It was a couple of days before I went back to do it, and I noticed something interesting. When I went to their profiles, I noticed that they had both written recommendations recently on mutual friends. As I looked at the timeline, it went something like this.

1. Ask for recommendation
2. Get recommendation
3. Write recommendation in return

If you’re struggling to get recommendations, why not write the “return” recommendation first? After all, if you feel that way about them it should be natural for you to simply write the recommendation. Then a bit later you can ask them to reciprocate.

Added bonus: writing recommendations can be difficult, and doing so well is a great skill to have. Write as many as you can, and you’ll keep getting better at it. Of course, only write what is true – and only accept recommendations that are true about you. The last thing you want in an interview is to have the employer say, “I saw on your LinkedIn profile where John Smith recommended you based on your recent internship at NASA.”

You’ll probably find that the recommendations you receive are written better, because you’ve done something nice for them first.

Now that I’ve given you some good advice, please like me…

The important question is how does this advice affect you?  Is this where your next speech comes from, where your next project comes from, where your next success comes from?

The notes from the Edge Summit are presented in chronological order. If you have some thoughts I missed, feel free to e-mail me at contact@robchristeson.com and I’ll include them here with attribution and a link (if you want). Please note that links to the Edge site are affiliate links.

Also, I’ve done my best to properly attribute information as I typed it in the session. Most of what you read here comes from World Champions Darren LaCroix, Ed Tate, Craig Valentine or Lance Miller from the Edge event. Mark Brown also participated remotely, and some material comes from the awesome Alan Weiss and the amazing Patricia Fripp. If you do spot any errors or omissions, they are unintentional and I’ll correct them immediately.

Here we go…
“Ya ain’t gonna learn any younger” – Lance Miller quoting advice he received from a story about learning to back up a semi trailer truck.

lightbulb moment – think chandelier moment – Maureen Zapalla

Three questions you should ask about your business
why you?
who will pay?
how will I reach them?

Topics members wanted to discuss (questions in bold)
coaching – developing a multi-session plan (this one didn’t get touched on) 

marketing a seminar - 3 months out – marketing blasts – touch multiple times – research says you can reach out to customers 220 times per year without annoying them – multiple items (e-mail, Facebook, twitter, etc.)

what 3 tips for the 73 people who didn’t make the finals - there were some thoughts later on the finals, read my notes here: http://robchristeson.com/toastmasters-why-you-wont-win-your-contest

Selling from the back of the room - selling without annoying people (SWAP) – sell another’s program before selling your own – Seeding (plant seeds) – weaving () – you aren’t selling products,you’re selling results
Lance – going from zero to moving – change from manipulating your client to helping them – 1. believe in the product, 2. care about the customer, 3. 
Craig – everybody has a story to tell, but rarely do they get to tell it, because (wait for it) everybody has a story to tell. Be the one to listen to other peoples stories.
#1 reason they buy – confidence in you – confidence comes from familiarity – familiarity comes from repeated exposure – sell the results (Craig’s car story) – put the result before the resource – not just for products, but in your speech too
Lance- present and ask for feedback – take the materials that work and use them to make your product

Ed – retention after 48 hours – 10 percent; take notes – 50 percent; notes and discuss – 75 percent; notes, discuss, and teach – 82 percent after one year

Should you have a book first, DVD, or other product?
Craig – never create a product without teaching it several times first – your first product should be an audio CD

Details about being a small business
Ed – this is a business first, you speak second. If you don’t treat it as a business, you won’t get to do either. More will come in the 2-day Get Paid to Speak seminar.

Using YouTube, how much is too much - embrace the concept of abundance – answer the question – 2-3 minutes – give a next step (more below)

Craig – recommended a book – Launch by Michael Stelzner

Maleki (District 71) – Take the Talent to Training and the Treasure will come out – not about the price, it’s about the process

“Be careful not to keep your ego to close to your position, if you lose your position, your ego will go with it” – Colin Powell quoted by Ed

Ed – the word is receiving – 3rd place Scott Pritchard stayed on stage after speaking and saying “mister contest master” (at the finish) and smiled at the audience for about 10 seconds – what’s the word? receiving

