Guest Articles | Chris Zavadowski's Massive Leverage Marketing

The Professor of Harsh Reality’s Lecture About Time

Having recently had another birthday click over on the odometer, time is on my mind. It’s never far from it in my work-cave, because I have strategically placed more than a dozen clocks around the room and can’t look in any direction without seeing one.

As I describe in my book, No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs, I organize everything with start and pre-determined end times; if someone has a phone appointment with me they know in advance when it ends, not just when it starts, and it does end as scheduled even if in mid-sentence.

I have trained and conditioned myself to be hyper-sensitive to time, and I train my clients to respect my hyper-sensitivity about it.

Why?

Because your bank balance and your satisfaction or dissatisfaction with it is more a reflection of how you invest your time than reflection of anything else. This the more dominant factor in wealth or relative poverty, success or failure, fulfillment or frustration than all externals combined – whatever Obama and the Merry Band of Thieves in Washington DC may be up to, whatever European welfare state is in collapse, whatever volcano or oil spill is occurring, whether economy is booming or struggling, whether your particular industry is healthy or diseased. These external things are fluid.

In my 35 years as serial entrepreneur, made-from-scratch multi-millionaire, and business advisor to thousands, I’ve seen all these things and worse come and go, occur and occur again, and I’ve seen some entrepreneurs surrender their attitudes and reality to them, while others defy them and thrive.

My primary area of specialization is ‘marketing’, and most of my articles for ETR are laser-focused on that, but truth is, marketing and selling of goods, services or concepts is sabotaged or supported by how much control the individual or individuals who are the business’ driving force exercise over the investment, direction and consumption of their time, and with it, their energy and creativity.

In reality, time is the asset the entrepreneur owns outright and has total control over. I don’t really need to follow you around and observe how you use your time to gauge how you’re doing in business. I only need hear about your philosophy about time, that governs your behavior and what you will tolerate or refuse to tolerate in the behavior of those around you.

For example, do you have litmus tests, and what are they? One of mine: if somebody can’t keep seemingly minor commitments, they can’t be trusted to honor important ones either. If they are allowed to hang around, soon they’ll be cause of you failing to honor your commitments to yourself and others.

Or, for example, how do you relate time and goals? My hovering question is: will this use of my time move me measurably closer to my meaningful goals? Is there even a chance it will? If not, why do it?

Or, a governing rule to safeguard your time and sanity. Mine: if I wake up three mornings in a row thinking about you, and we’re not having sex, you gotta go. Do you actually handle time as money, not just give lip service to the idea? Can you tell me what your time must be worth per minute to achieve your income goal?

It’s difficult to find a clock in Las Vegas casinos because those casinos are designed to separate you from as much of your money as possible; to make you a loser, and that is best done by dulling your sensitivity to the passing of time. The same principle applies to your business life. The surest way to be a loser is to be casual or insensitive about time.

I’ve worked up close ‘n personal with many, many entrepreneurs who’ve converted ideas and grit into fortunes. The difference between them and the majority of also-rans is never the originality or even the quality of their ideas.

As a matter of fact, I’ve see fortunes manufactured from mediocre ideas, and great ideas still-born. This is important because far too many entrepreneurs and, candidly, those who observe them, report on them, write about them, glorify their success stories, still hold up The Great Idea as the pedestal-worthy holy grail. That is worship of a false god.

When the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were first added to the NFL as an expansion team, and setting records for consecutive losses and embarrassing performances, after one game, a reporter stuck a microphone in the head coach, John McKay’s face, and asked how he felt about his team’s execution that day.

McKay quipped that he was in favor of it. There’s reality. Execute or be executed. It’s how business really works. Hardly anybody gets paid for their ideas. Not even the Imagineers at Disney. We actually get paid for what we get done. To the ignorant, my area of marketing seems to be about ideas. The insiders know: it is about implementation.

The entrepreneur has a situation encouraging of poor productivity: he is his own boss. Often this produces an unproductive employee and a lenient, dysfunctional boss. A two-fer.

This is why you must create a success environment for yourself, impose strict deadlines on yourself and be ruthlessly resistant to waste of time by self and others, and hold yourself accountable hour by hour.

If you aren’t willing to work under such self-imposed pressure, I suggest forgetting the idea of getting and staying rich as king of your own kingdom. Every great kingdom needs a ruler with an iron-fist.

