Building A Story Brand Book Review

 

On the recommendation of a copywriter friend (Adam Bensman at Brain Hickey – check him out!) I read Building A Story Brand while on the road a few weeks ago.

The book is an easy to read framework for realizing how to position your business or brand as a story that your customers want to be a part of. This is different than telling your customers a story about yourself or just making something up – you’re given the framework to tell the story (on your website, in your copy) about why your customers need your business.

The step by step layout is great and goes through the arc of a story that you need to then insert yourself and your customers into in order to create this story that builds brands and loyal customers that are drawn to you.

It reminded me of Russell Brunson and all of the stories he tells. Do you know why he tells so many stories to get his points across? It’s because we as humans are wired to be more receptive to stories and find them much more interesting than logic, even when the same ideas are being communicated…and they can be highly persuasive.

But, back to the book.

It’s a great read that is very actionable and gives you the framework to start defining your brand in a manner that will ultimately help draw the customers you want closer. Definitely worth the few hours to read it.

And there’s an added bonus – the last section deals with putting the story into practice on your website and in your company culture. Good stuff!

You can grab your copy of the book here: https://adammoody.org/storybrand

Or get the Audible version here: https://adammoody.org/storybrand-audible

The story engine book review

The Story Engine Book Review

The good news – this is a really easy recommendation. If you know you need or want to create more content, with higher quality, and better processes, stop what you’re doing and grab this book. It will help you – that’s the bottom line!


Of course, if you’re like me you might want to find out more – in that case, just watch the video above for the full Story Engine book review.

It’s a great short and to the point read that you can easily get through in less than a week (and I’m sure many people could tackle it in 1 or 2 readings). That isn’t a bad thing, it’s got a lot of value and not a ton of fluff.

If you’re ready to grab your copy, you can get it at Amazon via this link: https://adammoody.org/thestoryengine

As mentioned, there’s a lot of resources available for free with this book – you can get your hands on the PDF’s, spreadsheets, and more to take your content marketing game up a few notches.

The only people that I would not recommend this book to are the ones who are VERY new to content marketing or just getting started with writing online.

This book assumes some knowledge of the area and is really meant for the business or blog owner that wants to create and utilize better processes for some real world content marketing results.

If you liked The Story Engine book review leave me a comment or click on the YouTube embed and leave a comment there.

work less make more review

Work Less Make More Book Summary

 

James Shramko starts off his book with a great metric that we should all consider: Effective Hourly Rate, or “EHR”. If nothing else, you should take away from this Work Less, Make More review that regularly reviewing and estimating your EHR and then taking steps to increase it can be hugely beneficial.If you’ve watched the summary video above and want to grab your own copy, you can get it here: https://adammoody.org/worklessmakemore

Now, for those of you that have been running your own businesses for several years, this may seem on the simple side. However, I’ve personally found time and time again that simple is good – right?

This EHR metric is something that I’m going to put into my toolbox and evaluate quarterly. It’s a great way to see how effective you are, and it can apply at all scales (business, project, tasks, etc).

What I liked about the layout of this book was the remaining chapters of the book that James uses to give actionable advice on how to increase your EHR.

For example, one of the first areas you can (and should) work on is your effectiveness or productivity. Start monitoring your time, what areas are producing a return, and how you can minimize the bad, and expand the good. Just taking time each week or even month to look at this and make positive moves can have an enormous effect.

In the book, he then goes beyond this and into many different areas such as building a team, creating systems and processes to grow, and something that I personally found to be a great idea – “the infinity project”.

What’s that?

It’s a project, or projects that you can have  your team work on when there is down time. Once you have a team there’s certainly going to be hours or parts of days where they might be between projects or waiting – don’t let that go to waste, have them engaged in a long term project that highlights their strengths.

I highly recommend Work Less, Make More for a quick but engaging read that will give just about anyone some good ideas and strategies that they can put to use immediately.

 

profit first book review

Profit First Book Review & Breakdown Summary

This review and breakdown of the book Profit First by Mike Michalowicz was born out of necessity. While my businesses are profitable, we haven’t had a system that guides us to more complex financial decisions. Sound familiar?

Check out the video review for more details, but the idea behind this book is that profit CAN be planned for. More than that, it should be planned for and we should stop thinking in the Revenue – Expenses = Profit mindset.