Ed – number one job of a speaker is to make an impact – not to be liked

Ed – Talk in Tweets (talk in sound bytes) <–blog topic

Craig – speaking in sound bytes creates a memorable message – what is his focus? two words – touch lives – before you speak, say “please help me forget myself, remember my speech and touch my audience”

Lance – conviction – convict – what happened to become a convict – trial with evidence beyond a reasonable doubt – conviction is having a position you believe beyond a reasonable doubt 
- passion – in dictionary, passion came from ancient word for suffer. 
Practice to execution ratio (pro football)
Passion are those things that we do that we would suffer through without feeling like we are suffering
Sincere – means we have a clean, clear message
Do a raffle for your product- collect business cards and draw one to get a free copy of your product. Be clear “I’m going to email you with an option to opt in” so they know why you’re collecting the cards

Ed – Presentation variety- in order to maintain peoples attention, change your delivery method every 5- 10 minutes (I.e. You talking, asking questions, audience interactions, etc.)

Ed asked a few of us to run the 10 minute review after lunch
Take one minute and review your notes and write down your three favorite tweets or sound bytes of the morning. – you will learn…
Instruct online folks to tweet to hashtag Championsedge 
Take two minutes to turn to your neighbor and choose your best tweet
Next we go one group per row to give their top tweet
Maureen will write them down

general or specialist? – start with what you know – package/title it in what they want Book “how to earn more than a million dollars …”  

“the Psychology of Money” – became  ”the millionaire mindset”
“anatomy of an audience” – “connect with any audience”

Esteem
Do
Gain
Enjoy

Craig – touch all 4 categories to reach your audience
Darren – start with 3 topics, 2 specific and 1 general (or 1 and 2)
Craig – your audience is going to come up and tell you what you are speaking about – “never strike oil by digging an inch deep”
Ed – you can also specialize by delivery methods – be known as “the person who is known as…”

Make three colums – Experience     Delivery     Results

Experience
Specifics about your experience

Delivery
Speech          
Seminar
Book
Process CD

Results
increase profits
decrease costs
decrease turnover

Homework – flesh this list out for yourself

Mine – Experience
Teaching
PM Increase knowledge (anecdotal)
Military
Logistics
Supervision
Evaluations
Speaking
Blogging
Writing

My Delivery
Blog
Speaking
Seminars
Lunch ‘n learn

My Results
Increase productivity
Decrease turnover
hmmmmm….(homework)

 
Focus on results, not experience and delivery – discuss results, leave out experience and delivery – Craig, focus on the pain – ask questions and turn their pain into your promise

Social Media is a hot topic right now – Be careful about speaking about making money with social media when your aren’t making money yourself (credibility)

Marketing a seminar - sign up on edtate.com - special report 
Ed – make sure that you have enough time i.e. three months to market it
Delivery mechanism – e-mail, linkedin, postcards, newspaper, business journal,
Darren – web page – convert them – title – split test to find best conversion method
Shopping cart – all three of them use the same one speaker resources.com

6- minutes to a keynote
Craig – structure – you have 7 seconds before they decide if they like you, 30 seconds before they decide to check out. Open with a question or a story – then make a big promise. i.e “By the time you leave here today, you will have the tools… you will have ideas…etc.” Then the roadmap. “…and these come to you in the form of 4 R’s to remarkable results”
10-1 rule of thumb, 1 story/point to every 10 minutes
Phrase
Anchor – what’s loose is lost – Acronym, anecdote, analogy, activity
Reflection – Take your story and have them reflect on how it affects them
Technique – how do they practice it i.e. “write down your perfect day”
Sale – Push them into the Pull – Push away from what they want to avoid and pull them toward what they want
Use the PAR for newer speakers

Demo video - less than 10 minutes on site (have report, need to have a point, need solid audio) – less than 10 seconds on who you are
YouTube 2-3 minutes (1 minute if you can) – 1 video, 1 purpose, 1 next step. no more than 3 scenes (locations)

you must package your process in order to profit

Ed- what do you want people to Know Feel or Do

Darren – watch the first 5 minutes of a movie – notice how they are introducing characters through dialog
Time management from NSA
Focus day – product, speaking
Administrative day – mundane activities
Free day  - free of everything – phone, e-mail, etc. 
Same model for athletes and entertainers

Darren -every time you speak, build your list – then, touch your list – at least once a month
Do interviews
an a-ha moment is a letting-go of a previous belief 

Charles speech (coached on-site)

longer pause after first “so was I”
pauses

“do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Concluded twice 

too many I’s, My’s and Me’s

My homework:

Work on 52bloggingtips.com – finish creating the tips and start filming videos

Talk to the Human
New tagline – an IT guys perspective on communicating with real people

Affiliate link alert: World Champions EDGE. This link will take you to the Edge website, where you can see some free materials or sign up for just $1 for the first month.

