Trizle

1. You want to sell your amazing products.
2. But, your shy-frickin' behind fears rejection.
3. So, you continue driving your busted Pinto.

If you're (1) one shy mofo, (2) hate the thought of selling, but (3) want to build a ridiculous business -- what do you do?

Here's what:

Don't climb Mount Humilujkaridario -- yet.

Conquer the mountain's little peaks first.

If you're freakishly scared at the though of selling/being-rejected/hearing-NOs, don't sell your product on Call ^1.

Instead, take itty-bitty steps so you're gradually making your way up the mountain.

For instance:

Your First Step if You're One Shy Mofo

1. Do something super-easy, like calling some prospect's customer service department.
2. Ask for some information about their company.
3. Hang up, and congratulate yourself. You're done!

You just desensitized your fear by a little. You're making your way slowly up that mountain.

Break The Fear Systematically.

Gradually break into your fears in subsequent calls; for instance:

• Call ^2: Request a brochure.
• Call ^3: Recommend something on what you see so far.
• Call ^4: Ask for Chief Sales Officer (or a manager).
• Call ^5: Send information to the CSO.
• Call ^6: Follow-up.
• Call ^7: Pitch a purchase order.

Every subsequent call should be as easy-as-pie, something you could oh-so-totally-do! Hooray!

That helps you conquer your fears in itty-bitty-mother-@^%^-baby steps -- until you're selling like cupcakes at Fatty Camp.

Win.

Itty.

What do you see when you look at Apple?

• "Sweet products! Hooray!"
• "They make everything so b-eee-autiful!"
• "Wow! Even their boxes are so lovely!"

But what if Schmo gave you a gut check:

1. "Apple doesn't manufacture its laptops."
2. "Apple doesn't make its own boxes."
3. "Apple doesn't build its own iPods."

If you were an Apple fanboy, would you cry?

Yes, you would.

The Reality Behind Every Big Business

Behind every big business stands a collection of a kazillion smaller companies -- companies that:

• provides its furnishings
• builds its products
• sweep its floors
• provides its light bulbs
• serves its food

A collection of a kabazillion smaller companies make Target/Wal-mart/P&G/Google/Intel/Goldman/Berkshire work.

Opportunities: Ga-frickin-lore.

Yet, Aspiring Entrepreneurs Want to Suck

The typical 'magical' entrepreneur like Johnny thinks:

1. "We got to beat some Apple ass."
2. "Then, we'll make billions!"

But when Johnny tries to compete against the big fellas, what happens to Johnny?

Johnny ends up sucking, with clients wondering:

1. "What about 24/7 support when I need it?"
2. "What if I need some enhancements?"
3. "Can't this dude go belly-up within months?"
4. "I don't know if I can trust this guy!"

A few years of exhaustive work later, he sees his potential-to-rock-like-a-mofo evaporate.

Meanwhile, his buddy Stevie in the corner office -- who has actively partnering up with bigger firms, has grown his organization like a fatty.

Don't suck like Johnny.

Instead:

Find a Friend

Small businesses rarely start off with freakish bangs.

Instead, the smarter route to grow your small company is to first become some bigger company's beyotch.

1. Find bigger guys to supply your stuff.
2. Grow your business incrementally.
3. You'll see yourself gradually becoming bigger and bigger.

...until you're the big guy yourself!

Hooray for you.

How to Start Your Journey

Do this:

1. Hop on Google...
2. Then, search "[companynamehere] suppliers"
3. Or, try "[companynamehere] procurement"
4. Or, contact a company directly and asking how you can be on its vendor list

(If you're a service company, pitch your ideas. Or, give some value first to show your stuff.)

Win!

"But what if I can't break into the Fortune 500 because I don't have a financial history?!"

Try this:

• mid-sized companies

KABAMOFOSUKO!

High-five to you.

Be a bizattchi. Supply bigger bidnezzes.

1. You set 10 goals for Year 1.
2. You set 15 goals for Year 2.
3. You set 50 goals for Year 5.

Five Years Later

You check yourself:

• "I've only accomplished only 2 goals -- total!"

