Category: business tips

7 Top Business Books 2023

Looking for the 7 top business books in 2023?

Today we'll dive into the top business books of 2023, hand picked for you.

During the ups and downs of the economy, advertising, and business sometimes we need to be inspired by those who came before us and achieved incredible goals.

DISCLAIMER: I OWN AND HAVE READ ALL OF THESE BOOKS. NO FLUFF!!!!

Let's get started reviewing the top business books of 2023

1. How to Win Friends and Influence People

Dale Carnegie's amazing book How To Win Friends & Influence People shows you how to build sustainable social networks that will sky rocket your business.

This is a book you will read again and again over the years because of all the gold it holds. Its on the top of many best business book lists.

"Thank your opponents sincerely for their interest."

Here, Carnegie talks about how you can't ever win an argument because let's say you do win, and score points in the debate - if the other person resents you for winning the argument and wants nothing to do with you...

...did you really win?

He goes on to say that we should find common ground with our opponents.

If we're both arguing about the same topic, it means we already share something in common: passion for this subject matter.

Quoting everyone from Benjamin Franklin, to Andrew Carnegie to Galileo 300 years ago, this book is probably the best guide to life and business you can ever buy.

That is - if you practice what he preaches and have follow through.

You could be given the cure for cancer but if you never use it what good does it do? With any business development strategy or self-improvement book, you need to apply what you learn to your life for it to truly be powerful.

I have seen some amazing things happen when I practice the principles Dale Carnegie has shared in How to Win Friends and Influence People. I'll end with this quote from the book:

"Begin in a friendly way. Scolding won't win people to your way of thinking. No one can be forced to changed their minds. But they can be led to if you are ever so gentle and friendly. A drop of honey brings more bees than a gallon of gall. So with men, if you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart."

Check out How to Win Friends & Influence People

Here because you're having issues with Facebook ad policies? Read What to Do After Violating Facebook’s Ad Policies

2. Atomic Habits

James Clear in Atomic Habits gives you the blueprint for how to create healthy habits that will optimize your performance in life, business and fitness.

Habits are how we live our life already right? But how many of us have gameified our habits for success? Or even tried to optimize habit building?

One thing I loved about this book was how short clear and concise the sentences were. No fluff - just actionable content.

James Clear talks about how if you commit to a daily habit, having a physical action correspond to successfully completing it will encourage you to continue.

This could be as simple as crossing a day off the calendar or dropping a marble into an empty glass jar - but it works really well to make that brain-body connection. We get something out of a physical action that symbolizes completing a task on our to-do list.

Another cool tip James Clear gives is called Habit Stacking.

This is where instead of committing to doing a triathlon you commit to a simple easy habit like just putting on your running shoes every day at a certain time.

Then, once that habit is completed a few times, stack the next habit of running for a couple of minutes.

After you complete this habit, stack the next habit onto the previous habit for running for 5 minutes.

Breaking up a larger goal into smaller bite sized pieces makes it easier to achieve.

I definitely recommend this book as it's super easy to read and comes with worksheets online and easy to follow tips. Read it today!

For tips on running FB ads as a business, read How to Navigate Facebook’s Advertising Policies as a Business.

3. The Dhandho Investor

The Dhandho Investor is a great investing book - ever notice how motel owners all have the last name Patel? (More on this later).

One night I'd organized a board game event at a local pub called Easy Tiger when I found out about The Dhandho Investor. I met a money manager named Eric Schleien at the event who I became friends with, who was new to Austin, Texas.

We got to talking about stocks and investing which he is a lot more well versed than me on. Facebook ad policy and book writing are my zone of genius (check out my sci-fi novel Zero Point Horizon), but investing is his specialty.

I asked him for tips on getting into the stock market which, even as up and down as the NYSE may be, is still more stable than crypto. He told me to check out The Dhandho Investor.

The Dhandho Investor lays out the powerful framework of value investing. Written with the intelligent individual investor in mind, this comprehensive guide distills the Dhandho capital allocation framework of the business savvy Patels from India and presents how they can be applied successfully to the stock market.

The Dhandho method expands on the groundbreaking principles of value investing expounded by Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett, and Charlie Munger.

Why Patels Own All the Motels

The author, born in India, set the framework by explaining how the extended Patel family, immigrants originally from the state of Gujarat in India, came to dominate the American motel industry.

The key, he said, was a business philosophy called Dhandho, which means “endeavors that create wealth”; the word is pronounced dhun-doe. More specifically, it referred to the low-risk, high-return approach of the Patel family.

The first Patel family to come to the United States, via Uganda, arrived in 1972. As refugees from Uganda, the family had few language skills and practically no savings. They arrived at a particularly bad time as Americans were trying to deal with a serious economic downturn, one made worse by the Arab oil embargo.

The motel sector may have been suffering more than most since it is directly affected by the availability of disposable income and travel. Both had taken a beating in the early 1970s, and many motels were selling at distressed prices, in some cases by banks that had foreclosed on them.

Papa Patel, who may be an archetype, thought they might have to settle for two minimum-wage jobs (one for Patel and one for his wife), which was hardly enough to raise a family with 3 teenagers.

Fortunately, he discovered a 20-room motel for sale at a very low price and considered the possibilities. First, he thought the bank or seller would be motivated to sell and probably finance between 80% and 90% of the purchase price.

The family would live at the motel, thus eliminating any rent expenses. Since they will live and work in the same place, they would not need a pricey car.

And, the family, including the three teens, can do all the cleaning, maintenance and management. It looked like a no-lose situation, so with a few thousand dollars of their own cash and a few loans from relatives and friends, the family bought the motel.

Because they had no paid staff and kept expenses to a minimum, they became the lowest-priced motel in the area. That allowed them to offer the lowest prices while remaining as profitable as other motels.

In turn, they enjoyed a higher occupancy rate and made above-average profits. So with rates of $12 or $13 per night, and occupancy of 60% or less, they brought in annual revenue of about $50,000.

From that $50,000 came interest expenses of about $5,000, principle payments of $5,000 and a further $5,000 to $10,000 in operating expenses and taxes (amounts of taxes are not discussed).

According to the author, “The annual return on that $5,000 of invested capital is a stunning 400 percent ($20,000 in annual returns from the investment—$15,000 in cash flow and $5,000 in principal repayment).”

If, on the other hand, the motel had failed, the loss from their personal guarantee would have been less than $5,000, which would have been unfortunate but not life-changing. As Pabrai put it, “If a Patel cannot make the motel run profitably, no one can.” So the lender would have to be very hard-pressed to foreclose.

2nd scenario: For several years after they buy the motel, the economy is in bad shape, so the lender works with the Patels to renegotiate the terms of the loan. For 5 years, the family earns nothing on their investment, but in the second 5 years, the economy recovers and they sell the motel for $50,000. Ultimately, this works out an average annual return of more than 40% over the 10 years.

3rd scenario: The economy does not recover after year five and goes on for another five years with the family unable to make payments. They are foreclosed and lose their investment. This represents a negative return of 100% (but they will have lived rent-free, if nothing else).

The author looked at the likelihood of the 3 scenarios and assumes there is an 80% chance the first, and best case, occurs. He also attributes a 10% likelihood to the second (mean) case and a 10% probability that the third and worst-case scenario unfolds.

Based on the scenarios, Patel estimated there was a 10% chance of losing everything, a 90% chance of winding up with more than $100,000 after 10 years and an 80% chance of winding up with more than $200,000 after a decade.

The author noted that these numbers do not include an increase in the motel’s value and no room rate increases for 10 years.

He also wrote, “This is not a risk-free bet, but it is a very low-risk, high-return bet. Heads, I win; tails, I don’t lose much!”

As it turned out, the big bet worked out for the Patels, and soon they had a thriving business and lots of cash flow, allowing them to buy a house of their own and an even bigger motel. Even then, they stuck with the basic business model of ultra-low costs, charging lower rates than competitors and bringing in lots of cash.

Soon, they could afford to buy more motels, which they handed over to other Patel families to run. As the author noted, a snowball effect was developing and by 2007, the Patels owned half of all the motels in America.

Interesting stuff right?

Think about picking up the The Dhandho Investor - the investing strategy here will give you plenty of thought experiments that may boost your business.

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4. Think Like A Rocket Scientist

Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life

Think Like A Rocket Scientist is behind the scenes wisdom from an actual rocket scientist.

The author, Ozan Varol has got a pretty interesting backstory: During his time at Cornell, he served as a member of the operations team for NASA's 2003 Mars Exploration Rover project; which sent two rovers to examine the Martian surface.

His book, How to Think Like A Rocket Scientist breaks down how Elon Musk built SpaceX with 1st Principle Thinking - even to the point of buying rocket parts off eBay!!!

I gave this book to my son and he's actually reading it (miracles of miracles). I love Varol's way of challenging the status quo to remove stagnation from business:

"Process by definition is backwards looking. It was developed in response to yesterday's troubles. If we treat it like a sacred pact - if we don't question it - process can impede forward movement over time, our organizational arteries get clogged with outdated procedures."

"Do we own the process or does the process own us?"

I've worked at many Fortune 500 companies - and later many were my clients in my own Facebook ad policy consulting business. So, I'm familiar with the corporate world. I see the same mistakes being made for the past 100 years because of an attachment to outdated thinking.

Ozan Varol has a way of making you examine your perspective that leads only to improving your process. I'll leave you with another favorite segment of How to Think Like A Rocket Scientist:

"It's one thing to say, 'let's think outside the box', it's another to actually step outside the box and examine your company or product from the viewpoint of a competitor seeking to destroy it."

"...Why might my boss pass me up for a promotion? Why is this prospective employer justified in hiring me?"

"Why are customers making the right decision by buying from our competitors?"

"Ask yourself, "Why are they making that choice?"

"It isn't because they are stupid. It isn't because they're wrong and you're right. It's because they see something that you're missing. It's because they believe something that you don't believe. And you can't change that worldview or belief by calling plays from the same old playbook."

#micdrop

Whew! I loved reading this book and it is on my top picks for a reason. If you look at how you're framing things, sometimes that alone can help you level up.

Check out Think Like A Rocket Scientist today.

(Looking to side step a FB shutdown? Peep Top Reasons Why Facebook Disables Ad Accounts).

Let's take a look at more crazy ideas, so good they are practically looney.

5. Loonshots
How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries

Loonshots by Safi Bahcall is a unique read that teaches you how to the concept of Phase Separation when it comes to the idea guys and product manufacturers for the perfect balance for product development and distribution.

I'd heard about it from a book club I used to be part of and was surprised at the knowledge it dropped.

This book reveals a new way of thinking about the mysteries of group behavior that challenges everything we thought we knew about nurturing radical breakthroughs.

Bahcall, a physicist and entrepreneur, shows why teams, companies, or any group with a mission will suddenly change from embracing new ideas to rejecting them, just as flowing water will suddenly change into brittle ice.

Mountains of print have been written about culture. Loonshots identifies the small shifts in structure that control this transition, the same way that temperature controls the change from water to ice.

Using examples that range from the spread of fires in forests to the hunt for terrorists online, and stories of thieves and geniuses and kings, Bahcall shows how a new kind of science can help us become the initiators, rather than the victims, of innovative surprise.

Having worked at Apple during iPod launches back in the day, I appreciated his breakdown of P-type technologies that were once widely dismissed before becoming household names like:

• The Telephone
• Apple Computer
• Digital Photography

And S-type products - a surprising breakthru in strategy that creates a new way of doing business or a new application of an existing product such as:

• AppleStore iTunes
• Frequent Flier Miles
• Google Search Rank Results

Bahcall writes about having a Systems Mindset that analyzes not just why a move was bad but how you should change the decision process behind the movie.

And what the context of that decision was to your situation, background, obstacles and what that means for how you should change your decision-making process and action or preparation routine.

He contrasts this with an Outcome Mindset which reviews why something failed.

The author goes on to say:

"Teams with Mindset 1 of an Outcome Mindset analyze why a project or strategy failed:

• The storyline was too predictable (Hollywood Movies)
• The product didn't stand out from the competition
• Those teams commit to working harder on storyline or unique product features

"Find out why something failed, rather than get defensive about it."

Wow. I wish some family members I have would take that attitude lol. Wouldn't it be great for America, as a nation, if we all got curious instead of defensive, when faced with failure?

When a book is recommended by Bill Gates, Daniel Kahneman, Malcolm Gladwell, Daniel Pink, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Tim Ferriss - you might wanna read Loonshots today.

6. Think and Grow Rich

Think and Grow Rich - I don't remember how I found out about this book, but it changed my life.

I was working dead-end jobs and didn't have a specific plan for how to get ahead in life. Through this book I learned to define what my vision of success was for my life, create vision boards, mantras, and a specific image of what my ideal life looked like.

Using the techniques Napolean Hill teaches, I got a new higher paying job, a convertible, a trip to Hawaii with my son, and eventually started my own business and became free of the dreaded 9-5 life.

It's the original mind-over-matter guide that truly brings manifesting destiny, money, wealth and happiness to you. And in a way that many later books tried to copy. But this is the OG manifestation manual.

And you don't have to be like super into the "woo-woo" to benefit from the practical visualization techniques and mind frames given here.
We can talk Freud, Jung or whoever you trust in psychology - our subconscious does create the life we live.

Good and bad.

When you embed an idea or purpose into your subconscious, it's proven that your mind will work to achieve it. I've used this book to do just that and increase my income level by 2 classes.

One of the techniques Hill teaches here that I haven't used - yet is creating the counsel in your mind of greats that came before you. Hill says that you need to create a room in your mind with a long table that your thought leaders sit at.

Whether that's John D Rockefeller, Steve Jobs, or Andrew Carnegie - the idea is that you hold imaginary counsel meetings where these avatars of great business minds give you advice. It sounds like a fascinating concept as far as thought exercises go.

Pick up your copy of Think and Grow Rich right here

Millennials and Gen Zers are migrating to influencer marketing because that feels more real. Folks are also sick of Facebook bans - learn how to avoid them

7 Habits of Highly Effective People

I think 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was one of the 1st self-improvement books I read as a teenager. I didn't understand it then, but on later re-reads I learned things you'd never guess were inside this powerful little book.

Here are his 7 habits of highly effective people:

Habit 1: Be Proactive
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
Habit 3: Put First Things First
Habit 4: Think Win/Win
Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
Habit 6: Synergize
Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

Now, let me make a disclaimer here: Stephen Covey's company itself often ran seminars that many felt gave off an MLM vibe. Also, the book is very verbose, so it does have some fluff to cut through. BUT it's worth scanning for the sections on being proactive, putting things first, building good character and integrity.

One of my key takeaways Covey's description of the Personality Ethic versus the Character Ethic.

Covey wrote that some people imitate the qualities of being a good person - just like a politician has his talking points for PR but then does the opposite when elected.

You talk to them and they are all about perfecting their public image, attitude and personality but you still get weird vibes from them. Ever met someone like that? The whole car salesman vibe?

I worked with a guy named Kurt at Facebook and he appeared to have all the surface level socialization skills but on a gut level you could tell he was wrong inside without integrity. It wasn't just me - other coworkers of his saw through the fake polite manners. He had a low character.

It was one of those strange moments when you read something and see it in real life like..damn..this person prioritized the personality ethic over actually being a decent person, lacking the character ethic.

Covey says many people seek quick solutions to their problems by looking for shortcuts and techniques from successful individuals or organizations.

However, shortcuts often fail to address the root cause of the problem - not developing a good character.

Instead, as Covey emphasizes, the problem lies in how we perceive ourselves and the world.

To bring about genuine and lasting change, we need to undergo a paradigm shift, which means changing our fundamental beliefs, assumptions, and values rather than merely modifying our attitudes and behaviors on the surface level.

That's where the 7 habits of highly effective people come in.

Similar to How To Win Friends & Influence People - if you are taking a shallow approach, you'll think you can manipulate people better when in reality the core message of the book is that you'll get along better with people if you learn to develop a genuine interest in people and develop your empathy.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People has a similar message about developing a true sense of integrity.

If we all seek first to understand the other person before seeking to be understood ourselves, this world would be a better place with a lot more compassion.

I guess, because I feel like I'm a genuine person and always being up front with folks, Covey's core message resonates with me.

You can skip a lot of the long-winded explanations he writes and benefit from being more proactive, thinking about your end goal in mind and truly listen to people.

I've passed along these lessons to my son, when it comes to having integrity and building good character - letting actions speak louder than words.

Check out 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

7 Top Business Books 2023 Conclusion

I hope you've found this list of 7 Top Business Books in 2023 helpful and have 1 or 2 on your to-read list.

I've read all of these books on this list and they've significantly changed my life. The key in reading business development books isn't to just have talking points or to sound smart.

It's about getting a better perspectives how to up your game, to optimize your process and evolve the way you think about solving problems. And scaling.

One of the best things you can do is connect the dots and have a breakthrough, in your personal life or professional. You can do this Being John Malkovich style - and get in the head of prosperous business leaders. See how they thought. And learn from it.

Before I read How to Win Friends and Influence People I didn't have a road map to build successful social circles of influence and power. Also, I wasn't a very good listener. Reading that book helped me show up better for my friends and family.

Atomic Habits gave me a great blueprint for how to keep promises I made to myself better. I'm still working on cultivating healthier habits for fitness using James Clear's methods.

The Dhandho Investor gave me the first real look at a stock market investing strategy that is sustainable.

Think Like A Rocket Scientist and 7 Habits of Highly Effective People both gave me a new way to think my way around industry roadblocks, and allowed me to open up with a few clients. The integrity I run my business with - while still flawed and a work in progress - has attracted some of the most amazing repeat clients and financial success to me.

After reading Loonshots I began examining almost misses, and failures in a new light: looking for the data in what had worked, and growing immensely in my tactics and strategic thinking.

Think and Grow Rich was a game changer. I had been laid off and was working a shitty ass job that was ripping off old people charging them for free prescriptions of life saving medicine. I didn't realize that was what the company was doing at the time, but I hated it nonetheless.

Every lunch break, I'd work on writing out the future life I wanted to live, according to Napolean Hill's instructions. I imagined getting a call with a job offer paying more and keeping my promise to my son, that I'd take him to Hawaii someday - where he's always wanted to go.

Fast forward a few weeks later - I'd found out the scam the company I worked for was doing. I walked up to my manager, handed my badge and quit - no safety net. But my integrity wouldn't let me work there anymore.

And the universe responded: Almost instantly I got the phone call and was offered a job paying $5 more an hour than my last upper tier role. 6 months later, I took my son to Hawaii and made his dreams come true. This is us at a cliff on the coast of the Big Island, in Hawaii before driving to Mauna Kea:

So, I'm not bullshitting here when I recommend these books.

I've got the money, success, and upward social mobility to prove they are effective. But, that's only because when I read something impactful, I follow through and put it to practice in real life.

What book did you read that had an impact on you? Anything you feel like you need to revisit to practice what you've read in your own life?

What do you think of the Top 7 business books in 2023? Any I missed? Did you read any on the list, and if so, what are your thoughts?
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Knowing if it’s right for you (or not)

Do you ever wonder if who you hire actually loves the job you're hiring them to do?

I saw a presentation at a marketing conference that made some great points when it comes to work ethic. The presenter suggested that before you start asking applicants for their relevant skills and job experience, ask them:

"If you weren't doing this, what would you rather be doing instead?"

This will give you an indication if they hate the job you are hiring them for. If they do then...it's probably not a great fit.

(Be sure to read my blog How to not feel like an imposter here).

At A Glance

∎ Hiring Someone To Do A Job They Hate

∎ How To Think Differently

∎ Purpose Over Profit Highlight: Australian Kids & Renewable Energy

Passion For The Job

Why would you hire someone to write copy if they hate writing? We produce the best results when we are doing something we love to do. Or at least are interested in the activity.

Now, for those who aren't founders, this may not seem as relevant because you're saying, "Trevor, I'm not hiring anybody for anything!"

But stay with me here, because this is pretty revealing for the tasks we all do in our daily lives. If we are not motivated by a personal interest in what we do, the results we produce for ourselves won't be as great.

We are 100% responsible for the results we get. Because the results we get are a direct reflection of the effort we put into working on improving ourselves, our lives, and our financial position.

It's Bigger Than Just Working Hard

Working hard doesn't mean we automatically get results because you can still be lazy while working hard.

It sounds like a contradiction but it isn't - if you work hard out of habit it's easier to keep doing the same thing than get uncomfortable, thinking outside the box to solve problems you're so used to having you've stopped trying new ways to solve them that are smarter, better and more effective.

If you are not happy with the results you are getting it's because you haven't broken mental and emotional habits that keep you on that hamster wheel and Groundhog's Day.

It is 100% your responsibility to think differently.

The speaker went on to discuss hiring C-Suite execs, operations managers, and Executive Assistants (EAs). He emphasized the importance of building a strong team that can run your business without your constant input.

I liked that idea. I'm not at the level in my business where I can take a month off from working and let my team do everything but the concept is appealing. The next thing the presenter said really caught my attention.

The topic was hiring a chief operating officer, and higher up positions like operations management. These are high paying positions.

He said, "Don't discuss salary when you're hiring. Instead, find out what they're driven by, and discover a shared purpose. They might already have money but want another need to be fulfilled. Negotiate based on sense of purpose."

That makes sense. I'd be happier working on something I cared about. He went on to say:

"Once you're both on the same page on purpose, they'll be driven to help your business level up more than just profit can motivate. If they share the same sense of purpose for your business, then they'll be thinking up ways to improve your company while they're in the shower."

I can relate to this. Working on my first science-fiction novel, sometimes I'll try to go to sleep but have new action scenes running through my head I have to jot down.

Having someone on your team that has their own motivation for helping you succeed - I like that. You may have heard me before comment on how so many jobs place people in roles they aren't fit for, ignoring employees natural aptitude, and just try to fill seats. It's what most 9-5 jobs are like.

Finding out what people are good at and what they're passionate about (there will be some overlap) and putting them in job roles that match that? Definitely a Win-Win.

We wear a dozen hats as the founder of our business. I know I feel like I have a million things to do sometimes and not enough time to do them all.

In these moments it can be helpful to take a step back and ask,

"What do I enjoy doing?"

This will help you find out if this task is right for you or not. If you don't enjoy doing something in your business - outsource that to people who love doing that and focus on getting great at what you're already good at.

It's a good reminder to ask ourselves how much of what we do in business shares our sense of purpose? And to realign our actions to doing what's meaningful to us.

Purpose Over Profit Highlight

In Tasmania, Australian high school students are bicycling to generate power for their schools, gaining sustainability awareness and making donuts! It takes about 600 watts to cook a doughnut, or if you attend Huonville High School a brisk 20-minute ride on the school's energy bikes.

Huonville High School created Zayed Huon Energy Hub which teaches students about renewable energy with hands on activities like generating electricity with bicycles to make donuts.

I can't imagine how much they'd have to cycle to make all the Christmas treats eaten this year lol.

With the most recent climate change report, reporting a "code red for humanity", young people are worried about their future.

And in a world where adults make the decisions, student Aisha Fisher said the energy hub is giving her a sense of purpose and impact.

"Being part of Zayed has definitely helped me feel like I'm doing something. I'm making a change, and that has reassured me," she said.

Ms. Fisher is level-headed when it comes to the challenge of climate change.

"Running from climate change as a young person doesn't help," she said.

"The best thing you can do is to look at it from an optimistic, realistic point of view, and see what you can do on your small scale."

[Read the full article here].

What good news is in your life right now?

Comment below!

Check out my hip hop podcast, From Da Jump

Interested in learning more about Entrepreneurs That Make A Difference? Go here.

Every other Tuesday on Clubhouse 10am-12pm CST I host a Startup Club Room called Entrepreneurs That Make A Difference - follow me @fbpolicypro to get find out more.
The next room is Dec 14th.

Facebook disapprove your ad and won't tell you why?

Schedule a time to talk to me, a Facebook ad policy expert who worked at Facebook here.

Want to check out my science-fiction novel, Zero Point Horizon? Visit my website:

www.trevorwgoodchild.com

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. . .

How to not feel like an imposter

I bet you get Facebook and Instagram posts all the time from someone living their dream life already doing what you’re hoping to do. And each time one of these posts interrupts your scroll, an all-too-familiar voice shouts:

“I knew it -- that spot's taken. Don’t embarrass yourself, there’s no room for you.”

Sound familiar?

(Be sure to read my blog The Reason Why More People Aren’t Entrepreneurs here).

At A Glance

∎ Many successful people still have imposter syndrome

∎ Overcoming doubts with consistency

∎ Self Doubt won't hold you back from achieving dreams

Trying Something New

If not now, at some point we've seen other people doing things we daydreamed about doing ourselves. Or we had a great idea we never took action on, only to see it happen for someone else later.

