Why do I, after 10+ years, continue to serve on that same committee? I’ve put in my time for the greater good. There’s no pay nor stipend, and we members even buy our own lunch. Why should I continue? Why should the other long-timers on the committee continue?

Yet today’s meeting was the best attended in many, many years.

Is it because our committee is the backbone of SICBA, our builder’s association, and without us the whole shootinmatch might fold?

Not even. The educational events we sponsor and host are generally not door busters. In fact, over the years, we’ve had to cancel a number of them for lack of interest. A strong turnout for us is 8 – 10 attendees. That’s pretty lame for a builders association of 680 member companies. Yet we march on, always striving to improve.

For me, it’s about giving to get. Last year, 2011, was my best ever, which in this economy is saying something. I attribute a small piece of that success to active involvement in the education committee. By active I mean that not only do I actually attend the meetings, I also give seminars. Most are freebie, brown bag lunch affairs lasting 1 – 2 hours. I can put one together pretty quickly using Power Point, so it’s low cost, low time investment.

But the rewards are rich indeed: I get the satisfaction of helping fellow building industry folks; my reputation as an expert in my field is bolstered; and I get my face in front of dozens of people a year, hopefully earning their trust.

Trust. It’s the main ingredient in the hiring stew. It’s the first question you ask your friends about someone.

The people who come to my seminars, if I’ve done a good job, will tell their friends, thus spreading the trust I’ve earned even further. Talk about win-win. And, none of my competition does this – I own the local engineers-doing-seminars market.

But what about Armand? His roots are so deep and his reputation so good, he probably doesn’t need more clients. Armand brought his son, Elboe, to today’s meeting. Elboe is 20-something, and will likely take over Armand’s business someday. Certainly, Elboe could have come to the meeting alone, introduced himself, and enjoyed the status the Hand name has earned in our county. Yet his dad came too and did most of the interacting.

Here’s what I know about kids (anyone less than, say, 35.)

1.  They are not as confident as they want you to believe.

2. They are not as competent as they like to believe.

I make this bold observation based on many case studies, the most notable one being myself. I recall clearly my transition from wannabe-punk to semi-professional-who-might-actually-know-something. By age 25 I had earned two college degrees and was in charge of a small construction and engineering office for the U.S. Indian Health Service in Fresno. I can guarantee you that my clients, the American Indians living on federal trust land in the nearby foothills, could have cared less what my GPA was or how many framed pieces of fancy paper hung on my office wall. And rightly so. I didn’t know jack, and they knew it. It took about five years of flopping about, striving valiantly to appear competent before I actually started to become so. And when that transition took place, I noticed. Suddenly when I said something, people would nod in agreement rather than shoot me sidelong glares. It was such a shocker that I recall the first time it happened – it was in Tuolumne, CA, regarding a proposed community sewage disposal system I was to design. I was 27-years-old. It would be about ten more years before I truly felt like a journeyman engineer.

I won’t mention the names of the other case studies I’m familiar with. But you can take it to the bank when I tell you every one strictly adheres to the two points listed above.

So to answer my initial question as to why Armand bothered to attend, I think it was to nudge his son into the builder’s association, and to introduce him to a few well-established industry people. If Elboe is anything like my own son, without the nudge he would have found 15 excuses for not going.

Do you work with people under 35? If so, you’d do well to offer guidance at every opportunity, even if the fledglings don’t ask. It was Jim Sinegal, CEO of Costco, who said, “If you’re not spending 90 percent of your time teaching, you’re not doing your job.”

And I strongly recommend becoming an active committee member at your local builder’s association. It’s an investment that pays dividends on many levels.

It’s positively numbing all that hustling. Driving by a public park, for example, the basketball backboards were ads for cell phones. On the beach, vendors were as common as sand. There were tip-grubbing jugglers performing during red lights in jammed intersections. A guitar man got on our bus, sang two songs, didn’t get tipped, then got back off.  Every flat surface yells at you in neon colors and bold font. Taxi drivers will throw you into a half-nelson to get you in their car. After a while one gets calloused and stops paying attention. It actually becomes anti-marketing.

My family just spent a week in Nuevo Vallarta and we had a bueno time – except for the inescapable, pervasive selling.

There was one instance, however, in which I didn’t mind the hustle – where I was actually eager to pay a generous tip.

We had been told by friends to be sure to do a zip line. So my wife, Cindy, signed us up with Vallarta Adventures for their Outdoor Tour. This consisted of a pontoon boat ride across Banderas Bay; a 4-WD open-sided truck ride up a river canyon on a dirt road; a mule ride to the top of a ridge; multiple zip-lines and rapelling down the river canyon; and truck and boat ride back. (Here are some pix from the Garrison family album: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tim-Garrison-The-Builders-Engineer/283247798367205#!/pages/Tim-Garrison-The-Builders-Engineer/283247798367205)

It was an adventure to be sure with thrills and wows at every stage. But that’s not why I’m writing about it. Like other fun activities in which we partook, we paid a fair price for a product and we got it.

