Awesome video - wanted you to experience this for yourself:
If you're interested in marketing success, business success, and life success - well, there are a lot of so-called experts out there.
Many are called. Few are chosen.
I've made the choosing easy for you...
Here are 29 super-smart, generous, prolific, sometimes contrarian, and always fascinating people worth following...
p.s. The best thing about them - none of them would CALL themselves a "guru" - they simply consider themselves lucky to be sharing their insights with others who can benefit.
Here they are in no particular order (although each of them is truly #1)
- Jay Baer - http://www.convinceandconvert.com
- Stephanie Chandler - http://www.stephaniechandler.com
- Corey Perlman - http://www.ebootcamp.com
- Melinda Emerson - http://succeedasyourownboss.com
- Barry Moltz - http://barrymoltz.com
- Henry DeVries - http://www.marketingwithabook.com
- Scott Ginsberg - http://hellomynameisscott.com
- Dan Janal - http://www.prleadsplus.com
- Mark LeBlanc - http://markleblanc.com
- Mary Foley - http://maryfoley.com
- Gene Marks - http://genemarks.com
- Viveka Von Rosen - http://linkedintobusiness.com
- Brian Tracy - http://briantracy.com
- Tom Searcy - http://www.huntbigsales.com
- John Jantsch - http://www.ducttapemarketing.com
- Joe Calloway - http://joecalloway.com
- Jay Conrad Levinson - http://www.gmarketing.com
- Joe Vitale - http://www.mrfire.com
- Mark Sanborn - http://www.marksanborn.com
- Marshall Goldsmith - http://www.marshallgoldsmithlibrary.com
- David A. Fields - http://www.davidafields.com
- Pamela Slim - http://www.escapefromcubiclenation.com
- Mark Hunter - http://thesaleshunter.com
- Bob Bly - http://www.bly.com
- David Siteman Garland - http://www.therisetothetop.com
- Bob Burg - http://www.burg.com
- Jeffrey Hayzlett - http://hayzlett.com
- Jim Kukral - http://www.jimkukral.com
- David Rohlander - http://theceocode.com
And here are eight more for good luck... (Yep, you get more than 29. See? Underpromise and overdeliver!)
- Michael Goldberg - http://www.buildingblocksconsulting.com
- Randy Gage - http://www.randygage.com
- Jose Palomino - http://www.valueprop.com
- Dharmesh Shah - http://onstartups.com
- Sally Hogshead - http://sallyhogshead.com
- Michael Dalton Johnson - http://www.salesdog.com
- Larry Winget - http://www.larrywinget.com
- Gary Vaynerchuk - http://garyvaynerchuk.com
Bookmark this blog post - stay connected with these people - implement their big ideas - and you WILL profit, prosper, and succeed.
What do YOU think? Please use the COMMENTS area below to share your advice, insights and recommendations on the people who have made the biggest impact on YOUR professional success...
Avish Parashar has just released a new book titled, "Say Yes, And!" and he has a great special offer for people who buy the book by midnight tonight, Feb. 28.
The book takes a fundamental principle from improv comedy - saying "yes, and" instead of "yes, but" - and shows you how that one simple idea can help you improve your career, your business, your relationships, and your life.
As a special promotion, if you buy the book today, February 28th, you'll get access to over $200 in free gifts, including PDF versions of two of Avish's other books and over 8 hours of MP3 recordings of some of Avish's most popular audio programs. That's over $200 in gifts in return for buying a $12.95 book.
To get the book and the free gifts, visit http://www.SayYesAnd.com
p.s. Here's my review from amazon.com:
First I have to tell you - I'm a business book junkie. I read 'em all. Big ones, little ones, famous ones, and hidden gems. All topics including sales, marketing, leadership, strategy, the how-to, the what-to, and the why-to kind.
And this books stands out.
Plain and simple, Avish Parashar packages essential wisdom, insights, and practical advice into a small concentrated form factor.
But don't be fooled - this is life-changing stuff.
One small turn in what you think and what you say CAN and WILL make a huge impact. Example after example pours out of this book and will soon spark ideas and memories in your own mind of times you took charge and created success - and other times when you chose the "Yes but" path and created your own obstacles, limits, and barriers.
Whether you are a business owner, corporate executive, sales professional, association executive, or non-profit leader, this book is for YOU. Filled with immediately actionable insights and concrete take-aways, this little book may trigger the biggest and best changes your team, your organization, and your results will ever experience.
Tell you what - STOP reading Amazon reviews of this great little book, say "YES AND I'll buy it right now." In fact, you may want to buy three - one for yourself, one for your boss, and one for the significant other in your life. Yes (and) the ideas in this book work as powerfully at home as they do at work!!
