Justin Blaney's Blog, page 51
June 11, 2015
Helping Your Target Market: Stage 1
Not everybody who downloads your ebook can afford your next conference and that’s okay. Keep helping, keep giving, keep offering free content of high quality and don’t worry about it. As you strive to help in the best way possible, generating business will be a natural side effect as people realize more and more that you know what you’re doing.
This isn’t a coincidence. As you seek to become more helpful, you’re going to hone in helping your target market anyhow. You only have so many hours in the day. To be as helpful as possible, you need to be efficient.
There are three main stages that this journey follows as you master your area of expert helpfulness. In this post we’ll focus on the first one.
Stage One: Trim the Fat
If you’re helping someone who’s behind you in their career path, someone who is downstream from you or who can't return the favor in any way, you should expect them to take part in the process. If you give them things to work on during their own time (homework, basically), they should have it done or have made progress the next time you meet. When you make connections for them they need to follow up with the people you introduce. If your protégé isn’t doing the word, stop helping them. Because the reality is you’re not helping, you’re hurting.
It’s a grim reality. You can’t help someone who won’t help themselves and if you persist, you become their enabler. You’re wasting your own time and you’re wasting theirs. Think for a moment. Is there anyone like this in your life? Maybe they seem enthusiastic and keep promising to make progress but they just don’t. If someone comes to mind, drop them and move on. It might be tough, but it’s in their best interest. They’re not going to progress if you keep going, but they might if you end the meetings.
It’s up to you how direct you want to be. It might be helpful to tell it to them straight. Yes, confrontation can be uncomfortable for everyone involved, but forget about your comfort and just be honest, kind and professional. Do what’s most helpful. If that is letting the relationship fall away without any direct explanation, fine. If not, have the conversation.
I know some people actually have a written agreement prepared for anyone who wants to meet with them in a mentor capacity. Before they’ll even make an appointment, they require a signature that binds their mentee to implementing their advice. If someone wants to meet with you badly enough, this is a possibility.
Keep it others-centered, even if you get discouraged with people who don't want to make the effort to take your advice. The world is full of people who have a hard time taking action and there’s not much you can do about that. Just be careful to never lose the desire to help those downstream from you who really want to improve and grow.
This post was originally posted at Inkliss.com
June 4, 2015
The Fear of Good
He wrote two pages about his future as a professional baseball star. But ever since he was cut from a small town AA team in his early twenties, Sammy has mostly called the streets, or whatever worn out sleeping bag he happens to be carrying that day, his home.
Born to a single mother, Sammy saw men come and go from his life and never knew his father. He’s now thin from wandering and eating poorly most of his life. His tan and wrinkled skin with his unkempt, greying beard make him look at least a decade older than the 50 years he claims. I asked Sammy why he’s homeless and he gave me some insight into his life:
“I used to dream about hitting balls for the Red Sox. I dreamed about the big white centennial I’d live in and how I’d eat out nice every night. The first time I went to a restaurant, I was 17 years old. So I wanted nice things for myself.
“Well, I was on my way, playing AA ball and I wasn’t rich, but I was a hell of a lot more rich than I’d ever been up to that point. After dinner one night, I remember it cost $20 and that was a lot in those days. I stepped outside the restaurant and two scrawny old women passed me by, all dressed in rags and pushing a shopping cart with everything they owned piled up in it. They looked at me like, well, like I was just another silver spoon-fed boy from the upper side of town.
“I was cut from the team not long after that and no one has ever looked at me that way since. I think that’s why I’m on the streets. Ever since those ladies looked at me that way, I lost my drive to get rich.”
Money can bring more problems than it solves, yet most people would rather have a little more than a little less.
From the outside looking in, it seems reasonable to wonder why anyone would chose Sammy’s lifestyle for fear of a few random people’s judgment—an unfair judgment at that.
That’s how fears are. They often don’t make sense to anyone but the person who feels that fear himself. Fear is often irrational, like when we fear a thing that most people tend to desire. It’s like the giant circuit board inside us got its wires crossed, wires that are now causing us to choose something less in exchange for giving up something better. We often let fear hold us back from good things in life and I think it starts with overestimating the power fear has.
