Aggregate Positive Exposure – Return on Involvement
Chapter 27 of the forthcoming book, Trajectory
Aggregate Positive Exposure
We are all familiar with the notion of encouraging “eyes on your website.”
Commonly this is measured by the number of visitors, and the number of times they visit.
However, in the Trajectory Formula, a much more meaningful metric is used to measure Social Media success.
It is an expanded concept I call Aggregate Positive Exposure (APEX).
APEX goes far beyond measuring visitors. It measures the aggregate amount of positive time – spent on the website by potential customers — who are actively involved with highly relevant content.
Highly relevant content, in the context of the Trajectory Formula, means articles written expressly to benefit your followers, and provided at no cost. It pointedly does not mean your product information or other sales-directed content. This metric is then compared with your perceived competition.
Why is this Important?
To understand why APEX is important, it is first necessary to take a step backward to review strategy.
There are numerous ways to monetize your Social Media efforts, but one common strategy that Trajectory argues against is traditional banner advertising on your website.
While ubiquitous on the web, you would be hard pressed to find many companies, (except of course the advertisers themselves), who are making significant revenue from this source. In some cases, in fact, advertising may soften the otherwise positive impact you are making on your followers.
Ask yourself this one simple question: Why are you building a following to begin with? Is it to attract “eyes to the website” in hopes that they will purchase whatever small, incidental products that you are displaying in other companies’ advertising?
Probably not, if you truly understand the power of Social Media.
It is more likely that you are interested in expanding your brand and building credibility with your followers, correct?
If this is true, and I believe it is axiomatic in proper Social Media implementation that this objective is the most effective and efficient, what you should really be concentrating upon is encouraging your followers to read, digest and appreciate your content.
For Social Media to work, you must cultivate a desire to help your followers, not merely to sell to them.
If you follow this simple advice, your visitors will become your friends. They will no longer be faceless numbers on a bar graph, they will be individuals — who visit repeatedly because they are involved.
Two Cautionary Notes
Before we discuss the value of APEX, it is important that you recognize two cautionary notes:
- Be aware that web analytics — the collection and complete understanding of visitor quantification and behavior on your website — is not an arcane luxury, that you can choose to ignore. It is a critical component of effective strategy. If you think you understand it, learn it better. If you don’t quite get it, study it until you do. Here is a Google explanation that will help you.
- Time on the site is not exactly a straightforward calculation. It is subject to a number of variables that can skew the results. For example, if the content is useful enough to demand attention, the length of time spent reading it is valuable to your efforts. On the other hand, if the content is boring and your visitor leaves his browser open while he gets coffee, it is less valuable. There are also purely technical issues in the way Google calculates time on the site that have an impact. If you are interested in the science, here is an exhaustive explanation from the Occam’s Razor website. The upshot is this: Use the Time on the Site calculation as a relative number, not an absolute. It is a basis for comparison only, not a stand-alone gauge of success.
The Crucial Difference — APEX by the Numbers
The reasoning behind Aggregate Positive Exposure, is that Social Media-enabled web pages should be in a category by themselves. Their strategic focus, management approach and execution methods are quite different from their sales-oriented cousins.
The intent is to encourage involvement through highly relevant content, not to directly solicit and convert sales.
Success should not be measured by product purchases or visitor impressions.
Instead, success should be measured by the aggregate amount of time the visitor spends reading, digesting and appreciating content that materially adds to his or her business objectives.
The APEX score is not reflective of immediate cash sales — it represents the current value of future sales based upon the effective involvement of a Social Media following.
By using the APEX metric properly, in a Social Media environment, the resulting value represents the broad effectiveness of all Social Media activity.
Through this approach, as illustrated by the Table below, it is possible to assign a higher value to 100 blog visitors than to either 120 e-commerce visitors or 250 visitors to the Home Page.
This Table explains the relative value of Aggregate Positive Exposure:
There are three example web pages in the calculation:
- A Home Page that is representative of typical websites, but without e-commerce or blog articles.
- A Sales page that is primarily e-commerce.
- A Blog page that is primarily articles with highly relevant content, by the above definition.
Time on Site: According to Goggle, “Time on site is one way of measuring visit quality. If visitors spend a long time visiting your site, they may be interacting extensively with it.”
Impressions: An impression is “the count of a delivered basic advertising unit from an ad distribution point,” or stated plainly, the number of views by a visitor with “eyes on the website.” Impressions are how most Web advertising is sold and the cost is quoted in terms of the cost per thousand impressions ( CPM ).
APEX: Visitors multiplied by the Time on the Site in minutes.
Return on Involvement
Social Media activity, no matter how you measure it, is transformative.
It changes everything about doing business online.
Traditional marketing, a staple in business for many decades, is slowly going the way of the buggy whip and it is unlikely to be missed.
Today’s businessmen and businesswomen have the opportunity to become successful, not on the backs of their customers, but rather hand-in-hand with them.
The sales process has become less about vendors and customers — and more about true partnerships where everyone wins.
When you open the door to your website, you are no longer capturing your visitors and trying to stimulate sales — you are inviting them into your business and involving them in your success.
APEX is a new metric for Social Media that monitors the intrinsic value of these new partnerships, elevating Return on Investment and transforming it into Return on Involvement.
TRAJECTORY IS COMING SOON.
My new book, Trajectory, will be published in January, 2012. If you found this article useful, you will love the book. You may read the first chapter, Overview, by clicking here.
PREVIEW TRAJECTORY: To preview the complete Mind View, (conceptual diagram), of the new book Trajectory, click here for a free download.
Trajectory Information
Anticipated Final Publish Date: January, 2012.
Anticipated Price: $24.95
AVAILABLE ONLINE: In addition to the book itself, buyers will receive a password to the Client Login section of this website at no additional cost, where they can view the book in its entirety online, read supplementary materials and use expanded tutorials. Importantly, as the Social Media landscape changes, additional material not available at the time of publication will be available here.
Any questions? I am here to help.
If you are a businessperson searching for answers, or you know someone who is, I am very easy to get in touch with and I am eager to help.
Don’t be shy, be effective instead. Take action.
Simply call the number below. During normal business hours, (8 AM – 5 PM Scottsdale, Arizona time), it is my direct line.
If I am unavailable, just leave a message.
If you would prefer to exchange email I would love to here from you. Just email michaelstewart@jerichotechnology.com or click the email badge below. I promise I will get back to you within 24 hours.
If you believe your company can benefit from a robust and highly professional Social Media Campaign, complete the following form for no-obligation information and an application.
The “Show Me” Factor – Demonstrable Value
The “Show Me” Factor
Among entrepreneurs, the most common request made to Social Media practitioners is this:
Show me how Social Media will contribute to my bottom-line.
For many of us in professional Social Media, delivering cogently upon this request has been somewhat elusive, but it shouldn’t be.
There seems to be a reluctance to answer two simple questions:
- How will Social Media deliver results?
- How will the company benefit?
If you are among those intrepid Social Media souls, battling on the front-lines to deliver immediate results, you may have been hard-pressed to respond to the “Show Me” Factor. If so, this chapter is for you.
If you are an entrepreneur, struggling mightily to have a business impact through Social Media efforts — and if tangible financial results have been slow in coming — this chapter is also for you.
Speaking as an entrepreneur myself — and after a period of sustained effort and experience with my own company’s Social Media campaigns – one fact seems inescapable:
In the end, Social Media for businesses is about building a customer base – or it should be – and that customer base has demonstrable value.
What is Demonstrable Value?
The dictionary defines demonstrable: Capable of being demonstrated or proved — obvious or apparent.
Demonstrable Value is not an official accounting term; it is a new concept that quantifies value to the company — but that does not necessarily and immediately convert to cash. It is the earliest — but most often overlooked — benefit to the company.
Demonstrable Value is:
- Value you can see and feel
- Value you can quantify
- Value that will predictably turn into cash — and that will ring the cash register in the future.
- Value that may, (based upon a current lawsuit in a California Federal Court), add to your bottom-line immediately.
Think of it as the anticipated value of future revenues — stemming from a tangible and engaged Social Media following in the present.
As can be seen in the chart on this page, while traditional ROI results at the end of the process — (after the E13 Strategy has been applied; strategy, management, execution and sales have occurred; and after the full effects of Trajectory have been realized) — demonstrable value begins to appear at the outset and gradually increases until it equals ROI.
Demonstrable value is sufficiently obvious as to be readily recognized by even the most ardent skeptic, and it is the precursor to traditional Return on Investment (ROI).
Once it predictably turns into sales and revenue, it will be expressed as Return on Investment. But even before that it will have impressive benefits.
In any case, demonstrable value – however it is accounted for – may be the yardstick by which all Social Media efforts should be initially judged.
Twitter Followers Have Demonstrable Value
Twitter followers, in particular, have demonstrable value. Such was the plaintiff’s argument in the recent PhoneDog court case in California. According to court documents, the judge refused to dispute the suggestion that the “industry standard” of $2.50 per month, should apply to every Twitter follower.
That means that a 50,000 member Twitter following could be valued at $125,000 dollars per month, or $1.5 million per year.
Not to belabor this point, but for the $2.50 monthly value to be even remotely reliable, such a financial projection relies on the fact that the followers are carefully selected, heavily engaged — and that they are interacting regularly with the brand.
Twitter followers who are bots, inactive or inappropriate to your specific market are essentially valueless. Extreme care must be taken to ensure that every follower meets these criteria, as will be explained in detail in later chapters.
We all know that you can “buy” Twitter followers on eBay for a penny apiece. The difference between these two extremes is the Social Media management, execution and sales savvy that you will leaarn in Trajectory.
Twitter is Simple, but it isn’t Easy — And it is Deeply Rewarding
The task ahead — for anyone wishing to attain massive success with Twitter — may be relatively simple, but it is in no sense easy. To amass my current Twitter following, for example, has taken well over 6,500 hours of very committed effort.
During the last 18 months, I have:
- Personally written 169 articles and published them on this website.
- Researched, selected and distributed 22,143 articles, written by others, in tweets to my loyal Twitter audience.
- Hand-picked each of my 62,811 followers.
It has been an honor to build, recognize and engage with my Twitter friends. I have learned much — and gained more — than whatever benefit they have realized from following me.
Twitter is much more than a business tool, it is an instrument for personal and professional growth.
The Trajectory Formula will teach you exactly how to build a fully engaged Twitter account of at least 50,000 followers during the next 18 months: How to plan an effective strategy, manage successfully and execute efficiently. And it will help you as you transform a lasting customer base into a huge tangible asset.
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Any questions? I am here to help.
If you are a businessperson searching for answers, or you know someone who is, I am very easy to get in touch with and I am eager to help.
Don’t be shy, be effective instead. Take action.
Simply call the number below. During normal business hours, (8 AM – 5 PM Scottsdale, Arizona time), it is my direct line.
If I am unavailable, just leave a message.
If you would prefer to exchange email I would love to here from you. Just email michaelstewart@jerichotechnology.com or click the email badge below. I promise I will get back to you within 24 hours.
If you believe your company can benefit from a robust and highly professional Social Media Campaign, complete the following form for no-obligation information and an application.
Crucial Awareness: More Likely to Win
Crucial Awareness
What is one obvious difference between a long-term success and a failure?
What causes a remarkable company to become a memory long before its initial public offering?
What distinguishes an accomplished entrepreneur from a has-been?
There are as many answers to these questions as there are different circumstances, but one certainly is Crucial Awareness.
Any book or author that emphasizes success, accomplishment and rosy projections — without discussing the downsides — is doing readers a disservice.
Business is like chess; you must never concentrate on a winning offense without planning for a successful defense. If you are always thinking many moves in advance – dealing with potential missteps — you are much more likely to win.
Crucial Awareness is Not Pessimism, it is Maturity.
As entrepreneurs, we are particularly susceptible to a lack of crucial awareness.
After all, we are the prime proponents of our ideas and often find ourselves leading a charge that seems never-ending.
