Christopher L. Hedges's Blog, page 12

Who Should be the Hero of the Story (9/5/14)

If you are looking to be successful in sales you better learn to become a good storyteller because nothing sells better than a good story. Lucky for you a story that sells isn’t too complicated. All you really need in a sales story is a major challenge, and a hero who learns something by overcoming said challenge.

However, there is one key point where most stories fall short; most storytellers pick the wrong hero when telling the story. Think back to any myth or fable that has stood the test of time. Achilles’ never wrote the stories of his exploits in the Trojan War, Homer did. The problem with most stories that are used in sales is that the storyteller either intentionally or inadvertently makes himself the hero of the story.

The telling of a great story in sales requires that your customer is the hero and you provided them with something  to overcome their adversity. That’s the story you need to tell your prospects.

You see Average Joe’s Story: Quest for Confidence and the book tour for the book are not stories promoting the author as the hero; they are tools for any would be readers. The real heroes of the story are people like Diane that I met at Safety Harbor Kiwanis Club, Peter of North Manatee Kiwanis Club, and the countless other people I met along the way that shared their stories and experiences. Average Joe’s Story and its book tour are just tools that permit me to connect with people who, in their day to day lives, are overcoming the adversity that life throws at them. Those tools provide the opportunity to develop a community for people who need a little pick-me-up during the tough times.

The real hero of the story is the reader who chooses to go on their own version of Average Joe’s Story.

Why did we Support Your Crowdfunding Campaign? (9/4/14)

On Monday June 16th I sent out an email to 46 contacts that I’m connected to in various different ways (college friends, family, people I’ve worked with, etc) asking them for some support in an ongoing project. I emailed them a link to my crowdfunding campaign that I setup to offset some of the expenses I foresaw on this little 10 month adventure,  asked them all to do three small things, and told them I would explain my request today.

Support Requested

Take 5-10 minutes to take a look at the crowdfunding campaign
Share the campaign link if they thought it was a worthy project, they found it interesting, or they just wanted to help a first time author out.
If they shared it ask their connections to do the same thing.

Most people who set out on crowdfunding campaigns are actually looking for the money because they need it. They can’t locate it by any other means, they have to have it, or for some other reason they can’t/won’t go through traditional financing. In all honesty part of the big appeal for crowdfunding is that for all intent and purposes you get the money for free because you are providing goods and services that you would otherwise be selling anyway.

Let me make this perfectly clear; I planned on doing this book tour even if that meant I had to sleep in my car to save money, and eventually sell the car and walk because I was broke. I set up a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to create buzz and build a platform. Any cash that may have been generated was icing on the cake.

Unfortunately to me it appears that more and more we are limiting our dreams, goals and success based on what someone else thinks or has to say. If you want to reach for the stars you are labeled unrealistic, arrogant, greedy, or some other stereotype that is belittling to your choice of wanting to pursue greatness. Can those labels be accurate? Heck yeah, but that’s another discussion altogether.

The sad truth is that most people will try to hold you back and tear you down, like a bucket full of crabs where those crabs will pull back any individual crab that has the audacity to try climbing out to freedom. Deep inside if someone can’t see himself aspiring to reach greatness then no one else is permitted to get there either.

So enter this project. It is a project that has no finish line, and will ideally go on indefinitely. It’s a project of potential and possibilities that shows there are no limits to what you can achieve if you are willing to let your imagination run wild, and commit to your dreams.

A first time unknown author had his book picked up by a big time New York publisher on spec with his first and only book proposal submission (unheard of). With a book complete that author set out on an unfinanced book tour that had a six figure price tag with a goal of going from anonymity to New York Times Bestseller. There is almost noway for that author to recuperate his costs and turn a profit so at first glance his logic appears flawed.

Sometimes that flawed logic is the only thing that keeps people going. When the light at the end of the tunnel seems so far away it would be easier just to quit, potential, possibilities and hope keep you pushing forward. For those 46 people that got my initial email and chose to forward it to their friends and share a link to my crowdfunding campaign on social media they weren’t supporting a book and book tour; they were supporting a message of hope.

This project is an ongoing story for every person who can’t see a brighter day ahead of them. For the cancer patient whose doctor has given up on them. For the kid who doesn’t think he has a friend in the world. For the person who believes he has lost everything he holds near and dear. That author’s dreams bordered on delusional, reaching his goals were unrealistic, and he still chose to do it. Why? Because stories of overcoming adversity inspire hope in others, and hope is a commodity that is short supply these days.

How did Your day Start? (9/3/14)

I don’t do so well at 5am. If I’m still awake at 5am it usually means that I’m up to no good, and I’m bound to get into trouble for something. If my alarm clock goes off at 5am it means that I scheduled myself to be somewhere way to early in the morning. On this occasion it was the latter. I was scheduled to be a speaker at the Kiwanis Club of North Manatee at 7am. Now you factor in an hour drive, my obsession for being on location at least thirty minutes early, and you are left with an alarm clock that explodes to life at 5am.

