Talk about an angry mob and all of the sudden you find yourself in front of one…

My last blog stirred a few pots. Some people really pulled the pitchforks out when I said “Social Media Is Dead”.

The point of that was that you need to understand marketing. Not just one tool. Social Media is just one tool in your marketing toolbox.

If you want to join the angry mob, go grab a pitchfork and check out that article here.

The idea behind using any type of social media marketing is to get more business.

People say they want more leads. But in reality what they really want is customers.

They want to give you money and you send them customers. Customers that walk through their door, customers that pick up the phone and call them, people that order on their website and so on.

People who decide to spend money with them. Which is great. That’s fantastic. And in some businesses, you can do that.

You can pay someone to get you more customers. Easy.

But in most other businesses, there’s more of a process to it than that.

In most businesses, you have to get them on the phone or have them face to face a few times to actually close them. It can be a multi-step process to make that happen.

Since the online marketing world exploded the process of getting more clients became sort of streamlined.

You run an ad campaign on Facebook or Google or LinkedIn to a landing page where the visitor gives you their details in exchange for something of value that you might be offering.

If you want, that’s where you can have your visitor schedule an appointment with you.

Naturally, the very first thing people think about is redirecting people to a shopping page. Under the principle that the more people come in your store, the more sales you’re going to make.

Are you going to make a sale if you redirecting visitors to a purchase page from an ad campaign?

That’s unlikely. Possible. But highly unlikely. Most businesses need a few steps in between. And chances are you are one of those businesses.

If you follow me, your business is unlikely to be a 7/11 where people come in to buy chocolate and a pack of gum on an impulse.

It’s more likely to have the visitors sign-up for a call with you. Most of the times you’ll offer them something of value to them in exchange for their contact information. It’s actually a good strategy.

But there’s also the flip side to that. And I’m sure this has happened to you too.

How many times have you got an email and went, “What is this? Who’s this guy emailing me? Where did he get my email from?”

And after you open the email and take a closer look you realize that you’ve signed up for a free report or an appointment and you just forgot all about it.

That right there is what you need to avoid with your customers.

This is a clear case of not contacting your customers the moment they signed up. Or you’ve only reached out to them once a few weeks back.

Well, obviously that’s not enough. Once is not enough.

You must follow-up with them constantly.

How often should you follow-up? That depends on your business, your product, and your customers. It’s a very individual thing.

For one of my clients, we literally have set up an entire year of information to be sent out. Because it’s a $30,000 sale, of course, you want to do that.

We make sure that we keep touching the leads for a year before they are ready to be closed. But for you, it might be different.

For another client of mine who runs a fitness studio, we’ve set up a 7-day follow-up sequence. But during those 7 days, we have 12 different contacts with the leads.

I know what you’re thinking… “12 times in 7 days is a bit too much… No wonder people pull out their pitchforks if you keep harassing them.”

Am I really?

I’ll show you why this isn’t “harassing” anybody and why this is actually the best thing you can do in your business and what your customers really want from you.

Before we jump into that, let’s talk about the worst thing that you can actually let happen in your business.

The worst thing that you can let happen in your business is to never call them at all. You get a potential client to give you their contact information and you never follow-up with them.

You’d be surprised how often this happens…

The second worst thing is to wait too long before you call your leads. And that happens a lot as well. But how long is too long? You wouldn’t want to “harass” your leads, would you?

Let me put this into context for you.

A couple of years ago I was working with a company where we were getting leads in. But they weren’t closing anything. And we had no idea why they weren’t closing.

We spoke with the client and he said that the leads were too cold… That’s very unlikely. These were AdWords leads. Which meant someone had to do the following:

1. Search for their service
2. Clicked on their ad
3. Go to their landing page
4. Fill out a form requesting someone contact them.

If some goes to that much trouble chances are they have a need for your service.

They might not be calling up up yelling take my money. But for sure they’re not cold.

We talked to the client and we looked to find out the process. Turns out the leads weren’t actually handed out to the sales staff contacted for three or four days. Then some of the sales staff would sit on their leads and didn’t contact them the day they got them so it was another couple of days.

So it was four or five days, sometimes a whole week before these leads were called back.

Of course, they were cold. I mean, if somebody is online doing a search and they click on your ad and they sign up, you need to somehow reach out to them immediately.

It could be a phone call if it fits. It could be an e-mail or even a text. Or you could be doing some combination of the three.

But immediately is when you want to reach out them. Because they’re in the frame of mind that they’re interested in your product or service.

It’s literally the same thing I’ve described before. How often have you received an email and you had no idea who it was from and later you realized it was for something you signed-up for a while back?

Your customer is in the frame of mind that they’re interested in your service or product and you need to take advantage of that.

This is one of the reasons you aren’t going to annoy your customers if you follow-up with them on a regular basis. They are interested in what you have to offer. Maybe they need more reassurance that you are able to solve their problems.