We are evangelists, innovators and risk takers. We are motivators and cheerleaders.
The mark of real maturity, however, is pragmatism.
Instead of losing sleep because we keep our concerns to ourselves, we need to take a common sense approach. We need to share our thoughts with those who are fighting the battle with us.
Crucial awareness is not pessimism, it is maturity.
What are the Elements of Crucial Awareness?
1. SWOT
Crucial awareness begins with S.W.O.T.
SWOT analysis is an important strategic planning method used to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to your business.
It gets a bad rap among entrepreneurs especially, who sometimes view informed realism as a negative, best provided as an afterthought and then ignored at their peril.
It is often relegated to the last pages in a Business Plan, like medical disclosures at the bottom of your TV screen during pharmaceutical ads.
This is a mistake.
It doesn’t belong in the fine print; it belongs near the center of your thought process.
A SWOT analysis must start with defining a desired end objective for your business.
Remember the earlier examples of General Patton and the Cheshire cat? The two essentials of strategy are:
- Knowing what you are trying to do, and
- Knowing where you are trying to go.
A vital corollary to these two essential steps is to recognize that there will inevitably be bumps along the way. Strategy is a journey, not a destination. It must be continuous and it must be realistic.
We have all heard entrepreneurs who insist that “we have no competition, our product is the best, and our team is invincible.” Don’t be one of them.
A common sense approach will not be seen as weakness, it will be seen as professional.
In its simplest form, a SWOT analysis must consider the following:
- Strengths: The characteristics of the business, or project team that give it an advantage over others.
- Weaknesses (or Limitations): The characteristics that place the business or team at a disadvantage relative to others.
- Opportunities: The internal and external chances to improve performance (e.g. make greater profits) in the existing and probable environment.
- Threats: The external elements in the environment that could cause trouble for the team or the business.
2. R-C.A.
The second element of crucial awareness is RCA.
This is a concept of my own invention, defined as Rose-Colored Arrogance.
I have seen it many times in the behavior of entrepreneurs and even in the attitudes of hugely successful businessmen in modern industry.
I’m sure you have seen it too.
Without mentioning examples, rose-colored arrogance appears most often in businesses that have had immediate and significant successes.
The owners have seen substantial profits, meteoric growth and overblown media attention – but they then begin to believe their own PR.
They begin to view their businesses through rose-colored glasses and make arrogant mistakes.
Most often these RCA mistakes manifest themselves when the businesses begin to forget why they became successful in the first place: Meeting the wants and needs of their customers.
Here are the most common mistakes, which are crucial to avoid:
- Raising prices to increase profits – without an urgent need
- Fundamentally changing business models
- Jeopardizing the quality of products or services
- Beginning to shift marketing attention from customers to advertisers, investors or the media
- Ignoring customer complaints in the worst possible environment: Social Media, where bad news travels fast and is difficult or impossible to stop.
All of these mistakes are made when crucial awareness is discarded, or takes a back seat to a sense of invincibility.
Common sense business practices are dispensed with, as if they were no longer necessary. Nothing could be farther from reality. If anything, crucial awareness becomes more important when successes materialize than it was when failures were a real possibility.
3. Avoiding the Panic Button
At the other extreme, the third element of crucial awareness is avoiding the panic button.
It is one thing to take immediate action when such action is dictated by the circumstances. It is entirely different when such action is precipitous and unwarranted.
Pressing the panic button, when to do so is uncalled for, is one of the most disastrous mistakes a business can make.
It communicates a lack of planning and entrepreneurial immaturity.
It worries customers and agitates investors.
Instead of fostering creative solutions, it encourages a crisis mentality.
It stops momentum in its tracks and freezes crucial awareness when it is most needed.
Equanimity Under Pressure
Equanimity under pressure, on the other hand, is a crucial characteristic of successful business owners.
“It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over,” Wayne Dyer has said, “because there’s nothing you can do about them, and why worry about things you do control? The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized.”
This is sage advice.
Crucial Awareness is fundamental to real business achievement.
It is not a sign of weakness; it is a sign of strength and resilience.
It is of paramount importance to an intelligent strategy and it will transform potential mistakes into exciting opportunities.
TRAJECTORY IS COMING SOON.
My new book, Trajectory, will be published in January, 2012. If you found this article useful, you will love the book. You may read the first chapter, Overview, by clicking here.
PREVIEW TRAJECTORY: To preview the complete Mind View, (conceptual diagram), of the new book Trajectory, click here for a free download.
Trajectory Information
Anticipated Final Publish Date: January, 2012.
Anticipated Price: $24.95
AVAILABLE ONLINE: In addition to the book itself, buyers will receive a password to the Client Login section of this website at no additional cost, where they can view the book in its entirety online, read supplementary materials and use expanded tutorials. Importantly, as the Social Media landscape changes, additional material not available at the time of publication will be available here.
Any questions? I am here to help.
If you are a businessperson searching for answers, or you know someone who is, I am very easy to get in touch with and I am eager to help.
Don’t be shy, be effective instead. Take action.
Simply call the number below. During normal business hours, (8 AM – 5 PM Scottsdale, Arizona time), it is my direct line.
If I am unavailable, just leave a message.
If you would prefer to exchange email I would love to here from you. Just email michaelstewart@jerichotechnology.com or click the email badge below. I promise I will get back to you within 24 hours.
If you believe your company can benefit from a robust and highly professional Social Media Campaign, complete the following form for no-obligation information and an application.
Steve Jobs – The True Measure of the Man
A Man of Consequence
Steve Jobs was indeed a man of consequence. He was the quintessential entrepreneur. But above all, he was remarkably human.
He has not so much left us — as he has simply walked from one room into another — through a doorway into his new future.
He was a man who worked very hard at what he loved, even if that meant an occasional failure – and he wasn’t ashamed to admit it.
He believed in value and beauty.
He enjoyed his success, but he lived simply.
He was loyal – to his products, of course, but also to his family.
He treasured happiness.
He gave us many a “Wow!” moment, but in the end he saved his best “Wow!” moment for his last few words.
Without diminishing his remarkable business accomplishments, there is as much to be learned from his humanity as from his professional achievement. The true measure of a man, I believe, is not what you do but who you are.
Much has been written about this extraordinary businessman and innovator, but there exists no better tribute, no more permanent legacy, than the words spoken by his sister, Mona Simpson, at his memorial service. She delivered a poignant eulogy for her brother on October 16, 2011, at the Memorial Church of Stanford University. A novelist and a professor of English at the University of California, she captured the man as few could.
Determination and Loyalty
“When he got kicked out of Apple,” his sister said, “things were painful.”
“He told me about a dinner at which 500 Silicon Valley leaders met the then-sitting president. Steve hadn’t been invited. He was hurt but he still went to work at Next. Every single day.”
“For an innovator,” she continued, “Steve was remarkably loyal. If he loved a shirt, he’d order 10 or 100 of them. In the Palo Alto house, there are probably enough black cotton turtlenecks for everyone in this church.”
Beauty
His philosophy of aesthetics reminded her of a quote: “Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.”
“Steve always aspired to make beautiful later,” she said.
Love
Love was at the center of Steve Jobs’ life. That is a rare characteristic for an entrepreneur of his stature.
“Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love,” Mona Simpson said. “Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him.”
“Whenever he saw a man he thought a woman might find dashing,” she recalled, “he called out, ‘Hey are you single? Do you wanna come to dinner with my sister?’ I remember when he phoned the day he met Laurene. ‘There’s this beautiful woman and she’s really smart and she has this dog and I’m going to marry her.’
When Reed was born, he began gushing and never stopped. He was a physical dad, with each of his children. He fretted over Lisa’s boyfriends and Erin’s travel and skirt lengths and Eve’s safety around the horses she adored.
None of us who attended Reed’s graduation party will ever forget the scene of Reed and Steve slow dancing.
His abiding love for Laurene sustained him. He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere. In that most important way, Steve was never ironic, never cynical, never pessimistic. I try to learn from that, still,” she explained.
Grounded
Despite his fame and fortune, Steve Jobs was grounded and attached to his family.
“Steve had been successful at a young age, and he felt that had isolated him,” Mona Simpson continued. “Most of the choices he made from the time I knew him were designed to dissolve the walls around him. A middle-class boy from Los Altos, he fell in love with a middle-class girl from New Jersey. It was important to both of them to raise Lisa, Reed, Erin and Eve as grounded, normal children. Their house didn’t intimidate with art or polish; in fact, for many of the first years I knew Steve and Lo together, dinner was served on the grass, and sometimes consisted of just one vegetable. Lots of that one vegetable — Broccoli in season, simply prepared with just the right, recently snipped herb.”
Unpretentious
Steve Jobs was unpretentious and approachable. “Even as a young millionaire,” Simpson said. “Steve always picked me up at the airport. He’d be standing there in his jeans. When a family member called him at work, his secretary Linetta answered, ‘Your dad’s in a meeting. Would you like me to interrupt him?’
“When Reed insisted on dressing up as a witch every Halloween,” she said, “Steve, Laurene, Erin and Eve all went Wiccan.”
“They once embarked on a kitchen remodel; it took years. They cooked on a hotplate in the garage. The Pixar building, under construction during the same period, finished in half the time. And that was it for the Palo Alto house. The bathrooms stayed old. But — and this was a crucial distinction — it had been a great house to start with; Steve saw to that.”
“This is not to say that he didn’t enjoy his success. He enjoyed his success a lot, just minus a few zeros. He told me how much he loved going to the Palo Alto bike store and gleefully realizing he could afford to buy the best bike there. And he did.”
Humble
“Steve was humble,” Simpson explained. “Steve liked to keep learning. Once, he told me if he’d grown up differently, he might have become a mathematician. He spoke reverently about colleges and loved walking around the Stanford campus. In the last year of his life, he studied a book of paintings by Mark Rothko, an artist he hadn’t known about before, thinking of what could inspire people on the walls of a future Apple campus.”
Whimsical
“Steve cultivated whimsy. What other C.E.O.,” Simpson asked, “knows the history of English and Chinese tea roses and has a favorite David Austin rose?”
According to Simpson, “He had surprises tucked in all his pockets. I’ll venture that Laurene will discover treats — songs he loved, a poem he cut out and put in a drawer — even after 20 years of an exceptionally close marriage. I spoke to him every other day or so, but when I opened the New York Times and saw a feature on the company’s patents; I was still surprised and delighted to see a sketch for a perfect staircase.”
“With his four children, with his wife, with all of us, Steve had a lot of fun. He treasured happiness.”
Refused to Give Up
Perhaps his sister’s memories of his final battle are the most telling. They reveal a man who would never give up, who was doggedly determined to live his life to the full, and in the end, was inspiring and joyful in his own mysterious way. His sister described it this way:
“Then, Steve became ill and we watched his life compress into a smaller circle. Once he’d loved walking through Paris. He’d discovered a small handmade soba shop in Kyoto. He downhill skied gracefully. He cross-country skied clumsily. No more.”
“Eventually, even ordinary pleasures, like a good peach, no longer appealed to him.”
“Yet, what amazed me,” she said, “and what I learned from his illness, was how much was still left after so much had been taken away.”
“I remember my brother learning to walk again,” she recalled, “with a chair. After his liver transplant, once a day he would get up on legs that seemed too thin to bear him, arms pitched to the chair back. He’d push that chair down the Memphis hospital corridor towards the nursing station and then he’d sit down on the chair, rest, turn around and walk back again. He counted his steps and, each day, pressed a little farther. Laurene got down on her knees and looked into his eyes. ‘You can do this, Steve,’ she said. His eyes widened. His lips pressed into each other.”
“He tried. He always, always tried,” his sister remembered, “and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man.”
“I realized during that terrifying time,” she said, “that Steve was not enduring the pain for himself. He set destinations. His son Reed’s graduation from high school, his daughter Erin’s trip to Kyoto, the launching of a boat he was building on which he planned to take his family around the world and where he hoped he and Laurene would someday retire. Even ill, his taste, his discrimination and his judgment held. He went through 67 nurses before finding kindred spirits and then he completely trusted the three who stayed with him to the end. Tracy. Arturo. Elham.”