Newsflash: everybody who has ever tried something new faces this feeling.

So if this voice - of self doubt - taps you on the shoulder and asks, “Who do you think you are?”

I want you to think of this story.

Keep Showing Up

When I left my corporate job, I had spent most of my time cold calling schools trying to see if any would put me up to speak on mindset to their students.

I worked on my content in my blog, podcast, and attended networking events in the startup space...but what I really wanted to do was create a community of entrepreneurs that wanted to change the world for the better.

Managing a group wasn’t a topic that I had a reputation for being the best at. I didn’t have an audience begging for my expertise facilitating startup organizations.

In fact, I had no formal track record teaching how to connect multiple industries together.

Imposter syndrome and self doubt was a regular feeling for me, but I knew I could help people. I knew I had perspectives that were different from the (huge) voices that existed in the industry

The many clubhouse rooms that were all about becoming rich without any focus on the impact their industry has on the world were far too many to count. But I felt like there was a gap missing for those who both loved startup culture as well as doing something good for the world.

So I kept showing up.

And I know you can too.

Many amazing people, some are reading this blog right now, were attracted to the message: purpose over profit.

Organically, almost on accident, I created Entrepreneurs That Make A Difference. Amazing things keep happening.

So no matter where you're at right now, push through that self doubt to make big decisions, take big risks, and go to bat for the dreams that you know are possible.

Remember you are not alone, because there’s not a single entrepreneur in history who doesn’t battle with these thoughts on the reg.

Oh yeah...a few years later? It’s still a struggle. But it does get better.

Purpose Over Profit Highlight

A Minnesota high schooler with a passion for disabled animals has made giving them mobility her mission. Two years ago, after studying some YouTube tutorials followed by a process of trial and error, 16-year-old Shaine Kilyun embarked on the enterprise of making hand-crafted pet wheelchairs for animals in need.

More than mere creature comfort, the mobility devices Kilyun manufactures in her spare time are changing furry lives for the better, and even saving animals that might otherwise be put down.
“I just love animals, and I wanted to make a difference somehow,” Kilyun told FOX-9. She went on to say: “I’ve saved a few lives, and I really hope to save more.”

Since launching Wheelies Dog and Cat Wheelchairs that offers “custom, handmade, and low-cost wheelchairs for specially-abled dogs, cats & pets,” Kilyun has only charged for the cost of her materials.

The savings are often substantial—$300 for one of her creations, versus $1,000 for similar devices for large-breed dogs from more traditional sources.

If you want to check our her Instagram, it's here:

https://www.instagram.com/wheelies_dogandcat_wheelchairs

And here’s more good news.

Self doubt doesn’t have to hold you back from living the big dreams that you have for yourself.

In fact, sometimes the voice in your head saying, “You can’t do this” allows you to say, maybe for the first time, “Actually, I think I can.”

There’s unspeakable power in that small but mighty statement.

Cheering you on.

Have you ever felt like an imposter?

Comment below!

Check out my hip hop podcast, From Da Jump

Interested in learning more about Entrepreneurs That Make A Difference? Go here.

Every other Tuesday on Clubhouse 10am-12pm CST I host a Startup Club Room called Entrepreneurs That Make A Difference - follow me @fbpolicypro to get find out more.
The next room is Nov 30th.

. . .

Where has this been my whole life?

What We Can Learn from The Art of War

Military strategist Sun Tzu says this about preparation:

"The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable."

Source: The Art of War

I use this quote loosely for what an "enemy" is. If humanity doesn't pay attention to how we are affecting the planet, than our enemy is the lack of preparation.

Write Your Own Rules

How often have we experienced adverse events that could have been prevented with more attention to details beforehand? It seems like now, more than ever, people are tuning in to how we affect the world environmentally.

Blame the internet, or the positive effect social media can have, but the young and old are starting to not only address how the planet is changing but creating never seen before solutions.

These solutions create new jobs, and economy. So the old argument that we can't support sustainable energy because it would hurt business falls flat. Which is good news.

I'd rather be spending my money on a product or service that takes into account how the supply chain in that industry hurts or helps the world. That's part of why I'm always amped up about entrepreneurship.

Instead of committing to an archaic system that could use improvements, as a founder, we have the ability to rewrite the rules. Decide what markets we want to change for the better and take action to do so.

The Blade of Preparation

Being prepared is a double-edged blade. You can get so caught up in wanting things to go exactly as planned that you forget the art of moving in flow. Catching those clues of when to act can be the catalyst for remarkable change.

When you have a feeling in your gut, pay attention. Those instincts can serve you well.

At the same time, looking at long-range changes in the market, in society, in trends and preparing for certain eventualities will put you ahead of the curve.

How To Use Economics To Build Your Social Life

Keynesian economists generally argue that aggregate demand is volatile and unstable and that, consequently, a market economy often experiences inefficient macroeconomic outcomes – a recession, when demand is low, and inflation, when demand is high.

Before we get to the Purpose Over Profit highlight for this week, I'd like to propose a new way of using long-run economic predictions.

A new form of preparation.

You may have heard friends, or say it yourself: "prepare for the worst hope for the best." This isn't a great approach because it often focuses on expecting bad things to happen.

Instead of expecting the worst, let's expect the best. When expecting the best, we can still prep for the unexpected just maybe be a little less gloomy about it ha ha.

Preparing for better things to come gets our mindset tuned to what we wish to attract to ourselves. No need to go super woo woo here. It's basic psychology. What we focus on more, we tend to attract.

Those who have survived trauma often work out (or repeat) the emotions felt during past events unconsciously. This shows up in the impulse to create conflict or over-respond to a situation due to past triggers.

Recreating social situations that mirror our past emotions can either allow us to respond the same way and keep repeating a behavior cycle or give us a second chance to respond differently.

If we lived our whole life worst-case-scenario expecting, in way that's a form of trauma. We self-traumatize our mind to focus on what we don't want.

To heal from that, focus on what we want to happen, positively. Preparing for good things can in fact create more opportunities that are good.

Look up how self-efficacy works - it's a similar theory used in education with kids. The more kids believe in their own abilities to do better, the more they improve the school work they're doing when thinking this way.

It's been proven in many studies - when we think we are getting better, it improves our ability to get better.

The Biggest Enemy is Complacency

Going back to Sun Tzu - we become our own enemy when we don't prepare for complacency. Everyone gets mentally and emotionally comfortable when we have established routines day in and day out - including routine emotions and social responses.

But remember to challenge yourself to break up that routine. Look we all have stuff we're juggling. We don't have to move a mountain to just touch base with ourselves every now and then and just ask,

"How can I do this better?"

And give yourself the time of day here. Don't rush through it. Pause and see what your mind suggests.

As far as your social life...Remember that people aren't stationary, they change opinions, grow, move away, switch jobs, get into and out of relationships and may not always be there.

Preparing for a Change You Can't Predict Sounds Like a Paradox.

It does sound a bit contradictory right? But the more fluid we are in adapting our perspective and learning from each experience - even the small ones during the day - the better prepared we become for those unexpected changes.

Take a look at your network. How many people do you know? How long have you known them? There will be a range of intimacy for how close you are to some verses others.

Taking a Keynesian long-range view of your social life may be helpful. You can look ahead and ponder how people may change over time.

This allows you to be more supportive and anticipate how to keep those social bonds strong rather than drift away.

Ever had a friend who had a baby? They disappear off the face of the Earth lol.

How do we keep up with friends who are too busy to keep up with us?

In small and incredible ways we can take the initiative to do acts of kindness that may make a huge difference in the long term.

Big picture view.

In a way, my drive to become successful in business is relying on the prediction I have of how much the world will change in ways we don't know.

Having multiple streams of revenue, in multiple industries provides a safety net. Not everyone can do this today. But it's good to keep in mind. Now for this week's POP highlight:

Purpose Over Profit Highlight

It is estimated that the aviation industry emits 2.5% of all carbon dioxide emissions nationwide and is responsible for 3.5% of global warming.

Replacing petroleum-based aviation fuel with a sustainable alternative is now a reality.

A mustard plant called Brassica carinata can reduce carbon emissions by up to 68%, according to new research from a University of Georgia scientist.

“If we can provide suitable economic incentives along the supply chain, we could potentially produce carinata-based SAF (sustainable aviation fuel),” said Dwivedi, associate professor in the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources.

So yeah, powering planes with mustard seed fuel could help reduce the carbon footprint of the aviation sector while creating economic opportunities too.

This comes at a great time. In September, President Joe Biden proposed a sustainable fuel tax credit which would bring federal agencies together to scale up the production of SAF nationwide.

Dwivedi says:

“Carinata has the potential to be a win-win situation for our rural areas, the aviation industry, and most importantly, climate change.” [Read more here]

Where has this been my whole life? Sustainable jet fuel? Sounds pretty cool.

Every year --sometimes every month-- we see new innovations that improve the world.

Hope your week is full of happy coincidences.

-Trevor

PS. Want to get this blog in your inbox? Join my newsletter:

https://trevorwgoodchild.com/entrepreneurtalk

PSS. I'm working establishing Entrepreneurs That Make A Difference as a 501c3, find more info about it here.

Know an amazing story of an entrepreneur putting purpose first over profit? Comment below!

Check out my hip hop podcast From Da Jump

Every other Tuesday on Clubhouse 10am-11am CST I host a Startup Club Room called Entrepreneurs That Make A Difference - follow me @fbpolicypro to get find out more. Next room is Nov 16th 20201

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. . .

Best SEO Tips in 2021 Featuring Steve Wiideman

I interviewed Steve Wiideman for the Best SEO tips in 2021 and he delivered some incredible content I'm happy to share with you.

(Be sure to read my blog The Reason Why More People Aren’t Entrepreneurs here).

At A Glance

∎ Learn the magic of SEO after Google's Hummingbird Update

∎ 3 principle-based factors on using Google to increase your sales

∎ BONUS: Get access to a $599 SEO course for FREE

Best SEO Tips in 2021

Trevor: I'd like to hear your thoughts on SEO, with some specific questions I have there. I've SEO'd my LinkedIn profile. It has gotten me a lot of business doing that.

Because people search LinkedIn for stuff and people don't realize, uh I guess I should say business owners don't realize how valuable SEO is on all platforms. Whether it's LinkedIn, or their website, or their YouTube videos or whatnot.

If you could share, maybe top 3 tips for folks that are doing SEO themselves or maybe what they should look for if they want to hire someone that does SEO for them.

Optimize LinkedIn & Identify What Search Results You're Pulling

Steve: Sure you make a great point with LinkedIn. Optimizing your LinkedIn profile is fantastic. But when you optimize all of your social media profiles it can help you with your online reputation management as well.

So when someone does a name search your social profiles are there not just on page but off page getting some links to those profiles pages so google feels that’s the results are the most relevant searches for your name.

Do a google search with your name in quotes and see what appears for your name. Figure out which of those things you own and control and optimize the heck out of them.

Drive links to them from blogs, your friends blogs.

Isolate those things you don’t want to appear so you can get those removed or buried and then isolate things that are neutral that you don’t control. So you know in the mix of things here’s what I control.

Here’s what I can’t and that’s ok and here’s what I want to keep an eye on to go away.

Google SEO Tip #1: Solving for the intent of the user

Do I have the most relevant page to solve what people are looking for?

Steve: This for Organic SEO - a principle based approach:Not just the key words - key words died in the Hummingbird update from Google in 2013

It's about solving for the intent of the user now.

What is it they really want?

They searched for title tag principles because they are trying to get their click-thru-rates up in search results. But what do they want?

Higher CTR? Or Higher keyword rankings?

So when you solve for what they are actually looking for...If someone is searching for cheap flights...ask:

What is it that they really want to do?

They want to save money, they don’t want to pay baggage fees right? They want value.

When you answer what your users really want thru survey:

Through customer support, intake calls whatever you need to do so that your page really solves what your customer wants this takes it to the next level.

Rank Brain - the other big update that sits on top of Humming Bird is trying to understand the meaning of words.

You do need to emphasize search terms that have high search volume when you launch a new page because Google is going to crawl that page, identify those phrases and test you in the search results for them.

Long term it’s how users interact with your listing. So you can hack your way to the top with key words but if other pages are doing a better job of solving what users are looking for and provide more of a delightful experience, long term your rankings will go away.

So that’s #1 looking at your on page, being the most relevant and doing a search for the keyword you want to appear for.

• Study the top pages

• Study the on page

• Study what links are coming into those pages

• Study how many people have curated or quoted from the 1st paragraph on that page

• Use this data to inform on how to optimize your page

Google SEO Tip #2: Optimize Your Off Page Results for Google

Steve: Google in particular started with an algo Larry Page coined as Page Rank. It isn’t where you rank on the page but the algorithm that crawls thru the net looking for info to understand what pages have what meaning and are a good match for a phrase someone searches for in the search results.

They are crawling thru links to get to pages and those links count like votes. Like a sign above the door that says what’s behind the door, so before you walk thru it you read the sign and go oh, this room must be about kitchen.

So google reads the text in the link, then read the page and says oh this page being linked to must be about this topic.

Then they crawl analyze the page for titles, headings, the URL the page name.

They look at all these hidden factors and based on the on page and off page this page might be a good match for this search term.

I’m [Google is] going to test it and 1 out of 100,000 times people are searching for this term if it does good I’ll show it twice for every 100K then every 50K.

Then more often you can see this in Google Search Console

It all stems from how often they hit your page and how many other websites are linking and mentioning your website and your content.

This is just organic results, not Google maps, not video search, we’re talking about specifically Google web search (Google depending on your industry having about 80-90% market share is the search engine we want to pay the most attention to).

So those 2 are 2 of 3 principle-based factors.

1. Am i improving the relevancy and helpfulness of my page over time?

2. Am I improving the visibility and mentions of my page over time?

Google SEO Tip #3: Search Appearance & User Behavior Signals

Steve: And the 3rd thing is search appearance and user behavior signals - how users actually interact with your listing.

And in many cases you can almost eliminate everything on page and off page if you’re already ranking in top results If your page is the most helpful - it will stick there at the top.

It’s really around the user signals that tells Google and other search engines that this listing is the most helpful so I’m going to leave it there on the top until they start choosing another listing more often and staying on that listing.

So our goal is to provide a really click enticing, helpful, maybe really rich result by using some of the different technology available maybe using some reviews to the page so you get stars in the search results.

Maybe having some FAQs section at the bottom of the page that will show up in the search results if you use that FAQ market.

Maybe it’s putting some mark up around your video or images so they shows it as a thumbnail in the mobile search results.

It’s making your listing really stand out so it’s not just 1 of 10 listings that have just a title, description and a URL but instead you have some really rich content in the search results.

Trevor: So it’s using these tools to appear more valuable at a glance.

This speaks to value based marketing,versus hard pitches, deliver value first to engender reciprocity to be viewed as more helpful and enhance word of mouth digitally.

Steve: Now we’re talking about attribution and the whole buyer's journey and you’re right there are some biz owners that get myopic of driving people to just sales content:

"I want to make sure my sales pages are #1 don’t waste your time with all this fluff marketing content just get my personal injury or car accident lawyer page #1 that’s all I want."

But the reality is you can’t make that happen without some of the marketing content because that marketing content attracts links and it helps your wholistic SEO and builds authority if your short summary of the page, that long form:

• How to

• Where to

• Why

• What is

• Strategy

• Tips

• Advice

• Checklist type content...

When it’s out there and it gets linked to that can support that sales page that you want to perform that you want to rank.

So it’s hard sometimes convincing the leadership team that we need to create a really strong content marketing strategy around what our customers are looking for before they are ready to hire us.

Maybe even doing some industry content where we get other sites in the industry to reference some data some case studies some research we did that isn’t already available online.

So I think you’re right I think it’s understanding that buyer journey and addressing each phase of it when the user isn’t at the point of making a purchase or ready to make a decision yet.

Trevor: This would align with influencer marketing and getting shoutouts from people that are already established and things like that.

But I mean this is why you have a blog - you develop an audience you provide all this valuable content.

And it serves a secondary function:

So when you’re giving away information and there’s not a sales pitch there maybe there’s a link where hey if you want to find out more feel free to enter the funnel, essentially, without saying those words.

What also helps with that [content marketing] is: it’s a pre-qualifier.

You don’t have to get low quality leads because people are coming here they are attracted here by the content.

Instead of someone that just saw “hey this is for free” let me click on this. It’s a free deal! And then you get everyone that wants the freebies instead of the people that are more invested for a longer CTV for the lifetime journey of the customer.

Steve: It can be a huge win.

With Meineke car care centers, we did this thing where we didn’t necessarily want our best evergreen content on the blog but that’s where they put it.

The blog for me is about industry news, having a voice in conversations that are happening right now what’s new with the company.

It’s really time sensitive and will get buried in RSS feeds over time.

I like to nest up the content that’s more evergreen that will be just as helpful 3-5 years from now under its appropriate silo.

So I can get those really competitive pages to rank well so I’ll nest them in a URL that’s a sub page of that main page and I might use the blog to link to it so those sites that do take RSS feeds and publish that.

If they consume HTML you might get a link back from it. So it’s still worthwhile to mention in a blog.

So with Meineke they did use the blog. We did one every Tuesday we came up with a list using Conductor Searchlight keyword.

We came up with a list of all the different keywords we thought people were looking for.

Every Tuesday we launched a How-to.

• How-to jumpstart your car battery
• How-to check your engine oil
• What’s the difference between standard and synthetic oil

We did this every single Tuesday.

Every post was optimized to rank with unique pictures we took on sight, sometimes videos, a step-by-step it was a really strong campaign and a lot of that content is still up if you want to look at it.

After 5 months we attracted over 500,000 visits.

I think the most visits we had was was during Coachella which was when people were looking for how to jump start your car battery which I thought was really funny.

So anyway in doing that, what was neat about that campaign wasn’t that we drove that much traffic and earned 200 links to the site in the process.

But because everyone needs an oil change and they did at the time every 90 days they were able to use re-marketing.

So for everyone who visited the website we were able to remarket to them with ads you know $14.99 oil change coupon or something.

So not only did we did we attract links, drive traffic to the site, build brand awareness get a lot of those featured answers that now appear in voice searches since Google Assistant will use featured answers in 70% of its results.

We were also able to drive some of that traffic back to the website using retargeting from Facebook, from Google, from Bing and from there continue to build our list.

We were able to almost quadruple the volume of visitors that are coming to the website just by creating that value that you were just talking about.

Trevor: It sounds like you have enough in your brain to build a course. Do you have a course in SEO?

Steve: Yes

Trevor: Where can people go to find out more information?

Steve: I’d like to give everyone free access to it if you want?

Trevor: Sure!

Steve: It’s at academyofsearch.com

What I decided to do 3 years ago which is actually one of my own personal dreams is to teach. I started teaching at Cal State Fullerton, UC San Diego and Fullerton Community College.

At Cal State Fullerton I was teaching a class on strategic SEO.

I took a lot of that course content that inspired an SEO course we have at Academy of Search - like a 6 week program - it’s a $599 course but your listeners can access it for free.

Just use SEOSTEVE and they can get free access.

Trevor: Is there anywhere else people can go to find out more about you and your services that you’d like to give a shout out to?

Steve: Sure I’m actually all over social. My handle is SEO Steve. But if I’m not responding quick enough our team - we have a team of 9 other search geeks like me, no sales people we just love to help. Especially small businesses, we don’t work with a lot of small businesses.

So any help you need as a small business is all free and something we do to try to help the business community.

Just use the handle the Wiideman pretty much anywhere.

Instagram, Facebook all over the web. If there’s anything we can do to help to solve for a problem, a page isn’t ranking, a competitor is doing something spammy you know whatever it and you’d like us to take a look please do that we like to help wherever we can and hopefully build some great relationships.

Who knows maybe one day you’ll be the next digital marketing manager at the next Sketchers and you’ll remember us.

Trevor: That’s such an awesome thing you’re doing for small businesses there.

Steve: Thank you.

Have you used SEO before? What were the results? Comment below!

Once a month on Tuesday on Clubhouse 10am-12pm CST I host a Startup Club Room called Entrepreneurs That Make A Difference - follow me @fbpolicypro to get find out more.

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. . .

What are some habits that rich people have that the non-rich don’t?

I was poor and now I’m in top 1% earners in my country, so I probably am competent to answer this question.

Poor people don’t think about future, they are fully concerned about the current moment. They have not experienced financial security don’t know how to achieve it.
They know very well what it means to wonder how to pay for groceries.

(Be sure to read Trevor's last blog New Stimulus Checks, Schools On Track to Reopen & Inflation here).

At A Glance

∎ Develop A Savings Strategy

∎ Build A Network of Wealthy Colleagues

∎ Create An Attitude of Gratitude

1. Rich People Pay Themselves First

For years, I struggled with saving money. I had been saving a portion of my salary only to spend money on some substantial item like repairing my car after I drove straight into a tree; or something lavish like gambling on the stock market.

I had been earning good money—but I had no support from my family. I had no assets at the beginning and a family of five to support.

My saving ratio was hovering about 3-4% point. Then I read "Start Over, Finish Rich" by David Bach and got one main takeaway from it: pay yourself first.

The idea seemed a bit preposterous, our budget was tight and we had no leeway to put away a significant chunk of salary. What difference would have made saving money at the beginning of the month and not at the end of it, from leftovers?

It did all the difference.

(my saving ratio)

In a few months’ time, my saving ratio skyrocketed to about 20%. Yet again I spent all of my savings when we bought our first house in 2014.

For several months, we were almost as poor as during my time as a student—having two kids and on welfare.

We survived on stipends, and student loans as our main sources of income.

But I rebuilt my savings and spent them once again on the house renovation. That was at the beginning of this year.

Still, I was able to save for those extraordinary expenses thanks to the “pay yourself first” rule.

I estimate that thanks to the difference between my previous saving ratio and the current one—plus the fact that my income grew by about 90% in the last few years—I ended up with equivalent of my 14 salaries in my pocket.

I spent about 10 of them, but I could spend them in bulk on expansive things that improved quality of our life; not on trivia.

2. Rich People Don’t Buy on Impulse

Alright—let’s be honest—I do very little impulse buying although I’m not completely immune to the shiny promises of marketing.

But I'm totally not interested in brands and sometimes it works against me. I've bought the cheapest laptop in the store and I discovered it is absurdly slow. I have a lot of opportunities to practice my patience with it.

But 99% of time, it serves me well. I bought an old Mazda 626 about 10 years ago. I put into it almost double the initial price (half of which after that accident with a tree).

But that's still much less than half the price of a new car and I know quite a lot of folks who exchange a car every few years. That Mazda is a small fortune "saved".

I don't follow trends and I don't chase shiny objects. I buy new items when I need them; not when I want them.

3. Rich People Work On Their Attitude

Seriously, it provides more benefits and more hard cash in your pocket than any technical tips.

We are programmed by our social environment to think all sorts of strange things about everything.

If you were lucky and you had the right social environment, you would believe good things about possessing and managing money and those beliefs would make you richer.

Most of us, unfortunately, got crappy programming. Even today, schools are doing very little to change this (kids are taught tons of facts, but there is not a single lesson in the curriculum about how to save money).

Advantageous beliefs and habits:

a. Debt is your enemy.

Debt compounds like the interest rate on your savings compounds. Uncontrolled, it will eat your finances alive.

Controlling this consumes so much of your brainpower and mental energy that it's best to avoid debt altogether, as a principle.

It's hard to put debt-avoidance in the context of habit, it's rather what you DON'T do: you never ever borrow money.

b. You are responsible for your net worth.

Not your daddy, not your boss and not your wife (yeah, I know she loves to spend, my wife loves it too; still, take the full responsibility).

If you don't accept this belief, everything that regards your money "just happens" to you.

Control over your cash flow is in most cases just an illusion (for example a car accident can wreck your vehicle, your body, your career and finances), but it's a necessary illusion, so you will act proactively to grow your wealth. Nobody will replace you at this job.

c. Be grateful.

And be grateful about more than merely your material possessions or the level of your salary.

Be grateful for everything. William W. Wallace, the author of "The Science of Getting Rich", prescribes gratitude as the way to stay in touch with a mystic element of the universe that provides abundance (his theories were a precursor to The Law of Attraction, ideas which were more sensible than the modern versions).

Science confirms that when the brain is positive, every possible outcome we know how to test for rises dramatically.

By "every outcome" they meant also net worth, savings, salary levels and chances for career advancement. And gratitude is a shortcut to making your brain positive.

A relevant habit: write down every morning three new things you are grateful for.

d. Pay with cash.

In the era of plastic money, we have a tendency to not see money as real... till it is too late and reality is biting you in your rear.

Credit cards provide the illusion of abundance when in fact each use of plastic money moves you further toward poverty.