Sometimes they just want to see if you are consistent and reliable.

But what is the best way to do your own lead generation?

A great way to handle it is to have a landing page. A page where you offer something of value to your clients in exchange for their email address and other contact information.

Or you can also use the lead forms on Facebook and LinkedIn. Those are great as well because the people don’t have to leave the platform to give you their information.

Typically what happens next is you send them an email. Sometimes it can be a text. But emails are easier to set up.

What should you say in that email? You want to get an appointment set up with them right away.

It doesn’t matter when the appointment is. What matters now is to follow-up. What happens now is they get a reminder sequence up until their appointment.

The sequence can be anything from emails to texts to phone calls. It depends on your business and the service.

If you are having the customers coming into your office, maybe texts and phone calls will work better. If it’s a video conference, maybe emails will work for you. Usually, emails and texts are going to be enough.

But whatever it is, you need to have multiple contacts with your lead before they show up. And if they don’t show up, then you touch them several times after that and get the appointment rescheduled.

Why would you do that? Well, you paid for the lead upfront. They’ve expressed their interest in what you do. You have their consent to contact them. If at any time they decide that this isn’t for them and say “Hey, please stop”, then you stop. You don’t contact them at all anymore and move on.

This is another reason why having a follow-up sequence isn’t harassing anybody. You have their consent to contact them. And if they don’t want to be contacted anymore, you just stop doing that and that’s the end of it.

My question to you now is, what happens to the people that sign-up for information but never schedule an appointment?

Yup, that’s right, they get a follow-up sequence as well.

Have multiple emails and texts going to them saying “Hey, you signed up… didn’t schedule an appointment… why don’t we get an appointment now?”

How often you keep touching them and for how long really depends on your business and how much is the client value.

There’s no exact formula behind it. We’ve set up an entire year of follow-up with one of my clients. Because it’s a $30,000 sale. You’ll need some time to build enough rapport to close that sale.

But for my coaching client that has a fitness studio, we do a 7-day follow-up sequence but we have around 12 different contacts during that period.

It all depends on the business, the product, and your client.

But ultimately you need to have some sort of follow-up system in place. I’ll give you another example.

Remember when webinars used to have those huge show-up rates? Everybody was running webinars because they had a better chance of closing people directly from the call.

I remember back in the day you’d run a webinar and you’d get a 70% show up rate. These days if you get 30% it’s awesome. And those are people that you paid money to get on the list and to get to the webinar. Same thing.

They didn’t show up on this webinar? No problem, remind them about the next webinar.

Keep touching them until they show up or they tell you to stop contacting them. Bring them back until they become a customer.

But what happens after they become a client? All that follow-up stops, right?

You guessed it. It doesn’t stop.

Because if you’ve ever run a lead generation campaign you will know that most of the times the sales you make upfront from this campaign are only going to probably make you break even.

Because you have to pay for the leads upfront and most of them aren’t going to buy. And that’s OK. Because there are ways to boost sales and make a decent profit.

Wanna know where the real money is?

In the old classic “Do you want fries with that?”. McDonald’s was literally made by “Do you want fries with that?”.

The amount of money that they make just from that is dramatic. And all successful businesses have some sort of “fries” they offer.

If you want to really boost your profit, it’s time to look at different upsells and cross-sells that you can offer.

An “Upsell” is selling a higher priced product. A king size menu or a premium package, for example. And a “Cross-sell” is selling them a complimentary service. Like “fries” or a consulting package to go along with a product.

An industry that’s really good at this is the beauty industry.

A few days ago I was talking to this friend of mine about beauty salons. He went to pick up his wife from the salon just before we met. She was supposed to only get her hair done.

But while they were doing her hair, the hairdresser went “We should pluck those eyebrows… When was the last time you had your nails done? That long time ago? Do you want to get your nails done now?”

And without spending any additional money on new leads, that little salon just greatly increased their profit. All because they asked.

A well-run coffee shop will ask you if you want three shots or four shots in your latte. Or if you want a bagel or a muffin with your coffee.

Why do they have gum and magazines that the rack at the grocery store? Because those are impulse items and it adds to the ticket. They make a lot of money off of those little things. Everything adds up to the ticket.

Retail stores and coffee shops hardly make any money on their core product. Your local coffee shop may keep the doors open with their basics coffee drinks, but it’s the upsells and cross sells that allow the owner to retire.

The core product brings in the clients, but they make their profit on what they cross-sell.

All those upsells make a difference and if you’re doing it right your customers are going to thank you for your help.

If you offer them something that they really need, they will be thankful and will appreciate the fact that you are paying attention to their needs.

I know we covered a lot in this blog. From why to follow-up with your lead to how you can follow-up with them. Then we also talked about upsells and cross-sells and why you need to have them.

