Marketing Plan Advice

Someone once said: “man’s propensity to give advice is only equaled by his propensity… to ignore it.”

That said, here’s my advice on developing a marketing plan:

1. Before developing your marketing plan you need to have a vision of what it is that you are trying to achieve

2. Once you know what it is that you want, then you need to figure out what it is from a customer’s perspective. You need to generate an avatar for the ideal customer.  You need to script how the relationship with them will form and develop over time.

3. Finally you write your marketing plan in consideration of the constraints in terms of time and money, then act on that plan working on 90-day goals and reassessing as new information comes to hand.

Why, did I bother… Well that’s another story.

This evening my personal trainer rang and wanted some advice about marketing his services.   What ensued would have to be the most draining experience of my entire day.  We spoke at length and I’m not joking the conversation did actually last two hours.  In that time I didn’t ever change what I envision for his business, as I’m fairly sure of what he is trying to achieve, it is simply that communicating it is very difficult for me.

I consider myself a relatively skilled communicator however I feel that I messed up in a couple of key ways.  Partially I was not strong enough.  I wasn’t completely certain because there are a number of variables that would influence a decision.  However I didn’t need to tell him that.  It only confused him.

Secondly I forgot about the primary convincing factor for many people, authority.  While compared to him I am an expert, I forgot to make it clear that I had it on good authority what I was telling him was correct.

Finally I didn’t do the most simple of all things and that was provide a framework around which to base my arguments which I repeat over and over sighting different examples and tying them in constantly to the framework which he could afterward remember.  I am very worried that because of this last point especially that he will be in the same situation when I see him on Tuesday, so perhaps I’ll just jot it down here and now (cut/pasted above).

I guess that now I’ve written this blog post I’ll be able to sleep, since I was previously feeling rather stressed by the whole situation.  It is great how blogging, and actually writing in general, can help to clear your mind and order your thoughts.  Actually I learned that from Glen Dietzel who taught me: “Writing is the doing part of thinking”.  And with that I’ll sign off.  Good night everyone.  I hope you’re day is full of love and joy.

The Argus & Super GP

I found this site after meeting a couple of lovely photo-journalists at Super GP weeks ago.  Turns out it is my personal trainer’s fiancee so here’s the link.  Check it out is based on WordPress as designed by Queenslander Sean Bunton… oh and the photos are pretty awesome as well

http://theargus.net.au/events/surfers-roars

Let’s make tech focused apartment buildings

I’ve been watching David Logan’s presentation on Tribal leadership on TED a lot over the last couple of weeks and something occurred to me today I want to share.   For a long time I’ve been thinking that we need to make tech centric apartment buildings.   The sort of buildings where you don’t need to call an electrician to install more power outlets or run wires all around the edges of the wall to get the network running.  Where you don’t have to worry about security, backups, networks and you can share files.  You can log in and see that the car-park is undergoing maintenance next week and when you meet another resident while checking your box you have something in common to discuss besides the weather or the headline news.  I suppose if you’re reading this you’re online, probably better than average in terms of education and this sounds great but how does it relate to tribes and what about tribal leadership?

David Logan in his presentation on TED.com talks about there being five stages of  a tribal culture.  Starting with level one, life sucks moving up to level two, my life sucks, then where most of us are level three: I’m great (& you’re not), up to level four, We’re Great  then finally to Life’s Great.  The problem is that we can only understand one level above and below where we are at.  This means that to empower leaders you need to learn to meet people where they’re at and direct them to the next level.  And here’s the tie in to the apartments.  With a building in a stage 5 culture, could there be a more useful method of taking stage 2′s and threes and leading by example?  I think not.

Going hungry in Papakura, South Auckland, New Zealand

I was reminded this afternoon just how poor we were when I was a kid.  Some might even say I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, but everything is relative right?

There’s no denying that the towns where I grew up are pretty poor by international standards, any standards actually.  The median income is a little over $10K USD and although my father was a good earner there were many times when we, my younger brother and I, went hungry.

What reminded me was while I was enjoying a massive meal after my afternoon swim three young lads came in to the cafe asking if there was any free food.  The shopkeeper flat out refused and they left.  Taking my lead from what Tony Robbins does I ran out after the kids and offered to buy them something.

It was a simple gesture but one that make me infinitely happy that I too am that kind of person.  My hope is that one day these kids will know there are people in this world whose compassion outweighs their self interest and will act to help a fellow human being in need.

Helping A Homeless Person

In my previous post I expressed regret that I didn’t remember the lady that was homeless and offer to help her.  Last week I was given another opportunity to help a homeless man and I took that opportunity.

In the beginning I didn’t know this guy was homeless.  We just got chatting in the sauna room of the local pool where I go to relax every other day or so.  He asked me for the time and later on while I was in the spa pool we started talking about taxation, charity and his ideas about business.  He was a nice enough guy, albeit a bit weird.  The pools closed soon after and I offered him a ride home.  Well, he wanted me to drop him off at a barn out in the middle of nowhere.  I figured he was roughing it so I bought him McDonalds and gave him money to stay at a backpackers, only after getting his assurance he would admit himself to the mental health hospital the next day.

