Monday, August 16, 2010
EXIT! The book...
The Worst That Can Happen Is Someone Says No - You're the Boss Blog - NYTimes.com#more-22529#more-22529
The Worst That Can Happen Is Someone Says No - You're the Boss Blog - NYTimes.com#more-22529#more-22529
Thursday, August 12, 2010
The Economy Doesn't Predict Your Future, Just Ask Your Customers
"Economic Predictions 2011 -- what is a person supposed to believe about the economy -- and predict how one should plan for 2011? My serious recommendation (and one I've given to my own personal clients) -- contact your top ten biggest customers this month, especially if they are large firms, and find out what they are predicting for 2011. In many cases, this is all that matters anyway -- their perceptions will drive their decisions and if they are big customers of yours, it will have an impact on you. And August is the very best time to reach the top guys (they aren't busy and likely not vacationing the entire month) -- ask them "so what are you seeing/predicting for 2011." Then plan accordingly!"
Great advice. Let me know what you find out... J.
Julie Gordon White, Principal
BlueKey Business Brokerage M&A
510.812.2233 Direct
License 01347013
www.bluekeybma.com
www.linkedin.com/in/juliegordonwhite
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Sunday, August 8, 2010
My Tribe!
More on Monday... J
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Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Fw: Seth's Blog : Getting to scale: direct marketing vs. mass market thinking
------Original Message------
From: Seth Godin
Sender: FeedBlitz
To: Julie Gordon White
ReplyTo: Seth Godin
Subject: Seth's Blog : Getting to scale: direct marketing vs. mass market thinking
Sent: Jul 21, 2010 3:19 AM
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Getting to scale: direct marketing vs. mass market thinking A mass marketer needs to reach the masses, and to do it in many ways, simultaneously. The mass marketer needs retail outlets and fliers and a website and public relations and tv ads and more more more and then... bam... critical mass is reached and success occurs.
Best Buy is a mass marketer, but so are Microsoft and the Red Cross. Ubiquity, once achieved, brings them revenue, which advances the cycle and they reach scale.
The direct marketer, on the other hand, must get it right in the small. That pitch letter can be tested on 100 houses and if it gets a 2% response rate, then it can be mailed to 100,000 houses with confidence. That business-to-business sales pitch can be honed on one or two or three prospects, and then when it works, can be taught to dozens or hundreds of other salespeople.
The key distinction is when you know it's going to work. The mass marketer doesn't know until the end. The direct marketer knows in the beginning.
The mass marketer is betting on thousands of tiny cues, little clues, and unrecorded (but vital) conversations. The direct marketer is measuring conversion rates from the first day.
That's the reason we often default to acting like mass marketers. We're putting off the day of reckoning, betting on the miracle around the corner, spending our time and energy on the early steps without the downside of admitting failure to the boss.
Of course, just because it's our default doesn't mean it's right. Business to business marketing is almost always better if you treat it like direct marketing. Most websites that do conversion as well. Same with non-profit fundraising. As well as marketing goods and services to the bottom of the pyramid, people who live in villages where mass media and mass distribution are difficult and have little impact.
Get it right for ten people before you rush around scaling up to a thousand. It's far less romantic than spending money at the start, but it's the reliable, proven way to get to scale if you care enough to do the work.
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Saturday, July 17, 2010
It's Always About the Best People
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Sunday, July 11, 2010
Soccer Love
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Saturday, July 10, 2010
My Life In a Nutshell
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Thursday, July 1, 2010
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Fw: Sunday Seth: Validation is overrated
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Validation is overrated
If you're waiting for a boss or an editor or a college to tell you that you do good work, you're handing over too much power to someone who doesn't care nearly as much as you do.
We spend a lot of time organizing and then waiting for the system to pick us, approve of us and give us permission to do our work.
Feedback is important, selling is important, getting the market to recognize your offering and make a sale--all important. But there's a difference between achieving your goals and realizing your work matters.
If you have a book to write, write it. If you want to record an album, record it. No need to wait for someone in a cubicle halfway across the country to decide if you're worthy.
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Thursday, June 24, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
USA! USA! Amazing!!!!
Business Team / BTI Group, Inc.
www.business-team.com
www.btigroupma.com
Cell 510.812.2233
License 01347013
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Gifts
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Gifts, misunderstood
What's a gift?
I met a big-shot former Fortune 500 company CEO who explained to me that he used to have three secretaries. One for his calendar, one for his usual work, and one who did nothing but send people gifts.
I think when it's sent by a corporation and chosen by a secretary, it's not a gift. It's a present. Or a favor...
A gift certificate from a rich uncle is a present as well, it's not really a gift.
A favor is something we do for someone hoping for an equal or greater favor in return. (Hence the phrase, "return the favor." No one says, "return the gift.")
A present is something that costs money, sure, and it's free, but I don't think it's a gift.
