I often wear a tin foil hat when it comes to Google and this is just one of those things that makes me go hmmm.

Source: Dave and Dan: 2012 Predictions Illustrated

This was among the first Dave and Dan comics we recently created for Hua Marketing.

Source: Dave and Dan Comic: 2011 Internet Marketing Recap

I am often astonished by people that get caught up in minutia in their personal and business lives. These people search for answers everywhere when the basic answer at how to succeed in almost everything is something they learned in grade school.

Math.

Basic mathematics are the key to achieving all of your largest and smallest goals.

Let’s run through an example of this theory:

Entrepreneur A decides that he wants to follow his life long dream of opening a restaurant. He has worked in the industry for years and decides what he needs is a unique gimmick and lots of space to capitalize on volume. He decides to focus his menu on your standard Pub foods, and invests about $30,000 in television for the establishment. Based on his theme he also invests quite a bit on the bar. By month 6 of this restaurants existence the owner is $100,000 in the hole and decides what is needed is a revamped menu to attract more customers.

His restaurant is doomed.

Entrepreneur B decides to open a restaurant to follow her lifelong dream as well. She plans the menu, and creates a business plan based on a fixed price model. She knows her market so she can gauge that based on her style of cuisine she will attract an average of 3.5 people per table. She estimates her revenue per table at $75 and profit per table at $35. She wants to maintain profit of 20%. This leaves her $20 per seating to pay for utilities, rentals space, vendors, and marketing. She decides based on this that she will start her dream in a small 10 table bistro and focus on remaining profitable. She leaves the decor simple to maintain low maintenance costs, and uses foursquare, Groupon, and word of mouth to grow the foot traffic because she can get a CPA of $5 per table through these routes.

If you think Entrepreneur A doesn’t exist you are incredibly wrong. People who bank on their ideas more than the value those ideas will bring to consumers, and more importantly how profitable that value can become, are jumping into business ownership everyday. A good idea is just that, a good idea. It is nothing without basic math based planning that makes them tangible concepts.

A word of advice to people going into business relationships with people like Entrepreneur A, these are the types, that once they fail from the lack of planning begin playing the blame game. It is best to stay clear and brush up on your math for your next big opportunity.

Often times when people look at starting a new business they try to replicate and existing idea, perhaps adding some features, or they look to invent something new.

Why not combine the two, and create something new from something old?

This idea has created amazing new markets again and again.

Cirque du Soleil is a business that employs 4,000 people worldwide and brings in an estimates $810 million dollars in revenue every year. Cirque du Soleil is by any stretch of thinking a large entertainment business.

It achieved this success by taking two dated forms of entertainment, the circus and theater, and mixing the pieces that made each a success. They took two established concepts, and invented their own product, which has seen success over the last 27 years.

Most of my thought processes these days revolves around how to take the well established “marketing services” offering and make changes to turn it into something completely new. I think we are on the path to make these changes, and you will see them unearthed in 2011, as we move towards our major goals of creating something unique in the digital marketing space.

If you are only regurgitating old ideas without new thoughts on how they should work from inside out, then you are likely not destined for entrpreneraul greatness. Don’t get me wrong, you can have moderate success with a remake, but Guy Laliberté, the founder of Cirque du Soliel, never looked at Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and said “I must recreate this show animals and all.”

We all create goals.

Few of us reach goals.

I made a personal goal in 2008 to create an industry leading online marketing company. It took several years, and some AMAZING partners and clients, but we are there. I have also accomplished some strong personal goals in the last few years, but I have failed in reaching more goals then I have succeeded.

Recently I began dissecting what I did right and what I did wrong.

What I have come up with, with the help of a few recent books I have read (The 80/20 Principle and The Power of Less) is that my success came from large goals that I supported with micro-goals.

The “goal” of becoming the best online marketing company is as broad as it is vague. To shoot only for that is almost impossible. In order to do it I had to create micro-goals:

1) Create the original Search & Social with Jordan Kasteler. We wanted to offer companies a firm based on youthful, fresh ideas in online marketing. We worked hard to differentiate ourselves from the older, more established firms. It worked to get us in the game.

2) When we merged with Loren Baker’s Search Engine Journal, Inc. the goal was to make a real run at being the best linkbuilding company in the space. We wanted to do this through differentiated linkbuilding, i.e. blogger outreach, social media, content aggregation, and linkbait. We built commodities in a white hat fashion, in a way that had only been previously been accomplished in scale by less legitimate lini brokering
firms.