However, it goes further and defines the framework by which you can accomplish this – which I certainly appreciate as there is no shortage of books that have goals and ambitions but not as much actionable content.

However, Profit First has a lot for you to do! I suggest giving the 200 or so pages a quick read through for the main ideas, which are:

  • Focus on profit
  • Set up a system that uses multiple accounts, removes temptation, and enforces rhythm
  • Complete an instant assessment (free)
  • Set targets based on assessment and move towards them

On top of these main ideas, the book delivers the steps needed to move towards your Targets from your Current state.

Who would this book be good for? If you own your own business, freelance, or are otherwise in charge of the financial well being of yourself, then it’s worth checking out.

You’ll have work to do – there’s no free lunch, but this gives you the frame work to increase profitability according to a set system.

As an added bonus the  book offers many insights into cost cutting and how to approach financial problem solving; reducing debt, increase utility of existing assets and more.

Grab your copy of Here or Get The Audiobook Here

High Profit Prospecting Book Review Notes

Just finished up this book and wanted to share my notes as I found a lot of value in it.

I’m interested in learning more about prospecting and the processes and strategies that I can use and this book delivered – lots of actionable content and good advice. I really liked that Mark Hunter went into detail on nearly every topic and provided scripts to get started with for people like myself who don’t have an extensive history of using the phone for outreach.

Another high point was his insistence of scheduling – getting your process down and making time for prospecting is really important and like many other areas, you HAVE to make time for it in order to be effective.

I recommend grabbing it for yourself if interested. You can see it on Amazon right here.

Below are my notes from each chapter:

Chapter 1
  • Definition of prospecting: An activity performed by sales and/or marketing departments to identify and qualify potential buyers
  • It’s not rocket science
  • Need to use all tools
    • Old school cold calls
    • In person visits
    • Internet / Email
  • Sales is an art
Chapter 2
  • Myths
    • One and done – blast emails doesn’t work.
    • I’ll prospect when done with current clients – you’ll never get around to it
    • It’s impossible to have dedicated time to prospect – stop being lazy and schedule it or you’ll pay for it down the road
    • We’ve made it this long without prospecting – good for you. Enjoy the good times and start prospecting now or your pipeline will be empty eventually.
    • If we provide great customer service we don’t need to prospect – customer service is very important but will rarely deliver the amount of NEW clients you need
    • Only “born salespeople” can prospect – wrong, anyone can.
Chapter 3
  • Your attitude is your problem
  • Prospecting can be difficult, don’t make it harder by having a bad attitude – prospects WILL feel your attitude
  • You will be rejected, and you don’t know if it’s because of a bad day, they don’t like you, or something else entirely. Get used to it
    • View each contact as an opportunity to positively impact that person
Chapter 4
  • Prospects don’t want average
  • Answer these
    • What about my process is compelling to the customer?
    • Does my prospecting process result in the customer having false expectations about what I sell, and thus force me to spend time later in the selling process reshaping them?
    • Is my prospecting process effective enough to help reduce the amount of time I spend negotiating with customers?
    • Is my prospecting process  focused more on sharing with the customer what I have to offer or is it more about uncovering information about the customer?
    • Is my prospecting process segmented enough to allow me to uncover customer needs faster from different types of prospects than if I used the same process for everyone?
    • How does the customer see me and how I can help them?
    • How long does it take for a lead or prospect to have confidence in me?
  • Additional 30 questions in the book to help measure your effectiveness and process
  • Notice – no mention of CRM. Don’t blame your CRM – fix your problems and process.
Chapter 5
  • Fit prospecting plan to your market
  • Who are you selling to, what are you selling?
    • 7 questions
      • Do I sell a consumable or something people buy on a regular basis?
      • Is what I sell considered a routine purchase or is it a capital expenditure / major expense (various depending on who you’re selling it to – keep that in mind)
      • Are my customers professional buyers who interface with numerous salespeople?
      • If the customer chooses not to buy from me, are they buying from my competitor, or not making a purchase at all?
      • Are my prospects currently buying what I sell from someone else?
      • Is what I sell purchased via a contract, quote, or some other type of deadline process?
      • Are customers familiar with what I sell or is it something I need to educate them about?
  • One size DOES NOT fit all
Chapter 6
  • Prospecting is NOT the last thing on your to-do list
  • Time for prospecting means actually prospecting
    • Not setting up to prospect
    • Not reading about prospecting…
  • Does your clock match your prospects clock?
    • When are they most likely to be responsive to your call/email/visit?
Chapter 7
  • Who you prospect will determine the price you get
  • Ask current customers who else might benefit from what you sell
  • Engage competitors customers frequently
    • When they fail to deliver, you’ll be a known entity who can help them and win their business
  • Tip: Out of office emails may have CC of next person in line or another contact…hit them up!
    • Don’t ever think you should only have 1 contact at a company
  • Use industry events and organizations
  • Don’t forget your past clients
    • Surprising amount of work / sales can be made here
  • A “No” is never permanent
  • Who are your customers customers?
    • Dig in and know the industry, will help you sell to your customer
  • Calling your friends is NOT prospecting!
Chapter 8
  • 6 ways to separate prospects from suspects
    • Have they told you when they are going to make a decision?
    • Have they shared with you a piece of proprietary information?
    • Do they have a need you can help them with?
    • Are you sure they’re the decision maker?
    • Do they have the financial ability to buy?
    • Has one of your competitors already clearly developed the customer’s expectations?
      • If you’re being invited in late to quote…it’s probably too late
  • Price does not belong in prospecting
Chapter 9
  • Your prospects don’t care about you
  • Don’t start with crap about you and your company, how can you HELP or BENEFIT the person you’re contacting?
  • You want 2 things from first contact
    • Find out 1 piece of information about the company and/or person with whom you’re talking
    • Secure a next step, either in-person meeting or another call at a designated time
    • DO NOT overcomplicate first contact. Dig deeper in second contact.
  • 3 ways to get first contact
    • Referral
    • Key insight/info (you provide to them)
    • Value statement (what benefits them)
Chapter 10
  • Phone calls (cold calls) still work
  • Don’t do a real “cold call” however
    • make an “informed call”
    • maybe as simple as being in the same industry as other clients and you know you can help
  • Don’t ever stop at 1 point of contact
    • Prospecting takes perseverance – many people might just miss the email/phone call, etc
  • Book has list of 10 ways to get phone numbers
Chapter 11
  • Make early morning phone calls
  • Can also finish day with “5 calls after 5” or something like that
  • Prospecting during holidays works well
    • May get you through to people you would normally not reach
      • Higher level people rarely take as much time off as their assistants or employees
Chapter 12
  • Telephone best practices
    • make it about prospect not you
    • Speak with energy and believe in yourself
    • If a door closes on you, find another door
    • Be prepared – 3 possible things can happen, you need to be ready for each:
      • Person you want answers
      • A gatekeeper (assistant) answers
      • voicemail
    • Always use a quality headset for good audio
    • Use the day wisely, keep records of what was said and when you called
    • Never think 1 call is all it takes
    • Never leave the same voicemail twice with the same person
    • Call right before top of hour for busy people (between meetings)
    • Never give up
Chapter 13
  • Telephone scripts – see book
Chapter 14
  • voicemails – keep them short – everyone HATES long voicemail
  • Examples in book
  • Can be effective if done right
Chapter 15
  • Emails
  • Keep them short and to the point
    • Does email have a call to action?
    • Does it carry a benefit the receiver can relate to?
    • Does it have a personal connection with the receiver?
    • Is it time sensitive?
  • Examples of subject lines and intros in book
  • How to leverage interests and strategic words
  • Email scripts in book
Chapter 16
  • ASK FOR REFERRALS
    • For god’s sake, just do it. It’s easy and you can do it anytime you deliver something positive to a client
    • keep person who gave referral in the loop
Chapter 17
  • You need a social media strategy
  • Use it, don’t abuse (overuse) it
  • It’s part of your process, not the whole process
  • List of questions in the book to help you decide who and where to use it
Chapter 18
  • Some more info on social media
Chapter 19
  • Getting past gatekeepers
  • Always treat gatekeepers with respect
  • Talk to them like you would talk to their boss
Chapter 20
  • Don’t overcomplicate large business prospecting
  • Answer:
    • What are the goals/objectives they need to accomplish?
    • What barriers are they facing?
    • What is the timeline they operate under?
    • Where is the power within the company?
    • What is the company’s tolerance for risk?
  • Challenge is in finding who can help you answer these questions
  • Avoid being routed to purchasing department
Chapter 21
  • Reaching the C-suite
  • May not always be the best route
  • What you’re selling needs to deserve their special attention
    • special budget considerations
    • strategic value
    • helps them achieve annual objectives at risk
    • implications on long term goals and objective CEO has set
  • They think differently from average prospects
    • (long list in book) Basically:
      • longer time frame mentally
      • high integrity and regard for integrity
      • cautious
  • Emailing and calling C-suite techniques in book
  • Connecting is also possible via mutual friends – bypass caution with referral
  • Can take much longer than normal prospecting
Chapter 22
  • Walk away from lead – have plan for when you will do this. Highly dependent on your business, but stick with your plan.
  • It’s a prospecting pipeline, not a parking lot
    • Don’t keep people on “active” list who aren’t moving forward
Chapter 23
  • You don’t win prizes for prospects you can’t close…
  • 6 rules
    • Never provide the prospect with enough information to make a decision without you
    • Never allow a specific price to enter your discussion during the prospecting phase
    • Never forget the most valuable asset you have is your time
    • Never become mesmerized by the lead who claims they want to do business with you right now
    • Never make contact with a prospect just for the sake of making contact. YOU MUST HAVE A PLAN. Don’t send those bullshit “just checking in” emails or voicemails.
    • Never forgo the quick sale for the sake of landing “the big one”

