You wait, and wait, and wait…

But waiting is so boring. Most stories deal with the boring, waiting parts by skipping over them. Whether it’s a montage of several months passing in the movie, or a simple statement “After several months of anxious waiting, the answer arrived…” in a book, writers have the luxury of skipping over the boring bits. We don’t, we have to tough them out. And that sucks.

No one wants to watch, read, or live through the boring parts. Unfortunately we often don’t have a choice and life makes us wait for the good parts of our lives to come about.

The good parts don’t just happen

When you feel stalled and waiting, it can be real tempting to give in to more waiting. Doing nothing sometimes feels great. In the end though, the good part of your story won’t come without action.

Your secret to ending the waiting, and being less bored, is acting.

Stop waiting and start preparing

Do something, even if it doesn’t feel like it matters. The main character in a good story is always moving forward, always trying to accomplish something, even if it’s not amazing at the moment. He or she is simply trying to get to the next step.

The next step doesn’t have to be monumental, in fact it will probably seem prosaic in comparison to your grand passions or goals. That’s okay. Your duty is only to keep moving. To keep on the path and take the next step.

But what if I don’t know what the next step is?

The one thing about creating a great story is that the main character always wants something, usually intrinsic to the human experience. Whether it’s a better station in life, a beautiful woman, a husband to love them, or simply to live, they are constantly seeking after a goal. What’s your goal? What do you want?

What you want can be the hardest question to answer. We want so many things but the real trick is narrowing down all the many things we desire to the essence.

What do you want more than anything?

Once you find that, proceed on

After you find the thing that you want more than anything, the next step should come naturally. The choice then becomes clear, do you pursue that goal or wait? Do you play an active role in your life or do you wait for things to happen to you. Are you the hero or heroine of your story or merely a background character that responds to other heroes?

Don’t wait, push forward

When things seem to be struggling in your life, when nothing appears to be moving forward, evaluate what you are doing:

• Are you acting, not waiting for things to happen?
• If you don’t know what to do, do you have a goal?
• If you don’t have a goal, what do you want more than anything else in the whole world?
• Once you know what you want, what is the next step?
• When you know the next step, do that, as hard as it might be, then the next, and the next…

Your Life, Your Story

You are living your life, minute by minute. The question is HOW will you choose to live it? Will you take an active role in your living, or will you sit back and let life, circumstances, or even other people have a greater effect on your life than you.

Does that sound too far-fetched or abstract? It’s not.

Imagine your life right now as a movie or book, would you want to read it? Would you pay to read it?

If your life is not worthy of recording in the annals of history, who do you have to blame?

Does everything in your life have to be sweeping and epic? Of course not! But why wouldn’t you strive for that in every thing you do?

Right now, look at your life and find the story you’ve been telling so far. What is it? Do you find it inspiring or incredible?

Chances are you simply need a new step, a challenge of sorts, to get you beyond the daily grind and to launch yourself into a much more satisfying story.

The little girl probably doesn’t care if her Mommy is just being nice or encouraging, she accepts it at face value. When you get older however, the problem becomes more serious. Specifically,  how do you know your friends and family aren’t just being polite? How do you know that you’ve ‘made it’.

If you are trying to sell your art, and no one is really buying, you might get a sneaking suspicion that all the nice comments you receive are just so much smoke blowing you know where. Here are four ways to measure whether your art is good:

1) You gain a collector

Client’s and customers come and go, but collectors are there to stay. A collector appreciates you for your work and vision, they love what you do. A collector will buy everything you have to offer, and tell their discriminating friends about you.

Friends and mere customers pick and choose what they like, their taste and desire is all about them. Collectors on the other hand care about what you are doing, they want to be a part of the unique vision you’re creating.

Once you find a collector, you know that your work has purpose and a story.

2) Your work develops a unified theme

Too many artists try to do everything. Even if they stick to one medium or style of creation (acrylic, watercolor, poetry, ceramics, etc…) many times their work lacks a clear vision. Each piece looks like a stand alone.

The great artists never have this problem. If you see one Picasso from the blue period, you can probably identify another. If you know that a certain painting of haystacks is a Van Gogh, you’re more likely to see the same spirit and vision in Starry Night. Even glass artist Dale Chihuly has a distinct style that people can recognize.

These artists create pieces with a unified vision, a common soul that makes them unique and distinct from anything else. So, when a stranger sees your art, what do they say? Can they recognize it’s yours?

3) Each piece tells a story

Making unique art coming from a unique and unified theme isn’t quite enough. Many artists strive for and attain this only to be thrown into the depths of obscurity. What your work needs is to tell a compelling story as well.

A story has a central character, a conflict, and resolution. The main character wants something and is willing to overcome conflict to get it. That’s the simple part. Incorporating that into your art is much more difficult than just reading the definitions. What’s not difficult is to see that the great works of art, the ones people love, all have a deeper meaning for them, and that comes through telling a story that other people latch onto and begin to tell themselves.

Begin to think more consciously about your work. What story are you telling with each piece? What story will your collectors tell themselves? How does it fit into the unified theme that you have chosen?

***Bonus Hint***

Take Five minutes before your start a piece and simply mediate on those elements of story; character, conflict, resolution. Don’t be constrained by your assumptions, character can be anything, and the resolution can be implied. Let your unconscious work it all out for you.

4) You become less uncertain of yourself

Once you stop asking, “Have I made it?” and instead consistently focus and producing more and better work, that’s probably the point where you have made it.

When this happens you’ll notice a new and bolder quality to your work. Maybe the best word for it is mature, but others will simply say it’s wonderful. It becomes a virtuous cycle that begets some of your best pieces.

Partly, this feeling stems from rejecting the panic and fear that come naturally with any artistic endeavor. The moment you can get passed that, and start doing the work, your whole world will open up.

Isn’t art subjective? What’s good enough anyway?

Maybe this is what you tell yourself so that you can avoid the hard work of being great. I know many artists who don’t think they have talent, or don’t want to be ‘commercial’ (giving them license to be bizarre and counter culture), but I don’t know any artists that don’t want to be great at what they do.

Art is subjective to the beholder, but if you want to make a living at selling your art, you need to take your audience into consideration. Major collectors appreciate a unique vision, a piece that tells them a story, and a self assured nature. If you want to be good enough for them, then you would be wise to focus on these key areas.

Your collectors are waiting for you

Follow these signs and you will be sure to rid yourself of that pesky nagging feeling that maybe you just aren’t good enough. In fact, if you focus on collectors, develop a unique vision, tell stories with each work you produce, and rid yourself of self-doubt, you will be well on your way to being a great artist, loved and appreciated by many.

The bad news: those things will be the hardest in the whole world to change. Which is why you haven’t changed them already.

I’m a big fan of stories to make a point… Billy once had a dream as well.

—————-

Through squinted eyes, Billy’s pencil sketched across the paper, a furry of motion. At only six years old, he knew what he wanted most in the world; to be a space explorer. Planets, comets, starships, asteroids and danger sprang to life from the nothingness of the white paper before him. His wild imagination created the world he wanted to live in.

Stretched out on the floor, feet swaying in the air, Billy drew his imagination on paper. Colored pencils added depth to the planet, providing foliage and oceans to an otherwise barren landscape. Red flames burst from the engines of his spaceship and blue lasers snaked across the shaded void to vanquish the enemy craft in a blaze of yellow and orange. Billy smiled to himself in satisfaction.

Billy’s Mom came into the living room, hands full with groceries and extra work. She blew a lock of hair from her face, and looked down at her son. “Billy, that’s enough drawing. I need your help with the groceries.”

The pleading was thick in his eyes and voice, “Mom, I just want to finish this thing.” He said.

She set the groceries down on the counter with a sigh, “Now Billy.”

Reluctantly, and with an air of pouting that his mother chooses to ignore, Billy got up from his masterpiece and went in the kitchen to help put away the groceries.

“Hey Mom. Wanna know something?” Billy asked.

“What is it Son?” Billy’s mom said.

“I’m gonna be a space explorer!” Billy said, pure joy in his smile.

“That’s nice, hon.” His Mom said, trying her hardest to be supportive.

That’s all Billy needed though, and he began to tell her about his planned adventures. On and on he went, no detail was too minute to hash out. Eventually his Mom had enough, “Okay Billy. I get it, you want to be a spaceman. That’s enough, okay?”

But it wasn’t enough, “I want to be a space explorer Mom, not a spaceman,” he corrected her.

Just then, Billy’s Mom didn’t watch where she was walking and stepped on his pencils and drawing. Billy yelled out, “Mom!” as his Mom swore out loud. Billy stopped in his tracks.

“Billy, that’s enough! You are not going to be a space explorer or anything like that. Life’s hard enough, you don’t need silly dreams that just can’t come true. Now pick up pencils and throw away this garbage.” She was pointing at his drawing.

Tears filled Billy’s eyes but he held them back, “But, I want to be a space explorer. More than anything.”

Billy’s Mom softened, “ I know Honey, but you just have to realize that the world doesn’t work like that. You need to be realistic.”

Billy nodded his head, not quite believing her. He walked over, picked up his “garbage” and threw it away in the trash.

—————-

And that’s how it starts, the slow terror that grips our hearts and dreams, telling us that living our lives isn’t really possible.

Billy’s Mom didn’t mean to crush his dreams, and she wasn’t the final word. Can you remember a time when this happened? It’s the silent death of the soul, and it teaches us how to tell stories about ourselves.

Stories like the one above can set in motion a chain of events leading to this:

—————-

The sound of recycled air clicked on above and William felt the stale breeze touch his hand. His cubicle felt less oppressive as he doodled on a scrap of paper. His pencil danced across the makeshift canvas but William was barely aware of what he was creating. This came second nature to him.

Deep inside, where he locked it away, William dreampt of being an artist. The thought of drawing and giving people pleasure and perhaps meaning through his creations made his heart nearly burst with happiness. But how can he? He has to pay the bills, he has to be realistic. You can’t just pursue what makes you happy, you have to work too. That’s how the world works.

William feels someone behind him and instinctively places a hand over his work. He looks up to see his co-worker, Denise, trying to peak through his hand.

“What were you drawing?” she asked.

“Nothing, just something I had in my head,” William says with a sigh.

“Can I see the whole thing? It looked like something you’d see in comic book. Do you draw for one of those?”

William snorted, “I wish. No, I just doodle. It’s nothing.” But he tentatively holds the scrap up for Denise to inspect.

She takes it from his hand and looks it over carefully, “I don’t really go in for fantasy but this looks pretty good. You should be an artist or something.”

William takes back his art and slowly crumples it up, “Ya, maybe someday. I just can’t quit my job and draw all the time. Maybe I’ll win the lottery or something, right?”

Both he and Denise share a sad laugh.

Denise thinks about the other night in the Karaoke bar, how she sang her heart out and the place erupted in applause. That’s what she lived for, her weekend performances, those moments of pure bliss. She shook her head and walked away from William’s cubicle. He was right, what was she going to do, quit her job and sing for a living? Maybe someday…

—————-

It’s in there. That deep, burning passion that keeps you up at night. That thing that you want most. And life, people, everything conspires for you to ignore it.

I bet it keeps you up at night, refusing to stop bugging you. Especially at your lowest points; those moments where it seems you have nothing else, it’s still there, haunting you. Even if you accomplish great things throughout your life, this one idea, dream, or desire nags in the back of your mind and won’t let go. It hurts.

You have to stop and accept that it’s there.

We all have a secret desire, an inner burning passion to do something great with our lives. Believe me, your desire is there. Whenever you get passionate about a subject, when life’s injustice seems too much to bear. You will see it when you find your self lecturing someone unintentionally. That’s your passion. You need to pursue it.

You are aching to pursue that passion.

But so often we choose not to. We choose instead to ignore it, to give up, to play the xBox or the latest Facebook game. Something inside of us holds us back and we give in to the fear, let the Panic control us. We choose hobbies or semi-passionate pursuits, but not the one thing that makes us come alive.

But why is that?

No one dreams of being mediocre, or working at something that is less than remarkable. Is your deepest desire to just get by? No, we want to make something special, something remarkable. We want to create things that last. We want to do great work, but we settle for story of getting by and “doing what we have to”.

Our souls are dying because of that.

Of course 30 years ago that was how you found a mass audience, you appealed to the largest group possible.  But those were also the days when there were only 4 channels on TV.

Today, you can’t be bland or general, everyone will tune you out if you try.  That’s a shame really, because then no one will know you or what amazing beauty you can bring to their lives. The worst part, if you’re boring, they won’t want to know you.

You have to stand for something, you have to have a unique story that inspires and moves people to want to join what it is that you are doing.  And that necessarily means making the hard choice and deciding who you are and who you are not.

What are you for? What are you against? What are you against? Where’s your struggle that people will notice and care about?

Define these and you will save your budding enterprise.

That said, I think sales can be a wonderful thing, if you focus on being good.

It’s like the Wizard of OZ. Glenda was a good witch, but to most people witches are inherently bad. If I walked up to you told you that I’m a witch, you’d probably give me the same look as if I walked up to you and told you that I’m a salesman. But witches, like people, are judged by their actions.

What are the right actions?

If you treat your artistic enterprise as a way to build, cultivate, and sustain relationships then you are acting like a good salesperson. If you treat customers as transactions and numbers, just trying to get their money, you are a bad salesperson (and rigthly deserve to have a house dropped on you).

I know a lot of people struggle with the idea of sales. I know this for two reasons 1) I used to struggle on a daily basis and 2) there are about 400 million sales and business books in existence trying to coax you into making yourself okay with with thinking about people as numbers.

So why do we worry about sales?

Because, if we create something amazing then we want to share it with the world. We could do that for free but our world doesn’t really work like that. We want to make a living as artists, creating value and beauty, but how do you find the people that want to pay for that beauty?

This is the problem.

Here’s how you can still be an artist (however you do your art) and run a successful enterprise at the same time:

1) Figure Out What Makes You Unique

What is it about your style, method, angle, your eye, your soul that creates something new. What about your art do people connect with?

This is your artistic vision and you know it, even if you haven’t defined it.

Example (My artistic vision): My writing is slightly humorous, with some quirk, taking different ideas and smashing them together. Everything I write shows a raging desire to see personal transformation in everyone. My passion is to see people change their lives for the better and begin living out incredible stories that they would be proud to share.

2) Find What People Like to Buy

You have to go where the people are. What are they buying? What’s the trend?

People don’t understand what quality is, not always. But sometimes they get sucked in.

Case in point: I wrote and published a series of bedtime stories. These are not run-a-way best sellers for many reasons, but my kid likes them and I honestly think that parents would benefit from reading them to their kids. This steps in line with my artistic vision.

I also have a desire to pay the bills. So I went to Amazon to see what was popular. My thought was that I could write a book about an up and coming topic that might sell better in the short run. I identified a couple of areas (ones in which I had some expertise as well) but held off writing until I found #3.

3) Apply your Uniqueness to the Trend

You must try this. At the very least you can see if it inspires you to do something great.

In my case, I found a couple of topics but I wasn’t exactly thrilled. One topic was social media marketing, the other was business productivity/self-help. My artistic vision will not allow me to do work without it, so I immediately applied my unique passion to these topics. Things began to blossom from that decision.

Self-help is a much maligned topic, and for good reason. It’s part and parcel with helping people realize their best stories, but it always seems so vanilla and blase. I almost dismissed it until I realized that there is one thing I know about that would really help people; getting past the panic to get things done. Suddenly, I found a new topic to write and it fits beautifully with my artistic vision. In fact, the whole book has transformed into a very personal and auto-biographical exploration. If I didn’t take other, commercially successful topics seriously then I wouldn’t have created this wonderful work.

Don’t Be A Sellout

You might look at someone who finds topics to write about or finds mediums for their art that are popular (like driftwood bottle cap openers) as sell outs. But as long as they bring their unique vision to the new endeavor, they are true artists. You can live in both worlds comfortably as long as you don’t forget who you are, you don’t leave behind your artistic vision.

Think about your life in terms of its duckiness

Isn’t your personal story the same as a duck? Hang with me for a moment here. When you tell your story to someone, for instance in your ‘Bio’ or about me page on your website, what do you tell them? My guess is that you try to make it sound like the ducks gliding across the water, serene and wonderful.

And that’s exactly what you need to avoid.

You need to avoid sounding peaceful?

Not exactly.

You need to avoid being really boring.

Peaceful and serene is nice, in the same way that telling someone the name of the town you grew up in or the names of your parents is nice. But it’s not terribly interesting.

At least not as interesting as scrambling duck feet.

What do duck feet have to do with anything?

The scrambling duck feet propel, they move the duck forward. The same thing has happened to you.

How did you get where you are now? You scrambled, you fought, you struggled, and eventually you made it where you are now. The struggle is the interesting part of your story.

People care about the struggle more than anything

Think about it, what gets your attention more than a good struggle?

A mega-star like Brittney Spears puts out a new album and it’s nothing new, snooze time really. But then you find out she wrote it from rehab. Suddenly the stakes were higher, the struggle was greater. Now you hear that not only did she write it in rehab, but she was being abused by her husband at the time.

Now you’re in, you are paying attention because you feel the struggle of her story.

But where’s the struggle in your story?

Let’s go back to your poor bio. Chances are you tell your story with the wrong details. No one cares where you grew up or where you were born unless somehow it involved danger, struggle or a problem. Where you born in Iran or the Sudan and had to escape to America. That’s interesting and worth telling. Born in Omak, Washington? Probably not worth mentioning. Did you live next to avid supporters of the Ku Klux Klan? Mention that little tid bit and people will be locked in to hear the rest of what you have to say.

But what if you don’t have anything interesting to say?

That would certainly be a problem, if it were true.

Thankfully it’s not.

Not one bit.

No matter what your life situation, there is always an element of conflict. Maybe it wasn’t a big, dramatic movie moment (they rarely are). But just because James Cameron won’t be stealing your lifestory for one of his scripts doesn’t mean your life hasn’t seen it’s fair share of conflict and struggle. In fact, I’m sure there’s a lot more than you think.

Find your struggle, gain attention

My wife used to have a terrible bio, awful really. But then she told the story of when she quit painting, gave it up seemingly forever. This was a problem which had a wonderful solution, a sudden burst of creativity that birthed her most loved pieces and a renewed commitment to the arts. That’s a much more interesting way to begin a story than what type of paint you use or where you grew up. There’s struggle in your life, you just need to draw it out.

Without the struggle you lose their interest

People like going to the lake and feeding the ducks, it’s nice. But is watching ducks swim really interesting? Not until you see their little webbed feet paddling away, struggling against the water. The movement, the struggle is memorable, that’s what people find interesting. You should strive to do the same.

Web 3.0 is the newest release coming out in the ‘Web .0′ series, and it’s incredible. If you’re not excited, then maybe you haven’t seen the right trailer.

Here’s the Story So Far

Web 1.0 taught us to find information using the internet, to seek knowledge online.

Web 2.0 showed us that we can share our lives and ideas more easily. The internet taught us to talk to each other in a new way, to share everything we’re doing and thinking.

But what’s next? Better sharing websites? More interactive web applications? Bigger Social Media sites?

Or could we be in store for something better?

Admittedly, it’s harder to fathom what could be better than our current setup. We have constant communication with our closest friends and family at nearly any distance, at any time. We are able to share and publish our thoughts and ideas immediately, as they come to us, and include everyone we know. We can interact with people all day long.

But just because each stage of this ‘Web .0′ story includes more human interaction, we don’t just want more interaction for it’s own sake. What we strive for are higher levels of interaction. If this trend continues ( and I think it must) then the next stage of our internet will move beyond just sharing.

What’s beyond sharing?

Sharing ideas and thoughts easily was a huge breakthrough, but sharing is only a component of what people want to do.

Think about it. What we do right now on sites like Facebook and Twitter is merely talking. Even if a conversation takes place, a back forth exchange, something is lacking. That lack is what lies beyond sharing.

We naturally strive to move beyond sharing to connecting, and from connecting to engaging.

We engage to change…

The next step on the internet is helping other people change their lives using the web. That doesn’t mean some silly self-help nonsense, I mean real change. The kind that makes people stand up and take notice. I think in their heart of hearts that’s what people truly want from relationships; to share, to connect, to engage, and to make a difference.

If the web represents our social activity then Web 3.0 is the one where we get to step closer to realizing our highest social ideals.

Our highest social ideal is creating change

What change do you want to create? First look deep down in yourself, do you just want to share things? Do you just want to let people know what you’re doing, had for lunch, thinking at the moment?

Or do you want to change people, to help them be better? Help them to move on and be even more, offline, aided by the online.

That’s where we are heading.

The course is set for future change

We want to communicate with other people, we want to connect with them, we want to be understood. What else is there except for being a change agent. Just as Web 2.0 made everyone a publisher, Web 3.0 will give everyone the opportunity to share their experiences, their lives, in a way that impacts others.

Web 3.0 will make everyone a change agent.

We’ll all be change agents, what about now?

So what will you do with this information? Store it away, tell some friends so that when it happens you can look cool, or perhaps you’ll do something something more, something profound.

Maybe you will start to see your sharing as a way to help others. I hope you intentionally shift your interactions toward this new ideal, one of helping other people around you become more of what they are capable of. When everyone on the internet strives to actively encourage and bless his or her “friends”, our collective story will become greater than it’s ever been.

