I previously wrote about our efforts to improve our marketing material, to stop talking so much about ourselves and start talking about how to solve our clients’ pains.  A company called Square2Marketing (writers of Reality Marketing Revolution)has been helping us make these changes, and that over time I would update on the progress.  The time has come for an update…

Our website is the first major change we’ve made.  It is still a work in progress, but we’ve taken some huge strides towards where we want to be.  We’ve defined the most common pains of our clients and have really focused on addressing those pains on the website, starting right on the home page.  We are continuing to build content that will be more informative to our potential clients, which is key.  I think of it like having a storefront with a big sign in the window:  if no one that sees the sign bothers to come in and look around or do business, does it do any good to have the sign?

At efficience.us, we point out the pains that our clients face and the solutions we have for those pains.  Providing information and education around these pains like we’ve done right on the home page (see below) is a huge focus point.  This is followed up inside the site with our “remarkables”, or unique solutions for solving those pains.

Offering valuable, interesting information online for free, aka No Risk Offers, allows us to get our content out to people that are interested in what we have to offer.  At the same time we are building an email base of potential clients that we can market to with things such as educational webinars, lunch & learns, videos and Facebook.   Having 50 highly qualified potential clients is much more beneficial than 200 that would not likely use your services.  Knowing who your potential clients are makes it easy to stay in front of them by sending out monthly datasheets, newsletters, or industry stats…keeping them reminded of you and informed.

This is all part of the marketing plan that we’re working on, adding more remarkable content as we go.  We migrated my blog to our website a while ago, we have added the blogs of team members, and will soon be adding an Efficience blog that we will all contribute to.  We are really happy with the changes we’ve made so far and excited about the additional changes coming.  I’ll keep you posted on the evolution of our marketing strategy and how these changes are working to help our business.

A few weeks back when we were visiting our office in India, we took a few days and flew on over to Bangalore to attend the EO India regional event called RIE.  The India EO events are always a great time, as they’re known for bringing in fascinating speakers and holding dinner events in extraordinary places such as castles, old forts or roof top venues.  This year, staying true to their reputation, they brought in Praful Patel, the Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Vijay Mallya, the Chairman of Kingfisher Airlines and Rasmus Ankersen, a self proclaimed high performance anthropologist.

The latter, Mr. Ankersen, was especially intriguing to me.  He has done some very unorthodox research around the world to back up his hypothesis of determining how to spot potential in someone when it may not be presently visible.  Ankersen is a native of Denmark, has written 3 bestselling books and has been in training camps in Moscow, Jamaica, Africa and Brazil (to name a few) to train with and help produce some of the most successful athletes worldwide.

Ankersen traveled to Moscow to study the training of the top tennis players in the world.  He went to Jamaica to study the best sprinters in the world, to Kenya for the best long distance athletes, and Korea for the best female golfers in the world.

Checkout this video of Ankersen discussing his theory.

His research thus far has resulted in some key factors in spotting potential:

1) Always look behind a performance.

To determine what caused a performance, you have to see what was behind the performance itself.  Was it raw talent that can be coached, or was it pure technique and heart without much raw talent?

2) Magnify what you can see.

Look at what you have and don’t let it be static. A vision of what is possible with someone is important to see where the future is with them.

3) Know Yourself.

Know your capabilities, and know the difference between what you can improve and what you can’t change.  If you are gifted at growing managers of people on a business team and have a candidate with amazing analytical skills, but low people skills, you could develop their people skills, but couldn’t contribute much to the growth of their analytical skills.

4) Give hunger greater priority than ability.

Hunger is something that you can’t teach, and is much harder to pull out of someone than the skills necessary to be the best.  If two people have the same basic skills, the one that demonstrates the hunger is the one you should be watching.

5) Stay Open Minded.

In order to do this, it requires that you not judge a candidate that may take more time to mature.  Keep people curious about their potential and don’t feed them negatives that can hold them back.

6)  Have the courage to believe in potential.

It requires courage to believe that you can take someone that is not yet there and ripen them to reach their potential, even if it will take time.  In our India office, we seek the candidates that are hungry to grow and learn, even if they possess less experience in software skills, and bring them along to blossom into their full potential.