Boo to you.

Why'd You Suck So Badly?

Think of trying to cook a 10-course meal simultaneously in three hours.

By the time dinner starts, you've:

1. half-butted everything
2. accomplished nothing

That is, when you juggle a variety of goals, you'll:

1. get "started" on everything
2. get nothing done

Result: S.U.C.K.

How to Accomplish Long-Term Goals

This:

1. Set one long-term goal.
2. Dominate the mother -@^^%.
3. Repeat.

(Long-term could mean 6-months, 1-year, 3-years, 10-years -- adapt to YOU).

That is, you set no other long-term goal until you accomplish Goal XYZ with a freakish vengeance.

What happens?

I Revolve My Life Happens.

When you set The Goal, you revolve your entire lifestyle around dominating The Goal -- tinkering with:

1. how you're working
2. what resources you're exploiting
3. who you want around you
4. how healthy you're living
5. the yaddas

...to accomplish the effer.

Result: Laser-sharp-focused YOU, which ridiculously boosts your chances of accomplishing what you really want to accomplish -- The @^^% Goal.

Kabambizzle to you.

ONE.

1. Bobishka's the chef for your little shop.
2. She's mad at your company.
3. Her performance drains.

Get this:

• Mad workers: Slow Workers.
• Happy workers: Rock Star Workers.

Then, get this:

• The happier the worker, the more she'll tell you how much she loves your company.
• The angrier the worker, the more she'll go behind your back ridiculing you, your company, and your children.

Result of The Angry: Company turmoil caused by drainage in morale, resulting in Super-Sucky Bottom-Line.

"OH NOES!! So how should I serve them?!"

Think back to where you excelled like a crazy person; you likely got:

• all the stuff you needed to do your work
• an awesome support system that helped you excel
• managers laying out the red carpet so you can rock your brilliance

Winner: All.

So, what do your employees need to perform?

1. resources to do their work
2. support to do their work
3. freedom to do their work

The more you serve them:

1. the more you'll boost their performance
2. the more you'll skyrocket employee morale
3. the more you'll fatten that bottom line

In other words:

1. Treat employees like their Kings of Your Company.
2. See the magic.

The Kings

Think of a top-down pyramid.

• The CEO's at the bottom; the front-line employees at the top.
• The CEO serves everybody above her like they're her Kings.

For instance, your badass-ity would dump the traditionally-pathetic-manager-employee social relationship, and adopt these mofos:

1. "Hey, you have all you need?"
2. "How can I improve my skills to manage better?"
3. "Do you have any concerns I can address?"
4. "What can I do to make you ridiculously perform?"
5. "Can I get you some @!^^%$^ horchatas?"

In other words, when you become their little bizattchi:

1. You create the ideal environment where employees can succeed.
2. You constantly fine-tune that environment per your Kings' feedback so they'll excel like rock stars in speedos.

Freakish increase in efficiency/morale/bottom-line/love: CHECK!

Winner: All.

Serve them like effin' kings of your ridiculous world.

1. "Dude, I'm working 9897685709856056 hours!"
2. "And, I'm only getting paid $2!"
3. "This is how hard REAL entrepreneurs work! HIGH FIVE!"

That's the fact of an entrepreneurial life, right?

You know:

1. Work ridiculous hours.
2. Get paid barely anything.
3. Can't afford health insurance, dental care, and the other yaddas.

"OH NO!"

But wait...

Why do some "magical" entrepreneurs out there seemingly:

1. work twice as less as you
2. make five times as much as you

Get this.

Two types of customers exist:

1. Customers that will work you like mofos for two dollars.
2. Customers that pay you splendidly for your valuable work.

We tend to:

1. find the very first client that wants to work with us
2. accept meager contract price
3. work butt off for little pay that ultimately exhausts us with incessant customer demands

Take Web Designer Kelly.