Guest Column By Lee Thayer
Firing someone is often a distasteful, sometimes painful, act. It is the end of something. Hiring someone is usually full of hope and expectation. It can be exciting. It is the beginning of something.
Yet you don’t learn much when you hire someone. It often turns out to be not all you had hoped.
You could learn a great deal about yourself and about others from the process of firing someone, however.
If you can do a better job of firing, you could do a better job of hiring. The most direct way of learning how to do a better job of hiring lies in what you can learn from the process of firing.
Here’s why:
- Hope and wishful thinking clouds your perspectives when you are hiring someone. But when you fire someone, you are challenged to understand why.
- Firing can clear the lenses. It can be – ought to be – a very rational process. If you do it right, you are dealing with bedrock criteria, not wishful thinking.
- If you can figure out why and how and when to fire someone, it will clarify why you went wrong in the first place.
- If you did a perfect job of hiring people, you would have a perfect understanding of how to fire people. But most organizations haven’t done a better job of hiring people in spite of the tsunami of advice about how to do it.
- You have to come at it the other way around. There is no reliable recipe for doing a perfect job of hiring. You have to learn from your failures – as all leaders have had to do.
- It is figuring out who needs to be fired and why that provides the clarity needed to get better and better at hiring.
There are always the conventional reasons for firing someone: poor performance, redundancy, obsolescence, RIF, attitude, and myriad others. There are reasons. And then there are the real reasons.
It is these real reasons the chief executive needs to uncover. You have to plow through the verbiage and your own thinking to arrive at the real reasons. Was it a poor hire? Was it just a poor “fit”? Was it the culture of the organization that was at fault? Was it the attitude of the person’s peers? Was it the person’s boss? Could it even be you?
Done well, this kind of forensic exploration begins to illuminate better hiring practices by starting with reality rather than the jargon of the day.
To the person targeted for being fired, there is often no correlation between the reasons offered and that person’s assessment of his or her own performance. Big clue.
Here is the crunch issue:
The person being fired was probably not told at the time of hiring the specific reasons that might lead to dismissal.
Three mistakes were likely made:
- The person was probably provided with a list of activities to be performed. That’s the way conventional “job descriptions” are constructed. There may have been some past experience or credentials thrown in for the company to hedge its bets.
- It was likely nothing was said about what was to be accomplished. You can’t measure activities objectively. But you can measure accomplishments.
- The person was most likely hired for a “job.” He or she was not hired to a role in the organization’s future. It is the future that really matters, not the past. Past performance does not predict well to future performance.
Competence is difficult to measure. So most organizations measure what’s easy to measure – the financials. But, to use a provocative metaphor:
Financial performance can only be measured in the wake of the ship. It is where the ship is headed that matters most. And then it is how it is powered and steered to get there.
It is full competence in every role in the organization that seals its fate. If you hire for full competence to carry forward in a well-specified role, you won’t have to fire for incompetence.
A key ingredient of competence is being in the “learning mode.” The best evidence for being in the “learning mode” is that the person performs his or her role better today than they did yesterday. You fire for lack of that. Maybe you should hire for the presence of that.
And, if it isn’t necessary for the person to perform his or her role better, poor performance may not be the person’s fault. It may be your fault for not making continuous improvement in every role necessary.
What is necessary will likely happen. What is not necessary may not happen.
Every organization, like every person, arrives at a status quo – ways of doing things that take precedence over doing them right. Percy Barnevik of ABB fame considered the status quo to be the enemy. His suggestion? Kill it.
There are people who have one year’s experience repeated 20 times. They become deadwood. How frequently do you clear the deadwood? Ranchers cull their herdsat least annually, in order to get better breeding.
Jack Welch eliminated the bottom 10% of performers annually. That takes the uncertainty and pain out of firing.
Outstanding performers are disruptive of the status quo. They are therefore more likely than mediocre performers to get the axe. If the culture of your organization is a safe haven for mediocrity, you are not doing a good job of firing.
And if you aren’t, you can’t do a good job of hiring.
One of the hidden reasons for firing people is that they don’t seem able to learn from experience. They never seem to get consistently better at what they do. Lesson? Make that explicit.
The best CEOs are not in their role to do the job. They are there to learn how to perform their role better today than they did yesterday. They expect the same of others.
If that’s not why you are there, you should be fired. You are, after all, the exemplar.
The best time to fire someone is the day before you hire them. If you can do that, you will be doing a far, far better job of hiring.
The bonus is that firing the wrong people for all the right reasons makes room for hiring more of the right people for the right reasons. But you have to know clearly what those are.
This is why knowing the real reasons for firing people will help you to make better and better judgments about hiring. In other words, the best way to get better at hiring is to get better at firing.