The premise of this book, why right brainers will rule the future, may not leap out at you. However, the assertions he makes will likely wake you up. While left brain work (logical, mathematical, or process driven) will always be needed, the right brain activities that are High Touch and High Concept are going to be where the jobs are in our future.

Daniel talks about the modernization of manufacturing, which shifted jobs in the United States from building things to knowledge work. Yes manufacturing still happens in the United States, but not to he extent it did in the past. Knowledge work is moving in the same direction. You’ve seen it, the ability to automate or outsource that kind of work (think Turbo Tax and help desks) is causing the next coming shift in our skill sets: the move to creative (i.e. Right brained – high concept and high touch) activities.

Think about it. What gets outsourced or automated? Other people jobs? Not anymore. Now, any tasks that can be repeated, directly measured and doesn’t take creative thinking can truly be done by anyone, anywhere.

Of course, the more important question is this: What are you going to do about it?

Daniel goes on to say that the MFA (Master of Fine Arts) is becoming the new MBA. MFA programs are becoming more popular, more prolific, and more preferred by the business world.

This isn’t an all-or-nothing concept. Imagine there are (hypothetically) 50,000 positions this year for new MBAs, 40,000 of them are outsourced and 100,000 people complete their MBA. Completing their MBA looked like a great idea for the 10,000 that find MBA-related work. I’m just thinking that if you’re considering being one of those who pursue the MBA, but your not sure you’ll be in that top percentage, you might want to rethink that investment.

What are you going to do about it?

Daniel’s six senses: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play and Meaning are described in this book, with ideas you can use to incorporate these concepts into your life, and start catching up with an ever-changing world. It’s not too late, but should you keep waiting, expecting that you will be the exception to the coming wave?

Look around. Daniel Pink is right about the change that’s happening. We’re seeing it every day, across diverse disciplines and industries. If you don’t find a way to add the value of high touch and high concept in your work, then someone else will soon be doing your job, and another person who has prepared will be handling the high touch, high concept work that is needed. Pink gives some poignant examples throughout the book.

If you find yourself thriving in a left-brain life style, you may be able to live out your days without change. But, it’s not the same certainty it was just a few decades ago. Now is the time to jump-start your right brain thinking and get ready for what is already happening to us. Read this. Today.

Do you have an old mind?

Photo by Ambro

I was chatting with a coworker recently who didn’t want to have a web-enabled phone. I asked, “what’s the big deal?” and she said, “Get your head out of your iPhone and make iContact.” (this was in chat)

I replied, “I don’t have an iPhone.” because, well, I don’t. She said, “same thing”

“iKnow”

So, of course the first chance I get I open my MacBook and started typing this post about getting your head out of the electronics and into real life. I am, if nothing else, a credible source on my own topics.

Have you thought about how much time per day you spend tethered to electronic devices? How about the number of hours per day you spend tethered (!) to real people? Is there a clear difference? How and when are you substituting iCrap for iContact?

Maybe you can take some small steps (literally) and add more iContact to your life:

Get out from behind your desk.
There’s a guy about 4 cube-aisles over from me. I need to talk to him about 5 times per day on various projects. It’s easy to open the chat program and ping him to get a quick response. However, I find that if I get up and walk over, I’m usually able to get more info and I can avoid any poor interpretations that can happen with a “quick chat” or e-mail. Are you substituting e-talk for real conversations too often? If so, get up!

Get out from behind the e-mail.
While e-mail and chat conversations can be good for quick distribution of information, nothing beats talking to a human when you need to get things done. When distance won’t allow you to make iContact, then at least put down the keyboard and use your iVoice. Of course, it’s okay to just call that your voice, I just needed to fit an iWord in there. If you find yourself hitting reply to a reply to a reply, then perhaps it time to dial.