“One time when Steve had contracted a tenacious pneumonia his doctor forbid everything — even ice”, she remembered. “We were in a standard I.C.U. unit. Steve, who generally disliked cutting in line or dropping his own name, confessed that this once, he’d like to be treated a little specially. I told him: ‘Steve, this is special treatment.’ He leaned over to me, and said: ‘I want it to be a little more special’.”
“Intubated, when he couldn’t talk, he asked for a notepad,” she said. “He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. And every time his wife walked into the room, I watched his smile remake itself on his face.”
“None of us knows for certain how long we’ll be here,” she said. “On Steve’s better days, even in the last year, he embarked upon projects and elicited promises from his friends at Apple to finish them. Some boat builders in the Netherlands have a gorgeous stainless steel hull ready to be covered with the finishing wood. His three daughters remain unmarried, his two youngest still girls, and he’d wanted to walk them down the aisle as he’d walked me the day of my wedding.”
“We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories”, she commented profoundly.
“I suppose it’s not quite accurate to call the death of someone who lived with cancer for years unexpected, but Steve’s death was unexpected for us. What I learned from my brother’s death was that character is essential: What he was, was how he died.”
“Tuesday morning, he called me to ask me to hurry up to Palo Alto. His tone was affectionate, dear, loving, but like someone whose luggage was already strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us. He started his farewell and I stopped him. I said, ‘Wait. I’m coming. I’m in a taxi to the airport. I’ll be there’.”
“I’m telling you now because I’m afraid you won’t make it on time, honey,” he responded.
“When I arrived, he and his Laurene were joking together like partners who’d lived and worked together every day of their lives”, she said. “He looked into his children’s eyes as if he couldn’t unlock his gaze. Until about 2 in the afternoon, his wife could rouse him, to talk to his friends from Apple. Then, after a while, it was clear that he would no longer wake to us. His breathing changed. It became severe, deliberate, purposeful. I could feel him counting his steps again, pushing farther than before.”
“This is what I learned: He was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it,” she said.
“He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry, so sorry we wouldn’t be able to be old together as we’d always planned, that he was going to a better place.”
“Dr. Fischer gave him a 50/50 chance of making it through the night. He made it through the night, Laurene next to him on the bed sometimes jerked up when there was a longer pause between his breaths. She and I looked at each other, then he would heave a deep breath and begin again. This had to be done. Even now, he had a stern, still handsome profile, the profile of an absolutist, a romantic. His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude. He seemed to be climbing.”
“But with that will,” she continued, “that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.”
“Steve’s final words,” she said, “hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times. Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them. Steve’s final words were: OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.”
My Personal Thoughts
The true measure of a man is not so much what he did while alive, but rather what he leaves behind. Some men leave behind a history of accomplishment, great deeds and monuments carved in stone. Others leave their monuments etched in the hearts of those they loved. Steve Jobs was such a man.
Some leave behind a list of inventions, patents and creative thought. Others bequeath a spark of genius that continues to ignite our thinking and appreciation for decades to come. Steve Jobs was such a man.
Some leave behind a finished story. Others depart this life in medias res. In the middle of their story. And that story continues to inspire us, urging us on to do more. Steve Jobs was such a man.
In the case of Steve Jobs that story didn’t come to an end in a hospital room; it looked above and beyond his final moments to further exploration, new questions and glorious answers. We may never know what captured his upward gaze in those last moments, but as we look backward at the essence of the man, as we chronicle his successes and empathize with his failures, and as we benefit from his fertile mind, we can share in his final words: “OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.”
TRAJECTORY IS COMING SOON.
My new book, Trajectory, will be published in December, 2011. If you found this article useful, you will love the book. You may read the first chapter, Overview, by clicking here.
PREVIEW TRAJECTORY: To preview the complete Mind View, (conceptual diagram), of the new book Trajectory, click here for a free download.
Trajectory Information
Anticipated Final Publish Date: December 13, 2011.
Anticipated Price: $24.95
AVAILABLE ONLINE: In addition to the book itself, buyers will receive a password to the Client Login section of this website at no additional cost, where they can view the book in its entirety online, read supplementary materials and use expanded tutorials. Importantly, as the Social Media landscape changes, additional material not available at the time of publication will be available here.
Any questions? I am here to help.
If you are a businessperson searching for answers, or you know someone who is, I am very easy to get in touch with and I am eager to help.
Don’t be shy, be effective instead. Take action.
Simply call the number below. During normal business hours, (8 AM – 5 PM Scottsdale, Arizona time), it is my direct line.
If I am unavailable, just leave a message.
If you would prefer to exchange email I would love to here from you. Just email michaelstewart@jerichotechnology.com or click the email badge below. I promise I will get back to you within 24 hours.
If you believe your company can benefit from a robust and highly professional Social Media Campaign, complete the following form for no-obligation information and an application.
How to Achieve Escape Velocity
This concept is a vital part of the Trajectory Formula, as it appears in my forthcoming book.
Escape Velocity
In physics, escape velocity is “the speed above which an object will depart on a ballistic trajectory, and never fall back to the surface nor assume a closed orbit.”
Such an object is said to “escape” the gravity of the Earth.
To leave planet Earth, an escape velocity of 11.2 km/s (approx. 40,320 km/h or 25,000 mph) is required. The required speed is a precise and absolute requirement. 24,000 mph is insufficient.
Once escape velocity is achieved, continued energy is less important. The object’s rise will continue unabated by atmospheric friction and gravity. Advancement is effortless.
What This Can Mean for Your Business
Trajectory will help you attain escape velocity in your business. It will generate predictable thrust that leads to sales and profits. And perhaps most significantly, it will propel you beyond a higher orbit — into a self-perpetuating and lasting upward trajectory.
In the Trajectory Formula, escape velocity is the sum total of the components of the formula, added together to give your selling effort the kinetic energy required for Trajectory Selling and guaranteed success. This immensely important section of the book is purposefully left to the end. Why? Because it relies on everything that comes before it.
Think of it this way: When a rocket hurdles into space, it leaves the Earth’s gravitational force behind because the propulsion systems, avionics, aerodynamics, computer systems and a wealth of other components are acting together elegantly. Nothing is left to chance. Not a single circuit is extraneous. Every cubic inch of the vehicle is packed with applied knowledge — from Einstein’s theory to the most advanced science.
As the Space Shuttle leaves the bonds of Earth, it incorporates the dedicated efforts of countless engineers, mathematicians, computer experts and astronauts. And when its mission is concluded, its legacy remains the launching pad for the next generation of adventurers.
Hopefully, so it is with Trajectory. Nothing has been left to chance. Not a single chapter is extraneous. Every page of the book is packed with over 20 years of accumulated knowledge — from basic marketing to the cutting edge of Social Media accomplishment. When the book is published in December, it will carry with it a comprehensive formula for capturing online success. And it is my hope, that it will provide the launching pad for the next generation of online entrepreneurs.
It’s Not Your Father’s Bottle-Rocket
There are simpler ways to launch a selling effort. There are countless theories on how to sell through Social Media that will demand much less of you. There are many approaches that require less study, thought and effort.
But in one man’s humble opinion, all of these abbreviated formulas are simply bottle-rockets — offering momentary flashes of excitement, but destined to fall back unceremoniously to Earth.
TRAJECTORY IS COMING SOON.
My new book, Trajectory, will be published in December, 2011. If you found this article useful, you will love the book. You may read the first chapter, Overview, by clicking here.
PREVIEW TRAJECTORY: To preview the complete Mind View, (conceptual diagram), of the new book Trajectory, click here for a free download.
Trajectory Information
Anticipated Final Publish Date: December 13, 2011.
Anticipated Price: $24.95
AVAILABLE ONLINE: In addition to the book itself, buyers will receive a password to the Client Login section of this website at no additional cost, where they can view the book in its entirety online, read supplementary materials and use expanded tutorials. Importantly, as the Social Media landscape changes, additional material not available at the time of publication will be available here.
Any questions? I am here to help.
If you are a businessperson searching for answers, or you know someone who is, I am very easy to get in touch with and I am eager to help.
Don’t be shy, be effective instead. Take action.
Simply call the number below. During normal business hours, (8 AM – 5 PM Scottsdale, Arizona time), it is my direct line.
If I am unavailable, just leave a message.
If you would prefer to exchange email I would love to here from you. Just email michaelstewart@jerichotechnology.com or click the email badge below. I promise I will get back to you within 24 hours.
If you believe your company can benefit from a robust and highly professional Social Media Campaign, complete the following form for no-obligation information and an application.
Trajectory Selling – It’s Not Your Father’s Bottle-Rocket
Leaving the Bonds of Earth
This post introduces the exciting last element of the Trajectory Formula as provided in my forthcoming book.
Called Trajectory Selling, it is the hugely important and fulfilling end result of the Trajectory Formula.
It is that final powerful moment when all of the careful strategic planning, meticulous execution and precision management come together with maximum thrust.
Escape Velocity
In physics, escape velocity is “the speed above which an object will depart on a ballistic trajectory, and never fall back to the surface nor assume a closed orbit.”
Such an object is said to “escape” the gravity of the Earth.
To leave planet Earth, an escape velocity of 11.2 km/s (approx. 40,320 km/h, or 25,000 mph) is required. The required speed is a precise and absolute requirement. 24,000 mph is insufficient.
Once escape velocity is achieved, continued energy is less important. The object’s rise will continue unabated by atmospheric friction and gravity. Advancement is effortless.
What This Can Mean for Your Business
Trajectory will help you attain escape velocity in your business. It will generate predictable thrust that leads to sales and profits. And perhaps most significantly, it will propel you beyond a higher orbit — into a self-perpetuating and lasting upward trajectory.
In the Trajectory Formula, escape velocity is the sum total of the components of the formula, added together to give your selling effort the kinetic energy required for Trajectory Selling and guaranteed success. This immensely important section of the book is purposefully left to the end. Why? Because it relies on everything that comes before.
Think of it this way: When a rocket hurdles into space, it leaves the Earth’s gravitational force behind because the propulsion systems, avionics, aerodynamics, computer systems and a wealth of other components are acting together elegantly. Nothing is left to chance. Not a single circuit is extraneous. Every cubic inch of the vehicle is packed with applied knowledge — from Einstein’s theory to the most advanced science.
As the Space Shuttle leaves the bonds of Earth, it incorporates the dedicated efforts of countless engineers, mathematicians, computer experts and astronauts. And when its mission is concluded, its legacy remains the launching pad for the next generation of adventurers.
Hopefully, so it is with Trajectory. Nothing has been left to chance. Not a single chapter is extraneous. Every page of the book is packed with over 20 years of accumulated knowledge — from basic marketing to the cutting edge of Social Media accomplishment. When the book is published in December, it will carry with it a comprehensive formula for capturing online success. And it is my hope, that it will provide the launching pad for the next generation of online entrepreneurs.
It’s Not Your Father’s Bottle-Rocket
There are simpler ways to launch a selling effort. There are countless theories on how to sell through Social Media that will demand much less of you. There are many approaches that require less study, thought and effort. But in one man’s humble opinion, all of these abbreviated formulas are simply bottle-rockets — offering momentary flashes of excitement, but destined to fall back unceremoniously to Earth.
Trajectory has been a labor of love and profound respect for my readers. I have been delighted to pen the ideas that will give you what you really want and need — results and accomplishment.
TRAJECTORY IS COMING SOON.
My new book, Trajectory, will be published in December, 2011. If you found this article useful, you will love the book. You may read the first chapter, Overview, by clicking here.
PREVIEW TRAJECTORY: To preview the complete Mind View, (conceptual diagram), of the new book Trajectory, click here for a free download.
Trajectory Information
Anticipated Final Publish Date: December 13, 2011.