It was extremely draining dealing with this guy.  By the end of it I was so relieved to be away from this guy.  Really I wanted to do more but I did the best I could.  It took a couple of days for my energy and enthusiasm to return after that episode and it has taught me just how difficult a problem we have trying to help these people.  I have the utmost respect for anyone who has to deal with the mentally ill.  It wasn’t easy, but I think paying the kindness I’ve received forward is they way we should all behave.  The compounding effect of acting with compassion and generosity is like a snowball rolling down a hill and if we all do our part we can effect positive change in this world we all share.

Love by eliminating the things you hate

Love.  It is everything.  The source of life.  I like to consider myself a loving person however today I have realised something that I will try and explain now.  That is this: if you focus on eliminating the things you hate you are more loving.  The law of attraction would suggest that we should concentrate on that which we want.  That is true.  It is also true that we can’t think about what we don’t want without thinking about it because our subconscious mind does not process negatives directly.  So what should we do when we are reminded of something we detest?  Think about how to eliminate it.

This thought occured to me this afternoon whilst eating my lunch and reading the newspaper.  In that paper there was an article about a corrupt mayor and a suicide.  I was shocked to the core that this still occurs in our world because for a very long time I have completed avoided news for the reason that I hadn’t realised how I should deal with the negative material that ubiquitously appears in our news.  Then I realised that if I can’t avoid it then the rational thing to do would be to use my energy to think of new ways to eliminate these things from our world.  If i focus on eliminating corruption, eliminating suicide, eliminating addiction, eliminating poverty then the law of attraction is working in the right way.

I am also trying to deal with another emotive experience that occured last night.  I was in Parnell meeting with a group of successful businessmen at a high class restuarant.  On my way inside I saw a Maori women cowering from the cold wind in the corner of the shop entrance.  She wore all black and had black hair, she was obviously homeless.  In a hurry I didn’t have a chance to think of helping her even though I had a wad of cash in my wallet.  I went to my meeting and left without further thought for the woman until I was in the car on the long drive home.  I realised I must have walked straight past her on the way out from my meeting, which was short and sweet, and completely ignored her.  Not that she wanted to be noticed, however on the drive home I felt awful because I realised I could have and should have taken the time to help her.  Or at least offer some assistance.  Perhaps this a step in the right direction.

Working holidays

Today is the last day of my working holiday to the Gold Coast of Australia.  Having thoroughly enjoyed the last week I am looking forward to returning to Auckland New Zealand to see my family and friends quickly before returning to start a new contract here in Australia that will see me travelling more and more I expect.

With the lovely temperatures here during the winter ranging from 20 to 28 degrees during the day, a wonderful light sea breeze with little more than a puff of cloud in the sky you would wonder why everyone doesn’t live here.  Having lived on the Gold Coast for the summer of 2001, arriving on September 13 two days after the horrible atrocity of a few days earlier, I can attest to the heat of Queensland in summer.  I once made the mistake of leaving the house without my shoes on.  You can do that in NZ.  In Queensland’s summer, despite the fact it was before 10am, the few hours of sun on the paved brick roads here was enough to cook my tender Kiwi feet.  Nevertheless I’m looking forward to returning to the most beautiful country on Earth, NZ.

Although I am clearly biased because of my heritage I would suggest that the New Zealand landscape is one of the most spectacular in the world.  With its vast rainfall it is one of the greenest countries and for those of you that have been lucky enough to go to or live in Ireland the North Island is fairly similar; except that in NZ you won’t ever see a stone fence.  The South Island though is spectacular for skiiing as any skier or snowboarder will attest.  As an Aucklander I should be careful though, there’s a tense rivalry between Auckland being the largest and commercial centre of NZ and the rest of the country.  They just love beating us in the rugby and rub our higher salaries in our face.

Of course those well informed will remind me that the highest average wage actually occurs in Wellington, however I would suggest that the use of statistics can be misleading to the uneducated.  The highest salaries actually occur in Auckland, it is supported by the leverage of the lower salaried worker no doubt.  I was once told by a successful businessman with links to ‘old money’ that the key to business was employing people smarter than you to leverage their work.  It is an unfortunate consequence of these seeming truisms that we may be led to forget the fundamentally binary nature of such generalisations.  They cannot be true in every circumstance and most especially when more and more demand from employers create a demand pull inflation of the wage required to employ someone.  Good old market economy.  Can’t wait to get back to NZ.

The power of persistence

Persistence.  Its value cannot be underestimated.  I am reminded of this just now as I have received a gift from Google, but more about that later.  The power of persistence is crucial for success in anything and often it is just around the corner from where you give up.  I have experienced much success in my life and this is my humble opinion.  You cannot succeed unless you get over the activation energy for the achievement.  The greater the achievement the higher the activation energy.  Think about it like this.  If you want to make Di-Nitro-Toluene the precursor to TNT it is relatively easy.  The first two nitrites attach easily.  But if you want the explosive power of TNT you need to place the mixture under pressure and heat it to give the nitrate enough energy to overcome the resistance created by the charge of the DNT and attach the final nitrite and make TNT.  Similarly when you want to achieve something extra-ordinary you must first achieve a lot of ordinary things.

