Finding Your Way In the Wild New World
Posted on 09. May, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, Podcast, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Marketing podcast with Martha Beck (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes or subscribe via other RSS device.
The way that many people still think about work has its roots in the Industrial Revolution where workers were told to go to a place at a certain time and perform work to specific requirements until such time as the whistle blew signaling a time that we could now go home and be with our families.
This concept of work then led people seek ways to create boundaries and balance that would allow them to then have a more fulfilling life outside of work. In many instances this simply led to an emotionless workplace where the clock was to be punched.
The world has changed so radically over the last decade that the entire concept of work, and certainly the concept of workplace, has be been altered forever – the question though is have we caught up with these changes?
The grand opportunity that exists today is that because you can choose to work in just about any way that suits your life, their is no reason to do work unless it feels like art to you. There’s no reason to separate work from the things that charge and energize and fulfill you emotionally and spiritually.
My guest for this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is Martha Beck, life coach and author of the new book Finding Your Way in a Wild New World: Reclaim Your True Nature to Create the Life You Want. Beck is a columnist for Oprah’s O magazine and was a frequent guest on her show over the years. One of Beck’s earlier books, Finding Your Own North Star should be required reading for every college student and perhaps every parent raising those college students.
My favorite line from the interview is this: Love sells better than hate. Beck was talking about how your approach to what you’re doing has a tremendous baring on the success of the venture. If you don’t enjoy your work, it’ll show. If you love what you’re doing people will be attracted to that.
So much of the belief about what is work and what our relationship to work should be is beaten into us as small children by school systems and even well intentioned, but equally battered, parents that breaking free sometimes takes years.
My firm belief is that if you don’t find a relationship with what you do for a living that also serves what you do for life, you’ll constantly struggle with a false sense of teetering imbalance.
Finding Your Way In the Wild New World is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
How to Steal Like An Entrepreneur
Posted on 02. May, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, Podcast, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Marketing podcast with Austin Kleon (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes or subscribe via other RSS device (Google Listen)
From Newspaper Blackout by Austin Kleon
Perhaps steal is to big of a word for some, but the concept of learning from, borrowing from and gaining insight from the ideas, failures, successes, styles and approaches of others as a way to build something truly unique is a proven path to entrepreneurial success.
So many entrepreneurs believe that success lies in some audacious innovation that is destined to revolutionize an entire industry. While that kind of result happens every now and then it’s actually more often a case where someone borrowed from many influences, learned how to make it there own and along the way accidentally tripped on an audacious innovation that changed the world.
In this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast I visit with Austin Kleon, author the book Steal Like An Artist and certainly the inspiration for the title of this post.
As I shared with Austin I don’t believe entrepreneurs are any more creative than other people, I believe they just view the world, concepts and ideas through this lens that forces them to ask – “How could I take this and make it better?”
Kleon’s book, subtitled 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative, started out as a presentation given to a group of students and grew to be a bit of a movement.
The book’s main premise is this: Creativity is in reality a form of “remixing.” According to Kleon creativity isn’t some flash of brilliance, but more of a collaborative process of combine existing ideas into innovative ones.
To me that’s about as close to the definition of the art practiced by most entrepreneurs as I can summon.
Note that the kind of stealing Kleon refers to is not the same as copying. Copying only allows you to create an inauthentic replica of something that already exists. The creativity that Kleon refers to is the kind that is inspired by others but becomes authentically your own.
This practical, stylish, dare I say, hip book offers even more entrepreneurial advice and truths about creativity: Nothing is original, so embrace influence, collect ideas, and remix and re-imagine to discover your own path. Follow your interests wherever they take you. Stay smart, stay out of debt, and risk being boring—the creative you will need to make room to be wild and daring in your imagination.
There you have it, go ahead and steal like an entrepreneur.
By the way, check out Kleon’s first book too. Newspaper Blackout is a book filled with art created by simply blacking out words in an article to come up with a creative saying. The image in this post is from the book.
How to Steal Like An Entrepreneur is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Optimized Is the New Integrated
Posted on 24. Apr, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, lee odden, Podcast, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Marketing podcast with Lee Odden (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes or subscribe via other RSS device (Google Listen)
Some years ago smart marketers latched onto the idea of something they referred to as integrated marketing. The idea behind this concept was to make all aspects of marketing such as advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and direct marketing work together as a single force, rather than allowing each to work as a stand alone.
The concept made complete sense, but then something really big happened.
The relationship that our prospects have with our marketing communications has changed dramatically. Marketers are no longer in control of how a message is consumed, who consumes it, when they consume it or even who produced it in the first place.
Social media, search, TiVo, and little things like the “do not mail” list altered the practices of lead generations through broadcast marketing forever.