To avoid this trap, pay for everything in cash. When you hand your cash money to someone else, it has a real feel. Your mind will not be lull into airiness.

A nice piece of belief is this: "If you cannot buy an item with cash, you cannot afford it." You should never take a loan if you don't have enough cash stacked to buy the item in cash in the first place.

e. Track your expenses.

Track all of them. I note down a sum when I buy bread or a bread roll. I register every single cent that goes out of my pocket in an Excel sheet. This discipline makes me more disciplined when spending money on anything.

The habit of tracking expenses provides you some much needed awareness of where your money goes.

Carelessness and ignorance are the allies of poverty. Impulse spending will decrease significantly when you have to register each of your impulses on paper.

f. Keep the company of rich/frugal people.

Attitude is contagious. When you spend time with people who wisely manage their money, you’ll become better at this yourself.

Of course, the ‘example’ is more effective when they actively mentor you, give you advice (and you actually take action to implement it).

But being around them is the basic requirement. Your copying mechanisms will work even in the background, it's how people are wired, and it’s how children learn life.

This activity may be easily habitualized. Simply find an appropriate group of people and engage with them on regular basis.

Play sport with them, volunteer with them or attend church services. Absorbing attitudes from others works better offline, but it works online too.

If you cannot think of an opportunity to find such people in your neighborhood, find them in Facebook groups or forums.

Michal Stawicki www.expandbeyondyourself.com

. . .

Facebook Reveals New Video Tips

Have you jumped on board with one of the highest converting mediums for marketing yet? Video is king right now especially during the holiday season. [Read our last blog on HP moving to Texas here]

Video is number one for increasing engagement on social media platforms which also boosts brand awareness to help you end the year strong with increased profits.

Struggling with how to do this? We got you covered - Facebook just released 3 tips to help you improve your video marketing.

1. "Add a 3-5 second trailer to hold interest"

Facebook recommends adding a short preview of your video at the start of video clips. While this has been used frequently on YouTube it hasn't seen as much use on Facebook videos as a whole.

Essentially you'll want to paste a key snippet from your video and include in the beginning of the clip which helps to entice viewers to stick around and see what's next.

It's a short and sweet way to boost your engagement as well as increase the view time which helps you segregate retargeting campaigns per video view time.

Another deet Facebook mentioned is using the Creator Studio analytics to find out when you're losing viewers. Once you identify this, you can swap out blocks of content and add more exciting elements where you see folks dropping off.

2. "Frame the story - with a 4:5 aspect ratio"

Because everyone is on their smartphones, Facebook recommends we should create videos that are vertical not horizontal.

Facebook says:

"We live in a world were most people watch videos on mobile just inches from their face and often in vertical orientation rather than turning their phone to landscape. Try framing your visual story and build for vertical format. Editing your videos using a 4:5 aspect ratio may work best for your videos on Facebook."

Back at Facebook's research HQ they discovered some videos have seen a noticeable improvement in performance when switching from 19:9 orientation to 4:5.

3. "Engage your community - commenting on posts"

Facebook leaves us with one last video tip: increase engagement by responding to comments on video posts.

It's such a simple thing to do but you'd be surprised how many businesses never reply to comments on their videos. When you reply, customers feel included, and it builds brand loyalty as well.

If you can't find the time to do so, hire a social media manager to post on your social media pages and reply to the comments.

Facebook clarifies this further:

"Joining the conversation in the comments section of your own posts can delight your audience and maximize your reach. Longer comments, like sharing your own perspective on the discussion or answering questions, can spark even more engagement with your content."

Facebook also says you can reply to Facebook and Instagram video comments through the Inbox tab in Creator Studio, which some find easier to manage their activity from.

Also, Facebook has shared 5 pretty general tips for video creation:

Clearly these are pretty basic tips, you want to get your content creation strategy well defined too. Make sure to switch up the type of content to keep it interesting.

You can read Facebook's full set of video tips here.

What is a challenge you face with posting videos on Facebook?

Comment below!

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Discover the Power of Day 1 Thinking

Dieting and business have a lot in common - they both rely on systems that seek to scale results. They both share a common flaw: unproductivity due to complacency.

Have you had a friend on a diet who does an intense workout and then eats pizza and ice cream? "Oh well, I've already exercised so I can cheat a little."

Except - this path leads towards homeostasis rather than progress.

Many times we take greater risks once we feel safe or protected which leads to more accidents and actually increases risk. This is called Risk compensation.

Risk compensation is a theory which suggests that people typically adjust their behavior in response to the perceived level of risk, becoming more careful where they sense greater risk and less careful if they feel more protected (source).

(Read the last blog for a guide on what to charge for your services here)

Risk Homeostasis initially proposed in 1982 by Gerald J. S. Wilde, a professor at Queen's University in Canada, suggests people weigh the expected costs and benefits of safer and riskier behaviour before taking a riskier behavior.

Expected benefits of risky behavior (e.g., gaining time by speeding, fighting boredom, increasing mobility)

Expected costs of risky behavior (e.g., speeding tickets, car repairs, insurance surcharges)

Expected benefits of safe behavior (e.g., insurance discounts for accident-free periods, enhancement of reputation of responsibility)

Expected costs of safe behavior (e.g., using an uncomfortable seat belt, being called a coward by one's peers, time loss)

In a Munich study, part of a fleet of taxicabs were equipped with anti-lock brakes (ABS), and afterwards the cabs with the ABS had more accidents than the cabs without ABS.

Munich Cabbie Results

The idea Wilde has about this is that cab drivers, feeling more protected, took more risks. Their corresponding behavior change canceled any benefit from the safety measures by ABS.

The Challenger rocket exploded because the managers at NASA felt like the 2nd O-rings were enough to not look closer at the potential for catastrophes despite warnings from engineers at NASA that the rocket wasn't safe to launch.

The Danger of Complacency

At the heart of this, is the dangerous toxin of complacency.

It's just as much a risk in dieting and getting complacent that you've "put your steps in" so can cheat on your diet - leading to a permanent stalemate to getting into better shape - as it is for businesses.

Businesses that want to grow, become profitable and then after becoming profitable often stop innovating their processes, addicted to old systems that no longer work.

"Hey it worked before why not just stick to what's working?"

That kind of thinking crashed Kodak and many more businesses. It's why mid-level managers are still dealing with employees who hate their jobs.

There isn't any intrinsic value in the work being done that is cultivated. I left working at Facebook because there wasn't any investment in the employees to cultivate more skill sets for vertical rather than lateral promotions.

Many companies like Facebook completely lack professional development - it's all about a high turn over rate because they feel if they invested more into their employees they'd have to pay them more.

Yet, this short-term thinking misses the elephant in the center of the room: work avoidance, extrinsically motivated employees don't give it their all, more mistakes are made, no learning from the mistakes is done because the staff feels unsupported - this all costs companies millions of dollars in loss of revenue from inefficiency.

If a startup - or any business - stops looking for ways to improve their systems and relies only on techniques, they will stop winning over the competition and decline.

This advice goes for continuing to be a good friend, a good husband, a good business partner, a good son to your mother (said from my perspective as a guy).

A good athlete doesn't stop training just because the race is over.

It's Day 1 Every Day

In every annual letter to the Amazon shareholders, Jeff Bezos writes the enigmatic line:

"It remains Day 1."

After saying this for years, Bezos after being questioned on what it meant said,

"Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1."

We have to keep creating thought experiments, AB testing, surveying our target audience, studying the competition, taking moonshots, reframing problems, testing as we fly and using first-principle thinking as Elon Musk did creating SpaceX.

Ultimately there isn't a magic bullet. No secret handshakes or magic pill that makes you a millionaire. You have to start thinking like a millionaire and study how and why successful launches worked and what didn't work about them.

Use this data as more than a way to brag at cocktail parties about what you know and have learned. Use this data to calibrate your next moves in business and beyond.

You're directing your own movie - creating the cast, the plot and the ending. What story does it tell?

Comment below!

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New Solution to Facebook Ad Policy Violations

After years of working at Facebook, I understand exactly what ad copy in your funnel is triggering the automations and how to get compliant. I'm a Facebook ad policy specialist and can audit your funnel, and share what to say that Facebook wants to see instead - but just isn't telling you. Get on my calendar while I still have free time here.

Want to book a call to talk to Facebook and get results? Get solid answers directly from the source instead guessing, googling and playing roulette? Schedule a call with me and I can easily tell you proven reasons why the automations flag you and how to become compliant.

You'll be swapping out walking in a minefield of ad flags, to having a sure path to having your Facebook ad accounts protected from being disabled.

My clients have included social media marketing agencies of Tony Robbins, Harv Eker and Dean Graziosi. I'm featured on the Queen of Facebook Mari Smith's Marketing Essentials Course.

Save energy and money - how much is it costing you to not know why Facebook is shutting you down? Save time and money TODAY

If you want to skip the line before this offer ends, immediately secure an expert-level Facebook consulting call from someone at Facebook. Book a call with me now!

If you're ok with waiting a bit longer, and entering the waitlist to see if you're eligible - Schedule a call or contact me via email.

How Much Should You Charge for Your Services – Answered

How much should you charge for your services? For startup founders, pricing is a four-letter word - many get nervous charging higher prices and low-ball their own offers when starting out.

When I started my first Facebook policy expertise business I simply accepted what other businesses offered to pay me - which often wasn't as much as this type of exclusive-working-at-facebook-in-depth-knowledge was worth.

It is challenging to put a price tag on intangible items like connections, knowledge and time.

(Read the last blog for a guide to social media marketing here)

Yet if you are selling a product, setting a price seems a bit easier because you have very clear numbers to take into consideration, such as cost of manufacturing, packaging, shipping.

As an executive business consultant I've talked with tons of entrepreneurs and wantrapreneurs who had pricing their services as a big pain point. Women who are startup founders especially found it challenging to charge based on what they are worth.

Googling Won't Provide the Answer This Time Here's Why

One of the reasons why it is hard on folks to determine what to charge for their services - in the consulting sphere - is that we have been trained to run in the rat race maze after the all mighty paycheck.

The old way of thinking that business schools teach is a standard formula for determining an hourly rate: Add up your labor and overhead costs, add the profit you want to earn, then divide the total by your hours worked.

If you try and google how much you should charge for your services as an entrepreneur, you'll find outdated advice that won't serve you well on your journey into owning and running a startup consultancy.

Google search results

Sites will tell you to add up:

Time you spend at work even if you’re not actually working, including travel
Your commute
Time you spend working at home
Time you spend working when you’re theoretically not working
Calculate your actual hourly rate

But this type of advice comes from the first industrial revolution, working in a factory, eating lunch when the whistle blows - not from the reality of what it means to run your own business and solve problems for customers and other companies that cost them a lot of time and money.

The value of the time you saved a company, who didn't have the solution you offer, can be exponential.

In a nutshell, value is based on figuring out how much people are willing to pay for your service.

Just asking isn't likely going to work because people rarely have an idea of what they're willing to pay, but offering 3 different tiers from low, medium to high helps you use the Sanders 2-Option close to make a sale.

Dan Kennedy has some great advice for determining what you charge for your services. This is an excerpt from his book No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs:

"Now, you may not have a situation that lends itself to clear-cut billable hours as I do, so how can this strategy work for you? It has to. It's even more important to you than to me."

"Let's say you own six stores and each store has a manager. You'll have to decide how much of the business's bottom-line profit goal will be provided by the managers and how much is still inextricably linked to you. If you want $500,000 at the bottom line, and you figure half is dependent on you, you've got a $250,000 target."

It's sort of like a heart attack being required to really get somebody to change their eating and exercise habits. A lot of your decision making gets easy with this number staring you in the face. It's hard to con yourself with this number confronting you."

"In fact, I suggest having it stare you in the face a lot until you internalize it. Write your number "$____ per Hour" on a bunch of colorful four x 6-inch cards in bold black letters and stick these cards up in places where you work and will see them often."

"Generally speaking, with this number confronting you, two business life changes probably come to mind immediately. First, you realize you've got to surround yourself with people who understand and respect the value of your time and behave accordingly. This isn't easy, and they'll forget often because familiarity breeds contempt. Periodically, you'll have to re-orient them. You also must get people who don't respect the value of your time out of your business life. If you let people who don't understand and respect the value of your time hang around, you won't even have a fighting chance."

"Second, you have to eliminate the need for doing -- or you need to delegate -- those tasks and activities that just cannot and do not match up with the mandated value of your time."

Charge Based on Value

You want to charge based on value not an hourly rate, once you realize your value to your target audience (ideally not starving artists) you can walk customers up the value ladder from intro offers to premium services.

While I do have hourly rates, 99% of my clients are choosing packages at a higher price point for facebook policy expertise.

The higher price point usually equals more dedication from your clients, less flakiness - they invested more than the $20/month gym membership they never use and thus are more committed to getting the results of their investment.

Also, another side benefit of charging based on your value and a transformation rather than 'market rates' from a google search is you attract more clients in that income bracket rather than using hope marketing ("broke marketing").

But I think the first step is to realize your own worth, because we first have to overcome the mental block we are worth what we charge.

How did you come up with the prices you charge for your services? Comment below!

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Enjoyed this blog? Signup here to get updates on new startup blogs.
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Is Facebook not explaining why they disapproved an ad?
I worked at FB for years and offer FB Policy Consulting here

Available for freelance writing and guest posting on your blog: blogger@jetskishaman.com

How to Fail Successfully

Fail fast, fail often, fail forward is a Silicon Valley saying that brands failure as a badge of honor, as if it is a secret right of passage towards success. This is both right & wrong, and I'll explain why we need to redefine our relationship with failure.

When a surgeon fails - that's life or death. When the Challenger rocket blew up - that failure cost the lives of the crew. So failing fast and failing often isn't a mantra that surgeons embrace for obvious reasons.

Back in the Upper Paleolithic era, when mankind drew stick figure animals on the walls of the Lascaux Cave we had a good reason to fear failure. This was a healthy fear that helped us survive from larger predators.

Fast forward, we now fear economic depressions, failing a final exam at our college or university, or failing to overcome the same obstacles that stopped our parents from becoming more successful in business or life.

We fear getting rejected when asking someone out on a date, we fear losing our job or abrupt market changes making our service or product irrelevant in the entrepreneur space.

As a result, we tend to avoid situations that are high risk, both economically and emotionally. This inclination to avoid failure actually produces more failures.

The car is coming towards you at breakneck speed and you don't dodge left, second guess dodging to the right and end up as roadkill.

Being too afraid of failing to make the right move is a recipe for making the wrong move.

You're stuck at a job you hate, have a promising idea to launch a business but want to wait for a zero-risk opportunity to launch. You want everything to be perfect first.

20 years later, shuffling papers on your desk, you think about how much the cost of living has risen and how your pension won't pay all the bills after you retire. Wait, what about that idea?

Too afraid of failure, you never took the leap. Having A+ syndrome, waiting for the perfect moment was a bigger failure than the actual risk you would have taken to start your own company.

Doing anything innovative, or disruptive to established routines requires taking the risk that you're going to fail --at least part of the time.

You may have read my other blogs about Elon Musk's way of thinking and how he used it to succeed at Tesla. Here's Musk's thoughts on failure:

"There's a silly notion that failure's not an option at NASA. Failure is an option here [@ SpaceX]. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough."

This echoes one of the speakers at a marketing conference I went to in Orlando, Florida who said,

"If you're not embarrassed by the first results -- you didn't launch soon enough,"

We'd never have medicines that help to cure ailments if we didn't explore the unknown and in doing so, fail a few times. As Facebook's early mantra goes, "Move fast, and break things."

While a friend of mine, that I worked with at Facebook mentioned, when he was talking to Mark Zuckerberg, "Mark didn't mean it in the way many engineers at Facebook interpret it as," the concept of prioritizing momentum over just waiting for an unrealistically perfect moment to arrive still holds true.

When we put a ban on failure we put a ban on progressive, and a better future.

Taking a shot at something great will require calibration - just like sighting in the crosshairs of a gun, pellet gun, paint gun or rifle - you'll have to miss a few times to see how far away you are from the target. You may miss more than you hit.

At least in the beginning.

Shakespeare is known for his greatest works like Romeo and Juliet but over twenty years he wrote 154 sonnets and 37 plays which were lacking in character development and had plots that were shoddy, incomplete and not really put together that well.

Now that we've established the importance of trying, even if you may fail, and how important failure is to help you calibrate the best path to success it's time to debunk Silicon Valley's failing fast and often mantra.

When entrepreneurs are too focused on celebrating failures as a token accomplishment, toasting to their bravery, important info is lost on how to work smarter not harder.

Failure provides valuable insight into what worked and what didn't work in our process of launching - to just throw spaghetti at the wall without a strategy or analyzing the results waits time and money - and the effort of even trying.

When we fail, we often try to hide it, or misrepresent what happened as someone else's fault. We twist reality to fit a rationalization of why it wasn't our fault and pass the buck onto other people or factors beyond our control.

What's the harm in fudging the truth a little here and there? you may ask.

If we don't own up to where & how we've failed then we learn nothing from the experience. What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing and expecting different results. That's what Blockbuster & Kodak did - look where it got them.

When we pass blame for our failures onto outside elements - the girl that rejected us, the upset customer, the competitors in our niche - we have 0 cause to course correct and improve.

Time, effort and money are thrown down the drain re-attempting the same failed strategy we didn't learn from, crossing our fingers hoping our luck will change without taking responsibility for how we can change our luck.

This is one of the biggest misconceptions about determination and 'just working hard & not giving up.' If we're aimed in the wrong direction all that yelling at the GPS won't do us any good. All that effort is wasted.

The adage "No pain no gain" misrepresents the value of learning from failures in broad strokes. The aim isn't just to fail fast. It's to learn fast.

We would benefit from raising a glass to toast to the nuggets of gold we learn from failure, not just failing.

Another way I often see failures framed is as a loss. "I lost a lot of money in my first start up that didn't pan out." But you're only taking the L if you frame it that way.

A better way to frame failure is as an investment, and take note of the data you get from your efforts. This isn't data you'll find in a fortune cookie or motivational bumper sticker.

Intelligent failures can help you succeed more than previous successes if you take the time to look at what worked in your attempts and what didn't.

One of the best ways to overcome depression from failing at something, whether that's at a relationship, business launch, or personal venture is to learn something. Learning from your experience will never fail.

The founder of Forbes Magazine, Malcolm Forbes says it like this:

"Failure is success if we learn from it."

When we were children, we had to stumble and fall before learning to walk. Imagine if had our parents telling us,

"Don't try to walk because if you do you might fall."

We had to learn how not to fall in order to discover the joys of walking. A single failure is just the start not the end of our journey.

One of the benefits of examining failures for what worked and what didn't is we begin to ask better questions.

Sure, the solutions may evade us in the beginning, but by asking better questions we start to understand more, and with more understanding comes better strategies, with better strategies comes a higher chance of success.

Much of the time we focus on instant gratification. The faster we can get to the prize the better. Spending all our paychecks on Friday and being broke on Monday is an example of this.

Eating at fast food restaurants and pleasuring our taste buds instead of overall mind body spirit health that lasts us into old age more fit, and able-minded is another.

The famous marshmellow experiment in the 1960s, by a Stanford professor named Walter Mischel, tested children's self control. They were given one marshmallow and told if they didn't eat it, they'd get a second marshmallow.

The children who were willing to delay gratification and waited to receive the second marshmallow ended up having higher SAT scores, lower levels of substance abuse, lower likelihood of obesity, better responses to stress, better social skills as reported by their parents, and generally better scores in a range of other life measures. (You can see the followup studies here, here, and here.)

To increase our short-term pleasure, we often avoid actions that might fail.

Yet those who succeed in life delay gratification longer, recalibrate for seeing the bigger picture in the long term. Not falling for the trap of perpetually living in the short-term gratification that social media seems to exacerbated.

"Failure hovers uncomfortably close to greatness," said James Watson who was one of the discoverers of our DNA's double-helix structure.

So your aim should be to re-center your attention on the elements that you can control - the energy and approach you take when attempting to achieve a goal.

Always put the ego aside to prioritize curiosity over pride.

Ask yourself, after failing, "What went wrong with this failure?" and fix the method you used, recalibrate the angle of your approach based on the data your failures provide.

However - that is only part of the story. You need to also ask:

"What went right with this failure?"

Keep track of the higher quality choices you made, even if they produced a failure.

Work on perfecting the method or strategy you're using, and focus on updating your processes. Don't be afraid to use first-principle thinking here too and rewrite the script from the start.

When you reduce the stress on just achieving a specific goal, and work on developing your strategy, you'll improve at everything. The goal because a side-effect of a well-developed system instead of just a lucky guess using a life hack.

We get intrinsic benefits and value from activities we're doing because we're so in love with what we're doing that failing isn't even relevant anymore..

This kind of mindset is similar to one taught in Thich Nhat Hanh's book, the Miracle of Mindfulness, when he describes an incredibly huge pile of dishes and becoming overwhelmed until he re-focused on just washing each dish as if it was the only dish.

Let's put this in perspective of the workforce. When employers only reward success and reprimand or punish failure, this leads to workers just not sharing about failures. Employees try to hide where they've failed instead of look where they can learn from them.

They exaggerate their successes and try to pose everything done in the best way without being intrinsically invested in wanting to learn from mistakes and perfect a process.

This is in essence, shooting the messenger - especially when the failure was caused by an error in the system the employees were using not always just their own competence.

A business stagnates when it stops learning from its mistakes. It's the same reason Sears went out of business.

And it's understandable to an extent - we're taught to justify our failures by blaming other people or circumstances, but yet when we see someone falter we start labeling this failure as a result of their internal processes;

They were lazy, didn't pay attention, incompetent. Our habit of logging the failures of others can be repurposed as a source of data for how we can do things better.

Many companies I've worked for in big tech, Microsoft, Apple or Facebook say they can understand failures or like to learn from them, don't actually do this in reality.

They'll debate that failures mean someone is at fault, blame needs to be assigned, and without discipline and punishment employees will just take advantage of this and fail more.

In actuality - you can let your staff take risks as long as you have high standards. If someone keeps making the same mistake it's time for a one-on-one with quality control.

You can punish sloppy work or poor performance but also reward intelligent failures.

The best performing hospitals have a culture where the nurses are allowed to give feedback to the doctors so everyone learns from mistakes made, the worst are where doctors are untouchable and above critique. These hospitals tend to make more mistakes and hide them according to first-year doctoral student, Amy Edmondson's study in the 1990s.

Her Ted Talk is pretty amazing here:

Is this blog too detailed? Perhaps - I get pretty passionate about discovering solutions to problems we keep repeating. The attitude on failure is one of them.

Let's take a look at how failure works in schools, particularly at the college level.

The New York Times has a great article on this:

"Preoccupied in the 1980s with success at any cost (think Gordon Gekko), the American business world now fetishizes failure, thanks to technology experimentalist heroes like Steve Jobs. But while the idea of “failing upward” has become a badge of honor in the start-up world — with blog posts, TED talks, even industry conferences — students are still focused on conventional metrics of achievement, campus administrators say."

We’re not talking about flunking out of pre-med or getting kicked out of college,” Ms. Simmons said. “We’re talking about students showing up in residential life offices distraught and inconsolable when they score less than an A-minus. Ending up in the counseling center after being rejected from a club.

Students who are unable to ask for help when they need it, or so fearful of failing that they will avoid taking risks at all.” Almost a decade ago, faculty at Stanford and Harvard coined the term “failure deprived” to describe what they were observing: the idea that, even as they were ever more outstanding on paper, students seemed unable to cope with simple struggles."

The solution to this anxiety about even trying due to fear of failure is to experience failure on a regular basis. This is true for any phobia. When I started driving, I was freaked out by everything - how close the cars were, the speed of vehicles, going on super high curving overpasses.

It took time and experience of exposing myself to driving more and more that the fear lessened and driving skills also improved.

Each setback becomes the training to overcome the next one - if we choose to learn from failures and take the risk of failing again. And again. And again. Each attempt builds resilience and familiarity.

What's something you couldn't have achieved if you didn't try first and fail?

Comment below!

Read the last blog on SEO tips here.

New Solution to Facebook Ad Policy Violations

After years of working at Facebook, I understand exactly what ad copy in your funnel is triggering the automations and how to get compliant. I'm a Facebook ad policy specialist and can audit your funnel, and share what to say that Facebook wants to see instead - but just isn't telling you.

Want to book a call to talk to Facebook and get results? Get solid answers directly from the source instead of guessing, googling and playing roulette? Schedule a call with me and I can easily tell you proven reasons why the automations flag you and how to become compliant.