What made this excursion extraordinary were the guides. Our family of four was placed in a group of 14, the capacity of one truck. The guides made a conscious point of keeping family members and those traveling together in the same group. It would have been easy to just herd us like cattle to the trucks, landing where you may, but instead great care was taken to set up compatible groups.

How do you teach flabby tourists to ride a mule and to rappel and to zip line, especially when most have never done those things? And teach it quickly in a 2^nd language (the guides were all Mexican)? And teach it thoroughly enough so that no one gets hurt or killed? Truly each stage involved deadly risk. Then pull it all off flawlessly – converting happy participants into walking billboards for their company?

Here is how they did it:

Step 1: Have enough guides. Our group of 14 had six guides, plus two full-time photographers, plus a cowboy in charge of the mules. And that’s just the folks who took us through the jungle. There was also the boat driver, the truck driver, the guy at the boat landing who set up groups, the ticket takers, cashiers, and untold behind the scenes people.

Step 2: Use experts.  Each guide was in their late-20s to early-30s, was well-trained, and had been doing this gig for several years. “Expert” could be an understatement.

Step 3: Connect. This was probably the main key to my happiness at the end of the day. Each employee was genuinely cheerful and took personal interest in all participants. Between stages they chatted about themselves and asked about us. They eagerly answered my numerous questions concerning the locals, the seasons, the hydrology, the mosquitoes (none), the rainfall, etc. It would have been easy for them to play the familiar “No habla Englese,” card, but instead, using their best-attempt English, they did the opposite.

Step 4: Make clear the expectations. People were told plainly what was expected of them and what they could expect from their adventure. There were no surprises. Paying clients generally do not like surprises.

Step 5: Market appropriately. At the end of the adventure, after they had earned our trust and had provided an A+ service, we were asked to complete a feedback form and to be honest with both positive and negative comments.We were also asked emphatically that if we had a good time to please tell friends. Lastly, we were told that if we appreciated the staff, there was a hardhat into which a tip could be placed. Not only did I partake, I also purchased the CD of photographs of our adventure for $100, and went away feeling that I got a great deal on a life-memory day.

Is your business extraordinary? Tipworthy? Do you do the things that Vallarta Adventures does to ensure customers so thrilled they blog about it? Do you:

* Provide enough manpower, both in the office and the field, to get the job done efficiently and right.

* Use only top-tier people, including consultants, and subs.

* Connect on a human level with everyone who could make a referral. A good rule of thumb is this: Are you someone your counterpart would enjoy having lunch with? I would love to have lunch with any of our Vallarta guides. Can you say that about those in your organization who are in contact with the public?

* Make clear all expectations, both what you will provide and what you expect in return. Are you 100% crystal clear on the big three: work scope, timeframe, and money?

* Market appropriately. After you have provided an A+ service do you invite customers and anyone else on the job to provide feedback? To sing your praises? Are you conspicuous in how best to find you – website, Facebook Page, Yellow Pages, service club, professional organization, etc.? Will you follow up in a month to take care of any niggling issues? Would you be a pest if you did it again at the six-month mark? Remember, word-of-mouth marketing is the most effective kind; and it’s many times easier to land a return client than a new one.

Hustling is marketing and is crucial to any business. The trick is using the right amount and the right timing to build desire. Get it wrong and instead you build revulsion. I can think of a couple radio commercials, for example, that irritate me so much I immediately change the station. Most marketing attempts in Mexico work that way too. There are a few exceptions, however, Vallarta Adventures being one.

Thank you for reading this article. If you enjoyed it please “Like” my Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tim-Garrison-The-Builders-Engineer/283247798367205

Normally I avoid politics like the mall on Black Friday. Mostly because our political machine is so bloated, partisan, and broken it nauseates me. But for some reason I read this article, which I found so inspiring I’m passing along the gist. This is the first time I’ve ever posted something with a political bent and it may be the last.

Here are a few bullets:

* Fortuno was inaugurated 2-weeks before Obama.

* At that time Puerto Rico was in its worst recession since the ‘30s. Its budget deficit was proportionally worse that the US’s. The government could not make payroll, and had to take out a loan for that.

* Fortuno immediately cut his own salary 10% and trimmed his agency heads’ 5%.

* With that credibility he chopped overall government spending 20%.

* He cut corporate taxes, starting modestly, but by 2014 by 25%.

* He cut individual taxes, again starting modestly, but by 50% in six years.

* Here is the one I love the best. Pre-Fortuno, it took 28 permits and endorsements to build anything. You had to visit 20+ different agencies to negotiate the permitting maze. CHOP! Now you go to one agency and get your ONE PERMIT there. Or you can go to PR.gov and get it online.

* He scrapped capital gains and death taxes, and implemented a 5-year property tax holiday.

* Existing home sales are up 35%.

* New home sales have soared 92%.

* Honeywell, Merck, Nordstrom, Pet Smart, PF Chang, Saks Fifth Avenue, Victoria’s Secret are all either building new or expanding there.

* Puerto Rico was ranked 51st in 2009 in deficit-to-revenue. Now it’s ranked 15th.

* S&P actually UPgraded Puerto Rico’s credit rating, while it downgraded the US’s.