Anticipated Price: $24.95
AVAILABLE ONLINE: In addition to the book itself, buyers will receive a password to the Client Login section of this website at no additional cost, where they can view the book in its entirety online, read supplementary materials and use expanded tutorials. Importantly, as the Social Media landscape changes, additional material not available at the time of publication will be available here.
Any questions? I am here to help.
If you are a businessperson searching for answers, or you know someone who is, I am very easy to get in touch with and I am eager to help.
Don’t be shy, be effective instead. Take action.
Simply call the number below. During normal business hours, (8 AM – 5 PM Scottsdale, Arizona time), it is my direct line.
If I am unavailable, just leave a message.
If you would prefer to exchange email I would love to here from you. Just email michaelstewart@jerichotechnology.com or click the email badge below. I promise I will get back to you within 24 hours.
If you believe your company can benefit from a robust and highly professional Social Media Campaign, complete the following form for no-obligation information and an application.
Steve Jobs – In Memoriam
The Bell Tolls For All Of Us
When John Dunne penned his immortal words, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee,” he must have had men like Steve Jobs in mind.
With his tragic death the world has lost one of its true visionaries. In a way, we were all part of his family. He gave us the gift of imagination, the spark of genius and the conviction that there was always something quite amazing around the next corner.
Steve Jobs was the type of man that is truly irreplaceable. He was in a class by himself. He was more than an innovator — he was an amazing presence. He guided us all toward a changed and better life. It’s hard to imagine the world of technology without his brilliant light.
While I celebrate his remarkable life and legacy, I cannot help but feel a profound sense of loss.
If ever it was true of any man, when the bell tolls for Steve Jobs it will be tolling for all of us.
Goodbye, Steve — and Thank You.
TRAJECTORY IS COMING SOON.
My new book, Trajectory, will be published in December, 2011. If you found this article useful, you will love the book. You may read the first chapter, Overview, by clicking here.
PREVIEW TRAJECTORY: To preview the complete Mind View, (conceptual diagram), of the new book Trajectory, click here for a free download.
Trajectory Information
Anticipated Final Publish Date: December 13, 2011.
Anticipated Price: $24.95
AVAILABLE ONLINE: In addition to the book itself, buyers will receive a password to the Client Login section of this website at no additional cost, where they can view the book in its entirety online, read supplementary materials and use expanded tutorials. Importantly, as the Social Media landscape changes, additional material not available at the time of publication will be available here.
Any questions? I am here to help.
If you are a businessperson searching for answers, or you know someone who is, I am very easy to get in touch with and I am eager to help.
Don’t be shy, be effective instead. Take action.
Simply call the number below. During normal business hours, (8 AM – 5 PM Scottsdale, Arizona time), it is my direct line.
If I am unavailable, just leave a message.
If you would prefer to exchange email I would love to here from you. Just email michaelstewart@jerichotechnology.com or click the email badge below. I promise I will get back to you within 24 hours.
If you believe your company can benefit from a robust and highly professional Social Media Campaign, complete the following form for no-obligation information and an application.
Trajectory Chapter 9 – Make An Irrevocable Commitment
This is a continuation of the Strategy chapter in Trajectory.
Effective Strategy Requires An Irrevocable Commitment
You may remember from the Introduction, that there are four objectives around which the Trajectory Formula is constructed.
The first three objectives dealt with honing your Twitter strategy until Critical Mass and Trajectory take over — making your strategy effective.
Objective four was to prepare you for the emergence of new technology — as strategies, tools, techniques and Social Media venues inevitably evolve.
In April, 2010, I made a strategic decision to maximize Twitter by building a highly engaged following of 50,000 individuals.
Much more than a decision, it was a rock-solid, irrevocable commitment.
I also committed myself to the notion that I would accomplish this objective alone, so that entrepreneurs like you could look at the tangible results and remain encouraged through good times and bad. This too was an irrevocable commitment.
Why Is This So Important?
Strategy is all about commitment — and if what you’re doing isn’t irrevocable, then you don’t have a strategy you have an idea.
You have a solution du jour — something that is enjoying great but possibly short-lived popularity.
Ultimately, if you don’t commit you will not succeed, because when the going gets tough you will falter. You will give up. You will be susceptible to the next big idea, whether it is in your best interest or not.
Even worse, you may allow yourself to become a hostage to the new approach, working countless hours in pursuit of a new objective before you have accomplished the last one.
One successful entrepreneur put it this way: “I’ve always wanted to treat life like I was an invading army and there was no turning back.” This is sage advice.
What Is The Take-Away From This Notion?
It is very important to remember that Trajectory is not just a book about Twitter.
It is a book about accomplishment.
It is a book about results.
It is a book about making sensible plans — and then sticking with them tenaciously.
The principles you will learn in these pages will make you agile, knowledgeable and fully prepared for whatever comes next. Importantly, they will teach you to be circumspect. They will make you heedful of circumstances and the potential consequences of every strategic decision. Hopefully, they will make you prudent. They will make you single-minded. They will make you resilient in the face of hardship and resolute in the face of change.
Ultimately, they will teach you that being prepared for whatever comes next is not a license to make ineffective and inefficient decisions or to arbitrarily abandon your plans for the next great idea.
Your Role As A Social Media Strategist
As a Social Media Strategist, you must be aggressive and knowledgeable — but you must also be discerning.
The only thing certain about change is that it is inevitable — and your role as a Social Media expert is to make recommendations that are in the current best interest of your various constituencies. Change for the sake of change may not always be the best approach.
Good examples are the sweeping changes that have taken place recently with Facebook and Google Plus. Recent industry press has been overwhelmed with commentary, pro and con, concerning these new series of developments.
In order to place these changes in the proper perspective, you must revisit the two keys to proper strategy:
- You must know what you are trying to do.
- You must know where you are trying to go.
You must know what you are trying to do. If after careful consideration, your strategy is to maximize Twitter for the benefit of your business, you must remain heavily involved with that strategy until it is accomplished. While it is easy to get sidetracked by other approaches as they mature and improve, a competent strategist will resist the urge to change until his original objective is met. Accomplishment, after all, is essential to success — and accomplishment is impossible without laser-like focus.
As the Social Media landscape changes, which it will and must, my humble suggestion is that you heed the advice of Thomas Alva Edison, one of the most successful and resilient inventors in American history.
He was a man of single-minded dedication.
During his career he was awarded over a thousand patents, but his overarching objective was to master the technology of the electric light — and to commercialize it.
He failed over 900 times before he finally achieved his original objective — but he never gave up. He never faltered.
He once remarked:
“The three great essentials to achieve anything worth while are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.”
If the successful usage of Twitter is your goal — and if you made that decision using common sense — stick to it. Work long and hard.
You must know where you are trying to go. The Trajectory Formula presupposes that you are a confident and informed decision-maker. It also recognizes that you have certain qualities of leadership that will inspire others to follow you. Taken together, these two central themes demand that you maintain your ground.
Let’s face it, choosing Twitter over other available options for business growth is not the popular decision. Many knowledgeable men and women have taken another course. But I chose Twitter, and presumably you did as well or you wouldn’t be reading this book. Perhaps you are searching for answers, which is where I was before embarking on this strategy. Perhaps you have decided and need reinforcement.
Either way, chart your course and maintain it vigorously.
Look at it this way, all Social Media is in a state of flux. It is new and mostly unproven. But it is a major departure in the way marketing has always been conducted. It is refreshing and new. It is a complete paradigm shift in a marketplace that desperately needs change. By pushing its limits, by remaining confident and taking a position of leadership, you will be making business history.
TRAJECTORY IS COMING SOON.
My new book, Trajectory, will be published in December, 2011. If you found this article useful, you will love the book. You may read the first chapter, Overview, by clicking here.
PREVIEW TRAJECTORY: To preview the complete Mind View, (conceptual diagram), of the new book Trajectory, click here for a free download.
Trajectory Information
Anticipated Final Publish Date: December 13, 2011.
Anticipated Price: $24.95
AVAILABLE ONLINE: In addition to the book itself, buyers will receive a password to the Client Login section of this website at no additional cost, where they can view the book in its entirety online, read supplementary materials and use expanded tutorials. Importantly, as the Social Media landscape changes, additional material not available at the time of publication will be available here.
Any questions? I am here to help.
If you are a businessperson searching for answers, or you know someone who is, I am very easy to get in touch with and I am eager to help.
Don’t be shy, be effective instead. Take action.
Simply call the number below. During normal business hours, (8 AM – 5 PM Scottsdale, Arizona time), it is my direct line.
If I am unavailable, just leave a message.
If you would prefer to exchange email I would love to here from you. Just email michaelstewart@jerichotechnology.com or click the email badge below. I promise I will get back to you within 24 hours.
If you believe your company can benefit from a robust and highly professional Social Media Campaign, complete the following form for no-obligation information and an application.
The Secret to Innovation: Looking Inside Yourself
When All Else Fails Use The Mud
What can entrepreneurs learn from the legends of the oil industry? What was the secret to their success?
The answer? Use the mud.
This was not the mud that your children track in from their play outside — but an even dirtier concoction, fashioned from materials on hand with the help of an obliging herd of cattle.
It cost absolutely nothing, but it changed America forever.
Let me explain.
Not far from Jericho Technology’s birthplace in Houston, Texas, there is a hill affectionately called Spindletop. Over 100 years ago, it was the home to grass, a few cows and not much else. Not much else, that is, except for the entrepreneurial spirit of two brothers, their unshakeable perseverance, unbroken spirits and the innovation of looking inside themselves for answers.
How to Become a Millionaire in Oil (or Anything Else)
In the early days of entrepreneurial oil exploration in Texas, there weren’t huge oil fields, major corporations and thousands of employees — often it was just a handful of determined men and a very few investors, operating on a shoestring and taking one day at a time.
After they built their ramshackle oil well and began to drill into the sandy east Texas earth, they had almost no way of predicting success or failure. In fact, with the inherent danger of explosion they couldn’t be sure if the sunset would find them dead or alive.
Expecting failure, investors would only pay entrepreneurs until they reached a depth of 1,200 feet. After that, if they hadn’t struck the proverbial black gold they were done.
The Hamill brothers, Curt and Al, were two such entrepreneurs. They and a friend manned their little well day and night, but became stuck at 400 feet. It was customary to force water into the hole, which under normal circumstances would have kept the sides intact. But this was east Texas where the earth was mostly sand and it kept falling into the bore hole and stopping their progress.
This is where the secret to innovation — looking inside yourself for answers — changed everything.
The Hamill’s were tired, broke and without any solid ideas. They had no options left. There was no one available to help them. More money was not possible — not that it would have done any good if there had been. They had no where to turn except to themselves.
Wiping the dirty sweat from his brow and gazing out over the pasture land, one of the brothers had a very simple idea. He herded a few cows into the pool of water left over from drilling, and as they stomped around they created mud. Being much thicker than water, Hamill reasoned, the mud might keep the bore hole from collapsing. After all, it might work — and using what he had on hand was free.
Much to the surprise and elation of the Hamill brothers, their simple idea appeared to work — and they happily redoubled their efforts.
They passed 500 feet, then 800 and finally 1,100, but nothing happened.
Imagine what they must have been thinking as they approached the 1,200 foot cut-off: Discouraged, anticipating failure — but somehow fulfilled.
Whatever happened, at least they knew they had tried — and they had reached inside themselves for answers, which is a huge victory in itself.
But in a few moments, with a soft rumble that became louder and louder until it shook the ground and spooked the cattle, the Hamill brothers became rich beyond their wildest dreams.
The quiet well that the day before was without hope, spewed forth a gusher of oil for days and days before they could bring it under control.
Within the next 24 hours, the investors who would have shut things down very soon, were now $40 million dollars richer.
When they had started their little enterprise, the brothers had dreamed of finding enough oil to recoup their time and trouble. They had been hoping for 50 barrels of crude oil per day — but before long, their little well was gushing 80,000 barrels per day, making the U.S. the largest oil producer in the world.