You can count on it.

It’s hard, and brutal. If you’re not careful it will swallow you whole.

I’ve learned this the hard way. Being a “self-published author” looked kind of glamorous, especially if you read stories about the likes of Amanda Hocking, JA Konrath, or John Locke selling millions of books in just a few months. After five or ten of those articles, my head swam with large figures as I counted my make-believe money, and imagined the love and adoration of my dream fans.

So I sat down, wrote a book, learned how to format it for eReaders, designed my own cover in Photoshop, and finally published my novel.

Hooray!

And then something curious happened.

Absolutely Nothing

A few sales trickled in, mostly from friends and family, certainly nothing I could live on. I was not easily discouraged though and published another. But I found the same results. I “promoted” and got the word out, sales ticked up slightly but nothing like I imagined it would be.

Depression and disillusionment set in, where are the riches and glory?

Here’s the problem.

I was acting like an author, but not a publisher

Self-pub authors do publish their own work, making them publishers in the most basic sense, but simply publishing doesn’t make them a good publisher. It’s like saying that stringing some words together into a story makes someone a good author. It means you can write, it doesn’t make you good.

From what I can see, good publishers think about:

Good publishers worry about catalogs and overall sales.

Good publishers worry about how to get out more product before the new stuff is swallowed whole.

Good publishers do what it takes to get the book in front of people that want to read it.

Good publishers do a lot more than hope, dream, and wait for sales. Good publishers think about the bigger picture, they promote like crazy for their authors, and are always looking for the next big hit.

Authors need to start thinking like a good publishers, and eventually they will become a good publishers.

Here are some tips and ideas about how to start thinking like a good publisher:

1) Pay Attention to Your Customer

First and foremost. Above all else.

If you really want to control or influence your sales, find out WHO is buying your book(s), then find HOW they decided to buy it. From there you can make more intelligent decisions about how to promote your work to the right people in the right way.

This is not easy and why major companies (major publishers included) spend millions in market research etc… they do a lot of small things that make a big difference to the end user.

2) Write a lot more, with a Twist

Write like you’ve never wrote before. If you read writing blogs this may be the most common advice because it’s true. You should spend every waking moment you have getting new work out.

Or partner with co-writers to write faster. Use Google Docs to remotely collaborate on a novel or series with them and use the synergy to put out more titles.

Or find people that want to put out a book but just need a little encouragement, and publish the book for them. Walk them through the process of writing or find a ghostwriter (maybe yourself if you have time) to do the hard work.

The point is… get new titles out, period. Any way you can. Think like a publisher, not an author.

I’ve heard it said once that “Hope is not a sound business strategy”. While I do think that luck plays a big role in breakout success, it’s not enough. With all due respect to Konrath, sometimes luck needs a helping hand.

If you don’t want to market heavily or ride many waves of changing business practice, you have to hope that luck will swing your way. The best way to do that is to get new titles out all the time.

However, I think for the few that do BOTH of these, they will find long term success as a publisher. And as an author.

Josh Kilen writes books that help people live better stories. His most popular works are his bedtime stories for kids.  Meant to be read night after night in serial fashion, these novella length stories are broken into easy to tell 5-10 minute episodes that always end on a cliffhanger. Your kids will be clamoring for the next episode. In addition to more bedtime stories, Josh is working on a book about Social Media Marketing for artists and authors, and he’s finishing an epic tome on artistic motivation using story and game design.

So, you’ve decided to run for office. You assemble your team, you define a campaign strategy (for incumbents, stay the course; for challengers, we need change!), and then you need volunteers.

Before you go any farther though, I want you to log on to the internet and play a free trial of World of Warcraft. I’m serious, or go read an epic fantasy story like Lord of the Rings. You won’t regret either, and they’ll help you win.

What if I told you that stories like The Lord of the Rings or games like World of Warcraft teach you what you need to know about consistently winning political campaigns?

Don’t laugh, stories and games hold the key to your victory.

Stories and games have three main characteristics that prove themselves invaluable to anyone seeking election:

1. They incorporate epic purpose and a great goal
2. They rely on collaboration to achieve that goal
3. They show the steps and provide feedback on realizing that goal

Here’s how you can successfully make those three principles a reality in your next campaign for office:

1) Find a better story that leads to an epic purpose

This is the most important step. Without a better story with an epic purpose, you have nothing to set yourself apart.

But how do you create an epic purpose?

If the 2008 presidential election taught us anything it’s that idealistic purpose trumps ideology. Obama ran on the platform of positive change, and made people believe that electing him would each of them a part of that change.

The problem with the Republican candidates this year is that they don’t have any bigger purpose. Either their focus is on regression, in other words going back to our founding ideals or they just want to “do better” than the other guy. Neither of these stories have mass appeal since they don’t mean much to most people.

Ask yourself, does a good story go backwards? Of course not. They always move forward and tackle bigger and better challenges. Good stories, just like good games, inspire people. The main character always moves forward trying to vanquish the great evil.

What’s your great evil that you want to vanquish?

Find the great evil that you will lead everyone to conquer, offering voters a clear way to move forward. Then you will have an epic purpose for everyone involved, both volunteers and voters.

On a national level, Obama focused on ‘Change’ and the ‘Hope’ that things will get better. Details as to how that would happen were inconsequential to the overall purpose. People simply agreed with the greater purpose.

2) Rally the volunteers and engage them with games

Once you have identified your great purpose, you need to get your team energized and motivated to seeing that purpose achieved. A major problem with volunteering is that many times it feels like a burden, not a fun, collaborative opportunity to achieve something great.

You need to make it more fun and interesting.

Make a list of all the necessary skills and steps to spread the message, which is the purpose of your campaign. You probably can think of a bunch right now; doorbelling, sign-waving, letter writing, putting up signs, helping out at events, internet promotions. Now make that list not-boring.

Not boring?

Yup, jazz up the names wherever you can. So door knockers become “roaming evangelists” and people who are influencers online become part of the “Social Media Corps of Engineers”. Think of some names that relate to your purpose and the personality of your campaign. But make it fun.

Then set up an online sign up form for volunteers.

Start by allowing the new volunteers to pick from the list those things that they excel at. If the names you came up with are too unfamiliar, you might have to describe them, that’s okay.

Then have each volunteer choose a secret identity based on their skills. I know this may sound cheesy but everyone is good at something and you need to allow them to embrace those differences and use them to help achieve the epic purpose. Giving them a new name, a campaign name, will help with that.

Set up a secret lair as a base of operations.

Everyone has fond memories of the clubhouse of their youth, and every adult longs for that experience again. Give that to them offline and online. “Campaign Headquarters” is too boring and common. Give them someplace of their own to congregate that makes them feel special and surrounds them with the sense they are not alone in accomplishing this amazing purpose you have set forth. You can do this with a physical location and also with a website.

You also have to allow them the opportunity to share and collaborate.

Setting up an online chat or forum is a good first step, but hiring someone to create an total social experience would be the best. You don’t have to get someone to create a Facebook or anything, but you do need a place where people can share stories, get ideas, and see that they are making a difference. Something like Ning.com would do nicely.

It’s crucial that you tie everything into the bigger story and have a clear epic win.

Every activity your volunteers engage in must directly relate to the great purpose you all have together. A story only moves forward when the main characters do something tied to advancing the story. Make sure they know that what they do is having an effect on the overall purpose.

That’s why you set goals and levels that give feedback to volunteers that they are accomplishing the goals you set forth. Within this social sphere you create, make sure to set up measurable goals that allow people to see that they are actually making a difference in achieving the purpose. If someone hangs 100 door hangers, then they get a badge or some accolade. If someone signs up 100 voters to pledge themselves to vote or to agree with your bigger purpose, they get a new level. People love these types of rewards.

Make the whole process of volunteering seem more like a fun game, not a dutiful obligation.

3) Include the voters using games

You can’t pay people to vote for you, but you can make it rewarding to vote for your purpose.

Instead of just going out and asking people to vote for you, why not create a system that engages people instead? If you tie it into the main goal, the greater, epic purpose, your efforts will be rewarded.

Ask voters to sign a pledge that they agree with the bigger idea, sign on paper and online. Now they are tied to that purpose and part of something bigger.

Then, on a website that you set up, once they agree with your bigger purpose, they have the option of being a volunteer or a collaborator. Each level has different tasks and duties that they have to perform. Maybe they aren’t ready to volunteer but if they agree that your epic purpose is good, then help them spread that. Use similar systems as above.

Then leading up to the big vote, set up specific challenges and achievements that engage them in the campaign and its epic purpose.

Also, set up a related website for voters that makes it fun to share their voting experience on election day. Help them to share their achievements and stories along with instant feedback from the campaign.

This is your mission

Obviously there is a lot of work to be done within each area, but it’s not impossible. In fact, that’s your epic goal, to craft a system that inspires and engages a large enough group of people to get elected.

So get to it, the fate of the world rests in your hands.

Josh Kilen helps people, and organizations, live and tell better stories. If you want more information or just want a bit of advice, email him at josh@joshkilen.com or mention him on Twitter (@jehoshuakilen).

Star Wars is an incredible example of this. Millions “get” the heroes journey that pits Luke Skywalker against his father and the Emperor, but George Lucas has allowed the fans to create a rich history that would take years to uncover and understand.

It occurs to me that the universe also works this way. What we experience is amazing when you think about it, but there’s so much more; trillions of stars, sub-atomic particles, even how our mind and brain work.

There’s always more to the story for the true fans.

Not the rainy day Saturday bored, but the kind of bored that makes you want to do nothing else.

I don’t think I’m alone in my boredom

A lot of people I talk to experience something similar but they have an internal fortitude that allows them to barely make it through. Most people just press on, trying not to dwell on how bored they are.

Boredom stems from a lack of conflict

Conflict is different than drama. Drama is like conflict but doesn’t go anywhere. Conflict must be overcome and won over, we have to defeat it in order to get what we want. Wherever you find great conflict, a great story is sure to follow.

Do you want great conflict?

If your goal is to sit, there isn’t much conflict there. You will probably achieve your goals quickly and consistently.

But not much is won or lost, so the story is not a great one, it’s boring. Would you pay $12 to go see a two hour movie about a guy who’s whole ambition was to sit?

What about someone who is trying to save a country from an evil dictator? Maybe you would and maybe you wouldn’t go see that, but at least the story is more interesting than the sitting guy. The stakes are greater, therefore the story is better.

You can live a better story too

You don’t have to overthrow despotic tyrants to have a great story, but you do have to do something, to want something, to pursue something. If you don’t choose what you want or you choose but don’t pursue, there is no conflict and your story is a bad one.

No one pays to hear about your life because you don’t have real conflict, you are not doing something that’s hard.

So, what are you doing? What are you pursuing? Is it hard or impossible? Good.

Nobody cares what you say, it’s only what you do that matters. Do something awesome, stop your life from sucking, and ramp up the conflict. And please stop sitting around…

Dream about your funeral.

Rather than being morbid or taking this as an opportunity to decide on the specific type of wood for your casket, use this moment to think about what you want others to say about you.

As they stand over your grave, hopefully crying and upset at your passing, what do you want the multitudes to say about your life, what you did, how you mattered? What do you want them to say about how you affected them, how you made a difference in their lives?

Your funeral is much more than just a gathering. It’s the final review of your Lifestory.

What do you want to be remembered for specifically? What do you want people to say in the end?

Reminiscing about your funeral is not about you or your legacy, or even the memories others have about you. It’s about starting your story with the end in mind.

We actively shape the stories of those around us with our life and actions. Every action you take, every decision you make, has an effect on someone else and in turn changes their Lifestory for the better or worse. You have the opportunity to help others create their better story by telling/living your better story.

You should live a great life because it matters to others.

You have responsibility to affect the stories of everyone around you and the stories that will be told about you. What will you do? What do you want? How will you inspire others?

Maybe you haven’t heard these stories, but even if this is the first you heard about Colonel Sanders, you can see how the story shapes the company, becomes part of it’s DNA.

Every business, large and small, has a story. What’s yours?

You have a story, a tale of struggle and overcoming. It is a powerful way to connect with your customers, and one of the easiest ways to set yourself apart in a cluttered marketplace.

For creatives, a clear and compelling story is vital to make a name for themselves. If you are an artist, author, or designer, how else do you stand out from the millions of others? It’s your story that makes you stand out.

Even if your art is unique, you still have to share your story. Customers or collectors will make up one for you if you don’t, and they don’t always get it right.

This is the great secret of higher end sales; the story sells more. People don’t pay $20,000 for a piece of art simply because it’s pretty. They can find something pretty at Target or World Market. Or they can commission a local starving artist for one tenth that price. High end collectors pay that price because of they story they get to tell themselves or other people. Maybe it’s a famous artist so the piece brings prestige, or it makes them feel a certain way. No matter what, it’s the story in their head that matters.

You don’t need better marketing, you definitely don’t need to sell anyone, you simply need to tell your story. Tell a good story and people come running.

Find your story, make it truly yours, and you can’t help but stand out.

They’re not.

Heroes are quite dumb. They have to be. In order to experience pain, conflict, and setbacks (so that they can grow from those experiences) they have to make mistakes.

It’s okay to fail and to make mistakes. You have to be okay with failure as a possible result of your choice to act. There is no other way to learn and grow as the character in your Lifestory.

You are the main character in your story, and your responsibility is to move forward. Even if it all feels like to much, or the world seems impossible, you never back down, never give up, and always press forward.

Failures will never be comfortable, but they will signal that you are on the right track and that your story just got more interesting.

That got me thinking, did the writer mean that there was not enough true stories about such things?

Because the annals of fiction are filled with such stories; the lone dissident leading the rebellion, or a nation coming together to fight a common enemy. And here’s a secret, I hold many of those fictional stories in higher esteem than many of the true-life stories I’ve heard.

The very fact that it’s true can inspire us but I’m not sure can necessarily motivate us to action.  True stories tell us what is possible, and they can tell us what to do, but they lack the crucial quality of transporting the reader outside of himself (and his experiences) to treat what is not possible as reality, if only in his head.

In a true story, based on real life, we see the situation in parallel with ours, but with all the inconsistencies as well.

A fictional story is treated at once as “not real” but our minds deal with it in a very real way. We unconsciously make the impossible, possible. A very useful trick I think.

Do we need more true stories of community? I suppose it wouldn’t hurt. Do we need more stories  that inspire us, as well as make us believe in the impossible, that we can make what is not real, real?

That, I believe, is essential.

This of course got me thinking, can a story focus exclusively on a group? Can a group be a protagonist? We can certainly write stories with groups in them, but I believe that a whole group as the protagonist would be too much.

We couldn’t focus on the details.

It’s like looking at a forest across the lake. At first you can see the entire panorama, the grand sweep of nature’s majesty, but your eye is almost immediately drawn to the details. The individual trees, the large rock in the distance, the small islands in the lake, or the trees on the islands, all these jump out. Your eye needs something to focus on.

People need a face, an individual to connect to and a group is only a collection of individuals. (Side Note: Perhaps another reason for Jesus Christ to be sent, to put a face, a hero, to the idea of God…)

A great story is someone (or a group with someone highlighted) overcoming massive conflict to get something he/she/they want(s). That someone can be part of a group, or fighting for/with a group, but never a group itself.

Human beings are simply designed to focus on the individual, therefore those are the stories we connect with and enjoy.

Human beings are designed to focus on the individual, therefore stories focusing on individuals are the ones we connect with and enjoy. But how often do we tell stories that have no focus, or focus too broadly on general ideas or groups of people?

Apply this to your business.

Does your marketing focus on groups or individuals?

Do your sales messages talk about single people or large groups and broad ideas?

Focus on one person when you create business marketing and messages (stories), and write for that person, telling them about themselves. Just think about it, then do it. Your audience will be grateful.

In the same way we must deal with pain, as a temporary situation, a signal that the enemy has besieged us or attacked.

It’s also our signal to strike back.

People could relate to a big guy named Bob.

My friends own a small dance studio in downtown Tacoma, WA and their students were slow to commit to anything more than a few classes at a time, so money was tight.

We all sat down one afternoon and talked it out. They were doing a lot of things right; they cared about the long term relationship over the transaction, they tried to cultivate those relationships, they strove to give more than their customers expected, they wanted to connect with their students.

But they missed the stories.

Stories Matter to Everyone

People need something to connect to, and their clients needed to see themselves in the overall story. That’s where Bob comes in.

Since my friends only had a few very specific customer stories, I told them to create a composite story and name him Bob. Their studio has a large 12×7 picture window facing the street that was perfect for telling Bob’s story of social outcast turned dancing star and ladies man. If they wanted something for the ladies, I told them a story about “Cindy” would do just fine, relating a similar situation for our dance-challenged heroine.

The drawings didn’t need to be fancy, stick figures would do. And long winded prose should give way to quick concise sentences. It’s the story that matters, and how much it resonates.

Too Few Stories Out in the Wild

I can only speculate why, but too many small businesses avoid stories in favor of marketing speak and persuasive writing. Such a mistake.

Your stories can be the premier way people decide to do business with you.

Three reasons stories are worth investing in:

1) They Highlight the Problem

People only care about their problems, not about benefits or advantages. Good stories naturally begin with a problem and work towards it’s resolution.

The good use of story allows you to focus the customer’s attention on the problem first, but lead them to a solution. So instead of having to figure out all the reasons why your product is great (benefits etc) you can focus on customers and relationships.

2) Stories Transport

When someone hears a good story, they transport themselves through the misty void into the world you create. The process is called simulation and it’s extremely valuable. Here’s why.

Everything is competing for your customer’s attention these days and gaining their attention, even for a moment is a challenge, and a triumph. Stories make that process much easier because when a human being runs into a well told story they automatically start imagining the story. You have their attention, and once you have that you can start building a relationship.

3) Stories are Shareable

The right story at the right time is magic, and people love to share the magic. Not every story you tell or your customer’s tell is going to be magic, but stories get listened to more than marketing messages or slogans. Why wouldn’t you cultivate more?

So what’s next? How do you make up these stories?

The best stories you can tell are not made up, they are found. I’m speaking here of testimonials. But even if you get someone to give you a story about their experience, it has to follow a story format.

1) Problem - What was wrong? What did they expect would be wrong?

2) Decision - When they decided to act, how did that feel? Why?

3) Hardships - What were some of the things going through their head? Did they try to talk themselves out of this?

4) Victory - How did the outcome feel?

This is obviously a different format than your usual “Mr X is so wonderful, he paid attention to all my needs and made me so happy. I will certainly tell all my friends about him and his great service. I couldn’t be happier!” Puke.

Instead, create a hand out with the outline from above (tweaked for your needs of course) and ask your customers for stories. Those stories will be real and believable, which translates into more business.

“But I’m just starting out, I don’t have customers”

That’s where Bob comes in. Nothing is going to work like a well told story from one of your ecstatic patrons, but in a pinch you can tell a  tell a good story without them. Just use your imagination.

Good storytelling is an art, a science, but mostly it’s a habit. As a business owner it’s one you should cultivate soon.

A brave soul took umbrage with my post, saying:

“You miss the point. Artists sell to be able to create more art, they do not create art in order to sell it.”

I appreciate the stance but I believe that this philosophy makes a mockery of an artist’s customers. If you decide to sell your art, everything changes.

You now have a business, not a hobby.

Do you have a hobby or a business?

It comes down to this question, do you have a hobby or do you run a business? There’s a wide gap between the two. If you attempt to sell your product then you are running a business, and a business is a great responsibility. On the other hand, if you just make art for your personal amusement or to give away, then you have a hobby. Hobbies carry no inherent responsibility.

As a business owner, your first and best responsibility is to provide value to other people, your customers. You’ve decided to enter the world and offer value, you are asking others to place a value on your work. It might not feel like that but to see it any other way is disingenuous. Why else would you have a booth at a trade fair or offer your work in a shop for others to purchase?

You are giving people a value, but also letting them give you a value in return. To say that those relationships are secondary to your art is a terrible way to run your business, and yet that’s what many artists do.

With great power comes great responsibility

You can’t honestly shirk the responsibility and still sell your art. You can tell yourself that people who “get” you will buy, but that’s simply not good enough. You are giving up on your responsibility. You have the power to bring great joy and happiness to people but you have to realize one important thing…

If you run a business then you have to consider relationships.

How this all ties together

One of the central principles of business and relationships is the idea of uniqueness. You won’t deeply connect with someone you think is like everyone else. There’s something that stands out about that person, something that sets him or her apart. The same principle applies to an artist as business owner.

If you have a hobby, you don’t have to worry about uniqueness, or other people for that matter. You do what you do and create what feels right without any thought about others. Why would you, it’s your hobby.

But a business is different. Now you have to stand out, to make your art more valuable to others to get more value in return. You have to consider what the customer thinks is valuable and change your work accordingly. This is not the same as a hobby no matter how much you wish it was.

Business is a relationship, not about you

Because once you decide to sell, to make your art public and ask for customers to place a value on it, you are entering into a relationship. That implies give and take, a working together, and, yes, sometimes that means compromise. While it’s true that some artists have been successful by not compromising, typically they were dead or it was a hobby that got lucky. If you start a business with your art, then you have deal with relationships and all that entails.

