Damian Skinner » Small business

Top 5 Reasons We Resist Expert Marketing – Saturation

DamianSkinner — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 20:31:03 +0000

In this blog we are discussing the last of the top five reasons I have heard over and over for NOT embracing Expert Marketing.

SATURATION

In other words the concept that you are in a crowded market, or looking to enter into a market that has already been overly marketed and serviced. A concept resulting in this horrible word entrepreneurs, authors, speakers and the like seem to dread… saturation! (said as if I was a motocross announcer).

This one might seem small, but it is a perfect example of how small little deceptions and misconceptions can have a massive effect on our lives and our business growth.

So many of us who have that entrepreneurial dream to either build our own empire or just create a second stream of revenue base our decisions on this classic business concept.

I do believe that an important part of business success comes from looking at a market and going where there is little to no competition.

In fact Thomas J. Stanely, Ph.D. author of the book “The Millionaire Mind” states that one of the top 10 reasons listed when interviewing hundreds of millionaires is just that. They knew they did not want to have to work as hard as it takes to take on heavy competition.

So if that is a researched fact, then why am I saying it is an excuse?

Let’s define saturation and competition.

For the purpose of our conversation, and dealing with why we resist marketing ourselves as experts, I will define competition as a fact of life but saturation as a perception, or better yet, how we are choosing to see the fact of competition.

Imagine for a second that you wake up one day with a burning passion to create a new line of cars, lawn mowers, health shakes, work out programs or even yet another social media platform.

You’re insane right? Well only if you are not willing to look for the opportunities in those crowded markets. In every industry there are weaknesses that allow for someone to come along and exploit.

Energy – Green Mountain Energy

Transportation – Electric cars or even low cost cars such as Kia

Social Media – New platforms that don’t create connections but facilitate them such as ping.fm, peoplebrowsr or tweetdeck.

The point is simply this: Yes there is competition, and yes you should look at that competition very clearly. But if you are an author, speaker or any sort of business person that will be in front of people you have one key ingredient, one secret weapon that can carve out a piece of that market faster than any technology, degree, or product.

YOU!!!

That’s right true believers. You.

I have spent my life showing people from every imaginable background and business how to leverage themselves to gain their market share and it starts by simply stopping the khaki game.

If you’re not familiar with the khaki game, I can sum it up with this quote that I heard from a girlfriend.

“Being boring is a choice. Those khakis and mild salsa didn’t create themselves!”

KHAKI TALK

No offense to all my khaki wearing brothers out there. Khaki pants and fashion is not really the point here.

Each one of us has a completely unique mind that has been shaped and forged from billions of impressions that all come together to create a single unique view of the world and its challenges.

So it doesn’t matter if you’re selling insurance, donuts, or civilian space travel. You see it differently.

The key is that you have to give way to those thoughts and allow them to be heard.

This is what truly lies beneath this excuse, as it does with all of them. FEAR OF REJECTION.

So let me leave you with this one question.

If you are scared of rejection from clients, customers, and especially your peers, then how has that worked for you up to this point?

Take a true assessment of your business.

Are you doing what you love?

Do you enjoy your clients?

Do you actually respect your peers and value their opinions?

If you answer no to any of these questions then you would probably truly benefit from what we see as rejection. It is “rejection” that shapes our business for the good.

Your life view and opinion will attract those that you will enjoy working with and for. Those that will value your business so you are not constantly asking for them to value your time and expertise.

Where there is saturation there is IMMENSE potential. Saturation tends to be the thickest in markets where the actual humanity is the hardest to find.

Every one of us wants to communicate with a human, purchase from a human, and work with a human.

If you don’t believe that then go ahead and call for tech support the next time your system or phone has crashed losing all of your work and pay attention to your very first reaction when an automated message comes on.

And if you don’t believe me well… then… I encourage you to “reject” me! LOL. I’m just that much closer to my true market!

Resource Mining Part 1

Damian Skinner — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:38:58 +0000

www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7htablmGWI

Transcript of Resource Mining Part 1 Video

Hello, Damian Skinner from DamianSkinner.com, and mogulizeyourbusiness.com.

I want to talk to you today about a principle that is extremely important to any business and yet I’ve never really heard it talked about anyplace else. Not to businesses anyway. I do want to give you a disclaimer, you’re going to think that this is self-help and metaphysical and that kind of thing and I promise you its not. It has nothing to do with that. This is a business principle and its based off the actual science and study of connectivity and synchronicity. Now I teach this as one of the underlying principles in one of our classes that we refer to as “Sync-Sational”. The purpose of “Sync-Sational”, which is actually a 4 month telecast that we walk companies through, the entire purpose is to show you how to get products, services, goods, and how to grow your business without spending a dime. Basically, how to really maximize your existing resources.

Now, those of you that don’t know me and haven’t seen me speak. There’s a couple of things you wont know. One, I love whiteboards. I think they’re great, I love them, I’ve got them all around me in my office but my writing is horrible and my spelling is even worst. I apologize in advance, you’re just going to have to love me anyway. The other thing I want you to know is that this is not some process that I learned somewhere or something that I read. This is how I have built my life.

Now if you know much about my life, you know I won’t go into it now, this is how I was able to make my first couple of movies with no money, no resources, well I shouldn’t say no resources, no access to people in the industry. This is how I built and sold companies. This is how I got my first home, this is how I’ve done any major advancement in my life.