Get out from behind the stuffy home computer.
Right now I’m posting this as I sit outside on my patio, diligently  BBQing tonight’s dinner. You may think I’m missing my own point, but consider this: the iWeather is nice, the iView is green and enjoying the iFood with my family is going to be awesome. You may not be able (willing?) to break the tether to iCrap all the time, but maybe you can find a way to get the best of both worlds.

So maybe I do spend to much time with my iStuff. If you do too, take a look at those opportunities and ask yourself, “can I talk to a real human, and maybe make some iContact?”

If so, get up and detach your tether. It can be tough, but you can do it. Trust me, iKnow.

Marketing is like breathing. If you don’t breathe, you will die – if you don’t market, your business will die.

Marketing is not an event, it’s a process. Many people confuse marketing with advertising. Advertising is just one form of marketing.

If you are in the business of speaking, you should read books on marketing.

“Companies that stop marketing during turbulent times go out of business” – Jay Conrad Levitson (Author of Guerrilla Marketing)

Marketing is every bit of contact your company has with the outside world. From every phone call you receive to every link (broken or working) on your website.

Guerrilla Marketing is Time, Energy and Imagination

Don’t think of marketing as just a single approach, look at having a “Marketing Mixture” of 10 items

“Client” Focus vs. “Company” Focus – your verbal business card should be short and convey to the customer what value you provide. Ed Tate’s is “We Breathe Life into Business Presentations”

Marketing Combination: 60-30-10

60% of your time with currrent and past customers
30% with prospects
10% with looking for new customers

Confidence is the number one reason people do business with you
How do they get confident? Familiarity
How do they get Familiar? Regular, ongoing, anticipated contact

Research from American Marketing Association – you can contact people up to 220 times per year without annoying them. It can’t be all e-mail – has to be a variety. Example – Craig’s 52 Speaking Tips

Seven Steps to Guerrilla Marketing
The Purpose
- What do you want your customers to do first
– On-line: Opt-In
– Off-line: Collect Contact Information

- Never negotiate on-line – get them to tell their story before you tell your story – never quote a price until you hear their story
- Always lead with the hook
Competitive Advantages/Benefits
- Features vs. benefits
- Don’t sell the product, sell the result
- How to translate:
– “So that you can…”
– “For you this means…”
- Put the result before the resource
- Pain relief does better than improvements

Question: What sells better, vitamins or aspirin? Pain relief beats improvement. Sad…but true.

Types of Benefits/Results
- save time
- save money
- make money
- avoid effort
- find success
- be pain free
- safe & secure
- live & love
- increase happiness
E.D.G.E. (Craig) – give your audience/customer as many of these as possible.
Esteem – (i.e. you can be known as the best vs. you can be the best)
Do – this product will allow you to do…
Gain (profit)
Enjoy – i.e. you’ll have more time to spend with your family

Target Audience
- Exactly who wants and needs what you have to offer?
- Define your ideal customer
- Who is your Jesse? (i.e. 24-30 year old woman looking to move into a management position)
- You cannot strike oil digging an inch deep everywhere, you have to dig a mile deep in one place
- Word files – one on what they want to avoid and one on what they want to attain
- You want them to say, “this is for me”
This seems to be one of the toughest exercises for anyone to do. People like to think that their audience is “everyone”. One source of confusion comes from the concept of who might buy your product versus who your ideal audience is. It’s okay for someone outside of your ideal customer to buy from you; that doesn’t mean your ideal audience becomes “everyone”.

Marketing Niche – slice of a subject (i.e. Craig is a speech coach, his niche is storytelling and his identity his “Mr. Nuts and Bolts”)
- What is your Industry?
- What is your Niche?
- What is your Identity?

Marketing Identity
- Figure out first what you are not

Guerrilla Markeing Weapons
- Provided in the handout (100 weapons – i.e. Business Card, YouTube video, etc.)
- Craig credits just one clip on YouTube (of the 15 or so there) for some of his recent business

Marketing Budget
- Most Guerrilla Marketing Weapons cost nothing or very little.
- Still, you need to plan and budget for your efforts

How do you distinguish yourself from other products – high quality recordings and high quality content

There was lots more info in the handouts and in their own programs than they could cover in a single session. Take a look at Craig’s book World Class Speaking (review here) for some great ideas, especially about specifics to market yourself as a speaker. Also, Guerrilla Marketing (review here) is the obvious source for ideas and tactics no matter what your speciality.

