He posed a question around why some entrepreneurs are successful and why others end up in the graveyard of failure.
He mentioned those individuals who are considered “successful” in society … Gates, Branson et al. There are people that have had more opportunity, are better qualified, are smarter and started with more money than those that we view as the epitome of business success. Yet they never reached the heights of these titans.
He distilled the difference between success and failure in business (and, perhaps, in life) into one word.
Randomness.
For someone like me who used to believe that effort = reward, that was a hard pill to swallow. Seriously, our success hinges on a bit of luck?
The irony is not lost on me that a mathematician believes in a bit of luck ;-).
According to Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers: The Story of Success, luck happens when knowledge (specifically, 10,000 hours of it) and opportunity dissect.
I like that definition of luck. There’s a distinct Fortuna Eruditis Favet vibe to it. Fortune (and randomness) favours the prepared.
So, if you buy Taleb and Gladwell’s construct (and I do), then you have to see the value of networking.
It stands to reason that the more people and experiences we expose ourselves to, the more chance we have of getting lucky.
I’ll unpack the power of networking in a discourse called “Connect For Success” at the Eagle Canyon Golf Estate Business Breakfast in Roodepoort on Wednesday, September 13.
Come network with business owners and sales professionals just like you, and enjoy a bang-up breakfast. Who knows, this random event may just change the trajectory of your life.
PS. Since this is being held at a golf estate, I leave you with this quote which I think is appropriate to this endeavour: “The more I practice, the luckier I get.” Gary Player.
If you’re on LinkedIn you’ve probably already seen the green ‘Open to Work’ (OTW) caption underneath a profile photo.
If you own your own business and choose to put the OTW caption on your photo, that’s your prerogative. I wouldn’t because to me, it looks a bit clingy and desperate. By marketing on LinkedIn, you imply that you’re open for work, don’t you?
But, I’m not talking about you.
I’m more curious about the motivation and intent of those who are currently employed and have the OTW caption on their photo.
What’s with that?
You might not be that smart.
Or you might be negligent and haven’t checked your profile since 2020. LinkedIn introduced the “Open to Work” feature amidst the Covid-19 pandemic with the aim of providing assistance to individuals.
Or maybe you just don’t realise how disrespectful this is towards your current employer.
You’re Not That Smart
If you employed someone and found out that they had their CV out looking for another job, how’d you feel? By putting OTW on your profile is the same thing. Let’s forget about the OTW. Even if you don’t have OTW, but your profile looks like a CV, and is not punting the company that feeds you, then you’re not that smart either.
If you’re going to look for another job, be a bit more discreet about it. Your employer would probably be upset if they knew you were openly searching for another job, since they are providing for you. They might also think that you’re not very intelligent because you don’t seem to realise the potential consequences. And, then, start wondering why they hired you in the first place.
It’s like having a Tinder profile that’s still active after you’ve found your partner. Staying open to other possibilities is discourteous, and frankly, it’s cheating.
I remember when I was in advertising and a bunch of us had come back to the office from a boozy lunch, my boss called us in. He said something like this, “Next time you go for lunch don’t drink vodka, drink beer. “I’d rather that the client thinks that you’re drunk and not stupid.” Apparently, Vodka leaves the least odour on one’s breath. .
You’re Negligent
This may be an unfair statement because LinkedIn may not be part of your branding or sales acquisition strategy. Or you’re on LinkedIn but not on LinkedIn because you put up a profile right at the beginning, and never went back.
But, if you are using LinkedIn to attract business, at least be courteous enough to the person you’re selling to, by putting up something worthwhile. This means writing a profile that resonates with your potential clients, engaging with insights i.e. posting articles regularly and connecting with the right people.
You’re Totally Unaware
Here I’m going to let you off the hook. Having a shoddy LinkedIn profile might not be your fault. Because when you work for a company, it shouldn’t be up to you. Your marketing department takes the rap for this. It should have identified that there is an opportunity to turn every employee on LinkedIn into a brand ambassador.
