The Call to Action

This week I received an interesting call from a small business owner who needs some help getting sponsors for a poetry project. Separately I spoke with a friend’s daughter who is graduating from college next month and is dealing with the “what do I do now” syndrome. Those two quite different conversations struck a common cord with me regarding what we all have to do if we are to live a life that resembles our dreams of success. We have to be ready to step into the middle of it all with some decisive action and risk taking every day.

I confess that thinking about things and analyzing situations comes easily to me. It’s comfortable, but that is a bit like using a rocking chair. No matter how enthusiastic and good I am at rocking or how long I do it, I get nowhere until I leave the comfort of the chair. It is all about heeding the call to action. About fifteen years ago I read a memorable speech from President Teddy Roosevelt that he delivered one hundred years ago in Paris on the subject of citizenship in a Republic. That speech has long been best known as “The man in the arena” address. Its lesson is for men and women, but that’s how the word was used at the time. One of the reasons I’m devoting this phase of my life to encouraging and supporting business owners and entrepreneurs is that most of them live the life that Teddy Roosevelt describes. Here is an excerpt from his remarks.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Two of the dominant aspects of American life these days, media and politics often seem to ignore the truth spoken by President Roosevelt. The media business is home to a surplus of critics and politicians specialize in telling voters they can have everything with little or no pain. By teaching generations of young people to seek safety and predictability above all else we’ve led them into “knowing neither victory nor defeat.” The young lady I spoke to who is graduating next month is now asking her parents to fork over another $25K so that she can attend culinary school because she may want to be a chef or even a restaurant owner! Well, that business certainly isn’t safe or predictable but remaining in school would seem to be that. Her parents have now helped her secure a low level kitchen job in a nice restaurant, thereby putting her “into the arena.” She’ll find out quickly if she likes the relentless pressures of professional cooking and if so, she’ll earn a chunk of the tuition money.

The woman who called me to help find a sponsor for her public access cable show focusing on poets brought a nice challenge. It turns out that she was expecting me to identify approach and close deals with sponsors. She didn’t want to go anywhere near the arena of knocking on doors or “dialing for dollars.” I offered to share my knowledge in sales and even to share our presentations and techniques with her while being clear that she may not get where she wants to go without putting her mind and body deeply into the process and to “strive valiantly.”

This is the time of year when thousands of young people are graduating from schools with high hopes. One of those hopes is that someone will figuratively lead them to water, hand them a cup and allow them to drink all they want! You and I know that it most likely won’t happen that way. One of my favorite inspirational characters was the Chicago insurance tycoon W. Clement Stone who said “No matter how carefully you plan your goals they will never be more than pipe dreams unless you pursue them with gusto.” That is your call to action.

Going GaGa for Business

Just one year ago the pop music phenomenon known as Lady Gaga was preparing to perform at Palm Springs California’s White Party, perhaps the largest Gay men’s celebration in the country. I’m sure it was a career step up for the Lady (real name Stephani Germanotta) at that time and a significant turn of the wheel for what I think is a masterful marketing machine. As small business owners we can probably learn some great marketing lessons from her story and those of other pop music performers.

I love just about all types of music and have been fascinated by those performers who have the ability to move beyond just having a hit song and a taste of fame to developing a long lasting career. What does it take? Were there other artists equally as talented as legends such as Elvis Presley or Michael Jackson? Yes, but today most of their names are etched in the sands of time rather than on marquees or the cover of People magazine. I’m way off the profile for Lady Gaga’s fan base but since noticing the promotion for her Palm Springs appearance, I’ve been impressed by her brand building and marketing skills. To get past being just a flavor of the year will require all her skills plus the ability to adapt quickly to the marketplace. It is about marketing what you have.

It was two years ago (August 2008) that Lady Gaga released her first successful album, “The Fame” and began to build her fame in several foreign countries. But as we now know in today’s media saturated marketplace, a person can be famous just for being famous. Excuse me Paris Hilton and Kate Gosselin. When I began to learn more about Ms. Gaga, it became obvious that the young lady can play the piano well, sings with a lovely voice and is able to write catchy songs. In other words she has the basic skills to sustain a music performer brand but she had to first get noticed and work on building a fan base. I’d say her packaging in those outrageous costumes helped separate her from the ever present pack of want to bees.

Who would have thought that when Madonna released her “Like a Virgin” album in 1984 that people would still be talking about her twenty six years later? She has been a brilliant brand builder. As a vocalist her talents are modest but earnest. If she were an American Idol contestant today, Madonna might not make it to round three. But she has successfully charted a singular course of experimentation and reinvention for a quarter century. The odds of doing that in the fickle firelight of pop culture are very long. The core values of a great brand must remain constant but how it is presented and marketed must evolve with the times.

Cyndi Lauper had a worldwide hit album with “She’s So Unusual” in early 1984 around the same time as Madonna began her rise to stardom. Though Lauper has sold millions of records over the same timeline as Madonna, you decide who is the bigger name brand today. The worlds of pop and hip hop music are littered with the bones of performer’s disintegrated careers. You do remember Wild Thing by Tone Loc don’t you? How about Christopher Cross who racked up hit records, Grammy awards, an Oscar award and a Golden Globe in a short space of time in the early eighties. Wherever Mr. Cross is now he must feel as though his career went from sunny and sizzling to the dark side of the moon.