Affiliate link alert: World Champions EDGE. This link will take you to the Edge website, where you can see some free materials or sign up for just $1 for the first month.

Erica’s post makes some great points, and she specifically discusses free as an element of your overall business strategy. Lots of people (including me) would agree that as a consultant, it can be necessary to build credibility with a potential client. There are some traditionalways to do this, such as referrals and various types of marketing.  There are also two types of free you can provide to your customers and potential clients. Note: depending on how you slice it, there can be a million types of free, for now just go with me on this “two types” thing.

1. The “Marketing Free” category is about getting the customer in the door. This includes content on your blog, tips sheets, special reports and other items specifically designed for anyone out there to see your value and learn more. I’m not talking about the traditional marketing crap, where you learn that there are 10 tips to riches (or whatever) and how Joe, Sally, and Johnny used them to make $12,000 per month in thier first year. I’m talking about something with acutal tips (see my example) that can stand alone. If the prospect wants more, then yes, readers can become customers and buy more advance materials.

2. The “Free Gift” category is where you take actual products and give them away as a promotion. This isn’t simply a “get them in the door” tactic, but sometimes of an enticement to attend seminars or a way to get some premium product out there to get referrals. I’ve seen speakers give away products like $297 Home Study Courses, $59 CD sets, and $19.99 Books to audiences as a method to get their product into the audiences hands. Three things may happen here. 1. Great word of mouth in that audience leading to further inquiries, 2. The person who gets the free item buys other items themselves and 3. Maybe nothing.

What may not fit cleanly into either category is when you give away your time as a consultant. Although I think it qualifies as more of the “Marketing Free” variety, the fact is that any one-on-one conversation is never generic (if you want to be hired) and so would have more value than th standard tip-sheet.

The trick here is determining that value and making sure you aren’t letting yourself get taken advantage of. In Erica’s post, she talks about the free cup of coffee not usually being enough compensation for some of the meetings she has had. It makes sense, since an hour of coaching (even at my rates) is higher than the cost of a coffee. Although, certain Starbucks offerings (with a rice krispee treat) do come close.

If you are going to use “free” as a part of your overall business strategy, don’t take the concept lightly. Like any other part of your strategy, anything you give away (even blog content) should have value, but not be all of your intellectual property. After all, just like in any job, when you do the work you should be paid for the effort, right?

Three things caught my eye off the bat (see a speech coming here?)

1. We give referrals as a method of creating social capital. In short, we (people) want to give good information so we can get good information when we need it.

2. Businesses (especially small ones) are not comfortable asking for referrals, even though customers (see people in point #1) like giving referrals.

3. Two important ingredients in getting referrals are a.) be worthy of a referral (the book has some in-depth info on this) and b.) set up a system to help you ask for them (also in the book).

I’m trying this out with the Nook reader on my iPad, so it’s a different feeling than reading “normal” books. However, I think I found a good one to read, an I plan to have a review ready by Sunday.

If you have a business (or a blog) that thrives on referrals to grow, and what business doesn’t, this might be a worthy read for you too.

I’m reading a very interesting book on motivation, called Drive, by Daniel Pink. There is a point made early in the book about the effects of human nature vs. rational behavior. It’s similar to some of the points in The Upside of Irrationality, but this one specific experiment in Drive caught my eye.

Here is the experiment: there are two players and both know all of the rules. They have never and will never meet. Player one is given $10. Player one can offer any amount of the $10 to player two. If player two agrees with the cut, they both keep what they get. If player two disagrees, they both get nothing. Of course, we could all agree that if we were offered $5 as player two, we would take it and be $5 better off. That was even true in most cases for $4 and $3. But here is where the irrationality kicked in…if player one offered just $1 or $2 to player two, in a majority of cases player two said, “No” and both left with nothing.

Essentially, our sense of fair play (or maybe revenge) means we would give up $2 to keep the greedy player one from getting $8. While I’d bet the numbers would be different if it were in increments of $10,000, the point is still valid considering the choices we make every day. We won’t accept the $2 treatment, and we are willing to give up a little money if it means we can make a point.