Within a year, 500 oil companies were born, including Texaco and Gulf.
As it turned out, their simple idea of using mud opened a vast reservoir of oil worth over $11 billion dollars today. At the time, no where else on earth had seen such monumental success.
And despite the fact that modern oil men use sophisticated synthetic liquids for the same purpose, it is still called mud.
The point of this story is simply this: When you run out of things to do to make your business successful, look inside yourself for answers.
Perhaps you have tried advertising, affiliate sales and countless seminars, but nothing has seemed to work. You Tweet often and you have developed a few followers, but nothing seems to be happening. You’re out of money, tired and frustrated. What do you do now?
Use the mud.
It’s not in the ground and you don’t need cows to make it. It is absolutely free and readily available. You don’t need others to supply it, in fact they can’t. It requires no capital infusion, no employees and no physical plant. And you don’t need to cast your gaze over the pasture land — just close your eyes and think.
Strive for an original idea. But failing that, simply drill down into the vast reservoir of your mind until you find intellectual oil. If you do this often, and you persevere, eventually there will be a trickle — and then a gusher — that will change your business forever.
TRAJECTORY IS COMING SOON.
My new book, Trajectory, will be published in December, 2011. If you found this article useful, you will love the book. You may read the first chapter, Overview, by clicking here.
PREVIEW TRAJECTORY: To preview the complete Mind View, (conceptual diagram), of the new book Trajectory, click here for a free download.
Trajectory Information
Anticipated Final Publish Date: December 13, 2011.
Anticipated Price: $24.95
AVAILABLE ONLINE: In addition to the book itself, buyers will receive a password to the Client Login section of this website at no additional cost, where they can view the book in its entirety online, read supplementary materials and use expanded tutorials. Importantly, as the Social Media landscape changes, additional material not available at the time of publication will be available here.
Any questions? I am here to help.
If you are a businessperson searching for answers, or you know someone who is, I am very easy to get in touch with and I am eager to help.
Don’t be shy, be effective instead. Take action.
Simply call the number below. During normal business hours, (8 AM – 5 PM Scottsdale, Arizona time), it is my direct line.
If I am unavailable, just leave a message.
If you would prefer to exchange email I would love to here from you. Just email michaelstewart@jerichotechnology.com or click the email badge below. I promise I will get back to you within 24 hours.
If you believe your company can benefit from a robust and highly professional Social Media Campaign, complete the following form for no-obligation information and an application.
The Runaway Stage and A New Kind of American Hero
A New Kind of Hero
It was 1860 and America had moved west.
Unbroken wilderness was challenging Americans to adapt.
Indian paths had become hazardous trails, trails had become dusty roads and then deeply rutted stage lines — and on this forbidding landscape a new kind of hero emerged.
He was a man of few words, who occasionally stumbled when speaking to a group larger than a few close friends.
For a while he tried ranching or sometimes farming, but his real place was on the edge — where his life and the lives of others depended upon his quick decisions, simple courage and the ability to take action.
He rode stoically through desolate territory on a Stagecoach — the reins firmly in his strong hands, eyes watching the horizon for unexpected potholes and danger.
On nearly every trip the unexpected happened: The road took a sudden turn, a wheel collapsed, or worse the horses sensing trouble bolted into an uncontrolled gallop.
There was no time to plan strategy and no time to prepare. As the runaway stagecoach reeled out of control and careened toward certain injury or death for his passengers, he had no choice but to take matters into his own hands. He uttered a silent prayer and jumped from safety onto the backs of the frightened horses.
A few moments later everything was under control, the danger averted and once again he retook his position of leadership in the driver’s seat, his passengers safe.
He would never be rich or comfortable, but as he continued his journey with his eyes focused on the job at hand, he allowed himself a moment to appreciate the grandeur of the magnificent country he saw stretching out before him.
“This is America”, he thought with fondness and he had a job to do.
Stagecoach the Movie
Many decades later, the famed Hollywood director John Huston immortalized this notion in his movie Stagecoach. John Wayne, a late arrival to the group, had taken the reins and inside the rickety stagecoach were his passengers – a drunken doctor, two women, and a bank manager who had taken off with his client’s money.
As the story and characters developed, it became clear that the essence of this movie was not simply the courage of John Wayne’s character, it was the humanity that resides in all of us.
It’s just a movie of course, but it resonated with the American audience. It made Huston the unequaled champion of the Hollywood western and John Wayne a legend.
But What is the Real Story?
America is, and always will be an adventure.
There are no pat answers, no quick fixes, and sometimes things can get dangerously out of control.
When that happens, it takes a special kind of rugged individualist to make things right.
He may not be polished or urbane, he might not be a shopkeeper or a banker, but he will be a decisive leader — a man who knows how to take action.
When times are tough and the trail is rutted by too many wheels, Americans will naturally ride with a man who will leap onto the backs of the horses.
There may be a modern lesson to be learned from this western drama.
Things in America have not changed much.
Ours is still a simple, principled and courageous country, with brave and resourceful citizens.
Place an obstacle in our path and we don’t get discouraged, we get moving.
We don’t stand on the sidelines and fret, we take the initiative.
We can be a little rough around the edges sometimes, but we generally know what to do — and most importantly, we do it.
Inspirational American Entrepreneurs (Part 1)
The Light of America
In the early 1880′s, America was reeling from an economic catastrophe called the Panic of 1873 — an event that triggered a severe international economic depression in both Europe and the United States.
The failure of two major banks in the U.S. set off a chain reaction of bank failures and temporarily closed the New York Stock Exchange.
Factories began to lay off workers and America’s railroad industry, long a powerhouse of American growth, was in serious trouble. Of the country’s 364 railroads, 89 went bankrupt.
A total of 18,000 businesses failed and unemployment reached 14%.
Construction work halted, wages were cut, and real estate values fell precipitously.
For some it appeared as if the economic light of America was about to be extinguished.
It was a dismal situation, eerily reminiscent of today’s headlines.
Liberty Enlightening the World
Against this backdrop, a young French sculptor, Frédéric Bartholdi, had completed work on a statue he called Liberty Enlightening the World.
It was determined that the French would finance the statue as a gift to America — and all we had to do as Americans was pay for the pedestal which formed its base.
A few years earlier, during a trip to the U.S., Bartholdi had fixed on an island in New York harbor as a site for the statue, struck by the fact that vessels arriving in New York would have to sail past it.
The statue remained intact in Paris pending sufficient progress on the pedestal and by January 1885, the statue was disassembled into 350 pieces and crated for its ocean voyage.
A poet named Emma Lazarus was initially reluctant, but was eventually convinced by a friend that immigrants to the U.S. would be deeply inspired by the statue and her words. She penned a sonnet with this iconic sentiment:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Politics As Usual
Committees were established in the U.S. to fund the pedestal construction, but the project became embroiled in politics as usual.
First, Grover Cleveland, the governor of New York, vetoed a bill to provide $50,000 for the statue project and the work was stalled.
A year later, an attempt to have Congress provide $100,000 — an amount sufficient to complete the project — failed when Democratic representatives would not agree to the appropriation.
The New York committee, with only $3,000 in the bank, suspended work on the pedestal.
Once again it appeared that the light of America, this time symbolically represented by a torch destined for New York harbor, was about to be extinguished.
Entrepreneurship Meets the American Spirit.
Many years earlier, an impoverished immigrant from a small village in Hungary, made the journey to America.
After a stint in Lincoln’s Cavalry during the Civil War and an attempt at whaling in New Bedford, Massachusetts, he found his way back to New York City where he was flat broke and living on the streets.
At one point he sold his one possession, a white handkerchief, for 75 cents.
Despite his many hardships, this young man was inspired by American Democracy, and by the success he believed to be attainable by a foreign-born immigrant through his own energies and skills.
He became a naturalized citizen and that same year studied law.
Throughout his career he had a mind of his own. Often having difficulty working for others, he worked as a reporter for a small newspaper but eventually decided to go into business for himself. He bought a small share of his employer’s paper — and then with a burst of entrepreneurial fervor, parlayed that investment into several more.
Eventually, as so often happens, his unfettered entrepreneurial spirit and hard work led to greatly increased success.
Finally, in 1883, while so many others were suffering from America’s economic travail, he purchased a losing newspaper called the New York World.
It was at this important place in his business life, as the statue languished in crates on a French pier, that the nexus between entrepreneurship and the American Spirit occurred.
It was destined to change the symbolism of American Democracy and once again ignite the light of America.
The Light of America is Finally Lit
The New York World became a thriving newspaper, and its entrepreneurial owner announced plans to take the required fundraising for the statue directly to the American people. He launched a drive to accomplish what the government had failed to do — raise $100,00 (the equivalent of $2.3 million today) and complete construction.
He pledged to print the name of every contributor, no matter how small the amount given, in his widely read newspaper. The drive captured the imagination of New Yorkers, especially when he began publishing the notes he received from contributors.
“A young girl alone in the world,” came the headlines, “donated 60 cents, the result of self denial.”
Another donor gave “five cents as a poor office boy’s fortune toward the Pedestal Fund.”
A group of children sent a dollar as “the money we saved to go to the circus with.”
Another dollar was given by a “lonely and very aged woman.”
Residents of a home for alcoholics in New York’s rival city of Brooklyn donated $15; other drinkers helped out through donation boxes in bars and saloons.
A kindergarten class in Davenport, Iowa, mailed the World a gift of $1.35.
And so it went.
Americans from every walk of life, from every section of the country and from every economic class, sacrificed for something that money couldn’t buy: The pride of being Americans.
On August 11, 1885, the World announced that $102,000 had been raised from 120,000 donors, and that 80 percent of the total had been received in sums of less than one dollar.
After the money was raised, and the shipments from France finally arrived, a courageous group of Americans — most from immigrant families like his own — joined forces with the entrepreneurial newspaper owner and began the long process of rebuilding the statue.
They climbed 150 feet into the air above New York Harbor, on a frighteningly high steel skeleton and carefully fitted the 350 pieces in place.
Finally, the greatest and most profound symbol of the American Spirit took her place at the door to New York and America, her torch raised forever as a beacon to the world.
An American Entrepreneur
The Statue of Liberty is much more than an American triumph.
It is the embodiment of what average Americans can accomplish when government gets out of their way.
It is the best example of how Americans will sacrifice when patriotism is their guiding principle.
It is the personification of what entrepreneurs can accomplish, when they are free to follow their dreams.
And it is the epitome of excellence — that special quality that always seems to emerge when American skills and entrepreneurial zeal are allowed to combine and flourish.
This Hungarian-born immigrant — this man most responsible for the iconic American symbol we fondly call The Statue of Liberty – was in the words of the prestigious medal that now bears his name, “an intense and indomitable figure … a passionate crusader against dishonest government … a fierce, hawk-like competitor … and a visionary who richly endowed his profession.”
His name was Joseph Pulitzer and he was an Inspirational American Entrepreneur.
Trajectory Chapter 77. Finding Motivated Followers
DIAMONDS IN THE ROUGH
Diamonds are created naturally under extreme pressure, usually 100 miles or more below the surface of the earth.
When they are formed, they are already the hardest natural material known to man and have enormous intrinsic value.
They basically last forever.
In the hands of a skilled craftsman, they can be priceless.
The name diamond is derived from the ancient Greek adámas, meaning unalterable, unbreakable and untamed. These three characteristics, aptly named, make them lasting and reliable, if not always predictable.
They come in multiple colors, but they are always valuable.
They are useful for a variety of important purposes, from commercial applications to adornment for the rich and famous.
Of course, they can also be made synthetically, and even then are of tremendous use commercially. Beginning in 1822, Sir Charles Parsons, a prominent scientist and engineer, spent about 40 years and a considerable part of his fortune perfecting the process.
It begs the question: Given the choice, wouldn’t you rather find a diamond than make one?
