Naturally, what that meant was:

• Let’s go back to the office and take a conference call.
• I can work until 7pm that evening.
• I can certainly take an on-site lunch meeting with a prospective new client on Thursday.

By late afternoon on Thursday, I’d given up. I needed to go see the doctor. I called Kaiser (shut it) to get an appointment and they gave me a 20-minute phone triage and said, yeah – it’s viral, honey. Nothing we can do. Drink fluids and rest. Muttering an inarguable “fuck you” to whomever would listen at that point, I drove my ass to the Walgreens and filled my basket with every possible homeopathic and OTC remedy known to mankind. If you can believe it, I walked out with over $30 in christ-I-hope-this-makes-me-feel-better concoctions and I-can’t-have-the-flu-because-I-got-a-flu-shot thoughts and positioned myself on the sofa.

Where I’ve been for 5 days now.

It got so bad on Saturday that I hauled myself to a doc-in-the-box where I was told, yeah – it’s the flu. BUT WAIT! For your faith in OTC remedies and all the rest you’ve given yourself, we have a special gift for you! An upper respiratory infection, complete with antibiotics that cost (gulp) a tidy sum of $100! (And yes, that WAS the generic version.)

So here I sit – humbled. Run down. I’ve dubbed this illness The Plague. Yesterday, I lost my voice. And truth be told, I feel like three-day-old pad thai that’s been left on the kitchen counter and licked by at least four cats. Today, my voice is coming back — I sound like a cross between Joan Rivers and Stevie Knicks with emphysema thrown in for flavor.

And this whole thing has taught me a little bit about business.

Everyone Knows Best

God bless the interwebz, I say. I’m as plugged in as plugged in can be and once I shared my battle with The Plague with friends and followers, the advice seemed to overpower the notes of sympathy. Not that I was looking for sympathy, but it reminded me that – good heavens – everyone knows best, don’t they? According to the interwebz, I should do everything from gargle with vinegar to steam baths and take Emergen-C. Even after I went to the doctor on Saturday, even a doctor wanted to share his long-distance opinion with me.

Something to remember: People are generally altruistic. They want to help. We all have experiences to share. And y’know, there are the jackwads who just feel like they know best (and there’s no shutting those up). When you decide to head down this entrepreneurial path, you have to prepare yourself for unsolicited input. Everyone – other than you – will know what’s best for you. It’s not unlike unraveling our lives and going back to the days where mom and dad said, “Because I said so!” or “You’ll go blind if you keep touching it!” Later in life, we realize that both are bollocks, and even though I wear glasses, whatever damage I incurred from “touching it” I’m happy to chalk up to genetics (my whole family is myopic to some degree) instead of behavior. You can’t stop the advice for pouring in, and that’s good because…

Great Ideas Can Come From Anywhere

For all the unsolicited advice, there will be a piece or two that catches your eye, ear, and mind. Like the person who recommended pineapple juice for my lost voice. I had to get dressed after 4 days (yes, FOUR days) and go to the bank, and Whole Foods was right across the street. I needed probiotics and, well, I saw a bottle of organic pineapple juice. So I grabbed it. Drank it on the way home. Not only did it taste sublime, especially when you consider that the only thing I’ve been drinking for days is coconut water and TheraFlu, I had a phone call come in and – wouldn’t you know it? I could croak out a “hello.” Maybe it’s timing, but I’m going to chalk it up to pineapple juice.

Something to remember: While all of that unsolicited advice (most notably, the person who recommended that I go for a 40-minute jog to ignite my immune system when it’s nearly impossible for me to even laugh with launching a coughing fit) is rolling in, you just might find some gems. It’s easy to get tunnel vision and think that we’re the only ones with ideas worth acting upon. But in the end, some of the best ideas – even ones that don’t include pineapple juice – come from outside our protective bubble. And that’s okay – the worst thing we do to ourselves as business owners is feel like we have to do everything. Which means…

We Don’t Rest Enough

Christ on an iPad – we sure as hell don’t. Lemme tell you what being relegated to the sofa for 5 days feels like: ass. Pure, unadulterated ass. I haven’t been to the gym. I haven’t left the house except to go to the doctor. I’ve fallen a bit behind on business (since it’s hard to have phone calls when you can’t talk). But you know what? I have rested. My body has crashed for nearly 9 hours straight each night since The Plague set in, and that’s not including the pass-out-on-the-sofa mid-day nap times I’ve had. I’ve watched stupid movies, seen the entire first season of Downton Abbey (OMFGAWESOMEBBQsauce), and even rearranged my office on Saturday afternoon in a fit of decongestant-fueled purpose.

We don’t take care of ourselves. We think that going to the gym and a Naked juice smoothie fixes the fact that we work 16 hours a day, six days a week. I need to unplug more and do things for myself. I need to stop answering business emails at 8pm. I need to take weekends. In short, I need to do a better job at having a life. Just because I can plug into anything via my iPhone doesn’t mean I should and it certainly doesn’t mean I should all the time. Life got along just fine these past 5 days when I needed to take care of myself.

I have a feeling it will continue to do so in the future.

The Net-Net

I might have a fever. I’m out of TheraFlu. But I feel decent enough today to spend at least half a day working and the other half taking care of myself. I’m also back to laughing at juvenile jokes that include the word “balls.” I’m grateful for all of the unsolicited advice, as in it I found something that worked. And it’s funny business, these bodies of ours. They’re the best barometer and thermometer we have for gauging what’s real and what’s not.