Although a bunch of the things we covered are really dependent on your business, your product and your clients, I hope that the example gave you a few ideas on how you can implement the same in your business.

And if you need a hand with it, you can always book a complimentary session with one of our consultants and we’ll help you draw out a strategy tailored for you and for your business.

Just click the button below to get started.

Before you start gathering an angry mob and pillage the comment section, just hear me out.

Social media marketing is at the heart of almost every marketing campaign now. Many businesses are moving the bulk of their marketing budget to social media. And that’s great for them.

My question to you is: “Is this the right method for your business?

It would be very sacrilegious of me to not recognize the value of social media. I’m really not THAT old…  

Social media and the online world are fantastic tools. And that’s exactly what they are.

Tools.

Tools to help you find where your customer is and show up in front of them.

For far too long there’s been this distinction between “social media marketing” and “traditional marketing”.

Right now, we’re getting back to where it’s just “marketing”. And you need to make sure that everything you’re doing is in alignment.

Here’s what I mean by this.

It wouldn’t be to your advantage to set up a LinkedIn marketing campaign just because LinkedIn is the social media platform you use the most.

Because when it comes to any type of marketing the first question should not be “What tools should I use?”.

Instead, Ask Yourself “Where Are My Customers?”

Let’s start there.

If you are a local fitness studio, your customers are going to be primarily on Facebook. But maybe a direct mail campaign will work better for them. It all depends on who your customer is.

If you want to reach people over 60, a direct mail campaign is going to be a better option for your studio than an Instagram campaign.

But if you want to reach people under 25 maybe Instagram or Snapchat would be more suitable.

It’s about how well you can identify them.

Anytime I work with somebody, the first thing we do is we talk about their customer type and we talk about the customer avatar. Some people call it customer persona.

It’s the same basic concept, but the idea is to understand your customer well enough to develop your marketing correctly.

You may have more than one customer avatar in your business and that’s fine. But we’ll talk about one for now.

Before You Decide On The Tools, You Have To Have The Basics In Place.

That is the demographics of your ideal customer.

This could be age, potentially race, sex, married, unmarried, whether they may be going to college, university, maybe do they own a house or a car… That’s demographic information.

The best part is that this information is readily available online. People share this information publicly and you just have to find it.

So, you want to make sure that you have that and you understand that.

Now, the second aspect of the customer avatar may sound a bit complex. But don’t worry, I’ll even share this crazy method to get the necessary info from your customers.

This second part is all about what it’s called “a psychographic”. Which is how they think and what are their purchasing habits.

There are actually classifications online that you can get that dig and divide psychographics. But for now, what we need to do is understand the simple stuff. The basics.

We need to look at how they talk, where they are making their purchases and where they are hanging out online.

So, where do they make their purchases? And where do they gather their information for the purchases? And all of that is part of our customer avatar. We want to understand as much as we can about our customers.

I understand this may sound like a lot. And I did mention a crazy method that you can find that information. And that is: You Ask Them.

If you have an offline business, it’s very easy. You ask them when they come in. You talk about it our you ask them questions about themselves.

You just make it a part of your conversation so you understand more about them. And if you want to integrate online marketing into it then you want to make sure that you ask questions about where they hang out online.

If there are any particular groups they are involved in, websites, or even forums.

I know that forums are a 90s thing but they still are very popular in certain markets. And the only way to know what type of marketing you should do in your business, you should know where they spend their time.

In some cases, even if your customers are primarily online you can use “traditional marketing” to break their pattern and stand out.

But it depends on your product as well. Even if you are selling ice cream, you’re probably not selling it online. But you could market it online if that’s where your audience is.

Don’t Look At It As An Only Online Or Only Offline Kind Of Thing.
Look At It As An Integrated Marketing Campaign.

So, that’s where you start.

For example, if you are selling to a professional above 40, certainly above 35, now more and more LinkedIn is where they’re at. So, you might be doing more LinkedIn marketing.

But another question I always ask is “What do they read?”. I like to know what they read because maybe there’s an online site that we can run ads on. Or maybe there’s an offline print magazine we can utilize.

That’s all part of your marketing mix.

It’s hardly ever black and white. It all depends on who your customer is.

And then, after you understand what sites they’re on, you develop the strategy to connect with them.

Let’s talk a little bit about strategy. Maybe you connect with them on a website and you collect their information and send them an email sequence to bring them in as a customer.

Alternatively, if you are running a seasonal sale, you might advertise the sale directly in the magazine they read weekly.

If you know from previous experiences that your customers need a bit more time to think about it before they make an investment with you, you might create a hybrid strategy.

You can start in a magazine, or maybe when they come in your store, and later connect with them online and have that email sequence help them consider becoming a customer or a return customer.

You have to decide what your strategy is to connect with them. But at the end of the day, it’s all marketing.

