgehog – who has a clear single-minded focus on one big thing — rather than a fox that pursues many ends at the same time, and is often scattered and diffused, never integrating his thinking into one organized concept or unifying vision.

To start working on your hedgehog concept, think about and discover these three things about yourself:
• What can you be best at? (Not just what you do well, but what do you have the potential to be better than anyone else at?)
• What is your passion? (What gets you up and raring to go every day? What would you spend time on even if you never got paid?)
• What drives your economic engine? (What would generate the greatest cash flow and profits for you? If you were to increase profit per X, what would the X be to give you the most robust economic return?)

For more on this, visit: http://www.jimcollins.com/lab/hedgehog.   

Focus your attention on the intersection of your responses and make that what you build your business around. Use this to create a vision of your future and develop a mission statement that describes how you will achieve that mission. Start thinking about this now, but don’t necessarily expect your answers to come immediately. For some people it may take six months, a year, or longer. But the sooner you narrow your focus, the sooner you will begin to improve your results.

It’s very easy – especially when you’re just getting started – to get distracted. What with all the e-mails, free downloads, teleconferences, all sorts of offers to checkout, as well as the stuff that you actually need to learn, you could spend whole days doing nothing else – and getting very little done. It’s essential to set some goals and build momentum. What will you get done in the next 30 days and what will you do each day and each week to move you closer to your 30-day goal?

I’m sure you’ve heard before how all the best ideas are useless unless they’re put into action. Pick one thing you will do and follow-through to do it – the faster the better. Every day, work on this first – before doing the maintenance chores you need to get done.

Don’t let the fear of making mistakes stop you. Mistakes can be the best teachers. Just keep doing it until you get it right. (And when it’s good enough for now, move on to the next thing. After you’ve figured out what works and what works well for your business, do it again with the idea of improving what you did the first time around.)

Next time out, I’ll discuss why using simple metrics is so important and show you some you can use to track your results.

And in a few days, I’ll give you a list of recommended reading that came out of the Workshop. Meanwhile, please give me your feedback.

‘Til the next time,

Eli

Eli Sadownick
esadownick@y2marketing.com

Hi again,

Here, now and over the next few days, I’ll continue to bring you useful ideas from last weekend’s Mike Filsaime 2007 Figure Business Building Workshop.

Today’s information I think will be useful to you whether you’re relatively new to marketing on the Internet — as is the case with me — or if you’ve been at it for a while.

First of all, you need to develop a mind-set that you are working to develop a business, not just to sell some stuff that will make money for you. If the latter is what you want, you may be able to do ok for a (relatively) short time, but it’s unlikely to work to bring you revenues that grow significantly and consistently and can be sustained over a long period of time.

If you want solid, stable and substantial growth, you need to think about developing a business for the long-term. Rich Shefren gave a great presentation this weekend about what you need to grow a business. He has developed three excellent videos on this topic and in them provides very useful information. All are free and you can download an audio file for the two most recent ones.

A few weeks ago Rich shared his ideas in a streaming video from a live conference he was presenting. You can view it directly, without opting in, at: http://www.strategicprofits.com/videolink. 

His newer video – which is closer to the presentation he made this last weekend – is at: http://www.strategicprofits.com/startuptofreedom. It provides an excellent perspective on the elements required for a solid business. While the presentation is geared towards on-line businesses, many of the principles discussed, I believe, are applicable to any business. It can also be viewed directly and is available as an audio. Running time is 30 minutes, and it serves as an introduction to the third video.

The third video focuses on developing the momentum you need in the early stages of your business to get to the phase where you can shift your focus from primarily generating revenue to growing the business – getting employees and retaining customers. This is my favorite of the three. I particularly like the discussion in two areas:

1. What an entrepreneur is and how to tell if you really want to be one

2. The importance of the offer and what makes a great one

To get access to this video you do need to leave your contact information. This one runs 1-3/4 hours and is also available on audio.

That’s it for today. Next time I’ll write about getting and staying focused.

‘Til tomorrow,

Eli

Eli Sadownick

esadownick@y2marketing.com

 That’s me — with Tom and Mike

Hi Folks,

I’m back from Mike Filsaime’s 3-day 2007 Figure Business Workshop this last weekend. This was a great event. Very few pitches and lots of good learning. I’m back inspired, motivated and more focused than ever on moving my business ahead.

It was also a lot of fun and a great way to make some good contacts and start some friendships. I’ll share with you a few of the things I came away with that will help me and, I hope, be useful to you.

Mike’s workshop – conducted with his VP of Operations, Tom Beal – was aimed at people with 6-figure incomes who want to move to the 7-figure range. There was some number of folks who already have 7 and even 8-figure incomes and more than a few –like me—who are not yet in the 6-figure range (at least not in on-line sales).

I went because I thought I could learn things that would be helpful to my business (helping other businesses grow profitably) – even if I couldn’t use all of them right away – and I couldn’t resist some of the great bonuses Mike offered to paid attendees.

I want to share some of the ideas I came away with that may be useful to you if you’re relatively new to marketing on the Internet (and maybe even if you’ve been at it for a while) as is the case with me.

Over the next few days, I’ll write about:
• Your mind-set about your business
• Getting and staying focused
• Using simple metrics and why they’re essential
• Working with others vs. working alone
• Exciting developments in using the Internet to market your business
• Books recommended by presenters

I’m interested in learning what you’d like to know more about or where you may be stuck. If you will post a comment or shoot an e-mail to me at esadownick@y2marketing.com, I will respond in the most helpful way I can. I’d also like to hear about what you’ve been doing that’s worked for you.

See you back here tomorrow.

‘Til then,

Eli

Eli Sadownick
esadownick@y2marketing.com