• Sweating is different than being on fire
• The gut offers brilliant, no-hold-barred unsolicited advice 24/7
• If we don’t learn to take a break every now and then, our bodies will, without fail, make us take one.

When businesses get it right

2011 was a year filled with businesses that got it wrong. AirBNB. Netflix. (Insert your own epic cluster here.) From turning on the evening news to the front page headlines of any major newspaper, we’re a culture (and a sad one) that focuses more on the foibles than those who are doing something right. This year marked the 4th year that The UPS Store sponsored Entrepreneur Magazine’s Growth Conference. Having been a customer on and off  - more out of convenience than brand loyalty – I was interested to see what the sponsorship looked like up close.

And it looked stellar. So let’s talk about how, first, the partnership makes sense, and secondly, how the UPS Store gained a new customer out of the experience.

The Partnership: Franchising is a significant part of the entrepreneurial culture. While some might scoff at what they perceive as the inherent laziness of taking someone else’s business concept and running with it, most franchisees will differ with you all the way to the bank. It takes just as much oomph to launch, build, and sustain a successful franchise as it does to launch, build, and sustain a one-off business. And that’s the main reason that having The UPS Store as the event’s title sponsor makes sense. I wish more businesses would look at this partnership and use it as a model for how to get involved with your customers – and peers – without coming across as a our-name-is-in-big-print-so-buy-our-stuff bunch of jackasses (which are the majority of convention sponsorships I see).

• Peer-to-Peer: The event tapped into the knowledge and experience of numerous SoCal area franchisees. They shared their successes and motivations with an audience of over 850 people who were hungry for that type of information. A perfect fit.
• Class: Everything about the conference was class. The main stage, the signage, the digital displays that announced each room’s session. Pure class. For an event that’s 100% free to attendees (including a catered lunch – no sammiches here), the UPS Store and Entrepreneur Magazine did one helluva job demonstrating that neither are fly-by-night operations or business-in-a-box solutions. Whatever you thought about franchise business models, The UPS Store blew conceptions out of the water.
• No Hard Sell: Everyone pretty much knows what The UPS Store does. We get it. Shipping. They began as Mailboxes Etc. back in the day, the place we all went to ship a box, buy a box to ship something in, and when it was relevant, make a few photocopies. Instead of beating everyone at the conference over the head with who they are and what they do, they reinforced the why. They did this brilliantly through their sponsorship of not only the conference, but Entrepreneur’s “Entrepreneur of the Year” awards, celebrating three incredible businesspeople carving their own way in their respective industries.

So how did they score a new customer through the event? I’m a single woman who owns a business, which means that I have a PO box and work out of my home 70% of the time. It also means that a simple records search can tell people where I live. Which is creeptastic. Weird things show up in my mail, any yahoo could land on my doorstep. And you can’t list a PO box as a valid business address with the Colorado Secretary of State – so what’s an entrepreneur to do? Well, that’s coming to an end this week, as I’m headed to The UPS Store to get a business address – and one that’s not my home. I only heard the service alluded to once, but it was enough for me to go: yeah, I need to get that shit taken care of. So I am. And unlike my PO box, I can CALL and see if there’s mail in my box before I go. Which would – and will – save me a crapload of blank trips every year.

It was a Wednesday well-spent, and a shout out to my Wednesday evening compadres who will invariably agree with me that sangria mixes with absolutely nothing.

Sidebar: I was asked – and kindly – by the Entrepreneur Magazine staff to clean-up my presentation for this conference. I don’t have a problem doing that, and I’d been great all day about avoiding the-fbomb. Well, in my second session of the day, I let one fly. And immediately, the fire alarm in the convention center sounded. I guess that will teach me.

Back to business…

Attending, much less speaking at, conferences is rough business. It’s physically and emotionally draining and it’s a huge rally to get yourself going when one (even a day-long conference) has come to a close. The rest of my week involved business as usual as well as taking care of some housekeeping and thank yous for book #2, all the while dealing with the impending launch of book #1 and SXSW Interactive looming in the not-so-distant-distance. I headed up to Studio City to stay with my friend an co-author on book #2 and even got to catch up with one of my graphic designers, Lindsay Goldner, over a meal featuring pasta made from little baby zebras in a cream sauce. Which leads me to the business of business.

There’s a question I ask in every session I’m invited to present: Why are you in business? The answers vary and sometimes there’s someone who gets it right. The answer isn’t to live, because it’s what we love or to make money. (“To make money” is the most common answer, by the way.) The answer is because our customers let us be in business. Never forget that your customers are the reason you get to do what you love – and that’s why speaking engagements and travel are my favorite part of this gig I’ve got going on. I get to meet the people who let me do what I love everyday, from those who work for me and with me to those who just stop by this site and consider my posts to be time well-spent.

Never forget to thank your customers. And never forget that not all customers spend money. Many simply spend their time – and asset we’d all do better at appreciating as even more valuable than the almighty dollar. Which brings me to the part where my co-author on book #2 and I drive all over Los Angeles and Newport Beach to hand-deliver thank yous to the people who contributed to that book.