In your company’s induction programme (if you have one of those), there should be a section on branding and marketing (and social media etiquette). You are after all a brand ambassador for your company, aren’t you?
The marketing department should give you the company branding and message to put on your banner. It should also give you a profile that pushes the company line. And, it should leave some space for you to show your personality.
This is not what your banner should look like. This is a prime location for marketing purposes. Use it to get your brand and message across.
As part of your KPIs, it might be an idea for you to be encouraged to connect with your company’s ideal client. LinkedIn allows you to connect with 400 people a month (20 a day).
Every time the marketing department writes an article, it should pass it onto you so that you can post it (that speaks to engaging with insights). At the least, there should be four articles or posts a month. One a day is better, but probably a Grail quest. You can, of course, use your initiative and share posts from other sources that are valuable to your target market.
Let’s Do The Maths
Imagine that you have 50 employees that are on LinkedIn.
That’s a golden chance to create 50 branding opportunities.
That’s 50 profiles with a single marketing message punting your company.
On average, only 20 percent of folks will accept your connection request. Out of 20 that would be four. Out of 400, that would be 80. If we multiply 80 by 50, we can estimate a total of 4000 connections every month. That’s a staggering 48,000 connections made every year.
If each of you is sending out four articles per month (48) and they reach your ideal clients, what would that mean for your business?
If you had a connection to contact system where you could bring your sales team in to reach out to those who have met the lead scoring criteria. For example, if you have six interactions with your ideal client, that could indicate that it is time that a sales person reached out. How much more business do your efforts could generate for your company?
Go have a look at your profile. If you’re using it as a CV whilst working for another company … well, that’s just not cool (Remember Tinder). Ask your marketing department to help you set up your LinkedIn profile properly.
I was rereading Seth Godin’s All Marketers Are Liars the other day. The premise is that we believe whatever we want to believe, and that it’s exactly this trait of ours, which marketers use (and sometimes abuse) to sell their products by infusing them with good stories – whether they’re true or not.
Some marketing stories are embellished with fibs, and others with downright fraud.
When is it a fib and when is it fraud?
A fib is when you tell your wife that you went to the petrol station when you actually went to the mall to buy her birthday gift. Fraud is when you say that you went to the mall to buy her birthday gift when you were in fact in a hotel with a hooker (don’t do that).
This fib/fraud dilemma is why I’m such a shocking marketer (ironic for someone who is in the marketing business). I’m always scared that I’ll tell a lie. There’s good reason for that because I lie to myself all the time. I just don’t want to out myself in my marketing copy for the world to see what a fraud I really am. It’s enough that I know.
So, generally, I underplay what I can do for my clients. Just in case they see behind the mask.
Even though I stand sentinel to the lies I could tell, a number of them slipped through … which I’ve tried to rectify.
Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story
I tell people that I’ve written more than 12 million words. Technically, it’s not a lie, but if you interrogate it deeper, it’s taken me 27 years to write those words. This comes to around 1217 words a day. I tout myself as a writer … this is patently untrue. Real writers like Kirsty Coetzee and Tiffany Markman could easily knock up 2739 words a day and produce a million words a year. Most real writers do way more than that a day. I’m not a real writer.
My favourite fib is one I see in the speaker/trainer fraternity, and it makes me uncomfortable because I think it’s fraud. And, I’ve done it before. You’ll see a list of recognisable clients on their websites: Liberty Life, Standard Bank, Discovery and the list goes on. But it isn’t exactly the truth is it? Having trained six people in a dingy training room in Sasol’s Secunda office doesn’t qualify as ‘Sasol’. I can say that because to my shame that’s what I did, and stuck Sasol’s logo on my website. It’s gone now with all the other puffery.
Oh, here’s another favourite that people use: “I get 90% of my work off LinkedIn/website/Facebook or whatever. This may be true, but 90% of two deals a month is nothing, really. Technically, it is 90%, but it’s not a real number. If you were getting 10 deals a month, then it is something to crow about.
Weaponised Marketing
98% fat-free. They don’t tell you that it’s the 2% that’ll kill you.
