2008 Democratic Convention: Lesson on Image

Even if you're part of the 50%+ part of America or the 98%+ part of the world that doesn't vote in the US or pay very close attention to the process - there are BIG business lessons to be learned from even just this single photo comparison.

On the left is a photo from the 2008 Democratic National Committee Convention in Denver last night - it's a pep rally for the guy who wants to be president. On the right is a still image from a video of the CURRENT Philippine President moments before she was to deliver a message on TV.

Why is Michelle Obama standing before

• Dozens of Television Cameras
• Thousands of live cheering people
• Millions of at-home viewers
• With her Name and Image blasted on the Jumbo Vision?

Because she's telling people how she grew up and what she believes in.

Why is the Philippine President standing in a doorway before an address? Because she's waiting for dozens of blank-faced assistants and technicians to properly display the teleprompter and change the design of the desk where she will sit.

There's something strange about seeing the leader of a nation waiting in a small doorway for the event to be set up properly.

The lesson here is clear - Take care of your image. Is your company van falling apart? Are your representatives poor-spoken? Is your website stuck in the style of 1998? Do you realize that's a decade ago?

Not only did the Democratic Convention LOOK the part - the presentation was complete. Michelle Obama didn't step on stage until after a 7-minute video (complete with soundtrack) creatively told her story - narrated by her mother. Then her former pro-basketball brother came out and went further into the "Michelle of today." Cue up the theme song - and NOW we get to see her.

THAT is an entrance.
THAT is taking care of your image.

You make it easy for people to say 'Yes' to whatever you're offering when you purposefully, creatively, and SPECIFICALLY present the image of your brand. Your business is your life. It should be as important to you as the presidential election is to a potential president.

Take another look at what you're doing for your image.

Oh - and if you're interested - here's the video of the President getting a bit frustrated - it's long so you might want to click and drag to the parts where you see Yellow:

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Changing Beliefs to Make Money

Isn't it great when something goes wrong in your business or at work, and it's as if God Himself was watching you, knowing that you're in need of something? He placed a coworker near you - perfect. Someone to blame.

You feel great. Problem identified - it's not you - perfect.
[Change Your Beliefs Changes Everything. Continue...]


WAKE UP. The problem IS you. When you own the business, when you're the manager - YOU are the one. Now if you'll get over the "I want to feel badly for myself" bit - then you can skip straight to the solution.

That's also YOU.You are living your beliefs.

Part of Leadership means you take responsibility for everything that affects you. So if for some reason sales are down, no one will hire you, or customers just aren't getting what you're offering - it's time to turn inwards.

Fact:

Each and every day incompetent people are promoted, lazy people win money, and people with inferior skills sell their product, while earning millions.

Why does this happen? What's the factor? Luck or Belief? If you think Luck exists, then you need to go back to my first post and start reading from the beginning. See you in a few months.

The difference is BELIEF. It's easy to see how your belief is doing for you. Just take a look at your life, because you are living your beliefs. Every detail is determined by your belief system. So don't pick up the newspaper or turn on the 5 O'clock news, listen to the state of the economy and go: "AHA! I knew it wasn't me!" It's a good thing that it's you because when you're in control, YOU say what goes. You make the decisions.

“A belief is just a thought that you keep thinking.”

-Abraham

To change a belief you just need to consistently change your thoughts. How often are you muttering complaints about sales or your business or your coworkers or your boss? Nix all that. Sounds easy, but just try it and you'll see that you've worked yourself into a little groove in your mental dialogue.

It's easier to complain about those things than it is to think well of them. That groove is why things are as they are. Get yourself out of the groove by making small changes each day. Get a notebook, head a page with the subject you want improvement on and fill it with positive things about that subject. Catch yourself during the day complaining about the very thing you're trying to change - say something else. Talk yourself into feeling better about it before you do anything else.

Try it for 30 days, then come back here and report.

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Commercials that Work: Press Play.

The More Fun,
The More Effective.

David Elsewhere is just trying to enjoy some of his daily robot dancing(modeshifting) in the middle of the streets of LA when people keep interrupting his groove by calling his motoRokr: Mp3 Player / Cell Phone.

I've seen creative ads before - the old guy who break dances for Great America, the cavemen for Geico - but this one drives home the point that it doesn't need to cost thousands to make a commercial stickily effective.

Think of the most popular YouTube videos:
Creativity + camera = featured on the national news.

Advertising works. That's why even the biggest multi-billion-dollar corporations with millions of regular customers STILL heavily advertise on a daily basis. Do you think your start-up will need to put much thought into marketing?