– By Dan S. Kennedy, serial entrepreneur, from-scratch multi-millionaire, speaker, consultant, coach, author of 13 books including the No B.S. series, and editor of The No B.S. Marketing Letter. FOR A SPECIAL FREE GIFT FROM DAN FOR YOU including newsletters, audio CD’s and more: visit: www.FreeDanKennedyNewsletter.com

Filed Under: Articles and Tips, Guest Articles Tagged With: importance of time, success through time management, time management

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There Are Two Basic Ways

There are two basic ways people can react, when they are have-not’s, observing have’s; when they are not doing nearly as well as some others in their field, industry or community.

One is to justify their unsatisfactory results, make excuses, blame others, and develop resentment toward the exceptionally successful.

The other is to study those who are achieving, seek information about their methods, accept full responsibility for results, and ultimately lift themselves up.

There are two basic ways people can react when they face adverse circumstances – anything from a slump in the economy making selling their wares or services more difficult to something more serious and personal, such as diagnosis of a debilitating disease.

One is to surrender. The other is to acquire important ‘how-to’ information, aggressively make changes, develop personal motivation, and be a warrior.

There are two basic ways people can react, when they encounter subject matter they find difficult and complex, and that they don’t easily and quickly understand.

One is to turn their back on it. Put the book away. Quit the course. Leave the group. Go in search of something easier, simpler and less demanding. Even insist “it doesn’t work” despite abundant evidence that it does.

The other is to re-double efforts, get help from a tutor or mentor, burn the midnight oil, be creative, persistent.

In essence, you can either move yourself up to a higher level of know-how, skill, capability and, thus, value, or you can settle into a more comfortable, less challenging, thus less rewarding routine and rhythm of living.

The most basic example of this: two people reading a book come upon a word they do not know the meaning of. One skips over it, and if he encounters too many ‘difficult words’ he sets the book aside. The other gets a dictionary and looks up the unknown words in order to improve himself. One stays put where he is intellectually, the other moves up.

The most important word in all of the above words is: can.

There is always something you can do about anything, in order to improve your situation. You aren’t a tree. You’re a human. You can move.

When you walk past a Mrs. Fields Cookies store in the mall, know the entire company exists because, when nobody was coming in to her first store, Debbi Fields did not sit there – she put fresh-baked cookies on a platter and went out onto the street.

When you walk past the Kenneth Cole shoe store, know that exists because, when lacking money to exhibit his line at his first trade show, and told by New York City he could not park a truck-based exhibit outside the hall in the street, he did not take ‘no’ for an answer and persisted and figured out a creative way to station that exhibit out on that street, and launched his line.

After years of lackluster sales in department stores, the manufacturer of a little counter-top grill moved it to TV infomercials and hired George Foreman as its pitchperson.

Jeff Bezos moved the bookstore to the internet and birthed amazon. Subway moved from just another fast food choice to being a weight loss program with Jared.

Jean Nidetech moved diets from the doctor’s office and drug-store to classes in living rooms, and created Weight-Watchers.

Countless people have moved from ghetto, from orphanage, from bankruptcy, from scandal to success, wealth, prominence. Limited space here forces me to cut the examples short.

Years back, a book given to just about all wet-behind-ears sales rookies was written by Frank Bettger, a baseball player turned insurance salesman. Its title was: How I Raised Myself From Failure To Success In Selling. You need never read the book to know the first and most important “How”. It is Frank deciding that he could and accepting responsibility for doing so.

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Two Sword-In-The-Stone Secrets

How To Make More Money Than Ever When Others Are Stymied And Struggling

My newest book, No B.S. Wealth Attraction In The New Economy is all about making yourself magnetic to money, in part via different approaches to marketing. Here’s some insight into that process…

Last year I bought a 1972 AMC Javelin. I already own a ’63 Lincoln Town Car convertible. I don’t have them as investments or to show; just to drive around during the summer. I didn’t need two summer cars. In fact, I had to rent a garage for the second one.

Then this year, I bought Dean Martin’s 1986 Rolls-Royce, which has only 19,000 miles on it and is nearly showroom new. It’s not that I haven’t been affected by the recession and by anticipation of economic damage to come from the President’s policies (mis-guided or sinister – your choice) and the big tax target he has painted on my chest.