Backlinks Are Important…Right?

 

Over Time Backlinks Will Become Less Important – No Kidding

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, said in a video that backlinks, over time, will become a little less important. Matt did say that backlinks in the Google ranking algorithm still have many years left in them.

Matt explained that Google is focusing a lot now on working on ways to determine if a web page is meets the expectations of an expert user. They do this currently by looking at the links to the page, the reputation of the site and pages and the quality of the content on that particular page.

Matt Cutts added that for the “next few years” links aren’t going anyway and will still be used for determining reputation. But overtime, Google will rely a little bit less on links for reputation purposes. Over Time Backlinks Will Become Less Important

So – hopefully this isn’t breaking news to anyone that reads this. However, it does serve an important notice for those working right now and who constantly hear things like “link building is dead” or “building links is a waste of time”. No it isn’t – this is basically exactly what this message tells us. The other side of this is that building authority and moving away from possibly penalizing ranking maneuvers will pay off in the long term as, of course, Google and others will work to provide the best content for the consumer…if possible.

Over Time Backlinks Will Become Less Important

Video Views By Social Network

Speaking of social engagement and the importance of various social networks – I can across this article at reelSEO that had a great graphic:

tumblr-video-referrals-reelSEO

So – that’s a pretty hefty amount of views originating at Tumblr!

When Adobe released their Q4 2013 Video Benchmark report there was one golden nugget of information that went largely unnoticed. Social network Tumblr is responsible for referring more average video starts than YouTube, Twitter and Reddit.  Additionally, Tumblr is producing nearly identical video view rates as Facebook, with over 1/3rd of referred visits producing a video start.

Furthermore, more than half of visits referred from Tumblr to sports-related Websites, resulted in a video view. 56% – that’s an incredibly high conversion rate in anyone’s book and if any brands and marketers have shunned Tumblr as part of their online video marketing strategy, they need to sit up and pay attention to the new data.

If you’re leaving out Tumblr from your network, especially if you’re looking to drive videos then you’re doing it wrong…

See the full article at http://www.reelseo.com/tumblr-video-marketing/

social signals and seo

Google, Identities, And Social Signals

I was doing my morning reading and came across this short article in Search Engine Land:

http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-facebook-twitter-pages-are-treated-like-any-other-web-page-on-the-internet-182370

I am of course interested in the details of search engine related news, but the first sentence of the sixth paragraph was a beauty:

However, Matt does add that he does see Google crawling, indexing and understanding more about identities on the web in the long term.

Yup, I also think that Google might be interested in identities more and more as time goes on! A little bit of an understatement.

I choose to read “identities” as “entities” – people, businesses, places, things.

Nothing terribly surprising here, but the other side of the article is that Google is saying that the signals from Twitter and Facebook aren’t used in the ranking algo. So – that leaves a bit of area for interpretation – social media is important for nearly and optimization campaign, ignore it at your own peril, but Google does not have access to the trusted data set of each respective company.

What else could they be using from these large communities to help their own ends? Co-occurrence? Speed/size of meme/story spreading?

a bunch of books

Reading Challenge 2014

I came across a good post on Reddit that got me thinking about what some of my goals are for 2014. I’ve already got some fitness goals (first triathlon) as well as personal goals (done with an office job by August). But, being a fairly avid reader when time allows, I thought this was a good idea:

  • The goal is to read as many books as you can written by authors from different US states.