1. Kelly's working on a website for a mom-and-pop shop.
2. They're paying her a measly $100 for a website that must include a "custom content management system, multi-user access, permissions galore, a custom blogging engine, and a lead system."
3. She works her freakish bootay off.

50 hours of work later:

1. The mom-and-pop's peeps don't like this, and this, and this, and this, and this.
2. They want her to redesign humongous freakish parts of the website.

50 more hours of work later:

1. "We're getting there," the mom-and-pop tells Kelly.
2. "Now, I want you to change this, and this, and this, and this. Also, can you add 20 of these extra features? Thank you."

Exhaustion sets in.

Kelly wants to escape.

But, she's determined -- because hey, Edison never quit, so why should she?

"If I just stays in the ball game, I'll be a-okay!"

But no.

She destroys her morale, burns herself out, and the simple thought of running her own business scares the beejeebus her.

Choose Your Clients Wisely

Horrifically-cheap clients that want you to change the world for them for $2 will:

1. exhaust you
2. drain your morale
3. make you work exponentially horrific hours
4. run your business into the ground

Rich clients and organizations that will pay you richly for your efforts will:

1. boost your morale
2. connect you to profitable referrals
3. grow your company
4. give you a life

Working for cash-strapped mom-and-pop shops might be good for the initial learning experience; but relying on unprofitable clients will exhaust you to your core -- and put your business on the brink of falling off the cliff.

Look for richer clients.

Think the Fortune 500. Think the government. Think bigger clients.

At the least, think clients that can pay you above market rates for your services/offerings.

(And, if you can couple that with recurring work, you'll set yourself in super fantastic shape.)

Those big guys can likely service those mom-and-pop shops in some way anyway (through economies of scale), so you won't need to sacrifice your welfare.

Win for all.

KABOOMSHAKAH!

Think bigger.

1. You display a product.
2. You explain its features.
3. You sit back, and relax.

Will people remember your products?

They might -- but, you'd be super-rifically-ka-duper better off if you highlight the potential rewards of using your product instead.

Why?

Here's how your brain works:

1. "I see potential reward."
2. "I open my learning basket wider to dump more info inside."
3. "I remember more of the info later!"

Research from Stanford's Alison Adcock and research buddies showed peeps immediately tap their brain's reward and learning areas (mesolimbic and hippocampus regions) when they saw potential rewards.

It's like an ugly-looking child opening his mouth wide when he sees unwrapped candy because no one has ever fed him candy because he was so ugly-looking.

That is:

1. see potential goodness
2. prepare wide in-basket

The To-Do

To get prospects/customers/people to remember more about your products, start ridiculously highlighting the potential rewards of using your product.

1. You'll build better brand recognition.
2. You'll increase word-of-mouth.
3. You'll boost repeat visitors.

And ultimately, you'll increase familiarity (which breeds attraction) -- boosting sales.

Highlight the goodness.

1. Tamika does something that's freakishly unprofitable.
2. "Things will turn around!", she tells herself.
3. She continually sucks.

How We Humans Suck

• We peeps continually leave our options open.
• We keep piling on a million things to our to-do lists.
• Everything and its mother is important to us.

That leaves us sucking each and everyday.

Instead of focusing our minds on only the very-berry-super-duper important stuff, we stress our minds to cover a billion things.

Result: S.U.C.K.

Our Human Tricks

Psychologically, we hate surrendering something.

We won't:

• dump a TV show that used to be good but now sucks more than a Donnie and Marie sitcom.
• dump a website we visit daily, which we know serves no positive benefit to our lives
• dump some project that's draining cash like a mofo on a drug-induced ostrich that has a thing for pink elephants

Psychologists call it "loss aversion."

That is, we strongly prefer avoiding loss over acquiring gain.

So, we continue to:

1. fattening our to-do lists
2. watch bad sitcoms
3. visit websites with masturbating bears

BOO!

Your brain tricks you to do incredulous things that ultimately harm your progress.

Here's how to combat it.

Combat Yo-Self

Do this:

1. Today: Stop doing one thing.
2. Tomorrow: Stop one more thing.
3. The day after tomorrow: Stop another thing.
4. Etcetera that mofosoko.

