I recently was asked to be a guest speaker at a very good friend’s real estate coaching group. The topic of interest was multi tasking and staying organized when you have multiple things going on. An example is having a full time job, working your real estate business, handing family, kids events, and keeping it all straight. Sounds like a lot to do, but actually pretty easy when you have 3 main things. In my opinion you need the following:
1) Desire to succeed & Passion for what you do
2) Keep your head in the game - Goal setting, and remembering your “Why”
3) Jott.com - using technology to help you (after the age of 30 things arent easy to remember)
I find it really simple. My main tool is Jott. Jott is a service that transcribes your voice notes into text and organizes them into categories that you create. You can also create calendar events using your voice, or create reminders from your Outlook email. All of your “jotts” are kept securely in one location that you can access from your desktop, your iPhone (very cool), or the web. The categories set Jott apart from other services. A short video is below from Jott on what exactly it is. I love it! It keeps me sane, and no I dont use Jott to remind me of my wedding anniversary! Good luck.
I love Pacino in this movie. Recently I have been hearing from friends and colleagues, all excuses. Most are being eaten up by the “economy”, BS. Others are being controlled, yet own their own business. Let me tell you people, what we get from our day, from our business, from our lives, our families is in our own control…PERIOD! Stop being a puppet and look around you. Inch by inch, small changes, will make a huge difference for you.
Yesterday a friend of mine gave me a flare pin that reads “I refuse to participate in this sluggish economy”. I prefer the tag line “I don’t do recessions!”. Things have been going very well these past couple of weeks, thus have not had the luxury of posting many blog posts. But the one thing that I am finding is that people are still spending money, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Just because the news tell us that plants are closing down, people are losing their houses, blah blah blah, doesn’t mean that you or your wife is going to go learn how to cook. Am I right? I mean, you’re not that desperate, so you just go somewhere that will save you a buck or two and done, you feel good about yourself.
Now for those of you that just love to cook, I came across a decent website that has various recipe’s. The link that am posting below is the one that has a few Greek ones. It caught my eye because the recipes remind me of how my mom used to cook them, hard core Greek dishes.
Here’s a freebie to all my restaurant customers. Not sure if you want to do this in your restaurant, but fun to do at home. More fun stuff at Tim Ferriss’s. Enjoy!
A week doesn’t go by that I don’t get asked to “deal” on my prices for our advertising programs. If you can relate to this, you will laugh at this video…
Congratulations, you landed your first 14-top birthday dinner party! Nice, now its time to start your in house marketing list. Did you get all of their info? What did you do for retention?
This is exactly what my wife, Bessie, asked a prospective client last night as we sat around over a drink (and watched the Celtics take the Bulls). His response was typical, “I knew I forgot something, I was so caught up in taking care of them I didnt have time to think about our next strategic retention move…”. He did take care of them, gave the entire 16 people (two more came) a shot as soon as they came in, cut their birthday cake and had everyone laughing. They definitely had fun and said they would do it again.
Now for the marketing stuff. What I would have done is given them the opportunity to give us their information to “win stuff” , hear about the restaurant promo’s, but more importantly become loyal customers. Getting them into the restaurant is the hardest part, but easy for us, as we already have a system for that (http://newcustomersforyou.com). Once they are in your restaurant its time to think about equity in your business, not only one time cashflow. Now for the paradigm shift: Return on investment becomes Return on relationship (see my previous post on return on relationship).
You want to capture as much info as you can, but at least the following: their birthday (even though we already know it), their wedding anniversary, their kids birthdays, email, and mobile phone (for text message marketing http://www.connectivemobile.com/). There are many companies out there that can help with this type of retention based info capture. Its the way to go if you want to invest in your clients and secure your return business. Make it personal, not just another TGI Fridays.
Today I had the pleasure of meeting Kimberly Small, Co-Founder of Connective Mobile http://www.connectivemobile.com/. Kim has brought a whole new meaning to the term “Mobile Marketing”. This is a very cool idea and is actually giving me ideas on how to co-market our two products. How cool would it be to receive a text message from your favorite restaurant sharing discounts or happy hour specials, or even a thank you for dining with them.
This is permission based, opt-in, text message marketing. We all have pda phones these days (if you dont, gotta get on the bus!). I find that texting is a quick way to communicate. One of the coolest ideas I have heard of is the “Pro-Lead Suite” for real estate agents. Imagine sitting in front of a house that you want to get information on and you text a code to the 5 digit number on the sign. You then get an immediate response back with the house info in it, just like a realtor flier, very cool! Another great app that is being developed now is appointment reminders. You would get a text reminding you of your salon appointment, dentist appointement, etc. That is useful, atleast in my busy life. How would you use this in your business? Send me an email at nick@newcustomersforyou.com
Return on Relationship is a spin off from return on investment or ROI. When I heard this term being used this morning it just made sense. How many relationships are you nurturing today to help your business tomorrow? Some people are watching the sky falling (with this small economic glitch going on) while others are looking for opportunities. This is not the time to sit back and watch business pass you by, its time to work with your closest relationships and make things happen. Its time to join groups like http://pickylist.com/ or http://twitter.com and develop relationships that everyone can benefit from. A couple others that have worked for me recently are BNI and Rainmakers, http://www.bni-indiana.com/ and http://www.gorainmakers.com/rainmakers/ respectively. So its time to network like its going out of syle, grab the bull by its horns, and stop making excuses that the economy is failing us. I know groups that network together as we speak and have over $1.2 million in referral sales from January till now, amongst 30 people!
That my friend is not economy driven, it is relationship driven.
Today I had the privilege of meeting one of the founders of http://pickylist.com/ . Very cool guy, Mark Anderson from Fishers Indiana. Mark has a very cool story and has a very cool product that will explode in the near future. A site that allows businesses to advertise, individuals to list items for sale, social “twitters” to post just like twitter but local to a focused market, and lots more. The SEO on this site is awesome. The ability of getting information out to google and allow it to search for it yielding a high ranking is one more bonus these guys have already thought through. I like pickylist because it gives you a local feel, where my message will go to people listening in my backyard rather than around the world. Dont get me wrong I love the fact that my friends can feel my tweets across the world, but there is a huge business value and networking value in having a local targeted audience. Dont we all want an audience that can run into us from time to time at Starbucks down the street? Mark was kind enough to let me in on some secrets to his success, and we compared notes. He seemed very anxious to take this vehicle nationwide, but is going to perfect the model locally first. I think that based on what he has this will be big soon. Good luck Mark!
Steve Jobs spoke of “connecting the dots”, at his commencement speech to the graduating class of Stanford University in June 2005. This story has touched me in a way that has made me realize how our experiences have molded us and taken us to where we are today. This is a touching story, a must read…one of my top 3 speeches ever!Here it is…
Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call Read the rest