It’s either a hobby or a business

You need to decide.

Artists sell to give value to the other person and receive some value in return, not so they can create more art. There are far easier ways to make money. Don’t sell yourself, or your customer’s short by pretending your efforts are something they are not.

So what do you have, a hobby or a business?

Without the larger story, the small stories don’t have meaning.

People need a “why”, a larger, better story to follow. That’s called context.

The small stories you tell are the content, what people hear or read. The larger story is the context, what people will feel and understand at the deepest levels.

Audiences must have the context as well as the content, and it is up to the story teller to provide both, explicitly or implicitly.

You see, I was hurting her heart.

All my talk about the Church and the Christians that make it up, all the pointless questioning and vitriol, it was causing others to stumble.

I had become what Paul called a stumbling block, what Jesus described as a Millstone.

I emailed her and when she told me what I had done, my heart was crushed by the weight of it.

My friend is savvy enough to know when to get out, to stop listening so the words didn’t have their unintended effect on her. Others might not have been so wise. This one thought was enough to make me stop writing. How many people could I hurt with just my words?

After praying with my wife, I knew I needed to recant and repent. Much of what I wrote about Christianity and the Church is fueled by my hurt and bitterness, my own wounds from grievances long unaddressed. The general ideas were not necessarily wrong, some of the heart was in the right place, but how I expressed those ideas was descructive.

I focused on tearing down the Church, instead of convicting Christians. I went for shock value and controversy instead of love and the power of truth. I went negative when I should have gone positive.

As a writer, I realized that I have the responsibility to lead other people. My words can have an effect and without the Holy Spirit, I can’t imagine that the effect will be that good. It certainly hasn’t been the case for me.

There are a few things I have learned from this experience:

1. Talk about yourself first

Part of the problem is that I rarely spoke about myself, which is really where the struggles take place. I kept every post at arms length, a safe distance from the truth and from my own hurts, my struggles, and my failings.

Too often I was quick to rattle the sabers and call out Christian leaders for doing things the wrong way. Or I was railing against the whole institution of church as it’s practiced, as if I was some revolutionary.

What I didn’t write about was that I make every mistake they do, and that I’m not a very good Christian in the sense that I’m not following Jesus everyday.

I think if the goal is to instruct, others can learn far more from your failings and challenges than from a public rally or outcry.

2. Speak to your hurt, don’t speak from your hurt

When your heart is broken, you say mean and hurtful things. At best you simply say very silly things, which, I think, is being a little generous in this case.

I spoke from my hurt, from that place of bitterness that resides in all of us when we don’t get what we want. I lashed out and tried to bring down. I’m not proud of this, but it happened.

Instead, I should have spoken to my hurt. I could have written about the pains in a positive way, how they have changed me and how I have chosen to deal with some of them. Or how the situation could have been satisfied, perhaps an object lesson. But I decided to snipe and make fun, which is the last resort of a coward.

3. Leaders inspire, they don’t tear down

If someone writes for the public, they are a practicing leader. I lost sight of this. Leaders are responsible for inspiring people to move and choose a different direction.

This implies that the leader chooses a direction and way of leading. In retrospect, both mine were flawed.

I attempted to lead in controversy, hoping that my views would be shocking enough to get attention but the power of my ideas would turn people around to see the truth of my position. I was wrong on both counts.

Jesus didn’t tear others down (with the exception of certain religious leaders), he spoke truth through stories, healed the sick, and tried to set people free. Any Christian leader, or follower of Christ, should strive to do the same.

So, What’s Next?

I’ll continue to write, but probably not about matters relating to Christ’s Church.

I still believe that Churches should not market themselves like big businesses do, but instead should choose a more relational, biblical method. I still believe that many Christians should re-evaluate how they spend their money and start to give more out of their abundance. I still think that some Christians use church as a crutch for their identity, focusing on using church and activities to define them rather than using Christ to define who they are.

I think these things because I have done them all.

But to those of you who I hurt through my words, I am sorry. To anyone I helped increase their doubt without hope, I am sorry. If I caused anyone to move farther away from Christ, please accept my sincerest apologies. It won’t happen again. I’m asking forgiveness.

From now on, I choose to emulate Jesus, how He led and how He moved others. I choose to write, not to tear down, but to build up. I promise to do a better job.

Via Flickr (fredcavazza)

After publishing a series of bedtime stories for parents to tell their kids and a devotional for Christians in Business, I needed a new project.

So, I’ve begun work on a book for authors and artists about using Social Media to its fullest.

These are a few main points from the book:

1. Start a Blog, Now

In the last ten years, blogging has grown from an interesting way to share fun family anecdotes to a powerful way to connect with readers.

There’s a difference between your blog and a website, although to the uninitiated the changes are minor at best. The blog looks like a website to be sure, but the blog offers much more.

First, it’s super easy to add your content to the site. This only makes visiting your site more interesting for previous visitors. If you never update things, why would they need to come back.

Second, and more important, it’s social. A regular website, called a static website, is more like a fancy online brochure. Nice to look at but not interactive. A blog on the other hand allows you comment, share, and… tell stories. It not only provides a way for the writer to tell stories, but it makes it easy for the readership to tell the same story about themselves through sharing buttons.

For example; say you write a great article or post on your blog about how Ovation Guitars are far superior to Martin Guitars (whether this is true or not I have no idea, I tend to be slightly tone deaf, much to the consternation of all around me). A reader finds your article and either agrees or disagrees with it. They see a button on the bottom of the post that allows them to share the story on their preferred Social Media. If the reader shares, they have made your story part of their story.

That’s what Social Media is all about.

2. Create a Facebook Page

In late 2011, Facebook tops over 650 Million users. That’s over twice the population of the United States of America and if it were it’s own country it would be the third largest in the world. It’s an absolutely massive platform with a great deal of potential to bring your venture unprecedented success. But you can’t focus on all of that, you have to think one person at a time. Or rather one friendship at a time.

Facebook pages allow you to set up your personal brand and share what you think is interesting or important. You can share writing, pictures, videos, updates, links to other sites. The possibilities are endless.

*Bonus*

Create a LinkedIn account to take advantage of their groups feature, either creating yourself or joining a professional group and starting discussions.

3. Start a Twitter account and post cool stories

The common misconception of Twitter is that it’s filled with Twits, Tweeting about Twilight and Twerps. Sorry, I could help myself. Contrary to this common belief, Twitter is not filled with people posting about their bathroom activities or what they had for lunch. Okay, there are a fair share of those people but you don’t have to follow them and therefore you get to ignore their existence. You get to ignore the boring people. This is already better than real life.

Instead, effective Twitter users share stories and start conversations.

You can think of Twitter as a big party where everyone is talking at the same time. You have the option to listen to what people say or you can ignore them, you can comment at anytime, or you can start a conversation yourself. The more you see Twitter as a useful tool for communication, the better conversations you will have.

Follow people that you find interesting, talk with them, sharing stories that you think they’ll find interesting. That’s how we make friends in real life and it’s no different on Twitter.

4. Understand the power of YouTube and videos

Video is quickly becoming the dominant form of media consumption on the internet. It’s only going to grow. As movies and TV shows transition to a broadband audience, more of your customers are going to expect that you have a presence on one of the major video sites.

As Twitter is to micro-blogging, YouTube is to video-sharing. In fact, YouTube may be one of the best ways to promote your art.

For some people, a blog with it’s focus on words and static pictures may not be the best way to connect with a specific audience. Instead, getting creative with a hand-held camera and offering different points of view from different points of view might be the best way to offer value.

For authors I’m not talking about book trailers (although if you want to do one, go ahead) and for artists I’m not talking about product showcases (quick clips of your paintings or sculptures to music). Instead, you want to create content that your audience wants to see and, more importantly, wants to share with their friends.

For example: authors could create educational videos into their craft, character bios, special extras, or even voice overs of chapters. Painters could feature their work in a montage, show the painting process, do some art classes going over special techniques they employ, or even show videos of special events.

The point is to make a video that someone who would buy your art will think is cool, interesting, and/or relevant.

5. Share Some Pictures

For authors and artists, picture sharing is one of the least utilized forms of social media. And that’s a shame because for a very little effort it can yield some big results. The two main providers of pictures on the internet are Flickr and Picassa, and you ignore them at your peril.

Appropriate images are at the top of most Google search results. If you want to use that to your advantage, you need to set up your accounts right away.

The greatest advantage of picture sharing is the ability to link to and from the pictures themselves. You can link your picture to your blog and other social media. Conversely you can use your pictures in all your social media profiles, creating great exposure and cross-over for your content.

What Does It All Mean?

Social media doesn’t have to be difficult but it can be useful. The main idea is that as long as you know the tools and try to honestly connect, you can’t help but be successful. If you slowly start implementing each of these suggestions, you will find success (and customers) knocking at your door.

Here are some ideas:

- For Painters -

Find another medium than canvas and prints. Again, stores like Target and World Market sell pictures and prints at deep discounts and those are what people compare your art to. Not fair, but that’s how it is. Go find cool looking rocks and paint them how you think nature should have colored them. Paint furniture, or picture frames, or create wrapping paper out of your work. Turn your paintings into jewelry, magnets, or note cards.

- For Sculptors and Potters -

Move beyond bowls and simple containers. Find something that people can use but haven’t seen before. Try your hand a custom tobacco pipes or clogs. Make pie holders or limited edition water pitchers (co-created with a painter). The world doesn’t need another bowl or vase.

- For Photographers -

It all starts with amazing pictures, ones that capture a side of life that no one else saw before. Then you have to rethink the medium.  A friend of mine grafts his photos onto metal. From there he can manipulate it into any shape or form he wants. They are fantastic and if I could afford his prices I would buy everything he makes. What can you put your photographs on?

- For Jewelers -

There are thousands of people who take beads and wire, string them together, and call that jewelery. While the art is in the placement and selection of beads, is the medium unique enough to turn people’s heads? What about getting together with painters, sculptors, and photographers and creating limited edition mini stories that people can wear? How about developing something that men would want to wear? Think beyond the necklaces, rings, and bracelets. What else is there?

What Can You Do Next?

The best advice I can give any artist or creator is the same thing I told my wife (a beautiful painter); don’t be constrained. If your imagination takes you to some odd places or makes you consider an unconventional pairing, do not tell yourself that you can’t do it. Follow your gut, don’t place limitations on yourself, and be true to that inner vision inside of you.

Don’t be defined by the medium, go beyond it. Don’t be limited by a style, create your own style. You are the creator and the maker, take that calling to heart.

Via Facebook (Taylor Reed)

I was recently at an art’s fair where hundreds of local artists were trying desperately to wrangle the thousands of passerby’s into their booths. For all their cajoling and enticing, it was like trying to herd cats.

I imagine there are many reasons people chose to simply pass by, but one reason trumps them all. The artists weren’t selling anything really unique.

I know, each piece is beautiful and unique on its own. But the average customer at a street fair doesn’t know that at a glance. Instead they just see the same old jewelery or more paintings that they probably can’t afford.

And yet, that day, these same disinterested people bought a bunch of $45 driftwood bottle openers from my wife’s friend Taylor.

Why? Because they were actually unique and different.

Your painting is still on canvass. Your pottery is still a painted vase. Your jewelery is still just necklaces and rings. Your photography is still just pictures in a frame.

And people can get all these things, for cheaper, at Target.

Guess what? That’s what they will do and for most artists that is the competition. The question potential customers have is “What can I get here that I can’t get somewhere else for less?”. They don’t care about quality (only that it doesn’t break) and they certainly don’t unconsciously care about the design atheistic, at least not like the artist does.

This applies to more than just arts festivals, it applies to any artistic endeavor; why is your art cool? Why is it unique and interesting?

The trick is to be different enough that people notice you but not so staggeringly different that people don’t know what to make of you.

Instead of pulling out the canvas, next time paint something off the wall and crazy. What’s your painted driftwood bottle opener?

When everyone was wrapping up, I gave them some ideas for improvement for the next time. You can use these same ideas in your business or trade show booth.

1. Create One Entrance and One Exit

It might seem too simple to start with with, but it’s crucial for people to be told where to go next. In fact, people respond to this kind of advice. Have a nice sign that let’s them know where the entrance is. Also place one over the exit to let them know the entrance is on the other side. Over the entrance, be friendly and inviting (Welcome, Come on inside!).

2. Create a contest, give something away

They actually had a basket of art to raffle away. In return for a raffle, they received potential customer’s names and email addresses. My only critique was that the Give-A-Way basket was a little hum-drum. Not the art inside, but the idea of a basket. The best idea is to create something that has a high intrinsic value for your potential customers, that is also somewhat unexpected and piques their curiosity.

In this case an original painting by the person’s favorite artist would have been an interesting idea. By having to think about their favorite, it’s more likely that the person entering the drawing would look at the work to find their favorite artist. This leads to more eyeballs on the work, and potentially more sales.

3. When you collect emails, have a plan to do something with them

Don’t just get emails or names to add to a general mailing list. Think of this as building a friendship, a quality relationship. Find ways to personalize and connect with each person. Social media also offers multiple ways to do that.

4. Create a takeaway that continues the conversation

Remember, it’s all about the relationship. If they don’t want to sign up for the raffle, don’t just give them a business card, or if you do, make sure it has a link to a website that offers free downloads of your product in exchange for email. You want to keep the conversation going, and not just hope that they might call you back.

5. Place signs inside that guide the customer

When people find themselves in a new and confusing situation, they naturally look for direction. Placing signs that focus attention and show (tell) people what to do will help them immensely. Even something as heavy handed as “Start Here” would be better than nothing.

The goal is to help them tell a better story to themselves as they look for things that they want.

6. Eliminate any friction

There’s a conflict when you’re selling expensive items and you only accept cash. There’s a conflict when someone buys a large or a breakable item and then has to figure out how to transport it. There’s conflict when people worry that what they bought won’t look right in the house.

Conflict often ends in people not buying. That is unless you remove the conflict, or friction to buying, at every level. Offer to take credit cards, offer free or low cost delivery, offer a money back guarantee. And make sure all these things are highlighted in the booth.

7. Tell your unique story

People only pay attention to something that’s new or interesting. If your booth looks like everyone else, then people won’t look twice.

What separates you from the others? How can you make them feel differently than anyone else can?

More than anything, you need to have some fun. So many booth operators looked tired and down-trodden. The more successful ones (the ones with people around them) exemplified the opposite. Whether you use these ideas for your next trade booth or a store, remember if you focus on the customer and not on selling, you will be better off.

In fact, as Christians we are held to higher standards and hamstrung in ways that our secular counterparts would never understand. Where they can cheat a little, the Spirit inside of us will accept only honesty. Where they can bend the rules, we must walk the straight and narrow. Where they can feel justified in closing a lop-sided deal, we must love our neighbors as ourselves.

We’re handicapped in getting ahead.

Or are we?

Because business is changing. The old ways of tricking and making people feel a certain way through psychological manipulation are finished. If you watch carefully, the tides are turning.

As people become more informed, more savvy, and more fed-up with with businesses’ broken and lame promises, your business can thrive. The future belongs to those people who can form relationships, exceed customer expectations, connect, and tell relevant stories.

In short, the future belongs to the Christian Business Owner.

We have a model for all those things, the man we claim to follow, Jesus himself. He valued and maintained quality relationships above everything (with his relationship to His Father being the most important), He consistently exceeded his followers expectations on things that mattered, He connected with people in a deep and meaningful way, and He communicated mainly in story through parables.

As Christians, or literally followers of Christ, we are called to emulate these traits, to walk in his steps as Peter says in his second epistle. If you do, then as a Christian Businessperson you are in prime shape to outlast your secular competition and grow your business for the Kingdom.

However, the road to change is long and difficult.

If you are looking for quick answers or easy solutions, Jesus never promised that and neither do I. But if you dedicate yourself to change then can I guarantee you will.

You’ve already taken the first step by reading this blog, I believe you can make it all the way.

In any good story, the hero struggles against the antagonist which creates deep emotion. Customers won’t become emotional about (i.e. remember) your story unless they can see themselves as the hero in an epic struggle or a battle with an antagonist or obstacle.

So what do you do? You join your customer in the fight against the common enemy and aid them in their fight, fighting along side of them if possible.

Keep this in mind; in the end, the villain is almost always disappointment. Help them avoid that, achieve happiness in the process, and they will love you for it.

Unfortunately that’s how people traditionally use marketing; to identify what people will be most susceptible to buying and then how they can be persuaded to buy it.

This marketing model is not only outdated, it’s dangerous.

Marketing Is Not Really Connecting

The danger comes from trying to sell at the expense of the person. Isn’t that why people don’t trust marketing? The customer automatically assumes that the business doesn’t have their best interests at heart.

I envision a system that affords businesses the opportunity to connect with their clients in such a way that they tell the business their story. Then it’s up to the business to help them live the story that they really want to live.

marketing = persuading people to buy things they don’t need

connecting = helping people’s current lives be amazing

Two Quick Examples

Proctor and Gamble makes Tide. Their gargantuan marketing machine will sell you and market to you using thousands of focus groups to refine a message designed to get you to buy Tide. Why? Because they want to make your life better? Not really. They simply want to sell more Tide.

The customers are no longer dealt with as people, they are a line item, a number. The customer becomes a way to perpetuate the business.

Seventh Generation Laundry Detergent on the other hand takes a different approach. They are living a better story and they strive to help others live that story too. The business connects with their customers through that story.

If you are an extremely eco-conscious individual, you will probably find the Seventh Generation narrative more appealing than P&G’s. Seventh Generation has found your story and invites you to live an even better version of that (your) story.

Does Marketing Have A Future?

Marketing is being replaced by connecting with people to share mutual stories. Not pushing agendas on others, not coercing them to take certain actions, not tricking them to act against their best interests. That’s a dying model.

Marketing as it’s been practiced has no place in the future of business.

In our increasingly connected society, which do you think stands a better chance of success: Connecting to share in stories or tricking people to make purchases?

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Do you really know how the spark of life brings a new being into existence? In the same vein, do you really understand why you get emotional?

Where Emotions Come From

The key is in how people see the world. We see the world through our expectations.

We expect certain things to happen and whether reality delivers or not determines what emotions we feel.

Too simplistic? I’ll give you some examples:

Situation 1: The Lost Lover

If someone you love calls and says he’ll be home by 5:30pm, how do you feel when he still hasn’t shown up at 6:30 and isn’t picking up his phone? What about at 10:30pm? Are you more upset? The farther reality gets from your expectations, the more emotions you feel.

Situation 2: The Disappointment Store

You walk into an upscale store, expecting a certain level of service. As you walk through the aisles, sales clerks pretend to be busy, others actively walk away from you. No one comes to help you. Do you feel disappointed? Or angry even?

Now imagine you actually are able to corner a salesclerk to ask question, but instead of treating you as important, she holds up her hand, tells you to wait, and walks away. Are you mad now? Why? It’s because you had certain expectations and the business didn’t deliver.

What if the same situation happens in a dollar store? Are you just as mad? Were your expectations different for the cheaper store? Are you still thinking about the hand in your face? How does that make you feel? Why?

Situation 3: The “Nice” Date

Now, imagine that you are on a date. You go to dinner, a movie, and have a nice time. How do you feel? Would you call it happy? Or would you call it satisfied and maybe content? When we get exactly what we expected to get, we are content.

Situation 4: The Unbelievably Great Experience

What about happiness?

Happiness and joy are when reality exceeds our expectations. You feel this most often when you are surprised with more than you originally expected. A husband comes home with a surprise gift, your kid suddenly decides to clean the bathroom (and does an excellent job!), the IRS gives you a bigger tax refund than you thought they would.

What about the same business from the second example, with a twist.

You walk into the upscale store, expecting great service, and looking to buy a nice scarf. You’re immediately greeted by a smiling salesclerk. She asks if you have been to the store before and you tell her yes, that you are just browsing. She helpfully points over to a new line of clothes that she thinks you will like (you can tell that she did a quick evaluation of your current style and made a well educated guess).

To your surprise, you actually like the outfits they have laid out and try a few on. The salesclerk at the dressing room is also trained as a fashion consultant and makes a few careful recommendations about different sizes and accessories, all of which improve your look measurably. You choose two outfits that look fantastic, and the sales/fashion consultant points you to where the scarves are.

You find one that you like and head up front, where you find the first salesclerk. You ask her where to check out and she says that she can help you over at an obscure kiosk that you would have never expected to be a checkout counter. As the clerk is scanning your outfits, and complimenting your taste, you tell her that you really just came in for the scarf. She looks at you with a smile and tells you the scarf would look great with the second outfit, and as a thank you for coming in, the scarf is included at no charge.

How do you feel as you leave? Will you go back to that store? Did they succeed in making you happy? At the very least more than content?

Emotions Unleashed

As you can see from the examples, emotions stem from the interaction of reality against our expectations. What steps you can take to be happier is the subject of another post entirely.

This is especially important for business to understand this. Honestly, your future depends on understanding this.

What do you think? Is this definition right? How do you think you can use it in your business?

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A Postcard From the Old Church Is Nice, Right?

It certainly looked nice enough. On the front of the postcard was the church logo and next to that a suitably retro-distressed font type telling her “Happy Birthday”. Then the handwritten note on the back read thus:

Have an amazing Birthday! We are so glad you are a part of our [church] family! Many blessings on your Birthday!

