Robert McKee says when talented people write badly it’s generally for one of two reasons:

1. Either they’re blinded by an idea they feel compelled to prove.
2. They’re driven by an emotion they must express.

Robert McKee goes on to say, when talented people write really well, it’s generally for this reason: They’re moved by a desire to touch their audience.

How will you know if you’re giving respect to your marketing audience and how will you know your marketing audience is receiving your respect?

If anything we shared inspires you to send us your comment or thought, we promise to say thanks and respond.

If we can be of further assistance to you and your company, we would like to give you a complimentary consultation where we listen to your greatest challenges in producing and delivering content that your ideal clients want to share.

We promise to not be lame and try to sell you stuff you don’t need when we talk.

Andy Warhol image from www.poolparty.com

Would we have remembered Andy Warhol if his dream of becoming a tap dancer came true?

According to the documentary Andy Warhol’s People Factory, Andy Warhol became an artist and filmmaker rather than a tap dancer because there was no criteria for art.

Let’s apply this to social media…

Do you believe there are social media trendsetters that are successful because there is no criteria (yet) on what social media should look like for everybody?

We will talk more about how Andy Warhol abolished the importance of pre-determined criteria in the history of art.

The documentary also showed a practical side to the eccentric artist and filmmaker…

Andy Warhol wanted his success to be as easy as possible. Contrary to public opinion, he didn’t believe he needed to be a tormented creative soul to be a successful artist. As you will find-out, he attracted plenty of tormented creative artists to display their talents and he would be more than happy to receive the credit for their work.

What is the best question for you to determine if you are choosing the easiest authentic pathway to your version of success?

I love this short video below demonstrating how Andy Warhol tried to say nothing and succeeded, while others tried to say something and failed.

Here is what else I learned from the Andy Warhol documentary that I feel is relevant for any size company or individual engaged in marketing:

• Creative helplessness. Andy Warhol made people more creative simply by asking different people, “What do you think we should do?” He accepted all ideas, and accepted all the credit. (Not saying you should accept all the credit).
  
• Pretended he did not care, but did. Andy Warhol displayed a smart vulnerability in pretending that others negative comments didn’t bother him, even though they wounded him privately. Over time, he created a strong self-identity for himself.
• Made others feel like the star. Person after person in the documentary said Andy Warhol made you feel like he chose you to be his instant star in his next film or art piece. Interesting to note, most people interviewed intellectually knew they were being used by Andy, but not a person regretted having their 15 minutes of fame.
• Star power is more important than ability. Can you deny that “attention getters” often get the attention over more well-deserved people? Andy Warhol made it work for him.
  
• Anonymity & 15 minutes of fame. Andy Warhol realized that after one’s 15 minutes of fame, one will pay dearly for his or her anonymity.

If anything we shared inspires you to send us your comment or thought, we promise to say thanks and respond.

If we can be of further assistance to you and your company, we would like to give you a complimentary consultation where we listen to your greatest challenges in producing and delivering content that your ideal clients want to share.

We promise to not be lame and try to sell you stuff you don’t need when we talk.

I’ve learned over time that the place I belong changes. What do you think?

I asked some of my talented friends to share with you their version of home.

I decided to ask six of my entrepreneur friends from different parts of the country to contribute a 1-minute or less video on why they have chosen to live, work & play in their town or city.

Kind of funny, only those friends from my home state of Oregon chose to complete my request. Maybe my friends who did not complete my request knew they could not compete with Oregon, not even for 1-minute:)

Tim Berry, Author, Blogger, Speaker & Founder of Palo Alto Software

Chris Guillebeau, The Art of Nonconformity, writer, entrepreneur & traveler

Please share where you live + work + play in the comment section below.

Toledo, Birmingham, Scranton… Where you at? Sound-off!

My thanks to my friend Jonathan Fields of Career Renegade for sharing this video.

Get past this attention getting title and open your mind to some niche marketing strategy for small business owners. I watched a documentary last night called Missionary Positions. It has an obvious message: Pornography is addictive and we want to help.