The part where my friend pees in the backseat on the 405 freeway

For any of you who have lived in the Los Angeles area (as I did from 2002-2005), you understand how the region redefines the epic fucktardery of traffic in general. We were blazing along the 405 — I might have been exceeding the speed limit — when my friend Wendie expresses that she has to pee. Given that we’re on the 405, exiting at 4pm on a Friday is simply nonsense. We’re 1 hour from her house – I ask if she can hold it. Fast forward to a situation where she climbs over the seat into the back and finds a Nalgene bottle holding my then-hot-now-cold tea from the morning. The car gets silent. I’m terrified of potholes (I’m sure she is as well). Within minutes, she’s back in the front seat and we’re serenaded with the gentle sloshing coming from a bottle on the floor board of the backseat all the way back to Studio City.

The lesson here? There’s a lot of shit that happens along the way from where we are to where we need to go. No one started the day planning to pee in a Nalgene bottle in the backseat of a Lexus. Shit – and in this case, pee – happens. Deal with it as best you can and get on with your business. Move forward. Because moving on is bullshit. Moving on implies that we have to forget in order to progress, when in fact, we’re probably better served by bringing our experiences with us to help shape the next ones.

And finally, coming home

Saturday evening, I landed at DIA just in time for the Broncos to blow the playoffs. Truth be told, I missed my puppycats (which is what I call my collective of 2 dogs and 2 cats). I’ve lived in Alabama, Missouri, Illinois, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, Japan, California, Nevada, and now Colorado. No matter how long I’m gone or where I travel, I get excited about coming home to my little nondescript house in East Denver. So I was excited. I spent the evening on the sofa. I made some puree for a homemade tomato curry bisque (which turned out FUCKING AWESOME – sorry to shout). And after a whirlwind week, I slept for 10 hours.

In my bed.

In my house.

In Colorado.

And on Sunday, I woke up excited. Because I’d built a life that gives me the gift of doing it all again very soon. See image at top of post. Remember. Apply love liberally, in all that you do. We only have one chance to own this motherfucker of a ride called life, and well, yeah. Own it.

image via Creative Commons

Having read more rah-rah posts at both the close and beginning of the year than my red head can handle, today’s missive will be devoid of a few things. Here’s what you won’t find in today’s post (with a h/t to Amber Naslund for her thoughts on “shipping”):

• Requests to get on board
• Directions leading to the outside of the box
• Instructions or demands to ship anything (especially “it”)
• Buzzwords used in context
• Links to a Huffington Post article
• Pictures of penguins
• Lies other than the one included in the above bulletpoint
• The use of the word “passion.”

What you might find, however, is that it’s filled with bullshit. Which is surprising, considering how much I loathe it.

I’m not good at bullshit. I suck at small talk. I’d rather sit in the passenger seat of a car and stare with wonder at the world around me than ask how my date feels about his mother. And while every conversation does not need to be of earth-shattering import, I believe that there’s entirely too much bullshit floating around in the ether.

The Taste and Smell

Yeah. You know it. Stringing people along. Avoiding difficult but definitive conversations. Things that should end, others that should begin. The time wasters. The jackwads. The shit you put up with, refuse to address, and then bitch about to your friends. Your money woes, your relationship turmoils, the dog crap you haven’t cleaned up in the backyard.

You can smell it from sixty-three paces. Sometimes we wake up with the taste of it in our mouths. We have sandwiches made of it for lunch.

You know what it smells and tastes like.

So you have a few choices.

Step Over It OR Step In It

I love shoes. Consequently, there is nothing more demoralizing than finding that I have inadvertently placed one in a position where it is adorned with a turd. And even though it’s recently come to light that I have a habit of leaving shoes neatly arranged next to the toilet, your shoes really don’t belong anywhere close to bullshit. Or the toilet. But at least mine are neatly arranged. I digress. We come to our choices:

Stepping in it: Is there a single one of you who can tell me that, faced with a steaming pile of bullshit that you’re going to deliberately make the move to submerse your shoes in it? Doubtful. Yet it’s something you do all the time. You piss and moan and then walk foot-first right into the motherfucker and then have the audacity to piss and moan about having stepped in it. THIS IS BULLSHIT. It is also bullshit on top of bullshit. Entirely too much bullshit.

Stepping over it: Ah, the logical choice, right? Yet one we seem to refuse to make more times than not. Stepping over the bullshit involves a few things. First, acknowledgement. This involves us being honest with ourselves, and frequently, with others. It’s not about hurting other people’s feelings or being an asshole. It’s about refusing to submerse one’s self in a pile that sits before us. But first, we have to acknowledge the pile instead of bitching about it and then acting all surprised when someone points it out to us (and most of the time, after it’s already all over our shoes). Secondly, it involves growing a pair. Stepping over the bullshit involves refusing to engage in situations that don’t serve us and waste our time. Your relationship, business, financial, and other woes? Bullshit. Stepping over it involves addressing the situation’s existence and then resolving it or refusing to engage, period.

Bullshit Controls Power

Bullshit is a quirky yet powerful little sonofabitch. It has the ability to rob you of power if you allow it, making you (or making yourself) feel helpless and fall victim to less-than-OMFGCrackalacka life experiences (thanks to @Merredith for the gift of the phrase “crackalacka”). On the other hand, bullshit has a sneaky little ability to empower you. There’s a metric ass ton of power derived from acknowledging, processing, and then dealing with the bullshit in your life. When you’re the one in control of your feet and stepping over and around the steaming piles the universe places in front of us during our time on this big blue bouncy ball, just think of what you can accomplish. And with that power comes a greater level of honesty.