Of course you would. Why not avoid the pressure and the expense; not to mention the time and the inconvenience?
With a little poetic license, the same can be said of Social Media followers.
They already exist in large quantities.
They are of immense value in their natural state.
They are an unbreakable asset that can last for a very long time if they are understood and well-cared for.
They may be unalterable and untamed, but that is not necessarily a disadvantage.
In the hands of a skilled craftsman, they can be priceless.
And while they can be made synthetically, why bother?
From Humble Beginnings
From a lump of coal to a precious gem, the diamond boasts millions of years of transition and growth. From pure carbon, to metamorphic rock, to a thing of timeless beauty — the diamond represents immense value emerging from humble beginnings.
Likewise, from a pointless banality to a valuable business asset, Twitter and Twitter Followers have taken only five years for their transition and growth. Who would have guessed that a website first claiming, “If you have a cell and you can txt, you’ll never be bored again…E V E R,” would rise to such prominence – raising a king’s ransom in venture capital, toppling dictatorships, and materially changing the world.
By the way, for those who scoff at Twitter’s business value, it might be useful to ask how it was able to topple governments. The answer, I suspect, is that committed freedom fighters are less arrogant and better informed than some so-called business experts, a subject better left for later.
In the introductory chapter to this book, the Trajectory Formula was explained. The formula is S = (T+C) x AM, or expressed in a sentence: Success equals Trajectory plus Critical Mass times Amorphous Marketing.
Missing in that formulation is the raw material that makes the formula work: Motivated Followers.
Throughout this book I have touched on the critical distinction between followers and motivated followers. Knowing the difference and understanding where both reside in their natural state means the difference between mining for coal and mining for diamonds. From cover to cover, you will never read any advice on how to find the former, only the latter.
In this chapter, the process for finding motivated followers will be fully explained.
What Is A Motivated Follower?
By definition, a motivated follower is an individual requiring very low maintenance.
He or she is positively inclined to listen to your message, when you eventually provide it, without requiring strenuous motivation to do so.
Before you begin casting your net for followers, you should already know through testing and empirical evidence that your product or service will actually sell. It may seem counter-intuitive, but once you have that certainty under your belt, it is time to take off your sales hat.
At this stage you should not be selling or propagandizing – directly or indirectly – you should only be providing relevant information in very large quantities.
Your desire should be to help, not to make a sale.
This is such a fundamental concept that it bears repeating: While you are building and maturing your follower base, you should not try to sell to them.
Your new follower is not necessarily a buyer – now or perhaps ever — but he is naturally inclined to pay attention. He will do so because he needs or wants solutions that your product or service may provide, even before you have explained that product or service to him.
He will pay attention, not because you are overtly telling him why he should, but rather because you have demonstrated important and relevant knowledge, he trusts you and you have established rapport, even if that rapport is somewhat distant at the beginning.
He is likely to watch and listen from a distance at first – standing back, waiting to see what happens next – before he commits to you intellectually.
Once he has committed intellectually, like a diamond he will become an unalterable asset in your business, dropping to your bottom line long before his value actually shows itself on your balance sheet. However you choose to quantify it, his value is every bit as valuable as cash in the bank.
This is the first tangible metric for Return on Investment – the sheer number of motivated followers you have accumulated.
Just like panning for gold, you will have to sift through a lot of sand before you find the gold nuggets. It is a winnowing process. Do everything you can (the process is explained in detail later in this chapter) to start with the right follower base – but then you must refine that base – over and over. Sometimes you must be unmerciful when applying the rules I will suggest, but do it anyway. They are tried and true. They work.
Building followers, just for the sake of doing it, is a fool’s errand. I know of some thought leaders who grow their follower base indiscriminately – some have hundreds of thousands of followers — but I doubt that they will ever amount to much. If you don’t care who follows you, you will find that they don’t care much about you either.
What Is Your Target Market?
A motivated follower, also by definition, comes from your target market.
Understanding your target market is essential, but you would be amazed at how few entrepreneurs actually get this.
Most know what they think their target market is. They will parrot their business plan: “My target market is males, age 35-45, with disposable income.” But they have no empirical evidence that this is true.
Some profess to understand their market before they have made their first sale. How silly is that? If no one has made a purchase, there is no discernible market, targeted or otherwise.
Before you can truthfully understand your market, it is first necessary to have tried to sell (at least in a test environment), turned at least a few potential buyers into customers, and even if that attempt was only marginally successful at least you have empirical evidence that your business is viable.
You have already learned the elements of strategy in this regard. If not, you should take a few moments and review the chapter on Strategy.
You have internalized the Basic Six requirements for success and you are prepared to put them into action.
You have already determined what you are trying to do and where you are trying to go.
You are learning the fundamentals of the Trajectory Formula.
You are beginning to understand Critical Mass and Amorphous Marketing.
Now it’s time to start taking action – and your first priority needs to be accumulating motivated followers.
How Valuable Are These Motivated Followers?
One final comment may be useful before I begin to explain the process.
In a recent study reported by Berkshire-Hathaway and derived from analysis of customer viewing and shopping behavior on major U.S. online retail sites, RichRelevance highlighted the significant value of Twitter followers.
The new study drills into more than 200 million shopping sessions to uncover how Americans are browsing and shopping online – and how their behavior varies depending on whether they are coming to a site from a bookmark, search engine or social network.
This chart tells the story. 
While the conversion rate on Twitter followers is lower than other Social Media channels, (less than half that of Facebook, for example), the AOV, (Average Order Value), is higher than any channel studied. In fact, Twitter followers spent 22% more on average than Facebook followers.
What is the practical result?
If you have 50,000 Twitter followers, you might expect .5% of them to become buyers. That’s 250 buyers at an average AOV of $121.33, or $30,332. Stated another way, for every Twitter follower who becomes a buyer, you can expect a 22% higher return than from a comparable buyer generated by Facebook, everything else being equal.
Conversion rates differ, but once a buyer becomes converted, he or she becomes more valuable than conversions from any other Social Media network.
One final thought: Presuming that the Twitter followers studied are typical followers, to the extent that you have found motivated Twitter followers instead, your results might be better still.
Step-By-Step: How to Accumulate Motivated Followers
What you will need:
While I am absolutely not a fan of software to build followers, one website is an enormously valuable tool to assist you in becoming both effective and efficient. That website is Tweepi.com.
Promising to “make sense of your Twitter account,” Tweepi will assist you in identifying your target market, finding and accumulating potentially motivated followers, winnowing that follower base to improve results and doing all this with enhanced speed and efficiency.
As you begin accumulating followers, you will discover immediately that every moment saved by increased efficiency will pay huge dividends – both in results and in your quality of life.
As I have said repeatedly, Social Media is simple, but it isn’t easy. You can reasonably expect, once you have fully implemented the Trajectory Formula, that it will consume a great deal of time and energy, at least for a sustained period, and you will learn to appreciate every sensible shortcut. Tweepi is definitely one of them.
After using this website daily for over a year, I can attest to its value even at the Platinum subscription rate of $14.99 per month, which I heartily recommend.
(Incidentally, as will be true throughout this book, I have no financial interest in this recommended solution, or any other recommendation that I make.)
Also, as a matter of procedure, I will not waste your time with learning features of this and other tools that are not directly required to implement the Trajectory Formula. Tweepi has an abundance of additional features that you may wish to learn, but for purposes of this step-by-step tutorial I will ignore them. Just follow the instructions I provide and you will be fine.
What you must do (all of these instructions are specific to the Platinum account level):
You can use Twitter Search and other tools to identify Twitter Accounts favored by your target market, but my preferred approach is to use common sense. You know your market better than anyone else presumably. You are probably following leaders in your own field already. Whatever approach you use, make a list of those Twitter accounts (e.g. @jerichotech which is my Twitter handle) before you begin your first use of Tweepi.
- If you are starting from scratch, I recommend using Alltop.com as an initial tool. Follow these simple steps.
- Navigate to alltop.com.
- Using the alphabetical listing across the top of the page, navigate to each drop-down box and look for categories pertinent to your market.
- Click on your chosen category (e.g. Social Media in my case) and review the “Most Topular Stories” in the upper left corner. Each of the five listed stories are Alltop’s choice for the most popular stories in that category.
- Click on each story in order and you will be taken to the website responsible for that content.
- Review each website looking for a Twitter button, and follow it to the appropriate Twitter account.
- If the resulting Twitter account has a significant number of followers (it will depend upon your market, but the larger the better), take note of the Twitter handle and add it to your list.
- Continue with this process, until you have exhausted all appropriate categories, or until you have amassed at least 10,000 potential followers, whichever comes first. You are now prepared for your first Tweepi session.
- Very Important: Before you begin to follow, carefully read and understand the Chapter on Twitter Rules. Especially at the beginning, it is quite easy to violate these rules without intending to do so. Should you make this mistake your Twitter Account can be suspended, and believe me, you don’t want to fight that battle.
Using Tweepi:
Follow these steps:
- Navigate to your login page within your Tweepi account.
- After logging in, navigate to your “my dashboard” page.
- In the “Follow new tweeps” section, click on “Follow followers.”
- In the “@Interesting tweep” box, type in the first Twitter handle from the list you compiled above. Don’t forget the @ sign before the name.
- Click on the yellow “Start following” button.
- The resulting page will be a listing of the first 200 followers (if you are in the Platinum subscription plan) of the Twitter account you entered.
- Note the total number of followers in the upper left.
- Change the “Tweepi presets” to default, if not already set.
- Click on the “Last Tweet” button to resort so that the listing begins with the most recent tweet (e.g. “2 minutes ago).
- Highlight the most recent tweet (it will turn blue).
- Scroll down the page highlighting all rows that you have not followed, unfollowed before etc. (You can quickly highlight multiple rows by using the shift key.)
- Very Important: Only highlight rows down to and including “4 days” in the “Last tweet” column. Remember, you only want Motivated Followers. If the potential follower is not motivated sufficiently to tweet within the last four days you should not be interested. Don’t break this rule ever, though you may be tempted to do so.
- Once all appropriate followers are highlighted on this page, click “Follow” on the lower left on the page.
- The word “Follow” will turn gray while the follow activity is completing. When it is complete, the “Follow” will once again become normal, and a message will appear on the bottom right showing the number of followers actually added.
- Repeat these steps until your daily follower goal is reached. (Again, keep the Twitter Rules in mind.)
Note To My Friends and Followers
This is the last segment of Trajectory that will be provided publicly before the book is published. The four chapters already provided represent approximately 10% of the final publication. Hopefully, I have given you a useful taste of what is forthcoming. Much of the nuts ‘n bolts that make the Trajectory Formula exciting and worthwhile will be yours in the published e-book.
As I explained in the Introduction, I am honored that you would take the time to read Trajectory. But with that honor comes great responsibility. As my reading audience, you deserve all the respect and diligence I can muster. Simply put, I must take the confidence you have invested in me and return it to you in the form of prosperity for your business. That is my central goal and highest ambition.
When the book is nearing the publication date, I will let you know. In the meantime, if you have observations or requests for added subject matter, please leave a comment.
Sincerely,
Entrepreneurs and Politics: Get Real, Get Informed and Get Involved
What Can We Agree On?
As online professionals, (those who look to online business as a full-time profession, expecting it to make a profit), we are told to agree on one thing, if nothing else.
Never discuss religion or politics.
From a purely business point-of-view, they are roads to nowhere, or so the popular entrepreneurial wisdom would warn.
From a completely non-ideological perspective, however, it seems logical to me that standing on the sidelines benefits no one.
So, what can we agree on?
“People get the government they deserve.”
Most of us have heard the expression: “People get the government they deserve.”
That thought seems nearly axiomatic to me, but I doubt that we could even agree on who said it.
Many would suggest that it was the observation of Alexis de Tocqueville in his famous and highly complimentary book about American Democracy in the early 1800′s.