I wish to thank the article’s author, Deroy Murdock. Here is the link: http://www.timesherald.com/article/20111120/NEWS/111129970/-1/NEWS

If things like this inspire you, please pass this blog post along to your buddies and congresspersons.

“Yo, Vinnie, you wanna know what’s in my secret barbeque sauce? Tell you what, I’ll Facebook it tomorrow. Check it out.”

‘Google’ became a verb; why not ‘Facebook’?

Anything that goes from noun to verb, globally, should be paid attention to. If you’re interested in operating a successful business, you’d better know how to Google, and you should also jump on the Facebook bandwagon. Here’s why.

Whether you agree with me that in any business, marketing is half, you have to agree that marketing is crucial. I’ve written about this more than once. Here is my first article on it, published in Nation’s Building News in 2004: http://www.constructioncalc.com/blog/business-savvy/my-favorite-marketing-story/ . The gist is that word-of-mouth marketing is the best kind. Seven years later, that’s still true. What’s different, however, is the method in which word-of-mouth spreads.

In 2004, word-of-mouth was just that: words physically spoken by a real mouth, received by hammer, anvil, and stirrup ears. In 2011, that kind of thing still happens, of course. But nowadays, thanks to the internet, the savvy businessperson can get nearly the same word-of-mouth effect to a much wider audience with less effort.

Being an entrepreneur myself, selling a product to a worldwide market, it makes a lot of sense to get my message out to as large an audience as possible. I was excited when the internet gained popularity because it’s a marketer’s dream: a vehicle to broadcast your message to the entire world – for free! There’s a catch, though. The entire world is absorbed in many, many other things. To grab someone’s attention on the web is hard, indeed. I, like many early dot.comers, thought if I built it, they would come. I’ve since learned differently.

How it really works is, if you build it and it provides something extraordinary, in huge demand, at no cost, they might come. If they do, they might tell their friends, who might tell their friends, and so on. The more amazing your product, the better your chances of converting “mights” to “wills.” The word “viral” meant something entirely different ten years ago than it does today. Today viral is good. Very good.

In my case I believed the cornfield’s message in Field of Dreams, so I built a website. And they didn’t come. I built three more websites and still very few came. I wrote books and taught seminars. I thought that if I could just show people how to use my products, they’d buy. Not so much. I even tried giving away stuff. No soap.

I tried mass email marketing. Hey, it works for spammers, right?  Bad idea. Not only does it not work, it irritates people, a lot. My little experiment in futility cost a sizeable chunk of dough and a load of stress when my website got shut down. I don’t like people hard-selling me, why should anyone else?

My problem is the same as nearly every other entrepreneur’s. My marketing has failed. I used to wonder whether the problem was my product. It’s possible, of course, but the testimonials I’ve received over the years contradict that. I also know of others who have superior products or services and who toil endlessly to make money. It’s marketing, not the product.

So the million-dollar-question remains: How to market effectively on a budget substantially less than GM’s or Coke’s? There are answers in Jay Levinson’s excellent book, “Guerrilla Marketing.” Maybe too many answers. A small business not only has limited cash, it typically also has limited time. Guerrilla marketing takes time. Essentially, if you don’t have the budget to hire marketers, you have to do it yourself. That’s guerrilla. Me? I don’t have that much time.

Like most people, I possess certain expertise that I want to share. What better way to market my products and spread some knowledge than to publish articles. Writing is a beautiful thing. It can be a career propellant, and it’s always there for you, at your leisure. For example, as I write this I’m on a plane to San Jose. I could instead be wasting this time with the in-flight shopping magazine seriously contemplating whether or not I need the latest in nose hair clippers. I’d rather write. Several years ago, I installed a blog on my website and populated it with articles I’d published over the years. That didn’t generate much traffic so I also installed a forum, which, if you’re unfamiliar, is a way for colleagues and customers to ask specific questions that I can answer and that others can chime in on too. But, as usual, the problem lies in getting people there.

With Facebook, everyone is already there. And if they’re not, they will be someday, soon. If Friends like what you’re doing, they will “Like” it and “Share.” Could this be a tool to leverage the internet?

Until recently I haven’t been much of  a Facebooker. I just don’t think people are that interested in me. I try to be humble and not plaster every boring factoid or family picture on a virtual billboard for the world to gawk at. That’s how I think, and more or less how I expect others to think. But not everyone does. There are a few of my Facebook Friends, for example, who see fit to post something about themselves several times a day. Every day. I have other Friends trying to build their business on Facebook, which might be okay, but I don’t give a rip about their products and wish I wasn’t a recipient of their propaganda. Still, however, I want to be their Friend.

What about LinkedIn, MerchantCircle, and the other business networking sites? They’re business-exclusive, right? Maybe so, but one social media site is plenty for me. It comes back to the time thing. And also perhaps some laziness. I just don’t want to go through the gyrations and frustration of learning a bunch of new stuff that may or may not be of benefit, but will for-sure be a time-suck.

I was bumbling around in Facebook the other day and saw a banner ad for the app, BeKnown. I checked it out, spending several hours researching. It looked like a decent solution so I signed up. What I was looking for specifically was a Facebook account for my business, totally separate from my social Facebook account. BeKnown looked like the ticket until I went to post something on my BeKnown wall. Problem: there is no BeKnown wall. I emailed their tech support, which promised an answer within 24 hours. That was many days ago and still I have not heard back. Whoosh – I’m outta there.