And that boils down to:

1.    Understanding who makes up your market, where they hang out, and what their purchasing habits are
2.    Understanding the messaging they want to see by taking part in numerous conversations with your market
3.    Find the right medium and tool you are going to use to show that message.

This last point is called in the marketing world “Message To Market Match”. Which is basically if your market relates to your message and to your marketing. If they do, they will become your customers.

If they don’t, it probably means that your message isn’t right, or you need to change the tool. Meaning the social media platform.

So, in my opinion “Social Media Marketing” is dead. It’s just marketing today.

Social media platforms are just tools in your toolbox that you may or may not decide to use. It depends on so many factors that making social media marketing the be-all and end-all of marketing would just be silly.

Some niches are limited to online. But then again, there are limits to many of the markets online.

It depends on how your product/service and who your audience is.

If you want to better understand your market and have a custom strategy, feel free to book an exploratory phone conference at no cost below. And one of our consultants will get back to you right away.

Just click the button below to book a complimentary exploratory call and we will help you set up the right strategy to generate new business.

This year started out rough.

My business was hurting because I had spent the previous six months focused on one client who was paying me over $10k a month.

I had other clients, but wasn’t doing anything to generate new ones.

In fact ½ of my new clients were ones I was helping friends with and talking a cut of the project.

It just wasn’t what I wanted to do.

I was hurting financially and I wasn’t delivering to the best of my ability for my friend.

Somewhere along the way I read a post from Dan Meredith

It may even have been something from the Espresso With Dan archives

To be honest I can’t point you to the right one.

But I had the biggest “Duh” moment of my life.

I help B2B companies with their marketing strategy and

I was primarily doing B2B lead generation for my clients….

But I wasn’t doing it for myself…

I realize how obvious that is when I look back on it, but I was too stuck in my rut.

So in July I wrote down a plan to build my agency to 1 million in a year

I planned out the staff I would need and

I developed a lead generation strategy to get me there

And then I implemented it

Less than 4 months later

I’ve added 16 new clients

Have over a dozen more in my pipeline.

And I’m hiring staff

Have you ever had one of those days when you just don’t want to “do people”

A day where you would be happy just curling up with a book or the remote control

Where you would be thrilled if you didn’t have to talk to anyone outside of possibly the food delivery person.

I was having one of those mornings last Saturday.

I had an event to go to where a lot of my friends would be

An event where I could relax and have fun doing activities that I enjoy

But I had to leave my house and “shudder” be around people.

After many small internal arguments…I managed to get in my car to drive to the event at 10:00am.

While I was there I kept saying I might be leaving soon

But I finally I realized I was having fun.

I realized I was having great conversations with old friends and new friends

And before I knew it I was having a such a good time that I lost track of time and ended up finally leaving around 11:00pm at night after having a great time

What does this have to do with business?

I was getting to that.

I’ve had similar experiences when it comes to projects that I needed to do.

You see I love what I do. I love helping people grow their businesses

I love seeing my lead generation clients getting successes like Tom whose business has grown almost 10 fold since we started working together

I love seeing my coaching clients have that “aha moment” where they finally understand why I’ve asked them to do something

Like when I showed Rebecca how to use a full launch sequence instead of simply sending one email and how it almost tripled her response and her profits

I love doing it,

But some days I have to have that same internal argument as I had last weekend.

I need to push myself to get stuff done…

But then I remember I love doing what I do and I wouldn’t do anything else.

Do you love doing what you do?

Using social automation wisely means saving time, increasing your visibility and reach, promoting your products—and having people think you are present more than you’ve ever actually been before.

It feels personal, and is well-timed.

Here are seven tips for making the most out of social automation …

1. Don’t Sound Like a Robot

Our first tip is our most important: Just because you are automating a post, or sharing a link to your latest blog post, you don’t have to sound like an impersonal robot. Add a “you”-based sentence that speaks directly to your ideal audience member. Be warm. Use your authentic voice!

(They shouldn’t be able to tell your post is automated!)

2. Customize Your Automated Posts for Each Social Network

Don’t send the exact same message, worded the exact same way, to every network. For one thing, most networks have different requirements. You have to condense your message to fewer than 140 characters on Twitter, whereas a Facebook post can be longer.

Make the most of each network’s unique sharing guidelines! Take the time to customize for each network … then automate!

3. Schedule Your Posts Before You Go on Vacation

Just as you prepare in many otherwise, you also need to prepare your social sharing before you go on vacation. Yes, mobiles make it easy to keep up with social media no matter where you are … but ten to one that consistent schedule you’ve built up will go out the window (or prove to be a pain) if you rely on keeping it while taking a vacation from your daily routine.

Pre-scheduling regular social posts will ensure that you keep your visibility prominent. And you won’t be left in the lurch in case you encounter disasters like no mobile coverage in your vacation spot … or dropping your laptop in the ocean!