But I have also heard it said with authority that it should be attributed to Thomas Jefferson, William Shakespeare and even Hunter S. Thompson. Another likely candidate is the French-speaking philosopher, writer, lawyer, and diplomat, Joseph de Maistre.
I guess it doesn’t really matter.
Whoever said it, it strikes me as a truism — whether heard on the streets of Washington D.C. or Mainstreet USA , if not Cairo, or Kabul.
Uniformly, we get the government we deserve.
So again, what can we agree on?
Get Real, Get Informed and Get Involved
Here’s a thought: We should get real, get informed and get involved.
Get Real. With jobs, economic uncertainty and the welfare of the middle class, (that would be us), taking a paramount position in the forthcoming presidential election, can we afford the luxury of having no opinion?
Can we aspire to positions of so-called thought leadership without taking a stand?
Can we ignore being placed on center-stage in perhaps the most significant economic-political discussion in modern history?
Isn’t it time for us to get real?
Whatever our individual positions, it seems to me that we should at least get real.
We need to face the extant realities of our situation.
If we don’t create jobs in America, who should?
If we don’t care, who might?
If we ignore our central role, who loses? I guess we all will.
Get informed. We live in very complex times, especially economically.
We are confronted with myriad issues that require us to be knowledgeable.
Take for example, the national financial crisis that came to a head not too long ago.
We have heard a great deal about it, but what do we really know?
We know that we are concerned about the economy. We know that hiring workers is more than a little frightening in uncertain times. We know that there is a lot of finger pointing about who should share the blame. The answers are elusive, whatever our politics.
So, what should we do? What is our basic obligation in a free society?
One argument that makes sense to me as a baseline, is that we should all get informed.
We watch the news, listen to commentary and attend the occasional cocktail party where these things are being discussed. But what do we know intellectually?
We have heard about the Dodd-Frank Bill, but what does it provide? Is it good for middle America or not? Is it good for business or destructive?
In fact, how many of us know positively who Senators Dodd and Frank are? Why and how did they get involved in the first place?
And while we’re at it, who is Henry Merritt “Hank” Paulson, Jr., Timothy Franz Geithner, and why should we care?
We all know of Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, but who is Brooksley Born?
We all know of the Federal Reserve Bank, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but what is the CFTC?
If you’re scratching your head a bit, perhaps I have made my point. We should all get informed.
Get involved. Whatever our political persuasion, getting involved and taking a stand for our beliefs seems to me a mandatory step.
If we don’t get involved, shame on us.
If we remain on the sidelines, then we should expect to be sidelined in the future.
If we do not have the courage of our own convictions, who will?
235 years ago last month, after signing the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin purportedly said, “Gentlemen, we must all hang together or we shall most assuredly all hang separately.”
Those were much different times and clarity of purpose was a simpler idea then perhaps, but Franklin’s message is still clear.
We must all hang together.
Whether Democrat, Republican or Independent — whether businessman or politician — whether interested and committed or disinterested and searching — we all have an obligation to get and stay involved.
What Do You Think?
This has been my first and only political comment in twenty years online.
It may be an unpopular and ill-advised step.
But I hope and trust, for all our sakes, that it was the right thing to do.
What do you think?
Trajectory Chapter 10. SUPER Motivation – The Desire to Feed Our Families
(This is Chapter 3 of Trajectory, the forthcoming book by Michael R.H. Stewart)
CHAPTER 10: SUPER MOTIVATION
There is an overarching objective in today’s unpredictable world economy — as the owner, manager or employee in a small business – and that is the desire to feed our families.
There can be no shame in that.
Of course, under ideal circumstances this should not be at the very top of the entrepreneurial list.
As Guy Kawasaki is famous for insisting, if your primary goal is to make meaning – rather than to make money — all else will fall naturally into place.
Steve Jobs is famous for similar beliefs. His desire was to change the world, not to own it.
I agree with both men entirely.
Current research suggests that we are making headway. We entrepreneurs can take pride in the fact that in recent research being conducted by the Startup Genome Project it was found that: ”Most successful founders are driven by impact rather than money.”
However, this book is intended for the overburdened entrepreneur, not the successful founder. This book is intended for individuals deeply involved in the search for accomplishment, not for those who have already achieved it.
So how do we accomplish the necessary, while aspiring toward the exceptional?
Make an Impact While Facing Reality
To completely ignore the present realities – to insist that we should be eleemosynary to the elimination of our basic obligations to those who depend upon us – is at best naivete and at worst the height of irresponsibility. We must absolutely make an impact, but we must face reality too.
Let’s call this dual approach SUPER Motivation.
Having proclaimed a strong desire to get back to the salad days of Guy Kawasaki’s thinking before the world economy started to slide, let me say that for now at least, feeding our families should be a major concern of everyone involved in business.
Bear with me on this, because what I have to say in this chapter – however it is framed – may be the most important advice in this book.
In order to feed our families, it is first necessary to learn the mechanics of motivating people – encouraging them to do what needs to be done – to buy our products and services.
But equally important is the notion that in Social Media we should soft-pedal the sales message. It should be decidedly in the back seat as we drive toward our objectives.
It is the great conundrum of business – how to motivate people, and in today’s world we must do so unobtrusively.
In this chapter, I will share the simple secret for getting this done.
Take the Money and Run
Remember Virgil Starkwell? Probably not, I suppose.
Let me refresh your memory.
In the 1969 movie comedy, Take the Money and Run, Woody Allen played a hapless hero bent upon a life of crime.
He was not very good at it.
He tried to rob a bank by handing a too-hastily handwritten note to the bank teller at window #9.
The note was supposed to say:
“Please put $50 thousand into this bag. Act natural. I am pointing a gun at you.”
Sadly, the teller could not read his illegible note.
The teller asked, “I can’t read this. What is this? Abt natural“?
Virgil responded, somewhat annoyed, “No it just reads, ‘Please put $50 thousand into this bag. Act natural. I am pointing a gun at you.’”
“Does it say, ‘Act natural’?” the teller asked.
Virgil responded, getting more than a little frustrated, “I, uh, am pointing a gun at you.”
“That looks like ‘gub’”, the teller responded. “It doesn’t look like ‘gun’.”
Virgil was nonplussed.
The teller asked her manager to come review the note, saying “George, would you step over here a moment please. What does this say?”
Now the manager was reading the note. “”Please put $50 thousand into this bag and… abt? What’s ‘abt’?”
(You can see where this was going, even if you don’t remember the movie).
“It says “Act,” Virgil insisted again.
Then the teller asked her manager “Does this look like “gub” or “gun“?
Virgil made one final attempt, repeating, “Please put $50 thousand into this bag. Act natural. I am pointing a gun at you.”
Finally, both the teller and the manager saw the light.
“Oh, I see, this is a hold up,” the manager exclaimed.
“Yes!” Virgil said with victory in his voice.
“Well, you’ll have to have this note initialized by one of our vice-presidents before I can give you any money.”
Virgil got arrested and served his time, regretting that he had not stood his ground with the teller and manager. He became very highly motivated not to repeat that blunder.
What’s the Point?
The point of retelling this story is not Virgil’s embarrassing plight.
Rather, it is to lay the groundwork for a later scene in which Virgil, now a convict on a prison chain gang for another crime, has become very highly motivated to prove his courage and resolve and not to cave in to the prison warden.
The movie narrator describes Virgil’s chain gang experience this way:
“The time drags by an endless grind of backbreaking labor. Brutal discipline is common under the hot sun. The men aren’t even permitted to faint without written permission.”
“Virgil complains and he is severely tortured.”
This is where the key to motivating people is described.
The narrator continues:
“For several days Virgil is locked inside a sweatbox … (a deep pit in the exercise yard, topped by a steel lid) … with an insurance salesman.”
“Hi, I’m Joe Green, I represent Ajax and Widget Insurance Company,” the insurance salesman begins. “I’d like to talk to you about a little insurance… You’re about 30, right?”
Virgil screams under his breath, barely maintaining his resolve.
“I think the best thing to do is get straight life then a little term… and… how about dental and medical?”
Virgil’s resolve begins to dissolve.
“We got a great deal on dental,” the persistent salesman concludes.
Virgil finally loses it.
He has lost his motivation completely, and the warden has won.
Fade to black.
A Pleasant Surprise
Having spent many years as a senior executive for one of the largest insurance companies on earth, this scene has always made me cringe a little. But there was no denying that this torture seemed to work.
Is this the answer to motivating people? To make the alternative too unbearable to contemplate? Well, no, but it puts the subject in stark relief.
Motivating the prospective buyer has always been a necessary evil, whatever the means.
The debate has always been how to motivate the buyer, without permanently destroying the rapport between buyer and seller.
Of course, there are answers to this marketing conundrum. Marketing texts are full of them. Business schools delight in explaining theories and possible approaches.
But here’s the pleasant surprise, provided by the miracle of Social Media.
Here is the punch line – the advice I promised you before telling the story of Virgil Starkwell.
Because in Social Media you have the gift of very large potential numbers, it is no longer necessary to motivate people.
The secret is simple and powerful.
Instead of motivating people … find people who are already motivated.
Do this, and you will no longer have to drag your potential buyers up the steep cliff to where your products reside — they will scramble to the top themselves. Give them what they want and need and they will do the difficult climbing mostly without you.
The New Motivation Model
What can we learn from Virgil Starkwell and his unfortunate hold-up note?
What can we learn from the pit in Virgil’s exercise yard?
What can we learn from typical marketing approaches that attempt to motivate our potential buyers, even when that approach seems not to work?
The simple answer is this – motivating buyers is a thankless, ineffective and inefficient process – so don’t do it.
Don’t do it? How else are we to progress in our businesses? No one enjoys the process, but isn’t it essential?
Ask yourself this important question: Is traditional marketing still relevant in today’s world?
Let’s take a step backwards in time to see where this motivational process came from – and let’s check it for reasonableness in today’s world.
In 1890, American transportation was in a state of flux. There were over 13,000 businesses that sold various accessories for the “carriage industry.” A famous example was the buggy whip manufacturer.
One of the stalwarts in the buggy whip trade was William Durant — who ultimately founded both General Motors and Chevrolet. He worked for a carriage maker, and was one who spoke out against cars as being “smelly, noisy and dangerous.” But when he realized that the world was moving towards them, and that his current company wouldn’t be able to adapt due to preconceived notions about product, he jumped ship to Buick.
Before this important choice, he could have taken two approaches. He could have ignored the fact that the American transportation industry was changing fundamentally, as he continued to beat a dead horse with his buggy whips. He could have continually upgraded his buggy whip, his marketing material, his sales force and his motivational techniques. He didn’t. He chose to adapt instead.
There have been many examples in our history of choices similar to this one.
The steamship and railroad companies — successful for decades when they had a virtual monopoly on moving the public from one place to another — when faced with the advent of the commercial airplane could have easily clung to the status quo as they sailed and steamed away from reality and into obscurity. Some did, but many did not. They chose to adapt instead.
The software and computer industry — having not existed at all a few decades before — when faced with the advent of the DOS operating system, Windows and Microsoft, could have easily clung to the status quo as they clicked and whirred away from reality and into obscurity. Some did, but many did not. They chose to adapt instead.
These were monumental paradigm shifts in buyer preferences, but did we learn from them? In some ways we did, but in important ways we did not.
We still believed, and we continued to teach in our colleges and universities, that motivating the unwilling buyer was still the key to successful marketing.
We believed that marketing was a push technique. If you continued to bombard your buyer with the reasons to buy your product, irrespective of his wishes, you would eventually prevail.
It was just a matter of modifying the sales pitch, we stubbornly believed – we just needed to be sure our brochure said “gun” instead of “gub”.
It was a continual unwelcome message, but like placing the buyer in a pit with an insurance salesman, we believed that he would eventually give in. The alternative – staying in the pit listening to an unwanted sales pitch – would eventually wear the buyer down.
The dominant sales thinking was simply, never accept “no” for an answer.
Today we have seen a paradigm shift that makes the aforementioned market changes seem trivial by comparison.