You'll gradually sharpen your focus to do the most beneficial things that will help you rock this world like David Mother-@!^^^@% Hasselhoff.

HIGH-FIVE!

"Today, I will stop: __."

1. Mr. Shabambizzle builds Product A.
2. He releases his first innovation.
3. He then builds Product B using Product A's "heart".
4. Quickly and efficiently, he releases his second innovation -- with little cost.
5. He soon builds Product C using the aforementioned heart.
6. (1) Third product, (2) with little financial strain, and (3) high efficiency: CHECK.
7. etc.

Mr. Shabambizzle wins like a mother-fruckin hero.

To win like Mr. Shabambizzle:

1. Build "bitch" products -- products that can act as "hearts" to various other end-user products.
2. That helps you release newer innovations quickly, efficiently, at low cost.
3. You'll soon provide ridiculously-accelerated value to your customers with newer offerings.

Winner: You.

The Value of B*tch

Think of it like this:

• A motor is a car's bitch.

It can also be:

1. an airplane's bitch.
2. a motorcycle's bitch.
3. a lawnmower's bitch.

You don't just end up with a "car" -- OH NO! -- you can also end up with:

• a frickin' airplaine.
• a frickin' motorcycle.
• and, a frickin' lawnmower.

You exploit the "bitch" (i.e., the motor) to produce an array of new offerings for your customers.

(Harvard Business Review's C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel coins that hub your "core competenticies".)

That is:

1. You extract a framework from an existing product (e.g., the motor from a car).
2. You use that framework to build new products (e.g., airplane, motorcycle, lawnmower).

The motor starts becoming sexier, sexier, and oh-so-much sexier.

See The Gold

Ridiculously-innovative companies like P&G, Google, and 3M don't just build discrete user products.

Instead, they primarily focus on core/heart/bitch products that can pave a kabillion new product offerings for their end-users.

That massively saves them time, resources, and a lot of $$$.

The key to your innovative treasures:

1. Focus on core/heart/bitch products.
2. Increase how quickly you release new products.
3. Generate 98978987695785968707676 new offerings for your customers.

WIN!

Think Bitch.

• Option A: "Price it at $10/month!"
• Option B: "Price it at $120/year!"

Does it make a difference?

You bet your bottom tidy ass it does.

Get this:

1. Peyton pays for a CRM subscription for $10/month.
2. Eli pays for a CRM subscription for $120/year.

What happens?

• Peyton uses the software more throughout the year because he's constantly reminded of that $10 monthly bill.
• Eli would use the software a bunch at first, but then gradually uses much less of it because the $120 bill becomes a distant memory.
• Therefore, Peyton would much likelier renew his subscription because he sees more use out of it.

That's according to Harvard's John Gourville and his research peeps:

• People are more likely to consume a product when they are aware of its cost - "when they feel 'out of pocket.'"

The less customers know about your charges:

1. the less they'll invest time into your product
2. the less they'll understand how enthralling your product really is.
3. and, the less likelier they'll renew.

BOO!

"YO!"

1. You have a coffee shop at a vacation spot.
2. You're doing your first marketing blitz.

Who should you target?

• Option A: Vacationers
• Option B: Hotel staff

Companies that exponentially grow look for customers who come back:

1. Time...
2. ...after time
3. ...after time
4. ...after time
5. ...after time
6. ...after time
7. ...after time

People who repeatedly buy from you = The super0ideal customers

• You'll get more bang for your marketing dollars.
• They'll repeatedly return with kaching.
• They're more likely to refer you to other customers.
• They're lifetime financial support for you: F.A.T.

How do businesses grow and thrive?

Like this:

• 1st year: Customer A sends them $1.
• 2nd year: Customer A, B send them $2.
• 3rd year: Customer A, B, C, D send them $4.
• 4th year: Customer A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H send them $8.
• ...and it grows like a fatty...

Target repeatable buyers.

Think repeatable Johnny.