The note, even though handwritten to convey a more personal connection, read like a boilerplate template (I checked and other friends received the exact same message). It made us wonder whether the church staff knows that she doesn’t attend their church anymore.

The bottom of the birthday card had another logo and a pre-typed message saying that this heart-felt message was from the pastor and the whole church family.

To top it all off, the address wasn’t even handwritten, it was printed on a sticker.

What’s the Big Deal?

Does this seem like a trivial thing? It’s probably something that most people would let go or pass off as just a nice gesture. But to me it signals a mindset that is increasingly common among Christians; the transactional mindset or treating people like numbers.

Christians are replicating the marketing practices of major corporations, to the same result. The idea is to maximize the amount of relationship for the least amount of cost, but the focus is all on the cost. They try to cover this up by placing fancy graphics on the outside or finding a cool font, but the truth of the matter is that no one cares how it looks if it looks generic.

People don’t think you care about them because you keep their names in a database.

True, at least this church tried to do something, to reach out and build the relationship, but I think they could have done better.

Churches Need to Change How They Deal With People

What’s the solution to transactional thinking? Focus on the relationships.

Another friend of mine said that at least they did something to extend the relationship. They could have just as easily not sent a card. While I agree, I think it could be even better. Handwrite letters the old fashioned way, use postcards but write something personal on them. Pray about them, find a word for them, connect with them.

Whatever you decide to do to connect, don’t just let them know that you remember them. That’s just not enough.

But relationship is a two way street and soon we’ll discuss what people can do do help build a solid relationship.

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Really, they just need some information that will benefit them but aren’t sure of how to ask to get said information.

So what if you created a system or game that answers questions, gives the needed information, and reassures the user? You could conceivably structure a system where your customers were free to explore, and prompted to find answers on their own.

If you created such a system or game, instead of sending a sales person next time, you could simply plug in prospects to your system and let the automated process take over.

Of course not. Pizza is not baby food.

But why isn’t it? The baby could probably handle it (although I’m not cleaning up afterward), why not feed babies pizza? If a baby eats pizza then it becomes baby food, right?

When we say that pizza is not baby food, what we are really saying is that pizza is not GOOD baby food.

The Difference Between Existing and Being Good

I think there is a similar distinction between being a Believer and a Christian.

We are Christians, but what does that actually mean?  We go to church, and we sing songs, and don’t drink too much, and don’t say swear words, and generally try to be nice to people.  But is that good Christianity?

Believers vs Christians

I see it this way; a believer is someone who believes in Christ. Jesus said that if anyone believes in Him, then that person is saved. But isn’t there more?

Being a Christian, however, means that you follow Christ; you are a follower.  You decide to identify yourself with Christ so much that you now bear his name.

That means a good Christian will follow Christ’s example no matter what.  Just as a good baby food is nutritious and good tasting, a good Christian follows Christ and serves him in the way that he asked.  Just because you are a believer doesn’t mean you are a good Christian.

Hard to Swallow

So is anyone a good Christian?  I’m not, at least not by these criteria, and I wonder how many people truly are.  So if you are not a good Christian, if your definition is shallow and wide, then deepen it. Follow him, get to know him.

Don’t just read the Bible because you have to; read the Gospels and feel the story unfolding before you.  This amazing man on the pages is asking you to follow him, even now, after he’s no longer on this earth.  That’s crazy in other contexts, but not here.  Why isn’t it?

Really begin to read and listen.  Don’t look for spiritual truths or deep insights, just read and really take in the seemingly crazy things that Christ says.  Things like “you must eat my flesh”; if you heard someone say that out loud on the street  you would probably cross.  Or at least keep a safe distance. But we read that in the Bible and we usually skip over it as just something Jesus said. If you really think about it, there’s far more to this whole Christian experience than just going to church and hanging out with Christians.

Do you know why Jesus is worth following? Are you willing to be a Good Christian?

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Modern marketing battles for the control of people’s minds

But what happens when people won’t be controlled? What will businesses do when people won’t be manipulated and cajoled into buying something that they don’t want or need? How will they market or advertise?

Here’s an idea

Instead of tricking or manipulating customers in order to control them, instead of employing the latest marketing fad or guru, instead of giving your customers just enough not to leave you; if you want them to stay for good you will have to give them more.

The future of controlling people lies in the ability to delight, to surprise, and to make happy.

You have to exceed their expectations

Surpassing, or exceeding, expectations isn’t some vague ideal. You can, and should, find out what your best customers expect to get from your business, then give them even more.

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I’m not living a great story.

If our lives were made into stories, would any part of your Christian walk be an action sequence? What about your time at church? Or would all those moments be included in a montage, the kind authors and directors use to skip over the bits that drag and bore the audience to tears?

As long as our lives are just a series of unimportant moments, boring scenes in a bad story, we will feel that unease and dissatisfaction.

Christians have no excuse for living bad stories, for living and encouraging long strings of unimportant moments. We have the greatest motivation, the greatest enemy, and a killer prologue.

So live a great story. Make every scene count. Make sure there’s a theme, a purpose, a driving action and conflict.

What kind of story does your life tell? How can you make it better?

Curious, I felt compelled to ask him why he was going to die soon.

Adam confided in me that he worked for a paint company that recently put him in charge of over 100 current commercial accounts, in addition to establishing new accounts. He attributed his grief filled noises to the paperwork this company required him to complete.

The Curse of Being Unproductive

As Adam sat across from me, for 3 hours he didn’t make one phone call, write any emails, or do anything towards helping his clients. He sat and inputted his monthly expense receipts. While this paperwork is necessary to tracking, it is also completely unrelated to the real talents for which he was hired.

Good sales people are rarely that detail oriented, and often fail miserably at routine and repeating tasks. They excel at making personal connections and cultivating relationships. Why force them to do something that they are not good at?

The Solution That’s Hard to Swallow

The paint company could easily pay $20k a year for a part time assistant to take care of his paperwork and routine details. Don’t you think that they would receive at least twice that sum back in increased productivity? The paint company could easily find someone who is detail oriented to deal with all the tasks he’s not proficient at handling. That way they are

It’s That Ol’ Transactional Mindset Again

I see this kind of thinking all the time. It’s a symptom of the Transactional Mindset where numbers and figures become the standard, and relationships take a back seat to “efficiency”.

Focusing on transactions cause most businesses to favor short term thinking over long term. Relationships are for a life time, transactions are all about right now. This paint company only focuses on the present, and as a result loses out on major long term profits.

If the paint company just shifted their mindset a fraction of percent, they would see the wisdom of segmenting talent and work to let their sales representative do what he does best.

Image by © H. Armstrong Roberts/CORBIS

Is it better to be rich, or is it better to be poor? Can a Christian own a BMW and still claim to be following Christ?

The problem is that the rich have everything they need, which tends to make them less grateful when good things come around. Their expectation of what life should give them is skewed. How can you rely on God’s mercy when you have everything you want?

The poor on the other hand are grateful for everything they receive in love. This must be why Jesus said the poor are blessed.

If you are rich, live as though you are poor, so that you might be grateful for what you receive. Give away what you have to those who need it, not just want it.

If you are poor, live as though you are rich, giving freely out of the abundance of your heart. Your time and love will never run short with Christ in your heart.

Either way, remember that the most important assets are the relationships we cultivate, the people we can touch, the individuals we can help, and most importantly the souls we can help save.

Aristotle once said something interesting, “We are what we repeatedly do.” So ask yourself;

Is this the person I truly want to be?

You are telling a story with your life, right now, this very moment and for the rest of the day, month, year, life.

I think today is a great day to decide whether you want your story to suck, or whether you want it to be awesome. It’s really that simple.

I hope that you make the right choice.

Marketing is Too Dirty For the Church

Later, as I thought about it, my reaction was very natural. The problem is that most ‘marketing’ is synonymous with tricking people to buy something they didn’t really want in the first place. Marketing isn’t really honest.

When we practice marketing in the Church, are we really doing anything different? We are covertly tricking people with bright lights and loud rock music. We are entertaining them, giving them the trappings of the world and watering down the message to make it easier to swallow.

That’s marketing; that’s tricking people.

Church = Business?

I think the problem is that pastors are seeing their churches more like a business. I’m not convinced that it’s not a conscious mental shift, but it’s certainly there. Look for any church that talks about weekly numbers, or focuses a lot on tithing, and you will see this Transactional Mindset taking hold.

Church = Cultivating Relationships

Instead, churches and their pastors should embrace the new paradigms in marketing, which is really anti-marketing. It focuses on relationships, not transactions; on connecting with people instead of tricking them. It focuses on telling stories and helping others do the same.

Pastors, Don’t Fall into a Transactional Mindset

Transactional Mindsets see people as numbers, focusing only on metrics at the expense of relationships. When pastors talk and worry about tithes, about attendance numbers, about the number of people in certain programs, or how many are taking part in the recent outreach, they are focusing on the wrong thing. They are transactionally minded, when they should be relationally minded. If you focus on the relationship, the numbers will take care of themselves.

For most pastors, the culmination of the relationship with a member is in service. The member has committed to the body and shows his or her love through serving. Here are some tips to help that process along:

1. Identify gifts and talents – This more than anything is important, simply because most people just don’t know what they are good at. If you help the people in the church identify what they were made to do and encourage them to continue in it, you will see your church transformed for the better.
2. Train in the field, helping them use their talents – It’s one thing to know your talents, it’s something else entirely to use them practically. Book learning and classes can be important, but experiential knowledge sticks with you for the long run.
3. Connect them to a group within the larger group – There’s a nasty habit, taken from public schooling, to group people by age and geography. Instead try connecting people based on passions and interests, maybe even talents. When you get someone with passion and talent serving to their best ability, everyone is lifted up.

Also, don’t simply have people serve at the church building. I’m sure that will work as a beginning training ground but you will stifle their imaginations and before they know it, they are living a boring story. And they will leave.

If you want people to stay and grow in churches, move away from the numbers and focus instead on the relationships.

My first instinct was to run away.

Thankfully my good breeding held up and I politely accepted her offer. After all, a free hair cut is still free and in many ways I’m still my father’s son. Plus I had my trusty hat in case things went horribly wrong.

According to her name tag, her name was Kelsey and she was a student of The Salon Professional Academy in Tacoma on 38th Street. The Salon Academy is just another private school along the lines of Corinthian Colleges (of Everest fame, the school that trains people to be medical professionals that most doctors won’t hire); it’s post-high school education that’s intended to train people in new skills. The cost is quite extravagant (more than $15,000) and the program takes a whole year to complete.

As I sat down in her chair, I asked Kelsey how long she had been in the program. “Two months,” she replied cheerily. As her scissors approached my head, I was not encouraged by this.

We talked as she cut my hair. I was nervous about dividing her attention (I really didn’t want her to be distracted around my ears) but she seemed to know what she was doing, and I began to relax if only slightly.

Eventually the subject of her post-school employment came up and I found out something startling. The Salon Academy doesn’t actually find them jobs at the end of the program, instead opting to give a class our two about resumes and job hunting. For the kind of money they charge you’d think they would have a more robust job placement program, especially since that is the desired outcome for the program; learn a trade so you can get a decent job.

Kelsey sounded very excited about the education she was receiving so I tried to be supportive. It became blazingly clear however that she was not prepared for life after school, and needed some extra advice. Luckily she had the right man in her chair for such matters. We merrily discussed websites, blogs, videos, and general sales techniques. At the end she seemed slightly overwhelmed but very happy.

After I left, it occurred to me that she’s probably not alone. Other hair stylists also should know how to build their personal brands and cultivate quality relationships with customers.

This is for all of you stylists that actually want to be successful. I highly doubt you would ever get this list from the Salon Academy or any similar institution, but here are some quick tips to start your stylist career on the right foot:

1. Build a personal website

Blogs are free to set up and there is tons of information out there to help you. Get one and start creating your online brand.

This will help you two ways:

1. It will help you get a job since the salon can see your work (you can put videos on your blog) and read about your insights (you should tell stories about clients and your work)
2. It will help you build your personal brand. You will most likely work for a salon but you still have to build your own clientele. Your own website will do that.

2. Pay attention to the relationships, not the transactions

One haircut is worth $15-50 dollars. However, the lifetime value of all the customer’s business is in the thousands. Find a way to connect and make them a friend, so that they become a client instead of just a customer. Find what matters to them and strive to give them that every time, and that doesn’t have to do with hair.

And always deliver your absolute best product every time, no matter what.

3. Exceed client expectations in everything you do

Find out what their previous hairstyling experiences were. What did they love, what did they hate? How can you do better? Do people expect hair stylists to have a website or blog offering free tips?

So surprise them, and give them your card with the address to your blog or videos you created that teach them great ways to maintain their hair.

4. Make it easy, and special for the customer

One technique that I have yet to see is to sell a subscription for haircuts. Essentially the customer would pay a set amount and get a certain number of haircuts, but they would pay in advance or you could set up a monthly reoccurring payment.

Then what if you went the extra mile and made little cards for each of these VIP customers? Just think of all the ways you could make things easier for your client or make them feel special.

5. Up-sell the easy way

Most salons require stylists to up-sell product and for many this proves to be a real challenge. Actually, it’s an opportunity in disguise. You can use bundling to work the cost of the product into the service. Instead of charging$20 for just a haircut, you offer them a “special” of haircut plus product for slightly more money.

Even better is to create two special offers and give them to your client as a choice. As long as the products you’re bundling are the right fit for the client, this technique is guaranteed to grow your sales.

6. Tell Stories

Good sales is good connecting and conversation. If you tell your customer stories about life, about similar customers, about funny situations that you have imagined, you will succeed in connecting with them and they will buy more. Simple as that.

Honestly, I wish schools like the Salon Academy would teach more cutting edge (pun slightly intended) marketing techniques. You can’t find a more recession-proof business than cutting hair but that’s only if you can build a clientele, and that takes a solid marketing and relationship strategy.

While many stylists I’ve met don’t have a desire to “market” themselves, it will soon be absolutely crucial for their careers.

Oh, and by the way, the hair cut, though just a trim, went quite well and my hat stayed off my head for the rest of the day. All in all, I’d say everyone came out ahead that day.

I never to toss stones at God’s chosen, all I wanted to do was to stir up some conversation.

I figured by taking a more controversial point of view, maybe I could show an0ther side of the equation and get people to think about what they are doing. But considering my friend’s words of warning, perhaps I take things too far.

The Church Is Not Too Broken

My friend’s reminder was simple; don’t forget that God uses broken people and will use His Church, even if it’s messed up. It’s a good reminder, something that I haven’t discussed or highlighted yet, but I wholeheartedly agree. I think that God badly wants to use His church.

Can God use the church as is? I’m sure He can, but not without first changing some hearts. First, the church must break free from a wholly dangerous mentality.

The Church’s in the Grip of Transactional Thinking

The most dangerous thing a church can do is to subscribe to Transactional Thinking as opposed to a Relational Narrative. So many churches these days slip unconsciously into a mentality of numbers; tithing, attendance, percentage serving, number of programs, 30 minutes for worship followed by 35 minutes of instruction, even number saved.

I see the focus on numbers as antithetical and dangerous to sustaining and cultivating relationships. The mindset of numbers automatically makes people less human, which, from what I can tell is exactly the thinking God wants us to avoid.

We get so caught up in efficiency and making things so perfect (“Oh No! Worship is going 5 minutes longer, no we have to shift this to there and everything is ruined!), that it seems easier to listen to processes than the prompting of the Spirit.

In fact, it’s so much easier to follow a checklist than to wait on Holy Spirit to guide you; that’s what I see happening, a lot.

Change From the Inside Out

I am not anti-church, and I don’t encourage anyone to leave the church. Ever.

But I do want people to take a long hard look at what they are doing and see it for what it really is, not just in the light of whatever spiritual coating they have put around it. Know why you do what you do, don’t just do it.

It also serves as a warning for local businesses, shedding some light on the most important topic in business.

I used to work for Penguin Windows back when they were called Statewide, then spent several more years working for a competitor. I found that many window resellers focus simply on the individual transaction. The mentality is simple; sell people a product and get out of the house, then find more people to sell to.

The Transactional Mindset is actually an old sales philosophy that has 4 main tenants:

1. Value the transaction over relationship
2. Meet only their minimum expectations or whatever the customer will let you get away with
3. Advertise and “market” to people constantly
4. Use persuasion as a tool to get people to buy

Each of these points is deadly on its own, but there’s a real danger to the business when they are combined. The reason so many businesses, especially in this industry, are closing is directly related to this transactional, non-human mentality. Consumers pick up on that mindset and avoid the business.

Instead, your customers are looking for the opposite of the above list. They want:

1. A relationship that’s cultivated over a lifetime
2. A company that will exceed their expectations and surprise them
3. To be understood and connected with
4. To be told stories

You might look at the above list and think that customer wants are too vague, but I assure you they’re not impractically so. Here are some quick tips:

• Don’t focus on the sales but instead look at the process of the relationship, from the introduction to evaluation to creating partnerships.
• Don’t be just good enough but surprise your customers with more gifts, give them more than they expected and they will be happier, rewarding you with more business.
• Don’t just talk about your offers or business but speak to them and their values. A good start is a blog or a “newsletter” that speaks to issues and topics that your customers deeply care about.
• Don’t try to “sell” them, use stories and narrative tools to help them persuade themselves.

Even if you aren’t just out to make a quick buck, you probably don’t practice all four of the new habits. Take some time to re-evaluate your marketing and sales strategies in light of these points and see how you match up.

If you have other questions or need some help, ask in the comments or email me at  josh@joshkilen.com

There’s definitely a storm brewing and if you don’t focus on relationships, giving more, connecting, and storytelling then your business may find itself in very dire straits.

What if we traded self-help messages for helping others messages?

What if we started really learning from each other, through life, example, and experience?

What if we absolutely refused to give money to organizations that just want to pay salaries and build buildings, and instead started setting aside money to give to those we see who are in need? What if we were ready to give where the Spirit directed us?

What if we came together out of joy and desire and not out of a strangled sense of obligation?

What if how we do church now isn’t the best way? What are our goals for coming to church? What are trying to accomplish?

What if we rejected easy to listen to for solid, challenging instruction? Could we handle that?

Business is all about cultivating quality relationships with clients and customers.  B2B is no exception to this.  But business tend to take longer to trust one another, so the relationship process is extended.

Relationships have a process

Every relationship follows distinct stages in a process; introduction, curiosity, evaluation, exchange, purposing, and togetherness.  These are the crucial stages where you have to construct the story you are telling.  If you ignore any of these stages, you will miss something crucial in the relationship.

Relationships thrive on good stories

The key is in developing the story for each stage of the relationship. The story you tell must be different at each stage but they must all tie to the same theme of a larger story.

At the introduction stage you simply focus on making yourself known and the very basest of relevant detail; connect yourself to a theme, and their overall story.  At the curiosity stage you work on intriguing them to continue the relationship; you tell them a story that is interesting, cool, and relevant. And so on throughout the stages. The idea is to tell a larger story as you cultivate the relationship through telling the smaller stories at each stage.

Stories motivate to act

While the relationship will give you credibility and authority, the story will motivate them to act.  If they believe the story you are telling them, and it touches them at a relevant, deep level; only then will you have success.

Talking about benefits isn’t important at first

Creating that smaller story for each stage begins with identifying the problem. While most business or marketing books teach the reader to highlight the benefits first, the benefit is like the ending of the a story.  Unfortunately the ending isn’t usually what grabs our attention.  It’s the opening (of a good story) that holds us and draws us in.  In fact, our psychology is created to hear and process information in the form of story.  So wouldn’t it make sense to follow a narrative form in our communications, especially if that’s how our brains work?

Crafting your B2B stories

So how do you create a good story for B2B if you don’t hammer away at the benefits? They simply won’t care about the benefits until they believe you understand their problems, until you can prove to them that you understand their desires.

When you create a story to draw a client in, you want to start with the want, the desire.  Often their want is represented by a problem; something they don’t have, a lack, which is caused because the obstacles to get the thing they want are too high.  You must address all these issues first, only then telling them the ending to the story. Once you have laid the groundwork, then can you paint  the picture for them, the picture of a brand new world where they can finally get what they want (the benefit).

Think Relationships, Not Transactions

Remember, this is part of a relationship, and the process for businesses is much longer than for most consumers. Identify where you are in the relationship, craft the stories that will take you deeper into the stages of relationship, and make sure you stay true to the overall story. Honestly, if you simply remind yourself that it’s not about sales goals, it’s about cultivating quality relationships, communicating, and telling stories, then you will be on more solid, long term footing.

What Would You Say?

If you were a pastor, what would you say? Upon hearing that a recent new visitor was a multi-millionaire, would you tell him to sell all he has and give it directly to the poor?  I think most of us are more likely to have a conversation about financial investments than spiritual ones.  Why turn away a potential source of serious tithes?  And yet Jesus seemed to be unconcerned with getting any of the Rich Man’s money.

Why not?  They had expenses, and imagine what the disciples could have done with the young rich man’s wealth?  But instead, Jesus told him to sell all he had and then give the money to the poor.  I find that inspiring.