For what good reasons would you fire yourself? If you really figure that out, you will do a far better job of hiring – including casting yourself in the right role.
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Lee Thayer has been a CEO coach and consultant for 45+ years and is known worldwide for his work “in the trenches” with executives to create high-performance organizations. Dr.Thayer has also held distinguished professorships in many of the major universities worldwide. His recent, acclaimed books include: Leadership: Thinking, Being, Doing; The Good Leader; Leaders and Leadership; Leadership Virtuosity; How Leaders Think; Explaining Things and The Competent Organization.
In my marketing seminars, we spend about 10 minutes talking about what I call "canvas size." And my point is that most people's canvas is too small. Sometimes WAY too small.
To indulge the analogy for a minute, most folks can fingerpaint just as well as others... they just limit themselves to those small little 3x3 canvasses you can get at the art store.
Now, let's say you have big-canvas talents. For example, let's say you're a Chuck Close or a Jackson Pollock.
You could certainly paint on a little 3x3 canvas, but you wouldn't have the space or capacity to express YOUR message in YOUR way.
You'd be constricted, small, and tight. You certainly would not be considered a master of modern art. You're working on the wrong canvas size - it's too small for you.
Or worse, you'll make a mess on the rug and the table as your paint spills over the edges. You need more space.
Are YOU working on a big enough canvas?
Are you SURE?
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David Newman is a marketing speaker and marketing coach who works with professionals who want to do a better job of marketing so they get more leads, better prospects, and bigger sales.
As a
motivational speaker in the area of marketing and business development, I'm often asked by CEOs and business owners about how they can be better leaders of their internal marketing efforts.
My answer is you can't be a great marketing leader unless you're first a great leader.
Here are some guidelines that the best leaders across all disciplines have come to recognize as foundational to their leadership success and that I share with you for the benefit of your own marketing success:
- Expect the best from people you lead.
- Become fully aware of others' needs.
- Establish high standards of excellence; communicate them
clearly and often. - Create an environment where failure is not fatal.
- Climb on other people's bandwagons if they're going
anywhere near the neighborhood you want to go. - Employ stories, examples, analogies, and models to
encourage success.
- Use a balanced mix of positive and negative feedback in
a constructive spirit and with specific substance.
- Appeal sparingly (or not at all) to competitive or
aggressive impulses.
- Encourage and reward collaboration.
- Build into the group an allowance for healthy conflict
and "fights" around issues, not around personalities.
- Recognize and celebrate achievement.
- Take steps to keep your own level of motivation genuine
and high
By three methods may we learn wisdom: First by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by
experience, which is bitterest.
-- Confucius
Let's examine these three methods a little more closely.
Learn by reflection: My friend and mentor, Michael Ray, believes that the question, "What should I do?" is not really a question of action - it's a question of information.
When it comes to small business marketing, whenever you find yourself asking, "What should I do?" there's something you need to find out first: it could be information about yourself, your capabilities, your prospects, your marketplace, your goals, your resources, or your intentions, but there's some piece of information that is missing.
When you have all the information, you will know exactly what to do.
The best way to access this information might be to take 10 steps back from the problem - zoom way, way out - and spend some time on a mental "retreat." The retreat could be as short as an hour, or as long as a week, or even more if you have the time.
Take the time you need to re-examine the situation and your relationship to it. Look inward and explore your intuition and your feelings. If you need more external information, go find it - talk to people, do some research, get out and about.
But always bring that information back and examine it introspectively and holistically to put all the pieces of the puzzle on the table. Then, allow what you see and feel to help you decide what
to do.
Learn by imitation: Best practices are dead. So that's not what I mean by imitation. But if you see something that works in one company or industry, see how that might apply in a cross-pollinating way to your organization - and specifically to the marketing challenge you're trying to acquire wisdom about solving.
For example, what can you learn from:
Southwest Airlines flies to a limited number of cities that are profitable for them. They choose where they want to compete.
AOL used to send out countless millions of subscription CD's for people to try their service firsthand.
Sony prides itself on the speed with which they can take a new idea and prototype it in order to get feedback from internal groups. Their average time to prototype: 5 days.
As composer Igor Stravinsky put it, "A good composer does not imitate; he steals."
Learn by experience: People sometimes make the mistake of assuming that learning by experience is the same as learning from your mistakes. That's only part of it.
Perhaps more important is learning from your successes.
Look for what went right in the past; what successes were easy, effortless, and enjoyable? What did you put into motion that "just clicked" and turned out even better than you expected?
It is these successes that are some of your most powerful teachers in business and in life.
I'm not suggesting that you try to replicate past successes - you can't.