What you don't have in cash you can make up for in creativity. That has always been the case, but today that's even more true. It's easier today to spread your message to more people for a smaller dollar amount than ever before in history and thanks to CONSTANT technological improvements - it's always getting cheaper to do more and more.

You'll be hard-pressed to find a company using the same ad campaign from one year to the next - so if you're still banging out that same phrase with the same design - you've bored your audience.

FACT:

Arnold Schwarzenegger is an undisputed body-building mega success. In his first book he explained one of his tricks to getting his muscles to another level was to SHOCK them. After continually doing the same routine on his biceps, they basically anticipate what's coming and they figure out ways to make it easier on themselves. So once a week he chose a muscle group and on that day he exploded them using new exercises. He shocked them - forcing them to grow in new ways.

Shock your target market once in awhile.

Get creative and be playful about it. Having fun is magnetic. It will come through in your ideas and be apparent to your audience. Here's some inspiration:

David Elsewhere, Modeshifting

The Geico Cavemen Series

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Business Power: More Customers

“If you Feed them,
They will come.”

I might be crow-barring these images into the business section but they'll illustrate my point as well as anything else.

The point? Consistency creates comfort - and comfort means trust...and TRUST means money, opportunity, development - everything.

Did you know that your website will be ranked higher if it has been registered with you for a longer period of time? Even the search engines need to know that you will be consistently present before they start to 'trust' you by increasing your rank. Who wants to use a search engine if the results are poor-quality websites that offer little or no requested info?

In my article on the power of authority...

I mention a few examples of how you can show people that you ARE an authority - but the whole point of creating authority is to gain trust. Nothing is more important about your relationships - whether business or personal - than the level of trust you have with the other person. Especially in the world of the internet where you can't look the business owner 'square in the eyes' (eyes are round - why 'square'?)

Authority is a quick route to trust, and this power of consistency is another route that takes time to develop but pays you over and over again with momentum. There's more than one way that you can be consistent and they will all add up to more customers and more loyal customers for you. For instance, just by virtue of the fact that you have a location can start building major trust with people who know nothing about you.

Part of the reason why presenting your physical location on your business site is so important is because it shows a few things:

1. You're not hiding. You're completely forthcoming about where you can be found.




2. You've likely taken legal steps to register your business and purchase business property. If you're 'legally' in business - stamp of approval from The Law - you're more trustworthy.




3. Going through these steps takes time - means you've put consistent effort into creating the business.

Note: Adding an 800 number is the icing on this cake.

More Ways You Can Be Consistent:

Present Your Theme and Repeat.

This is related to your branding. The theme of your business should run throughout your store or website. Hundreds of thousands of small businesses neglect to display their brand name and logo all over the store, but consistently reminding people who they are trusting will play a bigger role in influencing them to come back to you next time.

Newsletter. Updates. Contact

However you communicate with potential clients or customers - you've got to be consistently doing so. Don't try to track the effectiveness of your efforts after a week or even just a few weeks. That isn't consistency. You might have a problem with consistency because it flies right in the face of 'getting rich quick' - but then you have bigger problems if that's what you're after.

Even if you promise people a little less, or you do a bit less - but you do it CONSISTENTLY - you'll be doing yourself a favor in the long run.

When you're consistent as a seller or a negotiator or a speaker or an employee - when you do what you say and you follow through regularly - people will begin to trust you.(And so will hummingbirds.)

Read more about these birds at moondesignslive.com, search: "hummingbird"

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Successful Entrepreneur: Simon Cowell

A Lesson in Effortlessness
[Video Below]

You've seen him, heard him - watched him ridicule people who likely have mental disabilities - he's Simon Cowell the British...money mogul. He really can't be called much else given to the fact that he says he'll consider any job if it offers a paycheck.

What I like about him - and especially this video - is you hear him admit that he doesn't know anything about the music industry on the technical side. He's basically just a fan with ideas. More evidence that there is no reason for you not to be able to succeed in whatever area you've decided on.
[See Video, Continue Reading]


You can also get behind the “I couldn't care less” (about what other people think) attitude that he wears on his sleeve. Cold? Maybe. But that frame of mind allows you to take action where you might shy away - go with the flow in one moment, rather than censor yourself and your idea. Most successful people won't articulate this sentiment very well - even though they all share it - but thanks to Simon he just spells it out for you in simple words.

“I couldn't care less”

Listen to how many times and in how many different situations he sees 2 things that are separately popular, then he just blended them together - and benefited. Not reinventing the wheel - just playing with the design that someone else toiled over.