I think that one key to Madonna’s brand success is that she has constantly developed it over the years, offering something interesting to each new generation while holding onto some of her late eighties fans. She has been a magnet for press coverage as a result of living a clearly unconventional lifestyle. And she has explored various music trends which kept pure music fans interested. Madonna has succeeded with what the very best marketers in the world have always done; they have trusted their inner instincts and followed them. Barry Manilow has a long career arc, having been hot and cold over the years. Now he’s performing in front of crowds in Las Vegas. Manilow’s core value is that he truly loves and respects the music and that has nourished his relationship with fans for decades. Paul McCartney is filling the Hollywood Bowl with his durable product forty years after the Beatles broke up! Prince has always enveloped himself in an aura of mystery on top the fact that he is a consummate musician. Being a mysterious iconoclast who can play music exceptionally well had helped him establish a strong personal brand. Among the newer generation of performers there are people such as Gwen Stefani who may have what it takes to build a long lasting personal brand.

What the business branding lessons we should take from these people? First your product has to be useful or desirable to a sizeable body of consumers and you have to help them notice it by building awareness. It needs a distributions system that makes it easy for them to access the product. You want to develop a clear product identity. Pop stars have a clear advantage there because their faces, voices and costumes separate one from another in the public consciousness. The key to longevity is to never stop developing your product or presenting it in fresh ways to potential new customers. The old Volkswagen bug changed in over a hundred ways during its lifetime, but there was never a danger of mistaking it for anything else.

It will be very interesting to have a look at Lady Gaga’s career a year from now to see if she’s mastered the art of keeping the brand fresh without breaking the bond with her core fans. She got noticed as a costumed curiosity who also had songs with strong lyrics. Will she learn to be a successful marketer for the long term in the unstable world of pop culture? She faces challenges similar to those that all small business owners must master. First there is the product then the perception, and most importantly, keeping the relationship with your customers alive. Last week I watched a 1969 Dick Cavett interview with Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones. Cavett asked Jagger if he could picture himself singing a prancing around a stage at age sixty. Jagger’s reply; “sure I could.”

Twitter or the Pet Rock?

Early in 1975, Gary Dahl a California advertising executive came up with the idea of the “Pet Rock” which quickly became a pop culture phenomenon and made him a millionaire. By Christmas of that year, the fad was over and the cute little rocks from a Baja beach went back to just being nuisances at the ocean’s edge. I think that Twitter may be destined for a similar fate.

I must confess that as a small business owner, salesman and marketer, I haven’t yet found a use in my business for Twitter and I’ve treated every encouragement to use it like a jury duty summons. Because my business resources are limited by dollars and staff size, the first question I ask about any new whiz bang idea is “how does it help me get the attention of people who are in a position to buy what I’m selling?” In my case those products are, TV and radio program sponsorship plus seeking partners for our non-profit, the Making It Institute. If I can’t connect those marketing and sales dots with Twitter, I’d prefer to just read about it rather than invest precious hours in attempting to make it work for my business.

Here are some interesting numbers on Twitter from RJ Metrics that would interest marketers. The number of monthly new users dropped from 7.8 million to 6.2 million in mid 2009. That report also says that just 17% of Twitter users updated their accounts last December, an all time low. The Nielsen Company says that 60% of Twitter users don’t return from one month to the next. While I’m not predicting the total demise of this branch of the social media tree, the digital world is littered with formerly hot ideas. You remember Friendster and Second Life don’t you?

The words Tweet and Twitter imply something small. At a certain level, I think that Twitter is made for small businesses since we are always yearning for economical ways to put our messages in front of prospective customers. Because small business owners can say and do things that buttoned up corporate marketing types would have to get lots of signed approvals for, there are some success stories. I read a story that Someecards has about 1.7 million followers while the giant and legendary Hallmark Cards has around 2000. One of those companies has 14,000 employees and the other just 5 full timers. Part of the Someecards winning strategy is not being afraid to post some downright crass statements in their tweets.

How are the big marketers handling Twitter? Dell Computer seems to be riding a wave of success because they use the service to tell customers about bargains in their outlet store. In American culture having someone lead us to a good deal is very high on the “I love it” scale right behind our affection for the flag and long buffet tables! One of our sponsor clients, Verizon shelled out a billion in advertising dollars in 2009 but they only have about 5000 followers in their tweet parade. In other words you’ve got to have an offer that has some special appeal to your followers and consumers.

Even politicians (or their assistants) are thumbing their way through this fairly new form of outreach. This week the Los Angeles Times featured an article titled “Congress Keeps it Short and Tweet” about the legislators who are using Twitter. Just the idea of those folks on social media sites reminds me of the historic phrase, “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” I’m under the impression that the 140 character limit that Twitter enforces might not be compatible with the natural verbosity of politicians who are usually looking for a more spacious platform. Elected officials are probably the polar opposite of an ideal profile for effective Twitter marketing.