3) Second Step Search, which began in 2009, had the goal of creating scalable workflow solutions and reporting for SEOs and marketers. This included CopyPress.

4) The last step, the merger of BlueGlass, brought together all of the pieces into the final product that would allow us to achieve our original goal.

Breaking the micro-goals down further:

1) We entered the game and created a differentiation
2) We set out to become experts in one channel of a multi-channel market
3) We figured out how to scale other channels of that market
4) We merged with awesome marketers in those other channels to pull of the goal

By looking hard at these areas where I have succeeded I now know that in order to be successful I have to:

1) Create an overarching but tangible goal. Think big. $1 million in monthly widget sales recurring
2) Setup Micro-goals for this with deadlines. Lets say you want to achieve the $1million in monthly sales, first you should plan on a. creating a sales strategy b. hitting $250,000 a month in sales c. increasing sales force by 50%
3) Create daily tasks to help you reach the micro-goals. In the example above in order to hit my first micro-goal I need to a. do competitive analysis of the competitions sales strategy b. create a pricing structure based on this analysis c. create a sales funnel that meets or beats competitors.

By making this a daily activity, you work daily on achieving your dreams. The upside as well is that by dissecting items like this you know that you can get minor achievements accomplished without burning out chasing the big prize.

So this has to be one of my favorite scenes of my favorite movies:

In this scene from Step Brothers, Robert tells Dale and Brennan that they shouldn’t “lose their dinosaur.” He tells a story about when he was a boy all he wanted to be was a dinosaur, and he lost that dream when at 17 his dad told him to stop acting like a dinosaur and get a job.

As ridiculous as the scene is, didn’t it happen to all of us at some point?

When I was a kid all I wanted to be was a writer. I would write short stories, and try to begin novels. I wrote poetry, and in high school was editor of the school paper. In college, I studied creative writing. On graduation day the main question from my family was, “Now what are you going to do.”

In our society, there is a perceived separation between childhood dreams and reality, as though the two could not exist. The reality is that in this society, for it to function properly, we can’t all be movie stars, presidents, and athletes. But overall why do we need to lose our dinosaur?

Social media has given us the ability to take back our dinosaur. In my case, you are reading this blog post, so while I may not have written a book (yet) I am obviously getting to leverage my love for words.

Other things I wanted to do when I was a kid:

Be an archeologist – I really thought Indiana Jones was cool, and wanted to run away from giant boulders. If this was still my passion why couldn’t I take a video camera on some amateur archeological digs and highlight them in blog format.

Be a musician – When I was in college I was convinced I would spend the rest of my life playing music, this didn’t happen, but again there is no reason I can’t self produce my music and share it with the world via P2P software, iTunes, and some web savvy.

Even my teenage cousin has started to pursue his dreams in this fashion:

However, Dr. Seuss said it best:

I’m sorry to say so
But, sadly it’s true
That bang-ups and hang-ups
Can happen to you.

Society needs people to do all types of jobs, and with that we often settle. However, the bright side of this is that we do not have to be defined by what we do for money.

Find your dinosaur again. Begin to experience those things that your dreams used to be built on, and share them with others in the world. Don’t be surprised one day that on top of being happy you all of the sudden have a profitable blog, youtube channel, or some other revenue channel you have made just because you love it is what you are doing.

The Two Sides:

1) Friendly, Giving Attitude Towards Your Business Relationships
2) Fierce Adherence to What is Right

You never know…

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.

Lao-Tzu

In November, at Pubcon, Greg Boser and I took a number of people who were very new to the industry out to dinner at one of my favorite restaurants in the world. We escorted them there via limo, and then we took a party bus to one of the Pubcon happenings afterwards.

The concept behind the dinner was to pay it forward. I have been able to excel quickly in my field based on the support more seasoned individuals have given me, and that jump start has meant the difference.

Everyone at the dinner seemed kind of confused as to why we would do something that nice. The answer was two fold:

1. We are nice guys that like to give back to our community, as is the whole BlueGlass crew
2. However, we were also scouting out the future of our business

That brings me to the first side of business relationships, a lesson sometimes hard learned:

Be humane to everyone, because you never know who they will be in the future

Greg and I are a perfect illustration of this idea.