4. Pre-Post About Your Vacation

If you’re planning a vacation, be sure share images and posts about your preparation, if you think your audience would enjoy it. Doing this makes your followers feel included in your plans (disasters as well as triumphs). Including them makes it feel as if you are taking them along (not leaving them behind).

And you can create a whole bunch of posts as you shop and pack—and pre-schedule them at designated intervals for maximum engagement.

5. Automate Post Content Creation—but Don’t Automate Interaction

The fact is … you can’t automate interaction. Better to have someone write posts for you—but ALWAYS go over them to add your personal “voice”. And monitor responses, and respond!

6. Use Content Creation Wisely

It’s a great idea to find and curate highly useful, interesting content for your audience: But even if you pre-schedule pieces, do go into your schedule and add a sentence introducing the curated content, or putting your own twist on why you are sharing it.

7. Fill the Gaps!

Use social media apps and tools to automate posts and fill the gaps between your posts—and make sure you anticipate all the “lows” in the month when you won’t be available in person to post. (E.g. you’re busy at a three-day conference or in hospital for a minor operation or off the grid at your parents’ cottage.)

Automating your social media should be seen as an aide, rather than a substitute, when it comes to social interaction and growing your reach. (Think of social automation as leading a party of schoolchildren to the zoo … and having three extra teachers along to make sure each child is properly monitored and cared for.) You’re still present … but you’re making sure you’re everywhere, even when you’re not.

Social media is the fastest way to connect with your audience. Be sure to make the most of it, every opportunity you get.

We chose a pharmacy management system because the family of Derek Jurovich, one of the other founders, owned a pharmacy and we knew the industry was built on old green screen DOS and Unix applications. Many of those apps weren’t Y2K compliant and the industry was ripe for a Windows based application. We partnered with a pharmacy co-op, got an investor and started development.  As things go with software development we ended up being way behind schedule and we ran out of money.

The only other project we were working on was building a Keno game platform and development on that was behind schedule as well. That client was pissed and ended up raiding our company for our employees. That included offering me a job, which I declined. In the end he managed to get the graphic design team and one developer, but the rest stayed with us even though none of us knew how we would keep the doors open and keep everyone paid.

We did what we had to do and shelved the product. I had to lay off most of the company which included my Dad and my Sister 4 weeks before she was getting married. Which ironically was easier than most of the other dozen people I had to let go.

We managed to find a couple of projects to keep the last couple of employees.  I didn’t take a paycheck for months and paid myself less than $6,000 a year for two years. I was months behind on my rent, but thankfully my roommate carried me.

That was a really dark time for me, my entire identity was built around the company and I didn’t know what to do except keep coming in to work and keep trying to find more work for our team. Lots of people thought I was nuts, but I was driven top make it work.

While we were limping along we found out that Albertsons needed to replace their current Pharmacy management system and was looking for a solution.  We reached out to talk to them. They were somewhat interested, but wanted us in their offices for a demo 5 days later. To be honest II think they thought we were complete vaporware.  We found out years later that they had asked some of our clients about us before they even met with us.

The bad thing was we were broke, really broke. We didn’t know where our rent money was coming from and all three of us founders were broke. Heck on one of our last sales trips one of our developers had put the plane tickets on his credit card because the rest of us were completely tapped out.

Luckily our investor was willing to front us $5k. That wasn’t enough for last minute tickets from Billings, MT to Chicago, IL. I managed to find tickets from Denver to Chicago for $1,700 each. So we bought them.

The day before our presentation my business partner, Lincoln and I loaded our computers, our touchscreen and our clothes into his Suburban and drove the 9 hours to Denver. I had my laptop plugged into his cigarette lighter and worked on our PowerPoint presentation on the way.

We got into Denver late that evening, ate some food before checking into our motel. Then we worked well past midnight.  I worked on our PowerPoint and Lincoln made some updates to our demo and tested to make sure everything was working correctly. Then we tried to sleep until 3:30am when we ahd to get to the airport and fly to Chicago.

As luck would have it, the tickets I bought were for Midway airport, when we got to Chicago we realized that the meeting was clear across town and ½ a mile from O’Hare…oh well off we went.

We got there 2 hours before our presentation. When the receptionist called back to let someone know her first words were, “wow you guys are early.” We just smiled and said something about our flight arrived early and just wanted to make sure everything was set up.

We got everything set up and made sure the demo was working correctly and then paced for over an hour.  We were glad to see that we were the only two people in the building wearing a suit and tie so we ditched our jackets before the presentation.

Then they slowly started to filter in there were quite a few of them.  Chris Dimos, who was the head of their Pharmacy Technology was the one I remember the most.  Then we went into the presentation. Ironically they could care less about the PowerPoint and ended up crowding around our demo and Chris even sat on the floor playing with it.

Needless to say Lincoln and I left that meeting feeling pretty good.  Then it was back the airport and back to Billings. We were elated and exhausted.

