There are a couple of books that have really changed my thinking recently about the future of business.  One is “Meatball Sundae” by Seth Godin.  I’m doing a Learning Circle on this over at the First Class Lounge Forum on TaxLoopholes.com.   There were literally hundreds of walk-away ah-ha’s that I had from this book. A couple relate specifically to the B-I project.  

#1:  Businesses spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to reach consumers who don’t want to hear from them.  The old direct mail campaigns are more like “warm body” campaigns.  There is nothing directed about them at all.  The secret to success is trying to trick your prospect into thinking you aren’t junk.   Instead, build a business based on people who WANT to talk to you.   This is one of those blinding flashes of the obvious to me.  Most busy professionals and business owners put multiple screening in place and don’t ever give out their personal numbers.  Hey, I”m one of those guys too! The first “chink” in that was when I heard Bill Shopoff (founder of the HUGE Shopoff REIT) give out his personal office number and extension and his private email address.  Huh?  This guy is huge!  He made $85 mill over the past 3 years (that’s net profit, guys) and he gives out his personal contact info. Then

Seth Godin in his book said that until Forbes “outed” Bill Gates, he did the same thing.  BillG@Microsoft.com got you a direct connection to Bill.   These are the people who WANT to talk to you, WANT to become your clients and most questions, complaints, inquiries, never even get a response from the average company.  Yet, these companies will spend tons of money trying to get the attention of brand new people that they will eventually ignore as well.

You’ll start seeing my email address on a lot of things.  I’ll block out the spam and I’ll block out the threats (yes, I’ve even had a stalker), but otherwise, let me know if you have something you want to hear about or learn about.  I’m not going to do private consultation for free, but I will tell you how you can get answers to questions easily and how you can have a private consultation.    Oh, by the way, my email address is Diane@TaxLoopholes.com.  (It wasn’t even that hard to figure out.  I probably wasn’t fooling anyone.)

#2 Ah-ha!  We’re used to see the traditional bell curve graph.  It’s the graph that looks like a hill.  When it comes to sales, it means that we sell more of the middle.  But that’s not true anymore.  In fact, I’ve noticed a trend at TaxLoopholes that I just realized was actually because of this change.  Now the hill looks like a valley.  People buy cheap and they buy expensive.  Nobody wants middle-class mediocrity anymore.   That makes me rethink my model on a lot of things.  

Tomorrow I’m going to talk about another book that hit me upside the head.