You'll be swapping out walking in a minefield of ad flags, to have a sure path to having your Facebook ad accounts protected from being disabled. My clients have included social media marketing agencies of Tony Robbins, Harv Eker and Dean Graziosi. I'm featured on the Queen of Facebook Mari Smith's Marketing Essentials Course.

Save energy and money - how much is it costing you to not know why Facebook is shutting you down? My calendar is here.

I get 100s of emails a week from businesses and advertisers asking for help when their facebook ad account keeps getting disabled, so my calendar gets booked fast. But if you want to get to the front, you can pre-pay for a consulting session here: Book a call

If you want to skip the line before this offer ends, immediately secure an expert-level Facebook consulting call from someone at Facebook. Book a call with me now! If you're ok with waiting a bit longer, and entering the waitlist to see if you're eligible - Schedule a call or contact me via email.

5 Quick SEO Tips – How to Increase Your Search Rank Result

SEO basics: Five tips & best practices to consider for your website

SEO explained

Here is an SEO starter guide for those who want the benefits of search engine optimization without spending hours googling and guessing. Let's get started!

Provide useful product or service information

Step 1: Discover What Your Audience is Googling

If you don’t know what your audience is googling you can’t optimize your site, so here is an easy way to find that out.

Imagine you are one of your customers, and start entering in search terms. It seems pretty easy but you’d be surprised how many people don’t experiment with googling things first.

Use short and meaningful page titles and headings

Let’s say you own an Italian restaurant in San Francisco. Now imagine you’re in San Fran, you’re hungry for some pasta or authentic Italian pizza - what would you google?

* Italian restaurants in San Francisco
* Bay area Italian food
* Best Italian restaurant in the Mission District

You now have some of your first search terms. Are these the best search terms with the highest search volume? Maybe, let’s do some more research.

Include details about your business

a) Find The Commonly Used Keywords For Your Business

Searching Google for Italian restaurants in SF produces many results:

Glancing at the search results you can see key phrases used, “Italian restaurant” and “San Francisco” as well as “Italian food.” The reason why we’re seeing this is because websites are using title tags to rank in search results.

We can also see Italian restaurants appear in “best of” lists for more than one website, which may be a good idea to include somewhere on your website, if you’re the owner of an Italian restaurant.

Check image and video tags

Search engines might not always interpret images or videos in the same way people do, so it’s important to use words to help the search engine understand these items. Make sure you adjust the "alt =" text of your images to reflect the keyword you're targeting.

Use descriptions that your potential customers can relate to

b) Find Out New Ways Your Customers Search for the Same Topic

You’ll want to use a Keyword Explorer tool, there are a few free ones on the net, or you can pay for one on sites like SEM Rush, ahrefs, and moz.com I believe offers a free one after you create a profile on their website.

This is where you'll discover more keywords, rated by their search volume and a few other long-tail keywords which consist of entire phrases versus just one or two words.

Knowing these gives you the sense of how people are searching in different ways for the same thing.

c) Research Related Subjects & Themes in Your Niche

You can increase your search rank results by blogging about topics in your niche, increasing the amount of keywords your site ranks for.

But, this won’t be any good, if you’re just guessing and writing content. I’ve heard of more than one person that complains, “Well I’m producing tons of content but nothing ever happens!”

That’s because you need to produce content that is optimized for search engines based on what words your customers are already using.

Going to forums, Quora, Reddit, Facebook groups and finding out what phases your potential customers are using is a great way to create a word bank to fill your blogs with.

Another pro tip is to find pain points and solve them on your website or IRL for your Italian restaurant in this hypothetical example.

Eg: people complain there's no seating at other Italian restaurants - you add an outside patio area and mention on your site, "Unlike other Italian restaurants that don't have seating you'll always have a spot in our new patio area.

You can even subscribe to podcasts by authority figures in your vertical and write down keywords you hear coming up again and again.

Step 2: Optimize Your Website Pages for Search

Make sure your website looks good on mobile and use the data you’ve found from the previous steps in this article to add those keywords and long-tail phrases to pages on your site.

Always start with a keyword phrase at the beginning of paragraphs and in titles or headings on your website.

You can use free and paid plugins on WordPress to optimize your site even more, like the Yoast SEO plugin.
Step 3: Create Content With Search Intent in Mind

There are 3 main search intents when folks are googling:

Navigational: They’re looking for a specific website, e.g., ‘Italian restaurant’
Informational: Looking to learn more about a specific topic, e.g., ‘Italian restaurants in SF’
Transactional: They’re looking to purchase a specific product/service, e.g., ‘book a table in San Francisco’

Typically, informational searches rank the highest with Google - but research your field and back it up with proof.

Step 4: Design Snappy Clean Short Website URLs

Google’s bots crawl website URLs in addition to content on your site. That being said, you want to make sure you get this one optimized from the get go without changing
it later.

The simpler and topic-based URL you have, the better SEO results you’re going to get. This means no long numbers in your URLs, but short URLs that have a major keyword in it will work best.

eg: /italian-restaurant-SF

Step 5: A Few Bonus SEO Tips

Make sure your website loads fast, and install an SSL certificate, which means your site has an HTTPS instead of HTTP.

What's your niche? Comment below!

New Solution to Facebook Ad Policy Violations

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Why You Should Disagree With Yourself

You should disagree with yourself when you're about to make a business decision here's why:

Every time we re-affirm what we think we know, we restrict our vision and ignore more possibilities.

There's a reason why think tanks like the Brookings Institution or the Earth Institute are comprised of many minds; additional perspectives help reveal more insights when working together.

When you begin to toss an idea around for a change in your startup company, or are problem solving ask yourself:

"What are my existing beliefs and preconceptions?"

And just as importantly ask, "Do I really want this theory to be true?"

If you answered yes, that's a red alert that you may be filtering new info through a tinted lens which won't reveal the bigger picture of what's possible.

So be careful if you're feeling yourself leaning towards one conclusion already, because you may overlook flaws in this idea and misread signals as something you want to see rather than reality.

That can be a fatal flaw when starting a business, launching a product, adding a new service or simply taking a new direction for your company or life.

When you're launching a new type of business that you haven't done before, it's good to ask:

"What's missing?"

This is great for analyzing any gaps in the competition as well as your initial blueprints or launch plans.

After you've thought long and hard about what's missing, and feel like you've gotten as far as you can, ask:

"What else?"

Be deliberate about finding your own blind spots. Disagree with yourself when you're quick to say everything is perfect.

Just like the How to Think Like A Winner blog, discusses looking at your business like a competitor who wants to destroy your company, you want to shift perspectives for maximum effect.

Here's another way to look at your new ideas, or plans: view them as a theory before committing to them.

When scientists create a theory, it isn't cast in stone. A theory isn't proven right it's just not proven wrong. After scientists work really hard to disapprove their theory and can't easily do so, that's the moment when a theory starts to be taken seriously.

And after a lot of time passes, new facts can come to light that shed more light on this theory, what's wrong about it or why it is more right than we first thought it would be.

So try to disprove yourself when you're convinced that your new idea is going to be the money-maker.

If you're feeling confident about your approach to solving a problem, ask what else can go wrong?

Disagree with your own conclusions and see if you can hold 2 opposing view points about the same issue in your mind at the same time.

The idea isn't to unnecessarily create inner conflict but it's to illuminate the range of possibilities beyond what your initial impulses are.

Poking holes in your theories is what makes them stronger because as you do so, you'll find new solutions as well.

It's akin to a great sales pitch. A great sales pitch doesn't just tell you everything is going to work out perfectly: it acknowledges the objections you may have and then overcomes them.

Get into the habit of asking yourself:

"What am I completely wrong about?"

Empty the recycle bin of your wrong ideas because when you do so it makes a new space for good ideas to emerge.

"One mark of a great mind, is the willingness to change it." - Walter Isaacson

You may need to get some breathing room from your ideas. Put them down for a while and come back to your notes in a day or two. Or even a week.

Writing in my journal since I was a teen has helped me see my own personality with new eyes as multiple versions of who I am, was, and am becoming get to look back and see things my old me didn't see.

It's an incredible tool not enough people use.

You should disagree with yourself - constructively with the intent of improving the design - because if you don't someone else will come along and prove you wrong eventually.

A mouse that believes and convinces itself to believe there are never any cats around is just prepping itself to become a feline dinner.

The ultimate goal here is to discover what's right not just to be right.

The most incredible minds of past and present generations used a series of thought experiments to challenge assumptions on how the world works.

Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein debated about quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle about the impossibility of determining both the exact location and momentum of subatomic particles.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBgC0PyIomU

Their public debates sparked new ideas for both scientists, as each questioned the other's conclusions and didn't just accept they were completely right.

What you see and experience in life is always through your own eyes. You won't know how to ask about what you don't know. What may seem pretty obvious to other people isn't as obvious or clear to you.
Other people who aren't attached to your own view of life and the world don't have the same emotional ties and beliefs to your opinion on a topic. This means they won't automatically reject info that conflicts or disagrees with your world view.

That's not to say this is easy. Tribalism has re-emerged in the internet echo chambers of social media. As the 2016 election showed us, sites like Facebook enhances this tribalism and encourages us to only search out ideas that agree with our own.

This is the confirmation bias turbo-charged. We add people on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram that match our existing interests. We get newsletters from blogs that agree with our dominant world view and opinions.

It's far too easy to cultivate a circle of "yes men" that just reiterate our existing feelings and belief systems. That's part of how systemic racism still pervades our government, police force and politics - opposing ideas aren't nurtured to question preconceived notions.

When the circular logic of an idea is repeated by other people, we then feel it is more right, the more people say it even if it's completely wrong and uncalibrated with reality. (How else do you think flat-earthers still exist?)

Just like the mouse that thinks there are no cats meeting other mice that also think cats aren't around - we fall victim to the over confidence of group thinking on one single narrative.

Without opposing ideas there to make us re-think assumptions, we are also food for cats when we are busy just hearing the same ideas repeat and pretending that ideas that don't agree with ours don't exist.

In order to continue to grow and develop, whether that's for a new business strategy or new look at our life perspective we have to make the decision to step outside the circle of yes-men.

We benefit from asking ourselves:

"Who disagrees with me about this topic?"

Getting a contrasting opinion about our thoughts and opinions on a new venture and being open to having our ideas challenged just strengthens critical analysis skills.

Rest in peace to Ruth Bader Ginsburg - she had her Antonin Scalia to bounce ideas off of and dissent with. Einstein had his Niels Bohr.

Here are a few tips if you'd like to test your ideas out before risking putting your eggs all in one basket:
1. Hold 2 Opposing Views for New Launches

Come up with some disagreements for your ideas going forward and see if you can make headway on a third new idea that is balanced between the two.

2. Seek Colleagues Who Already Disagree With You

I have a friend who is an engineer and she frequently disagrees with me but, her views are well-informed. Even if we don't agree - a lively discussion results in new ideas outside our own echo chamber.

Seek out personal or business colleagues who are willing to challenge your ideas.

3. Ask Your Friends to Disagree With You

Your friends that you normally always agree with can play devil's advocate in a discussion about your new business strategy and poke holes in it to allow you to solidify a better plan. One of my business associates and friends runs several giant entrepreneur Facebook groups. I frequently bounce business ideas off of him and ask for his critique. I have benefited from learning how and why he may disagree with me.

4. Question How You're Wrong

Simply ask yourself, "How could I be wrong here?" and do some free writing to see what your first impulses come up with.

5. Create An Imaginary Opponent - Even Model It After Someone Famous In Your Field

Think about famous people who hold an opposing view to yours about certain topics, and make a mental model of them to argue with.

This can be fun - imagine Steve Jobs sitting on your shoulder disagreeing about the aesthetic design of your new product. I disagree with Elon Musk's cyborg dreams of implanting microchips in our brains - arguing with Elon on other topics related to my field of business produces new insights I wouldn't have otherwise of thought of.

Just make sure you give your mental model real teeth and not straw man arguments where the other side's view is so extreme it's a little too easy to dismiss.

Taking a page from the vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Charlie Munger, remember:

"You're not entitled to take a view, unless and until you can argue better against that view than the smartest guy who holds that opposite view."

How do you plan on using this strategy in your business? Comment below!

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How To Use The Einstein Technique of Combinatory Play

Have you hit a brick wall inventing a new product, trying to create a strategy for your business or personal life and felt like you're out of ideas?

You're not alone, we all get "writer's block" brainstorming how to solve persistent problems. Whether that's how to rise above the competition, fighting custody battles in split families, or creating your unique selling proposition for your service, product or business as a whole.

There is a technique that can help you break past this like the Kool-Aid Man bursting through bricks.

It's using an unrelated activity to stimulate your brain to make new connections. Einstein called this technique, thinking outside the box, but playing with multiple boxes: "Combinatory play," which he felt was essential to productive thinking.

Combinatory play means to explore a diverse collection of concepts and ideas, finding the common thread between many dissimilar fields.

Using this technique the big picture becomes more than just the sum of many different parts and it also diversifies your thinking through cross-pollination of many varied interests.

Einstein would take a break when working on a physics problem to play violin, as his form of combinatory play. On those days when Einstein would get stuck, he'd set aside his work and play the violin for a few hours.

During that break he'd suddenly get an idea that would help make a new connection to move forward on the problem at hand. Just like that.

Galileo often would spot mountains on the Moon due to his training in painting and drawing giving him a greater understanding of shading in the dark and bright regions of a landscape.

Albert Einstein first coined the phrase combinatory play in a letter to French mathematician Jacques Hadamard, but it's been used throughout history.

Taking a bath helped Archimedes discover the principle of buoyancy,Leonardo da Vinci studied placentas of calfs, jaws of crocodiles, muscles of a face, the light of the Moon, and the edge of shadows.

Einstein drew inspiration from David Hume, a Scottish philosopher who was one of the first to question the absolute nature of space and time.

Charles Darwin studied geology and economics to develop his theory of evolution.

David Bowie used a custom-developed computer program called the Verbalizer. He'd input sentences from journal entries and news articles which the Verbalizer would mix and match together.

He'd use these bizarre combinations as inspiration for writing song lyrics.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin who created Google, combined the frequency of citations used an academic paper in order to demonstrate its popularity to the internet on how many other sites link to one specific site.

This idea is what led to creating Google.

Netflix creator Reed Hastings combined the subscription model from his gym membership to video rentals after getting high late fees renting Apollo 13.

Why We Get Stuck in the First Place

When we get used to thinking in a certain way about a particular issue or problem we're trying to solve, our brain maps this pathway through our neurons.

Our brains are always working for order and predictability, and can get pretty set in non-productive routines.

When we see something novel, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) part of our brain is wired to review old rules and apply them to the new situation. Our brains do not want to create new ways if it can help it.

While going back to familiar paths can work for things we automate like driving and eating, it can also restrict our creativity. So it's necessary to take a break from this part of our brain if we want to create new solutions.

This is where combinatory play can help us do this by relaxing our mind.

3 Steps to Start Combinatory Play

1. Do Something New: Let Your Guard Down to Let in New Ideas

Next time you're stuck try doing a new unrelated activity. We stress ourselves out trying to solve problems and when we switch gears to a new unrelated activity, it lowers our guard to let a free flow of new ideas, through new neural pathways be created.

2. Combine 2 Unrelated Activities Together

Playful creativity combines 2 known ideas to make a 3rd new idea possible. Doing unrelated activities with the intention of learning a new path or method for solving a problem stimulates our creativity in a fresh way. This works subconsciously so if you don't get the "ah ha" moment right away - no worries it will come.

3. Switching Point of Views is Revealing

Just like having a business consultant helps you see the same issue through new eyes, switching your own perspective through combinatory play will lead to new angles being revealed.

Try walking around your mental room and seeing the same issue from an avatar's perspective. Create a persona of another person in a new niche and think of how they would view the same issue you're looking at.

Just as different countries may be decoupling their technology, you are decoupling neural pathways that are so used to the same thoughts you get stuck.

The next time you're wanting a new break through try doing something completely different to cross-train your brain. Trello's blog has some great suggestions here:

"Take a page out of the athlete’s playbook and cross train your brain. An Olympic runner doesn’t prepare for her next competition by simply running laps on the track; she pursues other physical activities such as swimming, weight training, or even pilates, for example."

"Each cross-training activity works a different, but complementary, part of the body that will help her get stronger in her event overall. The same goes for your brain. If you’re a novelist, try your hand at poetry. If you’re a painter, dabble in sculpting. If you’re a computer scientist, play around with web design."

Taking a nap and getting into REM sleep has shown to produce new ideas just as doing something, intentionally mundane can free your self-imposed stress up allowing the brain to wander.

That's how NASA engineer James H. Crocker fixed the distorted lens of the Hubble Telescope. He saw the European shower head in his German hotel was adjustable to fit different heights.

Crocker realized that, by using that same concept, NASA could make an automated device to reach inside Hubble and install corrective optics.

A Visual Combinatory Play Activity

Make two lists of 10 objects each on the left and right sides of the paper. Pick one from the left and combine it with one on the right. Play with the combinations until you find a promising new combination, then refine and elaborate it into a new invention.

Combining bagel with slicer yields a bagel slicer with plastic sides designed to hold the bagel and prevent rotation when slicing.

Suntan lotion and insect repellent combines to form a new product —one lotion that protects against both the sun and insects.

Cell phone and soda can inspire the idea of utilizing cell phones as devices that, with sensors, would enable users to dispense soda and other products from vending machines with the expense charged back to the vendor via the carrier.

Closing Thoughts - See Similarities in Different Things

The act alone of comparing and combining different things will inspire new ways of thinking. However, you can fast-track this by intentionally seeking to see the similarities between different ideas and activities.
Don't expect this to be a perfect fit, but you will develop new neural pathways to lead to your Eureka moment.

So for closing thoughts, I suggest you pick up a book or magazine about a subject you know nothing about. Go to another niche's business conference, and make friends with people from all types of professions, interests and backgrounds.

Initiate a conversation and ask people, "What's the most fascinating thing you're working on right now?"

When you hit that writer's block for creating anything new, ask,

"What different type of industry has faced something like this before? How did they solve it?"

You may just strike inspiration to create the next blockbuster for your business, and at the very least you'll keep moving forward, progressing your business to the next level.

So let me ask: What's the most interesting thing you're working on right now?

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How To Think Like A Winner

"The greatest obstacle to discovering was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin

How many businesses have closed their doors since March 2020? Over 100,000 according to the Washington Post.

While there are certain obstacles that can't be overcome due to restrictions the government has chosen to apply to cities across the world, there is also a deeper rooted problem in how businesses think about change & admitting there may be a better way of doing things.

Why did Blockbuster go out of business despite Reed Hasting offering to sell Netflix to Blockbuster in the Y2K year of 2000, for $50 million dollars? According to Forbes, Netflix is now valued at $194 billion dollars.

It was time for a change from the old guard to the new guard, but Blockbuster fell behind because they were attached to old ideas and processes and a pretense of knowledge about their audience.

The artifice of knowledge (eg we already know it all) closes our perception from new signals from outside sources that are the catalyst for growth and opportunity.

If you'll look at any recent political issue, you can see people prefer mentally vivid images versus accurate data. The images stick with us, everyone loves a good story. But doing the legwork to verify the claims made by memes-gone-viral that doesn't interest us.

More than ever, most stuck with their habit, and routine even when the advantages of changing far outweigh the cost.

Established routines in our lives and in the businesses we work at and run can often obscure the chance to improve on the design.

When we look at processes themselves, we see that they are by definition created to solve yesterday's problems. And yet the world keeps changing with new problems but many processes stay the same.

Countless people are applying for unemployment right now, and in the state of Texas the Texas Workforce Commission's website is woefully out of date.

Many are denied claims because of this outdated technology, and the same goes for veterans who gave their eyesight, life or a limb in service of their country.

Yet VA benefits are withheld, or backlogged on a pen and pad not computerized so long that Vets often die before getting the benefits they need to survive. Especially now.

The DMV is the same way. As are many other industries. And it comes down to a way of thinking.

If we don't question the processes we are using, and treat processes like a religion, this can get in the way of progress and forward momentum.

The heart of many large organizations becomes clogged with antiquated procedures that serve no one, and benefit only those too lazy to examine what can be done that's better.

Sometimes it's important to simply ask:

"Do we own the processes we use or do the processes we use own us?"

It's easier to conform ourselves to doing things the same way they've always been done.

In fact there is even scientific data showing that fighting against the urge to conform activates the amygdala and produces pain to think independently.

One of the ways we can break free of being slaves to outdated processes that hurt our businesses like Blockbuster adhering to an unsustainable business model, is by breaking things down to their essence and shifting perspectives.

In my Elon Musk blog about First-Principles thinking, I discussed how Musk used this way of thinking to create SpaceX, reducing the cost of buying a rocket by creating a company that built and launched rockets.

Right now more than ever we need to be on the balls of our feet, ready to adapt to sudden changes in the market. I have an exercise that will you help develop first-principles thinking for your business.

Take 1 day out of your week to question what seems obvious. Question all the foregone conclusions about how things are and how they are supposed to be.

Question all the assumptions you have ingrained as just facts of life, about your business and your goals.

Question these assumptions to expose the invisible limitations that control your life and impose artificially low ceilings to what you can achieve.

With each presumption you have, ask yourself:

"How could this be different?"

"What if the way I do this was better, what would that look like?"

"Why are we doing things this way?"

"Can I replace this process with a better one? Or get rid of this process all together?"

Make sure to support your new ideas with current evidence which demonstrates feasibility, not just outdated ideas from last year's playbook.

Many of the limitations and many of the processes we created were made in response to problems that don't even exist anymore.

When we remain stuck in the perpetual unchanging loop of old processes, we don't act. When we refuse to act we become attached to the mirage of our self-importance.

New thinking risks our old image of ourselves and our business. It risks admitting we may not be as self-important as we thought, if we can find a new way to do things better than your last year's you had created.

Is it worth the risk? Well you can be broke with your pride intact like Blockbuster, or risk feeling a little less self-important with more disposable income, because you chose to re-think a better way of doing business.

And it isn't just business. You can apply this way of thinking to find the source material inside you to become the architect of the new you.

You'll have to let go of how self-important you felt about the old model but it is often required to move beyond tactics to using a winning strategy.

There is a much greater risk involved in remaining stagnant, and not acting. We've all seen massive changes since the historic COVID-19 stay-at-home orders in March this year were dictated. Trillions lost in the stock market.

Those who learned how to think about their business differently survived. But you can't just think outside the box. You have to walk around the box and say,

"If I wanted to destroy my company what would I do?"

This will let you find out ways your competition is succeeding that you aren't and ways to put redundancies in to safe guard against new market changes which threaten to destabilize an industry.

Thinking this way allows you to stay ahead of the curve. When looking at a more successful business in your niche, ask yourself - thinking about your competition's customers:

"Why are they making this decision?"

It's because they believe in something you don't, finding what that is, and adapting it for your business - or better yet creating an improved model for that which is even better - is how you stay in business.

What's a new way you can do business? Comment below!

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7 Facebook Cover Photo Tips 2020

Image Source: https://www.cheapwebdesign.co.uk/

1. Make Sure to Follow Facebook's Rules for Facebook Pages

Make sure you have Facebook guidelines bookmarked and review them before creating your Facebook cover. Breaking these rules can result in your whole Page being taken down - which would be a bit silly when you explain to your clients that you aren't able to advertise for them because of your Facebook cover photo. So know them and follow em!

2. Facebook Cover Photo Size: 820 Pixels Wide By 312 Pixels Tall On Desktop

So you spent an hour designing the perfect Facebook Cover Photo and then you go to upload it but your killer CTA line is cut off. Shucks! All of that could have been prevented by just getting the right dimensions.

If you upload an image smaller than 820 Pixels Wide By 312 Pixels, Facebook will stretch it to fit the right size which can distort your image and we don't want that.

If you want to avoid the hassle of resizing your cover photos you can just use one of these handy templates, and it's ready-set-go:

Canva FB Cover Photo Template

pre-sized template for Facebook cover

Poster My Wall FB Cover Template

To be honest, sometimes you just have to mess with it until the picture fits, if you aren't using the templates. For example, my ecommerce store cover photo fits perfectly but isn't the Facebook standard dimensions for cover photos, it's 2232 × 822:

3. Keep Your Cover Photo Visually Striking Not Busy

If you've ever seen a photo with a lot of things going on in it, you know that it's like a visual representation of a head ache. No one wants all that going on!

Keep that text concise, and images simple with clean lines and primary color contrasts. Use 1, maximum 2 info graphics. Here are few Facebook Cover Photos that really work:

Here you can see Uber has identified their target audience - consumers who need a driver, pointed out how they can book a driver with a smartphone image of their app, and created a visually striking contrast between the black and white colors.

The map grid in the background is almost a subtle unconscious influence to get you thinking about where you want to go using their ride share service.