An entrepreneur or small business owner should be paying attention to

Simon Cowell

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Business Trick: Persuasive Selling I

The Stringing 'YES!'

Here's a quick selling tactic that you have definitely run into, but you probably forget to actually use during your sales pitches, letters, negotiations, and even job interviews: The Stringing YES!

Do you want to learn more?
Have you been looking for ways to improve your business skills?
Wouldn't you finally like to learn something valuable for free?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Now buy my product!

[Master the Technique]


And....you're supposed to follow the pattern that we've already established here. This selling tactic is based on the human tendency to form habits quickly. Sellers are banking on that tendency - expecting you to form a habit within 20 minutes or less.

And it works.

Here's an example of a sales-pitch web page that uses the stringing yeses in a more clever way:But wait - where are the questions that produce the 'yes' answer from me? Well - this clever little site is using rhetorical sentences - you agree to obvious statements.

“Everyone KNOWS you do this IF you want to make money online.”
Yes. I want to make money online - and oh - everyone knows that? Ok, then I know it too.(Using peer pressure to get you to agree....and you thought you got away from that after high school, right?)

“If you love what you've seen so far...”
Yes...

“...and you're ready for me to do tons of stuff for you...”
Yes...

“Then just keep reading.”

From what you see it looks like this letter is about to ask you to purchase - but you'd be way off. There's still another 500 words or so to get you to say 'YES' 100 more times in 100 different ways. They REALLY want that word tattooed in your brain so when it comes time to ask you for the purchase - you've been looking forward to it all along!

The 'Stringing Yes'. It works - but I hope you'll start using it to sell products that actually provide Value!

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Business Advice: Fake Your Energy.

Warning:

This will be one of the most important articles on the site - so though I expect many first reactions to the word "energy" to be recoil - I strongly advise you keep an open mind until the end.

There's a phrase that many success 'gurus' advise and that is to

“Fake it until you make it.”

And that is supposed to mean "pretend that you're a success until you actually become one." I like that advice - BUT - it isn't a suit you put on only when you're 'at work' - and when you treat it that way it is INEFFECTIVE.

Another way of putting it is to Practice your Attitude. Practice feeling like a success. Practice BEING a success.

Become: 'Be' first, and THEN it will 'come'.

[Donald Trump, Real Examples of How to Make this Work for You]


You can't be down about sales, or down about revenues, or down about your standing in the company all day and then - during that short part of the day when you are actually making the sale or you're actually at work, you won't be able to convincingly portray a sense of confidence, power, and leadership. You will not be able to compete.

You need to be pretending or practicing ALL DAY LONG. That's the whole point. The point is that you pretend to be a success so often - so frequently - that you actually start to believe it. And once you BELIEVE it - you will GENUINELY portray it during your sales pitches, while you're at work, when it counts.

Someone in a forum recently asked the question:

“How do I respond when someone asks me how much money my business is making when it's not doing so great at that moment? The question makes me feel bad about my business even if it's getting better. How should I respond?”

To answer that question there are plenty of responses that MIGHT work:

“It's doing pretty well and it's exciting to watch it consistently improve.”

“Sales are OK but the interest level is REALLY there. I can tell things are about to hit and I'm just trying to get ready for it.”

But the important thing here is that NOTHING will feel good to you when you haven't been pretending or visualizing. So when you find yourself in this kind of situation - where someone asks you a similar question and you feel your gut tighten in response - get through your answer but then MAKE NOTE that you have some 'pretending' work to do on this particular subject.

Thank GOD really that they showed you where you have some cleaning up to do. If you never noticed it and never cleaned it up - nothing would change for you. And that's exactly what happens to most people.

So fake it - but remember to Fake it consistently. Fake it when you're in the shower, when you're watching TV, when you're talking at the dinner table - do it all from the point-of-view that what you want is already your experience.

Ever seen kids playing basketball at a park - counting down the end of the game and visualizing, pretending or PRACTICING winning the game with a last-second shot? Kids have a lot more intuitive knowledge than most people will ever know.

A Trump Thing.

Someone once came off bossy to a client of Donald Trump and he asked her: "Why did you do that?"

She responded: "Well, you know how they say 'fake it until you make it?'"

He gave her a look of confusion and disbelief that you will see if you tell someone that aliens served you a peanut butter & jelly sandwich today.

He said: "I don't know what you're talking about. You don't do that."

Now SHE is most likely NOT practicing that feeling on a consistent basis and 'The Donald' is just lost at the whole idea.

Classic Donald. No one has ALL the answers.

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