As marketers started to discover the new reality of the need to be found, a new word started to creep into the marketing lexicon – optimize. The term itself has been with us since the dawn of search and has been mostly applied to the practice of search engine optimization or SEO.
But now it must be applied more broadly than the notion of keyword rich content and high quality backlinks.
Today, every element of our marketing must be optimized to take advantage of the fact that it may indeed need to work in isolation.
This doesn’t throw off the notion of integration; every element of your marketing working in tandem is still a good thing. It adds, however, the reality that much of your marketing may be encountered in ways that you no longer control and every element must be able to do the job of moving a prospect forward on its own.
- Today’s marketer must rely on outposts, such as social media networks, to open up new paths of entry for a prospect.
- They must rely on educational content to draw the attention of those researching online.
- They must participate in communities that exist for the sole purpose of building trust and providing proof.
- They must optimize every brand asset and put them in places where prospects might stumble upon them.
Few marketers online have shared my longstanding belief about the optimization mindset so thoroughly as Lee Odden, publisher of the Top Rank Blog. Lee has been urging SEO types to embrace the marriage between search, social and content for as long as anyone I can remember.
This month Odden released what I think is an absolute must read for anyone that wonders about the practical realities of the new world of marketing. The book is simply titled – Optimize.
Optimize introduces the concept of the optimized mindset and in opinion says just as much about how you need to think about your business as being a guide for how to turn practical social media and content marketing advice into action.
Odden stopped by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast to talk about Optimize and the future of marketing online.
Here are just a few things that you need to consider in the optimized mindset:
- Your listening, especially to your customers, must be optimized
- Your brand assets, such as images and videos, must be optimized
- Your content, tailored to serve specific purposes, must be optimized
- Your customer experience, beginning with the end in mind, must be optimized
- Your social media participation
- Your product and service delivery
- Your customer service
- Your store or office
- Your advertising
- Your referral generation
- Your public relations
- Your sales system
- Your partnerships
- Your analytics
You see, integration isn’t enough anymore – Today’s marketing requires the optimization of every element and it’s a mindset as much as it is a tactic.
Optimized Is the New Integrated is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
The Expanding Potential of Digital Books
Posted on 20. Apr, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, Duct Tape Marketing, Nancy Duarte, Podcast, Presentations, Resonate, slide:ology, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
I’ve seen the future of interactive business books and it is Nancy Duarte’s Resonate for the iPad.
I’m a big fan of the presentation work of Nancy Duarte and I’ve had Duarte on my podcast to talk about her books Slide:ology and Resonate.
This week Duarte’s team launched Resonate as a Multi-Touch book built in Apple’s iBooks Author tool. Calling it a book in the traditional sense doesn’t do it justice. It’s more like attending a workshop rich in images, stories, video, lectures, and even quizzes, all perfectly displayed on the iPad’s stunning screen.
The book is available through the iTunes store and may be the best teaching tool on the subject of creating presentations that resonate ever created. (I guess you can tell I kind of like it.)
The Expanding Potential of Digital Books is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Making Sense of the Cloud for Small Business
Posted on 19. Apr, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, Podcast, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Marketing podcast with Rhonda Abrams (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes or subscribe via other RSS device (Google Listen)
No matter if you refer to the way you work as using the cloud or just getting more done virtually, or offsite, Internet based and hosted applications have become the backbone of how small business runs today.
yettis doings via Flickr CC
I pretty much run my entire business using cloud based web apps.
The following web based tools make up the backbone of my daily business operations.
- Dropbox – My file storage, quasi server and backup tool
- Google Apps – Collaboration, sharing and storage
- Central Desktop – Project management, collaboration, communication
- Evernote – Idea storage, to do, bookmarking, note taking
- Delicious – Bookmarking and RSS content
- Reeder – Consumption of RSS feeds
- GMail – Hosted email for my domain and team
- Infusionsoft – CRM, email marketing, shopping cart and affiliate management
- Zen Desk – customer service
About the only thing I don’t do online is bookkeeping. I still use QuickBooks on a local computer but my bookkeeper accesses it from her desk 1000 miles away.
Even mid sized businesses and those with proprietary applications are moving to the cloud and using integration services such as Dell’s Boomi to patch the holes and get everything to play nice.
My guest for this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is Rhonda Abrams, USAToday columnist and author of Bringing the Cloud Down to Earth – How to choose, launch, and get the most from cloud solutions for your business.
Abrams’ book takes this often over jargonized topic and as she suggests, brings it down to earth. Even you’ve hired a consultant to help you move your business processes online this is a great way to get a quick education on the subject.