Honesty with yourself. Your colleagues. Friends. Lovers. Partners. Hot baristas.

All those things we’re not supposed to say – we usually never do. And they’re the things that need to be said most. Why? Because they dispense with the bullshit. Not saying them? Well, that’s bullshit, too. The greatest gift I’ve given myself over the past 13 months is saying what I feel. Acknowledging and then stepping over the bullshit. And being even more honest with myself and using the presence of bullshit in my life for good instead of allowing it to capitalize on its inherently evil nature like that “friend” who always has a left-handed compliment that you seem to keep around for…no reason whatsoever.

So today, give it up for bullshit. A round of applause, if you will, to begin the New Year. We’ve shipped nothing, and that box? Fuck the box. I’ve never seen the box and really have no use for one that doesn’t contain a new pair of ski boots or faboo pair of pumps. And if you’ve gotten this far in the post, you’ve done something appreciable:

You’ve acknowledged the bullshit that fills this post. And you’re probably ready to do something about it.

Here we are, one day before Chanukah and six before Christmas. I’m not even bringing up the inevitable fuck me that tax time is approaching one again. Oh wait.

But I got to thinking over the weekend about whether my business sucks. And like everyone else’s businesses, some parts of it do.

So what the hell am I going to do about it?

Owning a business that sucks is like masturbating while wearing ugly shoes — while it might get the job done, you don’t want anyone to see what you’re doing or what you look like when you’re doing it. Isn’t it time to dispense with the ugly shoes? God knows, I’m not going to tell anyone to stop masturbating and I’m a big fan of shoes worth masturbating in.

Life’s too short to wear ugly shoes, especially when you’re getting down to business.

So we have two choices:

Keep diddling your business in shoes that don’t fit, feel uncomfortable, give your blisters and make your business experience less ossum (which again, is like a possum but better)

or

Get some new fuckin’ shoes.

And Then I Got Excited. But Not Like That…

Because it’s not enough for me to have sat down and realized that there are certain parts of my business that suck. I had to admit it. Out loud.

And then I had to ask for help. And boy, oh boy. If there’s one thing that I suck at it’s asking for help.

But I did.

This weekend, I sat down and reached out to people who make me feel okay about asking for help. And I got responses.

Then, the most kickassapotamus thing happened: I got excited. Because I was out from under the burden of diddling around with my business while wearing ugly shoes.

Isn’t It Time You Got Some New Shoes?

Maybe you didn’t expect to get a blog in your inbox today that equated things that suck about your business to the relationship you have with Rosie Palm and her five sisters. Do I care? Notsomuch. But what I do know is this:

If those shoes you’re wearing hurt, take them the fuck off and get some new ones. It’s time you started feeling good about the

• business you do
• how you do it
• and how you feel when doing it.

And it doesn’t hurt to look good when you’re doing it, too, because no one wants to do business with a hot tranny mess.

So maybe this holiday season, you want to dispense with the kumbayahs and bullshit advice about those “shoes” you’re wearing looking good when they hurt more than an April 16th phone call from your CPA that starts with, “Oh, hey…that decimal was in the wrong place.” Are you going to change where you go? Are you going to change how you get there? ARE YOU GOING TO CHANGE YOUR SHOES?

No matter who you are and what you do, there’s some part of your business that sucks. It’s just up to you whether you’re going to keep up with the ugly footwear or slip into something that looks good, feels great, and kinda makes you want to take some pictures of your alone time with your business…

because we all know that diddling feels better when we’re especially fond of how we look and feel when it’s happening.

And that? Yeah. That just happened.

Today, money’s role in my life is more akin to cherry blossoms – a lovely product of the business I’ve built, and there will no doubt be more if I continue to feed and nurture said business. It gives me the means to take care of Me, take care of the people I love and share it with those who need it more than I ever will…and occasionally just blow it on something ridiculously fun that leaves a smile on my face for days*.

* not hookers

On any given day, we are both the consumer and purchaser – there’s no way around it. While money’s the accepted currency for payment, there’s a role we don’t ordinarily talk about: being a vendor. I’m a vendor, you’re a vendor, he’s a vendor, she’s a vendor – wouldn’t you like to be a vendor, too? (and dammit, I love me some Diet Dr. Pepper) Accepting our roles as vendors, I think, is a higher level of responsibility for a business owner than just being someone who expects to get paid. So today, I thought I’d run down some things that can help business people to become better vendors and elevate their business practices to ones that operate with unquestionable integrity.

Deal with your HR and administrative shit

Do you have a W9 on file for every contractor and employee? Are you set up to pay your quarterly taxes? Do you have all of the required business licenses to operate in your county, city and state? Are you filings up to date with the Secretary of State’s office? When you let these things slide, it snowballs. Any prospective client should be able to look up your business entity and verify its validity and skipping out on your taxes is not only a total asshat move, it puts undue financial burden on your company. As someone who recently had a vendor share cash flow woes they blamed on a shitty CPA, which were apparently affecting their ability to pay my invoices on time, this is bullshit. Deal, because poor planning on your part doesn’t constitute an emergency on anyone else’s.

