The morning after my twenty first birthday I was promoted from the restaurant to the night club where I would keep the bartenders supplied with the liquor, mixes and ice. Seeing the money that the bartenders were making, I decided that I wanted to be a mixologist.

A few months later I got my big break when a bartender was needed for the Sunday brunch shift. My first day as a bartender was not very exciting. I only made two types of drinks, gin fizzes and bloody marys.

Having little opportunity to establish myself as a great nightclub bartender in the solitude of a Sunday morning shift, I decided that I needed to focus on one thing. If I was only going to get to make 2 different types of drinks, I would make the best gin fizzes and bloody marys in the world.

I can’t say that I achieved this goal with the gin fizz, but 3 months after my proclamation, I had built a steady regular crowd of 40 customers who would come in to the bar area just for my bloody mary.

One of the simplest concepts to understand in marketing is also the most challenging to accomplish. Every business owner understands that “standing out” is a way to get noticed, yet very few – especially dentist – know how to make their practices “stand out.”

If you practice general dentistry you might find it hard to distinguish yourself from other general dentistry practices. After all, you are all just… well… general. To find your platform, you need to take a hard look at your practice and determine what it is that you do different from others in your market.

When I ask this question to dentists and their office managers, I hear similar replies.

“We can do it all” So you can do crowns in a visit with your CEREC, straighten up a grill with Invisiline, or total reconstruction with implants- do you think the public knows that you would send them elsewhere if you could not do these things? Doing it all is more of a benefit to your practice then it is to the patient.

“We care more” I can’t help but shake my head in disbelief when I hear this one. It’s your job to care. It is part of being in the healthcare profession. Your customer is not calling around asking “Do you care for your patients, or just drill and dash?”

“Blah Blah Smiles” A lot of dentists think that there platform should have something to do with smiles. Sorry, that message is over used and underwhelming.

I have to say that at least these dentists made an effort to say something. About 20% of the dentists I talk to have no message at all and the others simple state what they do, Family, cosmetic or children. If you’re the only family, cosmetic or children’s dentist in your market this could work.

Find your plat form. In my bartending days, mine was the world’s best bloody mary.

If you can’t think of something that you can stand on that will lift you above your competition, invent it. This is the road block. I find the trouble with this road block is less of not knowing and more of not willing.

If ninety percent of your competitors operate 8 to 5 Monday through Thursday, Maybe your platform could be later hours, or weekend appointments. Few of you are willing to do that and that’s why it works. I have a client in a large market that is making a killing because they are the only ones delivering this message. Even though others were already delivering nights and weekends, my client was the only one to make that his platform.

You could also decide to specialize in one thing. You could focus on pain or missing teeth. There are a lot of ways to market to these people.

It is better to target to a small audience with a pointed message then a larger audience with a broad message.
Whatever your message, say is load, say it often and say it consistently.

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When it comes time to writing an ad, they look at what everyone else is doing, and follow the lead. They add a twist of their own and are careful not to exclude anyone. This is where the biggest mistake is made. An effective ad will exclude most of your audience, but if targeted well, will out pull a general ad by as much as 4 fold.

Most advertising takes what I call a shot gun approach. A non-customer of yours is like a target 300 yards away. A shot gun blast might hit them but only with a couple of tiny bb’s that will bounce off without incident. An ad designed to appeal to everyone “Family Dentistry- $49 Exam and X-ray” will be utterly ineffective. However an ad written to cure a specific need “Does it hurt to chew your food?- $49 Exam and X-ray” is like firing a deer rifle. At 300 yards the target is still hard to hit, but if it does, it can be lethal.

I’m itching to give some strong examples but you might be in a market where I have a client. So try to understand the “why” of what I am saying. By understanding why it is important to make an ad more specific, you can begin to learn the “how” that will give your advertising results a huge boost.

It was a Friday lunch. I bit into my gourmet burger and “Zing!” Pain shot through me like a bolt of lightning. I had cracked a tooth in half. To my amazement I was chewing my chicken dinner that night.

Dr. Smith put a new permanent crown on that tooth in under 2 hours. It was amazing. I had no idea that was possible. It took 3 visits over 2 weeks to get a permanent crown from my last dentist.

There are many ways to get someone to read your ad. The example above is a technique called “Random Entry.” It’s effective only to get people to read the first paragraph of your ad. So the headline is the first priority of your ad. The first paragraph of your message is the second priority.

The first paragraph needs to be as surprising of a statement about your practice as the curious headline.

