He can give you a succssful small business

The Greatest Story Ever Told…

The best business professionals tell stories. This he does with aplomb. You may already know something about him, but here he tells his story as if it were the most incredible tale the world had ever heard. He talks about his love for Houdini, and how the great escape artist inspired him to become what he is today.

He goes through the challenges. Like having a tube (literally a thick plastic tube) shoved down his throat to see whether he could use it in his record attempt. There is footage of this. You might want to turn away.

He tells jokes. His life is unique. Funny things have happened to him. He’s got a sense of humour (check out the ‘before and after’ weight loss photos), and this draws the audience in.

He Gets Naked…

Being real about yourself makes connections with people easier. So back to the tube video again. This is something you wouldn’t naturally want to be on show to millions. But he does it. It reduces him to a human being. He looks vulnerable, a little stupid. We like him for it.

He cries at the end. Blaine has come under flak for his stage craft, but this is real. He cries and the tears come because he manages to finish the talk, and encapsulate his reason for being, all at the same time.

You get a sense of his drive, too. The man is tough. He has suffered for his art, his passion. This is genuine stuff, and it touches you.

He Completes Us…

Like any great business presentation, the talk has an incredibly compelling moment in it. An anchor, if you will.

For me it wasn’t the tube, or the crying, or the weight loss photos. It wasn’t even the humour.

It was a phrase he said, almost casually, around halfway through the talk.

He said ‘I think if something is done by one person it can be done by others.’

It is about two and a half minutes in, and he says it like he’s reading from a phone book. But it meant something to me.

That was my moment of connection. Right there.

David Blaine doesn’t know me, and he certainly doesn’t know the many thousands of people who will watch this video over time.

But he knows his story, he knows his business, and he knows why he does what he does.

Most importantly, he knows what the guy in the street is looking for when it comes to his product.

Magic, illusion, whatever you want to call it, is about shock and awe. And like business, it’s about connecting with people. He delivers all of this in his story, in the tube, the crying.

And for me, he delivered it in that one, fifteen word phrase.

I don’t even know what the video did to me, maybe you will have a different response, I don’t know.

But when you need to run a successful home business, every now and then you need simple, compelling inspiration to fire you up.

This is twenty minutes of simple, compelling inspiration.

Tell me if it touches you too.

Enjoy.

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Protect your business

Maybe you own virus protection software for your computer, maybe you don’t.

However, you are a customer. That is one thing that will never change. I recently received another of those red-bordered reminders from a very well known virus protection software company, informing me that my computer will soon be unprotected, and that unless I send them some money, it will be exposed to ’security threats’. In other words, the world is going to end soon, and it is probably going to be my fault.

The other day, however, some sunshine entered my life. I found an article that sang the praises of Microsoft’s firewall and protection suite, called Security Essentials. Microsoft are not, as you know, famous for loving the customer, but the one thing that immediately made me sit up and take notice of this product is that it is free.

The reviewer in the article enthused about the comprehensive levels of protection the software gave, and was pretty clear that it provided all the defences a home computer user would ever need. I’ll be downloading soon.

Not because it is free though. Well, not wholly because it’s free anyway. I just like the fact that, in this increasingly bleak world, a major corporate giant has remembered it’s roots.

Microsoft have gone back to business basics. They have illustrated, via Security Essentials, one of the core factors that are present in successful business offerings. While all the other ‘protection’ rackets (sorry, software firms) are offering safety at a price, Microsoft offer it free. The key emotional button of protection (of our photos, music, work etc.) is allied with the other emotional button of safeguarded income.

This works. And it is an important lesson for all business owners. If you can find a product or service that hits at least one emotional button (fear, love, anger etc.) then you have something that will grow.

Thank you Microsoft. And I’m sorry for any Bill Gates jokes I may have made in the past…

Until next time, work smart.

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I’m trying to buy a new phone, and it’s Hell.

You see, I know exactly what I want, and at the moment, that gets you nowhere in the world of mobile communications.

It started off easy enough.   I began to research using the Internet, using sites like CNET, which, to be honest, couldn’t do much more to help their visitors.   They even offer video reviews of phones.

As my research continued, I managed to mentally rid myself of a huge number of phones.   First of all, I realised that I needed what is known as a ‘smart phone’.   It needed email, messaging, and Internet access.

All good so far.   I then started looking for smart phones and then realised that there was one very famous smart phone.  

After discounting the iPhone due to the fact that I wanted to listen to Windows music on the phone – and because I am starting to think Apple are becoming increasingly creepy – I continued with my search.

After a while it became apparent that there is no such thing as the perfect phone.   Now, I know that it is way too much to ask for a customised phone and that even if you had the ability to procure a totally bespoke solution you would have to pay a lot for it, but I am still here without a phone, and wondering why I can’t have one that is at least nearly perfect.