In this episode we cover just what it means to move your business applications online and how to do it, how not to do it, what to consider and things you may not have even thought of.
Web based applications offer small business so many opportunities to compete with even the largest of organizations by providing functionality that would have costs hundreds of thousands of dollars in hardware and support just a few years ago for pennies or less.
Making Sense of the Cloud for Small Business is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Free Copy of What the Plus Book and Interview with Guy Kawasaki
Posted on 11. Apr, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, Guy Kawasaki, Podcast, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Free Copy of What the Plus Book and Interview with Guy Kawasaki
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
Marketing podcast with Guy Kawasaki (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes or subscribe via other RSS device (Google Listen)
Update: Guy offered 500 free copies of his book What The Plus and they were snapped up in a matter of hours. We’ve added another 1,000 so grab your free copy of What The Plus and pass the word. (Update No. 2 – the additional 1,000 have now been given away – thanks again Guy.)
Depending upon who you listen to, Google+ is either the Holy Grail of social networks or another passing fade, but make no mistake, Google is Google and Google thinks this is important. So, even if you’re still waiting for some sort of critical mass from your industry to join Google+, you can’t ignore the fact that Google is starting to weight its search engine results with content from Google+.
In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast I visit with one of Google+’s biggest evangelists and power user, Guy Kawasaki. Guy has written a very down to earth book on using Google+ called What the Plus-Google+ for the Rest of Us (Read on to see how to get a free copy of Guy’s book)
What I really like about Guy’s book is that it is filled with tons of very practical little tips gleaned from using the network on a daily basis. Beginners and more advanced users alike will get plenty from reading this book.
For example, I picked up a much better way to use Google Hangouts and a totally clever way to run your own polls on Google+.
Guy is selling fully functioning Kindle, eReader and Google Play versions for $2.99, but you can download a free PDF copy of What the Plus courtesy of Guy here. (8.5 mg PDF file limited to the first 500 downloads – expires April 23, 2012)
Creating Analog Experiences
Posted on 28. Mar, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, Podcast, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Creating Analog Experiences
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
Marketing podcast with Ramon Ray (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes or subscribe via other RSS device (Google Listen)
So much of what we do in business today can be done virtually, digitally and technically.
So much so that I believe we actually have to make an effort to meet in a way that allows us to acquire hugs and handshakes in the good old fashioned offline analog way. In fact, I further believe that making an effort to fuse the online and offline worlds is how you build deeper and richer experiences much faster.
Ramon Ray hosting the Small Business Summit
A few of my favorite ways to create analog experiences:
- Bring five customers together for lunch so they can meet each other
- Host MeetUps focused on a very specific topic of interest
- Go spend some time shooting video of a strategic partner or customer
- Host a small peer-to-peer panel discussion with customers and prospects
- Create a day long event co-hosted by several strategic partners
- Hold annual customer appreciation events or learning events
- And of course, don’t forget to get out there and attend some events
Once you get the hang of creating offline events you could even take this to much higher level and start creating paid and sponsored events.
My guest for this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is Ramon Ray, Editor of Smallbiztechnology.com and producer of the long running Small Business Summit, which he has co-produced since 2006.
In this interview Ramon shares:
- The benefits and pitfalls of creating events
- Technical details you need to get started
- The best ways to create an engaging program
- How to get people to sign up for events
- How to attract sponsors to underwrite the event
- The math of making money with events.
We Are a Collection of Our Habits
Posted on 22. Mar, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, Podcast, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
We Are a Collection of Our Habits
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
Marketing podcast with Charles Duhigg (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes or subscribe via other RSS device (Google Listen)
Habits are very strange and powerful things. They drive our everyday routines and teach us, often subconsciously how to feel and react to the things that happen around us all day long.
They can propel us forward in very positive ways and hobble us equally destructive ways. Habits allow us to do many of the little things we do, often without thought. They are extremely difficult to change and can be a major factor in the success of failure of a business.
My guest for this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is Charles Duhigg, a staff writer at the New York Times and author of the recently published book The Power of Habit about the science of habit formation and its applications among individuals, companies and societies.
For the Power of Habit, Duhigg researched in great deal how habits are formed, how they are disrupted and changed and how some companies are using this understanding to turn your habits into sales.
At its core, The Power of Habit contains an interesting argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive, building revolutionary companies and social movements, and achieving success is understanding how habits work.
Duhigg breaks the psychology behind how habits control are actions into three parts: Cure, Routine, and Reward. It’s this pattern that makes our behavior so predictable and makes breaking habits so hard.
However, when we understand why we act as we do habitually, it starts to make the process of creating healthier rewards for healthier habits more possible. In fact, habits are so hard to break that we often only succeed doing so when we replace one habit with another.