No added sugar. How much was there in the first place? Any diabetics out there that this could impact?
Our clothes are the cheapest … because we use enslaved seamstresses who are trapped on a ship that goes from port to port delivering the finished goods.
Mass murderers Bush and Blair: “They have weapons of mass destruction”; leading to the death of more than 460 000 Iraqis after the US invasion. And they’re boy scouts compared to some of the shit that has gone down in history (Anyone want to go on a Crusade?).
You get the picture, I’m sure.
It sounds like I think all marketers are liars
I think that all of us lie (mostly to ourselves) because it helps us get along (with ourselves and others). Can you imagine being 100% truthful (Do I look fat in these jeans?), we’d never have any friends, would we?
If you’re a marketer (if you have your own enterprise then you are) you can fib a little if you think it’s appropriate because it makes a good story, and hopefully doesn’t harm anyone. But, if you want to tell a great story, tell an authentic one.
That feels more congruent.
Attracting clients to me through authenticity rather than through duplicity feels right to me, and I’m sure to you, doesn’t it?
I certainly sleep better as a consequence of that choice.
My PTSD crawled out of what I thought was my impregnable hurt locker the other day. It was the silliest thing that triggered it. It was the word ‘ambush’ that I used in marketing copy for Hamilton Wende’s Frontline Afghanistan story for the Salon we hosted the other day.
A quote by Frida Kahlo made me realise, I cannot run from this thing that eats me, I need to deal with it: “I tried to drown my sorrows, but the bastards learned how to swim.”
1984, somewhere in Namibia (formerly, South West Africa)
The unmistakable cloyingly sweet smell of fear oozed out of my pores, mixing with the dirt, grime and sweat; a consequence of being unwashed for 15 days.
All 10 of us stank of fear as we lay flat on the ground in our ambush, our rifles aimed at the kill zone.
Contact and probably death was imminent. >>>
At that moment, a romanticised notion popped into my head. Death and fear smell the same. It’s the smell of soul. In death, when the soul is released to go home it’s sweet. When we anticipate death, it’s not fear, but excitement that we feel because the soul finally gets to go home.
No matter how I try and romanticise fear and death, it’s an unpleasant smell for me, probably because I’ve experienced too much of both.
>>> The footfalls on the barely discernible path are close, too close. My finger tightens on the trigger, my eyes squint and my breathing slows.
They appear. Two souls. Time stands still. My brain registers something out of place, and my heart stops.
A wizened, weather-beaten old man, holding the hand of a young girl-child wearing a ragged faded yellow dress, came into my sights.
The 10 of us connected to a Hive Mind that has been forged from being together for 17 months, acted as one. Ten fingers removed themselves from their triggers.
Our haunted eyes welled with tears and our hearts wept with relief. No one died today.
The old man, a grandfather of the young child as it turned out, looked at us, his smile beaming from ear-to-ear. He said, “Welcome. We saw you come here, and we thought that you might be hungry and thirsty. We brought you food and water.”
It was more than I could bear, and it still haunts me today.
In the border war (SWA/Angola – 1966 – 1989) around 20 000 civilians and soldiers from South Africa, SWAPO, ANC, Angola, Cuba and Russia died. Countless others were injured.
The survivors sit amongst you (some may even be reading this). You’ll know them: they’re your fathers, husbands and grandfathers. They’re anywhere from 55 upwards. But they’re all going on 100, haunted, lost and traumatised.
Be kind to them because they can never be kind to themselves.
I recently watched a documentary called Lewis Capaldi: How I’m Feeling Now on Netflix. Wow, what a beautiful singer. He is afflicted with Tourette’s Syndrome and it almost scuppered his career. Thankfully he’s back – his gift is too beautiful to be snuffed.
There was a scene where he said this about the Scottish view on life: “Let’s give it a go. We’ll probably fuck it up but let’s have fun whilst we’re doing it.”
This sentiment appeals to me. I don’t know about you, but I’m fucking it up every day, and (sort of) have fun doing it.