Here is my bottom line. The flood of messages showing up in my in-box these days has me dreaming of an electronic shovel to get rid of 100 or more messages per day. Add social media messages to that, and the whole thing is making me antisocial! If your life is being bombarded in a similar way, you too may be growing suspicious of all electronic message advertising. For any of the social media tools to really work for you, it had best be by spreading useful, compelling and beneficial information to prospects and customers. Just as before Twitter, there must be a strategy and good idea in your marketing messages. Sometimes you’ll have to be snarky and irreverent to break through the clutter of clogged in-boxes, but small business owners can get away with that much better than large corporations. Despite some marketing success stories, something inside continues to tell me that Twitter is really the territory of those people named Hilton or Kardashian or Kutcher. I must confess that I often feel that everybody’s talking but very little of immediate use or lasting value is being said.

Can We Handle the Truth?

In the hit film “A Few Good Men” starring Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise, Nicholson’s character screams out the memorable phrase while being questioned in court, “You can’t handle the truth.” The ongoing health insurance squabble, alarm bells surrounding public sector budgets and the constant political food fight brought those words to mind for me this week. The only way to find out if we can really handle the truth is for us to consistently hear the truth from business leaders and political types and I don’t think the truth-meter needle is moving often enough right now.

I want to say two things here to clarify my blog writings. My passionate interest is in small to mid-sized businesses and how entrepreneurial thinking can help all of us. I really do believe that our lives will be better if we run them on sound business principles. Political rhetoric is of no real interest to me and I don’t write with a political party preference. Both major parties have done some good things over the last 60 years for the long term health of our country as well as making some pathetically boneheaded and harmful moves. My questions regarding political moves are just about the same as I’d ask of any business owner. They are: What is the goal? Are your strategies grounded in logic? How do the finances work out?

For example, the overly discussed, dissected and vilified health insurance reform legislation means one primary thing to me; politicians are demonstrating either a lack of knowledge or contempt for basic economic realities. We now have another underfunded entitlement program joining others that have the words social or medi as part of their names. The truth is that the money will run out and that will mean; cutting entitlements, asking for more money or printing a lot more money. As the British are fond of saying, it will end in tears.

There is a passage in the bible that says “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." I often supplement that wisdom in my speeches by telling the audience that before showing you that freedom; the truth will first kick your butt!

Here is a lesson in painful truth from newly elected New Jersey governor Chris Christie. His state like California and New York is facing fiscal disaster. Unlike the governors of those other states he seems to be pouring some painful truth into the discussion. He told the legislature that he was impounding $2 billion of the state budget, and cutting spending in 375 state programs to eliminate their $2 billion budget gap. Of course there were howls of unfair and all the comments you’d expect from a choir of vested interests. However he did not take money from public education and didn’t ask for more taxes on property owners which strike me as common sense thinking.

The hardest truth for politicians to speak about is that pensions and benefits are the biggest driver of spiraling spending at all levels of government, which was also a key factor in the death of General Motors and Chrysler. Sound business principles dictated that those companies go through the fire of bankruptcy to be able to shake off some of that smothering burden before being reborn in a slimmed down form. With no disrespect to the many able public servants and government workers, let’s look at some numbers. A New Jersey state employee who retired at age 49 has paid a total of $124,000 toward his pension and health benefits. If he lives to the expected age, he’ll receive a total of $3.8 million in pension and health benefits! Who really wants to pay for this? The naked truth is that this story is repeated hundreds of thousands of times across the country and even the slow learners understand that this model can’t be sustained. I did say that truth will kick your butt before any feeling of freedom flows in.

As a small business owner, I get the good and bad news weekly if not daily. In my world, truth can’t be obscured for very long. Even in what used to be America’s largest corporation, General Motors, suspended truth eventually won the battle and imposed it’s will on the fate of that iconic company. Some years ago, a tough old real estate developer said to me “you have to lay a solid foundation under whatever you do because gravity always wins and brings you back down to earth.”

Is this a doom and gloom prediction? I don’t think so. Sound business principles can be applied at any time as long as we are willing to accept truth and work through the resulting pain. Anyone who has kicked an addiction can attest to that. I believe that the human spirit is indomitable and that the true American foundation in capitalism is solid. We just have to be true to it.

Since my business is built around media, I often muse on what role all media plays in diverting American’s from dealing with the truth. Another motion picture, “Network” written by the legendary Paddy Chayefsky was prophetic on the subject in 1976. The lead character is fictional network anchorman Howard Beal. He has some choice words regarding truth. “Listen to me. Television is not the truth. Television is a God*****d amusement park! Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, story-tellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, side-show freaks, lion tamers and football players. We're in the boredom killing business! So, if you want truth go to God. Go to your gurus. Go to yourselves because that's the only place you're ever going to find any real truth. But, man, you're never gonna get any truth from us. We'll tell you anything you want to hear.”

Whether we can handle it or not, it is time for a major dose of truth.