That shift is Social Media.
Importantly, we suddenly have the luxury of a virtually unlimited source of motivated buyers from around the world. We need not motivate a small group of potential buyers, because we can accumulate motivated buyers in large quantities simply by casting a much larger net. They are out there waiting, eager to buy our products and services; we just need to find them.
Marketing in today’s Social Media world, is or should be a pull technique. If we simply learn to listen to our potential buyers – if we learn to give them what they want instead of what we want to sell them – motivating the buyer will no longer be necessary.
Social Media Has Changed Everything
Products and services change, economic environments improve or get worse, but it is a rare event indeed when everything changes at once.
Social Media is one of those events.
Social Media is neither a tool nor a vocation, as it is often mischaracterized. It is a complete paradigm shift — if ever that term was appropriate.
Old solutions have become obsolete. Old approaches have become irrelevant. Old methods — even those memorialized by the passage of time — have lost their effectiveness and efficiency.
Social Media requires a new mindset — new principles — new ways of doing things.
Most important among these changes is the fact that motivation of the buyer has become less of a nightmare and more of a blessing. It is no longer necessary to cajole and convince. It is only necessary to locate and inspire.
25 Secrets For Solving BIG Problems In Your Business
How To Solve Your BIG Problems
Some problems you face in business are small ones that can easily be solved. You’ve seen them before and you have ready-made solutions that require little or no thought.
For example, suppose you have a temporary cash flow problem. From past experience you realize that there are two obvious solutions:
- Sell more.
- Improve the way you handle receivables.
But suppose you encounter a large and unwieldy problem that you have never struggled with before.
Suppose none of the obvious solutions seem to fit?
What should you do? What’s the secret?
The simple answer — the secret to solving your BIG business problems — is simply this: Use your intellect.
When you are faced with a problem that’s too big to handle, you must marshal all your intellectual resources — the resources that got you this far already — and craft a new problem-solving regimen.
Sounds simple, right? Well it isn’t.
Using your intellect to solve problems does not mean just thinking about them. It’s an intellectual process. It’s using your mind creatively, to place you in an intellectual environment where the BIG problems can be solved.
Win Wenger, PhD, of the Renaissance Project, has developed an intellectual problem-solving process that I find useful. Here it is, with my embellishments.
(Note: Wenger’s comments are in bold below — my embellishments are in normal type.)
25 Secrets: Solving BIG Problems In Your Business
In order to solve BIG problems you must:
- Want to solve the problem. Sounds obvious? Well it isn’t. Before you tackle a major problem, you must first be sure that you really want to. Many entrepreneurs continue the fight for their business when the truth is: It’s no longer viable. Deep in their hearts they know, or suspect, but habit forces them forward. Sometimes it is better to admit that the business, or the market, or the product was a mistake — and start over. Thomas Edison failed over 900 times before he commercialized the light bulb. If you persevere, while at the same time adjusting your approach, you will succeed eventually.
- Have wide-ranging interests, and feed them. Many businesses fail in the long term due to a lack of innovation. To innovate in the 21st century you must have a wide-ranging intellect. Far too many entrepreneurs become so obsessed with their businesses that they ignore everything else. That is a serious mistake. Develop your mind in other ways: Art, music, history, literature and mathematics, to name a few, can be well-springs of creative energy and problem-solving power. Use them. And as you develop other interests, feed them by taking the time to involve yourself.
- Entertain ideas and inspirations from outside the box. I don’t mean merely thinking outside the box. I mean removing yourself from the box entirely. Leave your comfort zone. Get out into the real world, not your business niche. Listen to others less accomplished than yourself, it’s remarkable what you can learn. Inspiration, the fuel that will keep your enterprise going, often springs from the most unexpected of sources.
- Learn from any and every source. Wenger puts it this way: “Anyone can learn from someone wise….it takes someone pretty wise to be able to learn even from fools.“ Personally, my faith tells me that there are no coincidences. People from all walks of life and all levels of intellect, cross my path every day. And yes, some of them will turn out to be fools. But I believe that every single one of them is there for a reason. There is a quote from Corrie Ten Boom, the Christian Holocaust survivor who helped many Jews escape the Nazis during World War II, that makes this point well: “Every experience God gives us, every person he puts in our lives, is the perfect preparation for the future than only He can see.” Whether spiritual guidance or pure pragmatism is directing your problem-solving, be sure you pay attention and learn from any and every source.
- Keep coming back to the problem from different directions. Some entrepreneurs are myopic. Their nearsightedness causes them to look at their problems from one point-of-view. To be adroit at solving problems, you must view them diligently from every angle. Give it your best, then stop. Now approach the problem again from a completely different place and give it your best again. Keep this up until you arrive at the solution.
- Let go of it between times, and deal with other matters. Not taking a break from the problem-solving process can be debilitating. It can sound the death-knell for your business. Build some variety into your business life. And if you can’t find another business requirement to occupy yourself, heed Wenger’s advice:
- Tend the garden
- Wash the dishes
- Meditate
- Experience or ‘do’ in the arts
- Take inordinate pleasure in little things—sometimes that’s all you’ll have, sometimes those become big worthy things.
- Keep or build your stamina and follow-through. This is a tough one for many entrepreneurs. How many times have you heard yourself saying, “I know I should take better care of myself, but I don’t have the time?” Certainly it requires discipline to build up your stamina, but without doing so it is likely that you will be too tired to follow-through effectively. This is a crucial business requirement, not a luxury.
- Keep your health. Similar to number 7 above, this secret to solving BIG problems is difficult for many entrepreneurs. Difficult or not, it is also a crucial business requirement, not a luxury. Remember, that when you eventually solve the problem that is nagging you, you’re going to want a bit of celebration. And if health problems make that impossible, you have stolen one of the priceless benefits of being an entrepreneur. Stay well and prosper.
- “Keep your day job.” This secret can be twofold. If your business cannot support you financially, that is a much bigger problem than the current problem you are trying to solve. If you need to keep it, keep it. On the other hand, if your business can support you, never lose sight of the day job that got you there. Think of it as an intellectual fall-back position. If you know that there is another secure job waiting for you if the business fails, not only will that provide encouragement when things get tough, but it will make failure less likely. Problem-solving is always easier if you know it is not a matter of life or death.
- Keep your sense of humor. This is sage advice. It’s hard to lose your positive attitude if you belly-laugh once in a while. You can always find something to chuckle about, even when enduring BIG problems. Smile. Laugh. Share your sense of humor with someone else. You will feel better — and you will do better.
- Be fully creative, then fully critical, then fully creative. You can’t be both creative and critical at the same time. But they are both important. Give the full force of your intellect to both creativity and sensible criticism, but alternate them. You will find that you can do both with effectiveness and efficiency. Try it. You’ll find it works amazingly well.
- Raise and keep up your level of ongoing tinkering. Tinkering is a very useful intellectual exercise. It is restful by contrast to full-fledged intellectual activity. Tinker with your problem by tossing it mentally up in the air. It won’t seem as heavy. It might even float back to your mind resolved. Tinker with your ideas as well. Take them apart and put them back together again. See how they fit together. You’ll be surprised at the positive result.
- Be opportunistic. This is huge. Solutions can flit in and out of your mind like butterflies, hardly making a sound. Watch for them, listen for them, and grab them. Solutions are often targets of opportunity and need to be treated as unexpected gifts you need to take immediate advantage of. You don’t need a water-proof voice recorder for use in the shower, but you do need to develop the mental discipline necessary to be constantly vigilant.
- Fiddle in other creative activities, keeping those further resources of yours in the picture. Engaging in other creative activities, and bringing all of your other talents into the effort, can yield a very positive result. Steve Jobs once attended a calligraphy class at Reed College, and became very involved in the artistry of the various fonts. Later in his business career he fiddled with fonts quite often. The result was the innovative fonts used in the MAC computer. Now all computers utilize sans serif fonts and proportional spacing
- Work in creative bursts; don’t 9-to-5 it. This is an exceptional idea, that sadly, I have not been able to execute myself. I will do better. I will convince myself with this argument: If you are only 75% effective, let’s say, after working 9 to 5 without a break – but you are 95% effective after working 9 to 5 with three twenty minute breaks to stimulate creativity, you gain almost an hour more of effectiveness when you work in creative bursts than when you make yourself an indentured servant to your computer.
- Fly on inspiration as fast as possible before the pattern dissipates. Inspiration can be gossamer thin, like the wings of a butterfly. It comes rarely and disappears quickly. So when it does make an appearance, embrace it, and fly on it.
- Fly fast on inspiration as long as possible, then climb right back on and go up again. Despite the fact that inspiration is fleeting, it will return if you welcome it. When it does, take advantage of your luck. Climb aboard. And fly as long as possible. Never give up the reins unless you must. If you fall off, or if inspiration disappears, get up and get back on. Inspiration is far too precious to waste.
- Be willing to dog-plod some of the task, on some sort of scheduled regular basis of production, but do as much as possible inspired. We have all done our share of dog-plodding, regular or otherwise. And we will undoubtedly do more. But it is infinitely better, more palatable, if we are doing it inspired. If you are short on inspiration at the moment, at least turn on Pandora and listen to music while you work.
- Don’t wait for inspiration, find it. Waiting for inspiration is a fool’s errand. It’s like waiting for a winning lottery ticket: It’s theoretically possible, but highly unlikely. We were given our intellects for a reason beyond simple self-preservation. It seems unlikely that we were given intelligence just so that we could recognize an unresolvable problem to worry about. It seems more plausible that we were made sentient beings so that we would have a power within us to search out and capture inspiration. We should appeal to the “better angels of our nature,” as President Lincoln said it his First Inaugural Address in 1861. Whatever we call it: Inner Self, Karma or Divine Guidance from God — few would dispute the fact that in the small hours of the night, inspiration often comes. Stay alert and pay attention.
- Build high self-esteem. If we have little respect for ourselves, it is axiomatic that others will have little respect for us. We have all been endowed with intrinsic worth, so we should build upon it.
- Reinforce your confidence by being self-critical from time to time. Only a fool listens to his own judgement exclusively. We all make mistakes and fall short of our highest capabilities. There can be no shame in that. Being self-critical is not a short-coming, it is a basic human advantage.
- Search hard for everything that might be wrong with your idea-theory-discovery-invention, then: “Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead!” If we don’t root around in the closets of our mind, seeking to find our own inadequacies, then someone less sympathetic surely will. It is infinitely better to find our own flaws and correct them than to wait for others to fill in our intellectual vacuum. We should be scrupulously honest with ourselves, find what’s wrong and fix it — and with this accomplished, start anew.
- Do your homework, keep on getting better informed in the context. There is no substitute for hard intellectual effort. Learn, learn, learn — and when you’re through, learn some more. We live in a business world, that to use Bill Gates’ words, changes at “the speed of thought.” We cannot solve today’s problems with yesterday’s solutions. Don’t waste your time trying. And remember that in the Internet Information Age, there is a solution out there somewhere, to even the most intractable problem.
- Pat yourself on the back on some of those many occasions when no one is going to do that for you. Just as surely as you must be your own worst critic, you should also be your own most ardent evangelist. The simple fact that you are reading this article, indicates that you care about what you are doing — and that by itself is a laudable trait. Congratulate yourself. Pat yourself on the back. Look back over your business and personal life and contemplate your past successes. Sadly, unless you are a philanthropist showering charitable causes with your largess, or you find yourself on the cover of Fortune Magazine, there will never be a line forming to praise you. Do something praiseworthy — and then praise yourself.
- Find others also doing something worthwhile and pat them on the back. A small but definite percentage will reciprocate. Our’s is a big world — and if you are alert you will find countless others searching for meaning by benefiting others. Like you, they deserve an occasional pat on the back. Reward good works with unselfish admiration and respect. Give to others and they will give to you.
Albert Einstein once famously remarked, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Since most of our BIG problems are self-created, we need to take Mr. Einstein’s advice and change our thinking.