You Must Tithe, It Is Written

One of the most preached sermons these days seems to be the exhortation to tithe.  They say we must trust God with our money and the way that we show our trust is by giving our local church 10% of our wealth.  This method of tithing is commonly accepted now, but I wonder if it’s the best way to go?

Many churches quote Micah and the verse about the storehouse, “Test me in this says the Lord.”  I’ve heard many an eloquent sermon about how the storehouse is the local church, and how this is still true today, as much as in yesteryear.

What doesn’t make sense to me is why Jesus didn’t mention to the young rich man anything about giving his wealth to his local synagogue.  Or why he doesn’t mention that anywhere in the  gospels?  Maybe it was so common place that people just assumed Jesus implied giving to the local synagogue, but what if he didn’t?  What if, as Jesus commonly did, he was advocating a radically new way of dealing with your finances?

Jesus Liked to Make Waves

In fact, Jesus was very good at disrupting the local religious law by simplifying the law itself.  He was born to save man from his sin, but he also sought to raise his people from childhood into adulthood.

The law was placed on our hearts but we needed external rules to guide us, as all children do. Eventually people made the rules more important than applying the law to whatever situation life throws at us.  We didn’t need to figure out the answer, we already had the rule.  Jesus came to abolish that kind of thinking (the mindset, not the law).

He came to help us grow up.

It’s Not Good Enough to Just Give 10%

Instead of just tithing or going to church or any number of other religious activities, which are not bad in and of themselves, we must think of the why behind the activity.  Why do you tithe?  To satisfy a rule?

If you’re just following a rule then it’s not really coming from your heart and God is not pleased.  Tithing is meant to help us understand that our money is not our own, that our wealth is from God and a gift.  But does that mean we have to give everything to our church?  I don’t see Jesus mention that once in the Gospels. Though He did say we should give everything to the poor.

Cultivate a Heart For Giving

So, what if you set aside 10% of your income, but instead of giving it to your church you put it in a giving fund.  Now, this would require real self discipline on your part, but if the Spirit is leading you will have the strength you need.  What you do is save this money for helping the poor, the weak, the needy, the orphans, the widows, just as the Bible tells us to do.

What if you did that?  What if instead of giving your money to your church, you gave it to the souls who need it, directly.  I guarantee that if you do this, it will change you.  You will be on the look out, more in tune with people and their needs, you will want to give more and more.  You won’t have a choice, you’ll be compelled.

God Wants Our Hearts More Than Tithes

Instead of begrudgingly saving that 10%, you will find ways to increase the amount.  And I doubt you will be motivated by the deep gratitude you see the other person’s eyes as they look at you in thanks, even though that will be incredible.  You will be motivated by the connection, by showing God’s love in a real way.  This love will lead to many more salivations than saving up tithes to build a new building or paying for a new sound system.

Which is better, giving to people or giving to an organization?

OfficeMax exemplifies the mindset of Transactional Thinking. I mean that its laser focus on the single sale and minimizing costs reduces the customer relationship to that of a mere transaction. This automatically makes people feel less than human.

A Tale of Treating People as Transactions

This is what happened.

Last Friday morning, as I entered the local Tacoma OfficeMax, the employee at the copy counter saw me come in. Instead of greeting me, she actually turned her back and walked the other way. Not a satisfying start.

As I made my way to the wall of toner, another employee puttered close by, stocking some items, but he made a concerted effort to avoid eye contact. I found my printer toner, milled around looking at other items, all the while the employee studiously went about his business. He never made any attempt to greet me.

Only slightly annoyed that no one had even welcomed me, I headed to the checkout counter to make my purchase and get out of the store. As I approached the counter, an employee, Erin, came out through a side door and visibly sighed at the sight of me. She walked up and and said gruffly, “Ready?” I told her I was more than ready.

The rest of the transaction proceeded in a hurried and impersonal manner, as if she’d rather be doing anything else. Of course she was obliged to ask if I found everything alright and I told her about my experience. Erin sighed again, directing me to the company website, speaking in a very bored and uncaring manner.

I left the store feeling like OfficeMax employees, and by extension OfficeMax itself could care less whether I was a customer or not. Maybe that’s true.

And the hits keep on coming…

Now add this to my wife’s experience with their copy counter the night before. She belongs to a local artist collective and they needed 600 fliers printed. They requested that the fliers be printed on colored paper, to which the employee responded that each unit of colored paper was $.59 each. Not color copies mind you, black and white copies on colored paper. My wife and her colleague pointed out that the price seemed exorbitant (over $350), but the employee apparently shrugged her shoulders and said that’s what it cost. No reasoning would sway her.

Instead of going through the hassle of dealing with managers or customer service, my wife decided to go across the street to Kinko’s. They got the job done with no trouble whatsoever, for 1/4 the price quoted by OfficeMax’s employee. This could have been a great opportunity for OfficeMax to connect with a thriving local community organization but instead Kinko’s gets the business.

Treating people as transactions will destroy your business

OfficeMax has at least three problems here that Local Businesses can learn from:

1. Transactional Thinking Loses in the Long Term – If all OfficeMax cares about are single transactions, then what they are doing in Tacoma works fine. But, if they want to maximize the lifetime value of each customer, they must take into account the long term relationship. The future will rely on businesses cultivating relationships into friendships, and no one wants to be a friend with someone who uses them.
2. Not Hiring the Right People for the Job – It’s an employer’s market out there, find employees that care. This is interesting to me since the only advantages OfficeMax has over internet competitors are immediate gratification and quality of in-person service (i.e. cultivating a relationship with the customer).
3. Breaking Promises - OfficeMax has a large sign at the entrance saying they guarantee satisfaction. If you guarantee anything, you need to be able to deliver in the moment. Erin, the OfficeMax employee, should have been authorized to do whatever she could to make it right. Every business should promise a better story for their customers. Failing to provide that, every business should have in place a way to immediately correct the situation. In this case, if OfficeMax does have such a policy but Erin was unwilling to waste her time with helping a customer, they should see #2.

Am I just being too sensitive?

You might simply read this as me complaining, and to a degree you would be correct. I was peeved at the small things, annoyed at being treated like I didn’t matter. The thing is, you have been in my shoes. We have all experienced that moment of annoyance when the salesperson won’t go out of their way to help, or someone tries to sell us the extra feature that we obviously don’t need. The time will come when that is all it takes to lose a customer forever.

There is so much more at stake

There are two worldviews at war here; the view of the customer as the transaction, as an inhuman number to meet a sales goal, V.S. viewing the customer as a friend and cultivating relationships with each person that visits your place of business.

Every business must make a choice. Will you follow the old way, trying to make customers cogs in your sales engine? Or will you connect with them and cultivate quality relationships, turning into lasting friendships? The choice is yours.

[To their credit, OfficeMax was monitoring Twitter and told the Tacoma store manager to call me on Friday, just hours after I left. He apologized for both situations and offered reasons why the experience was not optimal. I told him the basics of what was in this article and he agreed with me. However, unless change comes from much higher up, I don't have much hope for the organization.]

"It's a good thing we made friends with our neighbor! Look at the size of this thing!"

I’ve noticed that we Americans seem to take for granted that everyone is trying to kill us.

Perhaps this is nothing new, but it shows in our conversations, or lack thereof, with our neighbors. How much do people, especially those living in the city, know their neighbors? Not especially well I think.

Maybe it’s because we don’t need to, being loosed from the constrains of proximity thanks to the internet. But I think it’s more than that. It comes down to the fact that we simply don’t trust people.

We look at strangers as potential thieves and murders and not as potential new friends. As if their sole purpose in life is get chummy with us in order to take our $35 DVD player or study our habits so that they can better off us when we’re sleeping.

Now I know that there are other reasons for not making friends with neighbors; renters don’t want to make friends they might have to lose if they move, perhaps you have a full social calendar (Who needs more friends, Facebook has given me plenty!), or you might be utterly disagreeable to everyone you meet, in which case none of this really applies to you.

But for those who are generally well liked, what’s your excuse for not getting to know all your neighbors? Why hide yourself away in a perpetual fog of fear and uncertainty? Are your neighbors really going to kill you? (If your answer is “Yes!” to the last question, my advice is to move. I’m fairly certain there exists a community close by that has diminished degree of murderous intent)

If your excuse for not knowing your neighbors starts with “But…” or “Well…”, I would say throw the excuses in the trash. And while you’re outside, get to know your neighbors. You never know, you might get a good DVD player out of it.

Discounts actively kill relationships

Discounts are a bad habit for both the business and the customer because they lead to an unhealthy relationship. The business is artificially setting the customer’s pricing expectations lower. So later, if the price is higher, the customer feels disappointed like they’ve been cheated. No one stays in a relationship that’s perpetually disappointing.

Creating disappointment is one major reason for the backlash against Groupon and LivingSocial’s business strategies. When you sacrifice value in the beginning of the relationship (i.e. tell people your goods aren’t worth as much and discounting them), they won’t believe you later when you tell them the value is worth much more. The customer’s expectations have already been set, and the discounting business has trained them to equate value with price. In the end no one is truly happy.

Why not give more and increase the pie?

Instead of lowering prices or discounting, it’s better to find a way to add on and give gifts. The relational benefits of giving more far outweigh the minimal short term boost of discounting.

But base your gifts on the relationship

Give gifts based on where you are in the relationship. Like in the beginning of any budding relationship, it’s always customary to give small gifts that mean something to the other party. So find small ways to celebrate your new relationship. If the client extends the relationship, by referring or showing loyalty, they should get a small gift.

These simple gestures will cultivate the quality relationships your business needs to stay afloat. And they are MUCH cheaper than discounts in the long run.

Think of alternatives to discounts, what can you add?

In addition to relationship gifts, have something around that costs you very little but will mean the world to your customers and clients. You should never underestimate the power of the random gift. Gifts are always that much more enjoyable when they are unexpected.

So, if someone asks for a discount in the future, tell them “No! But…” then give them the small but meaningful gift that you prepared for them.  The gift is always much more appreciated.

Thanks to Motifake

I’ve been attending church for almost all my life, and feeling guilty about not going when I wasn’t.

You are supposed to go to church, right?  That’s just what good Christians do.

But why exactly do we go to church?

Because it actually makes us better Christians?  Because our lives will be better for it?  That never sat right with me.

Why should church be about us, and not about others?  How often is church about others, especially when it’s not part of a ministry or a program?  We do love our programs.

So now, after 30 years, I’m thoroughly questioning why I’m going to Church every Sunday.

My problem isn’t with leadership or programs, or more engaging sermons, my problem comes from what we believe it means to be a Christian. It think it means we should follow Christ.

Jesus was always trying to help others

Can most modern church bodies say the same thing?  Are Christians all about others, about spreading the gospel, about making disciples of all nations?

I think we are more concerned with helping ourselves.  We dress it up as being better Christians, neighbors and people, striving to be the best people we can. But it all amounts to the same thing.

What we don’t do is preach the word or help the hungry and needy.

Here’s what we usually do

A lot of people go to church every Sunday, talk to a few people they know, sit down, stand up, sing some songs, sit down again, listen to a “sermon”, give some money away to the church, talk to some more select people, then go home. They go home where they don’t pray, don’t read the Bible, and don’t talk about God to anyone for fear that they might have to know something. They don’t help those less fortunate because they don’t go out and meet any, they don’t give away any money to the poor, and they don’t make disciples.

But at least they go to church because they think that is somehow the minimum requirement to call themselves a Christian.

Sound familiar? I know it does for me.

Going to your church simply isn’t enough

Maybe we up the ante and join a small group that meets outside of church, or join a program that helps the homeless once a month, or start a non-profit that helps needy families, or set aside 10% of our income to use as a way to help anyone we see who the Holy Spirit directs us to help.

Does it feel like those actions are mere tokens, and not nearly enough?  Yes and Yes.

But it’s a start. And as long as we start, and continue to press on, the wonderful Christian story that God has written for us will unfold before our feet.

Only one problem.

While he was passionate about the idea, I really didn’t feel anything.

What I mean is this; when he spoke about buying local I felt no passion in myself to run out and support local businesses.  It sounded like a good idea intellectually but the only passion I felt was coming from him.

Inside me, there was only very calm and placid agreement that we should do something soon.  I knew that even this agreement would soon fade into forgetfulness. That’s because the concept of “buying local” is only focused on solutions and benefits.

We usually focus on the benefits

I told him to stop talking about the solution (Buy Local) or the benefits (better neighborhoods, more local businesses, more local jobs).  When  people hear about “Better Communities” they are pleasantly supportive but hardly motivated or inspired.

To motivate people to action, you need to add conflict.

Conflict gets attention

Writing a slogan or tag line is just like writing a story. Whenever you are telling a story, it has to begin with conflict.  Something happens to motivate the main character to take action.  That something is conflict.

Think of the customer as the “character”, where is the conflict? Why would they need to take action? Why would people NEED to buy local?

If I designed a Buy Local tag line, it would go something like this

“We’re all in this boat together. Buy Local.”

Put it on every poster, bumper sticker, and button in every business you can. That story will start to spread throughout the community and soon enough the “In This Together, Buy Local” story will become their story.

First the Conflict, then the Solutions & Benefits

The key to the story is to first show the reader a REAL problem for them (“We are all in this together and if one falls, we all fall; we have to have each others back or we’re all dead”) and THEN you give them a solution (“But if you buy local, then we can avert this disaster”).  The beginnings of a great story are in place and people can sense when a good story is brewing.

If the Story is boring, add in some conflict

Conflict solves most problems in advertising, marketing, or writing.  If you are designing a campaign, a flier, or or just trying to come up with a cool slogan, conflict will be the key.

Remember to tell it like a story and include a healthy dose of conflict to grab your audience’s attention.

I constantly wondered “What am I doing with my life?” and “What is it all supposed to mean?”

Sound familiar?

The question is even more puzzling to a lot of Christians who try to succeed in business.   The are trying to bridge a gap, the disconnect between the Church and “The World”.

How can you make both happy?  How can you be an amazing Christian, live out your faith, and yet still be successful enough to provide for your family?  What’s an entrepreneur or business person to do?

And it’s hard to find good answers

Many Christian leaders I have known are more than happy to take your money, and they tell you to tithe, of course.  They might even saddle up to you and ask for help with the new church they are building “for the glory of God”.

But in the same breath they will tell you to hate your wealth, that it’s something to be ashamed of and reviled.

But is it?  And is tithing to an organization or building buildings the best use of your money?  Is that the calling God has placed on your life or are you copping out?

Your calling is to give everything you have

Give as much and more than you can.  But give to the poor, directly.  Give to charities out of the abundance of your wealth.

Do you want a calling?  Do you want to know how to make a difference in your two worlds and eventually merge them together?  Give.

Give what you have to those in need and you will be blessed.  But make sure that you give yourself, don’t let others take that privilege from you.

But God help you if you are successful

And I mean that literally and with a tongue in cheek.  If you are successful in business, you will be quietly mocked by many Christians.

If you give away that hard earned money, but don’t give them any, instead using it to help the poor directly, those same Christians will try to convince you that you can’t do it on your own, that you need help.

Stay strong my friends, don’t let anyone trick you into thinking differently. You have been given much so that you can give much. But give directly to those that need it, you and they will be blessed more through it.

I usually try to stay away from politics in public settings.  That hasn’t always been the case.

In my less mature years I used politics as a way to stir up lively debate. Luckily the years have made me slightly wiser. The thrill of seeing people get red and huffy trying to defend an indefensible opinion faded along with my penchant for ghastly Hawaiian shirts.

But, that doesn’t mean I don’t care deeply about what is happening to this country.  Deficits, debt, bad monetary policy, even worse foreign policy have dragged this country into a perilous quagmire. Somehow, it needs to stop.

Fortunately there is a candidate running on the Republican ticket for President in 2012 who wishes to make the necessary changes. Unfortunately that same candidate also tends to ramble, go off on rants, and those in the media think he sounds like a “crazy uncle”.

But there are a few simple changes he can make that will give him the edge he needs in 2012.

If you are listening Congressman Paul, and I desperately hope that you are (or someone in your campaign), please take these ideas into consideration and implement them right away in all your future debates and interviews:

• State your principles first – You have a wonderful message of freedom and individual responsibility, but you tend to stray away from that when you first answer a question. When you were asked about the flooding and the government’s role, your first sentence should be your belief that it’s wrong for the FEDERAL government to take money from some people to pay for flooding.
• Be concise in your examples – After you state your overall principles, then you can use an example. But make sure your examples always tie back to principles.  That’s how you stay on message.  In this case you would say that the state’s should have all the freedom in the world to deal with this disaster, BUT the federal government has no right. You instead talk about flood insurance with vague references to FEMA and beaches.  It’s confusing.
• Constantly remind people of your credibility and consistency – These are beliefs and principles that you have always held and practiced.  You need to remind the people of this at all times.
• Use a story model in answering questions – The story model is time tested, effective, and you don’t use it:

1. First, tell them what the current situation is (“Such and Such is a problem [based in one of your principles]“)
2. Then what it’s consequences are (“This is why Such and Such is an issue”)
3. Then the solution (“Instead of Such and Such, we should do This and That!”)
4. Then outline the major reason why we don’t or wouldn’t (“We don’t do This and That because of our beliefs/actions/current principles/etc.”)
5. And finally paint a picture of a better outcome (“Imagine how much better This and That would make our lives” or “If we are able to do This and That, this is what will happen, isn’t that much better than Such and Such?”)

Practice this story structure often, it will turn out to be Godsend. For example, when someone asks about your stance on Defense you would give them a short and sweet retort:

“I’m all for defense but our current policy is not about defense, it’s about militarism and there’s a dangerous difference.  Our policy of Militarism drains our resources, creates enemies, and loses us respect from our allies.  My stance is simple, close foreign military bases, pull our troops out of the 150 countries we are occupying, and let’s use the TRILLIONS of dollars we save doing those things to pay down the debt.  This would actually make America much safer because we can focus the bulk of our defense resources on the DEFENSE of our country, and not on militarism around the world.  I think that’s what the American public really wants, to be safe from those who want to hurt us, not to spend all our money trying to tell other countries how to live and operate.”

Short and simple, to the point.  All you need to remember is the structure itself and your core principles, all your answers flow from that. The key is repeating your principles and staying on message. If you want to win, you have to do this.

There are many more hints, tips, and ideas I could give. I’m offering my help if you desire.

But please read the list, at the very least, and practice some answers.  You will fare much better in the primaries if you do.

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Image from Yahoo!

In doing some research on a company, I came across some vexing examples of written communication.  I begged the words to stop, but they laughed, gave me an inappropriate gesture, and rolled along anyway.

Here’s an example of their awe, if not headache, inspiring text (company name hidden to protect the guilty):

[Company] is the leading provider of web-hosted sales and use tax management services. [Company] mission is to provide end-to-end tax management solutions to businesses of all sizes and transform the sales, use and VAT tax process for customers with cost-effective state-of-the-art solutions. With its innovative, patented technology, [Company]helps companies from every industry eliminate the complexity of tax management by automating and providing accurate tax calculation, painless administration, effortless reporting and, timely remittance. [emphasis added]

Ugh. And there’s more:

Our Software-as-a-Service tax solutions integrate directly into existing workflow processes; eliminating the tedious work and complexity of calculating, collecting, reporting on, and remitting taxes across multiple jurisdictions. Offering integrations with more financial, e-commerce and point-of-sales applications than any other transactional tax solution on the market, [Company] is focused on providing the most convenient, accurate and affordable way for businesses to address all their statutory sales and use tax requirements. [emphasis added]

All the Company’s communications are like this.  From the website, to case studies, to marketing materials, they each offer something equally painful for the reader.

But what can they do instead?

Luckily this lengthy, eye-gouging verbiage can be boiled down to understandable, and decidedly unlengthy ideas:

• Calculating sales tax from different counties, cities, and states is a waste of your time.  Who wants to worry about math when you have customers to help?
• We take away that feeling that you’re missing something in your sales tax calculations.
• There are only a few options for you; calculate all these different rates yourself, hire one of your kid’s friends to do a semi-professional job, buy expensive software, or let us handle the whole thing for half that price.
• No more stress for you, no more worry.
• This is one less thing you have to have on your plate.  We guarantee it [I didn't see this anywhere on the site, but it's a good idea].

The Bottom Line of Tragedy

Basically they need to let potential customers know that calculating sales tax is a pain in the ass, not really worth the business owner’s time, so why not let a fully automated service take over what they hate to do?

But this company would rather slip into techno-language and marketing-babble.  Unfortunately, this malady is not a single occurrence. After a quick look at the company’s competitors, it seems all these “leading providers” use the same unpleasant language.

It’s not just the bad writing, they’re also unoriginal

What bothers me even more, more than the painful copywriting or endless talk about “solutions”, is the lack of any unique differentiators.  I went to the top three providers in the sales-tax service field and not one could tell me why they were superior over their competition.  Not one could show how they stood above and apart.

You have to tell your client’s story

You can’t just talk about benefits (especially not using silly marketing lingo) or your solutions. Instead you have to target your audience, speak to them, and then tell them a story about how their lifestory will improve.  And the story you tell has to be unique to your company; it has to be cool, interesting, as well as relevant.