Social Media Examiner is using their Facebook Cover photo to advertise their upcoming YouTube marketing summit. You have their summit's name just to the right, with brand colors present and kayakers symbolizing the teacher-student relationship - very well done!

Last but not least, luxury brand Louis Vuitton has an elegant yet simple design of motion going from left to right as most people read, from an airplane that may symbolize a private jet from the upper echelons of the financial earners:

4. Keep Your Audience In Mind

You want to instantly strike a chord with your target audience, and while it's fun to get creative, don't get carried away. Keep your intentions in line with your brand colors and cover photo.

Social media accounts are extensions of your business - this is your digital store front. So you want a call to action, and a message to speak to your target audience.

5. Make Sure Your Cover Photo is Mobile-Friendly

Look at any metrics for ads and you'll see more and more people are viewing Facebook ads on their smart phones than on a laptop or desktop computer.

If your cover photo is beautifully designed, but looks janky on mobile, you've just lost a sale. So do the work and make sure your cover photo is optimized for mobile too.

Your cover photo displays at 820 pixels wide by 312 pixels tall on desktop, it displays only the center 640 pixels wide by 360 pixels tall on smartphones. Take a look at this Facebook help document for more information.

6. Use A Pinned Post As a CTA That Matches Your Cover Photo

This a nice little hack: pin a post that matches your cover photo's brand colors and message:

This helps the flow of a Facebook user, which your scroll stopping Facebook cover photo attracted, to follow through and view your offer immediately beneath the cover photo after arriving at your page.

To pin a Facebook post: Simply publish the post to Facebook, then click the three dots on the top right corner of the post and choose "Pin to Top."

7. Facebook Cover Videos

You also have the option of putting in a video for your Facebook cover photo too.

Post a Facebook cover video by saving a video file at 820 pixels wide by 426 pixels tall to your desktop. Open your Facebook Business page, click "Change Cover" at the top-left of your cover photo, and select "Upload Photo/Video." This allows you to format and publish the desktop file to your Facebook page.

Facebook accepts cover videos between 20 and 90 seconds long, and a minimum of 820 pixels wide by 312 pixels tall. The maximum (and recommended) size is 820 by 462 pixels with a video resolution of 1080p.

Here are some of my favorite Facebook cover videos:

Nokia

REI

WIRED Magazine

HubSpot

I hope you enjoyed today's blog, (last blog was on Oracle partnering with TikTok)

Post your Facebook Business Page Cover Photo below!

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5 Business Tips Every Business Owner Should Know

One of the biggest challenges owning a business is being a specialist in your own field, but a complete newb on the skills for managing a business and scaling it.

You can dodge the bullet of making common mistakes many startup founders make by reading the following 5 tips every business owner should know.

1. Learn to Make Definite Decisions

One of the biggest ways to fail in business is being indecisive. Not making a decision is a decision too and can hurt your momentum as well as create new problems. Getting crystal clear on what your business does and what it doesn't do will help you refine your process and get-er-done much faster.

2. Study Your Competition

Be aware of your competition and either reverse engineer their successful tactics, improve upon them or use first principle thinking to overcome where they offer something better than your company does.

3. Know the Marketplace and Define Clear KPIs

A successful business needs data on who their target audience is, market trends, current competition and expected growth in supply and demand.

Glossing over this can be a fatal flaw where an entrepreneur bases a whole business model on an audience that doesn't actually exist.

Don't make that mistake. Do careful, detailed and written down market research from the jump.

You need to be clear on the 4 Ps: product, price, promotion, and place. They can navigate the creation of your market research, marketing plan, and customer avatars, and serve as a great jumping-off point if you're not certain where to start.

4. Learn How To Write & Read Good Contracts

Whether it's an NDA, non-compete or a marketing proposal you're presenting or receiving this is another overlooked skill that can be developed with a little googling. (Here are 12 Elements Every Marketing Contract Should Have)

The more proficient you become at writing agreements and reading them (or outsourcing this to your lawyer) the better business you'll be able to do.

5. Consistently Improve One Thing Everyday

Consistency is the key to growth and learning how to adapt to new and changing markets. Find out which processes work well, optimize them and look for ways to improve them. Daily.

While it may seem like a lot to ask, to improve one thing everyday it could simply come down to improving how you make your first cup of coffee, getting consistent wake up and sleep times to increase productivity, using tools like Evernote to schedule meetings and times when you put the nose to the grind stone to churn out new ideas for your business.

All these little things add up to create the momentum that carries you forward to the next gen level of what your business is able to accomplish - as long as you are consistently mentally looking for ways to up the ante.

It is as much an attitude as it is a daily ritual. Reviewing your day's tasks at the end of the day and seeing what you've got done adds to the feeling of completeness, helps remind you of things you forgot to do, and shifts from the frantic overwhelm to an organized plan of attack for the next day's activities.

. . .

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How to Use Apple’s Stock App

Source: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/stocks/id1069512882

Apple has a great Stocks app which assists investors with prices updated in real time as well as a consistent stream of news articles from many media sources.

This is helpful because while you will have your standard lineup of stocks you can check prices at a glance with, you'll also be able to customize your stocks with new additions.

Say for instance you're on reddit financial threads or talking with a business partner about an exciting new stock, you can add this one to your roster here for it's history, prices and anything else you'd like to follow up with.

The Easy Process of Apple Stock Price Checking

First step is just opening up your Apple Stocks App.

You'll see the indices and funds with a standard stock lists that often begin with the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 for example.

Right after these, you're probably going to see Apple Inc following those indices.

How to use Stocks app on iPhone 1.PNG — The stock stats for the day are @ the Apple Stock app's home page.

To view more stock prices simply scroll down
Tap on a stock to get more info

You'll see the chart displaying a stocks price for the day once you tap on it
Timeline options: Simply click on a measurement of time like a month or 6 months and more times frames to gauge the trending prices for a span of time.

Apple Stocks Media Intel

There's a handy section called "Business News" that you can tap on at the bottom to view the top stories in business that Apple News displays

How to add new stocks

1. Click on the search bar at the top:

How to use Stocks app on iPhone 4 — Just like Google search bars type search terms here for stocks

2. Type in the stock ticker symbol for a stock you want to see.

3. Tap on the stock you want to look at. Make sure to click on the right stock and correct exchange.

4. After the stock chart comes up, you can see all of the info just like with the stocks on your standard list.

5. Click on the add button located in the top right hand side to add this stock to your roster

Simple Steps for Removing Stocks

1. Press the edit button in the top right corner of the app's home screen.

2. Just tap the minus sign next to the prices you want to remove then "Done"

Here's a list of promising tech stocks in 2020:

Top Tech Stocks for September 2020

If you're applying First Principle Thinking described in my last blog you're full of ideas for improving your business & investments. So which stocks are you excited on investing in?

Comment below!

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5 Top Tips to Avoid Zoom Fatigue

Credit: Google Trends

While working at Facebook I interfaced with teams around the world on video, which was cool when mixed with real life meetings with fellow Facebook colleagues but now everything is on Zoom.

If you feel like you're getting a lot more tired at the EOD than pre-covid19 you’re not alone. Zoom fatigue is a real issue that many of us suffer from since March of this year.

Back in the 80s Sci Fi films showed video chatting as futuristic tech - their future is our right now but why are Zoom video chats tiring?

Well, in a real life meeting there is a lot more social stimulation, just being around other people can be invigorating. But in the silo of staring intently at a screen to retain the info can be exhausting.

Video Calls Make Us Lose Focus

Being able to do a quick whispered comment in a meeting to a colleague and then refocus doesn't have a Zoom equivalent. It's way too easy to lose our focus and go down the rabbit hole.

It starts innocently enough with one email, one Facebook messenger response, one text, or perhaps a Slack convo that we attempt to do all within a minute or two

10 minutes later we refocus, look up and have no idea what was being said and look like an ass to other conference attendees.

Not to worry! For all you social media marketers on Facebook, IG, Twitter, and business owners or remote workers I've got a few tips to help:

Here Are 5 Tips to Relieve Zoom Fatigue

1. Talk On The Phone - Yes This Is Still A Thing

Ask any preteen right now & they'll say phones are so 1999, but phone calls are still a thing for a lot of people, especially those who run their own businesses.

Phone calls are especially helpful to reduce Zoom fatigue. When on the phone with Mari Smith, the Queen of Facebook, we chatted about my upcoming feature in her Facebook Marketing Essentials course (FBME2).

Mari and I opted for a phone call instead of Zoom, because we have both been on so many Zoom calls recently due to covid 19. A phone call was a nice break from Zoom fatigue.

Here's a plug for her marketing course I'm featured in talking on Facebook policies: Mari Smith's Facebook Marketing Essentials 2

Back to relieving Zoom fatigue - if you're a pacer like me, talking when you walk helps get the creative juices flowing as well for new business ideas and conversation starters.

You can also see if there are any calls that you can switch to email or Slack if they aren't too too in-depth, this will help you recharge and refresh. Phone calls also let you do a little multitasking without appearing rude to your Zoom guests.

Saying something as simple as, "I'd appreciate a chance to recharge from staring at screens so much, mind if we switch to a phone call?"

Chances are, the other person is also facing Zoom fatigue and would enjoy a break too.

If you're a business consultant and give career advice, this can be achieved just as well over a phone call as on Zoom. You can even build in looking at a website a client has on your computer for a couple of minutes, giving feedback, and then stepping away from the screen.

2. Integrate Breaks Into Your Daily Schedule

Uninterrupted screen staring will tire us out so we need visual breaks to "refresh our mental screens" in a manner of speaking. Visual breaks help us refocus, if our brains are growing fatigued.

When you plan the day, build in a few breaks. If you have a longer Zoom call scheduled, make sure to take a few mini breaks and look away from your computer screen. Follow the 20 second rule, for every 20 minutes staring at the screen look at something 20 feet away, for 20 seconds.

Your friends, family, and business associates are going to be a lot more understanding than we may assume, if you both want to talk without having to look at the screen, to give your eyes a break for a moment (and perhaps add some carrots into your diet).

Sometimes things just get busy and you have nonstop Zoom calls, make sure that your scheduling app, daily planner Google Calendar or smart phone notepad (wherever you schedule the day at) also includes a buffer of 20-30 minutes between meetings.

This will give you a little bit of time to go for a 10 minute walk outside (walking increases productivity and creativity up to 60%), make a cup of coffee, meditate for 5 minutes, make a healthy snack and look away from the screen.

3. Notice Zoom Callers Backgrounds

Now this may sound silly at first, but you can actually reduce strain by simply taking a moment to look at the background of your Zoom counterparts.

Sometimes we stare at our own faces too much on Zoom calls, or other people's faces, but when you take a moment to notice the plants in your associates background, book titles on their bookshelf, it can give your eyes a break from staring at the same thing.

At the same time, if you're on a Zoom meeting with a bunch of people and they all have clutter in their backgrounds, don't focus on that. Even ask people not speaking to use avatars or suggest plain backgrounds either with a green screen and the Zoom virtual background feature or just for them to sit with a plain wall behind them.

4. Ensure There's Speaking Protocol for Social Zooms

Given that we are all on lockdown due to Covid-19 regulations often socializing nowadays is done on Zoom calls. But, if everyone is talking at once (especially when there's alcohol involved) this can lead to fatigue (and annoyance if your guests decide yell over others to be heard).

This can be solved by just simply verbalizing that taking turns is going to be followed. Now everyone gets a chance to talk and it isn't a room of people talking at once - this relieves screen fatigue.

When there aren't clear expectations outlined, the more alpha members of both genders jump in and compete for conversation space. By outlining expectations and format, this helps everyone out and reduces Zoom fatigue.

5. Reduce Multitasking

Multitasking IRL or on Zoom actually lessens our productivity. For those readers who are entrepreneurs and are familiar with 'serial entrepreneurship' you understand how spreading yourself too thin isn't as effective as laser-focusing on one project and nurturing it to perfection.

While it's tempting to think that you can use Zoom to do more in less time, research shows that trying to do a lot of things at once leads to a lesser performance.

This is due in part because you have to turn one part of your brain off and back on for the different types of tasks, which equals around a 40% dive in productivity.

According to the Stanford Memory Laboratory, those who multitask a lot can’t even remember stuff as well as those who choose to use tunnel vision productively, which makes sense given the experiences I've had and fellow startup founders in juggling 10 things at once leading to less quality than focusing on one thing or just a few things.

This also reminds me of another proof of concept moment in business history. Ebay started by dominating a small market of those who liked beanie babies, Amazon started with just books.

It was by focusing on a smaller area first, and getting expert level at this that lead to these companies' success and later expansion to other markets. You can read more about this in the blog on What Made Amazon & eBay So Successful (it's all in the power of dominating sub niches).

They key take away here is that when you're on a Zoom call, it'll be helpful to close the other tabs you have open and put away your smart phone. Be here now. Distractions can wait.
Practice these 5 tips and you'll find it refreshing to relieve the Zoom fatigue as we adapt to the new normal. By the end of 2021 I predict we'll have things more or less back to normal.
In the meantime I hope you've found these steps helpful. Do you have anything you've done to help with Zoom fatigue that isn't on this list or have a story about Zoom fatigue you want to share?

Comment below!

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The Secret Power of Follow Up Questions

Right now it is especially important to stop looking at TikTok & develop the skill of active listening.

Customer feedback is often ignored and profits are lost because a Startup founder is too attached to an old idea that is no longer feasible in today’s market.

We’ve got black lives matters protests, we’ve got different opinions on COVID-19, opinions on how the government is handling it...

What they should be doing what they shouldn’t be doing..blah blah blah. It's so much!

When you find yourself going down a black hole of madness and negativity there is another option:

Instead of just waiting for someone to stop talking and eagerly decide exactly who they are and tell them this forcefully, we can also choose to simply pause. Ask a few questions to clarify their point of view.

We can exchange the eagerness to speak our opinion for curiosity.

The Art of Follow Up Questions

I believe that right now many of us have lost the art of follow-up questions.

I was hanging out with a friend I’ve known since childhood and I share the exciting news of one of the biggest moments of my life, of launching my second business in e-commerce.

He asked zero follow-up questions and made me feel like I hadn’t even spoken. And I know honestly reflecting there were moments as a teen, I was so eager to share something that didn’t notice the other person had just shared something meaningful.

The good thing about perspective is you can use it to examine itself. Instead of the knee-jerk reaction many have to constructive feedback to say, “Well I guess I failed at that too.” < end convo > we have the amazing quality of trying just a little harder.

Studies Show That...

Right now is a great time to examine perspectives, especially our own, and see how we can do better, be better than just mediocre.

The Harvard Business Review did a study on active listening that revealed some key insights here.

Credit: Harvard Business Review

Imagine that - when someone gives you feedback and sounds judgmental af you don't receive their feedback too well. On the flip side, when feedback is delivered from someone who is active listening, it is 10 times more well received.

The study the Harvard Business Review did demonstrates this isn't just a theory but statistically proven true time after time. One lab experiment assigned 112 undergraduate students to be speaker or listener.

Another lab experiment done with 114 undergraduates at a business school. The students were told to talk about their future plans and each student was paired with poor, moderate and good listeners. This is what they found:

Credit: Harvard Business Review

Our customers deserve better too. Many are buying on debts they can’t pay back and it’s not too much to ask for active listening to play a role in the customer experience.

The Pay Off is Big

The teenage version of ourselves isn’t who we are today - we are fully capable of asking follow up questions to demonstrate sincere interest in our clientele.

And, the added perks of doing so are many. The small amount of energy invested in being curious, will often reduce conflict, and increase CTV.

The range of environments and businesses that benefit from follow up questions and active listening is well documented. In the medical peer-reviewed Electron Physician journal a study revealed that:

"One of the important causes of medical errors and unintentional harm to patients is ineffective communication. Active listening does not come naturally to most of us, and, like other communication skills, it must be learned and developed."

I definitely don't want a doctor to operate on the wrong body part because he didn't listen well! Asking follow up questions derived from sincerely listening to someone has tremendous value.

This journal also makes the important observation - active listening doesn't always come naturally.

You do have to make an effort to develop it to benefit from these skills. But, the pay off is huge:

Better business deals, better converting sales funnel, positive social circles and high-power networking.

Appreciated & Respected

I’ve learned since being a child, the value in asking follow-up questions. I've learned the value of active listening and making other people feel appreciated and respected.

Personally & professionally.

Of course, I'm still working on perfecting it but, I'm aware of where the work needs to be done which is where the first battle is won.

When someone doesn't feel appreciated or respected who's shopping at your store or contracting your service you reduce their loyalty and chance they'll give you repeat business.

In social circles, this can cause unnecessary rifts that are easier to prevent than repair.

That’s why it’s important right now to just take a moment and pause before we respond to other people.

This helps us in our business doing market research on what the customers really want instead of our assumption of how we can solve their pain points.

What are the underlying circumstances of a pain point?

What second solution are they trying to solve in addition to the first?

These sort of questions are not asked nor are they answered when we are quick to assume that we know what another person feels, thinks, or believes.

We won't know a prospects' wants and needs unless we ask follow-up questions.

Omitting this very crucial part of social interaction is what leads very good people who used to be great friends to sometimes never even speak again because they take a hard stance on one issue, and refuse to listen to each other.

With the heightened emotion, panic, fear and everything else going on right now the reptile part of our animal brain that dictates the flight or fight response just assumes that if someone doesn’t agree with us about something like Covid they must be a danger to be avoided.

While this can be understandable if someone who tested positive is out shaking hands and kissing babies and refuses to socially distance - which would be irresponsible and unfair to other people who don’t want to get sick-

In other circumstances when it’s merely an intellectual debate those follow-up questions help us to understand why someone feels the way they feel.

You will discover using the secret power of follow up questions, pausing your first reaction, that you have more in common with another person than you think you do.

And they’ll hear your point of view better if you listen first. #facts

Great Follow Up Questions To Ask

So the next time you find yourself disagreeing with someone try waiting to share your opinion. First ask follow-up questions like:

What led you to believe this?

Is that so?

What do you think of other people that disagree with this point of view?

Do you think other people may have doubts about that?

What would you say to someone that doubted that this is the best approach?

Does their opinion have any merit?

Is there anything you think you should say to someone that you respect but may not share your opinion on this topic?

Do you have any doubts about the position you’ve taken on this issue?

In Conclusion...

By simply asking people for more information you show them that you are sincerely interested in understanding why they think the way they do instead of demonstrating to them that your only interest is in hearing yourself speak or being right or just scoring points in a conversation or debate.

And we need more constructive solution-focused conversations right now, less aimless arguing.

Asking questions through active listening also shows that you respect the other person.

How many times has a sales agent tried to pitch you over the phone, or at a car dealership or at Best Buy and was more concerned with getting to the end of their pitch than hearing you?

Annoying right?

Not just annoying - it’s ineffective. The sales agents that pause and listen to what the potential customer is actually saying convert at much higher rates because they’ve made people feel appreciated and respected.

Now that you’re taking the time to really ask why they feel the way they feel instead of assuming you already know everything about them because of one word that triggered you - everyone feels better.

It also empowers you to overcome misconceptions the other person may have had about you. As well as clear up misunderstandings you had about the other person.

So ask follow up questions!

It allows us to bridge gaps rather than burn bridges which is always a lot more advantageous.

Do you have a time you wish someone listened to you better as a customer or personally?

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Time Management Tips for Entrepreneurs

Time management is a skill set not many are naturally talented at but it yields greater results than crossing your fingers and hoping you get everything done on your to-do list.

Entrepreneurs in particular are subject to having 500 projects, all half-finished, running at the same time because delegating time, energy and prioritizing tasks can be a challenge.

(More challenges: Congress Challenges Big Tech here)

The ability to self-direct is another talent that doesn't come naturally to everyone, let alone those brave enough to quit the 9-5 to start and run their own company.

You need two skillsets to be effective: time management & task management

According Journal of Universal Knowledge Management:

"Task management is the process of managing a task through its life cycle. It involves planning, testing, tracking, and reporting. Task management can help either individual achieve goals, or groups of individuals collaborate and share knowledge for the accomplishment of collective goals

Tasks are also differentiated by complexity, from low to high. Effective task management requires managing all aspects of a task, including its status, priority, time, human and financial resources assignments, recurrence, dependency, notifications and so on."

I thought I'd share some effective time management tips with you on today's blog, from trusted sources, because, well, uh...we are all managing our own time now working remotely due to C19.
From Entrepreneur.com:

Break Down Your Activities Into Simple Problems

"Utilizing your consciousness requires more energy and can be avoided by simplifying your problems. Excellence in time management revolves around establishing a process and breaking it down into small, atomic operations that are easy to grasp and don’t require intensive resource consumption."
The idea is that you develop your own process that is generally the same for handling new activities or problems, but you adapt it to the situation.

This holds an advantage to producing repeatable results once you get in your groove for developing your new how for how you approach a task or problem.

When you break this process down into smaller steps, it's easier to systemize organizing your day instead of hitting that wall of overwhelm we feel when tackling everything at once.

From James Clear, author of Atomic Habits:

The Ivy Lee Method: The Daily Routine Experts Recommend for Peak Productivity

"By 1918, Charles M. Schwab was one of the richest men in the world. Schwab was the president of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, the largest shipbuilder and the second-largest steel producer in America at the time. The famous inventor Thomas Edison once referred to Schwab as the “master hustler.”

He was constantly seeking an edge over the competition. One day in 1918, in his quest to increase the efficiency of his team and discover better ways to get things done, Schwab arranged a meeting with a highly-respected productivity consultant named Ivy Lee.

As the story goes, Schwab brought Lee into his office and said, “Show me a way to get more things done.” “Give me 15 minutes with each of your executives,” Lee replied. “How much will it cost me,” Schwab asked. “Nothing,” Lee said. “Unless it works. After three months, you can send me a check for whatever you feel it's worth to you.”

The Ivy Lee Method During his 15 minutes with each executive, Ivy Lee explained his simple daily routine for achieving peak productivity:

At the end of each work day, write down the six most important things you need to accomplish tomorrow.

Do not write down more than 6 tasks. Prioritize those 6 items in order of their true importance.

When you arrive tomorrow, concentrate only on the 1st task. Work until the first task is finished before moving on to the second task. Approach the rest of your list in the same fashion. At the end of the day, move any unfinished items to a new list of six tasks for the following day.

Repeat this process every working day. The strategy sounded simple, but Schwab and his executive team at Bethlehem Steel gave it a try. After three months, Schwab was so delighted with the progress his company had made that he called Lee into his office and wrote him a check for $25,000. A $25,000 check written in 1918 is the equivalent of a $400,000 check in 2015."

So why does this work? It's simple without too much over thinking or analysis needed.It forces you to make hard decisions eliminating the fluff and it removes the initial barriers to starting up.

Also instead of multitasking it forces you to focus on achieving one task which can improve the quality of your results.

From Pat Flynn:

Take Advantage of Just-in-Time Learning

""Just-in-time-learning" changed everything for me. That is, I only consume content related directly to the next task I have in the current project I'm working on.

Blog posts, podcast episodes, videos—they must help me with completing that next task on my priority list, or else it doesn't deserve my attention...at this moment.

'Just-in-time-learning' changed everything for me. FOMO (fear of missing out) does make this hard though, because there's so much great stuff out there we don't want to miss.

However, if you're smart about it and as you come across interesting and potentially helpful content you put it aside into a tool such as Evernote for easy access later, it can truly change how much you get done versus how much you learn.

I love this tip from Pat Flynn - so much of the time entrepreneurs become program-addicts, enrolling in course after course and not taking action with A+ syndrome - thinking it has to be perfect to begin.

Focusing on just consuming content related to achieving the next task is a way to laser focus actions for all of us info-aholics.

Pareto principle - 80/20 Rule

Can't leave out the most well known time management strategy can I? From Forbes:

"This “universal truth” about the imbalance of inputs and outputs is what became known as the Pareto principle, or the 80/20 rule. While it doesn’t always come to be an exact 80/20 ratio, this imbalance is often seen in various business cases:

• 20% of the sales reps generate 80% of total sales.

• 20% of customers account for 80% of total profits.

• 20% of the most reported software bugs cause 80% of software crashes.

• 20% of patients account for 80% of healthcare spending (and 5% of patients account for a full 50% of all expenditures!)

Instead of trying to do the impossible, a Pareto approach is to truly understand which projects are most important. What are the most important goals of your organization, or boss, and which specific tasks do you need to focus on to align with those goals. Delegate or drop the rest."

Investopedia has a good example here of how to apply the 80/20 rule as well.

Next up from Than Pham:

Do the hardest thing first, every single morning.