After we were back in Billings we had a conference call with Albertsons. They were impressed with what they had seen, but expressed some concern about a company of young guys being able to deliver something as mission critical as their pharmacy app. We introduced them to Harvey Stewart a business consultant we were working with who we said would become our CEO if the project went forward.

That made them feel better and they wanted to come see our office…which made us a bit nervous because it wasn’t….shall we say…that professional. So we said “of course” and got it scheduled. Because we had a meeting scheduled our investor fronted us enough cash to pay rent and our employees their salaries. Then we went to work getting the place presentable.

We borrowed art from a gallery in our building with the promise we would buy some of it if we received the contract. We had friends come in and help us clean everything up and we moved every computer we could find into our server room. Which they never entered lol.

We made all of our developers clean up their offices and we made sure everyone was presentable. For the developers that meant a shower, a shirt with a collar and clean jeans.  For us that menat dress slacks, dress shirts and ties. We did everything, but ask our friends to sit at desks to make us look bigger…not that we didn’t discuss about it.

They came out with additional people and reviewed our software again. They had reviewed dozens of options and they had come down to three options:  doing it in house; which they really knew wasn’t feasible, going with IBM Global Services or going with us.

The thing in our favor was we were close to a shipping product and IBM would be starting from scratch. They decided to go with us contingent on a code review by Microsoft. Microsoft’s team came out and gave us raving reviews. It probably helped that we had had our lead developer contracting with Microsoft on their Active Directory team and we were using Active Directory extensively in the application. Plus Lincoln had been on the SQL Server team at Microsoft.

Then negotiations started and I’ll skip those details, but the short version is an 11 person company that had no idea where their next month’s rent was coming from negotiated a $35 million deal with Albertsons, the 3^rd largest pharmacy chain the United States. The first $25 million was guaranteed the additional $10 million was for version 2 and 3.

Needless to say a lot of people didn’t think we could do it and it was a crazy, insane time getting there. We ended up having the usual craziness of business lawsuits amongst the founders and we ended up writing a 6 figure check to our Keno client because he had threatened to sue us.

We were eventually screwed out of the second $10 million, but ARx, the pharmacy system, is in use today at 1,300 Super Value and Albertsons across the United States.

When it was shipped it was the largest implementation of Active Directory in the world and one of the larger SQL server databases as well. Not to mention dozens of other industry leading items like touch screen, Active Directory rights based on fingerprint scan, script digitalization among many others.

That’s the end of the story today, but next time I’ll tell you about our journey to winning and then losing a $16.6 million deal in Uganda and President’s Bush’s phone call. That’s quite a story too. But that combined with a number of other things caused the eventual demise of RMTG, the little company that landed a whale.

Have you ever dreamed about becoming an authority? You’re not alone. Lots of us dream about it, but few of us ever get a chance to realize their dreams. Becoming an authority is no easy feat, especially if you’re starting from scratch. However, by reading and taking the advice in this article to heart, you’ll already be ahead of most of your competitors.

You’ll learn more about what being an authority means, and you should also have a pretty good idea about the steps required to get there. While everyone’s path will be different, there are still many practices you should try to follow to maximize your chances of becoming an established authority in your field.

Let’s get started, shall we?

The power of authority

People have always looked up to experts and authorities and they always will. Since it’s impossible to know everything we sometimes have to consult the advice of others, and that’s when we look for authorities on the topic in question to help us out. We don’t listen to just about anyone – and that’s a good thing.

The definition of an authority is essentially a well-known, recognized expert in a given niche. Since expert knowledge is required it follows that becoming an authority isn’t easy, and usually involves many years of learning and building up a reputation. For someone who’s involved and interested in a niche it is definitely possible though, given some time and hard work.

It’s definitely a good goal to strive for, as there are many perks and benefits of being an authority. First of all, it will open the doors to a whole range of opportunities that would otherwise be out of reach. Being an authority means having people come to you with interesting, and often profitable, ideas and projects. It also means that most will respect your opinion, whether they agree with it or not.

Another definite upside is that making money will be easier than ever before, either by recommending other’s products as an affiliate or selling your own products and services. Just think about what happens when a TV doctor recommends a specific product – it flies off the shelves. You can do the same thing, and people will trust your recommendation and take action.

The downsides are few, but one is that it won’t just be opportunity that comes knocking on your door every day. It will also be people looking for handouts and free help, and this problem only gets worse as you gain more fame and recognition. Some established authorities in large niches get hundreds of emails like this every single day! It’s a good problem to have though, as it means that people look up to you and come to you for help.

Carrying yourself like an authority

Being an authority means living up to certain expectations. Carrying yourself like an authority is important even in the beginning stages, as it helps shape how people think of you.