Predictability is the death of a headline.

“$49 X-Ray and Exam” Unless your reader is looking for a new dentists, they will never read past this. It tells the reader everything they need to know. The reader thinks “If I need a dentist, this one has a special on what my insurance covers.” Then it winds up in the trash. This ad is about the offer which can be work if the offer is strong.

“Now Accepting New Patients” I know a dentist that actually ran this headline. It says nothing to the reader other than the dentist is slow and arrogant. The reader thinks, “So What” This ad is about the dentist. No one cares about the dentist; they care about what the dentist can do for them.

“Beautiful New Smile” Someone wants my money. Why read any further. This headline is a statement that says “I’m just like every other dentist.” The ad is about the patient, which is a step in the right direction. The challenge is that it is lacks a compelling reason to read any further. It is obviously just another dental ad.

The goal of your headline is to get people to read your message. Because dentists have a hard time differentiating themselves from other dentists, there ads are often predicable. They only grab the low hanging fruit, the people looking for a dentist at the moment the see the ad.

What you say in your ads needs to speak to someone’s needs. Even, if it is not yet a need.

If your business has a defined platform that is different from your competitors, tell people about it. If you can’t get their attention with a direct headline, a random entry headline can increase response.

No matter how strong your headline is, your message is what gets the phone to ring or people to walk through your door.

The real kicker is that when the ad does not work, it is the fingers point to the ad agency and the expert copy writer they did not listen to. It is no coincidence that my most successful clients are the ones who focus on their business and trust ad writing to us.

It used to baffle me as to why there were so many awful ads. Just turn on the TV and watch for a while. Most of the ads, I figure 80% of them are the outcome of years of beatings. To be profitable the Madison Ave agencies write ads they know will get the nod of the client the first time around.

Why must the client get in the way? I have figured it out. Everyone has an opinion of marketing. So the wife of the business owner, the marketing manager of the company or the executive panel feels the need to put their stamp on each ad. After all, advertising is something that everyone sees, so if you have your stamp on an ad, you have added to your worth right? It is this stinking thinking that makes it easy for untouched copy from a real advertising professional to stand out.

While the intentions are good, the advice from your spouse or successful brother-in-law can be damaging. Here is why. They are afraid to offend. Yes, that’s it, they are afraid to offend anyone. So the result is an ad that appeals to no one.

Since the Greek physician Hippocrates first wrote about it in 370 BC, I have found 32 different books about the 4 different personality types and how they differ from one another. After reading at least 5 of them, I have concluded that you can’t please everyone with the same approach. In fact, if you are going to appeal strongly to one persona, you will proportionately offend another. In other words you must risk offending one persona if you want to appeal to another.

The strongest ads I have written, the ones with the best results, are the ones that also received the most complaints. It has come to the point that if the ad does not solicit some complaints, I get worried that it might not work.

If you want to grow your business, let a true ad agency, not the graphic designer that thinks they know advertising, but a go for results ad agency, the ad agency that has the guts to be accountable for the results.

Yes, when a client gets in the way of their success, it can be frustrating. Especially when your success depends on there’s. Learn from their mistakes, focus on what you know and trust what you don’t to the ones that do.

Profits are a necessity.

If you are a fan of Michael Moore, you probably disagree with that statement – but let me point something out. This country, like all the other economic powerhouses, was built on profits. Innovative people that put their personal wealth, time with their families, and personal health on hold to bring mankind such items as; the Phonograph, affordable automobiles, and the personal computer, deserve to reap as much profit from their contributions as the market will provide.

Profit is the motivator of action.

Personal satisfaction from gifting the world is a greater reward than the wealth gained from it. Just ask anyone who doesn’t need the money. However, few are able or willing to risk their family’s future just to feel good. Profit is the engine that drives risk.

Sadly, profit also motivates greed. As Gordon Gekko put it, “Greed is Good.” I disagree. Greed drives deception and deception soils society’s view of profit because there is no contribution to society birthed of it.

However most of the time the public views the dollar earned as too much when it is reported as a dollar amount. This is naiveté in its purest form.  No one would look poorly at an auto repair shop that earned its owner $77,400 on its $2,000,000 in sales but when Wal-Mart reports that it earned $15,690,000,000, people say it’s too much. What they fail to see is that in both cases the profits are only 3.87%. That is low by comparison to some other businesses.  We cheer the success of Apple who profited 30.8% – 508% higher than Wal-Mart for a net earnings of $23,605,296,000.

We like Apple.