In the coming years there won’t be any way around this and any company who doesn’t start focusing on relationships and developing sustainable friendships will perish.

And what do you do?

Do you quit? Or give him the finger?  Perhaps you do both as you walk blissfully out the door into unemployment and heady uncertainty.  Do you do what you’re told but complain and grumble, hating your work all the more? What about joyfully performing the work, how do you do that?

What the Bible says about our work

Colossians 3 tells us to do all our work as if unto the Lord, but how do you actually go about doing that? That question has plagued me for years.  Over time (and a great deal of weeping and gnashing of teeth) I constructed three strategies that seem to help:

1. Work as an expression of Love – When Jesus reminded us to love our neighbor as ourselves, work was part of that.  In fact, at work is the one place where we most often forget this command.  Think of everything you do at work as a way to express God’s love to others.
2. Focus away from the crap - You have a choice.  You can pay attention to the bits of your job that you hate, or you can remind yourself of the positives.  But first you have to find the positives.  Find what you love about your job, the opportunities to shine and be your best.
3. Exceed everyone’s expectations – Find out what they expect from someone in your position and then do more.  You will be more happy, they will be joyous, and everything will go well with you.  Find the details, those sometimes hidden parts of the task or job that most people take for granted, and then do more or better.

Choose to show them Love, above all else

If you do nothing else, at the very least go and think about how you can do the first idea.  If you work as a way to show love then you’ll find yourself quietly cheering for work.  Maybe it won’t be a standing ovation, but you will certainly feel better about work than you do now.

In what ways can you express Love to other people through your work?

The book discusses how the modern American church needs to overcome the seduction of the American dream by following Jesus in the way that the Bible prescribes. Good stuff overall.

Many questions I’ve always had about Christian living are answered by Pastor Platt, but he also brings up issues that have always given me pause.  And by “given me pause” I really mean that I try not to think about them, as they tend to play a bit of havoc with my theology.

If you haven’t heard of Jesus, you go to hell

One such issue concerns the unsaved who have never heard the gospel.  This is a topic that has never particularly bothered me before, I probably just assumed that God would sort it all out someday. But the persistent Pastor Platt has a different take on the matter, one I find far less enabling.

How would YOU answer this question:

If someone has never heard of the gospel and doesn’t know Jesus, can they somehow be saved?

If you’re David Platt from Alabama, you say NO and then back that claim up with Paul’s argument from Romans.

What Paul says in Romans

In the beginning of Romans, Paul says that everyone knows God, his glory has been revealed to ever person, but we have rejected that glory and God.

And since all have sinned and and fallen short of the glory of God, then we are all separated from Him.  But God has given us a way of coming in commune with God, and that is through belief in Jesus Christ.  Paul also goes on to say that the church is charged with bringing that message of the gospel to all peoples.

So, if all people fall short of God, and if someone hasn’t heard of the Gospel, then they are going to be separated from God for eternity.  That’s a hard pill to swallow.

Something about this just doesn’t sit right

In the past, I simply assumed that God had grace for those that never heard of Jesus.  That sometime, in some way they would be able to hear the gospel and have the choice.  But maybe that’s not the case.

Honestly I’ve never been a fan of the concept of Hell, for obvious reasons.  But it just never seemed like a quality of a loving God to send people to a place of eternal torment and torture. But this is different, more cruel somehow.

People go to hell because of random circumstance?

Why would God, who loved the world enough to send his one and only son,  not provide another way for people who haven’t heard of him?

Seriously, the Aborigine in Australia who has never heard of Jesus Christ is going to hell because of location?  That’s almost too random.  It also means that I am going to heaven, essentially because of my “Luck” in being born in America.

I’m heaven bound because of my family, situation, and location. I get eternal benefits because of chance.  That goes beyond fair into the realm of right and wrong.

And even worse; Is God the cause of damnation?

How can a loving God send someone to hell simply because of bad luck or random circumstance?  And if the theory of Babel that’s accepted by most Christians proves correct, it’s God’s doing that set these people so far apart.

So God sends these people to the ends of the earth, and then penalizes them for being so far from where he revealed his glory.  How is that the sign of a loving God?  How is that loving or right?

Hard questions, fewer answers

How can God set up a system like this?  How can a loving God so randomly and so callously send the people he created and has known since before the womb, to a place of complete separation from him?

I have no concrete answers but it all seems a little callous to me.  And way too random.  I don’t like it but I don’t have any other answers.  What are we as Christians supposed to do with this?  Any thoughts?

Photo by nelsonrico via Flickr

Recently someone asked a great question on Facebook in response to my post about social media professionals.

The comment:

But what do we hire you for then? I liked your article a lot- since coming to facebook I’ve added some business friends that are doing exactly what you write about. I don’t know how you’d measure the impact on their actual business but facebook definitely is allowing them an interesting new relationship with customers. See Jane Run posts about her runs, quotes, and poses great questions- she probably got 20+ responses to what’s your power song yeterday/ Mamamour gives you a running photo log of her handmade products as they are completed and mailed. I don’t know if this contact actually increases sales, but I think the connection definitely increases the perceived value of their products by making the companies “real.”

My point in writing the previous post was to highlight that businesses should not just jump on the social media bandwagon just to do something new.  The point of using social media as a tool is to connect and converse with your clients and customers.

If business is all about cultivating quality relationships and “marketing” is the conversation that adds value to those relationships, then social media is simply a tool that allows easier conversations.

I help local businesses have better conversations

Using some very simple processes, I’m allowing the businesses the freedom to engage in real and genuine conversations.  BUT, I don’t have the conversations for them.  That’s a crucial difference.

So whether it’s a new website, integrating social media, setting up a mobile presence, or designing the entire conversation process, there are several ways I can help these business reach more people and connect more deeply. The actual conversations or connections need to be done by the owner.

But what about measurment

As for how it’s measured, that’s a great question that many businesses have a hard time with. This is why local business owners need to understand the conversation process.

If they initiate a conversation with a client, then what happens?  What’s the goal of the conversation, of the relationship, for both parties?  How does your conversation lead to the customer’s next interaction with your company? If any business owner doesn’t answer these, they will always have a difficult time tracking the effectiveness of their efforts.

Business is going back to the way it used to be

We are more connected, more concerned with relationships and being treated as people and not transactions.  I help business owners come to terms with this and rediscover the joy of running and marketing their business.

Cartoon by Hugh Macleod

Social Media “professionals” get paid a lot of money. But the more I see of their work, the more I question whether or not they’re worth the expense. Granted, many of them DO a lot, I’m just not sure that what they actually do is helpful.

So, are they the right move for your local business?

Hardly ever.

Most of the services that you pay these “experts” to do for you, you should be doing yourself.

As a local business, you cannot outsource social media effectively.  Trust me, the hour a week the paid professional puts into posting on your facebook wall won’t get you a ton of new business, no matter how much they talk about engagements or impressions.  The “Social Pro” will never connect like you can.

Only you can honestly tell your story

The “Pro” can’t connect like you because he or she doesn’t know your story like you do.  Social media has the amazing potential to build and cultivate relationships with your clients, but only if you stop and really consider the story you want to tell them.

Why do your customers need your business?  What will your customers find interesting, cool, and sharable about your industry or business?  How do you consistently exceed their expectations?

The story you tell them on social media networks is a combination of all this.

Let your customers into your life

Once you find your story, your unique compelling idea, then you have to let people in.  Many have said “social media” is the essence of this, the new marketing.  But I see it as old marketing, as a way to cultivate and further relationships.

And the rules for cultivating quality relationships have not changed.  You have to give them more of what they want, things that interest them about you or what you both enjoy.  Give them access, or something interesting to tell their friends, make them the resource their tribe goes to for certain information related to your business/industry.

The more you see this as a relationship cultivation tool, the more success you will see in your online marketing efforts.

Is This Good?

Osama is dead. But no matter what the pundits say, I just can’t get behind this.

I can’t be happy that a person has died, no matter what sins they have committed, no matter what heinous things they have done.

Osama Bin Laden was still a soul, and the real question, the one that matters is: where is that soul now?

If you believe that Christ was telling the truth, that he is the WAY the TRUTH and THE LIGHT, that there is no way to the Father but belief in Jesus Christ, then Osama has been lost forever.

And we are celebrating his eternal death…

Christians, or people who say they are followers of Christ, are reveling and feeling satisfaction in the one thing Jesus came to stop.

Someone has been sent to hell and we are cheering

Amid all the whooping and hollering and the war rhetoric, it gets lost that we are celebrating death.  We cover that morbid practice up with a sense of justice, but it is what it is…

“Christians” are happy that a man no longer lives

Again, as a Christian man, I don’t see it as holy or Godly to lift up a man’s death.  Christ brought people back to life, he didn’t kill them.  How can we call ourselves His followers and still glory in this man’s demise?

I find glorifying murder deeply sad and entirely un-christian

Would Christ condemn a man to death like this?  Christ’s response was love, hope, and forgiveness in the deepest and realest ways.  Turn the other cheek?  Not just meant for people to overcome verbal insults.

Turn the Cheek, Love those Who Hate You

Christ was laying out a philosophy that does not come easy to Americans;

Sacrifice everything, even the things that you know are just, in order to show love.

To Jesus, showing God’s love was everything. But to us, this weekend, death and “justice” are everything.

Which one makes more sense?  Which one feels more right?

Image from Facebook

I told my son that he would go crazy.

Perhaps not as crazy as this girl, but similar.

I let him know that that as he begins his ascent into teenagerhood, his brain will actually rewire itself.

I told him that teenagers turning crazy is a biological fact.

I also told him that this particular insanity would reveal itself through his emotions, anger, frustration, sometimes random needs to cry or fight.

It’s all very natural.

Most importantly, I asked that when he feels the Craziness attacking his brain, and he gets really upset and doesn’t want to trust his parents, that he should remember that I said these things and predicted they would happen.

I don’t think he believed me at first

But this all changed when, one day, I heard some crashing in his room, and my son emerged crying, an unholy mess behind him through the door.  He looked up at me,  “I think I have the Crazies…”  he confessed to me.  He came over, I gave him a great big Dad hug and the tears subsided.  He was OK.

Maybe I am blessed with an extraordinary kid (and what parent doesn’t believe that deep down?) but I think there might be some lessons here.

Lesson One: Be Honest, Always, Brutally Honest

As a parent I think that it is crucial to be honest like this.  I try to never pull the punches with Sean and so far he seems to be reaping the benefits of this practice.  I try to let him know what will happen and do my best not to sugar coat anything.

Lesson Two: Tell Them That Your Arms Are Always Open

Along withe honesty I let him know that my wife and I will always be around to love him through mistakes, changes, accidents, anything that might come up.  So far he’s accepted that .

Lesson Three: Tell Them All the Bad Things You Did

Most importantly, I am sharing my own experience with him.  Now he knows, since I essentially predicted his future, that I really understand what he’s going through.  If your kid really believes that you have some idea about him or what he’s going through, there will be far less moodiness and anger.

So share with your son and daughter, tell them the stories that they need to hear about how you rebelled or acted out.

Be honest with them about the mistakes that you have made, share those experiences, and let them know that you are aware they might make similar mistakes.

This all seems impossible to many folks, but I’m convinced that it’s helped my son immeasurably.

When an epiphany comes along, you pay attention

We were discussing values and how a parent needs to know and live their own values before he  can impart those values on to his children.  Makes sense in one’s head, but when you get down to it, how exactly do you know your values?

We all theoretically agreed that values are important, that we must have them, but how does one create new, or good, values?  Is there a process?  As we talked about these issues, it became apparent that most of us saw this topic through a fuzzy lens, meaning that we understood it in our heads but had very little idea how to go about making it happen.

What I mean by “values”

A value, meaning “what you value” or “your values”, is a reaction to experience.  When you go through something, or if something happens to you, you react.  Your automatic actions will reveal your deepest values.  That will show what your heart really believes.  Then your actions reveal your chosen values.

For example…

If you are accosted by a homeless man outside of a supermarket, or perhaps someone that “has just run out of gas” and “just needs a few bucks” to get somewhere, what is your reaction?

Initially you might be sympathetic to their cause but then other values kick in, ones that make you decide that this person is not really stuck, that they will just buy booze with “your” money.  So your value is your reaction but also your final action.

In fact, your final action is your chosen value

And this is how you know and change your values; change your decisions.

And this is not a theoretical discussion

This idea plays for keeps, but you have to live it.  You can’t simply sit back and imagine that you will make a different choice, you actually have to change.  You have to actively participate in the change you want to make in yourself.

If you sit at home all day and night, watching TV or movies, you probably won’t have many opportunities to test yourself.  Go out, put yourself in new and challenging situations, find experiences that push you to see who you are and more importantly who you want to be.

Create a better story, be the character that inspires

In great stories, truly memorable characters are never passive.  They take action, they move their story forward.  The writer puts him or her in situations that test their mettle so the reader can see how they’ll respond.  That’s what we need to do with ourselves.

If you have never been to church, find a church that pushes your buttons a little.  See how you react, then if your actions are not the values you want, conscioulsy focus on the actions you want to take.  Go to a part of town that you are scared to go to and see what happens.  Obviously some good sense is required but a little danger is good for the soul.

Conflict allows you to see who you are and change.

We are created to tell great stories with our lives

We are meant to live and rub up against this world in a way that matters and inspires. To make a difference in ours and others lives.  Find the values that inspire you, put yourself in situations where you have to choose to make those values part of you, then repeat with different experiences.

You are the storyteller, the writer of your character’s actions.  The Great Storyteller handles the world around you, but you are in charge of your own actions.  Make them the best you can.

With every conversation that we had, it became more apparent that they understood what we were fighting for; that long term relationships matter more than short term transactions, every time.  And this is the ideal they strive for, all the way up to the publisher.

Finding this progressive mindset has become an obsession for me, mostly because it’s still so rare.  I’ve become a self-appointed flame spotter, looking for those bright spots that “get it”, that know what it means to cultivate quality relationships.  There are still few, but their ranks are growing.  And they will keep growing.

What I enjoyed most about the meeting was when I mentioned that most businesses treat customers and employees as transactions, as opposed to relationships; they got it right away.  They understand what so many in their profession just can’t see:

The world is changing.

And now they are trying to change with it.  They are trying to tell a different story, a better story with every client.  And I for one applaud them.

If you want to reach customers and clients in the Vancouver Area send Teresa Keplinger an email (Teresa.Keplinger@columbian.com), or if you’re interesting in some cutting edge digital marketing, email Mike Ripley (mike.ripley@columbian.com).  I can’t recommend these guys highly enough.

There’s a war brewing

From now on, every marketer, every salesman, every business owner and CEO has a choice.  You will either treat your clients like transactions, like they exist to serve your bottom line, or you consciously strive to cultivate quality relationships with all your clients. The battle lines are drawn.

There will be no middle ground, there is no hiding from this reality

You cannot do business as usual, you will not keep your best customers or the best employee talent if you do.  They will abandon you for relationships, and eventually the money that those relationships bring.  If you stay the course, you are fighting a losing battle.

I’m sitting comfortably in Starbucks right now

The decor feels warm, and the staff is friendly, but I’m very close to finding another place to write.  The reason is simple; other, smaller places care more about relationships.  Starbucks as it grows inherently cares less about relationships and more about the small, short term, transactions.  Case in point: coffee refills.  A small but nagging point,  Starbucks has always charged for refills whereas other coffee houses usually give them for free.  And that’s fine because many people are wiling to pay for the ambiance.

But now Starbucks is deciding to go a step farther

Typically I get a small (12oz) latte with four honey’s which costs $2.73, but afterwards I feel like a little kick of caffeine and get a coffee refill, which is free since I am a “Starbucks Rewards” member.  No longer though.  Starbucks now has a policy that if you didn’t buy a drip coffee, you can no longer get a refill price.  A “tall” (12oz) coffee costs $1.50, and that’s the price they want to charge me.

So, I pay for a more expensive drink and that doesn’t qualify me for the same advantage as a lesser priced beverage? This is absurd.  And honestly it’s not the money that bothers me, it’s what the policy represents.

They care, but they don’t care

The manager was sweet about it, very nice girl named Val, and she even acknowledged that it sounded ridiculous, but Starbucks had given her the authority to hide behind policy and procedure.  I brought up the company’s mission statement about “inspiring and nurturing the human spirit” but she simply shrugged her shoulders, because her company empowered her to not fulfill the mission.  Rather than telling the employees to save and cultivate relationships, Starbucks is encouraging transactional thinking among it’s employee’s, training them to sacrifice the relationship for an increased bottom line and blind rule following.

Will Starbucks miss my business?

No, probably not, but they are closing stores and I think not caring about my business is the core of their problem.  When the economy gets bad and we circle the wagons, we listen to the accountants who see the world in numbers.  When a business gets larger, we have to worry about budgets and plans, and customers become numbers by default if we let them.  Instead we need to listen to our hearts and understand that the lifetime value of a quality customer relationship means far more than temporary cost cutting measures.

There are plenty of shops that recognize this and practice it daily.  I guess I’ll just have to drive a little farther, but the relationship is worth it.

I’ve got a radical idea.

I think that we are most prosperous when we invest our wealth to directly impact and renew communities.

Just imagine if we used our prosperity for the good of others.  Imagine if we all lived on only what we need and use the rest to give back to those who need our help.  Imagine if the wealthy invested in the poor so that the poor could produce and achieve even more.

Imagine if every business adopted a healthy lifestyle of serving others, first their families and then their communities

For example, a family owned grocery or market would agree to donate not just money or volunteer time to the local food bank (although that would be appreciated I am sure), but would also buy extra food for the food bank if business is good.

A credit union or local bank would dedicate some or all of its excess to fund a full time position that coordinates with local nonprofits on financial education or the creation of a select number of high risk, second chance accounts.

The Point of Wealth is to be Spent

Business and marketing are fantastic in themselves, but what’s the point of simply creating more wealth? Do you just keep creating more for its own sake? Where do we invest it?  Spend it on ourselves, on bigger houses or more cars,or on bigger TV’s or more computers or expensive vacations?

How about reinvesting in the business?  YES, reinvest in the business but don’t reinvest simply to expand the business so that the business can grow and become larger for the sole purpose of becoming bigger and more expansive.

Reinvest in serving those that can’t help themselves and your business will grow as a consequence.  But you will also be serving a better cause, not just the organization’s growth.

I know this sounds idealistic, but it is a lifestyle we can all live and the consequences of this behavior can have the most amazing impact the world has ever seen.  Instead of growing to consume, we will grow to give.

Who’s with me?

Add an a generous helping of conflict

Conflict is absolutely the first thing you should know about creating stories.  Most “Bio’s” or “About Me” pages are all sweet and cuddly, filled with details that don’t get anyone’s attention.  So what if you were born in a regular town, to regular folks, in a regular manner.  I’m already bored.  But this is what most people do.  Without conflict you lose the reader.

Go easy, only a dash, of details

If you want a really compelling story, the details are not important.  Well, details are kind of important but only if they serve the main conflict.  For example, my wife is the oldest of five children, her parents are average folks, she grew up in Port Orchard, WA, now she paints with acrylics and enjoys painting flowers.  All these things are true, but they also make for mostly uninteresting reading.

Make them ask “Why is that?”

Now what if I told you that at one point she almost stopped painting forever?  I suspect that you ask yourself  “Why?”  And that’s what you should strive for when you are creating any story about yourself, to make the reader want to read more.  This is how I would write her general biography:

“I almost stopped painting, forever.  When I was a teenager, I had a horrible experience where someone completely shattered my confidence in my artwork.  For many years I believed the lies that person told me , so much so that I couldn’t bring myself to even touch a paint brush.

“Then, in 2006, this nagging voice in my head wouldn’t let go of the idea that I had something to give, that I was hiding my talent from the world.  Eventually the voice in my head won and I picked up the canvass and paint.  Out of that first flurry of pent up emotion and desire came one of my most loved works, Wildflowers, but I couldn’t stop there.

“Instead of giving in to the fear and negativity of the past, I decided to fight back by creating my idyllic world on canvas, making the world as beautiful as I saw it.   Every so often, the old fears creep back, but all it takes is a little bit of paint on canvas to remind me that the world can be a much more beautiful place.”

Let them get to know the real you

While a little dramatic, this passage is more memorable than just talking about your vital statistics.  People will be able to connect with your story more deeply if you include your pain and your struggles, all those things that you hide away and don’t want everyone to see.  You are an artist, people already see them in your work and this is simply another way that you can connect with people that want to know you.  Let yourself be free to be you.

Here are some quick questions that you can ask yourself when you are trying to craft your story:

• Where is the conflict? What have you struggled through to get where you are?  Have you had obstacles or setbacks? When did these things happen? (dates and places provide mental foundations for the reader to imagine)
• Do you have a defining moment in your past? Was there a point where you transitioned from a “non-artist” to artist?
• What have you overcome to get where you are? Do you have mental or physical handicaps?
• What is your theme? What one word describes you or your work? (admittedly this is one of the most difficult tasks you can do if you are honest with yourself, but the rewards are a clarity of purpose and thought)
• Do you have a guiding passage, poem, or phrase that gives you constant inspiration? Why does it work for you?  Is there a story behind that?
• What about your life or work is interesting, out of the ordinary, curious, or fascinating? People are just as interested in the unknown as in your conflicts.  Where you born in another country?  Did your parents raise you in a basement?  Were you a country-bumpkin and now you are in the city, how does that make you feel? How does that affect your work?