They’re pretty sharp down at Facebook HQ and have figured out that I’m not the only businessperson with social media issues. Poking about some more I stumbled on the option to “Create a Page.” After a bit more research I believe it might just be what I’m looking for.

In a nutshell, any entrepreneur with a Facebook account can create a Page that’s all about their business. It could be their band, their book, their deli, their software, their store, whatever. The privacy settings in your regular Facebook account do not apply to the Page, the Page is public. And, you get a separate wall within your Page. Your regular Friends are not automatically Friends of your Page. Page Friends must be invited separately even if they’re already a regular Friend. It’s a cakewalk to import blog articles to your Page, meaning that you need only write and upload an article once. From there it’s a single click to import it to the Page. This article, for example, appears on my Page that way.

I believe that, in general, you reap what you sow; that you get what you pay for. Facebook Pages follow accordingly: Entrepreneurs will only be successful with them if they truly bring the goods… if they provide something extraordinary in huge demand. Fail there and no one will want to be a Friend of your Page. Succeed at that, however, and Facebook provides an awesomely powerful, free platform to build something viral. And, you don’t have to aggravate your social Friends in the process.

If you  want to check out my Page, it’s Tim Garrison, The Builder’s Engineer. Certainly, if you like what you find there, please “Like” and “Share” it. There’s a lot to Facebook and Pages and I’m still learning.  I will continue to post what I discover. Thanks for reading.

Half.  That’s a big number.  

The above explains why so many businesses languish, or worse, fail.  For example, say you are a crackerjack framer and are tired of working for someone else.  So you hang out your shingle and start a company.  It doesn’t matter that you are the best framer in three counties and have all the best tools and employees.  If no one knows about you, you’re going down. 

How best should a construction company spend their marketing dollar?  We all know that marketing comes in many shapes and sizes:  phone book advertising; jobsite placards; sponsor a hole at the fund-raiser golf tourney; newspaper advertising;  radio advertising; etc.  

In my experience, the number one marketing method for construction-related companies is also the least expensive:  Word-of-mouth referral.

Which brings to mind my favorite marketing story.  About ten years ago I happened upon a  magazine article.  Unfortunately I don’t remember the magazine nor the author, but the article’s message is forever riveted in my brain.  Here’s the gist:

A fellow owned a small remodeling company.  He had struggled for years trying to find the right mix of advertising using traditional methods.  Finally one year he got fed up with pouring all that money into advertising, which may or may not have even been working.  He knew, however, with 100% certainty, that most of his customers came to him by way of referrals from other satisfied customers.

And so he had a radical thought:  What if I stop paying for all those advertisements and instead invest that money in follow-up customer service?

His plan was to call every customer a month or so after their job was completed and ask how things were going.  Specifically, were there any problems?  Were they satisfied with the quality of his work?  How well did his personnel treat them? 

This accomplished two things: 

• It gave him feedback on his crew and workmanship.
• It gave him a chance to correct problems. 

If there was a problem, even if it may not have been his, he graciously offered to come back and fix it, free.  This fellow’s business skyrocketed.

Can you imagine?  What if a company did this for you?  And what if they actually did come back and cheerfully fix the problems – free?  If a company ever went that far above and beyond for me, I would go out of my way to tell friends and associates all about it. 

Remember the old saying:  A person rarely talks about a good job, but will complain about a bad job until their dying day.  My dad is a great example of this.  He bought a set of tires from a nationally recognized company in the 1970’s.  One tire blew out in the sidewall.  The company gave him a big run-around and would not make it right.  To this day, my dad has not gone back, and takes great pleasure in telling all his friends about that company’s shoddy products and poor service.

To summarize:  The basic fundamental of all marketing is to have customers seek you out.  This can’t happen unless:

1. They know you exist, and
2. They feel comfortable that you’re trustworthy and competent.

Traditional marketing methods are poor at accomplishing this.  Word of mouth referrals, however, work like magic.

Risk + Talent.

Together these variables are as important as anything else in the equation. But, interestingly, you don’t need large quantities of one or the other to succeed. Certainly it helps, but it’s not mandatory.

Risk.

Most successful people are risk takers. You’ve heard the expression it takes money to make money. In business that’s true. Where does startup capital come from? Since most entrepreneurs don’t begin wealthy it’s usually borrowed.

Capital is needed at every step in the growth process. To go from a startup to a small business takes cash. From small to medium, same thing, magnified. And to get big requires huge capital investment. Generally it takes more money to get to the next level than a company makes in profit. So to get there you borrow. Starry-eyed entrepreneurs often glaze over the fact that borrowed money must be paid back, with interest. What if your profitability falters? Do you have a fallback position? Borrowed money is risky.