Here are eight characteristics of fear that might help us shed some light on how to beat it in our own lives:
Fear tends to become a much bigger deal than it really is.
If we were able to step outside ourselves and see our fear as someone else does, we might agree that our biggest fears are perhaps laughably small. In our own minds, fear becomes a fire-breathing dragon, something that pins us to the wall and cages us in and makes us shiver and sweat. But to everyone else, our big fear is just a little kitten, a kitten we are allowing to cage us in. The kitten pretends it’s a dragon and we eagerly play along.
We always overestimate the strength fear has over us. We tell ourselves how weak we are and how big our fear is and we worry about the consequences of standing up for ourselves. If we could see our fear like everyone else does, we’d realize that all this time we’ve been talking ourselves into submission. We’d see that all we ever needed to do was step over that little kitten and walk right out of the dungeon we’ve built for ourselves.
Most fears are created by our mind. These fears can be also be destroyed by our mind.
We choose to give our fear power over us. And no one in this world, not a loving spouse or child or parent or friend can do anything about this fear, either to make it stronger or weaker, without our consent. Of course there are many real fears that are not in the mind, such as an abusive spouse. Those fears must be dealt with differently, namely by locking them up in the backseat of a police car. But fears born of the mind, like the fear of success or the fear of love or the fear of being a good parent, these are fears that can disappear with the focused and persistent power of choice. A fear of the mind could hypothetically evaporate in the blink of an eye if we could summon the necessary strength. In the real world, though, most of these fears are far too ingrained in us to go so easily. We’ve often been walking with them a long time, feeding them too richly, allowing them to weave their scales into our psyche. These fears are tenacious, but the mind has the power to unweave them, just as it had the power to weave them there in the first place.
Other people’s fears seem strange to us, just like our fears seem strange to them.
Since each of us tends to get our wires crossed in a slightly different pattern, it’s hard to understand why someone might be fearful of something that we would actually like to have. Some people fear losing weight while millions of others would very much like to lose twenty pounds. Some people fear entertaining friends while others get great joy out of having a party. This is the oddity of fears. To the person feeling them, the fear is the most reasonable thing in the world. It’s all they know and they’re frustrated when others don’t get it. All the while, everyone else is wringing their hands trying to get this person to see the world as they do.
Fear loves the dark.
What is the first thing an abuser tells his victim? “Don’t say a word about this to anyone, or else…” Fear is a cunning abuser and the sad part is that all of this fear is going on inside our own heads. There is nothing fear loves more than suffering in silence, but just speaking up is frightening. Admitting our fears makes us feel weak. We worry people will judge us. We worry people will think we’re crazy. But most of all, we’re so comfortable with our fears that we don’t want anyone to take them away from us. We’ve allowed our fear to become such an important part of our identity we can’t imagine ourselves without it anymore. Fear knows this and makes sure we don’t bring it into the light, in part because fear knows that the light will reveal it for the harmless kitten that it really is.
Fear is from Satan.
Where is it written that God is a God of fear? Did God become man and die for our sins so we could enslave ourselves to fear? No, fear is perhaps our enemy’s greatest weapon. Satan steps up close, whispers self-hate in our ear and slides his poison-tipped dagger up into our side. He does it all so subtly that nobody else can see what’s really going on and we feel alone. It’s clearly a wartime tactic—what derails us from God’s plan more surely than fear?
Fear becomes more aggressive when we try to do something that matters.
Fear has one goal: to render us into a useless pile of mashed potatoes. Fear hates when we contribute to our world or when we make a difference for another human being. The more we try to do, and the bigger a difference we attempt to make, the more fear will try to sabotage us. The closer we get to making that difference, the more aggressive fear will become with us.
Fear’s greatest weapon is indecision and inaction.
Fear wins when we do nothing and the easiest way to make sure we do nothing is by getting us to delay. It’s a lot easier to get us to wait one more day than to get us to quit entirely. Fear loves the idea of doing something tomorrow that could be done today, because every day we wait we get one day closer to never.