There is no major problem with me being up that early, but I just don’t officially start functioning properly until about 10 or 11am. There is a problem with that when you are behind the wheel in what might as well be a foreign country. At 6am when I made it to my interstate exit I was functioning, but I wasn’t yet coherent. However, I became coherent real quick after I self induced a minor panic attack. With it being pitch black and not even having the benefit of the moon and star light to pierce through the night sky; I was relying on my not so trusty GPS unit to guide me with its little pink line.

I followed that little pink line around the left hand curve that went under an overpass and merged into traffic, but my problems began when my brain started shouting “CANNOT COMPUTE”. Everything about this dark road felt wrong, like I was going the wrong way down a one way street. So I slowed down and was about to pull a u-ie when I saw two pairs of lights flying down the road in my direction, and I righted the ship posthaste.

I nearly turned myself into a bumper sticker on the front of an 18 wheeler at 6am, literally. However, I arrived at my final destination in one piece, and made it through the rest of the morning without any serious issues. I was even able to maximize the value of my trip by setting up brunch with my buddy Steve who organized a future meeting with a potential corporate sponsor for the following Monday. I may have been very productive for the day, but I nearly turned myself into roadkill in order to make it happen. So how do you start your day?

A Successful Crowdfunding Campaign (9/2/14)

How do you determine success? Is it simply setting a specific goal and the act of attaining or failing to attain that goal determines whether or not you were successful?

I don’t think it’s that simple. The idea of throwing out an arbitrary finish line and success being the act of crossing it is the basis of capitalism. Driven people have the opportunity to go out and be as successful as they want to be. The problem with that belief system is it leads to some very nasty byproducts.

A win at all costs mentality is developed. In an attempt to meet or surpass that imaginary goal morals, ethics and even laws become grey-area. You are willing to subscribe to morals, ethics and laws up until the point where they become inconvenient.

After a while selfishness sets in. It may be an instantaneous event after you experience your first taste of success or success might be something that grows on you after a prolonged period of time like acquiring the taste of fine wine. Regardless of when it happens the end result is the same; you become the focus. A subconscious fear that there is a limited supply of success sets in and you can begin to see those around you as enemies because their success takes away a slice from your success pie.

You can see it anywhere you are willing to look. One of the best examples in this era is Bernie Madoff and his $65 billion ponzi scheme.

I was thinking about success when I was reflecting on my crowdfunding campaign. The original target goal was $50,000. It was quasi arbitrary in the sense that $50,000 would afford me a little over $300 per city on my first book tour. I changed it to $21,000 because Roberto told me he thought it was realistically a little high if I was looking to meet that goal. He was 100% correct it was an unrealistic number, but the crowdfunding campaign wasn’t about the money.

When I think about success its not a question of winning or losing. I don’t see success and failure as mutually exclusive, but rather as equal parts in a much larger picture. In my opinion you can meet your goal, but be a failure because you sold your morals down the river. I also believe you can miss your goals, connoting failure, and still end up being a wild success.

As far as my crowdfunding campaign is concerned I would much rather not even raise a single dollar if I could verify that the campaign itself was viewed by 1 million people. In the grand scheme of things the money is trivial in comparison to the value of the campaign going viral because you can’t put a price tag on the publicity of going viral. Having that many people see my campaign is a more powerful pr pitch for my book than if ten times the target cash goal was reached; just because I don’t meet your definition of success doesn’t mean that I was unsuccessful or even a failure.

Who I Needed for Crowdfunding (9/1/14)

Anyone who tells you they did it all by themselves is lying. Even if they are eluding to the fact that they did it themselves they are either being disingenuous or they’re really being lazy in thinking about who has contributed to their success. The easiest example to use to prove that success is not a one man show, but rather the hardest team sport to compete in is an individual sport athlete. It’s very easy for say a fighter, golfer, swimmer or gymnast to believe and even claim that they did it all themselves because they are performing in the spotlight, and they put in the hard work to get where they are. However, there are trainers, coaches and nutritionist that prepare the athlete for competition. An athlete’s parents may provide the proper motivation and schedule accommodations to facilitate the athlete’s development. The competitors and regulatory bodies provide a forum for the athlete to compete, and by extension the possibility for competition to even take place.

You may think this doesn’t apply to you because you’re no world class athlete. How about your professional life? As an author I recognize that I have an even larger team of people than you may recognize in your own life.

I have a team at Morgan James Publishing that helped me publish my book. They guided me through the process of taking it from a rough word file to a hard copy that will be sitting on bookstore shelves everywhere.