An excellent example of someone who probably wouldn’t have made it without taking huge risk is Walt Disney. He started in animation at precisely the right time in the history of film. It was a new industry in the early 1900s and Walt was prescient enough to grasp moving pictures’ mass appeal. He was driven by the belief that animated film would become an art form in its own right, though few in that day agreed. He spent his first 20 years toiling in poverty, producing some of the best animation of the time. The problem was that everything was hand drawn –  hugely labor intensive and expensive. Good animators were a novelty, difficult to come by. And the market for cartoons was small – most theaters showed them as shorts prior to the main feature. Walt lived from paycheck to paycheck, paying off loans to qualify for new ones. When he decided to create Snow White in the ‘30’s he estimated its cost at around $1 million. Banks backed him until expenses approached $3 million. Had it not been for a hungry fledgling bank, Bank of America, willing to loan Walt enough money to finish the project, Snow White would have likely taken Disney down. If Snow White flopped, Walt would have failed under the burden of insurmountable debt. But instead Snow White became an international phenomenon, propelling Disney on to greater things.

What’s your appetite for risk? Are you willing to risk it all – your business, your home, your possessions? If yes, you enhance your chances for success. If no, it’ll be tougher to get there – but not impossible. It just takes longer. Elevating to the next level, not using someone else’s money, requires that you use your own. Meaning: 1) What profits you earn are all folded back into the venture; 2) Those profits do not become extra income for you; 3) Since those profits are likely modest, the amount you fold back will be modest too, which will limit your growth.

Talent.

Let’s say you’re conservative and don’t relish borrowed money and risk. Can you still succeed? Yes, of course. But you’d better be talented. My use of the word talent here is broad. It includes:

* Vision. Can you foresee which ventures have the potential for success? Who will be a good partner or employee? What profession you will still love 30 years from now?

* Memory capacity. Can you remember and recite facts or critical information? Do you learn from history – your own and others’ – so that you don’t repeat mistakes?

* Intelligence. Do you absorb new concepts well? Are you a problem solver? Are you just plain smart?

* Ability to perform. Do you have the physical gifts required of your job? Are you better at it than most? Is the quality of your finished product top tier?

* People skills. How well do you work with others? Can you lead?

* Integrity. Are you absolutely, 100% truthful at all times? Are your actions always honorable?

* Work ethic. Do you work long and hard, or are you lazy?  

Some of the above talents are God-given and others are choices. Successful people exploit their natural talents and strive to continually improve the others.

One thing my talent list doesn’t include is formal education. Many very successful people did not possess college degrees when they made it big: Walt Disney, Milton Hershey, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Les Schwab, Mark Twain, Howard Hughes, the list is long. Education has seemingly little to do with talent, intelligence, or success. And in fact, I believe it can be counter-productive. American colleges are very good at teaching a vocation, preparing one to enter the work force and do a job. But they’re terrible at teaching the principles of  success.

For example, I possess three engineering degrees from three separate colleges. In the nine years it took to earn those, not once did I take a business or marketing class. Nor was I encouraged to do so. Now, many years later as an entrepreneur and businessman, that fact staggers me. We all strive for success: the act of continually bettering our lot in life. That betterment has nothing to do with math or physics but everything to do with economics and business principles. Why is the path to wealth and success such a tightly-kept secret among our colleges and universities? Do they think that a bachelor degree gets you there?  A bachelor degree can get you a job. A job does not equal success.

Steve Martin, the entertainer, provides an excellent example of success via a lot of talent and not so much risk nor a college degree. As a teenager he worked at Disneyland doing magic tricks, balloon animals, and some stand up comedy. He continued with stand up as he attended junior college then pursued a philosophy degree at Long Beach State and UCLA. He never graduated but did incorporate some philosophy principles in his act. He learned to play banjo. Each skill he acquired he used in his stand up routine. After years of grinding it out in small clubs he got a few breaks (read, Luck) to write for and appear on TV shows: Sonny and Cher, Merv Griffin, and ultimately Johnny Carson. He thought he’d finally broken through but after half-dozen appearances on Carson, his career was still flatlined. He became disillusioned with TV and went on the road with his stand up act. Crisscrossing the country, he played at colleges and clubs, making enough money to live but not much more. Even though he had TV exposure, he was not a headliner – his was an opening act for more famous entertainers. He put an arbitrary time limit on himself: either make it big by age 30 or get a real job. He noticed that opening acts got virtually no press, reviews were strictly for headliners. With his self-imposed deadline looming large, and basically broke, he made a critical decision: he would only headline – no more opening acts. This boom-or-bust ultimatum was the pivotal decision that propelled him to stardom. His first headline gig in Florida earned such rave reviews in the Miami Herald that he was able to leverage them to spots in bigger venues, Saturday Night Live, and ultimately to become the biggest standup concert draw in history. Film, plays, albums, and books followed.

For 14 years Steve worked his way up the ladder, never going seriously in debt. If at any time he failed, he would not have been bankrupt, rather, he would probably have finished school and gotten a job. It was talent and persistence, in the end, that won the day.

“Then at dinner, Bill Gates Sr. posed the question to the table: What factor did people feel was the most important in getting to where they’d gotten in life? And I said, ‘Focus.’ And Bill [Gates Jr.] said the same thing.”

As an entrepreneur and business owner, many times I’ve wondered if there’s a blueprint for success. An equation, perhaps? I’m an engineer, I like equations. Focus? Can it be that simple?