Listening to Ankersen’s talk made me see the similarities between being a coach and being a manager.  If you have a camp that consistantly leads with medals, then it says something about the opportunity to grow the talent that is around you.  What are you doing to pull out the best in the people around you? 

Here’s another video of one of Ankersen’s interviews.

Some really great things have been happening on our visit to our India office.  In addition to hiring 2 new developers, 1 tester and a designer, we shared a lot on improving our projects and engaged our R&D team in some awesome discussion on new products. Outside of the office, we broke off into 2 teams and Chris and I enjoyed our first game of Cricket.

A few days ago we had the pleasure of visiting a very unique community called Auroville.  Auroville came to be in February of 1968 when some 5,000 people representing 124 nations came to India and participated in a ceremony.   They each contributed soil from their homeland as a symbol of unity, that Auroville would be a place where people “of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities.”  The place where they joined to perform this ceremony is in the picture below…and it is one of the most amazing things I’ve seen yet.

What do you see?  It looks like a bunch of trees…beautifully and carefully placed to grow together, but looks can be deceiving.  This is a Banyan Tree…and it’s all ONE TREE. How it works is that the tree’s branches grow out, but as they continue to grow out laterally, along the way new roots grow out from the branches and down to the earth to support additional growth.  The new roots can be so thick that they appear to be separate trees.  It’s simply a beautiful sight to behold, and a perfect location for the unity ceremony.

The growth of the Banyan Tree occurred to me as a great analogy to business.  Building anything, whether it’s a business or a house, requires a foundation.  What many companies experience, however, is that their foundation cannot support their growth, causing them to fall.  The reason the Banyan Tree doesn’t fall is because it continues to add to its foundation as it grows. 

Good businesses are built with several layers of support that push information up and down the hierarchy.  Without a good foundation to support those layers, the flow is disrupted and bad information can be shared, usually resulting in bad decisions.  If you’re in the business world, you have probably experience this in some form or fashion.  Small issues can usually be corrected, but bigger issues can easily lead to business failure.  For this reason, having the right people and the right processes in place is vital to creating a strong foundation.  As your business grows, so do your people and your processes. 

After writing the first part of this blog I decided to do a little more research on the Banyan Tree, and what I discovered was pretty interesting.  I found that in the ancient language Gujarati, the word “Banya” translates to “Grocer or Merchant”.  This stems from when long ago, Hindu merchants would conduct business under Banyan Trees because of the shade they provided.

Can your business grow outward and upward like the Banyan Tree?  Does your foundation have layers of support…people and processes…to handle your growth?

People look at things in very different ways.  We all have our own rose colored glasses that affect how we view the world and 2 people seeing the exact same thing can easily come to 2 completely different conclusions.  This is a matter of interpretation.

Sometimes it’s difficult for people to see through their rose colored glasses to see what actually works, and what doesn’t work.  For example, thinking that you can jump off the empire state building and go up instead of down…that won’t work, and will soon make those rose colored glasses very, very red.  A little less extreme…say you leave LA planning to drive to NYC, and your rose colored glasses say it will be fun to just “wing it” and you drive west. Does this work or does the Pacific get in your way?  Looking at the journey through rose colored glasses doesn’t render reality.

Many people require something along the lines of a scoreboard to have a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t.  Say you and I are on opposing teams in the sport of your imagination, and we are about to compete.  We both brag about our teams being better than the other, but how is that possible when you beat me 10 fold every time?  Do I have credibility to make this argument?

Those of you that read my blog regularly know that my entrepreneurial spirit resides in my DNA.  I am a capitalist (knowing it is not perfect) all the way, and my rose colored glasses see that this system provides choice and freedom for every individual to be and accomplish whatever they choose.  Many people choose not to use this freedom to their advantage, but the option is there no less.

Looking at it from the other end of the spectrum, without my rose colored glasses; we have a communist system that spends its time planning how to control access to goods and services and pays people to tell you what you can or can’t do with your life.  They have their own rose colored glasses, which show them that it’s better for everyone to be the same, save a few elite.