Start with the conflict and then you can get into the other details like theme and curiosity.  If the reader knows a little more of your real story, the deep and dark things that make up you, then they will care more about the other things.  And they will care more about your art.

Excerpt from http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/04/guest-post-by-bob-mayer.html

Last year I predicted that legacy publishing wouldn’t be done in by technology, or by readers retreating from print and embracing digital. It would be authors who kill the Big 6 by deciding to self publish.

Looking back at my old blog posts amuses me, because they’re a combination of eerily predictive and massive underestimation (for example, a year ago at this time I believed I could earn $100,000 in seven months, and I’ve just done that in seven weeks.) But even though my thoughts about the future were conservative, the majority are coming true. Publishers still don’t understand that they aren’t going to have anything to publish if they don’t immediately change their ways.

Once again, for all those industry folks who read my blog but are too chicken to leave comments, here’s what you need to do:

1. Give authors fair e-royalty rates. 50% should be the ground floor, and it should go up from there using various escalators.

2. Share the e-wealth with authors by offering them higher rates on contracts that are still active.

Did you hear that, Hyperion and Grand Central? Pay me more money for my Jack Daniels books and for AFRAID. Let’s redo the ebook clauses on my old deals so they’re fair in this brave, new ebook world. Because if you don’t, I’m going to exploit my interactive multimedia rights, release my backlist as enhanced ebooks, and UNDERCUT YOU ON THE PRICE.

You think people will buy your bare-bones version of WHISKEY SOUR for $4.79 when they can get my enhanced version for $2.99? Would some iPad of Nook Color owner rather have a black and white text version of AFRAID for $6.99, or one with games, artwork, author audio commentary, and annotated clickable links for $2.99?

That’s right. They’ll buy mine, not yours.

Now IMAGINE THAT HAPPENING WITH EVERY SINGLE AUTHOR YOU HAVE UNDER CONTRACT.

Yeah, I’m yelling. Because you need to wake up fast, or you’re over.

3. Drop the prices of ebooks. If anyone in New York has been PAYING THE SLIGHTEST BIT OF ATTENTION TO ME FOR THE LAST TWO YEARS I’ve made it painfully clear how cheaper ebooks make more money than expensive ones, with reams of data and dozens of examples to support this.

4. If you are an agent, begin to morph your business into an estributor model, or you’ll sink along with the Big 6.

There. I’ve laid it all out for you. Now go have your meetings and act on it, or you’re not going to survive the next two years.

The story is about a square who lives in a two dimensional land.  The shapes in this 2D universe have no concept of more dimensions, they are more than happy to live their lives as squares, circles, triangles, and other various shapes.  That is until one day the square meets a sphere.  Then everything gets interesting.  The square learns of a whole universe, one filled with cubes and pyramids and bigger spheres, it seems amazing.  Then the square is introduced to the the line, the one dimensional object that cannot comprehend that there is life in two dimensions.

The original sphere, who served as the 2D square’s mentor throughout this process, is pleased with the square’s education.  Until the square asks about other dimensions.  Using a very logical mental process, the Square thinks t makes sense that if a one dimensional being couldn’t imagine a 2D being, and until recently he as a 2D could never have imagined a 3D universe, then the sphere might be part of a 4D universe and that universe might be part of an even larger universe.  The possibilities are endless.  The sphere becomes angry and asserts that 3D is it, there is nothing beyond three dimensions.  Eventually the square has to go back to 2D world and he becomes an evangelist or something, but that’s not the part of the story that sticks with me.

I like the idea of a complex world, where things are more than they seem.  What if the world was more complex than we could imagine?  And God, whoever he is, must be so unimaginably complex that we would be remiss in even trying to understand beyond our current dimensions?   What if God was infinite in His dimensions and our lives are simply the process, the journey, the story of being moved through those dimensions so that we can better know him?

Lately I have been struggling with some very difficult theological concerns, but thoughts like this bring me peace of mind.  They make me happy.  I have never been an advocate of blind faith, believing something just because it’s written somewhere or because your gut tells you to.  Instead I have always assumed that my faith was built on belief, grounded in reasonable assertions.  But what if those assertions are wrong?  Then you have the choice to believe anyway or re-question your assertions.

I’m choosing to do both but I am comforted through the process with the thought that life is both much more complex, and probably more simple than I believe it to be.  In other words, no matter what questions I have, there is probably a logical answer, a good answer.  I just might have to visit another dimension to get it.

Just Write

Write like it’s the only thing you want to do.  Write because you have to and don’t edit yourself.  It doesn’t matter if everything that comes out is terrible because you can always edit later.  What’s important is that you write and keep writing.

Let the words flow freely and don’t censor yourself

Don’t go back and correct your typos, if you see a grammar mistake, leave it alone.  Fix it later.  Speak in your voice and let that be the most you that you can put into yourself.  Embrace the small mistakes that sometimes can lead to the greatest insights.

If you stop, pick it up again

If you miss a day, start again the next day.  What ever you do, keep going.  Whatever you have done in the past is merely a prologue, it doesn’t write the rest of your story. You do, you decide, you act, you make things happen.  You either write or watch TV, you either write or watch a movie, you either write or you sleep.  Which will it be.

If you have a story to tell then the more you choose writing, the happier you will be

A website that helped me get into the practice was a site a called 750 Words.  It’s based on the thought that if you write about 3 pages everyday, that process will unlock your creativity for the day.  For me, it made me write every day and I will always be grateful to the owner of the site for that.  Check it out here.

I’m sure that I have more, but this will get you started.

You don’t trust business anymore, and I think that’s great.  You have this pain in your gut when you make a deal and it bothers you when you sell a contract.

That pain is wonderful

Those feelings deep down are signs that you are still alive, that you are human and breathing. That you want to live.  The acts of marketing, business, and signing contracts aren’t inherently bad or evil.  In fact they are some of the most beautiful and complicated human relationships we engage in.

The problems come when we think about relationships as transactions

Please be honest with yourself.  Anyone in busienss who has sold anything has a moment where they hated themselves.  At least once.  And the reason you hated yourself?  Because you focused on the transaction instead of the relationship.  It grates against our souls and if we give in to the temptation once, the next comes so much more easily.

People in general do not trust businesses

And the lack of trust isn’t caused by MCI or Enron or Lehman Brothers, people don’t trust because businesses don’t treat them like people.  They feel like transactions made to serve the corporate interests.  Now, the corporations don’t see it that way, but it doesn’t mean that it isn’t there.  We live in a world where the transaction trumps the relationship, only because most businesses are not designed to cultivate relationships, only to streamline transactions.  We make sure that the transaction costs less and less, keeping the price the same.  This practice, while monetarily beneficial to the corporation, has the added problem of devaluing the relationship with the client over time.  And the relationship is all the client cares about.

And relationships are becoming everything

Can’t you just feel that business needs to change.  Maybe you’ve written a book about it, or a blog post, or just felt it in your gut.  You have to see things are changing.  This is how.  Much as been made of relationships in business during the past 20 years.  But I think that they all miss three vital points.

The first is that this is a battle, a war between ideologies. The fight is between those who want to blank out, cut costs, treat people like numbers, and “just run their business” and those who understand that with so many choices in the marketplace, people are looking for companies that are willing to give them a relationship.  Clients recognize that a relationship is an asset, that it’s difficult to provide.  They will reward you for that.

This is a war, between businesses that simply want to sell stuff and those that value and cultivate relationships

The second vital point that this movement for relationships has not latched on to in any meaningful way, is that the human need for relationships is natural and rational. It makes a lot of sense.  But rarely do we delve into the psychology that underlies our basic motivations and ideals.  I think it’s knowable, you can understand it, and it will make the bigger picture so much clearer.  And clarity makes the details shine.  I think that this has been generally ignored in the past because it’s pretty difficult to talk about, and not at all easy to illustrate.

A third vital point missed, mostly because the underlying causes were unknown or ignored, is the impact of storytelling on communication. We tell stories, to ourselves as expectations of things to come or past, and to others in order to convey information.  It’s lovely that storytelling is emerging as a qualified topic of conversation, but I rarely see any information that goes beyond reciting some information you can find with a quick Google search.  Typically it involves some variation of the three act structure, maybe some hero’s journey mixed in, but there’s a much deeper level that will allow you to communicate more effectively more often.

Ultimately, if you decide to operate relationally, there will be serious consequences for you personally and your business.  You will have more clients, you will make more money, you will create an amazing reputation.  But I wonder if those will matter to you anymore?  Because when you start cultivating relationships beyond creating transactions, you begin to care more about relationships.  That may have unintended consequences.

Are you ready for this revolution?  Will you be able to make the change?  If you don’t or you aren’t, and you fight this movement, I guarantee that you will be left in the dust of those who are.

I couldn’t disagree more…

The industry as a whole will be fine, people are simply purchasing more books electronically.  This is just the newest trend, and since digital downloads don’t have any of the costs associated with print, they are much cheaper.  Or should be.

That’s where most publishers get into trouble

While the industry may be OK, Traditional Publishers may be in some trouble.  These days it also makes more fiscal sense for most authors to sell direct to readers through an electronic medium.  An example, Amazon splits the revenue 35/65 on $.99 book purchases, and 70/30 on purchases $2.99 and above.

So if you retained your digital rights to your next book, you could price it at $2.99 and receive a $2.09 royalty per sale instead of the standard $1.34 royalty (or 17%) from a traditional corporate publisher.  And how many more books will you sell at $2.99 than at $8.99?

There’s now potential for authors to make millions on their own

In fact, New York Times Bestseller Author, Barry Eisler, recently turned down a $500,000 advance from St. Martin’s Press on his next book, and decided to instead sell the novel direct to readers on the internet.  He cited that the royalties from many, many years of online sales would far eclipse the advance and small royalties from the publisher.

But many say $.99 is just too cheap, it’s devaluing books

But many “direct to reader” authors are using the $.99 price point to bring in new readers, essentially making their books an impulse purchase.  Then, when the readers are good and hooked, upping the price back to $2.99 or higher.

J.A. Konrath talked about this in his blog.  He adjusted the price of a novel, The List (not affiliate), to $.99 and it shot up to #15 on the Amazon Bestseller list. During the 15 days his novel was at $.99 he made $5647 and sold 1500 copies a day average.  Then he raised the price to $2.99 and made $4092 in 50 hours.Obviously not every author is going to make $9700 and sell 20,000+ books in 17 days, but many are selling thousands every month, many at $.99, and they are making a living.

If authors do well, then readers will do well

In the future I see more good authors receiving more of the fruits of their labors, which makes them want to write more, so that readers get more of what they want at a cheaper price.  How is everyone getting more of what they want a bad thing?

All of this change bodes well for the authors and the readers, just not the traditional corporate publishing industry.

Expectations are the key

To change someone you need to understand expectations.  We see the world through our expectations.  As we act, do, talk, exist, we expect to have certain real-world outcomes, also called experiences.  These “expected experiences” or expectations, are how we plan the world to work out for us.  They are what we expect to get from the world.

Happiness is easy to find, but so is disappointment

If those expectations are violated then we are disappointed, if they are met then we are content. But if somehow these expectations of our future experiences are exceeded, then we have the phenomenon known as happiness.

My wife is great at expecting things

For example, if I say I will do the dishes and then don’t, I have given her a reality that is below what she expected and she is disappointed.  If I do the dishes she got what she expected and is content because reality met her expectations. If the dishes aren’t done to her expectations then she will be disappointed.  But if I do a better job than she thought I would, she is mildly happy.

If I decide to be “Husband of the Year” and do the dishes, vacuum the carpet, give the dogs a bath, AND clean the bathroom on my day off, then she gets more than she expected and since reality exceeded her expectations she experiences joy and happiness.   It’s all very simple, but often goes unnoticed.

Are you willing to change yourself to change someone else?

Definitely think about this if you want to change someone’s life for the better:

• In what ways am I disappointing the one’s I care about?  The one’s I love? What are their expectations of me?  Are those realistic expectations?  Am I even close to meeting the realistic ones?
• How often am I just getting by?  If I were to grade my daily behaviors on a 1, 3, or 5 scale then how many would be in the middle?  How can I change my efforts from 3 (mediocre, content) to 5 (exceptional, happiness)?
• In my day to day interactions, business and personal, how can I exceed someone else’s expectations?

You have the power to change a life for the better, you just need to find out what their expectations are and learn to go beyond whatever that person expected from reality.  It will change their lives and yours.

Imagine a group of people that work normal jobs, have normal families, who don’t do anything unexpected, who get together once a day every week to sing some songs, hear someone talk about how to be better at being normal, say “Hi” to each other and discuss the week using the appropriate group language, and then go home to repeat the process again.

How would you rate that story? Is it an interesting story?  If that were a movie would you recommend that to your friends?

“No” you say, but you also think this doesn’t describe you

Your church is different of course.  Your pastor speaks from the Word and your worship is inspiring. Your church is “spirit filled” and whatnot.  And maybe that is true, but is that enough?  Chances are that your church and the boring church above are essentially the same because the church doesn’t conflict with society.

True: A story becomes extremely boring without conflict

The Christian Church’s current story in America has no passion or drive because it has no conflict.  These days there is nothing opposing the church in any serious way, there are no persecutors.  In fact, we have become the persecutors.

Without conflict, the story becomes stale and boring.

The Church feels comfy under this subtle, fuzzy blanket that society has placed over it.  Sometimes there is minor friction and that causes some static electricity but nothing major, nothing that makes anyone seriously uncomfortable.  So why has it come to this?  Why are we so complacent that nothing excites us anymore?

The answer is Jesus

Or rather the lack of following Jesus.  To most Christian lives, following Christ doesn’t conflict with society or it’s rules.  We can live a “good” life, consume all we want, live the existence that everyone (including non-christians) lives and we are just fine.  No conflict, no friction.

But, there’s friction and conflict galore in the Bible

But when we go to the gospels, and when we read them not to help ourselves but to understand Jesus, we find all the friction we could ever need.  Jesus calls us to leave everything and follow him, to sell everything and give it to the poor, to not even worry about food and clothes because we should trust that our father will give us everything we need, and finally he called us to make disciples of all nations.  Do we even try to do these things?  Are any of these acts, that were so important to Jesus, important to His bride?  No, because we have lost focus.

We have replaced following Jesus with following the church

We pledge our allegiance to the church, we talk about the church, we worship the church in many ways.  But the church is not the groom, it is the bride.  We are the bride.  This is simply another way to worship ourselves.  We don’t draw any identity from following Christ, we draw an identity from the church that we “belong” to.

We aren’t Christians so much as Churchians

Here’s what we can do instead

We can go back to the scriptures and put into practice what Jesus commands us to do.  We can try to pray more, or read our Bibles more, or go to church more, but Paul says that without Love these things are worthless, just empty sound and noise.  He’s right.  And how do these things show God’s love TO OTHERS?

That’s got to be the key.  Once we are willing to open our lives to others, to help the poor, sell our wealth to travel abroad and heal the sick, to actually make disciples as Christ calls us to do, we are simply playing.  Everything we do is sound and noise.  Worthless.

And I’m tired of being worthless

I want to mean something, to be more in God’s eyes.  Jesus said that many people will act religious, even performing miracles, but in the End he will look at them and say, “I don’t know you.”  All because they didn’t open their hearts to the plight of others, they closed themselves off to the poor and needy.  And therefore closed themselves off to Jesus as well.

I want Jesus Christ inside of me to rub violently against this world, and I want that friction to set the world on fire.

From gapingvoid - by Hugh MacLeod

What if I could live my life how I always dreamed of, what would that look like?

What if I actually learned to like people? AND all their issues and problems? AND  stopped dealing with them as problems themselves?  Stopped seeing them as a burden or a curious idea? Would I be able to help them more?

What if I expected less from life than I received, and therefore was happy all the time?

What if I stopped reading the Bible to solve my problems, and started reading because of the miraculous story it tells? Less for what it can do for me to benefit my life, and more for what it can teach me about God…?

What if I truly saw my life as a story, or a movie, and embraced every moment as a scene, where each line was dialogue, and crucial to moving the story forward?

What if I really saw myself as important?

What if by being important I could help others and make them feel important?

I don’t know what would change but I think it would be profound.  A better story to say the least.

Do I really have to say anything else?  This is why people don’t trust business and why people hate marketing.  This started me thinking.

It’s relationships that matter, not manipulating or getting someone to do something you want.  If you focus on them and the relationship, you are creating and you will get ahead.  So will they.  And, you get to keep your soul.

To answer that question

No. For an increasing number of people the stigma of “e-books” is fading and being replaced with “That book on my Kindle” or “That book on my Nook” (say that last one out loud, it’s fun).

Can we prove the trend?

http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/27/technology/amazon_earnings/index.htm

http://www.pcworld.com/article/218039/amazon_kindle_book_sales_soar.html

Now, there are many more people who prefer to hold a book over downloading a book on their Kindle, Nook, or iPad.  But which is showing an increase; downloads or paperbacks sold?  The links above only show Amazon, but as the largest book seller in the world I think we should consider this a valid trend.

This has all happened before

Let’s look to other industries that have been absolutely rocked by the onslaught of digital technology.  How many video stores do you see anymore?  Is that a good business to be in?  How about record stores?  Would you invest in a friend opening a store that sells CD’s?  It looks like books and bookstores will suffer the same fate, soon relegated to specialty and vintage sales.

My verdict? E-Book publishing used to be like the old “straight to video” movies, but it is increasingly becoming a preferred method for the readership.

Mrs. Average Kindle User just got a Kindle for Christmas and absolutely loves it.  At first she downloads a few authors that she knows from print, but she has to pay $9.99 or more for each title.  She loves their books, and downloading book is much cheaper than hardcover, so she’s happy with what she’s getting.  But after a month or two, she starts to look at Amazon’s book recommendations or the eBestsellers lists and notices other authors that she’s never seen before.  She has no idea whether these are “real” authors or not, but if their books are in the top 10 of all bestsellers then they must be worth trying right?  Plus they only charge $.99, which makes her suspicious, but that also makes purchasing less risky. She decides to go ahead and buy it.  She reads the book, finishes in two days actually.  It was a quick read.  And not too bad, at the very least it was worth a buck.

When in need of a quick read down the road, can you guess which novel she’ll buy?  Will she buy James Patterson for $12.99 OR will she go for John Locke or Jack Kilborn or Victorine Leiske at $.99 each?  Now her brain must do some interesting math.  She must decided, usually sub-consciously, whether reading Patterson gives her 13 times more enjoyment than the other books.  Unless an Expensive Book is HIGHLY recommended by a friend, I predict Mrs. Average Kindle User will begin to choose the less expensive authors more often.

I think that a majority of readers will pay more attention to the price of the work as opposed to whether or not it has a publisher.  And instead of being a deterrent, signaling a poor-quality work, the $.99 – $2.99 prices will draw people in at an ever quickening pace.  If the quality matches the price then why pay more?

So, most people don’t have a bias toward self-published books in an electronic format.  This is why currently, James Patterson is #12 on the Amazon eBestseller list and John Locke is #1, and #4, and #9.  And all seven of his books are in the top 100.  Locke is self-published but he’s sold 350,000 copies in the last 2 months, and his popularity is growing.  And I’ll let you in on a secret… his writing is not great.  But people BUY what is popular.  That may change someday but for now I think self-publishing in the electronic format is the way to go.

Don’t get me wrong, the major publishing houses are still the dominant players and if you want your book in the brick and mortar stores your best bet is still to shop your script around and hope for the best. But the future is certainly in the hands of those who don’t follow conventional wisdom right now.

Can you believe that digital downloads are more popular than either hardbacks or paperbacks?

This summer, ebook sales outpaced hard covers on Amazon. The ratio is now 3 to 1 in favor of digital downloads. And as of February the digital books have overtaken paperbacks. Digital downloads now sell more copies than either paperbacks or hard covers, and selling more than both categories combined is right around the corner. The book world is changing, and it’s a beautiful thing.

Why this dramatic change is happening

The drivers for this epic change are price and availability. Since the books are offered digitally, available for download to Kindle or similar device, the price can be much lower. Correction, the price for independent authors can be much lower. Traditional publishers must cover non-digital costs within the digital pricing structure, and therefore they must raise the price considerably. This offers the brand new Kindle owner an interesting choice.

A new way of pricing books

Kindle owners download the new James Patterson, of course, and maybe the new Grisham paying $9.99 each. The question is does that reader want to keep paying $7-10 per digital book? Maybe, if he or she is fanatical about bestselling authors. The more likely scenario is that the Kindle owner will look at the best seller lists and see 20 or 30 books priced at just $.99. What?!? A whole book for only $.99? So they will download a sample of the cheap book, read it, and at that moment their brains have to decide if James Patterson’s writing is 10x’s better than the book they just previewed. Lately, and increasingly, people have decided that the expensive books are not as worth it. If you have the chance to buy an ok to pretty good book for $.99 you are much less likely to pay $9.99 for a good book. You might buy one down the road, but not as often as you buy the less expensive novels and books.