Over the years I’ve taken it way beyond wondering. How, exactly, have successful people made their millions? To find out, I’ve read and studied dozens of biographies: Walt Disney, Charles Schulz, Michael Jordan, Aerosmith, Henry Ford, Willie Mays, Les Schwab, Milton Hershey, Mark Twain, Will Rogers, J. Paul Getty, Stephen King, to name a few. I read and then reread Jim Collins’ classic, GOOD TO GREAT. I devoured Covey’s SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE. I’m a student of Dale Carnegie and Napoleon Hill.

At the end of it all certain recurring truths became apparent. Here’s my take:

S=E^P(R+T) + 1000/L

Or in words: Success = Effort^Passion * (Risk + Talent) + 1000/Luck.

In equation format here’s what Gates / Buffet said:

S = F

Or in words: Success = Focus.

Which equation is more correct? Are they similar? Will either actually predict success? Since neither Bill nor Warren has their fingers on my keyboard, I’m afraid I’ll only be able to explain my equation. Which, while I may have been the first to put it in writing, isn’t even quite mine. It’s Walt’s, Charles’, Michael’s, Aerosmith’s, etc. Let’s break it down starting with the last variable, Luck.

What does 1000/Luck mean? Let’s say you exert zero or almost zero Effort. Can you still be successful? Yes, but it requires extraordinary luck. My equation says that if Effort is zero, the entire chunk of equation E^P(R+T) goes to zero. All you’re left with is Luck. But it’s not weighted the same as the Effort piece. You need a thousand parts Luck for an equivalent single part of Effort. And that thousand may well be too low, it might need to be ten thousand or a million. The point is that Luck can play a part in success but generally it doesn’t, or it’s just a tiny part. Certainly, no wise businessperson should count on it at all. If it comes, great. If not, that may be great too. Sometimes bad luck becomes good.

My dad, for example, fell from a tree when he was eight-years-old, sustaining a compound fracture of the wrist. The doctors set his cast too tightly and gangrene set in. Little Charlie had a one in one-thousand chance of living, IF the arm was amputated. Because it’s me writing this today, you know that he did live, though the last 67 years have been without a left arm. You’d probably say he was a victim of bad luck – falling from that tree and then the doctors botching his cast. Or you could say he was unbelievably lucky in that he was the one in one-thousand who would survive full-blown gangrene in 1944. The one sure thing is that he didn’t let that incident define him. In fact, because he only had one arm and would be viewed as a cripple in a blue-collar world, his dad encouraged him to break the Garrison tradition of entering the workforce directly from high school. He instead went to college and enjoyed successful teaching and real estate careers afterward, not to mention raising my three brothers and me on a 76-acre cattle ranch. I’ll tell you the lucky one, it’s me.

Here’s an example of one builder’s disproportionate share of luck.

This world-famous builder wasn’t always famous – he started modestly. At age 19 he began a home renovation company and soon developed an abhorrence for shoddy workmanship because he typically had to undo or fix other’s messes prior to starting his piece. At 38 he got a job building a straw bale home for Michael Quast, a local TV exec who produced a home repair show. During a break in construction, Holmes bent Quast’s ear for 30 minutes about shoddy construction. Quast invited him to do a pilot for a show on that topic. At first Holmes said no, too busy, but he thought about it and 3 months later shot the first show. Now at 48 Mike Holmes is an international celebrity and icon of integrity. He has starred in hundreds of TV shows. Holmes on Homes is the highest-rated show on HGTV, Canada. He’s the president of the Holmes Group: TV shows, books, Holmes Magazine, DVDs, work wear, etc. He did a 6-hr TV special with Brad Pitt, post-Katrina. He’s been on the  Ellen DeGeneres Show rebuilding a botched job that left a family in ruins.

Would Holmes be where he is today if Quast hadn’t found him and asked him to bid his straw bale home? What if Holmes hadn’t changed his mind to do the pilot? What if the show he did wasn’t a pilot but was show 34 of 76? On a scale of one to one million how lucky was Holmes? I say around one million.

But one doesn’t create an empire on luck alone. Had Quast hired you to build his straw bale home, would you have been charismatic enough to garner an invitation to host a new TV show? If yes, would you have had the acumen to spin that into something bigger? Could you have parlayed a stroke of fate into a worldwide brand?  

Many ultra-successful people trace their ascent to a single lucky break. But deeper study reveals there’s more, a lot more, to it. It’s not so much your luck, it’s what you do with it.

Are you a victim of the down economy, or a beneficiary?

Why not use the recession as a springboard for success? Whether you want to pump up your current business or branch into something new, now is the best time to get it done.

Please join me, Tim Garrison, as I share a wealth of information I’ve learned as:

* An author of four books and 85 articles published in national magazines.

* The owner of ConstructionCalc, Inc., a software company with sales in 50 states and 11 countries worldwide.

* A professional speaker, seminar instructor, and nationally-recognized expert.

* A licensed engineer with associate, bachelor, and master degrees.

Specifically I’ll discuss:

* Why now is the best time to revvv your business.

* What Milton Hershey, Walt Disney, Michael Jordan, Steve Martin, and many other ultra-successful people have in common.