A gift costs the giver something real. It might be cash (enough that we feel the pinch) but more likely it involves a sacrifice or a risk or an emotional exposure. A true gift is a heartfelt connection, something that changes both the giver the recipient.
The Gift of the Magi is a great story because each person in the story sacrifices to create a heartfelt gift for the other person. And it's gifts--gifts that touch us, gifts that change us--that are transforming the way we interact.
One or two readers asked me why my book Linchpin costs money. After all, they ask, if gifts are a cornerstone of the new era, why not give it away free, as a gift?
Free doesn't make something a gift. Free might be a marketing strategy, free might make a generous present, but free doesn't automatically make something a gift. Gil Scott Heron's new album isn't free, but it's a gift. He's exposing himself. Taking a risk. You listen to the album and you feel differently when you're done... it's not a product, it's a very personal statement. Keller Williams approaches his entire craft as a chance to give gifts, but that doesn't mean he can't charge for some elements of his work. What it took him to create the music is so much greater than what it cost you to consume it that he is giving gifts without doubt.
The way I understand gifts is that the giver must make a sacrifice, create an uneven exchange, bring himself closer to the recipient, create change and do it all with the right spirit. To do anything less might be smart commerce, but it doesn't rise to the magical level of the gift. A day's work for a day's pay is the win/lose mantra of the industrial era. More modern is to view a day's work as a chance to generate gifts that last.
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Sunday, June 13, 2010
Fw: Seth's Blog : Hope and the magic lottery
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Hope and the magic lottery
Entrepreneurial hope is essential. It gets us over the hump and through the dip. There's a variety of this hope, though, that's far more damaging than helpful.
This is the hope of the magic lottery ticket.
A fledgling entrepreneur ambushes a venture capitalist who just appeared on a panel. "Excuse me," she says, then launches into a two, then six and eventually twenty minute pitch that will never (sorry, never) lead to the VC saying, "Great, here's a check for $2 million on your terms."
Or the fledgling author, the one who has been turned down by ten agents and then copies his manuscript and fedexes it to twenty large publishing houses--what is he hoping for, exactly? Perhaps he's hoping to win the magic lottery, to be the one piece of slush chosen out of a million (literally a million!) that goes on to be published and revered.
You deserve better than the dashed hopes of a magic lottery.
There's a hard work alternative to the magic lottery, one in which you can incrementally lay the groundwork and integrate into the system you say you want to work with. And yet instead of doing that work, our instinct is to demonize the person that wants to take away our ticket, to confuse the math of the situation (there are very few glass slippers available) with someone trying to slam the door in your faith/face.
You can either work yourself to point where you don't need the transom, or you can play a different game altogether, but throwing your stuff over the transom isn't worthy of the work you've done so far.
Starbucks didn't become Starbucks by getting discovered by Oprah Winfrey or being blessed by Warren Buffet when they only had a few stores. No, they plugged along. They raised bits of money here and there, flirted with disaster, added one store and then another, tweaked and measured and improved and repeated. Day by day, they dripped their way to success. No magic lottery.
What chance is there that Mark Cuban or Carlos Slim is going to agree to be your mentor, to open all doors and give you a shortcut to the top? Better, I think, to avoid wasting a moment of your time hoping for a fairy godmother. You're in a hurry and this is a dead end.
When someone encourages you to avoid the magic lottery, they're not criticizing your idea nor are they trying to shatter your faith or take away your hope. Instead, they're pointing out that shortcuts are rarely dependable (or particularly short) and that instead, perhaps, you should follow the longer, more deliberate, less magical path if you truly want to succeed.
If your business or your music or your art or your project is truly worth your energy and your passion, then don't sell it short by putting its future into a lottery ticket.
Here's another way to think about it: delight the audience you already have, amaze the customers you can already reach, dazzle the small investors who already trust you enough to listen to you. Take the permission you have and work your way up. Leaps look good in the movies, but in fact, success is mostly about finding a path and walking it one step at a time.
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Thursday, June 10, 2010
Fw: Seth's Blog : Cheating the clock
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Cheating the clock
One way to do indispensable work is to show up more hours than everyone else. Excessive face time and candle-burning effort is sort of rare, and it's possible to leverage it into a kind of success.
But if you're winning by cheating the clock, you're still cheating.
The problem with using time as your lever for success is that it doesn't scale very well. 20 hours a day at work is not twice as good as 18, and you certainly can't go much beyond 24...
What would happen if you were prohibited from working more than five hours a day. What would you do? How would you use those five hours to become indispensable in a different way?
Go ahead, try it. Just for a week. See what happens. Even if you go back to ten, you'll discover you've changed the way you compete.
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Sunday, June 6, 2010
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Short & Sassy
Julie Gordon White, President
Business Team / BTI Group, Inc.
www.business-team.com
www.btigroupma.com
Cell 510.812.2233
License 01347013
Women Food & God
Julie Gordon White, President
Business Team / BTI Group, Inc.
www.business-team.com
www.btigroupma.com
Cell 510.812.2233
License 01347013