When to Take Action

Things aren’t working out the way you hoped with the online advertising campaign (or new hire, new product introduction, etc.)  Should you be stoically patient and stay the course, or immediately take action to set things right?

 

Good leaders seem to instinctively know what to do.  But it’s less a matter of instinct, and more a result of practice.  Such leaders are neither impulsive, nor are they fence-sitters.

 

They develop the skill of mentally testing and visualizing how a plan can unfold, and what could cause it to unravel.  They rapidly run through what if options in their heads, learning to recognize critical milestones and markers, and etching these into their mental plans.  The acquire such skill consciously and deliberately at first, and then unconsciously with practice as their confidence builds.

 

If key milestones and progress markers are being met the leader is patient, no matter how anxious others may be.  Yet, when a critical marker is missed, even if it’s not obvious to others, the leader acts decisively, knowing exactly what to focus on.

 

What appears instinctive is more often the result of methodical practice.

An Amazing Secret Finally Revealed

Yep!  It’s a cheap and dirty trick.  I know better.  So do you.  But it works.  As the evidence shows, we prefer to suspend common sense on the off-chance that maybe - just this once - we learn something unknown to others from which we will benefit.

Def: Secret: Not known or seen - or meant to be known or seen - by others.

“The secret(s) to ______” (fill in the blank as desired) is a promotional artifice that has been around for decades.  Yet, anyone who has worked in the mail order or publishing business will tell you that it works just as well today as it did when Adam and Eve tasted the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.  In fact, in economic downturns it takes off.  It sells books, CDs, videos, food supplements, and week-long retreats, jus tot name a few.

Of the 142,000 books offered on Amazon that have “secret” in their title, fully 1/3 of these - over 45,000 - purport to let the reader in on the goods.  The top 5 categories, shown in rank order of number of published works, gives a good indication of which secrets indeed sell.

• Professional and Technical
• Spirituality
• Health, Mind and Body
• Business and Investing
• Romance

If we’re keen to know anything, then it had best be about health and wealth - we can satisfy our love-making curiosities later.  

A year ago I would have been surprised to see Professional and Technical offerings ranking at the top of the list.  Not anymore.  Week - sometimes daily - I am offered a white paper or a webinar that suggestively promises to impart one of more business secrets.  

There are secrets about things both familiar and new (some so new, one wonders how the secrets were discovered so fast).  SEO, online advertising (the kind that “really works!”), CRM, Google Ad Words, online marketing, social media marketing, Twitter advertising, yada, yada.  Just Google “online marketing secrets” and you’ll have a choice of gems to choose from like this one.

The secrets gambit raises two logical issues:

1. If it’s being told and sold massively - for that matter, at all - it’s no longer a secret.
2. If it’s that valuable, why is it either being given away or sold cheap?  (The price paid for Nortel and Motorola patents alone suggests that there’s no fire sale on trade secrets or IP.)

When Newspapers Were King

Remember that thing that was tossed on your driveway every morning?  The newspaper.  When newspapers ruled, an enticing ad ran in the Classifieds section.  It would run for a month, disappear, then return months later.  It promised that for $19.95 + S&H, it would send you the secret technique to making hundreds - even thousands - of dollars guaranteed.  Simple to do, all from the comfort of your home, no special skill required.

Harry, we’ll call him, can not resist the urge to mail his check for $29.95 (inclusive of Shipping & Handling - S&H).  Two weeks later (after Harry’s check clears) he receives an envelope containing a few nicely printed pages.  They describe how and where to place a particular ad in the Classifieds of his daily newspaper.  An image of the ad that attracted Harry is included ... just in case he forgot.  

Happily, I can say that I never sent away for the technique (though I will confess to being tempted).  But I did know Harry.  He could have mailed to the PO Box number provided for a refund of his $19.95 (the person placing the ad kept the $10 S&H fee).  But, in the rendering of his story years later, Harry admitted that he chose to eat the whole $29.95.  He was simply too embarrassed to seek a refund.  Hell, what if he had to pay S&H to get it?

I imagine many of those who responded to the same ad were like Harry, and simply wanted to put the matter behind them.

Yet, the scheme was legitimate.  Technically, that is ...

The Thrills and Spills of Multi-level Marketing (MLM)

Secrets are especially the rage among MLM-ers.  They regularly tweet about secrets in their possession that promise health, wealth, happiness and prosperity.  Many actually despise the term MLM as it’s suggestive of pyramid selling - which, legally defined, it isn’t.  They prefer to use the sobriquet “relationship marketer” to imply something positive, warm ... and even cuddly.  

Of all the secrets they are happy to share, though, none of them seems willing to share the biggest secret of all: that the vast majority of MLM participants don’t make a damn cent.  The profitability rate (generously defined as income minus out-of-pocket costs) is typically less than 5% of participants.  Sometimes it’s as high as 10% (Amway) and sometimes less than 1% (as contained in Mona Vie’s 2007 financial disclosure statement - and then, only 0.1% earned commissions in excess of $100 a week).

If anyone approaches you about about an MLM opportunity, after they have shown you the brochure photo of the smiling faces of upstream distributors sipping champagne on a private beach with a Maserati parked in the background, ask them two questions:

1. What proportion of participants show a profit after one year?
2. What proportion of money is typically earned from selling the MLM’s product compared to recruiting more participants?

If your friend is unable or unwilling to furnish an answer or, worse, tells you that the information confidential, then clutch your purse or wallet tightly and don’t let go.  