Fear argues both sides of an issue.
One minute our fears tell us we’re too fat. The next, we’re too skinny. Sometimes our fears tell us we’ll never succeed. Then we’re worried about what people will think if we do in fact succeed. Fear is like this. It doesn’t just stay on one side of the issue. Like a skillful war tactician, fear will attack us from every possible position, rotating to keep us confused and submissive.
So how do we fight fear?
Share our fears with trusted friends and keep talking about them until they’re gone forever.
In addition to sharing our fears, we should write down what our fears are. This will help us come up with arguments to use against the fear (see #4 below) and keep us accountable and honest with ourselves about the fears that we face.
Don’t ever put off anything that we can do now. It doesn’t matter how small the step is, take action right now. That might mean eating one less bite of food or writing one more paragraph. Whatever it is, don’t put it off one more minute.
Memorize and recite statements of strength that are in direct contradiction to our fears. These can be verses of the Bible or our own prose. We need to have these handy so we can recite them, possibly out loud, whenever the fear pops up.
God wants us to bring our fears to him. Meditate on God’s goodness and trust him to bring about his plan in your life despite your fears, inadequacies and lacking.
Sammy isn’t the only person in this world who has allowed fear to control and distort his life. All of us are living a lesser life than we are capable of, on some level, because of fear. But we don’t have to accept this as our only possible reality. We can overcome our greatest and most powerful fears and live the life God would love for us to experience by choosing His path. Somewhere along the way, we’ve allowed a wire to get crossed in our heads that makes us fear something that should be good for us. We must trade our fear of good for a healthy fear of God.
"The LORD is with me; I will not be afraid" - Psalm 118:6, NIV
May 28, 2015
Help People and Then Get Off Stage
One of the band members asks, "What if they want an encore?" Tom replies, "You unplug and you run. Run off stage."
With content marketing, we can forget that quality is king. Quality means giving really good content without expecting anything in return. Clearly with content marketing we do want a return, but we’re only going to see that when we give our best ideas away for free and really hone in on helping people before they ever become a client.
At some point, you’ll have an influential person engage with you, maybe on social media, maybe by contacting you directly. When that happens, resist the urge to latch on. Help the person, show them your best work, and let it go.
Too many people want an encore. Even a helpful person can overstay their welcome by waiting around for praise or gratitude or a little something in return for their help. But scarcity creates demand. So make yourself scarce and refuse to sit around waiting for some sort of reward. Prove that you’re being helpful for your own purposes by moving on to the next thing without looking back. In other words, get off stage. And mean it.
Influential decision-makers are used to people waiting around with their hands out. On a daily basis they have to wade through throngs of compliments that are attempts to suck up, through relationships that are one-way pork fests in disguise. This is ugly and it’s not what helpeting is about. Help for the sake of helping and leave it there. Not only will you cease to be a bottom feeder, desperate for the crumbs from Miss Influential’s table, you’ll experience the positive side effects.
Imagine you’re a prominent buyer and you see people every day who are falling all over themselves to do business with you. Say they make up problems in the hope that you’ll buy something, pay you compliments via email, tweet at you and cling to your side whenever you go to a party. You know full well they’re hoping to put you in their debt. Now imagine you live with this day in and day out. And then one day, in the middle of a real brain bender, someone comes along and offers a vey helpful solution. Your problem disappears, and so does the architect of your solution. No waiting around, no awkward small talk while they clear their throat and wait for a handout. They’re just gone. That person stands apart from the crowd. You’re more likely to remember them later when they show up and once more solve an impossible problem.
As this hero continues to help and just disappear without asking for favors, you’ll eventually realize that he’s really just helpful. At last, an intelligent person with great ideas and no strings attached. No desperation for your charity. Surely you’re going to start searching for this person on your own time. That’s a huge boost for any helpeter—who wouldn’t like to have influential people searching for them?
That's the difference between helpeters and marketers. People search for helpeters and shrug off spammers. No one's rifling through their jacket pockets for the business card of that one salesperson who wouldn't leave them alone at a cocktail party.