Watch this brief video and then read further as I share what I observed by watching this interesting documentary.

But it also has some great marketing strategy and tactics that you and I can apply to our niche small business.

… Like this video from their internet TV Show called XXXChurch.tv

Here is what else we can learn from this organization.

• Choose a daunting cause. David slayed Goliath and became a legend. His daunting cause was everyman truth vs. evil. Almost any small business can choose a daunting cause.
  
• Finish vs. start. The founder of XXXChurch.com reports he received the idea of creating while in the shower. The documentary follows him and his business partner as they question whether they are making a difference or if anyone really cares. He loses sight of his start-up intent and decides to quit. At end of documentary, he sadly admits to learning it’s more important to finish rather than start.
  
• Pick-up the torch. You can never tell who will pick-up your cause and become a torch bearer (Clients and Employees). There is a scene in the documentary and in the video you just watched where a business partner goes to the founder of XXXChurch.com and asks him to get involved after quitting. He even says encouragingly, “Hey, you are the one who heard God’s voice telling you to start, not me, so let’s go do it. What happened to you?” Do you have a process of noticing your torch bearers?
• Unlikely marketing allies. Ron Jeremy is one of the most recognized faces of pornography. XXXChurch.com befriends Ron Jeremy and even established a debate series around the country on college campuses on pornography. Ron Jeremy became a powerful and unlikely marketing alliance.
  
• The city reflects the mission. XXXChurch.com is headquartered in Las Vegas. Where else to attack pornography than sin city right!
  
• Multiple marketing mediums. XXXChurch.com taps into their own internet .tv show, podcasts, blog, and vigorous twitter and facebook platforms.
  

Consider watching this wonderful documentary and watch the creation and success of an organization with a mission.

Maybe you need a mission and not a business idea? Clothing optional:)

Sometimes our external market research should answer the child-like internal question, “Are we and our services fun to play with?”

A clip from the movie Big illustrates this question.

What are the questions and process you will use to determine if you are fun for your prospective clients to play with?

Here is what we are thinking about this morning…

• Is incrementalism the death of innovation in your/our business?
• How do we make it easier to share our good stuff with our ideal clients? How will we confirm if we are getting it right?
  
• Pride & Fear. The reason why they don’t ask us for help that we can provide. How are we humbly a solution?
  
• Please, trouble us. How do we prevent our clients from feeling like they are troubling us by approaching us with questions, explanations, and issues preventing us from best solving their problems?
  

What are you thinking about?

He recently passed away and has been remembered for his many contributions and accomplishments. It is not a stretch to say he changed the format forever of TV journalism.

I grew-up watching 60 Minutes with my father and continued to watch into adulthood.

As small business owners, we can learn from Don Hewitt and how he helped to change an industry.

Here are just a few:

• Find your life’s work. Mr. Hewitt worked until he was 81 doing what he loved. He said, “I want to die at my desk.”
  
• Become a lion-keeper of talent. Mr. Hewitt, on one hand, attracted the most talented staff. On the other hand, he cracked the whip when needed.
• He had street credibility. Mr. Hewitt was a journalist before he became a producer. His journalist viewed him as one of them. Entrepreneurship authors who have never run their own business are put on notice.
• The power of a story. Once asked by a young person what is the best advice he could offer on building a relationship with listeners and readers, Mr. Hewitt responded, “Tell me a story. Learn to tell a great story and you will be successful in this business.” When asked further about the power of a great story, he answered with a story, “In the Bible there is talk of an issue. The issue in the world is evil. The story is one where Noah warns the people of evil and the impending doom of a flood. You must build your story around an issue.”
  
• Focused on results. Every Monday, Mr. Hewitt would call and find-out the good or bad TV ratings of his show. He knew that the numbers mattered.
• Turned his Attention Deficit Disorder into an asset. Mr. Hewitt knew viewers were unable to remember longer news stories. He predicted that people would tune-out. So he developed the news format that still exists today: 3 x 15m stories. He is also credited at 60 Minutes for the teaser. The teaser or hook is the 15 second attention getter compelling you to listen to the rest of the story.
  