  • An author’s state is the state in which he was born; Hemingway lived in Florida and Idaho, but he was born in Illinois.

Here are the achievement levels, based on number of states “visited” in 2014:

  • Turn Off the Television: 1-5 states visited
  • Homebody: 6-10 states visited
  • Budget Traveler: 11-15 states visited
  • Frequent Flier: 16-20 states visited
  • Pathfinder: 21-25 states visited
  • Lewis and Clark: 26 or more states visited

In a best-case outcome you would read 50 books, roughly one per week. If you don’t think that even 26 is an achievable number, remember that’s just one book every 2 weeks. And consider the following partial list of novelists and their home states:

  1. Ernest Hemingway – Illinois
  2. Tom Perrotta – New Jersey
  3. Mark Twain – Missouri
  4. F. Scott Fitzgerald – Minnesota
  5. John Dunning – New York
  6. Dan Jenkins – Texas
  7. Robert B. Parker – Massachusetts
  8. Marisha Pessl – Michigan
  9. Carl Hiaasen – Florida
  10. Stephen King – Maine
  11. Jim Butcher – Missouri
  12. John Steinbeck – California
  13. Dean Koontz – Pennsylvania
  14. Dashiell Hammett – Maryland
  15. John Grisham – Arkansas
  16. Sue Grafton – Kentucky
  17. Laura Moriarty – Hawaii
  18. James Thurber – Ohio
  19. Ray Blackston – South Carolina
  20. S.E. Hinton – Oklahoma
  21. Flannery O’Connor – Georgia

Keep in mind that each state only counts once; Mark Twain and Jim Butcher are both from Missouri, but if you read the entire Dresden series and Tom Sawyer it only counts as one state visited (even if you detoured into Kansas in between). But this also shows the flexibility of this challenge: fans of the classics and fans of Sci-Fi/Fantasy both have options in Missouri.

I doubt I’ll find the time to get myself up to 26 or more, but I’m going to aim for 11-15 – and I’m going to include short stories. Being part of a reading club helps, and although I don’t always end up falling in love with new readings, I’ve found it helpful to branch out into different authors and subject matters. You never know where it will end up affecting your life!

Read the full article on the challenge here: http://somersetbooks.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-50-states-reading-challenge.html

Interesting state of affairs

As I was researching some local results for SEO services in the upstate area, I came across a wide range of services and quality. It was a little scary to think of a business owner wading into this, although my instinct is that most people would go with a service recommended by an associate or business partner.

For some of the smaller areas in upstate NY I came across SEO “firms” on the first page of results that were offering package directory submissions for hundreds of dollars per month – not a bad gig if you can land it, but certainly not a way to make your client rank! I’m fairly sure that some of these firms are just sites that no longer do much work – anyone still submitting massive directory blasts for a client will have some real issues – and fast.

Anyways, this made me think of how to educate clients and business owners. This is always a double edged sword – you can make someone dangerous with knowledge, but the lack of understanding can be just as bad. All things being equal I would rather my clients understand the basics and the current landscape – after all, it’s a function of marketing and they have a vested interest in being on top of what is going on in that segment of their industry (and in general).

As far as SEO and other forms of online optimization go, I usually see Moz referred to as a good place to start. I haven’t looked over their beginner’s guide in a couple of years, but I suppose that it isn’t the worst place to begin. I have this feeling that someone (but, who?!?) could put together a decent guide for business owners as a guide to online visibility. I use that word, visibility, since it isn’t always search engine visibility – if you can find quality traffic from a forum, social media, or other outlet, then great – go for it!

Something that would encapsulate perhaps the top 10-ish ways to gain visibility – onsite and offsite SEO being 2 of those. Off the top of my head I would think that several other topics would be:

  • Email collection / targeting (build a list)
  • Semantic markup (schema.org)
  • Local directories
  • National directories
  • Content generation

That’s the short list off the top of my head – from there it’s a matter of coming up with what might be the most important. I think I’ll end up taking the list of what matters the most to my clients and write it up into a short PDF for use as a freebie incentive on my services website. Couldn’t hurt, and it would be so much better for them than coming across one of these relic SEO firms that will submit their site to search engine Hades…