One of the most important things is taking every chance you get to help people with their problems. If it’s something that requires much time or even money to solve, just pointing them in the right direction can be very helpful. The more people you help, the more you’ll be recognized as a knowledgeable authority in your field.

Take every chance you get to network and make new connections, in and out of your niche. You never know when one of those connections can help you reach the next level on your journey, so don’t be too quick to rule anyone or anything out.

It’s a given that you should try to be humble, even if you happen to know more about your niche than most people. Acting polite and respecting others are also good ideas – even if you can technically become an authority without anyone liking you, you’ll find that everything is so much easier and smoother if you avoid being rude or condescending towards others.

You don’t necessarily need to shy away from a bit of controversy though, as that can be very helpful for your reputation. Stirring something up just for the effect isn’t recommended, but don’t be afraid to go against the grain and voice an unpopular opinion if that’s really how you feel. It will only help establish you as someone who’s honest and free thinking.

Actionable steps to become an authority

As we’ve already established, becoming an authority is rarely quick, nor easy. It requires spending much time and effort on learning the ins-and-outs of the niche, and also working hard on marketing and personal branding.

Writing a Book

One thing that everyone who’s interested in becoming an authority should consider is writing and publishing a real hardcopy book. While e-books are certainly popular today, anyone can write and publish them. They don’t scream “authority” like a hardcopy book does, especially one that’s well received. It’s actually possible to publish a book without writing a single word, by simply hiring a ghostwriter (this is actually more common than you might think).

Starting a Blog

Starting a blog is practically a must, to use both for marketing and networking as well as an outlet where you can share your knowledge and inspire others. To start building traffic and establishing a reputation you can also guest blog at other websites in your niche – most guest blogging deals allow you to place a short author bio in the post, linking back to your blog. You don’t have to be a great writer to blog either, just try to be aware of your limitations and adjust your writing style accordingly.

Social Media

Of course trying to become an authority while ignoring social networks is not a good idea these days. You don’t have to be active everywhere, but you need at least one platform where you can interact with others in your niche and market yourself. Whether that should be Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram is up to you, but a good strategy is looking at what’s most popular in your particular niche and trying to focus on that. Also, don’t forget that while social media is new and exciting, regular forums still work very well to network and discuss with other people in a niche.

Teaching

Making an effort to teach others and help them learn more about your niche is also a great idea. That could mean anything from writing helpful tutorials to hosting seminars or even launching complete courses on the subject. As long as you truly help people learn this will give a huge boost to your authority status.

I’m an authority – now what?

When all the hard work is actually starting to pay off and show some results, it’s time to start thinking about what to do next and how to ensure you get to keep your authority status indefinitely. The only thing you shouldn’t do at this point is becoming completely passive and just counting on everything to last forever with no effort at all. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.

However, you definitely can shift into a lower gear and go into maintenance mode at this point if you want. As long as you take every opportunity you can get to further cement your authority you’re not risking very much by not working as hard as before. Try focusing on high impact activities that make a big impression on people for best results.

If you’d rather stay active there are a couple of options available. There’s always a new area to try to conquer, even if you’re an established authority at this point. Maybe you’ve been blogging successfully but still haven’t written a book, or you’ve built up a massive Twitter following but you’re still somewhat unknown on the large industry forums. Now’s the time to tackle those challenges!

Another option is branching out to related niches, using your existing audience to kick start this new venture. If you try to ensure your new niche is one that the following you’ve built up might also be interested in, you’ll have a good chance at being successful almost instantly.

Conclusion

After reading this brief guide you should hopefully have a pretty good idea about what being an authority is all about, why it’s something you should strive for and how you can potentially get there.

Remember that getting there isn’t something that’s done in a month (or even a year), so it requires quite a bit of dedication and hard work. It’s definitely more of a marathon than a sprint, so don’t burn yourself out too quickly trying to do everything at once. Once you start seeing the first results from your efforts you’ll realize just how beneficial being an authority can be.

Good luck!

If you would like to learn about my 90DayAuthority Course and receive my Free Guide Gettign Started on Your Authority Path click Here

I’m a huge fan of John Wooden.

For those who don’t know, John Wooden was the coach of the UCLA men’s basketball team in the 70’s. He is the winningest basketball coach in history. UCLA won ten NCAA national championships in a 12-year period, including an unprecedented seven in a row and 88 games in a row. No other team has won two championships in a row since then.

He was really an amazing individual, and an amazing coach. During his coaching and in all of his books he talks a lot about focusing on fundamentals.  He would literally take the best athletes in the country and make them work on fundamentals. When I think of fundamentals I think of free throws, passing etc… No he would go further than that.

The first thing they’d learn in practice is how to roll their socks on properly and how to put on their shoes to make sure they wouldn’t get any blisters. Perfect preparation ensures a perfect game. That’s how John Wooden was.