The moral of the story is this: help someone, then disappear before you wear out your welcome. Don't worry, people tend to remember helpful people.
Put this into practice today. Find someone to help and walk away. This could be simple—pull out someone’s chair for them when you’re leaving a lunch meeting. Call someone you know with a tip or a connection and then excuse yourself from the conversation. Walk away and forget about it. This isn't some smarmy manipulation, it's a shift in how you see and approach the world.
Read more at Inkliss.com
May 14, 2015
Christmas Lights
However, as a dad, I prefer hanging them with my kids, even though they are guaranteed to slow me down and cause the lights to end up crooked. Hanging lights isn't about how efficiently you work or about how good the lights look at the end. It’s about family time.
One lesson that came up year after year during this blessed event was that helping isn't about you. Picture your own rosy-cheeked child, or a niece or nephew or grandchild, and how, in the absence of something immediate to do, that cute little face twists into something that resembles a witch crossed with a tomato. And then those fateful words scream out, "I want to help!" This is often followed by, "Suzy is doing it all! It's my turn!"
These situations presented me with the opportunity to teach my children that helping isn't about them. When a child, or a grown-up businessperson, makes helping all about them, they ruin things for everyone else.
Helping is about helping others.
This may seem obvious, but how many times do people who want to “help others” actually want to help themselves? You see this when someone who wants a raise helps their boss by staying late (at least when the boss is looking) or when someone wants a favor from their spouse and they help by doing the dishes (again, when the spouse is looking). These are examples of helping in order to get something in return. It's just like the five-year-old versions of my children who said they wanted to help but really just wanted to do all the fun stuff themselves.
Read more at Inkliss.com
May 7, 2015
While Wandering New York City…
Every culture, language, income level and, unfortunately, scent is smashed together into a single candid portrait of mankind. I stroll the city, as only those with blank magnetic refrigerator get-done lists do, watching the largest choreographed dance ever seen unfold before me. I’m an audience of one.
Tiny brown finches hustle under the legs of pigeons pecking at the crusts thrown by passersby. A dog so small it might be an overly pampered hamster scampers past. One owner, chasing behind, holds the leash, while the other moonwalks backward, GoPro in hand, hunched over to capture every moment of the tiny dog’s pure joy. Walking in the opposite direction, a dozen miniature people pass, also on leashes, wearing shirts that say things like “cutie pie” and “I’m adorable.” One of their hovering guides points out, with gusto, that the man playing the saxophone is “making music! Yes, that’s right Sophia. Isn’t it pretty?”
It’s spring, which means the pigeons are in full dating mode. One particularly puffed up fellow makes romantic cooing sounds to a potential hookup, but she’s playing hard to get. He chases her into the bushes where I can only guess whether or not he was successful at winning her heart. At night, instead of pigeons, there would be rats. I think of them scampering underfoot in such hordes that one must be careful where to step, like a receding wave washing across the sidewalk and up into the cracks and dark places of the buildings that rise on one side.
I grab a latte from a hipster coffee shop lit with large Edison light bulbs and keep walking past a mountain of trash bags next to an idling Maserati. Soon, six floor walk-up apartments rise above bail bond stores and dumpling shops. I come to crowds of old Asian men hunched silently over tables. Two players move pieces 
on a checkered stone surface. It looks a lot like checkers, but I can’t imagine such a large crowd would be enraptured with that game so I assume it’s something more sophisticated and turn my gaze to three men playing soccer. They share their small field with a dozen sleeping people huddled along the tall fence around the edge. Near one sleeping man is a sign that reads, in two languages, “Please don’t steal the plants.” The man awakens, rises to his knees and, never once looking at me, pisses on the bush between him and me. All I can think is that certainly no one would want to steal the plants if they knew what they were used for.