Its this principle right here and this is what its called. Resource mining, I hope you guys can see that. Resource mining. What I want you to do is take out a sheet of paper and write resource mining at the top and then split your sheet of paper into four columns, leave yourself space to write in between, unlike I did. And lets just walk through this.

Here’s the principle. The principle behind resource mining is that all resources are either owned or controlled by people. I want you to think about that for a second. And you go, “well, what about Oxygen man?” Well, ok, I’m not having to pay for my oxygen but we have found a way to sell it. We sell it in the medical field. We sell it in the entertainment field, they have flavored oxygen, whatever. And we sell water, bottled water. So resources are becoming more and more owned. I want you to think of the fact that these people are gatekeepers. Now, I don’t mean that they’re like hording resources and you’ve got to somehow get to them to get those resources.

No, this is a positive process. I want to say that right up front because a lot of us have attitude problems about other people have something that we want and that’s something I had to work on when I was younger because I just didn’t have a whole lot at the time.

So I’m not saying someone’s hording. I’m not talking about Scrooge McDuck with his vault of coins, sorry I had to use the reference. I’m talking about people that have it and they just don’t know that you need it. They don’t know because you’re not approaching them in the right way. SO get that in your mind, write that down, all resources are controlled by people, organizations, and associations.

I’m going to show you how to crack into that, ok? Here we go.

I’m assuming that you’re a business owner, small business, medium sized business owner or involved in business on that level. Maybe you’re in the cottage industry like I grew up in. This is for small, medium sized businesses. What you’re going to do in the first column is write down 5 resources that you believe you need, that your company needs. Now notice I didn’t say the top 5, don’t put that pressure. I’m not asking you to prioritize it, it doesn’t matter. This is a brainstorming exercise. Ok? And we have a rule here of brainstorming and this is how it works.

When I was first learning how to write scripts, how to edit, when I was first learning how to pitch to people, a good friend of mine whose now my business partner today came up with a principle and its called the No Censor Principle and to this day, over a decade later, when I talk with him which is every day whether I like it or not, we say we’re going to use the No Censor principle. And we will write this out and we have sheets of paper, anytime were going into brainstorming mode, anytime we’re working on a marketing plan or business plan, whatever it is, we will apply the no censor mode. What that means is the minute you think of something you’re going to say it. The minute you think of something you’re going to write it down because your brain has been evolved to the place where it is out to protect you. When you were a child you didn’t know that a burner on a stove could hurt you but you learned it once and now your brain is not just going to protect you from that burner but any form of heat. “Causes pain, fire bad”.

Same thing happens here so I want you to keep this in mind as we walk through this process. Alright so we’re putting gin the no censor rule, let’s get started.

I want you to write out five things that you’re needing in your company right now. I’m just going to mention this cause I hear it all day every day, a CPA, a new product line, maybe you need a better insurance plan for your company, a sales manager, I hear that one a lot because when the company’s not selling we automatically assume the sales manager sucks and that’s rarely the case. And lets see, a new marketing plan. Maybe you’re like needing to figure out what’s going on in the social media world, those young whippersnappers.

Well let’s just say, now I have one two three four five, good work. Now what I want you to do is I want you to notice two things that I do not want you to include in your list. One is saying cash or revenue cause that’s jut not really going to help us here. This whole equation is going to equal more revenue in your company but if you just say I need more cash, its not really helping us solve the problem.

Folks, 90% of our issues, and the reason we don’t solve the problem is because we don’t ask the right questions and I know that sounds a little Yoda-ish but the truth of the matter is you gotta ask the right questions to get the right answers. The other thing I don’t want you to do is put, “I need a new product line so I need to hire an expert in developing products. You know, our marketing doesn’t seem to be pulling in the dollars it used to, I need to hire another company.”

A lot of companies, especially small, medium sized companies when they’re struggling financially get into survival mode and its kind of fight or flight. And a lot of time they’ll say if I could just hire the right person…well folks a lot of time hiring a person is not the solution you’re looking for because then you’re bringing on another whole set of problems. You’re increasing your overhead and the complexity of the company. All these things that happen. Exponentially, you get more and more complicated.

Now if you need a new sales manager because you have an existing position, write that down. If you need a secretary, if your CFO quit, write that down that’s ok. But I don’t want you writing down thinking its people that can be hired.

Lets move on to your second column. The second column is always interesting and this is where I lose some people so I want to make sure you really get this. In the second column you’re going to look at the first column and decide if there’s anybody that has access, write that down, capitalize it, bold it, star it, to the list that you made. Now let’s define what access is in this case. That means knowledge, experience, resources. They might know somebody, they might have the problem that you have now but they’ve learned. I want you to just make a list.

I’m going to give you an example. I know a business guy that is named Austin, I’ve known him for a long time. He runs a really tight ship, great company, medical billing. I guarantee you he knows a good CPA so I’m going to list Austin. You’re going to list anybody you can think but I’m just going to give you one example right now. Insurance, now you may not know someone who works at an insurance company and even if you do, that may not be someone you want to contact because they’re just going to try and sell you that product, that service, their particular service. But you know what, maybe you know someone who has a great HR program in their company. You’re going to call them.

Lets go down to marketing cause this is a great example. You don’t need to hire a new marketing company, you just need to talk to that’s either in marketing or someone who has a great marketing plan working in your business.

I’m going to go over to Richard that I know has an excellent marketing plan working. He can define ROI down to 10 cents so I go and talk to Richard about it and of course Richard’s going to say, “you know what you need to call my guys, XYZ marketing company”. But maybe you don’t have the money to spend on that so he starts giving you the resources. He starts talking to you.