I’ve stated for many years that marketing is a habit. The fact that so many business owners struggle to practice it successfully stems from the fact that they haven’t sufficiently tied a reward to “doing” marketing every day.
The Power of Habit is a must read for any business owner trying to understand how to form habits that serve and a very enlightening read for any marketer trying to understand why their clients do what they do.
Duhigg has produced some nice extra resources to accompany the book, including a Guide to Changing Habits.
Hiring the Next Generation
Posted on 08. Mar, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, Podcast, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Hiring the Next Generation
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
Marketing podcast with Lindsey Pollak (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes or subscribe via other RSS device (Google Listen)
In a thriving business there’s growth. It doesn’t always mean the kind of hyper growth that we read about in feature stories, but a business is like any organism, it’s either growing in some fashion or it’s dieing.
The surest way to healthy growth is through the attraction of the best and brightest talent weaving it’s way through college and into the workforce.
But, we all know that the Gen Y worker just doesn’t have the same values and work ethic as the Baby Boomers right? Well, guess what, that’s what our parents said about our generation and their parents said about the generation before.
Every generation is different, the key is to understand how and build your business in a way that meshes with their priorities. (I raised four of them, I have some ideas on this!)
For this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast I spent some time with career expert and author of Getting from College to Career, Lindsey Pollak. Pollak spends more of her time coaching recent grads on the best ways to get ahead in their job search and career so I turned the tables on her and asked her to shed some light on ways for businesses to appeal to, attract and retain the best from the next generation.
The next generation of worker did not ever consider the notion that they would go to work for one company for life. They are looking for things that challenge, inspire and interest them, even if it means taking less money, or jumping around on the career path.
The next generation of worker is completely digital. But, that doesn’t mean they understand how to employ technology in business. They want to do work that matters, for companies that have a strong sense of story.
The next generation is social. But, that doesn’t mean they only get Facebook, that means they want to work with people they know and like and increasingly they want to work for small businesses that are doing something they think is worthwhile.
So, how do you attract this new worker? Have a story about where you’re going and tell it. Build a culture where creativity, collaboration and autonomy flourish.
And when they come to work for you, ask them what they think, ask them how they would do something different and most importantly listen.
Seeing Beyond the Numbers
Posted on 10. Feb, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, Podcast, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Seeing Beyond the Numbers
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
Marketing podcast with Greg Cabtree (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes or subscribe via other RSS device (Google Listen)
Woodlouse via Flick CC
Traditional accounting practices, or at least the ways that many business owners interpret the data from those practices, often lead business to the brink of extinction.
Far too often business owners trick themselves into believing their business is healthy, when in fact it’s one bad month away from disaster. Or, they become so focused on beating the IRS in the tax game that they miss the entire point about building wealth.
In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast I visit with Greg Crabtree, a CPA who’s spent most of his career helping business owners see beyond the numbers that blind and focus on the simple numbers that help unlock business potential.
Crabtree’s book – Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits!: 4 Keys to Unlock Your Business Potential
In Simple Numbers you get some very practical talk about how to manage your business based on the numbers that count.
Today’s break even is 10% Net Profit.
You get a salary on what you do and a return on what you own. So many business owners confuse profit with revenue or treat profit as salary. A salary is what a job pays. If you’re not focused on creating a net, after tax, after salary profit then all you’ve created is a job.
Taxes have become the tail that wags the dog. Business owners jump through tremendous hoops in order not to pay taxes – including doing things that rob from the future of the business. Crabtree advises that we need to stop focusing on the tax implications and focus on the true financial dynamics of the business. We need to take the energy we spend on not paying taxes and go make money.
Another crucial number that Crabtree reveals is something he calls the Labor efficiency ratio – Hiring people can either lift a business or sink it. But, good labor is a lever if you understand how to calculate what every dollar of labor produces in terms of profit.
You must understand how to hold your labor cost accountable for profit. Once you can do this you can set what you need in terms of additional revenue and additional profit for each hire.
Crabtree has created a number of tools for better understanding both labor cost and profit.
The last issue we discuss is cash flow. Many business owners struggle with cash flow. The thinking is that I must manage cash flow before I can think about profit. I believe and Crabtree certainly supports this notion, that if you focus on profit, you’ll fix cash flow.
The real problem with cash flow is that people don’t get cash flow considerations in the right order. On average 40% of your profit must be paid in taxes – that needs to come out first. Far too many businesses sink on this number because they consume based on total profit.
Simple Numbers is a very accessible read and just may do more towards helping business owners come to grips with the right numbers and right priorities than any other book on the subject. Go get it and make everyone in your organization read it!
Then start having discussions about labor productivity and profit at your next all hands meeting.
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