You have heard me talk plenty about Starley Murray who is helping me create a brand and develop an image. We are working on and offline to put the pieces together to pitch me, Average Joe’s Story, and my book tour to TV. By extension Starley is helping me build a platform.

I have referred to Roberto Candelaria in the past. I’m learning the ins and outs of sponsorship as I work with him; getting major corporate sponsors, working with non profits, and anything else you can imagine. He was the person who put the idea of creating a crowdfunding campaign into my head.

I have watched some of Tom Antion’s video’s on how to run a successful campaign, and I’m planning on spending some time with him learning how to be more effective online.

Most importantly let’s not forget the audience who looked at, shared, and contributed to my crowdfunding campaign. Without them there is no reason to have it in the first place, and hat means there’s no way on earth I would even have the possibility of being successful.

I put together a crowdfunding campaign, and whether or not it is successful or not clearly rests on my shoulders. On the other hand I wouldn’t be able to even think of having a successful crowdfunding campaign if any of these pieces were missing. It’s real easy to claim to be the hero of the story who did it all, but if you want more than limited results you need to recognize the value your team played in your success.

A Story About Stories (8/29/14)

A few months back I made a huge mistake. I created and delivered a presentation to a Toastmasters club that I wanted to use to attract potential sponsors for my book tour. It was only part of the presentation, but I forgot something very valuable that had made Average Joe’s Story: Quest for Confidence popular with everyone that had read it. I tried to rely on logic, statistics, graphs and pie charts. I didn’t tell any stories along the way.

When I wrote the book I stayed clear away from all of that nonsense because I wanted to stand out from all of the other business books I’ve read. However, for some strange reason I felt it was necessary to impress executives with the same material I went out of my way to avoid.

Do you have any idea what the best selling book of all time is? When I did a google search it was the bible. Don’t quote me on that, there is too much unsubstantiated information online. The last time I checked the only real numbers that are used in the bible are 1-10 that list out some rules that Moses brought down from a mountain on two slabs of stone. It is the most well known how to guide of all time, and it’s a story book called the bible not a self help book called the 10 steps to get to heaven.

Pick a culture anywhere in the world, and the way they teach is through stories. For kids it’s fairy tales and nursery rhymes about pigs and their building habits. As they grow up kids are told stories about life lessons their parents lived through. By the time we are adults we are so conditioned to listening to stories that they are the basis of sales. There’s a story in every commercial, buy this and get that.

When told properly a story creates an emotional connection, and it diffuses our defense mechanisms to new information. I recommend you weave in a little concrete support material, but don’t let the support material become the story you tell like I did.

My Vehicle for Being Discovered (8/28/14)

Without a doubt one of the highlights of my week is when I have a coaching call with Starley. I’m usually having so much fun on the call that I sometimes wonder how much I’m learning. In reality I learn a ton. She is grooming me not only to be able to get booked by local and national media, but how to own the interview once I get there.

There are things you need to do well ahead of time like creating scripts and demo videos that will position you properly in the eyes of the producers to get you booked. There is etiquette you need to follow. You need to plan out what your wardrobe is going to look like based on your skin tone, what the set looks like, and the image of the brand you are trying to create.

However, the most important point I’m learning from Starley is how all the pieces fit together. I’m learning how I connect my image and brand to the internet through key words and SEO. Once you have a brand that is desirable in the eyes of corporations you can then approach them for corporate sponsorship opportunities.

Unfortunately before you can run you have to walk, and I’m barely crawling right now. Building a recognizable and valuable brand is my focus over the next 12 months. I read a LinkedIn post that basically asked that very question, how do you want to be discovered (writing, speaking, networking, etc)? I would say TV. For better or worse there is no better way to become more recognizable than by being on TV. You don’t have to like them, but the Kardashians have in fact proved that this is the case. They built their empire around being TV personalities, which all truly started to be built off of a social connection Kim had to Paris Hilton and after a sex tape surfaced. From that point forward we haven’t been able to go one day without hearing something about one of the Kardashians, and they have become very successful as a result. They monetized reality TV.

In our society today you can be as successful as you want to be, you don’t even necessarily have to have any real skill set to do it, if you can learn how to master TV and public perception.

My Achilles Heel in the Author’s World (8/27/14)

A friend of mine just got a much deserved promotion after being with her company for eight years. She works her tail off and is a go to employee when a problem arises, but she was held back because she didn’t have her college degree. Personally I think that’s a ridiculous policy because I’m more impressed by proof of success based on results. Don’t get me wrong an MBA from the University of Chicago is impressive, but it isn’t an accurate depiction of a persons value.