Yesterday, Mr Jobs passed. In the stories of his life some compared him to Sam Walton. Both were icons of retail. The Apple stores that Steve Jobs created are the most profitable stores per square foot in the retail industry. Near double the runner up, Tiffany Co.

We don’t ask Apple to limit profits because Apple brings us things we want. Wal-Mart makes convenient to us the things we want, but banks just hold and loan us something we want.

What is most interesting is that if Apple were to fail we would be sad, but the government would likely not intervene. If Wal-Mart failed, communities would rejoice. If Bank of America failed we would have a world crisis. So why is President Obama telling a business that the government forced to absorb other failing institutions-a business that would cost the government trillions if it were to fail- that it does not have an “inherent right” to a certain amount of profits?

The real issue is executive pay. It is way out of whack in relation to the average pay of its work force. Yes- executives do deserve more pay. Their job is far more difficult and there are very few that can actually do that job well. What I don’t agree with is an executive putting together an acquisition deal that nets him hundreds of millions of dollars.

I remember reading the Forbes 400 back in the ‘80’s. There were very few billionaires (most were Japanese) and as I recall the average executive salary was around $350,000 a year. The earliest I can verify salaries is 1990. In 1990 the median executive salary was $2.918 million or 107 times the average worker pay. By the year 2000, just 10 years later, it was $14.857 million or 525 times the average worker pay. The only reason for this was supply and demand for top executive. The result was executives delivering $350,000 a year in leadership were receiving $14 million in compensation.

In my opinion, greed of these overpaid executives is what led to led to the Enron’s, WorldCom’s and Health South’s.

All of this could have been avoided if the SEC was not denied the ability to grow its force of auditors at the same rate of growth of new public companies. But that is a whole different argument.

Mr. President, give the SEC the people to do its job and report what is going on so that the shareholders can vote on what’s best for their companies. And for God’s sake- let a company’s profits be determined by the marketplace.

Profit is what allows a business to provide service, guarantees, and expansion. And expansion is what creates jobs.

Twelve different roads, including Avenue des Champs-Elysees, terminate at Place Charles de Gaulle, the 10 lane wide road that tightly circles the Arc.

This is a busy intersection.

As I entered the roundabout, the chaos, confusion and stress of fighting for a position with thousands of other cars vanished when I realized, Wow- I’m in Paris, a place with deep history and beauty at every turn of my head.

Life is like this.

We are programmed to keep our eye on the ball, to play by the rules and to obey authority.  The people who live in the moment, break the rules and challenge authority are viewed in 1 of two lights. They are problem makers or problem solvers, a Lindsey Lohan or a Steve Jobs.

There is a very fine line between problem makers and problem solvers.

I am beginning to believe that the more I am drawn to a stressful situation or the more challenging I find an individual, the more beauty, peace and genius there is around it. I just have to shift my focus to see it.

It is hard to argue that hard work is a key ingredient to success. But it is not THE key ingredient. Success is defined in many different ways. I define it simply as this- Are you choosing your day or is it being chosen for you. Do you see the hidden beauty in chaos or do you just feel stress. You need not focus solely on what you are driving towards. Pay attention to the scenery along the way. There are lots of lessons, and talented people along the way.

If hard work is not the key ingredient to success, what is?

The people you chose to surround yourself with are more important than the goal you seek, the effort you put towards your goal or the tenacity you drive it with. While a clear vision, hard work and relentless drive are essential to achieving success, it is impossible to accomplish with the wrong people.

If your business is chaotic, look around for people who are peaceful. Hire your weakness, hire people smarter then you.

David Ogilvy is considered to be one of the greatest ad men ever. Back in the early 60’s he gave new managers a Russian babushka doll. Opening the nesting dolls, each smaller than the one before, the manager would find a message typed on a piece of paper inside the tiniest doll: “If you hire people who are smaller than you are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. If you hire people who are bigger than you are, we shall become a company of giants.” Today his advertising empire is the 2^nd largest in the world.

Always be looking for people that will lift the others around them. This gift may exist in people you already have, but if you are too caught up in the chaos to see it, they will disappear. Some go to your competitor where they can expose their gift and other stay on your payroll and let it burn out.

Find the beauty and let it let it blossom. Peace and success will follow.

The personal aspect of social media has obvious impacts.  Good and bad.