Consider your own customer service. In a case where we feel a company has wronged us, most of us will spend our own time, energy and maybe even a few bucks to make sure everyone knows how much so-and-so company sucks. Right? There are lots of examples, and it took me a 5-second google search to find www.walmart-blows.com, which has been up since 2005. Also, there are pleanty of other negative sites along with numerous you-tube videos. Luckily, no one has bought TalkToTheHuman-Sucks.com yet.

You may be thinking,”I can’t stop every yahoo out there from using Yahoo to say bad things about my company.” You’re right!  I’m not suggesting that you can. However, there are two important points you need to consider, and stay on top of:

1. Make your customer service so good that the nay-sayers have no credibility with your true customer base.

For instance, if someone posts Target-sucks.com or whatever, it won’t change my opinion of them, since their customer service has always been good in my experience. However, my experiences with VerizonWireless has been a bit mixed, so I might believe some negative press about them.

2. Recognize that you need to respond to any complaint as factual until you know otherwise.

As an example, I give you a post I wrote on some shoddy customer service I received earlier this year. I chose not to be vindictive (since I hadn’t spent any money yet), but it would have been easy to make this one more negative with just a couple of less-rational word choices. If I had lost money or received crappy service for something I spent money on, I would have been less kind. As it turns out, I did finally receive a reply from their CEO, and he resolved the issue.

With blogs, FaceBook and other quick-to-market media sources, never underestimate your customers capability to talk about you from the virtual mountaintop. You have the choice to make those messages more positive than negative. It’s all in how you treat your customers.

Are you giving your customers the $2 treatment?

I’ve been working with Arlen Busenitz on a new project, and we have taken it live this week. SpeakerBlogger.com is our new site to Help  individuals take their experience & passion and create a platform to help others and make a profit. 

Take a look now, and sign up to get our free e-book, 7 Steps to Turn Your Passion & Experience into Profit.

Check back as we’ll be putting 2-3 posts a week and going into more depth on the 7 steps. National experts will also be sharing their thoughts through guest articles.

We’ve established your customer as men 35-50 who have an desk job, are married with family commitments and need solutions that fit a busy schedule. Now we need a message that resonates with that group.

This message comes in multiple parts:

Your business name
Your tagline
Names of your primary products and services
Names of your signature presentations
Even how people refer to you

Some of these items can be the same. For instance, Craig Valentine has a product called Create Your Killer Keynote. He also has a presentation with the same name. I know because I own one and saw the other in Tulsa this spring.

For the rest of us, the business name doesn’t have to be complex or totally unique. But, you can choose to go that way too if you like.

Simple
Craig’s fitness coaching
Smith brother’s fitness
Marilyn’s body shaping

Unique
30-something fitness inc.
Pennystone fitness
FitBlogger

Next is the Tagline. For my Talk to the Human Blog, I decided on Ways to improve your interactions with real people. That wasn’t my first tagline, and it probably wont be my last. For more tips on taglines, check out this post on CopyBlogger.com.

Naming your primary products or services, of course, requires you to have them. Examples:

FitBlogger blog
Get fit with Chuck cd set
Eat right and be fit cookbook
Build a Better Bicep home study course
Joey’s personal fitness instruction

As I mentioned before, those signature presentation delivered as a lunch and learn, seminar, or even at your Toastmasters club for practice should have a catchy title to help the audience know the value they will get by listening.

Michelle’s 7 steps to a healthier you
Sonia’s 3 keys to eating tasty and healthy food
A heathlier you in just 9 minutes per day

Finally, I mentioned how people refer to you. This refers to a type of iconic status, which means it develops over time. For instance, I know a guy named Rory Vaden who’s signature presentation is about self discipline. It’s called “Take the Stairs.” I see it enough that whenever I look at an Elevator, my mind says “Rory!” and I head for the stairs (within reason). I should probably hide his Facebook posts, but that’s another story.

Iconic status isn’t always flattering. Personally I’m glad my “Talk to the Human guy” idea from early posts never caught on. I’m not even sure what I was thinking on that one.

Determining your message is a multi-step process, and thinking about those different areas where your message goes will be important to your success. Start with that combination of who you are , what you offer and who your customer is. Brainstorm with some friends, your Toastmasters club, or here on the message board.