• Surrogate of what people wanted. “To be a TV producer, you must be a TV viewer,” said Don Hewitt.

What have you learned from this change agent that you can apply to your business?

]]> http://strategicincubator.com/2009/08/25/what-we-can-learn-from-don-hewitt-creator-of-60-minutes/feed/ 2 http://strategicincubator.com/2009/08/21/how-to-guarantee-your-chances-of-winning-more-proposals/ http://strategicincubator.com/2009/08/21/how-to-guarantee-your-chances-of-winning-more-proposals/#comments Fri, 21 Aug 2009 16:58:52 +0000 Matthew Scott http://strategicincubator.com/?p=2420 FOR: Are you a small business owner that offers a service for a fee?

If so, you have probably completed Request For Proposals (RFP) where you are sent a format guide and project scope and are required to complete this information request and compete against other services like your own.

WHAT: In this brief video, we offer you Step #1 in having a successful pre-proposal strategy to win more proposals and reduce or eliminate those proposals that you were not going to win anyway.

*Important Assumption: You are the right solution to a potential clients problem and they are willing and have the money to pay you.

You will learn 4 important questions that will direct your effort and actions before you submit another time-consuming and emotional draining RFP.

Music: Buddha Chill by Joe DJ, Flying Saucer

www.producerposts.com

Everyone thinks each other is the competition for customer mind share. And everyone is wrong.

Change is the real competition. You see, most people consider stuff intellectually, but make decisions emotionally.

Let me illustrate…

Ten years ago I was a sales manager with a medical device company. We developed a new medical device that cost less money, saved the operating room time, decreased by 70% the patient recovery time, actually resorbed in the patients body vs. stainless steel that remained in their body forever or had to be removed, and was proven to reduce foreign-body infections in the body. The surgeons even used the same exact technique so there was no learning curve involved.

Intellectually surgeons around the country agreed with everything I just said.

But our product was a huge failure…

Why was our superior product on all important decision-making levels such a failure?

Because the surgeons did not want to change. They had been using an inferior product for years and it worked fine. The stainless steel product was not perfect, but surgeons were used to it by now over the past 25 years.

One day a prominent Boston surgeon and I were discussing our product. I offered to let him try our products free for an entire month. My company would invest over $100,000 dollars for this free one-month trial.

The surgeon agreed to the free trial and two days later he had a surgery where he said he would use our product. Our company sent technical training representatives to the hospital and trained the entire staff. Whenever a question would arise from a hospital staff asking how do I… we would simply say, “the same as you use the product you have been using for the past 25 years.”

I showed-up early for the surgery and made sure our surgical system was setup and ready to go in the operating room.

The surgeon scrubbed in and began to prep the patient. He glanced at me, but did not say a word.

When it came time to use our medical device implants, he told the nursing staff to get his usual equipment. I mustered the courage to say to him, “Sir, I have everything setup for you and your OR team has been trained.”

The surgeon said, “I just feel more comfortable in using what I’m used to using.”

He went on to say, “I know it’s better for the patient, but I’m going to use what I always use.”

I responded in frustration, “Does the family of this patient know that?” I then walked out of the operating room. When I tell this story to my close friends, I add the part where another sales rep from another product who was in the Operating Room at the same time chased me down the hallway and said, “dude, you have big brass _______.”

As a company we learned that surgeons across the country were no different than my surgeon. They did not want to change, even if it was the best decision for the patient and the hospital.

It gets better…

One week later I get a voice mail from this surgeon. He said, “I’ve decided to give your product another chance, but I’d like to fly to your headquarters in San Diego to discuss some ideas I have. I will be taking my wife and would like to stay at the Hotel Del Coronado.”

I mumbled to myself, “piss off,” and I never called him back.

This is not just some big company story that doesn’t impact you as a small business owner.

Change is your biggest competition.

Can you provide some examples in your business where your prospects are choosing {same} over your {change}?