I spend a lot of time in airports, away from my friends and family.  I talk to my wife and kids everyday but I have no time to chit-chat with friends.  Facebook has changed that. I have reconnected and stayed connected with friends that I have not seen in years.  When we do hook up, it’s like we saw each other last week.  This is good.
Social Media is responsible for 22.7% of online activity. That is more than twice the runner-up, online games at 10.2%. Email is third at 8.3%.

Some people spend hours in cyber gatherings. Since our days have not gotten any longer, they do this at the expense of a clean house, time with the kids or their job performance.  Yes, they do it at work, 77 percent of workers who have a Facebook account use it during work hours.

As a small business owner you can’t ignore the impact of social media. But how are you going to embrace it? First you must decide if you are going to allow it in the work place or not. Second, you need to choose if you are going to make it a part of your marketing arsenal or keep your focus on what you know.

A lot of you have Facebook fan pages. If you don’t have a fan page yet, someone close to you has likely recommended it.  Be careful how you use them. Remember, this is ‘Social Media’ which translates to the real world as a ‘Social Gathering.’ View a post or a tweet as speaking up at a dinner with friends. Say something worthwhile that will make you interesting.  Don’t solicit your business. To do so is like pitching Amway at Thanksgiving dinner. You look like a jerk.

While everyone else is jumping on the bandwagon without regard to the investment of time involved or a plan on who they want to be in cyber space, a great opportunity awaits you. Use you creative genius to create an ongoing quiz game or offer interesting trivia. A friend of mine who lives in Africa during the winters posts African Proverbs. I always look forward to them.

Constant plugs of you business are a sure way to be defriended and likely push your fan toward a competitor. The best way to build fans and credibility is to serve your customers well and when a client does compliment you on your service, say “Hey, thanks. Could you spread the word for me by Tweeting or posting your thoughts?” You will be surprised at how many actually will. And then some will even look you up to become a fan.

It’s far more credible when others post about you.

A disgruntled employee or angry customer doesn’t tell just 25 friends, they tell 250. And they tell them all at the same time in the heat of their frustration. You are far more transparent now then you were just 5 short years ago. Be aware of your actions, good or bad, because people will find out.

Social Media is likely to become more entwined in our lives as more smart phones are sold and our kids get older. You can embrace it or become a victim of it, but you can’t avoid it.  It’s a part of our culture.

·    80% of the food eaten at a buffet is consumed by 20% of the customers
·    80% of your complaints come from 20% of your customers
·    80% of your sales come from 20% of your products
·    80% of a manager’s interruptions come from the same 20% of the people
·    80% of advertising results come from 20% of your campaign.
·    80% of benefit comes from the first 20% of effort
·    80% of the traffic in town travels over 20% of the roads
·    80% of your annual sales come from 20% of your sales force
·    80% of your staff headaches come from 20% of our employees
·    80% of your website traffic comes from 20% of your pages

This is why we burn out and loose motivation. Let me explain.
In a meeting we use 80% of the time to discuss the 20% or the issues that will generate 80% of the revenue. 20% of the people leave that meeting 80% motivated to accomplish a project that can boost revenue 20% only to become 20% motivated after 80% of the project is complete. Since 80% of the challenges of the project come from the last 20% of it, we decide that there is another project that will generate 80% more results with just 20% of the effort of completing the last 20% of the previous project. However, you have just started a cycle of not completing a project. You are now failing at completing 100% of the last 20% of your projects. This hurts because it is the last 20% of the task that will produce 80% of the results.

And then we become 80% less motivated to start another project.

The key is in the small details. The detailed task items that take hours of focus to complete, keep getting pushed aside for tasks with more immediate results. This is why we never seem to get anywhere.

Here is a tip to get big results in your business. Decide today where your business is failing the most. It might be labor costs or lack of calls. It could be poor performing sales staff, or it might be your pricing. Whatever that is, it can give you the biggest return with the smallest effort – do it to completion.

It takes focus but even the biggest sufferers of ADD can focus when we practice discipline. I speak from experience. I chase a lot of shiny objects but I use my To-Do list to bring me back to task. The key is having a To-Do list.

I have learned that keeping my To-Do list simple makes it most productive. I can’t put down a task like “Fix low Gross Margin.” I have to break it out like this:

1.    Compare completed jobs equipment cost to equipment cost used to build job price
2.    Compare labor cost from completed jobs to labor cost used to build job price
3.    Confirm that jobs were sold at established price
4.    Write procedure for holding sales people accountable to job price
5.    Collect latest equipment pricing for all job types and adjust job sale price if needed

Each of these tasks is simple. They take time but none of them are overwhelming. And all of them contribute to a “Low Gross Margin” situation. After completing these tasks, I will find more issues, or solve my challenge.