Infinite space and the spread of digital readers

Availability plays a role as well, in two parts. One is the shear amount of product available to purchase. Since writers and authors now can go direct to the consumer, many of them are publishing them. Granted, this leads to some very questionable writing hitting the digital shelves. But I am confident that companies like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and the like will set up the systems so that the cream rises to the top. In fact, their recommendation systems, based on customer purchasing behavior, has already catapulted several independent authors into the Kindle stratosphere. The second part of availability is the Kindle itself and it’s rapid growth. Quality hand held book readers are vital to this change, and widespread adoption of eReaders will be the driving force behind the demise of book store as we know them. They will join the ranks of the video rental store, the record store, and the pager store. Relegated to the specialty and sometimes novelty collector, popular book consumption will see the wide spread adoption and increased consumption. Just not in physical form.

How do Authors make money?

Financially, the benefits are amazing. Where as an author may receive 14-17% on their digital downloads when going through traditional publishers, Amazon offers royalties of 35-70%. Even when you take into consideration any advances given (which I hear are shrinking every year for new authors), the amount of money you can make during the life of the book far outweighs any advance. And make no mistake, it is the life of the book. That’s the beauty of the digital landscape. There are no overstocks of product, no dusty bookshelves, only bit and bytes when you want them.

Almost more importantly this gives authors the means to control their products. Each author now determines the future of his or her creation, either how successful or unsuccessful it becomes. This has not always been the case. When traditional publishers buy your book, they purchase it’s soul, and they can rip it’s heart out if they choose to. Now an author can work on a novel till it’s done to their satisfaction, create a cover they think is best, there only a one step approval process.

The future is so bright for authors

Any serious author looking to make a living with their writing now has the opportunity. The culture is shifting and the economics make sense, the only thing that doesn’t make sense is not writing and publishing for all to see.  For a great blog about the shift taking place in the publishing world this is your best resource.   It links to an article about JOhn Locke, an author currently (March 2011) in the#1 and #4 slots on the Amazon Bestsellers lists.  he sold 350,000 books this year and he only began publishing last spring.

Damn him.  He got there first.  I’ve been writing about this for years, but he’s currently better at shipping than I am.  For now.

But he is exactly right, this is where business and marketing are heading

We are becoming more connected and seeing the reversing trend of business going back to it’s roots, becoming a smaller community by the day. We are held accountable, we are known by our actions, and every business now has to comply with these new standards or fall by the wayside. You cannot ignore customer relationships anymore. You have to pay attention. Or else you will die.

Now, Gary talks a lot about Social Media, specifically the massive connectedness of the internet

And he’s probably right to do so. But the internet, social media, and all these things are merely tools and focusing on them only complicates the matter for everyone. What I mean is that local businesses and small businesses have forgotten HOW to form relationships with clients, like they are going to learn it on the fly with Social Media?

I like Social Media as a tool for connecting but you have to know how to connect first and then you can use it effectively

What story are you telling? What is their story and how does it merge successfully with yours? What stage of the relationship are in with your clients? Are you just acquaintances, friends, or are you partners? How do you know which it is? If you can’t answer these questions then you need to reevaluate what you know about business and marketing. In fact, we will start the re-education right now and change some vocab.

Business is no longer “selling stuff”

Sales is no longer about dollar transactions.  And marketing no longer means tricking people into buying things they don’t want. You can try to say to yourself that you don’t see it that way, that you know better, and that you have better definitions for business, sales, and marketing…

But you don’t, and you need to stop lying to yourself

It’s ingrained by the systems that we have set up to see these words in a certain light. A dark, red light. Deep down we feel bad about what we do but it doesn’t have to be that way. It wasn’t meant to be that way.

If you focus on money, on sales, you will focus on transactions

Transactions are not relationships and people can sense when you are not treating them as humans. The transactional mindset will often work long enough to get the job done, but if you look at it carefully it just doesn’t hold up over time. That’s why so many people close their doors, they don’t form relationships. The current system is set up to perpetuate transactions and people are not designed to love transactions. We are designed to love people. We are created to bond and connect with others. This is something that the current business atmosphere cannot comprehend or help to accomplish. It’s flaccid when it comes to relationships.

This needs to change. It will change.  And your clients are forcing the change. If you own a business, and you aren’t setting yourself up to pamper and cultivate your client relationships, your business is set to be abandoned. Your clients will leave you and the last one will turn out the lights.  You will go down alone.

The other option is to set up processes to make relationships easier

Just because you focus on cultivating relationships doesn’t mean that it has to be by the seat of your pants with no rules or guides. In fact, human relationships work in easily recognizable and understood ways. You can set up your business to be a part of that change.

More on that another time…

His name is Jim Cecil.

Never heard of him?  Just Google his name and you’ll see that every industry insider calls him a legend, brilliant, and marketing master.  He created the Nurture Marketing System and continues his quest to educate business owners about the benefits of relationships over transactions.

I found his book, Nurturing Customer Relationships, on Google Books as I was waiting for my wife to finish trying on clothes.  I had a lot of time to kill.  As I read the description and the underlying philosophy, it was shockingly apparent to me that this man was elaborating on the same things I’ve written about for years.  The further I went into his philosophy and background, the more apparent it became that this was a man I wanted to meet.  So I commented on his blog and sent him an email asking for some of his precious time.  He graciously accepted.

After meeting with him for 2 hours, I have to say the man lives up to his reputation.  Jim rains down information and gives freely of what he has.  He represents the quintessence of his philosophy in his generosity and attention to the personal relationships he cultivates.  I could not have had a better time.

Some Key Points he shared:

• Sometimes Luck Plays a Part – Much of Jim’s successes began from being in the right place at the right time.  But I’m sure that without his spirit of initiation, that inner desire to start things and create, he would never have capitalized on those lucky beginnings.  He’s proactive and open to possibilities.
• Give More Than You Take – Very often, Jim cites Napoleon Hill and for good reason.  Many of Hill’s maxims and much of his advice is as relevent today (sometimes more so) as it was when he wrote it.  He said there are Givers and Takers and Givers will always outperform the Takers.  Giving more than you get is key, but also…
• Give More Than They Expect – I’m a huge believer that expectations are the primary drivers of behavior and emotion and Jim hit on something that I try to practice in everything I do and teach.  Exceed their expectations, always.  If you do then your customers, your co-workers, your friends, your family will be happier.  It’s that simple.  Jim said that this might be the key to everything else you do in marketing.
• Find the Right People for the Job – It’s amazing how many companies waste millions of dollars on hiring-firing-retraining when simple steps could be taken to find the right person in the first place.  Jim’s working with sales managers right now to implement systems that aid in the hiring process.  He found great power in salespeople developing relationships with clients but found that power being squandered with the wrong people time and time again.  Now he helps sales managers develop systems to find the right people.

If you are reading this and know that your sales force is not performing up to it’s capacity, I would highly suggest you research Jim Cecil and Nurture Marketing (http://www.nurturemarketing.com).  At the very least his book is great investment for your library (HERE on Amazon, not an affiliate link) and an invaluable resource.

Looking at the key points above, you might think that they are old hat.  But which are you consciously attempting everyday?  Are you giving more than getting?  What about exceeding your client’s expectations?  Are you pushing forward and trying new things or are you relying on the same old to “get you through”?  We all need reminders and Jim Cecil is a master at reminding us in a fresh new way.

Thanks Jim for your time today, I’m sure we will be in touch soon.

If you can’t define something, you don’t understand it.

Paul Schrag and Mary K. Johnson of the local Tacoma marketing team ISIRIS started off the mini-conference with a helpful insight into this lack of a mindset.  According to them, those who support the sustainability movement in the business community suffer from a lack of cohesive  story.  In other words, when business owners talk about going green or sustainability, the very people they are trying to help tune out.  This represents a real problem for many people who are passionate about environmental issues, because if no one is listening to you then what’s the point of talking?

Paul says being relevant is the key.  If you are concerned about the future of this planet then you have to stop over-using statistics and scientific evidence.  People will listen to your numbers, but rarely will they HEAR you.  Instead, he urges anyone who cares about persuading others to become more green to find some relevancy between the movement and the people they hope to convince.

It all comes back to merging stories.  Where does the green movement and the intended audience share a story?  To begin, the business should start with broad themes.  Control, connection, and balance are all possible themes and from there you find real life examples of those themes in your audience’s life.  Then the business should find the analogy to that real life example in their own processes and beliefs.  Core Theme — Current Behavior — New Analogy —- Broader Understanding for Audience.

Again, marketing is about relationships and communication.  Communication is about stories.  If you want to be an advocate for green or sustainability then you need to construct a great story!  Simple as that.

Thinking that some education about sales or marketing would help, Robert bought his first sales book from Amazon.

Although he never liked or trusted “salespeople”, he thought this might be the way to get new and better customers.  Inside, he was horrified at the thought of turning into a “do whatever it takes to close the deal” kind of person, but what other choice did he have?  So he clicked the submit button and waited.

When the book came, Robert took some time on a Tuesday morning to look through it with a highlighter.  He skimmed most of it, read a couple of chapters, then threw the book across the table in frustration.

Besides being somewhat non-practical, the book hinged on Robert’s willingness to manipulate his client relationships.  It spoke of target markets and getting your “targets” into a funnel where they will automatically buy from you because you created a system that compels them to buy.  Robert wanted none of that.  He wanted simply to get to know his customers and for them to get to know him.  He figured his work would speak for itself and good work would prevail.  But that wasn’t happening.

After a few similar reading experiences at the library, Robert attended a short seminar presumably about marketing.  It was a last ditch attempt at keeping his business going.

The room was filled with artists and creative types, some of whom Robert knew.  The Presenter got up in front of the group and began the talk by letting everyone in the room know that they were right, that marketing and sales had been hi-jacked and stood for manipulation.  He said they were right for not wanted to be salespeople or marketers and correct in not wanting to “market” their art.  That the way most people talked about it or went about it was dirty, and beneath them.  Robert was instantly interested.

The Presenter asked what each person thought business was, what they thought marketing was, and what they thought sales meant?  When Robert and his new friends really got down to it, they thought all these things were about making someone buy things that they don’t really need.  The Presenter corrected them gently.  It wasn’t about buying and selling products, it was about forming and sustaining quality relationships.

There was a mass eye roll in the crowd.  “Relationships, really?!?”, they each said to themselves.

The Presenter smiled and continued on. “Most of you think that business is simply a transaction, one person has product that someone wants and that someone is willing to give money (or something of equal value) for that product.  But the transaction is NOT the whole relationship!  How did that person find out about the product?  How did the transaction go?  Did it lead to other transactions?  Is the transaction the only thing we should think about?”, The Presenter started to get passionate and animated.

“Almost every marketing book you will ever read talks and talks about the transaction as if it were the sole reason for being in business, but is it?  Isn’t that why you feel dirty and guilty about marketing?”  As soon as he said “guilty”, Robert knew that The Presenter was right.  He did feel guilty about selling to friends and family, and feeling like he had to sell to everyone he met, and making a target market, and all the implied phoniness that went with it all.  Marketing was all about transactions, and Robert was done with it.

The Presenter softened, “You don’t have to feel that way you know.  But what’s the alternative?  Suffering for your art? So either you become a phony and “sell out” or you live life barely scraping by while fewer and fewer people get to experience your art… I think that there is another way.  Because I used to be like you, hated selling and marketing and the manipulation that they required.  I struggled to find a different way, and after 12 years this is it.”  The Presenter kneed down, and he spoke with a force of purpose and authority.

“You will no longer think of your business as a burden, if you do then you need to start something new.  Your mission is to create art that brings light and life into peoples lives, then you will help bring it to those people that “get” it by building quality relationships.  Your art is your creation, your business is building relationships into partnerships and connecting more deeply with your fellow human beings.”

The Presenter stood up and looked at everyone in the crowd at once, “Now, who is ready to stop selling and start connecting with people?”

Everyone in the crowd smiled deeply and nodded their heads.

To be continued…

Interested in more? Drop me a note, ask a question, whatever is easier.

Both individually and as an organization, values drive the decisions we make every day and shape how we deal with whatever comes our way. You will achieve the greatest successes when you partner with a person or organization that has the same values as you.

The choice we have is whether we actively create our values, recognizing them for what they are, or passively allow them to motivate us. The difference is that knowing your values and actively following them makes you both consistent and credible, two major components of gaining trust in others.

Here are some steps you can take to find and follow your values:

1. Your morality – This is what most people think of when they hear “values” but it is only a component. Things like honesty, integrity, and fairness are just assumed nowadays, and you won’t get very far without them. You need to have a strong moral base, but then again so does everyone else if they expect to do business for any length of time.

Basic morals do not differentiate or set you apart, they are the price of admission. Make sure you know them and live by them or you will have a bumpy ride through life.

2. Find your strengths – Your strengths are where your natural talents, skill sets, and knowledge bases converge.

Talents are what you are naturally adept at, ways of doing things that you just get and know how to do such as: creating and understanding ideas, communicating one on one or in groups, competition, or analytic breakdowns.

Skill sets are applications of knowledge that you have learned to do better than 90% of the people you know. Some examples would be repairing electronics, creating web pages, or tutoring children.

Knowledge bases are areas of information that you know better than 90% of the world. Maybe you know all about aviation, or plumbing, or local history, or even marketing. These areas are your expertise.

A fantastic resource for this is Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton. (Full Disclosure: This is a sponsored link)

3. Giftings – Christianity has a list of special callings that people receive, and I believe that people are born with them whether they choose to be a Christian or believe in God at all. Regardless of whether you believe or not, finding your natural gift will help you to understand yourself and your organization.

Are you a teacher (someone who wants others to understand), a “preacher” (someone who must talk to others and tell them what they know), a counselor (someone who wants to emotionally help others), a giver (someone who loves to give and see people succeed through that), an encourager (someone who sees the best in others), a leader (someone who sees the right road to take and pulls people in that direction), an administrator (someone who loves the details and supporting other people)?

4. Desires and Beliefs – What do you know absolutely to be true? (Beliefs) What do you want or wish to be true? (Desires) Finding these answers takes some serious introspection but your desires and beliefs will determine your actions just as readily as any of the other areas.

Now comes the hard part you’ve been waiting for…

Create a list of answers for each of the items above: morals, strengths, gifts, and beliefs/desires. Separate them into the four categories and use as many words as you have to in each answer, just be sure you understand what you mean.

Next, determine which ones truly drive your life and decision making. Eliminate those that do not.

Now, can you combine any of the answers? Are some saying the same thing? Consolidate all the answers that you can, looking for ideas that are similar or close to one another.

Go back through the list if it still has more than 6 answers left, which ones are the MOST important? Get the list down to the 6 key drivers for your decisions.

This next part is harder than it sounds, so be patient. Take your 6 or fewer answers and find one word for each that encapsulates the entire answer. (e.g. “I really enjoy helping others succeed” would be giving or counseling or leading or serving depending on the context. Only you know the true answer.)

This last step is VERY important. Take one answer and explain it to yourself by telling at least 2 stories about a time when it truly guided your decision making process. Be as detailed and thorough as possible. If you have trouble thinking of 2 or more examples then the answer is probably not the right one.

Once you find your values and can articulate them, you are ready to start actively living them. Your business will work best with another business that has and lives the same values as you, which is why it is extremely important to understand what you value first.

There is so much more to this topic, but we have a start here. I’ll leave you with this:

Values are how you do things, your “passion” is what you choose to apply your values to, and your purpose is where all your values and your strongest passions exist in harmony.

We tell stories because they are about conflict.

One man against nature, or another man (including himself), or against man’s own creations (machines). The good stories always show something to watch out for; something that might diminish your resources, that might take away from what you already have. They relay to us a problem on the horizon, not solutions, at least not at first. The problem catches our attention, and only after we have bought into this problem do we look for the solutions.

Because humans have learned how useful stories can be, we inherently pay attention to them. We want to know when the conflict is coming, where the dangers lie. We simulate them in our heads, putting ourselves in place of the main character, so that we can truly see what’s coming on the horizon.

Stories are about a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it, and we all can relate to that in one way or another.

What stories are your customer’s telling? Where are they on their journey? What stories are you telling? Where are YOU on your journey?

These two must be reconciled, your journey (story) and the client’s journey (story). Where the two meet is where you will see increased communication, better understanding, and more sales. If you can truly tap into the real power of stories, the world will sit at your feet.

So,when talking to a client, relate to him or her in story.

Describe the client as the lead character, a person who wants something desperately (Need). Then describe or show the biggest conflict getting in the way of that desire (Problem).

But don’t tell your client the ending right away…

Because there isn’t one right now.

This story will go round and round, repeating endlessly, until a change is made. Until the conflict is overcome somehow. There will be an outcome eventually, but will it be best for the client?

YOU, as the trusted advisor, have to craft an ending to the story for the client. That is your job and really what you have trained for all these years; to provide great endings to client’s stories. If you do not, the client’s conflict will continue and all their time and energy will be wasted in fighting enemies they never needed to fight.

In the beginning, give them the lead Character, the Desire, and the Opposition but save the ending for the right moment, when you’ve built the tension so high the client can’t stand it anymore.

I hate to tell you, but your potential clients probably feel this way about you.

When you first meet a potential client, you should have something to say. Commonly called the “elevator pitch”, it’s crucial to starting the relationship with your client on the right foot.

If you think of this as a relationship then the elevator pitch is just the introduction. And being so, it is important that you DON’T JUST TALK ABOUT YOURSELF in the beginning. They don’t want to hear it and they don’t really care.

The client doesn’t care about you or your services, at least not yet. They care about their problems. So what if you are a consultant or marketing guru, how does that specifically help them? So what if you have “world class service” or “assist small business with outsourced marketing solutions”? What does that really mean to them? Those things are ALL about YOU!

The trick is to think about the client in front of you. Think about their story. A story is a character who has a problem which creates a desire, and then he or she overcomes obstacles to get that desire. Find their story’s problem and use that as the base for your pitch. What do they lack in their life that causes them to want to something? Or, what problem does your product solve and how does their life FEEL without your solution?

Once you have figured out their specific problem, now you have to overcome their unconscious blindness. This is the same reflex that helps everyone “bleep” of over commercials or read a billboard and instantly forget what what we saw. We saw them but didn’t really SEE them. Our brains are designed to filter out information we deem as un-extraordinary or useless.

People can do the same thing with your pitch. When you tell them what you do for a living, do people say “That’s interesting, tell me more?” or “Really! How do you do that?”

They should. That’s the whole point isn’t it? To build curiosity and open up more dialogue? If all the client says is “That’s nice” or “Oh, that’s interesting” and they do not follow up with a question, then you have lost.

Problems are the focus, but the proper analogy, or story, will shine the spotlight on those problems and overcome the client’s blindness.

For example, when someone asks me what I do, I tell them that I “un-wrinkle christian business men.” Invariably I get the same quizzical look and the question, “What do you mean?” My answer provoked curiosity and continued the conversation.

Then I extend the analogy by showing that Christian men who own their own businesses are treated by their churches like a cheap wrinkled suit, only acknowledged when they are direly needed. I show these men how to “un-wrinkle” their lives and business so that they can use all the talent and skill God gave them to use.

I create a story that resonates. It gets attention because it is a specific problem that a specific audience understands. So:

1) Really know who you are talking to or want to talk to.

2) Understand their story, including the problems that propel or stall their story.

3) Develop an analogy that shows their problem, how it affects them, and briefly how you help.

4) ALWAYS lead with their story’s problem.

This is just the beginning of the conversation, but at least you will be on the right foot. That counts for a lot in a relationship.

Describe the client as the lead character, a person who has a problem which creates a want. Then describe or show the biggest conflict getting in the way of fulfilling that desire.

But don’t tell your client the ending right away…

Because there isn’t one right now.

This story won’t end until a change is made.

YOU, as the trusted adviser, have to craft an ending to the story for the client. If you do not, the client will continue to waste all their time and energy on the current outcome which should be worse than with your solution.

In the beginning, give them the lead Character, the Desire, and the Opposition but save the ending for the right moment, when you’ve built the tension so high the client can’t stand it anymore.

(Did the economy and your customers all seem to abandon you at the same time?  Have you ever felt like the business owner in the picture?)

I’m sure that you would agree with the statement, “An investment expects a return”. That is the very nature of investing; you make an investment of time and money because you anticipate a much greater return.

But what if your investment isn’t paying off? Could you say that about your business lately? Does it feel like you are working harder to earn the same amount of business that you got so easily just a couple years ago? Are your sales down, maybe even just above the point where you may have to close the doors?

This last year, did you find yourself thinking “There has to be an easier way to get more customers…” or “I want to expand but how can I in this economy?”

You are not alone.

Last year, thousands of businesses just like yours closed their doors.  Their investment didn’t return what they hoped. But a lucky few had the opposite experience.  Sales were up, costs were down, and as a reward they were able to expand. These “lucky” few don’t have to be an exception to the rule, you can be up there with them.

I bet you are passing on the same great opportunities that these competitors jump on.   You don’t need anything new, right? What’s worked in the past WILL ALWAYS work, right?  How’s that been working LATELY?  If you keep going down the road you are on, it is likely you’ll find yourself working harder and harder to keep your customers, working even harder to find new customers, and you won’t be in the place you wanted.

There is a better way and I would like to show it to you.