I first met Greg in 2009. By then he had been in this industry around 13 years, and had seen many people come and go. However, Greg took the time to get to know me, and find out what I was all about. Him, Todd Friesen, and Dave Naylor were all old guard search guys that took me in, with little reason on their part to do so.

A year and change later Greg and I are business partners helping each others dreams come true.

You never know who that goofy kid next to you at a conference is going to become. A vendor, a client, a partner, all possibilities are within the realm of reason. Outside of the simple concept of being humane for the purpose of being humane, this concept should be enough to guide us in business.

The flip side of this coin is the old adage that people will mistake “Kindness for weakness.”

I can tell you that this is unequivocally true.

You are wrong, unless you are right.

Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.

Sun Tzu

People throughout my career have mistaken my large heart for a fools mind. In these times I am able to flip a switch , and you must be as well.

Business is guided by items like contracts to set the record and guide disputes. As long as you are in the right in areas where business relationships may test you, then stand by your principles and make them stand by their agreements.

However, even in these places of combativeness, never lose your humanity. Remember the rule above. Nothing makes an opponent angrier than when you handle a disagreement in a calm, straightforward, and polite manner. Not only is this the right way to deal with a fellow human being, you will also find that it gives you incredible leverage in the dispute as you trudge forward with a clear mind and they almost always find themselves being worked into a state of emotional imbalance.

By setting your relationships with people in your professional life, including employees, into these two places you will always find success. You shouldn’t sway. Is this a time where becoming defensive or getting on the offensive is correct? If the answer is no, be guided by principle #1. Make it your default setting for all of your relationships. On top of being more successful, I guarantee you will find yourself happier.

1. Get Ready to be Broke

Tough lesson to learn. It gets even tougher when your company is actually generating revenue, but you need to reinvest it rather than take it off the table. Starting a company is about the long term investment, not the short term payoff. If you are focused in the short term, affiliate marketing or consulting is likely a better fit. These types of ventures allow you to run lucrative solo enterprises. If your goal is to build a company with a product or service that you are passionate about, then prepared for the early days of scraping.

Learn a lesson from my mistakes, this is easier without a family to feed.

2. Don’t Be Afraid to Take Funding

If you have a strong business plan and people are willing to invest in your idea their is nothing wrong with using OPM “other people’s money.” In fact, it can help you accelerate your growth and success. Working capital and cash flow are the two toughest elements for a young business to get a hold on, and OPM helps entrepreneurs move past those concerns. In the first 6 months, of a company your ability to control capital and cash flow can make or break your business.

The one thing not to forget is that the money still belongs to someone else, and that means they are expecting a return. One of the best ways to lose control of your enterprise is to take OPM via Venture Capital and squander it. You will find yourself on the outside looking in at your own company.

The basic types of funding options include:

Loans - These can be a good option if you have some collateral to borrow against, i.e. equipment or if you are willing to pay higher interest rates. SBA loans are a good option as well, and they have been getting more funding as of a late.

Receivables Funding - Also known as factoring, is a good funding option for businesses that find themselves receivables rich, but cash poor.

Angel Capital - This is a great place to start in terms of private equity. Usually you are dealing with a single investor who is willing to give seed money for a portion of your company. The other great piece of this equation is that most angels have the connections and motivation to get you your first large round of funding via venture capital firms.

Venture Capital - For your larger capital needs, VC is the only way to go. With each round of funding the private equity groups are going to expect a larger piece of the pie. Keep this is mind as you move through funding options, and play out how the piece you are giving up an effect you long term.

Here is a good list of VC firms.

3. Don’t Be Afraid to Not Take Money

After the funding sources above you also have personal credit, savings, and loans.

While I think using OPM is great, all of the ventures I have been involved with have been 100% self-funded. I have now been involved as an owner in 5 companies, and although each had unique needs, including extensive development needs for Second Step Search and BlueGlass, we have gotten by going the self-funded route.

One note on this is that the structure of my companies has always been centered around a strong services offering. This allows us to take dollars earned from this revenue stream and allocate it to other projects. I would not suggest self-funding for a company whose first product may be 6 to 12 months from launch and several more months from revenue producing. It really comes back to forecasting for cash management, not just short term but over the first few years of your business.

4. Look at the Future Not the Now

Goal setting is key. It becomes very easy to get complacent and believe , “I have accomplished it all. I am a success,” and then turn around the next day and lose it all. Economies and markets move too quickly for you to rest as a business owner. Look out on the horizon and try to forecast what direction your business will be going in, and make changes for this direction.