Take away the glasses and look at the scoreboard.  You have the US economy’s total output at 14.5 Trillion, compared to 1.5 Trillion for Russia. That is nearly 10 times more.  This debate has ensued for 60 years, despite what the numbers on the board show.  Most of our poor still have a much higher standard of living than the majority of Russia’s citizens, who are all the same.   Their citizens are deprived at the cost of being the same and eliminating classes.

When deciding what works and what doesn’t, it’s only relevant to what you are trying to accomplish.  Do you want a high standard of living for everyone, a choice of products, higher profits, and freedom to pursue your own entrepreneurial spirit?

AchieveStreet.com.

Happy New Year to you as you pursue all of your dreams, and best wishes using a process that will turn them into a reality.

As we celebrate this weekend with our family and friends, I find it a reminder to realize the significance of the 2 words that you get when you separate Thanksgiving to get Thanks and Giving.

Go back with me for a moment and remember how there were just 50 pilgrims, only half of the original settlers, that managed to endure the touch environment and lack of food their first winter. It was a Patuxet Indian named Squanto that helped the pilgrims communicate with the other Indians and learn their ways of harvesting. On that first day of Thanksgiving, they celebrated the Giving of the Indians and Thanks to God for their lives. Looking back, what we call Thanksgiving today is really a celebration of the Giving done by the Indians and Thanks for the gift that allowed the settlers to survive, thus founding the great nation we live in today.

Growing up I was in a scarcity mindset, and I would horde and protect the things I had obtained. I felt like I shouldn’t give because I didn’t have much to give. It took life experience and books like Deepak Chopra’s The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success to open up to the Law of Giving and steer away from a scarcity mindset.

Chopra says “stopping the circulation of energy is like stopping the flow of blood. Whenever blood stops flowing, it begins to clot, to stagnate. That is why you must give and receive in order to keep wealth and affluence- or anything you want-circulating in your life”. This applies to anything you want more of which includes the energy of love. Want more money, success and love in your life? What if you gave more of each?

So what is the best way to put the law of giving in action? Chopra says “make a decision that any time you come into contact with anyone, you will give them something. It doesn’t have to be in the form of material things; it could be a flower, a compliment, or a prayer. In fact the most powerful forms of giving are non-material”.

Have a wonderful Thanks…..and plenty of Giving this holiday weekend as we celebrate our freedoms and all the material and non material abundance around us.

On a separate note, check out this article in the WSJ that is a nice follow-up to my previous blog on investing.

If you recall, I wrote a blog not too long ago on the Black Swan, with emphasis on its take of an Extremistan world, where living in a scalable world makes you subject to extreme events. With the recent movie Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, I’ve been thinking a lot about this theory, and about what caused the stock market crash. Was it really because of the greedy types on Wall Street?

A big portion of the Black Swan is on how the Gaussian bell curve can measure risk in a world not subject to extreme fluctuations, but it doesn’t come close to measuring the risk that is associated with things that can range more than 3 standard deviations from the mean. Things such as wealth, stocks, bonds, book sales, movies, or CD’s are an example of this.

Since Wall Street uses this form of measurement to analyze risk, they gave everyone that warm and fuzzy feeling when thinking about how much loss they were exposed to. In reality, an extreme black swan event blew out all of their ability to measure the risk they were taking, causing all the major investment banks to push their existence to the edge, and not all survived.

This seems to me to be a much better explanation of what happened than one that blames all of the Wall Street players for being too greedy. If this was so, why would so many people jeopardize their careers and livelihood, all just to make more money?

Having been part of the investment world for over 20 years, and associating with the Wall Street players, I don’t feel that this is a plausible excuse. It would seem from an observation stand point that no matter what the income level, people are always striving to do better. Do you remember thinking that if you could only get to $25,000/year, everything would be great? Then when you got there, suddenly all it took was $50,000/year for everything to be great? Then $100,000…and so on, and so on.

If making a lot of money makes you greedy, then what about Bill Gates or Oprah? Have you seen Google or Intel’s earnings and revenue lately? In the last quarter, Google made 2.2 Billion, Microsoft’s profits are up 51%, and the late, great superstar Michael Jackson…he made 250 Million, which Forbes claims to be more than any living celebrity superstar. Does greed extend to the afterlife?