Each of these 5 items represents 20% of the fix. The challenge is not knowing which 20% will generate 80% of the results. Most managers fix one of the items and call it good. The result is that of the 80% of the time they spent on the issue, they may have only achieved 20% of the potential results.

Keep focused on the other 20% because that’s where 80% of the rewards are hidden.

I hope that is enough of a motivator for you.

In business school my accounting teacher taught me how to keep books. He even offered some advice on how to run a profitable business. I looked up to him because he dressed like he was successful.  In the 80’s, TV shows like Dynasty and Dallas showcased shrewd businessmen in sharp suits and monogrammed dress shirts as cultural icons. My teacher looked like them. So when he said “To be profitable you cannot exceed your marketing budget”, I believed him. I estimate his advice has cost me more than 5 million dollars.

My instructor was a bean counter. I now understand why he gave the advice he did. You have to watch your spending. But what I have learned the hard way is that it is more important to watch your sales. If you are spending your time cutting overhead while your sales staff is posting pictures of their cat on Facebook, you are going to go broke. There is nothing you can cut in overhead that will compensate for a lack of focus in sales.

But to bring sales you need to market yourself. I’m not suggesting that you advertise, that is just one element of marketing. What you need to do is take a long hard look at your business. What image do you portray? If your store front or vehicles are dirty or beat up, you are not portraying an image of a successful business. How are your customers greeted?  You have to look at your operation as an outsider and ask yourself “Are our sales slow because customer doesn’t know about us – or is it because they do?”

If you see areas that you can improve, improve them. The bean counter will tell you that you can’t afford it. And they will be right. But there are some things you can’t afford not to do. Train your people and hold them accountable to performance. You have to make sure that you can capitalize on new traffic. Once you believe you have things in order, then you can advertise.

Cleaning up your image, training staff, and advertising, all take money that the bean counters will say you don’t have. But marketing does not cost if done correctly. It pays. It pays far better than the stock market or any other investment I can think of. In the worst cases marketing costs are 25%. And that is how the bean counters present it, as a cost. But your stock broker will present a 25% cost as a 400% gain.

Invest, don’t spend.

I am embarrassed to admit how many employees I have hired in the past that I was so excited about that I overlooked dangerous characteristics just so I could expedite the training, close more sales or schedule that extra job. In all cases I thought I was making my life easier. In all cases I knew the “star” employee was causing some damage but felt the sales were worth it. In all cases, I was wrong.

Here are some examples of some of my poor choices. I had sales people who would sell me on why it was okay to have a low close ratio or why a 30% gross margin was okay. I would allow technicians in the homes of my customers even though the girls in my call center said the guy “gave them the creeps.” I would overlook an installer with a bad attitude and I have ignored a rude call taker. Wow. That was painful for me to admit but I will say that the lessons learned were worth it. My hope for you is that you can avoid the pain by paying attention to what I am about to say.

If you have an employee that your team is telling you is a problem, listen to them. Sometimes it may look like a witch hunt and it probably is but what triggered the witch hunt? As often as I wanted to think it was jealousy or a personal vendetta, it was almost always a loyal staff looking out for the business.

Working in other businesses I have observed other poisonous pills. They come in only a couple of different forms. They are either super charismatic or super talented. The charismatic are over looked because they are so likable that you downplay poor performance. Keeping this person too long will cause some long term damage. They lower the performance standards in your business and they disappoint customers that will never say a word. The customers that do say something are asking for money in the form of warranties that could have been avoided by better paperwork.

The other poisonous pill is the talented employee. The performer who gets a lot of work done but complains to everyone around them about their home life, your customers or you, causes damage that is often hard to see. A bad attitude should be called to the carpet right away because they are infectious and the damage caused by allowing a performer with a bad attitude to exist in your business can run deep. I have found that if you allow this person to become a long term employee or worse, if a long term employee sours… it make take months and the replacement of many other staff members to overcome.

Having the luxury of visiting many different businesses I get to see as many different cultures. What is amazing to me is the amount of work that can get done in a company with a fun easygoing culture that has strict accountability as opposed to a company that is strict but has relaxed accountability. The fastest growing most profitable businesses have fun and have small grey areas when it comes to what is right and wrong for the culture. They act fast. And because they are a good place to work, word gets out and they have more applicants to choose from.

I have written before about the need for urgency and accountability in your business. The most important area to have it in is replacing under-performers and bad attitudes.