5. Product Clones Rarely Succeed (Unique Value Proposition)

Plurk or Twitter?

If someone ever asked me to invest in “the next …. ” I would automatically say no. Very few, if any, product clones ever work.

I know Pepsi worked, but Zune anyone?

6. Get a CPA

Before you hire your first employee find your first CPA, and on that note your first lawyer as well. These people will pay for themselves short term in piece of mind.

7. Cash Flow Supersedes Growth Rate

Don’t spend what you don’t have. It is a simple rule, but one that is overwritten in our minds by our societies desire to consume. You are taught to “buy now, pay later” from the time you can sign a credit card application.

The title of this post could have been “Cash Flow is King!”

Every decision you make to hire or expand your business should not simply be based on current growth rate, but more so forecasted cash earnings.

8. Clarify Your Goal Before Setting Out

Goal Setting.

It is key. Even when you have succeeded to a point, it is time to rewrite your goals for what is next. It can help you make major decisions.

“My goal is acquisition.” If this is your mind set then going down the private equity funding route makes sense. Play with OPM, and take your cash off the table when the sale comes.

“My goal is to build my legacy.” If this is your mind state, having as few hands in the pot is likely going to lead to your long term happiness, and it also means that accelerated growth is not a must.

On my most recent travels I happened to be lucky enough to grab time on a plane to watch Inception.

The movie was great.

However, one element of the movie really struck a chord in me more than any other. In the film, the concept of a totem plays a key role. The main character, Dom Cobb, utilizes a spinning top that used to belong to his deceased wife Mal.

As explained by the official Inception Wiki:

“A Totem is an object that is used to test if oneself is in one’s own reality (dream or non-dream) and not in another person’s dream. A Totem has a specially modified weight, balance, or feel in the real world but in a dream of someone who does not know it well, the characteristics of the totem will very likely be off. In order to protect its integrity, only the totem’s owner should ever handle it. That way, the owner is able to tell whether or not they are in someone else’s dream. In the owner’s own dream world, the totem will feel correct. Any ordinary object which has been in some way modified to affect its balance, weight, or feel will work as a totem.”

Basically a totem ties its owner to reality.

This stuck with me as I traveled back to Tampa to be with my family. For two weeks I had been traveling to conferences and visiting BlueGlass employees and offices. There is a distinct difference between my reality away and with my family. As I sat there in my seat, aside from the questions that crept up about the real importance of the final totem scene in Inception, and the overall significance of the movie, it became apparent that for me the thing that grounds me in my reality is my family.

The Importance of Your Totem in Life

A lot of what we perceive to be important simply isn’t. There are ideas that are perceived to be important, but at the end of the day pail in comparison with what we really need to survive, i.e. food, water, shelter, health. In society, we have created false realities, and often times as entrepeuners we become overcome by these perceptions.

Sure money can buy a lot of these things, and if you are chasing the almighty dollar to support your family, than what is really important to you is your family and not the money itself. As consumers we lose sight of this. Somehow providing milk for our children becomes the same thing as buying the 2011 model of whatever car it is that has caught our eye.

For me, it is always money. The concept of finances consumes me because of my past. However, I do not often tie it back to its core, which is my desire to shelter and feed my family. My desire becomes mixed with my competitive nature to get MORE and never just to get ENOUGH.

This desire for MORE leaves me perpetually empty. I seek what I can’t have because my target is constantly moving. All this leads to is a feeling of failure. I become a consumer, and have a bizarre need to get more and trade in what I have for something better.

If I could simply keep my eye on my metaphorical totem I would realize that simply having enough to provide my family with the amazing life they have is all I need to consider my life fulfilled.

What is your totem? What is it that drives you, and is that concept something concrete or something grounded in illusion? The scary part of being driven by concepts that have no concrete root is that they never lead to a sense of completion, and over time the thrill of the chase can fade.

The Importance of Your Totem in Business

In my business life I have a totem as well. It is to create products and services that redefine any industry I create them for. I am obsessed with the concept of legacy. For me, nothing rivals the concept of figuring out how to do something no one else has, and to build that into a product that will forever change the way people approach that process.

If your totem is simply sales or revenue your reality is not going to based on something that has long term substance.

