What do you do with the critics?

You will never amount to anything great, your business idea is not good, your grades in school are not good enough, you better find a job with security, you’re not graduate school material, etc, etc.

The words of the critic!  As entrepreneurs we are faced with a common reality in this world, that reality is the voice of the critic.  They come in many forms, a co-worker, a boss, a banker, a government official, a brother, a sister, an uncle, a mom, a dad, a spouse, a teacher, a professor, a friend and the list goes on.

As men and women with passion for the free enterprise system, a love for the game and a quest for greatness we will all face our critics.  The question is not are you facing a critic it is what are you doing with the critic?  Personally, I think there are many men and women out there who fell victim to the harsh words of the critic.  They allowed the critic to get into their head and worse they believed them!

Ignore or be inspired by critics!

Talk to any successful entrepreneur and they will tell you stories of the critics in their lives.  Many of entrepreneurs will take the words of the critic and ignore them or they will take them and become inspired.  Inspired to prove them wrong and reach new heights of greatness.  Successful entrepreneurs have extraordinary drive and resolve.

I personally have had my fair share of naysayers and critics.  We face a danger in our culture and that danger is taking advice from so called authorities.  The guidance counselor at school who tells  a kid he is not good enough to get into a great school, the banker who says your business idea isn’t good enough and the dozens of others we allow into our lives to shape our beliefs.

As an entrepreneur you must be careful who you listen to.  Take advice from those who have the right to give it and be inspired by those who criticize and proclaim why you can’t.

So as you take your journey towards your path of greatness and success draw the line in the sand today and make a choice as to what you will do with your critics.

Keep on Charging

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Are You Effecient or Effective? Evaluating Your Actions

More than likely if you are an employee your are focusing on efficiency making sure to impress your superiors with multi-tasking and busyness, hoping to be recognized as a productive worker who “gets the job done”.  If you are a business owner you continue to cram your day with more stuff to do by figuring out ways to be more efficient, thus in return have more time to add more stuff.  Do yourself a favor . . .

STOP!!

I was browsing through “The 4 Hour Work Week” by Timothy Ferriss, pondering some of the principles he speaks about within his book.  (A book I highly recommend) Personally, I focus on a self analysis from time to time and my current focus is elimination.  In the book he speaks a good amount about Pareto’s Principle, AKA 80/20 rule.  For those who are not familiar with this principle, it has it’s roots in the lat 1800’s during which a controversial economist brought to light the principle that 80% of a countries economy is really generated by 20% of the people.

This rule applies to almost any area of production, at times even more skewed with 5% producing the 95% results.  So with that theory and principle in mind, I focus my energy on elimination.  Rather than being efficient to do more let’s step back and see what can we eliminate that is not part of the 20%?  As a business owner, evaluate your customers, evaluate your actions, evaluate your employees and measure what action, which customer and which employees are really responsible for the 80-99%.

Trust me, this exercise will be liberating, revealing and at times humbling as you realize 90% of your problems are coming from the customer who brings nothing to your bottom line, the employee who isn’t worth a penny to the company and actions that do nothing for your business growth.  As a business owner, help eliminate your actions from your day that are efficient, eliminate “busyness” from your employee base and help steer the ship towards the port of effectiveness.

Employees, this may be a tough one to tackle!  There is a good chance your boss is clueless when it comes to this principle and for them all the “old school” ways of a hustling, paper moving, cell phone talking and a busy looking employees is all they know.  You can’t blame them for this, your job is to help educate them.  Then, take steps towards elimination and liberation as you slowly move towards effective action which is the only action that equates measurable results.

Think about this.  If you remove 50% of your “efficient actions” and replace it with another 20% of effective action, you will, in theory, double your production while reducing the time you spend by 35%”

With that I say eliminate, liberate and fill your time with moments and actions that fulfill you, not with more “work”.

Keep on charging, make some comments show me you’re ALIVE

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You Have My Permission - The Downfall of Mass Marketing . . .

Here we are in February of 2010, the social media phenomenon is in full swing, Oprah is tweeting, corporations have a facebook fan page and people of all ages from 14-84 are plugging into a different way of communication.  I was reading an interview of Seth Godin from the year 2005, in this interview he talked about “Permission Based Marketing”.

To identify what this is let’s look at what it is not.  Traditionally a company has leveraged mass marketing to convey their message to the public hoping that this wide and broad blast would land a % of customers.  This traditional way of marketing has been used for many decades and traditionally was the “way” to market.  We as a consuming public would get unanticipated and impersonal messages by marketers who would deliver a message that was important to them and not necessarily important to us.

This method has for years become less and less effective as the general public is blasted with an insane amount of advertising all day long.  Today, we are trained to quickly and effectively tune out the messages that we don’t want to hear.  The example Seth used in this interview was very visual and will help you understand the difference in mass marketing verses, individual “permission” marketing or “privilege” marketing.

For those that are married, let’s take you back to when you were single.  If you were out at a restaurant as a single person and you saw someone who you were attracted to.  Was your first “move” to walk up and say, “Hi my name is John Smith and I have these qualities, Will you MARRY ME?”  Then when you are rejected, move directly to the next person until eventually you found someone that said, yes.

No, your first move was a conversation, which ultimately lead to the privilege of having another conversation, which then lead to the privilege of a date, etc.  See as a marketer you should be seeking the “permission” or “privilege” to engage your potential future client.  Not the immediate sale or rejection.

Whether you are in direct selling, traditional bricks and mortar business, network marketing or online marketing, you will need to learn how to transition your marketing from the mass market approach to building a list of “followers” who allow you the privilege to “engage” them.  This “privilege” will build a relationship of frequency and trust that will ultimately lead to a client with whom you gain “wallet” share verses mass market share.

Social media allows you to tap into the personal relationship of your current and future clients.  It allows you to build bonds of trust and nurture a privilege based marketing relationship.  This relationship becomes a vital asset to your business that cannot be replaced by anyone other than yourself.  Just as when you were dating you cannot send a “substitute” to stand in for you.

In conclusion, mass marketing is on a downward spiral and is daily becoming less effective for business.  We are quickly heading back to the way it used to be 100 years ago, where the only option was a personal relationship with the customer.  A relationship built on frequency, trust and providing value.

Evaluate your business practices and take steps of action to continually move into a “privilege” based relationship with your clients.  For consulting and direction on how you can implement this into your business, contact me for an analysis of your current business practices.

Keep On Charging,

Joshua Valentine

P.S. Let’s Here YOUR thoughts . . . Make A Comment Show Me You’re Alive

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