* Using your internal compass to set your path and defeat indecision.

* The huge difference between A+ and A-.

* The “Gap” and why it’s a business killer.

* How to build trust – the most important element of marketing.

* Mass marketing myths and truths.

* Guerrilla marketing methods and examples.

* How to achieve the holy grail of business – ecstatic customers.

* The fourth truth – luck – and how to bend it your way.

* The SERT principle: Success = Effort * (Risk + Talent)

* Specific ideas for knockoff businesses. 

Testimonials:

“Your seminar gave us the push we needed to implement ideas instead of just talking about them. This is a great seminar for someone who is new in business as well as those of us who have been in business all of our productive lives.”
MDocken

“Fun –  and helpful information to use in our business. Thanks again.”
Solarguy

“Your credentials seem very good. But the presentation was even better. Hope to put it to use soon. Thanks.”
Dolanklan

“Just went to this [class.] Now is a good time to get a little fire under your saddle!”
Kym Kelly

Click on the following link for the presentation. IceCreamFromSawdust1-10-11

If you’d like me to bring this seminar to your venue, please contact me.

Rule number 1 in all business is you survive only if you sell things. Goods or services, it doesn’t matter; money only flows in when the register goes cha-ching. I found out a long time ago that selling is impossible without marketing. In the old days it was easy, you paid for ads. Nowadays you’d better be computer and internet savvy or you’re sunk. Right?

If you believe marketing experts, that’s right. My experience, however, bears a different conclusion.

Fearful that I might miss a sales opportunity, I’ve thrown myself into internet marketing with a zeal reminiscent of a dog pack at a kill. I built a website. Actually, I’m on my fourth or fifth (I’ve lost count), and actually I didn’t build them, I paid others to. The words “paid others” is a wretched recurring theme in this whole worldwide web business.

When blogs came into vogue I shot onto that bandwagon and got myself one. Wasn’t sure why. Heck, I wasn’t even sure what a blog was, but the experts shouted that I needed one, so by-golly, I paid others to set mine up.

Right after that people started inviting me to join them at LinkedIn. And Facebook. And Twitter. And MerchantCircle. Marketing experts howled that I must join! Fearing the next great gold rush might pass me by, I flailed about setting up accounts and accepting invitations. A few of the people who invited me I actually knew.

I could go on, there’s more. Especially the “paid others” parts. But what’s interesting is that sales of my software and books have been absolutely immune to all of these gyrations. I’ve tracked sales through each Smoking Hot Internet Marketing Revelation and can report with certainty that they don’t work worth a hoot. At least not for me.

I even tried Pay-Per-Click (PPC) through Google, Yahoo, and MSN (now Bing). If you’re unfamiliar, that’s where a potential customer goes to one of those search engines and types in a search phrase, such as “structural software”. If I’ve bid high enough for that search term, my company’s products will come up either in the right column or at the top of the list. This is a good idea in concept, but in reality it’s fraught with financial peril. First, most people on the internet are looking for freebies. My products cost money. Not a lot, but they’re not free. PPC could care less. Every click is charged to my account regardless of whether the person buys or bails. Pretty much they all bail. Another problem with PPC is that the best search terms cost a lot. For example, a top position for “structural software” on Google is going for $4.53 per click. That might not seem like much until you multiply out several hundred searches a day times seven days a week times four weeks a month…

To summarize my PPC experience, I spent thousands for a blip on a sales graph so small most would confuse it for a scab. After four months, I bailed.

So now what? Not only have I thrown a couple vacation’s worth of dough into the ditch that is the internet, I’ve consumed a couple lifetimes learning and trying to make it work.

The secret may lie in the word, “learning”. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

* People buy things when they need them. Trying to convince someone she needs your product when she really doesn’t is hard. Very hard.

* There are ways to get people to buy your product even when they don’t exactly need it. But such means are not available to normal humans. For example:

            o- Get a celebrity endorsement. I tried this and found that celebrities don’t want to talk to you unless: A) You’re a celebrity. In which case you wouldn’t need another one. B) You guarantee the celebrity A LOT of money for sales that have not yet occurred. I’ve never been able to convince even a non-celebrity that I could deliver on such a promise.

            o- Spend so much money advertising that you create need. People don’t want to be left out of the latest fashion. So if your message reaches enough people enough times, they’ll figure they’re missing out and buy. Remember the Chia Pet, Rubik’s Cube, and more recently, the Snuggie? My wife asks me why I couldn’t have thought of those brilliant gimmicks. Maybe I could have, but the problem is I don’t possess enough money to force-feed them to the masses.

* People buy from companies they trust. They’ll even pay top dollar if they know the company is truly trustworthy and committed to service.

* If you’re a small company with a limited advertising budget, the most you can hope for using internet marketing is to get your brand out there, and to build trust. When a customer is ready to purchase, if you’ve done those things, your chances of a sale are better than those of a competitor who hasn’t.

* There are many companies eager to harvest your marketing dollars. Save your money. The best internet advertising, in my battle-scarred opinion, is absolutely free. It’s call a forum.