Amazing products generate revenue. Sales are the way you connect consumers with your amazing products. A business based on merely an amazing sales team will find itself with short client life cycles, and retaining clients is far more cost effective than producing new clients.

By keeping my reality focused on the perpetual improvement of products, I give our sales team ammunition.

This concept is similar to the difference between the thin affiliate site and the well created brand portal. The long term money and success will always reside in producing value.

The Importance of Your Totem in Decision Making

And in the end your totem should influence your decision making process. To often I let the false realities that haunt me influence my choices, and if I could have been just a bit more focused in those occasions many of the insanely bad choices I have made in my life could have been avoided.

My totem is my family. My beautiful wife and amazing sons. But like the totems in Inception everyone’s will be unique. Your’s may be personal fulfillment and peace, or having enough security to start your own business and feel the challenge of entrepreneurship on a daily basis. Perhaps your totem is the primal thrill of competition and victory, another form of personal fulfillment. Whatever it is make sure it is grounded in reality. Chasing goals that have no concrete foundation can lead to not only unhappiness but the death of creativity and the derailment of true greatness.

Greg Boser and I manage the search business unit at BlueGlass. It’s a dynamic partnership that seems like it came together via fate.

We both have interesting stories about how we got into this business, and are cut from a similar cloth of self made entrepreneurs.

From Greg’s own story:

In 1995, Greg was watching CBS news’ coverage of the Malibu fires. During the broadcast there was an aerial shot of three guys foaming down a house and running inside. Greg was intrigued. It turned out that it was a company in Boulder, Colorado that sold protective foam equipment to people living in fire prone areas. As part of their marketing strategy, they chased fires to demonstrate their product. Greg contacted the company and said, “Hey, I want to work for you.” They hired him and Greg became their Southern California sales rep.

Greg started using AOL and CompuServe because it was a good way to connect to fire fighters to recruit them for commissioned sales positions. Greg calls it his “first foray into internet marketing.” After a while Greg decided that he wanted to be a dealer for the company and sell other products instead of working with them directly as he had been. Sometime in early 1996, Greg started his own company, Wild Fire Defense Systems and started building himself a website. Greg built it but no one came. So he began looking for all the information he could get his hands on. That is when he stumbled into Danny Sullivan’s white paper, Webmaster’s Guide to Search Engines. Greg became one of Danny’s first subscribers. He recalls, “You used to have to fax him a paper fax of your credit card number because there was no online billing.”

After applying what he learned from Danny, he began seeing an increase in traffic. So Greg borrowed some money from his dad and locked himself in a room for six months to learn everything he could. Greg confessed that he “used to stalk Danny.” He would find out what email discussion list Danny was hanging out in and join those lists. Greg was introduced to John Audette and Marshall Simmonds through I-Search. Greg says, “You didn’t really have any clients so everyone would sit around and write these brilliant posts and submit them.” During that time Greg didn’t have any clients either so he worked for free, gaining experience by doing SEO for his daughter’s karate instructor’s website.

It was pretty hard for Greg in the beginning because he had to convince everyone why they needed SEO. But even though they were difficult times, Greg feels that they were good years where he met a lot of people that he is still friends with today. In those days Greg would make a change to a page, submit the content and in five minutes he would have a new rank at InfoSeek. Greg said “You would submit, refresh, [say] oh I went down to seven, that didn’t work, change the page, submit – it was insane – pots and pots of coffee all night long.

Greg was basically one of the first guys in this business and paved the way for a lot of the successful techniques people like myself have built our careers on.

My story is very similar.

The other similarity between Greg and myself is our zeal to share what we know with the community. With this in mind we thought we would take some time away from this years Pubcon to take a few people new to the industry out to dinner, allow them to ask us questions, and get to meet those insanely important connections that can make or break your career. Dinner is on us, and we plan on being completely uncensored in terms of tips.

Where are we going? Well I love meatballs .. so we are going to head to Cafe Martorano’s at the Rio.

When? Wednesday at 6:30 p.m.

What do you need to do to attend?

1) This needs to be your first conference or 2010 needs to be your first year in the business. We want to meet real newbies and also rockstars that are just now venturing out from behind their computers to meet the masses.

2) Write a comment below sharing how you got started in this industry. If it doesn’t interest us, we probably won’t want to spend a few hours eating meatballs and pasta with you, so make the story good.

3) Your twitter username in the comment so we can tell you that you won.

Looking forward to meeting the future of this industry.