The ordinary thing that inspired this post is the gift from Google.  I was on an Ad-Words webinar last week and won a bunch of tacky little gifts from Google.  One of those tacky little gifts was a cheap, and I mean really cheap, pen.  Google is stamped on the side in plain old white and not very well.  I wasn’t madly inspired but thought well I am attracting more money in my life and it wouldn’t be consistent to throw the pen out even though it wasn’t working.  Well I persisted.  I wrote ALL over the piece of paper that contained my goals from a couple months ago.  I turned it over and tried it again.  It still didn’t work.  Then I tried on the window.  The window is covered behind my curtains and was a pain to get to, but I persisted.  Then I tried again.  It still didn’t work.  I was about to quit.  I figured well if I’ve scribbled on three bits of paper (A5 folded in half) and they are completely covered, one even covered twice, then it is just not going to go.  It must be faulty.  I thought about checking to see if there was any ink in it and if I had another pen I could change it over with.  I decided against that as it looked slightly different than the pen I thought of changing it with.  Cheaper.

Then I had a thought if I just tried again maybe it might work.  It did.  The moral of the story is persistence pays.

My plastic surgery experience

Today I have had my bandages removed once and for all  from my finger after having the nail bed reconstructed nearly two weeks ago.  I must admit it has really knocked me around far more than I thought it would and so I figured I should share my experience here for you.

It is a strange thing to have your finger nail growing up instead of out.  That is what the surgery hopes to achieve but let me back up a little and give you the back story on why that is required in the first place.  Nearly a dozen years ago, almost in a previous life, I was working as a builder’s labourer.  (No that’s not a typo, that’s just how we spell down-under).  I was told to take down some scaffolding with the new guy on the site, a teenager with far too much to say for someone with far too little worth saying.  I took it upon myself to send him to clean up remains of the wall we’d demolished before smoko and went about taking down the scaffolding all by myself.   I had done this before, mind you, I was three stories up when the horizontal 5m steel pole I was removing caught on the brace that held it to the H frame, pivotted crushing the ring and middle finger of my left hand between it and the H frame.  Ouch!

I knew I’d done myself some damage immediately when I held my hand up and saw the bone from my middle finger exposed and blood pumping between six inches and a foot out from the gap where my flesh used to be.  I climbed down the three stories with one hand and my poor old foreman got a hell of a shock when he asked to have a look.  I went to the hospital and they nibbled the bone on my ring finger back to just after where the tendon attached and sewed it up.  The middle finger still had the majority of the flesh there so they simply wrapped that around and sewed it on.  The cuticle of the nail wasn’t damaged and the nail continued to grow only the nail bed was so scarred that it could not support the growth across and consequently the nail began growing up rather than out.

Having a nail that grows up is annoying for lots of reasons, many of them obvious, it catches on stuff and rips out, but perhaps of more interest is the effect it has on the way you grip things.  The nail actually gives a degree of stiffness to the flesh below it and this is especially important for playing stringed instruments where you bend the string to alter the pitch.  As I am a guitarist I was doubly penalised for my folly.  With my ring finger now a few millimetres shorter I would miss the string with that finger, and with my middle finger having a jelly-like quality was not good.  Luckily it didn’t affect my ability to type.

For ten of the dozen years since the accident I had held on to the vague hope that eventually the scar tissue would soften and the nail would regrow.  Unfortunately this was not the case and I had to do something about it.  I called the Accident Compensation Corporation – which for those of you not in NZ (probably most of you) is a strange but wonderful little invention which removes the personal injury claims from the courts by providing all the compensation to people who are injured by accidents in New Zealand.  They took about a year of harassing to finally process my claim but when they did I was ecstatic.  Finally I was going to have my finger nail right; little did I know.

That was a couple of years ago.  Since then I have had two surgeries.  The first was to remove some bone that was protruding up underneath the nail bed and pushing the nail out.  The more recent one was to graft nail bed cells from my big toe to my finger.  Both required a general anaesthetic and have been really painful for a couple of weeks afterwards.  While I can finally use my finger to type again, (one finger typing is hugely frustrating – especially if you want to write a blog), but it will be some time before I am able to pick up a guitar again.  Nonetheless I am grateful to my surgeon Cary Mellow from the Plastic Surgery Centre for doing great work and being a lovely guy.

Plastic surgery seems like it would be a great thing when you are vain as I am.  The reality of it however is that it really knocks you around and for a couple of weeks and more realistically a month or even two you’ll be unable to lead you life as normal.  I would definitely take this in to consideration if you are contemplating plastic surgery.  It takes a fair bit of resolve to stay in bed for a couple of weeks when there are better things to do.  Missing out on all the fun things that are going on is definitely a shame but I hope in the end it will put to rest something which has been a constant reminder of my putting work before my own best interests once and for all.