Closer to downtown, I sit for a few minutes on the edge of a square surrounded by very old and important looking buildings. Ten men, in suits, appear. Barricades are whisked aside. Private gates unshackled. The sound of Rihanna singing I’m friends with the monster that’s under my bed blares on a stereo in the distance while crowds cheer two men who are spinning on their heads. The security team escorts a man who, denoting of his status, isn’t required to wear a black suit and ear-radio, to the first of two black Suburbans parked along the street under a sign that reads “Do Not Park.” The crowds and street dancers don’t notice the armed entourage. The entourage doesn’t notice the crowd, though they do watch me well after they have passed. I can only assume this is because I’m staring intently at their boss, trying to figure out if I recognize him. The Mayor? Commissioner? It’s so hard to tell these super important people apart sometimes. And no one else seems to care who he is. It feels a lot like these two very different groups, the armed security forces and the cheering tourists, are invisible to each other.
Speaking of unseen, there ain’t no one in this world more invisible than a beggar on the streets of New York. A man hunches against a bus sign, dressed head to toe in sweats that would be bright if not for the years of mud and grime that call his folds home. As I approach he says, “Excuse me, sir, you wouldn’t happen to have any change?” I shake my head, more out of habit than a thoughtful response, but take up a perch behind him to see if he gets any takers. The next person approaches, high heels, lots of lipstick. While she is still about 15 feet away he makes his pitch. He doesn’t really look at her when he speaks, but it’s just the three of us within earshot. She changes not her course nor the angle of her chin until she’s passed. This repeats at least 20 times, though the man makes slight adjustments to his ask, perhaps not by design, with each new person. “Excuse me sir, wouldn’t you happen to have any change?” “Sir, excuse me. You wouldn’t happen any change?” Not one person so much as blinks their eyes in recognition of the request. I’ve seen enough and begin to walk on when he notices me, repeating the same line. Wondering how many times he’s uttered those words, in a slightly different order, I find a dollar in my bag and offer it before moving on. “Thank you, sir. Thank you very much, sir,” he replies and I wish I’d given it to him the first time he asked.
I walk on, stepping carefully over a puddle of something green and rancid that’s flowing into the gutter. Soon a dozen police cars and motorcycles, sirens and lights blaring, lead several more black Suburbans through the street at high speed. The windows are down in all but one of the SUVs. Men with machine guns, fingers on the trigger, stare at me as they pass. On later reflection, it’s an odd sort of feeling to have someone with their finger on a machine gun staring at you from the back seat of a racing SUV. But in the moment, in the third act of this endlessly waltzing metropolis, the sight seems nothing strange. The escort speeds around the corner and the sirens fade. The crowd, now behind me, claps for the dancers to the beat of Michael Jackson singing “Beat It.”
A stream of children dash out of what is either a museum or the most beautiful elementary school I’ve ever seen. Uniformed police officers and teachers watch them play tag and hula hoop and soccer in a quarter acre fenced yard. One girl attempts to climb over the five-foot iron rail topped with ornamental spikes while two other children pull her back. I don’t think her heart was truly into the escape because she gave up easily and went back to jumping rope. It’s noon and the streets are filling with more and more people. They pass between where I stand watching and the playing children. One hurried man carries three or four handwritten signs. The few words I catch read “NYPD is spelled DEVIL.” I think he might benefit from a bit of the education that hopefully those playing children will receive this afternoon.
This dance continues, unabated, every hour of every day. Even at midnight, the jackhammers and sirens and shoppers and falafel stands carry on as if no one notices that the sun has gone to sleep and most of the world with it. And carry on it will, long after this lone audience member has departed. That’s New York City. And we, the rest of us who don’t call her home, are both disgusted and enthralled by her. Like the accident on the side of the highway that we slow down to gawk at, feeling a little guilty, then say a prayer hoping everyone is going to be all right. She is center of the world, and its armpit, too.
April 30, 2015
Everyone Wants to Help the President
Buck had no idea what the invitation was for. He took one look at the invite, saw who it was from and made sure he could be there. He changed his schedule so he could make it, gave himself extra time the day of the meeting and showed up early.
When everyone had arrived, the host opened the meeting by sharing that someone had once told him, “As president, you have the power to convene.” He was right. Over a dozen people had dropped what they had going on that day to make it to that meeting and I imagine many of them, just like Buck, didn't actually know what it was about.