Get an invoicing program (I personally use GetHarvest, but Freshbooks is also a raging favorite with other small businesses), track your expenses and receipts MONTHLY and not in some hurried panic at year-end where you’re crapping kittens at the eleventh hour on April 14th and start acting like you own the legit business you claim to operate. Deal with your admin shit.

Don’t go down-periscope

We can all get better at this. Here’s the poop: we are all busy. But as a business owner, you are never too busy to respond to someone who has reached out to you. This goes for new business inquiries, simple client relations moves and (inhales deeply) all financial matters. Nothing pisses me off more than when an invoice sits hanging in the ether with a symphony of crickets attempting to lull me to sleep.

If you go down-periscope on me, I will hunt you down. It is a total dick move to enter into an agreement and have someone perform the work you requested and then not see fit to respond to emails or offer lame excuses when you can get around to them. It’s also a dick move to delay a project because you don’t have your shit together. I would rather hear that you own it – you totally dropped the ball or your cash flow is hosed or your pet hamster gnawed your goddamn checkbook to shreds – I don’t care. The moral is, I want to hear it from you and in a timely fashion.

Make the move to communicate and for all that is holy, do NOT fuck with other people’s money. It is inordinately rude and disrespectful to think that I – or the person that you’ve hired to do a job – does not have bills to pay and mouths to feed just like you. And know that this is coming from someone today who realized over the weekend that she had not paid her attorney’s bill for her latest contract revisions (yeah, the ones that help me get paid and legally protected). He will receive an email today, including a check number that’s in the mail, with the explanation that I’m an idiot and spaced it.

Ask for help

I think that we all have the tendency to operate in Can’t You Read My Mind? land all too often. We assume that our clients work the same way we do and their terms are the same as ours. Ask your clients and your vendors for help.

Some questions and things to ask of and share with new vendors:

• Is there anything you need from me administratively prior to commencing work? Vendor agreements, W9s, NDAs or the like?
• My billing/payment terms are _______. Do you agree to those terms?
• I have a standard contract for services. We can’t commence until that’s mutually signed and on file.
  • If you don’t have one of these, please refer to this video. Jesus.
• Do you have any questions about the contract?
• How do you prefer communications: phone or email?

Stop thinking that the people with whom you do business can read your mind. Because they can’t. Nor will they ever be able.

Communicate

This goes back to the whole down-periscope pet peeve, but one thing I’m proud of with my business is the openness of my dealings between contractors and clients. They are bcc’d on billing inquiries when that inquiry affects their cash flow. They are asked how they prefer to be paid. I explain what’s going on with every account and they are brought to meetings as required. I give them a lot of leeway to accomplish their tasks and in return, I ask for work that is the same quality I myself would produce.

On the other side of the equation, I never glaze over a client’s question. If they become excessive outside a scope of work, I explain that we’re entering Consultingville and we should schedule a session as 73 two-line emails isn’t a way around paying for an hour of my time. I reach out when there is no reason other than to say hello or pass on a cool article and I make sure that their life events, such as a new baby, marriage, loss, business expansion and the like never go unnoticed.

Communication isn’t about what you say. Rather, it’s about what you don’t. Silence is telling and we can all tell the difference between radio silence (bad) and I’m here if you need me – hope all is well.

***

So that’s my list on how to be a better vendor. I’d love to hear what you have to add, as most of these ideas came from the comments on 19 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started My Business. Now go forth, leave the asshat business behavior behind and do good business. There’s no better compliment to receive than, “I really appreciate working with you, because you make doing business a pleasure.”

image via CreativeCommons

Always the sucker for a sick blues riff and wicked guitar lick, it occurs to me that there might be some fans out there just like me who learned more than they know from Stevie Ray. From the first moment I heard Lovestruck to the day I learned that Stevie couldn’t read music and beyond, he’s held a piece of this Texas girl’s heart in his talented hands.  As a marketer and writer, I think there’s plenty we can (and have) learned from music. It has a way of telling us we’re doing shit wrong, reminding us that we’re not doing shit, and calling us shits when we fuck it up. Lemme take you through my reasoning that all I ever needed to know about marketing I learned from Stevie Ray Vaughan and who knows – maybe you’ll feel the same way or find some wisdom in the music that makes your life a better place to live.

Couldn’t Stand the Weather

Like a train that stops at every station,
we all deal with trials and tribulations
Fear hangs the fellow that ties up his years,
entangled in yellow and cries all his tears

How often do we waste time wrapped up in our own bullshit? Marketing is an -ing verb. It’s not a noun, for all that’s holy. Sure, use it as one if you want, but in my world, it’s a doing kinda thing. If you let fear paralyze you from taking a leap, you’ll never have truly exceptional results, truly appreciative clients and you’ll find yourself crying because the competition is doing what you really want to be doing. So why not just do? If you got into business only to give up, you let yourself be washed up because you couldn’t stand the weather.

Love Struck, Baby

I still remember and let it be said
The way you make me feel take a fool to forget
I swore a ton of bricks had hit me in the head
And what you do little baby ain’t over it yet

This is what a good marketing creates: unforgettable impressions. Brands we remember. Words to live by and an emotional impact on your target demographic that a ton of bricks can’t make you forget. But after the initial woo, you can’t stop there. You have to create lasting impact that carries over. Your audience? They need to be lovestruck and under your spell. If you can’t do this, then you’re doing something wrong, Vern. Take yer ass back to the drawing board and figure out how to make your audience a fool for you.