"Do the hardest thing first, every single morning. When you start your workday, tackle the task you find the most difficult to do or are most likely to procrastinate on. When we postpone those kind of tasks till later in the day, we often get stressed about them and keep postponing them."

"By flipping it, you can go on with the rest of the day knowing you were productive. Even if you did nothing else, you still had a productive day. I've done this for the last 5 years of running my business and it helped us tremendously. Everyone in our company does it too and it's part of our onboarding training to teach people this concept."

I haven't tried that one out, but I like the idea...and I probably would have benefited from applying it to my self-employment taxes this year as I literally waited until July 15th to file. ?

From my own experiences running multiple companies from the comfort of my own home, I've found one technique really useful. So here's a tip from the Jetski Shaman blog:

Time Stamped Index Cards and/or Smart Phone Notepad

Writing down a list of tasks for the day on a index card inside a spiral index card book or on a notepad on my iPhone with the empty checkmark circle is always super helpful and motivating.

• Write down all the tasks you have to do for the day on an index card or digital notepad

• Read over them and determine what has the 1st priority, 2nd priority, 3rd priority & so on

• Re-arrange the order of the tasks on a new notepad or index card according to priority

• Add a time stamp before the 1st word of the task for what time you want to achieve it

• Check off the tasks as you complete them. Ahhh the feeling of completing a task!

Pro tip: add a 30 to 45 minute buffer between tasks to stay on track as it sometimes takes longer

Credit: Apple.com

What about you? What have you found to be helpful for time management?

For more time management tips check out this article on 34 Time Management Tips

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Remembering Why We Do This

It's easy to get stuck in auto pilot - even our reaction to the news, major events and business developments can be automated.

Whirling into chaos, we numb out and forget our big Why, for why we do this. Why we started a business, why we continue to try to improve it and ourselves and we we hope for positive change if everything seems to be burning like the Notre Dame.

When it rains we run outside to roll up our car windows, adrenalin spikes and that one task is all we focus on.

I feel like since the global shut down of cities, the echo chamber on C19 has become a little too dominating, and a message of hopelessness. The reality is, there are good moments that still happen.

Every day.

Pictured above is a man in New Jersey who used a sign to thank hospital workers for saving his wife's life.

"Thank you all in emergency for saving my wife's life," the man wrote on his sign. "I love you all."
The nurse who snapped the photo is Allison Swendsen, who later shared the photo on Instagram and Twitter, where it quickly went viral.

When you are running your own business, crunching numbers, fighting with Facebook when they disable your ad account for no reason at all - it's hard sometimes to touch base with reality.

It's tempting to get sucked into the negative news vortex as well. But we are more productive when we nourish heart smarts and take time out for self care.

We function better, make more informed decisions and see more options open when there is also a little extra inner space that comes from setting the intention to genuinely care about your community, your customers and yes...your self.

A friend of mine recently told me that she felt like with all my big plans, launching a second business, being mentored by millionaires in ecom, writing a book - that I had forgotten to actually love myself.

It felt like I was being put on the spot and forced to be vulnerable while my attention was more focused on impressing this attractive girl I went to UT with, telling her all my grand designs.

She had a point - and I took it seriously.

It wasn't something that I vaguely considered - I set a specific intention to meditate on this during a break in one of my work days building my eCommerce store.

I focused on good moments that happened in my life, the things I've accomplished that I can celebrate as being uniquely me. Not just college degrees or starting businesses but repaired friendships, kind acts for others and developing self awareness.

My heart, which was weighed down with over concern for national issues, the pandemic, people I couldn't help but want to save - felt a release. The attachment lessened to trying to change things I couldn't, at least at this moment.

Afterwards, I got some great news for my business and even better developments unveiled themselves for my new startup.

It isn't a coincidence - there is a causal relationship between our mind state and emotions, and the quality ranking of business decisions -personally & professionally.

According to the Harvard Health Blog, self-care through exercise changes the brain to improve thinking skills:

"Exercise helps memory and thinking through both direct and indirect means."

"The benefits of exercise come directly from its ability to reduce insulin resistance, reduce inflammation, & stimulate the release of growth factors—chemicals in the brain that affect the health of brain cells, the growth of new blood vessels in the brain, and even the abundance and survival of new brain cells. Indirectly, exercise improves mood and sleep, and reduces stress and anxiety."

"Problems in these areas frequently cause or contribute to cognitive impairment."

This is good to remember as we all teach ourselves how to cope with lockdown as discussed in Monday's blog.

Need ideas for how to change up your self-care rituals or want to start from scratch?

Here are 80 Self Care Ideas which include:

√ Journaling
√ Taking time for slow contemplative morning coffee
√ Bookclubs
√ Exchanging social media time for nature time outside
√ Getting up early and reading inspirational books

That man in New Jerz, with his simple sign but powerful message, was so affected by the work done by nurses at that hospital, and his wife's life was saved, that he took the time to share this message even with social distancing.

The nurses that saw this both on social media and at the hospital went to work the next day, even more dedicated to saving lives and feeling glad they are appreciated.

Turns out compassion is great for business.

So take a moment to reflect on why you should love yourself and appreciate the efforts you've taken to get here today.

This will improve your mood, reduce stress and help you make even more strategic choices with better outcomes in your business.

What experiences have you had that give you hope? Comment below!

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How to Use SEO to Drive More Sales

One of the pain points small to medium sized businesses have (& even Fortune 500s in some industries) is not understanding what SEO is, and feeling it’s too technical.

Search Engine Optimization is in essence, how to get your website to rank on google searches when your prospects are searching for your product or service.

BUT there are even more benefits to keyword research that will be revealed below.

Keyword Optimization in a Nutshell

Let’s first get clear on the specifics of what SEO is:

Search Engine Optimization discovers which specific terms potential customers search google with to find a service or product.

How money is made through search terms is by including these same search terms on your website. This gets your website ranking higher on Google search results.

But – you need to know the exact phrases as well as words, and that’s just the beginning.

Beyond SEO

Finding those keyword terms is absolutely necessary to get your website content to rank higher on search engine ranking pages (SERPs). Also, you’ll want to be on page 1 of Google for search term search results because people rarely look beyond page one.

Yet, there is a level deeper you’ll want to go for maximum benefits:

Customer intentions when googling. When you know why your prospects are searching for things as part of the customer experience you expand your opportunity for upsells & downsells as well as where and how to build out new products and services.

For more info on how to improve your business by understanding the customer experience read this metrics blog here.

Making keyword research a regular habit you do for your business helps understand how your audience views the world, which enables your messaging to be more on point with better customization and personalization. This generates better trust in your business too!

Have you ever made a content map? I linked a nice Hubspot article to the words ‘content map’ to peep, it’s great to map out your blog content & social media posts ahead of time.

Integrating SEO into how you map out your content calendar will boost your business presence online and up your game by a whole bunch, as more of your audience will read your blog and consume your content when it is already planned with SEO in mind.

Bullet Point Your Search Terms

Step One: Brainstorm Likely Terms Your Audience Searches For
Just start thinking up the type of terms your audience may search for when looking to hire your type of service or buy your type of products, when Google searching.

It can be helpful to role play what you would do if you were a customer, or what you already do personally, when googling for a product. Write down those search terms. If you have a team, get their thoughts too. Think of how your customers may phrase things.

Step 2: Validate Search Terms With Reality
Go on Quora, google your keyword term plus forum or blog or articles and you’ll find where online conversations are happening about your topic. This will get you the exact words your customers are using.

For example, if you run a podcast or marketing firm search “podcast+board” or “marketing+forum” or vice versa, and you’ll find forums and bulletin boards where folks go to find more info. It’s a great place to get your finger on the pulse of current trends.

Pro-tip: Look at Wikipedia, enter your search terms, and look at the table of contents on articles that pull up. This will get you some new search terms that be even more clutch.

Step 3: Google Autofill Hack
This is a nice little hack even millionaires I work with in eCommerce didn’t know about until I taught them! Go to Google.com and enter in the first word of a keyterm — don’t type in the full phrase though let Google autofill the rest.

This is the genius of it, Google will suggest the most popular search term combos that people search for. This will advance your search term list with real results you aren’t guessing on but have in specifics.

Bonus: Google Search Console
Stroll over to the Google Search Console to see the keywords your website already ranks for. Google will also give you the heads up if you have broken pages and/or links on your site, or anything that prevents them from properly indexing your webpage on search engines.

The Genius of Long-tail Search Terms

At this point, if you’re following the steps outlined in today’s blog, you’ll have quite a few search terms written down from:

√ Your brainstorming
√ Role playing as the customer
√ Your teams ideas on search terms
√ What you find on forums and boards in your industry and
√Google auto fill suggestions

To be effective you’ll want to have four to six baseline key phrases.

Ex: Marketing, marketing strategy, marketing plan and eight to twelve long-tail phrases.

Ex: Marketing plan template, Marketing help for small businesses, Marketing ideas during covid.

Baseline search term phrases are just that, your baseline. Start with these, put them on your landing pages, even in About pages if you can.

Use one phrase for your home page and the other phrases should have landing pages or whole sections of your website dedicated to these terms.

This empowers you to earn rankings on search results on Google. But make sure when choosing baseline key words to include relational search phrases in addition to the main one.

What I mean is this, remember when we talked about intention and the customer experience? The plain picture search term of say “marketing” will have higher competition than a less-than-obvious search term that denotes the experience your customer has on the customer journey.

An example of a key word phrase that reflects intent would be “get leads for my business” instead of just “marketing.” It’s a more specific intention which separates the people who may also be marketers from your customer base, that you actually want to reach.

As you may have noticed, the second phrase is a long-tail search term.

The long-tail search terms are fantastic on clarifying the customer’s intention, like the “getting leads for my business” above. You can even make certain weeks in the month themed for specific long-tail search terms you want to split test for SEO generated traffic on your site.

Sounds pretty dang useful right?

There are a few tools SEO experts recommend using I’ll mention as well.

SEO Tools Experts Use

√ Google Keyword Planner

Try and use your twelve to fifteen search terms in the planner’s keyword suggestion tool, and peep the ad groups Google suggests to piece out and label what you see.

You can find terms related to the ad groups, and view the estimated search volume for each term and the suggested bid — keep in mind it’s an AdWords tool made mainly to sell more ads.

Keep your perspective balanced here, as search volume is just one metric. Search terms with a lot of traffic don’t always help, but when you marry this to the bid price, you’ll notice high bid price means higher conversion values.

It isn’t a hard fast rule, but you’ll begin to see that bid price fluctuations are a vital sign when diving in to the research. Ideally, you want to mark and edit your search phrase with a combo of search volume and bid price. Try to find the mid point.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed right now – it’s understandable. You can stick with all the advice given before the Tools section here and still come out on top, better than before.

Here are a couple of other tools SEO experts recommend:

Yoast Suggest
Google Trends

TLDR Cliff Notes Version: Yoast is a free WordPress plugin (with advanced options on the paid plan), it alphabetically lists related search terms from Google, and Google Trends is gold for seeing a timeline of the popularity of a search term.

Google Trends is key if you plan on running Amazon or Shopify eCommerce businesses, as you can see spikes, dips and plateaus for search terms ( = buying habits) of a product you’re evaluating for adding to your shop.

What are your favorite key takeaways from today’s blog on SEO? Comment below, thanks.

. . .

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Does Facebook Only Promote Sad Reacts? No – It Goes Deeper

The content that you see on social media, or Facebook at least, is not as random as you may think it is. The Facebook algorithm is how Facebook decides which posts users see, and in what order, every time they check their newsfeeds.

Credit: Hootsuite.com

In the early days, when the Facebook algorithm was born, in 2009, posts were sorted based on popularity.
But, after more time passed, Facebook decided to just do what ever they could to keep Facebook users on the platform. The reasoning is that the more time Facebook users are on Facebook, the more they can be advertised to.

Right now there is a lot of negativity on Facebook. There are positive posts too but many news articles state that negative talking points are organically being supported more than positive by the Facebook algorithm.

While Facebook is free to use, Mark Zuckerberg pays the bills through advertisers paying him ad money to run advertisements on the platform.

The more time people spent on Facebook, the more money goes to the shareholders of Facebook.

Facebook's Shareholders

Mark Zuckerberg, with a net worth of $54.7 Billion dollars according to Forbes, holds over 400 million shares of Facebook, comprising a market value of around $82.2 billion.

The Vanguard Group Inc., an investment management company, holds approximately 184.0 million shares of Facebook with a combined market value of about $37.7 billion.

BlackRock an asset and investment management firm, holds about 158.2 million shares of Facebook with a combined market value of $32.3 billion.

FMR LLC, a financial services company holds approximately 123.6 million shares of Facebook with a combined market value of $26.1 billion.

T. Rowe Price is an investment management company offering portfolio management, equities, fixed income, asset allocation, and holds about 107.8 million shares of Facebook totaling a combined market value of $22.1 billion. Source: Investopedia

Facebook Algorithm Changed to Prioritize Friends & Fam

Mark Zuckerberg announced in 2018 that going forward, one of the biggest changes with Facebook was that the algorithm would be modified to prioritize friends and family posts instead of just advertisers' posts.

However, that's not what happened. Instead of seeing more communities of friends and families created, studies revealed that over 50% of increased engagement was paired with increased divisiveness, outrage and angry reactions.

At the same time, the way the Facebook algorithm prioritized content ended up supporting fringe posts on fake news from scam artists and spammers who knew how to work the engagement algorithm.

If It Bleeds It Reads

Journalism, in the news media has always had a slant for things that are negative. Despite the fact that there are also more positive topics that are newsworthy -- these are often ignored to prioritize the shock and awe and graphic violence stories.

So much so, there is even a catch-phrase that journalists use: “If it bleeds it reads.”

In a sense, Facebook has just allowed itself to become prey to the same ideology with one big predator creating the most amount of unhappy feelings in millions of people’s lives as they scroll the newsfeed: Fox News.

“Angry” is the top reaction when it comes to political content, though not other types of content. Fox News hired social media managers who knew how to bleed the hearts of millions through divisive negative stories on Facebook:

Credit: newswhip.com

It's clear Faux News knows exactly what they are doing, and do it well. Creating content that is negative and hateful will get more reactions, with a consistent narrative, posting schedule and relentless factory of discontented posts.

That's not the entire story though. There are plenty of other stories and posts that have gotten a high number of reactions that are positive. Posts about babies, pets, and baking cookies also have gotten incredible amounts of reach.

Over 2 MILLION engagements were drawn to the So Yummy Facebook Page's post on 12 cookie decorating hacks:

Credit: newswhip.com

So while many decry Facebook as having the intention of hurting people's feelings and spreading discontent, this isn't reality. Reality isn't one single narrative. When you subscribe to only one way of thinking you miss out on what's happening in the periphery.

The reality is, Facebook is a tool, and if bad characters spend more time on learning how to use this tool and get more adept at distributing content with higher engagement - they will dominate the Facebook Newsfeed.

Credit: Anthony Quintano

What's curious is how many people seem to miss out on the fact that reactions such as the laugh react and love react, if prioritized in high numbers also drive just as much engagement on Facebook.

The narrative that keeps getting repeated is that Facebook is only supporting negative content, when studies by NewsWhip for instance, show this simply isn't true.

NYU professor Scott Galloway, who is known for his outspoken views on Facebook - and someone whose perspective I value - has also missed this essential fact as well in a recent interview with Fast Company:

"What these companies [eg Facebook] have done is created a business model where the most incendiary, upsetting, controversial, and oftentimes false and damaging things get more oxygen than they deserve because we are a tribal species and when people say things that are upsetting we tend to engage. Engagement equals enrichment. The more rage equals the more clicks equals the more Nissan ads. So these algorithms have figured out that if you promote the flawed junk science of anti-vaxxers, it increases shareholder value. There is a population of people out there that believe vaccinations are bad, and they should be heard. But they should not dominate health news so that you start getting these stories from your friends on Facebook. It starts adding legitimacy, and then there’s a trend around anti-vaccination, and more two- and three-year-old boys and girls have their limbs amputated because of an outbreak of measles which we thought we had conquered 30 or 40 years ago."

While there is definitely a lot of truth to what Galloway speaks of, as far as accountability, fact-checking, anti-trust laws not being enforced on big tech companies like Facebook & Google - he misses the point that there is more than one narrative here.

Positive stories get distribution and crazy amounts of reactions too - just share a photo or video of a puppy and see how many reactions and likes it gets. But - as stated before, when companies who want to use negativity to drive reactions put their posting in overdrive, it will definitely also create massive social media engagement.

One headline I've read recently said,

"Facebook Prioritizes What Makes You ‘Sad’ Or ‘Angry’ Over What You ‘Like’"

and yet this is false - as reactions aside from the likes, also include the wow, laugh, love and new Care react - not just sad or angry.

Later on in the article the author says:

"...all reactions are weighted the same, which means the News Feed prioritizes things you “love” equally to things that make you “angry” or “sad.”"

But the headline stated only the negative emotions.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This is an example of cherry-picking info to frame a story to support a bias. A pre-existing narrative being told instead of examining the data and seeing the full picture. How you use a tool determines the emotional outcome.

What's even more disturbing is how willing the public is to accept a pre-framed narrative without investigating it, reactions become almost robotic. (Read Great Leaders Don't Create Robots for more tips on leadership).

Ironically, a lot of the trite dialogue on social media, could have been written by a computer algorithm as it's one person trading talking points they didn't think up, or research themselves with another who is doing the same thing.

People don't study anything that doesn't already confirm their existing bias, and look for things on Facebook to support this rather than research their own beliefs.

It would be great to see folks get informed beyond the 3 primary outdated emotionally charged talking points on posts shared without even googling origins of the info and fact checking with multiple sources.

Forgive me, perhaps I am biased about people who are biased, as I worked at a college instructing students on how to cross reference primary and secondary sources. Authenticating data sources is important before becoming emotionally invested in what you think is the absolute truth. But back to Facebook.

It seems like there is a lot of opportunity right now to prey upon people's fears on social media, but there are just as many opportunities to encourage hope, trust and faith that things will get better.

I've seen posts celebrating the bravery of health care workers get amazing distribution, positive reactions and countless likes.

Don't fall victim to a one-story narrative, examine all sides, cross reference sources to make sure you aren't being fed a one dimensional version of a 5 dimensional reality.

I encourage individual Facebook users, as well as companies and entrepreneurs, to use the tools we have wisely. To do our best to create networks that support authenticity, mutual respect and a narrative that promotes sustainable social networks.

. . .

Available for freelance writing and guest posting on your blog: blogger@jetskishaman.com

Great Leaders Don’t Create Robots

Credit: Rock'n Roll Monkey

Does every piece of news, blog and social media post have to reference COVID19 right now? While we are limping our way through a pandemic sometimes there needs to be a break from obsessing.

During a crisis we look for leadership to guide the ship we're sailing into safe harbor. At every company, you'll have tons of managers but not very many leaders. Let's talk about leadership.

At an email-marketing conferences I attended, the speaker made it a point to communicate that we won't succeed without a solid plan.

To attempt to keep doing the same thing without strategy is called "hope marketing" and makes a lot of folks live the reality of "broke marketing."

Hope without a strategy doesn't create leadership. Leadership is developed when your hope and positive thinking are matched with a concrete vision of the future and a way to get there.

Real Leaders Know It Ain't About Them

Word of mouth is one of the most powerful ways to grow a tribe, to create a group of people dedicated to a specific purpose or cause. You'll find this in any major sport - word of mouth is a powerful driver and builds communities.

One of the mistakes people make is defining leadership as the worship of a single person. Identity politics is one of the most divisive cancers right now plaguing America.

Leadership that lasts beyond tomorrow and creates a strong community grows when the leader gives people a platform for spreading ideas that work.

Who do you trust more: an ad you see on your Facebook Newsfeed, or a recommendation your friend made? The friend of course. The culture around a product or service grows when people recruit other people. That's how ideas spread too.

People won't do it for you - they do it for each other. Leadership is embracing that it really isn't all about you. It's about the movement you're creating. The shared values of those who follow you.

Change is Inevitable - Except from Vending Machines

Generally speaking, managers don't like people that stick out. By definition they want everyone to tow the line, and stick within established rules.

Many companies have PR statements that say they are about innovation but reward conformity more than anything else. It was definitely like this when I worked in tech at Facebook. You didn't want to stick out in any way.

Managers were overworked and had no bandwidth to recognize the talents of their employees. I quit my job at Facebook because of this and started a successful consulting firm and e-commerce ventures.

I was a deviant - I didn't fit in with the status quo. But neither did Elon Musk, Henry Ford or Tony Robbins. All of them are outliers that challenged conformity. While I wouldn't say my contributions to society can light a candle yet to these notable people, there's something important to worth mentioning:

Managers don't like deviants, they don't like nonconformists who may be eccentrics or mavericks with too much individual personality. Deviating from conformity is a failure for a manager working to deliver within the rigid lines of their role.

Managers crush nonconformists - that's what they do. Managers don't inspire people. Leaders do.

Leaders understand a different outlook: change is unavoidable and also one of the keys to success. Not human robots.

Credit: Craig Sybert

As it turns out, when you have a workforce that is dedicated to change and more fully engaged in making things happen-- not only are employees happier but they are also more productive.

This is a much better way to organize a business than making people walk on tip toes, using threats of losing job security and fear as a motivation to do a good job.

Leadership isn't just popularity, power and showmanship.
The Harvard Business Review states:

"A successful leader as one who can understand people’s motivations and enlist employee participation in a way that marries individual needs and interests to the group’s purpose."

Find Someone Succeeding & Encourage Them

When someone at the job place has created a workaround, or another way of doing routine work that works better, instead of punishing them for not conforming shine the spotlight.

While it won't always be the case, often innovation comes in small packages from employees just figuring out a better way to do a task that isn't officially sanctioned in the employee handbook.

Great leaders find someone deviating from the norm creating success - and encourage them.

Many things we know and love as part of every day life happened because someone did something different than the norm and challenged the group-think of conformity in the workplace, society or within a specific industry.

Air Bnb is one example of this, so are Lyft & Uber, as well as Google's Gmail as mentioned in the blog about managers needing to adopt flexible strategies from leadership to keep folks motivated post COVID (to not just do the minimal but to exceed expectations).

It's raining right now in Austin, Texas and Leonard Cohen is playing on the online radio station I listen to, Radio Paradise.

As I listen to the lyrics sang, I think of leaders who inspired me in my journey from 9-5er to entrepreneur. And the traits they have in common.

One of the shared attributes every one of them has, is the ability to put aside their own ego and become sincerely invested and curious in how other people think, feel and perceive life.

Who are some great leaders you've met in your life? Who inspires you?
. . .

Available for freelance writing and guest posting on your blog: blogger@jetskishaman.com

The Economy of Integrity

Credit: Bonnie Kittle

We live in uncertain times but one thing we can all count on is our own ability to frame the social interactions we have. This is both in our personal lives and in business connections when we interact with other business owners or potential partners for joint ventures and more.

It's one of those nuances of human behavior often ignored - are you being the best version of yourself?

This is where professional development meets personal development. Why is it so hard to take a step back outside the echo chamber of previously held beliefs?

Some of it is habit. Habit in how we think of ourselves, the world, other people and our potential. For many, their careers don't take off until they figure their shit out, as a person. Yet - you won't see this taught in MBA programs at major universities.

It's Not What You Do It's How

There are tons of awful people that donate to charities yet abuse their spouses, do unhealthy amounts of drugs and never take a long hard look at who they are actually becoming aside from profit margins met.

Have you ever tried to save a friend from themselves? Passionately advocating on how to dodge the bullet you see headed towards them from their current actions and life path?

What usually happens?

A shit ton of defensiveness and resentment.

Leonard Cohen once sang,

"And I lift my glass to the awful truth
Which you can't reveal to the ears of youth..."

Cohen sings of the eternal resistance of being told what we know is true - that perhaps we aren't trying hard enough. Perhaps we owe it to ourselves to be a bit more honest on if actions taken are doing justice to the version of ourselves we become when energy follows thoughts.

The act of becoming is talked about in many esoteric texts and yet very divorced from the business world, as far as an inherent quality we associate with success.

The art of becoming is the acknowledgement we aren't perfect but also aren't helpless about who we become during the process of living our lives.

I've been blessed to meet, rather recently, a number of influential multi millionaires at the top of their game for their industry. And in this circle something is different than others I've met in previous years who were also successful in business.

These people, many of whom know each other, have spent time understanding who they are and reflect honor and integrity into how they do business and affect the world.

Back to the friend you're trying to save analogy (happened several times for folks I know). It isn't what you're saying. The content is gold - your intentions are pure, you don't have anything to gain here. It is all for the sake of your friend who is fucking up that you want to save.

It isn't what you say, it's how you say it. If anyone feels lectured to, instant walls go up. Higher than the BS ones the prez wants to build between USA and Mexico. Just add water or err um..strongly worded advice.