Of course, this reminds me of Carlos Castaneda: “All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. … Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use. A path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you . . . Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself alone, one question . . . Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t it is of no use.”
Go fuck it up. Get off a path if it doesn’t make your heart sing. And, have fun.
Vince Lombardi said, “Winners Never Quit & Quitters Never Win.” I’m going to argue that this is a dangerous sentiment, and ultimately false. I’m also going to argue that courage is ultimately more important than bravery.
Some of you may know that I was conscripted into the infantry in 1982, like thousands of white South Africans. I spent 17 months in Namibia (previously South West Africa).
As a soldier in a war zone, I was tested and had many opportunities to be brave. The scariest moment during this challenging time that almost drove me crazy was when I had to chase a Wind Scorpion out of my trench. Neither of us was hurt.
I don’t want to talk about my banal and benign military experience, but rather about two people. One was a genuine soldier. The other, a conscientious objector.
They show the difference between bravery (staying the course) and courage (quitting).
The soldier was involved in a lot of conflict, and had many opportunities to display his bravery. He has the medals to prove it.
The soldier and I had a chat one day and the conscientious objector, who is known to us both, came up. The soldier admired the conscientious objector’s courage in standing up for his beliefs. He said, “I wish I had his courage.”
That’s when it occurred to me. Being brave in a war is comparatively easier than having the courage to speak against something you find abhorrent.
What situation are you in now that you need to say “no” to and that you need to quit? I’ve no doubt that whatever path you’re on, it takes bravery to stay the course: A dead-end job. A loveless relationship. A soulless existence. A business that’s never going to fly. To quit these for something better takes courage, that’s for sure. It takes courage to play bigger than you are now. It takes courage to bring your gifts to the world. It takes courage to admit defeat.
And, most of all, it takes courage to know when to quit.
If I think about my own situation: I used to stay in untenable situations because it served me. I could play the victim so that I could get sympathy and attention. Quite pathetic, if I think about it now.
I didn’t have to take responsibility because the ‘world was doing this to me’. It was only when I realised that the world doesn’t give a shit about my feelings one way or another, and that I was doing it to myself, that I decided to change.
It was Carlos Castaneda that gave me the nudge that changed my life:
“All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. … Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use. A path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you. . . Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, alone, one question. . . Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use.”
Someone once told the composer Morton Feldman that he should write for the “man in the street”. Feldman went over to the window, and who did he see? Jackson Pollock.
When writing your blog posts, write about things that interest you. When you write like this, you find your tribe. What you find fascinating, they’ll find fascinating.
What should you write about to find your tribe?
Ask yourself: What would make you jump up with joy if you read it now? What would move your heart and stimulate your intellect? If you find something that makes you ecstatic, this is what you should write.
You will write text that almost no one likes. Fortunately, almost no one is multiplied by the entire population of the internet is plenty if you can only find them.
Don’t pander to search engines to try and get your website rankings up. Don’t dumb your work down. The people you write for you aren’t stupid. Treat them with respect and write your best work. Write in as much vivid detail and beauty as you can, because that’s what you’d like. And, that’s what they’d like.
That’s how you find your people. That’s how you build an enterprise that fuels the life you want.
I got the idea for this article from one of my favourite writers, Austin Kleon.
If you’re a professional speaker, don’t be stupid like me. Don’t connect with other professional speakers on LinkedIn.
I was scratching through my LinkedIn profile and got really excited because I saw that I had 9600 connections.
My excitement waned when I realised out of the stupid marketing mistakes I have made in the last 20 years, having so many connections, is right there in the top five of stupidity. And, believe me, I’ve done some really stupid things.
It would have been OK if they were the right connections. I.e. my ideal client. In my case, sales managers and sales directors.
It depends on which self-professed LinkedIn expert you speak to: only 15% – 5% of your first connections see your posts.
So, at 5% (which I’m more inclined to believe since my average post only gets 200 – 300 impressions) I would reach 480 connections.
That would be great if they were all my ideal client profile: sales leaders.