Surely someone out there has responded to some customer survey somewhere in the world with: “Well, I want a  phone that has speedy internet access, a touch screen that is responsive enough for me to type quickly and accurately on, with fast email that I can use easily, a long battery life, small overall physical size, no camera (don’t need one), a big memory, the ability to write and access documents and files, in a neat black casing, and with a 3.5 mm audio jack.”

Obviously no one has.   I need a consultant to help me on this, a personal phone shopper.

Or maybe I just need big companies to realise that the absolute Nirvana for customer experience is being asked, and then being listened to…

It’s why customers bother to go into shops and talk to sales assistants.

We just need to feel special.

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If you imagine a city where every single square foot of the place was filled by retail space, every street, every field, every single square foot, and then imagine trying to open up a new store in that city, that is what Internet Marketing (IM) is like.

At least in the real world you get to talk to other people, get to have lunch, get to go home, get to feel like you are running a real business that exists with real fittings, real products and so on.

I tried IM throughout November, really tried.   I joined forums, listened to podcasts, set up sites.   Nothing happened.   And when I say I really tried, I did.   I’m no quitter.

Granted, we have recently had our third child, and IM seemed less important than it was in the summer, but I did fill way too many free hours up with slogging away at the IM puzzle.

Funny that, how so many Internet Marketer’s call what they do ‘a puzzle’, or ‘a mystery’.   In fact, if you ever try to get into IM, and you decide to find advice, you won’t be short of courses, seminars, workbooks and so on.  

You see, I will try IM again; I would be a fool not to.   I know I just need to find the right formula for success.   But the one thing I have realised about IM is that the guys who are making the big money – as in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year – are those who are ‘teaching’ others to do it.

Take Brian Clark of Copyblogger.   Great blog and a very nice guy.   In the summer he was talking about bringing out a ‘limited places’ course called Teaching Sells.   Now Teaching Sells is very good as a course, and you get a lot of materials.

However, I was all primed up after his excellent marketing campaign for the course, which included emails, videos and so on – more on that in a little while – and then the email came through with the actual price of the course, something like a couple of hundred pounds a month.

I felt a little cheated there.   And when I looked through some of the preliminary materials, I noticed that the model that got me all primed to buy was the exact same model he was going to ‘teach’ me.

Brian and his team will have made hundreds of thousands of dollars this year from that one course.

I will try IM again, but at my own pace, and with the blinkers off.   And if you are thinking of trying it, I would suggest you take your time, forget the ‘riches’ you will make, and focus on getting the basics right.   It is so easy to be sucked into chaos, with all those Gurus out there.

And if you buy a course, do a heck of a lot of research first.

There have been many cases of people losing thousands just ‘learning’ IM.   Don’t let it be you.

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I love a good book.

I stopped reading for a while this year, fiction that is.   I was so engrossed in a self development cycle that I was reading stuff like Brian Tracy and Tony Robbins until it hurt.   Then I realised I wanted fiction again.

Books, contrary to what some people are currently saying, will not die out.   However, there is a reason why the Kindle and all of the other ‘readers’ out there are selling well.   People, five years ago, would have bet against them.   In fact, last year wasn’t looking too good for them either.   But they have something that will allow them to share the market that printed works have carved out for themselves.

They have benefits.   These benefits are both perceived and real.   The perceived benefits are what enter the average person’s mind when you give a quick summary of what the product does.   To illustrate…

Well, it’s this reader right?   And it’s digital, and you can store thousands of full length books on it, and it’s about the size of your hand, and it has a backlight.

Got that?   Well, the reason why even such a brief – and possible slightly inaccurate – description like that one sold Kindles – because, don’t forget, a lot of what they have done is word-of mouth stuff so that is exactly what people hear most of the time when they first ask what a Kindle is – is because it conjured up images of practicality and usefulness in the minds of ordinary human beings.

Kindle owners like the fact that it is hand-sized.   They like the fact that it can be used at night.  They like the fact that you can stick a ton of books on there.  They like the fact that it doesn’t take up space.

There is, in other words, no need for the technical specifications.  The thing has immediate perceived benefits that are attractive.

When it comes to the real benefits, they are those ‘oh, that’s nice’ moments when you have been using it for a few hours.  You get those with mobile phones too.   And they are never mentioned in the Quick Start guide.   They are built in and come with medium to long term use.

But the perceived benefits can work before you even get the product out of the box, before you even see one.

It’s selling the sizzle not the steak, the benefits, not the details.

Books will survive, but the Kindle is definitely here, and it has its place.  This is because there are perceived benefits that work for people.

To prove this, try selling with a slightly differently worded description.

Well, it’s this reader right?   And it’s digital, and you can store about twenty books on it.   It’s a bit bigger than your hand, and you can get a backlight for it, but that’s an add-on you have to pay for.

You see?

If your customers do not know what they are going to get out of your offering instinctively, they are not going to buy.

So look at what you are selling, and find that one thing that people will nod their heads to, that one perceived benefit, and make it the thing that jumps out at them before they even know what is happening.

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