The fact is, everyone wants to help the president. Power attracts lots of people who want to help. The problem is, most of us don't have presidents calling us up for advice and we can't just wait around for that fateful day. We have to start helping the people around us. You know, the common people like ourselves.
Read more at Inkliss.com
April 16, 2015
How to Grow Your Audience
Others will spend millions on a marketing campaign to become famous. I'm not recommending either of these, each for their own reasons. However, the fact remains that you need to be known if you're going to sell your product or service. The more people know you, the more potential you have. With infamy and millions of dollars off the table, you're going to need a system.
My System
The system I have found far and away most effective is surprisingly simple. Help people. That's it.There are a lot of reasons this is an effective promotion plan, including the simple fact that people feel indebted when they receive help. We're not talking about guilting people into buying your brand but rather being genuinely helpful and experiencing the principle of reciprocity as a side effect. When people feel cared for, they want to help you in return of their own free will.
Word of warning here. If you're trying to manipulate people, the principle of reciprocity is still in play and people will dish out the same undermining attitude you offered them. It's a genuine concern for others and helping other that's so effective. Just this attitude sets you apart from 99% of the people in the world. Everyone is trying to get everyone else's attention and the more influential you are the more people clamor for your awareness.
Actually being helpful is the opposite. It has nothing to do with asking for something and often you will find yourself melting out of the spotlight, drowned out by louder voices. When you're too busy helping to desperately seek attention, you become an anomaly.
Read more at Inkliss.com
April 9, 2015
America, we have an ugly license plate problem
My fellow Americans. It is long past time for us to take back our dignity from the gawd-awful license plates that have assaulted our senses for too many long years.
Laughter can be heard in every corner of Europe as those nations stand proudly behind the beauty of their wide-format black and white designs. Snickering rolls over the Pacific from Asia where the land is lush with simple, two-color license plates. Our forefathers bow their heads in shame as they, over omelets at Denny’s, harken back to a time when each state had only one design. And even if they were horribly contrasting colors like blue and yellow, at least there were only two of them and the designs looked kind of cool in a classic sort of way.
So my friends, let us begin anew. Let us cast aside the ugly barrage of multiple conflicting icons overlaid on outlines of state borders, still overlaid further by gradients and low resolution pictures of mountains and smiling suns.
Let the trumpets summon us again to a far back time when Americans could hold their heads high and where every child had the opportunity to not have pictures of birds and fruit and wrestlers bolted to the hood of their first car.
March 17, 2015
It’s Not Who You Know, It’s Who Knows You
His web traffic goes up because many influential sites recommend him. Michael Hyatt, Darren Rowse, even Funny Cat Pix speak highly of Jeff. So, of course, many people learn about Jeff through these connections.
It's tempting to say “it's all who you know.” Clearly, Jeff knows the right people. Think about this for a minute, though. Jeff can only know a certain number of people.
Who knows Jeff, by contrast, is absolutely unlimited.
And what better way to become known by people than by helping them? Jeff's career is built on helping people through blogs, books, speaking and personal connections. He offers help to people he doesn't know and they remember him because he was helpful. And because he was helpful, they'll probably recommend him on their website or to a friend. They may even post pictures of him on FunnyCatPix.com, which increases his fame exponentially. It starts with simply helping.
Read more on Inkliss.com
March 9, 2015
Hear my Verizon Small Business Webinar and get my newest book free!
In a world where we’re bombarded by marketing and people trying to get ahead, I’ve found a way to cut through the enormous clutter of this busy world. This may sound surprising, but the best method I’ve found is pretty simple. It's being helpful. That's the inspiration for my new book, Famously Helpful.
Want to learn more?
I’ll be featured on Verzion’s Small Business Ready webinar this Wednesday, March 11, at 11:00 am Pacific Time. I’ll share why marketing is broken, and how changing your focus to helping others is the key to growing your business or organization and achieving your goals.
After I share the secret to being famously helpful, I’ll be taking your questions when you tweet with #vzsmb
As an added bonus, everyone who tunes in to my webinar gets a free copy of this new book!
Think you can join us? Tweet at me or comment below and let me know!