Rude Mood

Sometimes you don’t need words to say what you need to say. The elements of some of the most successful marketing campaigns and brands have been what’s unsaid. Jingles, logos, unspoken moments and mere glances in the heat of the moment – those are things just as memorable as words.

Tightrope

Walkin’ the tight rope, steppin on my friends
Walkin’ the tight rope, was a shame and a sin.

You don’t walk on people to get business done. Great marketing requires a team of people to get the message out there in every possible channel. We’ve all run across the colossal douchecopter who thinks he or she is an island. We collide with shitty work ethics and have to pick up the slack, which at times isn’t unlike clawing your way back up a slimy, moss-covered ravine. But we do it. People help people and no matter if you dwell in corporate walls or your own living room, there’s no arguing that people are the reason you can get your job done for the client. Learn to walk the tightrope and ask for help when you need it – don’t step on people along the way because you fall out of balance.

Pride and Joy

Well I love my baby, like the finest wine
Stick with her until the end of time
She’s my sweet little thing, she’s my pride and joy
She’s my sweet little baby, I’m her little lover boy

It’s the song every marketer wishes a consumer would sing about what they pour their heart and soul into. Our brands, our customers – they’re our pride and joy and we do all it is that we do to hope that others will feel the same way, too. Maybe it’s your MacBook. A Mini Cooper. A custom Tiemeyer bicycle. Whatever your passion, we want our pride and joy to be the pride and joy of others. It’s why we do what we do.

And finally…while this isn’t originally a Stevie Ray Vaughan tune, it’s brilliance and it’s one of those songs that reminds me that things don’t have to be complicated. Simplicity is what we most often overlook when we’re trying to design the Next Big Thing. Maybe we can work with what’s already there and find a way to make it our own. Make people happy to see it again. And in the process, remind ourselves to stop making things so damn complicated for complication’s sake.

If you’ve never seen Amber speak, it’s something that should definitely be added to your Business Enhancement Bucket List. As someone who attends and speaks at multiple conferences throughout the year, there are some pretty lackluster speakers you can lose an hour of your life to. I wouldn’t be part of the team bringing her to Colorado if that were the case. Animated, insightful and human, Amber’s one of those speakers who grabs you in the first two minutes and won’t let you go until she’s signed your book when the hour is over. Not only that, she’s a rock-solid lady who avoids the dish-and-dash routine and hangs with her audience both before and after the fact.

What’s the Dealio? What Will I Get for an Hour of My Time?

What will you get? Ossum, that’s what. And just in case you’re not interested in ossum, here’s a more pragmatic breakdown:

At each event, Amber will address the “Seven Shifts To Make Businesses Faster, Smarter & More Social.” Whether you’re a one-person rodeo or a company with hundreds of employees, there’s something for any business that’s interested in becoming more nimble and efficient with their marketing strategies.

Amber’s presentation will teach attendees how to:

• Strip away silos and overgrown business processes and create a culture of NOW;
• Hire and empower a new type of employee who is adept at pattern recognition, human relations, and immediate analysis;
• Organize internal teams for maximum external impact, and empower every employee as a marketer (even if they’re not);
• Listen at the point of need and answer the social telephone;
• Travel the “Humanization Highway” and respond effectively and persuasively to customer inquiries;
• Plan for, find and manage real-time crises; and,
• Redesign success metrics in a business world that’s increasingly instantaneous.

Hey, Erika – Can I Get In for Free?

I dunno. I could probably arrange that if you want to pay Amber’s mortgage. The event is a $25 ticket. Why? Well, here are some things you might not know about how things work with published authors:

• Free books: Hahahahaha! Yeah. They might get 20 complimentary copies. So book tours are arranged to let various communities meet the author(s), talk about the book and let readers get some one-on-one time. Oh, and to sell books. Every attendee of these events will receive a copy of The NOW Revolution – that’s what your ticket price covers.
• Book tours: Unless you’re Seth Godin, Steven King or the awesomeness that is The Oatmeal, authors foot the bill for all their travel and expenses to get out and promote their books. The team that’s bringing Amber to the Front Range is absorbing 100% of the costs, except the books, to bring her expertise and message to the local business community. There’s nothing in it for us except being a part of a great event and we wouldn’t do it if we didn’t love the book and its message.

Fine, I’ll Pay. How Do I RSVP?

It’s easy-peasy. (And thank you for not arguing with The Redhead.) Here are the details, and we hope to see you there:

Denver Event

Thursday, May 12 at 6pm at The Rackhouse Pub (208 S. Kalamath)

Facebook event (for sharing with your folk)

Buy Your Ticket Here

Boulder Event

Friday, May 13 at 8am at Metzger Associates (5733 Central Ave.)

Facebook Event (for sharing with your folk)

Buy Your Tickets Here

About Your Event Sponsors

These two events are sponsored by Metzger Associates, the Mile High Social Media Club, PRSA/Colorado Chapter and RedheadWriting – four companies/organizations dedicated to bringing value to the Front Range business communities.

Aside from being one of the only other human beings I’ve ever met who’s as comfortable with the f-bomb as I am when speaking in front of an audience, Gary’s got the knack for dropping mad knowledge in a way that makes it accessible. It’s the other A-word, and if you’re a marketing professional not tapping into the fundamentals of accessibility, you’re the A-word everyone usually thinks about. He was in Denver last night on his book tour for his book The Thank You Economy, and there was one line from his entire talk that made me send an email to myself so I wouldn’t forget:

“Execute in the reality of the marketplace.”