Every minute detail on a player would be tracked and he would focus on making each player better every day. Really an amazing man. If you’re not familiar with John Wooden, look him up. You’ll love learning about him.

Now let’s talk about today’s quote.

Things work best for those who make the best of how things work out.

Seems a little obvious, doesn’t it?

That’s the thing, we forget that it’s the obvious things that change our lives.

It doesn’t have to be these huge amazing ah ha moments.

We need to just look at what is coming our way, what life is giving us, grab a hold of it, and move forward.

We can’t worry about what happened yesterday, we can’t worry about our past. We need to focus on what we can do with what we have and move forward.

Quote again, “Things work out best who make the best of how things work out.”

You know how it is….

You’re staring at your computer screen trying to decide what subject to write about

or what to write about that subject.

You write a sentence

then rewrite it

then delete it and start in a new direction

An hour later you’ve written a paragraph

if you’re lucky and you aren’t happy with what you wrote

Trust me I’ve been there and still struggle with it.

Here’s what I do to help myself get over this:

Videos

I do videos – I know my topics and answer questions all the time when I’m speaking. For whatever reason I’ve always overthought the answers when I write them. My workaround is to do short videos and have them transcribed. It saves me a lot of time.  I even figured out how to automate the process when I was my Motivation4Today passion project.

Don’t Look

I write without looking at the screen – since I never learned how to touch type this is actually how I normally do it J But I don’t allow myself to read or edit until I’ve written the entire document. Some people will even turn off their monitors, I haven’t gone that far, but some people swear by it.

Constantly Searching

I write down ideas all of the time – there’s nothing worse than not having any idea what you’re going to blog about. So I’m always looking ideas. If I hear a quote I like in a movie I write it down.

My girlfriend looks at me like I am crazy when I pause a movie and grab my journal or jump onto my laptop to write a post. That’s what happened with this one here when I was watching Denzel Washington in The Equalizer

Always Take Notes

Related to the above – If I find something interesting I take notes. It can be an interesting article, or a webinar, something I find in my house, something someone said or even a funny situation. One of my favorites was finding one of my journals from the early 90s and reviewing my goals – it made for a great blog post.

Know Your Reader

Make sure you understand your reader / customer profile – you’re reading this on my personal blog so the articles on here aren’t as connected as I do for clients like Avitus Group or on LinkedIn for example.

Hit Publish

Don’t be afraid to publish even if you don’t think you are done.

Ask yourself a question “if I don’t write anything….how many people will read it”

That’s right NO ONE.

It’s far better to get something out for people to read and don’t spend too much time worrying about typos.

Trust me someone will point them out for you.  Plus you can always edit your posts – they aren’t permanent

Those are my thoughts and this is my first post in Bradley’s 30 day Blog Challenge so stay tuned you’ll be seeing a lot more of these from me.

– so remember better

Sloppy success is much better than perfect mediocrity

Have an Awesome Day

Doug

Both movies tell the story of a man who sees himself as a protector.

In the first movie he’s the bodyguard for a 9 year girl of security for a businessman  working in the US embassy in Mexico.

In “The Equalizer” he’s retired, living under an alias and working at a home depot type of place in the lumber department.

He’s a humble, but scary man and they show both sides of him.

I’ll write another post explaining my fascination with the first one, but tonight I watched the second film “The Equalizer”

In this film one of the things he does is go to a local 24 hour diner and read at night.

One night while he is reading a young Russian girl who’s a prostitute starts talking to him.

She asks him why he’s reading there every night. He explains that his late wife was actually the reader and she was reading the 100 greatest books.  After she passed away he felt he should do the same so they would have something to talk abuot when he saw her next.

She then asked how many he had read so far and he said 91.

The prostitute said what will you do when you finish reading all 100.

He said, Take singing lessons, open a  donut shop …I haven’t decided yet.  Which she said in her world she didn’t have a choice – He then said then change your world.

Then Change Your World

That’s the profound piece that I took away from that interaction.

It struck me enough that I pulled out my laptop .

Too often we catch ourselves hung up on what we can’t do and why we cannot do it without realizing that we can change our world.

As Jim Rohn likes to say “you’re not a tree”  you can get up and move to a better world.

Especially with the internet today everything we want to lean is available either free or for a very reasonable cost. We don’t need to spend $20k a year to get a college degree we just need to decide that we want to learn and go for it.

I have a friend who decided this year that she wanted to pursue modelling again. Something she gave up pursuing when she started to have kids a couple of decades ago. She was nervous to start,  but she’s going for it and the world is opening up for her.

It’s amazing how the world is willing to provide when we are willing to let ourselves truly decide to go for it. In my past I’ve done audacious things and I think it’s time I start doing them again.

Too often we just need to decide on our big audacious goal and go for it.

We need to believe in ourselves and not be held back by our own limiting beliefs.

We aren’t trees and we can change our world.

Now  get out there and change your world