But here’s what this thing looks like:
868 professional speakers. I love speakers, but they’re not my market. And, they do try. They like, high five, and comment on each other’s posts. Not mine so much. (´-ι_-｀) Except for the brief dopamine hit, it’s not worth it. Another speaker is never going to get me a professional speaking engagement. The ones that do, and there are two of them, I have on my phone. We call each other.
1 600 coaches. Seriously, what was I thinking?
24 plumbers and electricians. Ke?
7 Wellness retreats, one called Chi Chi. Oy gevalt.
1400 managing directors. That was looking better, until I went through a sample. Ninety percent of them are one-man/woman bands. Fooi tog, I didn’t know you could be a managing director of one person? ¯\(º_o)/¯
287 personal assistants.
2700 sales leaders ٩( θ‿θ )۶ That’s a start, or is it?*
* Many people who are on LinkedIn are not on LinkedIn. Yes, they have profiles, but they’re not active.
So, what to do?
I don’t know, do I look like a LinkedIn expert? I’m as confused as the next person (⊙_◎).
You can ask a smart guy like Scott Cundill who is one of the few people I know who really knows his way around LinkedIn. The one thing that he said that stuck with me: “Don’t put crap in the app.”
If you want to connect with other speakers, do it on Facebook. Who cares about Facebook – a place where any original thought goes to die? For most of us, our ideal customer does not reside there.
I hope my therapist is right when she says size doesn’t count, quality and technique do.
⊙﹏⊙ Well, it’s true for LinkedIn, I’m sure. Rather have a smaller 1st connection base that is full of your ideal clients, than a big one that is full of (☞^o^)☞ well professional speakers, plumbers, electricians, coaches, and ‘managing directors’.
If connections don’t serve your agenda, perhaps it might be an idea to start disconnecting from them. But, do it slowly, like maybe five a day. We don’t want LI to think you’re a bot and put you in jail.
Some wisdom is timeless. If I read this quote today, I’d think it was written for our times: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” Charles Dickens – A Tale of Two Cities
He left out serendipity and happenstance.
A couple of weeks ago, I received a WhatsApp from someone I didn’t know. “Hello Jacques, how are you? Do you still work at “whatever” restaurant?”
“I’m looking for an executive chef to run my kitchen.”
I replied, “I think you have the wrong Jacques. I can barely boil an egg.”
“（◎0◎）ᵒᵐᵍᵎᵎᵎ, sorry, wrong Jacques”
I then replied, “Weirdly, I have a friend who is an executive chef, and she’s at a loose end at the moment.”
“Please put me in touch with her,” she said.
I did, and the rest, as they say, “is history.” My friend is now employed.
I think this is the most wonderful miracle as my friend was getting rather desperate to find work.
I’m sure that if you reverse engineer your life, you’ll be able to pick up that there’s a divine hand directing the path of our lives. Well, for me, anyway. Someone once asked me about my life. I said that it was a perfect mess. It is, and it’s perfect.
When we hunt an outcome, we have predatory attention.
Be Still, Predatory Expectations …
Our lives are full of expectations (hopes). When we walk into a room full of people we expect that they will like us and accept us. We expect things to work in our favour. We expect a result.
What we are really doing is hunting an outcome. Our attention becomes predatory. And, it’s exhausting. The more you chase something, the more it runs away.
Go, ask a tiger … for every 20 hunts it attempts it makes only one kill. The more we chase something, the more it eludes our grasp. Think about spammy marketing and pushy sales people.
What if there was another way? What if we just did our best and became still and receptive to whatever the outcome is – good or bad. What if we just did something for the pure joy of doing it, and not for an outcome? How’d it be if we didn’t have any expectation?
You know how this works in any case. Castaneda summed it up beautifully: All paths lead to nowhere, so find a path with heart. In essence what he is saying is that even if we get what we want, we will eventually be disappointed, and then we will want something else.
It’s a never-ending loop. I figure that if I just am, have an open heart and temper my expectations, this journey will be a lot more fulfilling.