People feel the energy coming from you behind your words. This has parallels in the start up world as well.

LTV Isn't Accidental

Of the highly successful 7 figure business leaders I've had the luck to meet, connect with, and in some cases become friends with - the feeling of 'this person genuinely cares for others' and reflects that in how they do business is a great predictor of not just success but longevity.

You may have heard of LTV, the life time value of a customer who makes multiple purchases with your business. A customer's LTV exponentially increases if they trust your business. This is the economy of integrity.

When customers feel a bond because of the tribe you've created based on integrity, the rituals specific to your business, and the values you stand for (and what you won't accept: read I'm Not For Everyone) this not only increases long term profits but you become an excuse for others to rise up and act better.

Do we need to wait for Christmas to be generous, forgiving and proactively giving?

Of course not. It's an attitude. An attitude of gratitude. Ok I did see that on the wall at a meeting I was at back in the day. But despite it's rather pithy phrasing, it speaks to deeper concepts.

It's the idea that every Sci Fi author understands - sometimes we are world-creating. We create a micro world of who buys our product or service and determine what kind of environment and culture we create.

Make use of the free will and choice we do have to lead a company based on values of integrity. It gives back so much more than it takes. Your influence continues to grow positively and affect the lives of others in a way that inspires them to do the right thing.

Don't Take My Word for It

Don't take my word for it - plenty of studies from multiple sources back up, empirically, the values delivered by being a decent person, and how that decency affects organizational structures beneficially.

From the National Academy of Sciences:

"Leadership by individuals of high personal integrity helps to foster an environment in which scientists can openly discuss responsible research practices in the face of conflicting pressures. All those involved in the research enterprise should acknowledge that integrity is a key dimension of the essence of being a scientist and not a set of externally imposed regulatory constraints.

To the Journal on Public Integrity and Ethical Leadership:

“ 'Moral values and norms' are often absent when scholars are involved in describing, explaining, and understanding the reality of governance and administration (the dominant focus is on goals and interests; biases and irrationality; institutions; and context and power). An “ethics and integrity turn” in the dominant fields of study is needed."

The Economist referenced a study ran by Tim Hird of Robert Half Management Resources who aptly said:

“Companies with strong, ethical management teams enhance their ability to attract investors, customers and talented professionals,” explains Hird, adding that ethical behavior starts at the top and allows companies to create a culture that values integrity."

Going back to the friend analogy - the reason I bring this up is that this fits your engagement with your customer base as well. If you really want to help your friend out and avoid a slow motion accident you see coming, listen first. Focus less on the righteousness of the point you're making. More on what his or her needs actually are.

Same goes for the impact your business has on the world through the interactions your clients have with each other, with your business and others they come into contact with after purchasing.

When the person you are is reflected in the values of your company, this ripple effect increases CTV by just making people feel more comfortable because they know, see and feel your integrity.

You may just inspire them to also live their lives with higher integrity - helping your business thrive through word of mouth, increase customer retention and long term profits but also help the world become a better place.

"The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office."

-President Dwight D. Eisenhower

I'd like to hear your comments on your experiences as a customer and business with integrity.

. . .

Available for freelance writing and guest posting on your blog: blogger@jetskishaman.com

The Power of Tribes

Credit: Joel Mott

We live in challenging times right now. Police brutality has led to business closures from storefronts near protest marches, COVID19 panic buying has led to food and toilet paper shortages and many college graduates, like myself, were stripped of the gift that walking across college stages in grad regalia gives our hearts and souls.

Would be memories never created due to the bizarre pausing of normal life, as we all wait, breathless, for the next thing to happen, hoping paradoxically for things to return to normal.

Business right now is also juxtaposed with innovation opportunities but strained to maintain existing product lines above margin.

Steve Jobs' iconic slogan for Apple, "Think Different," really applies to all verticals still attempting to run a company in these challenging times.

How to Challenge the Status Quo Correctly

Companies that defeat the status quo often succeed where many fail. Whenever the state of affairs is changing, it gives one a chance to be remarkable.

However, many grains of sand make up a beach. Microinfluencers are forgotten by heads of marketing as they push out more cold audience targeted ads.

When you challenge the status quo and can follow through with incredible products or services so unlike what's already out there you start to build a cult following & the story of your business changes.

This following is what makes the difference when you actually are

"Thinking Different."

Quality always beats out quantity. A highly engaged group of followers will recruit more people to join your tribe. They'll take the lead creating micro leaders to step up to the plate and push the envelope.

Nature Abhors A Vacuum

The problem is, there is such a large amount of people that have convinced themselves that it's best to do nothing. That's part of the reason why we see Black Lives Matter protests striking a chord globally. The sleeping masses have woken up and see doing nothing isn't enough now.

To build a business, you need to build a brand. To build a brand you need to build a following. To build a following you need to think differently than the other millions of brands out there saying,

"Buy my stuff, buy my stuff."

Nature abhors a vacuum. A vacuum exists when many who think alike, share pain points your product or service can solve but see no leadership to guide them forward.

Leaders find out how to enter these vacuums and generate momentum. They create the ripple effects the world feels later, after critical mass is reached.

This type of movement generates another type of momentum: the speed of shared trust, the pace of belonging, the transformation of individuals into a tribe.

Be Congruent Inside & Out

Distinguishing your customers from other brands and their clients takes some work. You need to develop your own rituals unique to your company's vision.

Don't be afraid to be a little eccentric. As long as it isn't forced. Jobs was probably very socially awkward but with a genius for aesthetic design.

The funkiness of having all MacBooks after a certain period, come with Garageband, a program to create music, really helped solidify Apple's tribe from competitors.

When you're feeling stuck, think about rituals you enjoy. Contemplate how to integrate these with your tribe. What are things you enjoy, hobbies-wise?

Take a moment to see if you can repurpose some of these activities into a ritual for your company. You may see there are areas you can still rise to challenge the status quo and become remarkable.

. . .

Available for freelance writing and guest posting on your blog: blogger@jetskishaman.com

Where Reverse Engineering Fails & Stories Win

Credit: Math

Just like a good cup of coffee, feeling like you are beating the competition in your business's market is a feeling you want to savor. But what are you competing against?

The typical response is binary. Apple competes against Microsoft. General Motors competes against Toyota. Netflix competes against Hulu.

However, when customers are using your product or service to solve a pain point they are doing so to satisfy a complex set of emotions, moods and attitudes.

There are times when a customer may decide to purchase from you because they want to meet a goal. The steps towards reaching this goal have sub-steps that have to be achieved before reaching the purchase point.

The 3D Sphere Model of Competition

Credit: jgvdthree

Just the belief that things can get better is a foundation for moving forward. If consumers don't believe that anything can improve it will be a lot harder of a sell. How does what you sell help your clients make progress in their lives?

The way someone makes progress towards completing a goal is a path that offers many moments for you to solve their pain points. If you have an Ecommerce store selling coffee it would make sense to sell coffee mugs as well right?

Amazon's suggestions of similar products customer bought after buying what you're purchasing is responsible for millions of dollars in sales.

But the only way you will be able to even get to this point is if you understand what is competing with your products. Think beyond a linear timeline. Make it more like a 3 dimensional sphere that intersects with other spheres.

If You Were Selling Coffee...

If I was selling coffee, the competition you may think is other coffee brands, and tea. However, just like last Tuesday's blog mentions another source of competition is not buying anything at all.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, talking about the competition Netflix faces said:

“Really we compete with video games. We compete with drinking a bottle of wine. That’s a particularly tough one! We compete with other video networks. Playing board games.”

Thinking outside the box of typical market research on the competition, you'll want to ask, "What do people do instead of drinking coffee?"

Crazy as it seems there are folks who use cold showers to wake up in the morning, or buy really bright lights to turn on in the morning. Workers who work the night shift have their own unique sets of alternatives to coffee which can only last so long before a tolerance is built up.

Energy drinks, Yerba matte, lemon juice and even just water are other sources of competition to coffee. Cigarettes are a replacement for coffee to stimulate the user into being more awake as well as physical exercise.

Using the sphere model of where competition exists for your product, we can see it's more than tea but also yoga mats and stationary bicycles. What circumstances are people in when they seek coffee?

Students, office workers, teachers, entrepreneurs and many more use coffee to start their day. It's a popular drink. What aren't people saying about coffee?

Power of Micro Targeting

Answering these type of questions helps you niche down to a specific market you can micro target and develop a tribe of enthusiastic buyers that will take your company to the next level.

Going with our example of coffee as a sample product you would be selling, we can definitely sub niche down to different categories like:

Social coffee drinkers - they only drink coffee in a coffee shop with friends

Daily coffee drinkers - there are subcategories here as well, the instant coffee drinkers, the pre-ground coffee drinkers, and the whole bean grinders that consider themselves coffee aficionados.

Intermittent coffee drinkers - switching between chai teas, coffee and green teas this group is constantly experimenting with a variety of caffeinated beverages.

How you speak to each member of these groups (which can be subdivided further) will be different.

The marketing messages for an instant coffee drinkers won't be the same as a coffee aficionado who might only use an Aeropress and burr grinder (this is me - I love making some of the best coffee ever created).

The experiences that each group has inside of specific circumstances will decide how you present your product. Finding out that exercise is a competitor for drinking coffee may make you want to pivot into finding ways to combine both.

Reverse Engineering Vs Story Model

There are certain brands who will never have direct competition because of the immersive experience buying their product creates for customers. Trying to reverse engineer an existing business's model can only go so far.

Creating your own story that is filled with rich details solving multiple pain points in the customer's journey is how you stand out from the competition. The truth is most companies don't go to this level of detail.

Crafting unique rituals specific to your consumer's demographics, and circumstances surrounding their decision to buy is going to put you leagues ahead in your progress towards becoming the best version of what your business is capable of.

. . .

Available for freelance writing and guest posting on your blog: blogger@jetskishaman.com

How To Measure Better Company Metrics

startup blog, startup blog, startup blog

Credit:Luke Chesser

It is easy to get caught up in measuring metrics at a company as a way to gauge success but the data is often not organized in a manner that allows a business to consistently forecast which tactics will be successful.

When you start up a new business, it's exciting to have data that you can parse to see which split test is successful, whether this is in advertising creatives, ad copy or product designs.

But, it's often taken for granted just how complex and layered this process is because it isn't just about delivering a satisfying product but a complete experience that makes buying from your company stand out from the competition.

Distinguishing Your Company From Others

Even the limitations of your product or service can be used as part of the unique selling mechanism. Take for example Twitter's 280 characters limit for tweets & calling a post a "tweet." (See last week's blog on the war between Trump and Twitter)

There are so many levels of a pain point your product or service solves, that it takes a very nuanced approach to address the gap filled. This means that just basing definitions of success on quantitative data will miss the elephant in the room, the customer's:

Credit: Sarah Kilian

Why a person buys your product or service is not always something so granular that it can be put on a spread sheet. This why can change at different times of the day, year or with a set of personal experiences of infinite variety.

Facebook's Metrics Fail to Measure Actual Data

When I worked at Facebook in the ads department we had scores that rated us on how effective we were at our jobs. The number one score was Customer Sat, for Customer satisfaction. The C-Sat scores determined the stability of vendor contractors that staffed for Facebook as well.

However, there was a huge hole in universally rating everyone, for every type of customer, based on one, very black and white metric. The amount of money a person had to spend on ads often was a big trigger on whether or not they were satisfied with the support from the ads department.

If you were too broke to spend enough money to both A/B test and retarget (or even understood what retargeting is) then it didn't matter how many help center articles you read --you'd be unhappy. It wasn't an accurate measure of job performance.

We didn't have conversations with management on understanding why customers chose Facebook over other social media platforms to advertise on.Or how Facebook products or services helped make progress in people's lives & which circumstances they were trying to make progress in.

How to Discover Multileveled Pain Points

Many organizations completely miss defining what the real reason is that customers hire them, and easily fall into the common trap of a one-size-fits-all solution that never solves the problem.

Diving deeper than the surface level metrics opens up new possibilities for growth hacking and innovating company structure, both B2B and B2C.

Taking the time to investigate a customer's multileveled why for consuming your business's offering helps uncover the real reason they buy. Before Volvo messed up their brand image, people didn't buy Volvos to get from A to B or for a flashy look. They bought Volvos to feel safe.

The Secret to True Innovation

One thing you'll discover when going beyond quantitative metrics is the reason why your customer does not purchase. This is often an even more important area to focus on.

If there isn't a product or service that fits a customer's needs, they'll choose not to buy anything rather than settle for a less-than-perfect solution.

Customizing a product or service to fill this need is where many entrepreneurs have made billions of dollars. If you've looked at a niche and felt like you don't have any room to compete because it's over saturated that's a big sign that you probably haven't defined your client avatar's Why well enough.

It's a whole range of experiences that create the need that you're solving. This goes far beyond the basic demographic information of age, gender, location and interests.

When you captivate the story of every day consumers in that split second of struggling to move forward and being stopped by not having what they need - this is the real gold.

Workarounds Offer Insight Into Product Development

Finding out what things your customer base is substituting for what they really want is another opportunity to growth hack. If they have a work around that's pretty "meh" because what they want isn't available you can become very successful by solving that trade off.

Start paying closer attention to the workarounds you use in your own life to get things done, digitally and physically. Being both the consumer and the entrepreneur at the same time can yield new insights because of the way you can think outside the box than just quietly suffering wishing for something better.

Take note of both your own circumstances, and social-emotional depths when faced with something you can't solve perfectly. Observe other people's buying habits and workarounds and discover if consumers are repurposing something it isn't intended for.

This will signal a new gap your product or service can fill. It's a story that mere metrics won't tell you about. This type of market research reveals the nature of pain points in a way that offers you a chance to stand out in solving them.

. . .

Available for freelance writing and guest posting on your blog: blogger@jetskishaman.com

How Entrepreneurs Go From Good to Great

Credit:NeONBRAND

As an entrepreneur you are a risk taker by virtue of your chosen profession: to be a leader instead of a follower takes courage. But how good do you have to be to succeed? How is success defined in your professional and personal life?

My last blog, COVID Economic Recovery Solutions, discussed the benefits of investing in employees, and seeing the return of professional development in productivity, profits, and increased word of mouth marketing.

In the same way you may invest in your staff, you can also invest in your company's other assets.

Don't Settle for Good Enough Go for Great

We walk a fine line between "just good enough" and "great." To the average suburbanite, just being able to pay bills without a boss breathing down your neck is a huge success.

But the line between good and great, while being thin, is what separates the quitters from the Elon Musks and Steve Jobs of the world. Entrepreneurs benefit from a daily check in and brainstorm sesh on how to make what's good even greater.

You will feel the difference, those few extra hours here and there add up to the bling, the shine, the razzle dazzle of a clean mean business machine. Your customers will feel the difference too when you put in the energy to fine tune and improve what's "just good enough" into something truly excellent.

Drive & Dedication

It feels good to solve a problem - this is at the heart of 99% of all marketing messages. When you've gone through the rigmarole of questioning how to fix something until that eureka moment - it's satisfying to arrive.

But don't rest on your laurels. The allure of complacency is strong and keeps you at mediocre instead of embracing your brilliance. You have to cultivate the inner engine to improve. It has to be an attitude. A mantra.

Once you create the habit of improving, you can't help but get better. This is across the board, personal, romantic, business, family, social life, hobbies, sports - attitude is gratitude.

What I mean is, you'll thank yourself for creating the habit of dedication to improvement. It's a new routine that once developed will help you reach the next level of your potential.

Self Sustaining Networks & Teamwork

There are plenty of entrepreneurs who can wear 10 hats and play multiple instruments. But to be truly successful as an entrepreneur, this means building a strong network. Creating a team that fills the gaps in your own competence is part of what crosses from 'just good enough' to something great.

I chose to use the word sustainable with a specific intention: The personal and professional networks built must be mutual, reciprocal and headed towards a destination that is beneficial.

If only one business is benefiting, see where you can help the other business benefit even more. This goodwill will not go unnoticed. It's all about who you know right? You may catch the eye of an affiliated interest that yields even greater return.

At the very least, you've increased loyalty to your brand and secured a better professional network.

The Self Efficacy Question

Self-efficacy is, in a nutshell, increasing your abilities by believing that you can increase your abilities. And of course taking action to increase them.

It's shown remarkable results in test scores in children in Kansas City, Missouri, and strengthening people's beliefs that they have what it takes to succeed produced even better results in college students at University of Wisconsin Milwaukee.

Student underachievement brought about by low academic motivation is a major factor contributing to school dropout levels according to the Department of Teacher Education and Higher Education at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Beyond Social Cognitive Theory in an academic setting, self-efficacy has huge potential to help businesses improve. 7 League Boot leaping over obstacles with emotional resilience is achieved by believing that you can overcome these obstacles.

The consistency and commitment to keep on trucking, and examine your methods for achieving success along the way is the key to making that success a reality.

Live, Breath, Sleep the Mindset of a Champion

Whether you're fighting cancer, winning an olympic gold metal, or mastering the art of public speaking - the mindset that you have frames your ability to perform at low or at peak levels.

To even consider quitting a day job requires a whole shift of mindset. But let's take that one step further.

When you believe your company will succeed, in addition to making the efforts to ensure it will, the mindset of a champion means that that needed grit to not only survive but to thrive is present.

Having the mindset of a champion doesn't mean you ignore the less-than-great realities of a situation or sugar coat the gaps in your business.

It means you don't hesitate to face these head on, and do what it takes to succeed. With of course, no moral ambiguity. Doing the right thing, for your business, only improves who you are and the quality of customers you attract.

I've mentioned this before, but one of the defining moments of my life was when my childhood mentor drove me to a homeless shelter when I was kicked out of my mother's house.

He let me know that while he doesn't support this happening, I also needed a wake up call and realize that even if I didn't like my step father, I had to do what it takes to survive with a roof over my head.

Hows that for a gut check?

I didn't have the mindset of a champion then. But 3 days ago I graduated the University of Texas at Austin, having gained acceptance into UT with a recommendation letter from the president of Austin Community College.

It was a hard struggle but once my mindset changed from victimhood to proactive reluctant hero - life aligned to produce the results I wanted.

The same is true for entrepreneurship.

What separates us from the 9-5ers is our ability to innovate, think outside the box, create solutions, and have an unshakable belief in ourselves, our brand and the goals we set out to achieve.

This is the mindset of a champion.

. . .
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COVID Economic Recovery Solutions – Treat Employees Right

Credit: Husna Miskandar

The economy's crashed, hundreds of thousands of jobs are lost and now as society begins to rebuild and open up again it's time to rethink how jobs are structured.

Recently, when moving 4 filing cabinets out of my living room, in order to build an at-home library I spoke with the manager at U-Haul. There were 7 people waiting, with an average wait time of 40 minutes just to check in a rented truck or U-Haul van.

When I asked the manager, a man named Christopher, if it was possible to hire one or two other employees to help manage the customer load he replied,

"I can't get people to work here. They all want to stay home and collect unemployment benefits due to COVID."

I was shocked that the economy is hurting not just because of COVID fear making local governments close down brick & mortar shops but also due to people not wanting to come to work to mooch off of unemployment.

Credit: https://writingboots.typepad.com/.a/6a00e55283a630883401bb0953519e970d-pi

This hurts retailers but also local cities and their economies because when and if local businesses reopen, if they are understaffed, with long lines, it's just going to push consumers to order on Amazon instead of shop there.

Obviously some businesses like U-Haul you can't order online..though drones are doing some amazing things these days.

Low Quality Jobs = Low Quality Work

Aside from the rather unique moocher situation with some staying home to college a paycheck and not working remote but living on tax-dollar funded government benefits...

- There is a lot to be said about flipping burgers or working a register or answering phones and being treated poorly by management.

The Trickle-Down Effect of Incompetence

When the number one concern of employers is not investing in employees to create a high quality work environment, but how can we cut costs, outsource labor to 3rd world countries, lower the hiring wage, reduce worker hours and spread them out over more employees and reduce benefits - well is that motivating people to do a good job?

The question answers itself. If an employee is given a half-ass training (because the manager is also underpaid and under trained), and they are disrespected and made to feel like:

"You are easily replaced so appreciate this shitty job,"

Then it's the trickle down effect of incompetence.

On the other hand, if employers approached training employees as an investment, with professional development included to help employees not only gain competence but additional skill sets to make them more of an asset to the company and their growth opportunities - this changes the ripple effect in workforce management.

Investing in both higher wages and professional training, with work culture more evolved than mashing buttons to get minimum wage then employees will find their own reasons for working harder to do better.

This creates a better quality product or service for the end user that the company serves, which then increases customer retention, loyalty and lifetime value.

Brand loyalty is something that shouldn't just be customer-centric. Brand loyalty cultivated in both the customers and the employees, when increased also increases profits and productivity.

Strikes at Whole Foods and Amazon

If decision makers at the CEO level can't read the room or doubt the logic in the above paragraphs just look at the strikes by Whole Foods workers and Amazon employees who continued to toil on in unsafe working conditions.

When you aren't given a lot benefits-wise, as a bargaining chip from your employer, you don't have a lot to lose if you get fired for striking.

This loses time, money, convenience, customer satisfaction scores drop and just as employees leave for a job that pays $1-3 dollars more an hour so will customers when there are delays due to poor work ethics and project management skills by hiring managers and those who structure employee business models.

Businesses Have to Adapt to Survive COVID19

Instead of making excuses about how an existing system can't change, employers should wake up and smell the Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee: with the lack of foot traffic now is the perfect time to retool the business model

Sam's Club, Costco and HEB grocery store have all taken the lead here and raised wages for their employees as well as invested in their safety.

As mentioned in management philosophy blogs, research has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that when intrinsically motivated individuals apply their efforts to a task they are 10 times more productive and successful than people who are only money-motivated.

This means it isn't just about the money - don't treat your employees like dirt anymore and they will reciprocate. So few jobs actually invest any sincere time in building new skill sets in their employees but every time a company does this, the employee becomes an unofficial brand ambassador.

Feeling respected and appreciated is the cornerstone for every social interaction that's successful, from family, to relationships, to friends to business both B2C and B2B.

Creating this feeling in employees with concrete specific investments in improving their abilities, you now have a spokesperson for how great your company is. Many of these employees are like micro influencers with their own social networks sometimes rather large.

More employee loyalty creates more profits because you get better work done, word of mouth organically spreads to their friends, families, and facebook and twitter accounts without a single ad dollar needing to be spent.

In a large company multiply this by 100 or 1000 - it's pretty damn clear it's stupid to treat employees as disposable to-go containers or warm bodies to fill a space when there is a much higher return from professional development in the workspace.

Where We Go from Here Matters

Ecommerce is booming, many jobs and even schools may utilize more remote work than in person attendance now. Businesses will have to adapt to a post-COVID world in order to survive. This means the old guard has to change.

Instead of hyper focusing on reducing labor cost - putting some real thinking and research behind it to create a 2020 strategy that involves treating and paying employees better, will only benefit everyone better and rebuild the economy. Mic drop.

Available for freelance writing and guest posting on your blog: blogger@jetskishaman.com

Startups: Power of Showing Up

So you've got this great idea - you want to start a business. Or launch a new product, or service for your current start up business. The stars seem to align, the universe is on your side and you're so excited. Then what happens?

It's like having a wonderful dream (Nice Dream) and then you wake up and can't remember the details - but the beauty of that moment is on the tip of your tongue.

What happened?

The fact is consistency works like magic to reach milestones, achieve goals in the short term and the long term and yet it's like there's this ingrained flaw in entrepreneurs and startup founders to avoid commitment. Perhaps we fear that getting too routine is a soul-killing spell reminiscent of the cubicle-laden 9-5 jobs we barely escaped from.

And Yet...

Every startup needs a certain amount of routine tasks to reach critical mass - the tipping point where we get investors, or consumers discover the beauty of our creation and rush to the aisles (or one-click Amazon buttons). Part of what's amazing about starting your own business is the ability to Be Yourself (with SMART Goals).

We enter Startup life to escape the false roles and identities we have to wear to appease oppressive overlords.

Being eccentric, socializing in ways that are 'imaginative' or just having our own, sometimes nonlinear approach to reaching business solutions is something we have always wanted but were unable to articulate in the office (aka "hell with florescent lighting"). The Trail Blazers of our time were known for their ability to be themselves. Being yourself is a powerful message other people can receive, relate to, and believe in.

So is the Power of Showing Up

"There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself.It is the only true guide you will ever have,"

- Howard Thurman

We live in historical times right now: 2-3 generations in the future they’ll look back and talk about the corona virus pandemic of 2020. The startup founders I’m either friends with or business associates with are one of the most unflappable, unshaken demographic I can imagine.