But you can
replicate the conditions under which those successes came to be. You can look back and recall the tools, the skills, and the resources that you mobilized. You can start to inventory your strengths, personal preferences, and your own best ways of working.
And those things, if used intentionally and with clarity, are much more likely to serve you well in the future!
"Keep your mind on the hole you're playing."
-- Tom Kite
I'm a marketing speaker - I am not a golfer, but the following bits of wisdom from former US Open champion Tom Kite contain value for you that you can apply way beyond the links...
- You can only play one hole at a time. That's the first step toward how to think like a pro. An important key to a successful game is staying in the present.
- Resist the urge to add it up. If you anticipate your score, you'll be distracted from the task at hand.
- Focus. Concentrate on hitting great shots rather than worrying about bad ones or what others will think.
- Visualize the ball going to your target. If your mind wanders, refocus and start over again.
- Don't worry about the shot you just missed, or how you're going to play the 18th. Taking care of the present lets the future take care of itself.
Just came across GoDaddy.com CEO Bob Parson's list of 16 Rules for Business and Life and found these incredibly relevant to small business marketing and entrepreneurship.
See if you agree with me (and mainly Bob) on these words of wisdom...
1. Get and stay out of your comfort zone.
I believe that not much happens of any significance when we're in our comfort zone. I hear people say, "But I'm concerned about security." My response to that is simple: "Security is for cadavers."
2. Never give up.
Almost nothing works the first time it's attempted. Just because what you're doing does not seem to be working, doesn't mean it won't work. It just means that it might not work the way you're doing it. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it, and you wouldn't have an opportunity.
3. When you're ready to quit, you're closer than you think.
There's an old Chinese saying that I just love, and I believe it is so true. It goes like this: "The temptation to quit will be greatest just before you are about to succeed."
4. With regard to whatever worries you, not only accept the worst thing that could happen, but make it a point to quantify what the worst thing could be.
Very seldom will the worst consequence be anywhere near as bad as a cloud of "undefined consequences." My father would tell me early on, when I was struggling and losing my shirt trying to get Parsons Technology going, "Well, Robert, if it doesn't work, they can't eat you."
5. Focus on what you want to have happen.
Remember that old saying, "As you think, so shall you be."
6. Take things a day at a time.
No matter how difficult your situation is, you can get through it if you don't look too far into the future, and focus on the present moment. You can get through anything one day at a time.
7. Always be moving forward.
Never stop investing. Never stop improving. Never stop doing something new. The moment you stop improving your organization, it starts to die. Make it your goal to be better each and every day, in some small way. Remember the Japanese concept of Kaizen. Small daily improvements eventually result in huge advantages.
8. Be quick to decide.
Remember what General George S. Patton said: "A good plan violently executed today is far and away better than a perfect plan tomorrow."
9. Measure everything of significance.
I swear this is true. Anything that is measured and watched, improves.
10. Anything that is not managed will deteriorate.
If you want to uncover problems you don't know about, take a few moments and look closely at the areas you haven't examined for a while. I guarantee you problems will be there.
11. Pay attention to your competitors, but pay more attention to what you're doing.
When you look at your competitors, remember that everything looks perfect at a distance. Even the planet Earth, if you get far enough into space, looks like a peaceful place.
12. Never let anybody push you around.
In our society, with our laws and even playing field, you have just as much right to what you're doing as anyone else, provided that what you're doing is legal.
13. Never expect life to be fair.
Life isn't fair. You make your own breaks. You'll be doing good if the only meaning fair has to you, is something that you pay when you get on a bus (i.e., fare).
14. Solve your own problems.
You'll find that by coming up with your own solutions, you'll develop a competitive edge. Masura Ibuka, the co-founder of SONY, said it best: "You never succeed in technology, business, or anything by following the others." There's also an old Asian saying that I remind myself of frequently. It goes like this: "A wise man keeps his own counsel."
15. Don't take yourself too seriously.
Lighten up. Often, at least half of what we accomplish is due to luck. None of us are in control as much as we like to think we are.
16. There's always a reason to smile.
Find it. After all, you're really lucky just to be alive. Life is short. More and more, I agree with my little brother. He always reminds me: "We're not here for a long time, we're here for a good time!"
Do YOU have any rules you'd like to add to this list? Use the comments feature below and fire away... we'd love to hear YOUR rules!!
p.s. There are over 100 small business marketing and sales tools, templates, scripts, and strategies waiting for you in the Simple Marketing Success 10-Week Virtual Bootcamp experience. The program is open by application only. Let me know you're interested (email or call me 610.716.5984) and I'll forward you the application materials and program guidelines right away. We begin September 5, 2012. Join us!