If your friend is a good sport, though, she/he won’t mind if you Google the names of the senior management of the MLM.  Eighty percent of the time they’ll come up showing a prior association with a prior MLM (hey, if this guy’s so good then why isn’t he still running that one?).  Don’t be surprised if you find that one of the names comes up as having been investigated by the FTC, fined, indicted, or served a prison sentence (I’ve scored a 100% hit rate on the searches I’ve done for friends).

Back to White papers and Webinars

I’ll admit, MLM schemes and “The 7 secrets of Successful Social Media Marketing” are not cut from the same cloth.  But they very much come from the same mill.

Roland Whitsell, who studied MLMs for forty years, observed, “The primary product is opportunity.  The strongest, most powerful motivational force today is false hope.”

The economy is tough, so doing business is tough (unless you’re Apple).   At best, it’s annoying to see an increase in the use of tactics that serve only to pander to buyers.  It gives marketing a bad rap, and discredits the potential value of what’s between the covers.  At worst, it’s a deception by decree: it promises the reader or viewer something that, by definition, simply cannot be true.

“The Seven Effective Methods of Successful Social Media Marketing” may not have the catchy ring that satisfies one’s craving for hope in a muddied world, but at least it plays credibly to one’s sense of value.  It may not “move” as many copies or attract as many attendees, either.  But it’s very unlikely to leave anyone feeling ripped off.  Like my friend Harry did.

S&P's Deven Sharma to Step Down

Well, no sooner did I blog about the miserable time that McGraw Hill's Terry McGraw has been having that do we learn that Standard & Poor's President, Deven Sharma, will be leaving the credit-rating firm by the end of the year.

S&P claims that the move was under way long before it announced its downgrading on U.S. long term debt on August 5.

Lookk for an announcement before the opening of markets on August 23.

Seeking Intelligent Life

After being offline for a few weeks, the SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute has raised sufficient funds to get its radio-telescopes back online following a hiatus of 4 months due to a funding shortage. 

“We are grateful to our donors,” said Tom Pierson, who co-founded the SETI Institute with Jill Tarter (the inspiration for Jodie Foster’s character in “Contact”).  “We believe we will be back on the air in September.”

The Allen Telescope Array (ATA), a series of 42 linked radio-telescopes funded by a $30 million gift by Microsoft’s Paul Allen, will be aimed at Washington, DC.  The telescopes have monitored the universe constantly since 2008.

The hope is that the powerful array can detect signs of intelligent life - particularly from the bi-partisan 12-member debt committee tasked with working out the $1.5 trillion deficit reduction agreement.

As to whether valuable time was lost in the four months that the ATA was offline, Pierson said it's hard to say. "You never know when or if a signal is going to be detected, so if you miss a few months, how important is that? It's impossible to know," he said. "We view this mission as one of profound importance, answering man's most fundamental questions -- are we alone?"

If you've been feeling other-worldly as of late, be assured that you are not alone.

The Wah Factor

Question: What do these songs, and the recording artists who performed them, have in common?

• Voodoo Child (Slight Return) by Jimi Hendrix
• White Room by Cream
• The Theme to Shaft by Isaac Hayes
• All Along the Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix
• Whole Lotta Lovin’ by Led Zeppelin

Answer: they were best-selling hits, and featured guitar instrumentals made memorable by the use of a wah-wah pedal.

Any garage bank guitarist who has plugged into an amplifier to emulate the rock or R&B riffs of the great lead guitarists has likely tried his hand - or more aptly, his foot - at using a wah-wah pedal.  It is so named for the distinctive wah-wah sound it makes when notes are plucked, and the pedal is rocked.

I used to own one of the originals - a Thomas Organ Cry Baby that I purchased in the late sixties.  It would be worth much more today than the $10 I sold it for in the 80s, realizing how extraordinarily difficult it is to imitate the craft of Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton.

What I didn’t know until I came across this NYT article is that the wah-wah pedal came into being entirely by accident in 1966.  The Thomas Organ Company, in re-designing Vox amplifiers made popular by The Beatles, came across a knob that added mid-range boost to guitar sound.  The electronics were married to an organ volume pedal, and the wah-wah pedal was born.

The wah-wah was one of a long line of solid state effects pedals, re-modeled amplifiers, mixers and processors that helped create the ground-breaking music of the late 60’s and 70’s.  The transistor and developments that would occur later changed how songs were composed, played, recorded and re-assembled to create the music genres that are well-known today.

The developments in electronics and digitization that occurred in the recording of music soon altered how music was distributed.  The early 70’s ushered in cassette tapes and Stereo 8-track cartridges that made music portable (players and automobiles) by offering an option to bulky turntables.  The media stood up to wear and tear far better than vinyl discs.  They took up less space on store shelves, too.

Compact Discs, pioneered by Sony, followed shortly after in the late 70’s.  Sony’s addition of the Walkman line - for both cassette tape and CDs - beginning in the 80s, made music truly portable.  By 2000 the first MP3 players were coming on the market.  Apple’s iPod stole the show beginning in 2001.

The rest - hard disk storage, Napster, iTunes, streaming audio, the dislocations experienced by the recording industry - we know well.

When I look at what is happening with social media and cloud computing I find myself thinking back to what has transpired in the music industry over the past 45 years.

It was difficult in 1966 to predict what would happen with the music industry no matter if you were an artist, a producer, an engineer or a recording company that distributed the IP.  It’s just as difficult now to predict how the changes in social media, and the processing and storage of data of all forms, are going to evolve how we work, and how and what we sell and market.

Agility, courage to depart from what has become comfortable, and willingness to accept and try new things are essential to build competencies, careers and businesses.  Pssst.  But don't get rid of all the old stuff ... it may be worth money one day