We’re prepared. We already work remote. Social distancing isn’t the exception - it’s the norm.

Social skills don’t always come hand-in-hand with entrepreneurship or tech. So we’re uniquely prepared and already adapted to taking this pandemic in stride and still create new inventions, new services, new apps, new ways to help brick and mortar and other businesses pivot towards sustainability.

And yet…some of our most lofty goals are still dusty on the shelf. Just like that nice dream we had and can almost remember. It’s because we aren’t showing up. Showing up to do what needs to be done to move the needle. The power of consistency to move mountains, redesign bridges connecting the gaps between who we are and who we see ourselves becoming. I’ve got a tip for you. I’ve got a tip on showing up.

5 Magic Minutes

It’s easy to go all out, make a big promise and then get so overwhelmed we do exactly the opposite. Happens all the time working out. Building a startup is working out just using different muscles, but both rely on creating muscle memory. When we use self-management in focused in 5 minute increments, this helps to initiate a 3rd drive that connects our ambition to the image we have of ourselves. Taking action, with intense focus, for 5 minutes at a time, consistently, builds muscle memory and makes it easier to self-identify as someone who is taking action to make dreams come true.

The 3rd Drive

The power of showing up depends on the unlikely 3rd drive, beyond the drive for money, and success. It's the drive to trust ourself to achieve the impossible. Or at least achieve a modicum of progress in our path towards greater things. Stephen Covey, who wrote the timeless classic, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People had a son who was also author. Well technically son(S) who are also authors. One (also named Stephen) wrote in the book, The Speed of Trust, that there was a formula for results.

(SXE)T = R

Or in other words, Strategy times Execution multiplied by Trust = Results.

The idea is that we as founders, must trust ourselves to lead with integrity for our business practices, inspire trust in customers and business associates, and achieve a type of startup leadership that gets results in a way that inspires.

Startup Tips: The Power of Showing Up

Science Daily States when making decisions, our perception is influenced by judgments we have made in the past as a way of remaining consistent with ourselves. Consistency breeds trust, in ourselves and the trust we inspire in other people. A book published in the 60s, called Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Volume 14)studied the power of consistency on human behavior.

One of the central themes is that attitudes predict behavior and the strength of how behavior can change or improve the quality of one's life (or startup business) depend on the consistency of the behavior.

How often you show up for yourself and for your startup is up to you. Start small and go big. The power of showing up, even in just 5 minute increments, is you are creating values of the person you want to be, that runs the business you want to run. Or envision someday (soon) creating.

Showing up consistently and doing small actions that move your startup forward adds up, every minute, hour, day and month of the year. This small amount of accountability for what you are creating, is a momentum-generator.

So generate your own momentum. Show up. Startup. And keep going until you reach the horizon line.

SMART Goals & Stretch Goals in 2020 Quarantine

"The moment you find what you truly enjoy doing, is the moment you should start focusing all your efforts on that particular thing. In the long run it will eventually pay off."

- Steve Jobs business,business,business,business,blog,blog,blog,blog,blog,blog,blog, entrepreneur blog, blog

Business success is so often contingent on the passion, vision and leadership of founders who relentlessly pursue their goals. As last week's blog discussed, motivation is vital for work productivity. Now we face an interesting challenge of the world on shut down due to the corona virus.
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This has affected markets unexpectedly, for instance right now there is a 100 million shortage on condoms as the Guardian reports here. Small businesses struggle to adapt to this new, strange world we live in.

Business owners can benefit from going back to the basics, foundational tactics that help every new entrepreneur starting out define the parameters for goal achievement.

Just like any scientist, advanced in their profession, may always fall back on using the scientific method they learned in undergraduate classes - there are tried and true methods for improving business. Let's talk about goal setting and achievement in this framework - keeping in mind we'll need to pivot how we do business for these troubling times.

SMART & Stretch Goals 2020 Quarantine

As business developer Mike Gingerich mentions, setting SMART goals is key for starting 2020 off on the right foot. Stretch goals are goals that are just beyond your current reach and abilities but are definitely worth pursuing as long as you don’t get burned out taking on too much. Now, for a long time we believed that stretch goals unconditionally fueled performance.
And it turns out that stretch goals can create superior performance. But there's risks associated with setting stretch goals, or challenging goals.business,, business,business,business,business,business,business,business,business,business,business,business,business,business,blog,blog,blog,blog,blog,blog,blog,
Stretch goals or especially aggressive goals, can engender unethical behavior - as people cut corners to make an unrealistic goal on a deadline.

Good people can do unethical acts to meet deadlines.That’s where SMART goals are a great way to balance your time and energy.

SMART Goals Defined

▪ Specific
▪ Measurable
▪ Agreed-upon
▪ Reasonable
▪ Time bound

You have to ensure that folks have the needed skills to reach a goal. If they don't, help to mentor them, or seek mentorship & support to make sure that not only are these goals reasonable - but the view of these goals in your perception is realistic.

▪ Short timelines lead to dissatisfaction

After setting the deadline and your team starts working towards it, it's important that leadership examples the desired behavior. You want to be a role model. Reward teammates (or yourself) appropriately after accomplishing those goals. Goals are most effective when you secure employee's public commitment to goals.

Skill Sets Must Match Job Duties

A fireman is a heroic profession and as much as the nation is grateful for their efforts you wouldn't automatically assume they know how to do open-heart surgery or be an astronaut. Yet - many employers place job candidates into roles their innate skill sets aren't matched for. This leads to job dissatisfaction from the employee side and a lack of quality work - leading to employer dissatisfaction. That topic deserves a whole blog post which I'll get to in the next couple weeks. But for our purposes let's apply this to SMART Goals.

Do assessments and make sure that people have the necessary skills to achieve a particular goal. If they don't, you might want to provide necessary mentorship, support and training to make sure that they view these goals as reasonable.

Now once you set that deadline and the team starts working on it, be a role model. The most demotivating thing you can do for your team is you set this tough deadline, and then leave early or take a 5 hour lunch.

SMART goals framework is very popular among many, many organizations. Take Amazon, for example. Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, is personally overseeing over 400 goals, and they’re all in the SMART goal framework.It is absolutely imperative that your SMART goals are aligned with that vision and strategy for your team.

We’re in a time of change right now and small businesses (and large) face new decisions for how you run your operations and customer support and acquisition. Being able to work well with retail shut downs, city shut downs is going to require adapting your business model to this new environment.

I would encourage more collaboration, and networking in order to effectively pivot. This is going to involve going more online with business operations and customer support. Various tools will help you achieve this:

Zoom - for video conferencing, meetings, customer support, Zoom webinar
Slack - to communicate via chat and virtual interface with your team
Chatbots - solves initial customer questions visiting your site & can transfer to human agent chats
Dropbox - cloud based storage of large media and other documents
Social media - more Facebook Lives, more aggressive targeting strategies, scheduled events

Want to improve your pivot-skills? Great I have some homework for you: Use the SMART goal framework and apply it with developing your business adapted to COVID19 quarantine skills. Set a SMART goal in terms of developing your business model shift for these current times. Make sure that it’s consistent with the SMART goal dimensions.

Comment on this blog post, and discuss with your peers your progress, obstacles and wins. There’s a high probability we are all facing similar challenges and if we work together, we can maximize resource access for each other and our businesses.

Uh Oh Management Needs A New Business Plan

Tuesday April 14th 2020
entrepreneur, entrepreneur, entrepreneur, entrepreneur, entrepreneur, entrepreneur, entrepreneur, blog, blog, blog, blog, blog, blog, blog, blog, blog, blog, business, business, business, business, business, business,
Management philosophy in business hasn't changed since the 1800s - yet the world has changed dramatically. The old guard will always think work is a bad thing in employees' minds. Traditional management philosophy holds that most need to be manipulated with rewards or threatened with punishments to do their job.

This simply isn't true anymore. It was never true.

When you see a sculptor so in love with their art, they lose track of time, you start to grasp what it means to work playfully. To do something for the sake of doing it.Chasing the all mighty dollar is a rather soul-less task by itself.

But putting the work in because of the world your efforts create? That's a different feeling. There's longevity in that.You can be creative, seek challenges out for the sake of just that achievement regardless of money - and still enjoy making money.

But what drives you has to be bigger.

When it is, not only does this lead to better results but it puts you on the path of truly mastering your craft.If profit is the only thing that drives you - you'll miss out on opportunities in the periphery. Thinking will be limited. You won't feel inspired.

Being inspired sparks a particular alchemy that isn't matched by robotic checking check boxes. It is what sets you apart from your previous self and those who live thru habit.

What inspires you?

A lot of old school thought is centered around the concept that bonuses alone will improve the way we perform at
work.

Despite the evidence that these type of incentives actually decrease overall productivity. It's a simple enough concept but not obvious to the casual observer: When an employee (or anyone in any role doing a task) is motivated by wanting to get the dollar attached to completing the task - we do the bare minimum. Because I mean, why bother doing more if we just want the money? If there's nothing beyond the surface get us to use inherent gifts of imagination and creativity - the boring tunnel vision creeps in.

What's rather puzzling is how much this has already been proven - coloring inside the lines only gets you so far.

As the New Patterns blog explored, entrepreneurs create innovation often by thinking outside the box. In a similar fashion, literally everyone, entrepreneur or not, has a much better chance of realizing their hidden talents by not being static, rigid, and motivated by achieving only one goal.

Back in the 60s, J.W. Atkinson, the leading psychologist on scientifically examining human motivation, did a study that demontrated when people knew there was a reward, or were attempting to avoid being punished, the quality of their work degraded. This was attributed in part to less spontaneous engagement with the activites and more of a routine nature, and habitual energy expenditures - in other words "autopilot."

However, when someone is driven by the need to explore their own talents, just to see what they are capable of (like children often do), there is a stark contrast in results. As people become more focused on the bigger picture, their field of vision expands on what's possible...both from their own abilities in addition to additional resources that a profit-only-driven person would have missed.

Interest = Competency. Wait..Wut?
So I'm going to propose an idea that may seem pretty out there. The more interested we are in a task, the more competent we become. If the task bores us our performance suffers. That's not too out there. It's pretty logical. Do you think your son, forced to wash your car against his wishes, is going to pay extra attention to getting all the smudges? But it goes deeper.

Even if we think we are giving it our all - we aren't using all of our brain's power, neurologically speaking. We've compartmentalized off just enough to get the task done. As Dr. Ryan and Deci discuss in their Self Determination Theory when you are intrinsically motivated this creates an innate tendency towards self-examination, in addition to a focus on growth and meaning. And it makes sense. If a person is genuinely interested in something, this reflects on self-image and identity. I'm the type of person who is good at math, likes Nascar and Netflix.

Right? We self-identify with the jobs we work at and it only makes sense that this is segmented into individual tasks that comprise the entirety of our work. How many times did you think about where you were at in life, working a shit job right out of high school, at a convenience store or 7-11? We reflect. The thing is, this sort of reflection happens instinctively (and often unconsciously) when we are intrinsically motivated to complete a task. It isn't a task, it isn't effort, it's part of who we are. As a result, our competency increases because we are not working we are self-expressing.

The old approach of cracking the whip, throwing up the cheese for the mouse hasn't ever worked well. No one wants to be reminded they are in a rat maze or treated that way. Being threatened with punishment just makes folks resentful - resentment doesn't improve your employees competency. Rewards aren't helping either. The regions called the “brain reward network” that light up when stimulated by the thought of rewards are rather tunnel vision in range and variety. There is an information gap between seeking to attain one item, and the self-directed learning that satisfying a curiousity generates.

You ever have a word just on the tip of your tongue but can't remember it? Meet someone at a get together and forget their name? Remember a scene from a movie but not the name of the movie? It gets a lot of attention and the urgency to satisfy this curiosity is only matched by the feeling of relief and accomplishment when we finally have that "ah ha" moment. This is like a macrocosmic application of that feeling across work forces. The problem is, very few, if any, business models in corporate hierarchy are structured to support the type of intrinsic behaviors that lead to the best results.

Uh Oh, Management Needs A New Business Plan

Regardless of the thousands of studies done on this phenomenon management in most large corporations is still based on non-working models that are proven to consistently fail. The reward/punishment system is still well in place. I've worked at Microsoft, Apple and Facebook - they all use this same system. Yes, there is more of a startup vibe - but craft beer and ping pong tables don't make up for a lack of leadership and understanding of how to extract the best work from employees at the top of their game.

The irony is that we see this in every every field - pay an artist to do a mural you'll get better results if they are doing it for a charity because they believe in the cause. The many old school hip hop heads who say that hip hop has died - they do so because (aside from stylistic preferences and autotune) the money-motivated artists lack the soul that Erykah Badu effortlessly broadcasts over thousands of heads at live concerts. Jack Harlow isn't Eminem - setting aside skill, age, connections to Dr. Dre - simply because his music doesn't have passion, or the feeling that he has to do this because it's part of who he is.

My own personal analogies aside - there is a shit ton of evidence from countless studies that demonstrate that the old management style just isn't working. A system focused on creating a personal connection to the work done, and more autonomy is definitely a step in the right direction. Rewards based on specific details regarding an employee's character, skill set and contribution are 10Xs more motivating than a generic compliment or external item. Many tech jobs are partially there with remote work, giving more trust to software engineers to get the job done in their unique way rather than a mass produced factory of cubicles (but I like putting pics up and decorating my little cubicle!).

What do you think? Share in the comments your thoughts on management.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5364176/

Power of Perception: Business & Life

Is Struggle Always Necessary?

Have you ever heard the saying "struggle leads to success" ?

There's a lot of talk about how life has to suck before it can get better. But is this a false dichotomy? That's a fancy way of saying, do we have blinders on and just aren't seeing all the options?

I agree working hard can produce results - IF you're aimed in the right direction. But is hard work always a struggle?

Labor of Love

"Labor of love" is often a term ascribed for when you ARE working hard but, you believe in your work, your steps to the big goal, the pay off, and every act that gets you closer is worth celebrating.

Is THAT a struggle?

Isn't 'struggling' just mental for how we choose to think about actions?

I mean, physical pain aside, generally, being on the grind, if you always frame it as 'a struggle' wouldn't that make it harder for you than framing it as necessary steps towards becoming that bad ass you know you already are?

We can go deep on this one.

If you do become successful but are an a$%hole to everyone, and don't have good social skills (Steve Jobs, asperger et al) - is that success?

How We Look at Ourselves
The World
Our PROCESS

All of these things...determine how hard life is, and if work is really a struggle or just a system you use to become el jefe. If there's one super power you can opt in to having, without being bit by a radioactive spider (which would make you sick in real life), it's the power of perception.

The Power of Perception

Being able to look at how we look at things is a strange gift I've had since I was fighting tooth and claw to not become my father, fighting for scraps living on the streets as a teenager. It's the one thing that led to getting accepted into the University of Texas, working at Facebook, and starting my own businesses.

It's easy to fall into a habit of if this, then that.

This is SQL terminology for how results of a search are defined by certain parameters.

YET...

IRL this means we tend to start to draw conclusions before actually looking at what's happening. Our eyes are not really seeing. We are going through a series of automated emotional habits.

However, it's mainly unconscious. And it can have draw backs when you want to innovate your company but are still coloring within the lines and not thinking outside the box. The habit-thinking of expecting the same thing despite there being different variables and inputs limits our growth, professionally and personally.

How Good Becomes Great

Taking the time to look at your business and ask the hard questions, without sugar coating is how good becomes great. The challenge with thinking bigger is we tend to self-impose mediocrity, and creating artificial ceilings that limit our flight path. These ceilings are due to the habitual way we think about potential. The definition of identity, of a company or a person, if it's habit-based, is going to suffer adapting to a changing world.

Do your self a favor, and begin to cultivate a sense for how you look at things. For how you look at how you look at things.

---------->Start Here<------------

What are habits you have on how you think of yourself or your business?

Are there conclusions you assume about people or situations?

What is a new way to think about this and rewire your process?

Think, be, explore - it's an adventure.

Secret to My Success

The value of exploring new things can change your life. Every university likes to talk about academic "excellence" with hundreds of pages in the course catalogue of course subjects. The attitude seems to be that you can choose anything you want, as long as you do it well.

What's the end result of this?

Many students end up staggering under the burden of student loan debts (spoiler alert I'm in it for $90,000 for just my bachelors). The student body becomes unknowing subscribers and executors of "Peter's theory," that purports a theme of getting just good enough not to suck at your role in a company, then getting promoted as soon as you start doing well. (Leaving a chain of events where everyone is always partially sucking at their jobs).

The college mindset is often (tho of course it depends on the school, and your professors),

--from an academic advisor standpoint--

"It doesn't matter what you do. Just graduate, and that piece of paper will get you set for life."

Yet Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard to become a millionaire starting Microsoft. Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College to found Apple Computer that is so part of our lives today.

What can we conclude from this? Baby Boomers often feel a sort of intangible optimism due to the rapid technological advances for the 18 years following the 1950s that seemed to infer things were always going to get better regardless of if you made plans, because success is based on luck. Which is incorrect.

Success is based on strategic planning and including within these plans, projecting for the future.

Millennials looking back to Baby Boomers often also ascribe success to a series of fortunate circumstances, family, money, private schools, who you know etc. Yet, there is a lot more to achieving goals than just opportunity. Plenty of other people had chances to capitalize on a market gap their company could solve but failed to innovate, clinging to old designs instead of evolving to meet the changes in public preference and society (Blockbuster, Kodak etc).

The worth of a product today, has to be adjusted for the devaluation of the dollar, and increased cost of living that continues to rise every year to some degree. And projected technological advances. Automation right now is big and will continue to grow, voice command software, eCommerce, all these are going to grow and evolve rapidly in the coming years as an example.

It definitely does matter what you do. Focusing on what you are already good at, and developing this into a master skill set is a good start. But hard work and dedication aren't enough. You need to look ahead, research trends in your industry, and determine if it will be valuable in the future.

You know the difference between people who have big dreams, but end up working at service-level jobs, and not making a lot of money and those who end up in Hollywood, on the cover of Forbes, or at least, making great money in either a phenomenal career or as a business owner?

Masive Action.

Consistency.

Research.

Mentors.

Massive Action.

It takes actions to make things happen, not endless convos about what life would be like if you got a big break. It is not luck that changes your destiny - it's mindset combined with taking specific actions on a daily basis to move the needle.

All the energy from making plans sipping jo at the coffee shop with friends, should be transferred into taking action. Being strategic, and prioritizing your dreams over drinking with friends, Netflix, socializing, video games on your phone, family drama, habits and hobbies, none of that excuse my french means shit if you can't 10X your income and lifestyle improvements as a result of:

Taking action
Guidance from mentors already successful in your field
Do Research - in-depth, results-based research not a blogger's opinion of success

And this requires a real sincere dedication to breaking down the steps in between you and your goal, as well as determining, specifically, how to overcome obstacles in achieving those microsteps to the bigger goals.

Sometimes you are your own obstacle.

Sometimes you need to remind yourself why you give a damn in the first place.

For me, it's family. I care about my family, and have unique gifts that will enable me to do a lot more with my life, and income earning potential than many of my fellow UT Alumni who subscribe to the "participation-award" ideology. I work hard to help friends of mine who are broke without exit plans.

But I don't work hard at just achieving mediocracy. I work hard at doing the impossible. The impossible is only impossible if you don't believe it's possible. So believe in your dreams as possible. They said we'd never put a man on the moon. The telephone was laughed at by early investors as impossible. Yet - it became possible because at least one person believed it was possible.

Be that person for your own dreams.

You need your own buy in. Give yourself permission to win.
To defeat your own demons you have to recognize your life is worth fighting for.

And it is, you are worth it, you've gotten this far haven't you?

So don't sell yourself short by accepting less than what you deserve. Dream bigger, work harder, BUT be strategic on specific outcomes from your actions. Hard work isn't going to accomplish much if you're only working to maintain. This energy needs to be directed towards something with much faster scalability. Seriously, figure out your Why and use it to motivate yourself to do the work necessary, inner work and outside, to live a better life.

You got this.

Are You On the Right Track?

Bonjour!

The world is changing at a rapid pace and as we enter the next year the often trivialized concept of "specifies survival" has become an intriguing concept in business.

The popularity of sustainability is indisputable.

But it's a paradox.

As many celebrities, and social movements have popularized "going green" there are often disconnects. People with "don't support the war" signs in their yard after 911, and the invasion of Iraq for their oil, still continued to buy oil guzzling SUVs.

Consumers still mindlessly buy products from companies that dump toxins in local tributaries (Walmart has had lawsuits threatened by the EPA for doing this in Texas - it isn't just 3rd world countries suffering). The motivation to actually do a little bit of research - I promise you, it's not any more time than you spend scrolling the FB newsfeed per week - is very little.

That's kind of mysterious.

The survival of the human race appears to depend on how popular an idea is, which Kardashian endorsed it to their fans (like the fires in Australia destroying an entire country ignored by the west, until more celebrities jumped on board and publicized it), and if it's convenient.

If there was some sort of complete trust in political leadership, around the world, to:

Care more about the long term survival of our species than getting re-elected
Prioritize resource preservation over doing arms races
Look at impacts of companies more than business deals subsidizing the very companies dumping toxins into our water supply

...then active citizenry wouldn't be as pivotal.

The World Grows Smaller & Bigger

Increasing access to technology and education are providing greater opportunities in developing countries and contribute to the expansion of the middle class as well. India is rapidly becoming more of an industrialized nation than ever before. New issues such as pollution are going to come to the forefront with this progress as well.

Per to the World Economic Forum, the world has fewer people living on less than $1.25/day by one-half. We are on the path to meeting the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) 2010 forecast that the global middle class may double by 2020 and triple by 2030.

Many say this is a result of urbanization, the increased access to education (no doubt increased by access to the internet as well), tech and growth expansion opportunities.

So while Walt Disney may have banned plastic straws from its theme parks we the people have a ways to go for changing our buying habits. It is from within society that lasting change happens.

Change starts with us.

For most people it's incredibly difficult to analyze their own buying behavior in relation to large changes in the world. We have 2 contradicting mindsets:

1. I don't matter, I can't make that big of a difference by myself

2. Everyone is looking at me, I have to be careful not to embarrass myself

The latter is called the spotlight effect - the idea that more people are staring at us than actually are (as the mass self-absorbed public rarely stares long at each other before power walking on).

The majority of consumers resist change to habits & established behaviors. The comfort of ignorance, the benefits and luxuries of not taking responsibility for anything we do with our money is the luring siren call of a real zombie nation.

Unthinking, feeding, breeding in large comfortable chairs like Wall-E's cast of characters or Jabba the Hutt (By the way Mandelorian is a great series..no Disney did not pay for that name drop)...we march on into oblivion. But wait. There's more. Hope.

Entrepreneurship+Sustainability = Opportunity

Entrepreneurs have discovered the benefit of sustainability as a business model due to it's popularity in pop culture. New ideas for new products that are eco-friendly pour out in the thousands every day.

Jason's Deli has little cards on the table talking about their sustainability work, more notices about where and how GMOs are used are no longer hidden but front and center.

Stating that your vegetables are organically grown not GMO isn't just an About section; it's a marketing tool and brand development asset.

I take heart in these type of changes. It's more than a business opportunity: being conscious of how what we do affects the world and being motivated to act on this knowledge helps save the world.

Saving the World

More than a general hippie euphemistic statement - but actually implement sustainable systems for land, air, and water and solar - it's simply incredible what is available now.

But the turning point, before we reach another critical mass for resource deprivation, deforestation, and water scarcity is going to come from a value shift in buying habits.

The 3 seconds it takes to make a buying decision based on the business practices in relation to resource-management is going to be what really helps us as a species survive.

These little decisions multiplied by the billions add up.

Every choice you as a person make - adds up. You are not alone. You are part of something greater.

Consumers are smart. Startup founders can make use of the growing consensus that companies should do more than tout 'sustainable' as an empty slogan. People are now expecting facts and data to back up a business's sustainability claims. The fluff just isn't enough anymore.

I take hope from this.

It's new opportunities to do a new kind of business: one led by less selfish money acquisition and more global heart-conscious decision-making skills. Entrepreneurs have can build partnerships with environmental organizations, 501c3 nonprofits and sustainability research groups to verify the sustainability claims of a product, service or company.

I like this. I like this a lot.

My thoughts are that once it becomes a core value, inherent as 'do no harm' and 'try to not be a douche bag if you can help it' that we'll see values and companies align easier and in greater quantities. Yes, fossil fuels will fight this every step of the way until they start building better cars with less of a carbon footprint.

While there may be a dark before the dawn, the way things are trending is that we, as a global consciousness are continuing to evolve. I tip my cap to you, sip my Texas Pecan Coffee, and wish you a good day!