There are some things I might have bought that I stopped myself from buying precisely because of those realities. But I bought these because I wanted them.

What does this have to do with you, since you don’t deal in classic cars? Plenty.

It reveals two “sword in the stone secrets” of marketing and selling in any circumstances, but especially in tough times.

You may recall the Arthurian legend, or at least the Disney version: mighty knights could not pull the sword from the stone with muscle and brawn; only one young, much less muscular boy pure of heart and strong of mind could command the sword.

If you were prospering by “pushing” products and services on anybody breathing during the boom, you’ve probably now found that muscle doesn’t matter. Something different is required, for success with advertising, marketing selling; for attraction of prospects, customers, clients.

A fact about money.

Whatever money is in circulation is always in motion, moving constantly from one person to another like bees flitting flower to flower, attracted not by happenstance but for definitive reasons that can be managed. At the moment, there is, admittedly, money withdrawn. Some is sitting on the sidelines; private capital on strike; money hiding in what one of my clients, a business coach to 4,000 financial advisors, calls “coffee can portfolios.”

Middle class spending reduced by restricted access to credit. Affluent spending reigned in as much by feeling need to show respect for others’ recession as by financial reality. So yes, there is a little less money in motion. But there is also a lot less competition for it.

Tens of thousands of retail stores closed in 09, and that is continuing this year. Thousands if not tens of thousands of real estate agents, insurance salespeople, etc. have gone into hibernation or off ledges.

An even bigger number in every business category just aren’t trying.

They believe effort or investment; advertising, marketing, promoting futile, because they deny the reality of money in motion, and the few times they’ve tried recently, they haven’t been able to budge the sword in the stone.

So there are orphaned customers, neglected prospects, discouraged and listless salespeople, foolish business owners stopping all outreach to try waiting out a New Economy evolving. Thus, there is actually more money in motion for you than anytime in over a decade. So, here are the two secrets you need:

#1: No matter what, each and every individual will buy when what is offered is perfectly, precisely aligned with his greatest, highest, burning brightest personal interest, desire or need. The individual in this situation will buy without price resistance or hesitation.

#2: To prosper, you need only (a) be certain you aren’t wasting time on the bottom 20% who really can NOT buy anything but bread crusts and water, and (b) align whatever you sell with someone’s greatest, highest, burning brightest personal interest and invest in presenting your business only to individuals for whom it is aligned with their greatest interest.

And, a bonus #3: there is somebody whose highest personal interest can match what you sell. Plenty of such somebodies.

In order to be a good prospect, by my criteria, a person must have a need or desire for which he is profoundly and urgently interested in – preferably seeking – an answer to, and must have the financial ability to buy my answer to it, at my price.

I have other criteria specific to my businesses and you should have other criteria specific to your business. But this is universal, foundational criteria.

Important note: without great clarity about the ‘who’ you want as prospect or customer, you are playing “blind archery”, a fool’s game.

This is why I bought the $30,000.00 Javelin and $70,000.00 Rolls-Royce but talked myself out of an $8,000.00 closet remodeling project we actually needed in one of our homes – however, at the Home Show, had a very astute closet remodeling company owner or sales professional stopped yakking about their design awards, quality wood, guarantees, and deals and discovered that a very important wedding anniversary was coming up and talked about surprising my wife with something unexpected inside a box wrapped to look like another piece of jewelry, there would have been a closet bought, without a second thought!

If I were running the closet company, I’d get lists of affluent neighborhood residents, and busy doctors and other affluent professionals, having spouse’s birthdays or wedding anniversaries each month and send them persuasive sales letters about ‘the gift she’ll appreciate every day. Flowers perish. Fine jewelry worn occasionally, hidden away most of the time. But this gift….’ (Yes, such lists are available.)

All this requires making yourself a much more sophisticated marketer. A choice. But know this, for the foreseeable future, trying to dislodge that sword with brute force won’t work. I’m all for work. But the cliché is true now more than ever: working harder won’t get much. Working smarter is essential.

The smart goal is perfect alignment of what you market or sell, probably re-positioned and more creatively presented, with the passionate, urgent interest of a group of reachable prospects, to the exclusion of all others.

In other words, be about something really meaningful to somebody, not about “stuff”; your product, your service.