I’ll drop the Gary Vee fan girl ooze and instead, give him a hat tip for putting something so succinctly (read: accessible) that it inspired a Bitch Slap. (Holler, good sir!)

Today, you will kill the unicorns in your business.

Where are you doing business – Disneyland? Fucking Narnia? Is the case of your Macbook made of adamantium and are you followed around by a rat named Nicodemus? I doubt it. So why the hell are you managing your business like it’s a sanctuary for unicorns? I see it every day. Businesses clinging to rote ways, colleagues not wanting to acknowledge that there’s a morbidly obese woman in the background churning out a tune, a cliche brought to life while they haphazardly fumble with shit that will get them nowhere. Wishes and unicorns are great if you’re talking about a twelve-year-old girl’s birthday party, but they’re worth absolutely nothing for your business. And there’s this common misconception that unicorns feed on flowers and marshmallows, but they can only truly thrive on a diet of bullshit.

When you take the bullshit out of your business, you kill the unicorns.

So, let me throw out some ideas as to how you, too, can hunt this mythical creature that can only (given its diet) have horrific breath. The Business Unicorns must die, and you won’t even be subject to Go Daddy-like chastising for your sporting ways. Let’s get down to the reality of  YOUR marketplace. This is a great conversation spin off from 19 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started My Business. Killing unicorns? #20.

Unicorn #1: I just need to get caught-up.

How far behind are you? (really) Let’s cut the crap and lay it out: if you’re so busy that you’re not sleeping and feeling snowed under 25/8 (that’s beyond 24/7), there is no amount of “catching up” that’s going to help you get caught up. Working weekends and 16 hours a day isn’t facing reality. For fuck sake, hire someone. Delegate. Make less money, sleep more. You’re of no use to anyone until you can feel you can pay the right amount attention to the things and people who need, pay for and require your attention. And damn, did I learn this one the hard way. We owe it to ourselves to feel that we service each of our clients with the same fervor and attention to detail. On the other side of the coin, we owe it to our competition to slam the door on them so hard that there’s no way they could ever have an “in” because we service the everloving shit out of our clients. It’s possible to get caught up, but we need help in order to do it and stay on top of the pile on a regular basis. Beats the hell out of being trapped underneath it.

Unicorn #2: It worked for so-and-so.

You know what? You’re not so-and-so. You’re Bob. Or Jane. Or (gasp) Erika. I hear this from startups pitching all the time: Well, Facebook/Twitter/TwitPic (blah blah blah) did it. So can we! No, jackass – you can’t. Here’s what you’re missing: each company and person has its own unique ecosystem, comprised of circumstances, emotions and qualifications. In order to thrive in business, you have to operate in the realities of YOUR marketplace, not one you’ve bogarted from someone else. If Pepsi tried to pull a Moosejaw, how successful do you think they would be?

Think back to when you were in school (I know – it hurts me to think about when I was in school, too. FML.) and when you saw a classmate wearing or doing something cool. You went out and bought it or tried that thing and here’s what happened to me in that case: it looked like stir-fried ass on me or I fell on my face trying. It’s like Bobby from the Brady Bunch – pork chops and applesauce isn’t a business model. When you take the time to be honest with yourself about the market you want to dominate, you’re already 50% ahead of the other yahoos out there. Given that we’re our own worst critics, be your own naysayer so that when you’re asked, “What about _____?” you can respond with confidence (as opposed to arrogance) about what you’ve done to be different and why it matters. There will never be another Facebook, just like there will never be another Coca-Cola. It’ll be something else – and wouldn’t it be shit-howdy if it were YOU?

Unicorn #3: We have something for everyone.

Bullshit. Not even Walmart has something for everyone. Why the hell are you any different? I’ve covered this issue before, but it’s definitely a unicorn and bears mentioning once again (and again…and…). Your business has a style. A personality. You do some things really well. And others, quite frankly, not so much. Stop deluding yourself into thinking everyone is your customer and start listening to your favorite, most vocal ones. Why do they love you? Why do you love them? Take THAT and build a business model from it and stop trying to be Joe’s Mortuary and Fine Sausage Emporium. This is a unicorn that’s not unlike a tribble – they spontaneously regenerate and turn up everywhere. The only way to kill ‘em for good is to build the one thing they hate the most: a solid business strategy.

And now, I pass the shotgun over to your side of the table. What unicorns will you kill today? And I don’t ask idly. Go ahead and leave a comment for me and next week (sometime), I’ll pick one of the unicorns you offer up to win a signed copy of Gary V’s The Thank You Economy. Tell me what’s getting strapped to the roof rack of your Range Rover on your business safari.

You’ve been slapped.

I never cease to be amazed by what moves me. On Sunday night, it was a place on the couch, dogs sprawled haphazardly at my feet like clothes I’d stripped off in a frenzy and remote in hand, bouncing back and forth between “The Wizard of Oz” and “Slumdog Millionaire.”

When’s the last time YOU rewound “The Wizard of Oz?”

I always found it a bit strange that once the man behind the curtain is revealed, he turns into a wisdom-spewing sage. Yet on this gazillionth viewing in my 38th year, I found myself rewinding to hear again the quote I posted above.

“Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.”

I smiled.

I’ve never been a practical woman. Believing in true love, fairy tales, the impossible – things that don’t really satisfy a pragmatist’s idea of solid foundations. I love shoes that make my feet hurt, dresses you can’t sit down in and breakfast burritos so big they require a knife and fork.

It occurs to me that everything I love is impractical.

The Math of Impracticality

I’ll preface this by saying that perhaps what will follow isn’t real math, but it’s my blog and I’ll call it witchcraft, alchemy or whatever the hell I want. I can only speak from my experience, but the things I tend to love are the ones that offer challenges, surprises and unbelievable joy and pain (and often simultaneously). If we break it down into and equation of Erika Math, it might look like this:

things we set out to do + shit we didn’t expect = life’s memorable moments

And given that memories aren’t always good, they are one thing for certain: remarkable. There’s nothing practical involved when it comes to being surprised or coping with unbearable pain. Then again sheer bliss is also completely impractical as well. Perhaps it’s time, along with a renewed perspective on unpopular, we begin to embrace impractical as well.

Practicality Has Its Place

Gadgets are practical. I’d give my left tit for a Roomba, which is uber-geeky AND practical. Basic black pants, shoes and skirts? Practical. Clothes hampers? Practical. Dictionary.com offers this: “inclined toward or fitted for actual work or useful activities.” That describes the bike rack on my car, not really anything in my life that I love.

Everything we value in life – all that we love – be it our business, our families, our children, boyfriend/girlfriend, relationships, hearts, souls and minds…can be broken. They’re fragile. They require attention, nurturing, love, kindness and humility to foster. While practical things can break, they’re replaceable. There’s no replacing the impractical, however.

Emotions? Impractical. Apologies? Practical.

Falling in love? Dear christ, certainly impractical. Breaking up? A matter of practicality for our hearts most times.

Taking the corporate job for the stability, predictability and camaraderie? Practical and comforting (and great parking). Launching a business to pursue what we love? Highly impractical, considering the availability of a paycheck with taxes taken out and benefits a few blocks down.

Practicality Isn’t Bad

It’s the water of our lives, the foundation on our house, the chassis of our car. But it’s the nature of impracticality – the shifting sand that moves beneath our feet – that makes the people who drink the water, architects who design feats of structural wonder on top of those foundations and that are the gas in our cars that get us from where we are to where we want to be. It’s never practical to dream of what might be – as for me, it’s what gets me through the bullshit some days. And how I love to dream. They’re my what could have beens and what ifs, and more often, my what could bes and what I wants. Being a highly impractical woman is what made me who I am today. While capable of glorious fuckups and subject to broken hearts and failures beyond compare, it’s the upside of impracticality that rules above all every day when I crawl out of bed.

I’ll continue to be impractical and put my hand on the stove to learn its hot. The shittiest days of my life are those where I let practicality rule, because I lose feeling. Go numb. Sometimes you have to walk around barefoot in the grass and step in the dog crap to realize…shoes are practical.

The laughter that comes from the person watching you wash the shit off your feet? Highly impractical. And memorable, too.

By the by and by, if you’re looking for the best latte in San Francisco, please stop by Dolce Gelato on Sutter. I’ve had 3 mornings of a nonfat sugar-free caramel latte and it’s possible this cuppa is my next meaningful relationship.

It’s been a week that’s reminded me that I’ve felt as if something’s been missing. But what that missing thing is? Elusive. Couldn’t put a finger on it. Yesterday sorted that out.

Sometimes you meet people who put things into perspective – yesterday was one of those days. The entire day felt different. Full of good meetings, great conversation, laughter, exhaustive speed walking to get from one place to another and while finally sitting down at dinner last night at a cozy wine and tapas bar called District, it hit me.

That is what’s been missing.

It’s my discovery, and I don’t feel it would be right if I told you what it was, but it let me sleep. It let me smile. It let me not say a word (something remarkable as I’m one that fills voids with sound). It left me yearning for a museum trip – and if that doesn’t happen here, I’ll do it in Denver over the weekend. But no – it’s not the museum that was missing.

I go through my life (and perhaps you do as well) looking to label things as best I can. I’m like a human card catalog, wanting to file and sort everything I possibly can. Manageable bits. Morsels. And for all of my sorting, I’m still left on occasion with things that I can’t identify. Like What’s Missing.

I have no idea if anyone else ever feels like this, but this morning, it’s good to know that I’ve got a clue what that missing thing has been. I even woke up in the middle of the night and smiled as I rolled from one side to the other. It skipped through my head and heart like a flat rock across a pond, and while I didn’t care where it landed, the ripples rocked me back to sleep.

Maybe you have your thing. Maybe you’re someone like me who was trying to put a finger on it. Regardless – we spend so much time trying to fill those voids with everything we’re not looking for that it’s not surprising we end up with a pile of shit we don’t need. Maybe the first step is getting away from the pile we’ve built/accumulated. And the next step? To stop looking.

Just some random BS tripping around my brain this morning and I’m sorry it’s been since Monday that I last posted. Traveling is the one thing that throws me for a writing loop and today, we both got lucky. Since writing is my catharsis and I had a much needed ah-ha moment last night, you got a post and I got therapy.

Carry on smartly.