A forum is a little like a blog except it doesn’t restrict its benefits to only the person hosting it. Blogs and Twitter are great if you’re a celebrity because people, for some baffling reason, care what celebrities say and will visit their site. Not many people care what you or I think, let alone work up the gumption to post a comment about it. With a forum, you can be a nobody and still reach many, many people.

I recently joined a construction-related forum and started posting. Immediately I was building relationships and earning a readership. I got more feedback and notoriety from a single forum post than I have from a year’s worth of blogging. Why? Because it wasn’t just me spouting one-way rhetoric. Everyone in the forum community could either agree or disagree, and doing so is really easy. Talk about awesome exchange of ideas! Now that’s what the internet should be all about.

I liked that forum so much I set one up myself (okay, paid others) at ConstructionCalc.com. So from now on that’s where I’ll live, virtually. And I’d love you to join me. It’s 100% free, no pressure to buy anything, and your email address won’t be pedaled to anyone.

My goal is to create the place where builders, architects, engineers, and code officials gather to toss around tough construction issues. You can check it out here: http://www.constructioncalc.com/blog/userforum/. I strongly subscribe to the notion that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, so this forum also contains “humor, bragging rights, and other off-topic” topics.

For those of you who’ve somehow missed out on the internet social media marketing hoax, good for you. If you’ve been worrying that the Igoldrush Express is racing by and you missed the train, don’t worry, you haven’t. In fact, you’re probably dollars and time ahead.

I bet there’s at least one thing in this article about which you have an opinion. Please share. This article will be posted under the “Business and General” theme at http://www.constructioncalc.com/blog/userforum/.

Before I recount coach Wolgamott’s speech, I need to tell you that I was especially struck by the applicability of the principles therein to any business. Brad was addressing a bunch of deflated 16U boys but could have just as easily been talking to a group of dinged up businessmen emerging from the recession. Here is what he said, as nearly as I can recollect.

“Boys, now that we’ve got a few games under our belts you can see that baseball here in Florida is a lot different than in Washington. In Washington, you guys are all studs. You’re used to winning, playing well, dominating. Here, you’re just average, if that.

“There’s not much we can do to change things this year – not enough time. But most of you will be back next year.  So you’ve got a choice. Will you be mediocre again? Or will you come back to win? The choice is yours. If you choose to win, you need to do two things.

“First, you need to get a whole lot smarter about the game of baseball. Do you realize that we’re averaging nine errors per game? I’m not talking about dropped balls or wild throws or physical errors, I’m talking mental errors. Dumb base running, missing signs, poor throwing decisions, bad pitch selection – things like that. Most of those errors costs us an extra base here or an out there. No big deal, right? Wrong. Add them all up and we’re giving away a couple or few runs per game. We’ve only lost by two or three runs in three of our four losses. You do the math.

“Baseball is an incredibly complex game. People think you take a ball, bat, and mitt and start playing. It ain’t that way, fellas. Listen to professional ballplayers and every one of them will tell you they’re learning new things nearly every day. Guys who’ve been playing for twenty, thirty years. Complex? Unimaginably so.

“So how do you get smarter? Simple – you study. Bring a notepad to games and write down every error made. When you watch other games, take notes. When you listen to professional announcers, pay attention to the details. Ask questions. Write down answers. Read books and magazine articles. Make yourself not just a student of the game but a master of the game. Look here at my notebook. How many of you have taken even one note? I’ve got six pages. I’m just an assistant coach on this thrown-together team and I’ve already taken six pages of notes. I can tell you every error we’ve made, both physically and mentally. Can you? You want to get better? Learn from yours and other people’s mistakes. If you don’t write them down you will repeat them, I guarantee it.

“The second thing you need to do is keep the following thought in your mind constantly over the next year: ‘If I want to advance to the highest level, I’ve got to stand out.’

“So simple, so elegant, yet so powerful. How many of you feel like you’ve stood out here in Florida? Like you were something really special? None? I agree, none of you. But you saw some players who did stand out, didn’t you? Do you think it’s an accident for them? That they’re just so naturally gifted they can show up here with the best in the nation and be the best of the best? Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. Actually, it’s fortunate that it doesn’t because that means regular guys like you, if you work hard, have a shot at being a top dog.

“If you want to stand out next year, will you do the same workouts as everyone else? When everyone else is pushing weights for 45 minutes will you do 45 too? Or will you do 75? When everyone else shows up to practice at exactly the appointed time will you scuttle in on the minute? Or will you be 45 minutes early; get in some extra conditioning? During drills, will you go through the motions like a sheep in the herd or will you bust your butt on every rep? Will you stand out even at practice? Will you leave at straight up 5:00 or will you stay late, taking more grounders and cuts? Will you learn things and not write them down – like everyone else? Or will you become a master of this incredibly complex game?

“There are a couple professional athletes that stand out in my mind: Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. I’ve studied them both and can tell you that, yes, they’re gifted. But more important, they work harder than everyone else.  No one matches their work ethic, no one. And, no one is smarter about their game. They reached the pinnacle of their sport because they mastered even the smallest nuances and they worked the hardest.

“So, fellas, you have a choice. Will you come back here next year and be another face in the crowd; or will you be one of the few who stands out?”