When someone lists off all their accomplishments my immediate reaction in the back of my mind is, “Yeah, so what?” A perfect example is this guy that I actually study and follow. He is probably one of the best content creators I know of, based on both quantity and quality of content. He’s also a really hard worker. There aren’t enough good things I can say about the guy, but I have one major problem. He’s always thumping his chest for the entire world to see how successfully he has been, who he knows, how much money he’s made, and how amazing his life is. He’s leveraging past results to demonstrate value, but inadvertently he’s decreased his worth in my eyes.

Results are good to have. I take that back; results are great to have. Having already achieved success boosts your confidence for future endeavors. However, if you’re going to throw your success in my face sooner, rather than later, I’m going to tune you out. If you have an overwhelming need for the fanfare than choose a different messenger. If you tell the world it’s boasting. If someone else tells the world for you it’s social proof.

If I were to label my Achilles Heel as an author it would have to be my beliefs on self promotion. I have become so turned off by the self promotion I see in other successful experts that I have become gun-shy. I have migrated to the other end of the spectrum where I rarely speak of my accomplishments. Hopefully I will find a happy balance somewhere along the way, and if I can’t I need to make enough money that I can hire someone that will do my promotion for me. I will just say this be careful in complementing yourself because your self promotion could backfire on you.

The Tale of Two Rejections (8/26/14)

I was recently rejected by a world renowned publication. I could care less about the actual rejection, but I found the elitist tone of the letter, and the hypocrisy of its logic to be classless at best. The funny thing is less than a week later I got the classiest rejection letter I have ever received.

I submitted an application to be a part of a project Seth Godin was putting together. If you don’t know who Seth is, he’s an extremely successful entrepreneur and author, a brilliant marketer, and in my opinion a very interesting person. For all the reasons I laid out Seth has a cult like following all across the globe.

Every so often Seth comes up with an idea, and puts together a project where he opens up the opportunity for anyone to submit to be a part of it. I have heard how these experiences have been life changing for some of the participants in the past. Considering the timing of this project coincided perfectly with my book tour, it was a project that I was qualified to be a part of, and it would have been highly beneficial to my personal development I applied to be a part of it.

I was rejected by a mass email, but that’s where the similarity between these two rejections ends. In the four or five days that Seth was accepting applications he was probably bombarded with hundreds if not thousands of would be applicants that he needed to whittle down to fifteen acceptance letters. I don’t know what the acceptance letter looks like, but I want to show you what a classy rejection looks like.

I confess that when I saw the quality (and the quantity) of applications for my seminar, my jaw dropped.

I was overwhelmed by the heart and soul that you shared, by the quality of work that you’re doing, and by the impact that you and the other applicants are making in the world.

I have no team here, it’s just me, and I gladly put in the time to review every application that came in.

Alas, as you may have guessed, I wasn’t able to find a spot for you in the program.

This is my loss, clearly. I couldn’t even TRY to find the very best people… instead, all I could do was create an interesting cross-section, put together a group of people who I thought might engage with me and with each other in a way that’s greater than the whole.

Please, then, accept my thanks for taking the time and for your continued work in making a difference. 

Seth didn’t have to take the time to put together a heartfelt apology to put into his rejection letter and he didn’t have to assume any responsibility in rejecting anyone, but he did. There’s a reason I follow Seth’s blog and I now laugh at the unnamed world renowned publication; Seth cares and has integrity, the other does not.

What I Learned in French Class (8/23/14)

The material you need as a salesman can literally be inspired from anywhere and anything. I found that point out purely by accident when I was at my first meetup meeting with my new French conversational group. I had been meaning to find some way to brush up on my French, and it didn’t look like Sigrid Agren was going to be walking through my front door anytime soon to help me work on my vocabulary. So I joined a local meetup group that had just started up.

It was a great collection of people! There was a woman who had driven up about an hour to take part in the meeting. The facilitator was an American who had married a Frenchman, and had perfected the language. A woman who was setting out on a six week trip to study abroad in Montpellier, France. A mother and her two daughters who moved to France from Vietnam shortly after the war, and had now migrated to the beautiful beaches of the Florida Gulf Coast. Our organizer was a man with considerably strong language skills who started the group because he wanted to perfect his French. Finally the last attendee for this initial meeting was an expat who picked up French bouncing around some of the countries of northern Africa.

So many good stories were shared, and I know there will be even more to come. I had the opportunity to realize how rusty my French truly was. I think I would equate the experience to banging a sheet of corroded steel with a sledgehammer to try and knock off the excess rust. It was a great time, but my ah-hah moment came as we were walking out the door.

“Why don’t you bring a translation of the synopsis of the book to the meeting, and we can make that the point of discussion for the day.” You know I never would have thought of that in a million years.

I’m not advocating you infiltrate random groups and clubs in hopes of leaching sales of of them, that’s unethical. However, if you genuinely want to be a part of a tribe and there’s potential synergy based on their interest, then I say have at it. There really are opportunities for success just about everywhere, if you are willing to use your imagination to seek them out on your little journey through life.