Does Wall Street, just like tech companies, writers, producers, or musicians, make lots of money because they live in the scalable world of the Black Swan rather than because they are greedy?
So what does this mean to you if you are trying to grow a business? The model of reality that you use is important in understanding the risk that you are taking. Depending on if you live in a scalable or non-scalable world, the risk that you are taking may not be what you think it is.

Have you thought about the idea of “free” as a business model before? You know…give it away for free and then get paid in some other format. It’s nothing new. The concept has been around for years, but was not accepted until the Google world of today.

It wasn’t until 1902 in LeRoy, NY (the next town over from where I went to high school) that Frank Woodward had an idea for how to create demand for the product. His idea was to give away “free” cookbooks with Jell-O recipes, delivered directly to people’s doorstep. Within 2 years they hit a million in sales. This concept built steam throughout the century with others like Gillette razors, and then free radio and TV.

Now we live in a world made of bits rather than atoms, and economics tells us that cost lies in the R&D. With increasing sales to cover the R&D expense, cost goes to zero for each incremental sale. When the concept of “free” is applied, it provides an opportunity to be creative with where the revenue comes from, and a chance to build a marketplace where most wouldn’t suspect.

Can you imagine flying for free? In Europe it’s common to fly for as little as $20. Ryanair’s CEO Michael O’Leary believes that they’re on their way to free airfare, with operations being totally supported by in-flight gambling. Look around at what else is free: talking internationally in Skype, Stock Trades, Craigslist, and a multitude of products by the king of free, Google.

My company is joining the world of “free” by creating an online software tool that helps you to achieve your goals, free to use, of course. It is called AchieveStreet. By using the accountability found within a forum, business team, board, charity group, or even group members for a school project, getting things done comes more easily. The tool is free, but as with other free online tools (I.e. Facebook), the more users you have, the more revenue you can expect to gain from advertising.

How can you utilize this “free” world to grow your business, or possibly venture into something new?

In the early 1800’s, a new kind of ship was manufactured. It was a leaner, more slender ship, built for speed rather than capacity. Its sharp long prow was made out of expensive oak, and its sails spread 160 feet across. These ships were called clipper ships. They ran wide open, day and night, virtually ignorant of weather conditions, arriving beaten and battered at their destination, but on time no less.

In the 1840’s, still recovering from a 5 year economic depression, the US built 160 of these low capacity, more expensive ships. The reason was that the gold rush was booming out west, and supplies were in high demand. The need for basic materials was so great that supplies could sell for as much as 1000% more than on the depression stricken east coast. These clipper ships were resilient and fast, and could travel the east coast, move down around the tip of South America, and be back up to the San Francisco Bay in a record 89 days.

At Efficience, our Clipper Ship Strategy is having a team in India with the high intelligence and low cost, allowing our clients to create software tools that make them more competitive at prices they can afford. Have you considered what your Clipper Ship Strategy is?

Have you ever thought about how long it takes to be really good at something? Or have you thought that if you weren’t born with a natural talent in something then you couldn’t be an expert at it?

According to Malcom Gladwell, in his book Outliers, it takes about 10,000 hours of practice in your life to be an expert in your respective field. This crosses over in all fields from sports, music, chess player, business and even master criminals.

Daniel Levitin, a Neuroscientist, was quoted in the book saying “It seems that it takes this brain this long (10,000 hours) to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.” Even Mozart didn’t write his outstanding concertos until he had his 10,000 hours of practice, which translates into about 10 years of serious practice and dedication.

Gladwell gives examples of this from Bill Gates (Microsoft) and Bill Joy (Sun Microsystems) to the Beatles. Their success and rise to fame was a combination of a few things, but all had the 10,000 hour expert rule associated with them.

Given the awareness from this great research, are you putting in dedicated, nose to the grindstone work to be an expert in something? You might like that song “I want to be a Billionaire so freaking bad”, but are you working towards your 10,000 hours of focused, dedicated practice to get there?