There is no such thing

Let me start off this post with a quote from one of my favorite Authors, Speakers, Radio Personalities, Pastors: Adrian Rogers.

Whenever somebody receives something without working for it, somebody else has to work for it without receiving.  The worst thing that can happen to a nation is for half of the people to get the idea they don’t have to work because somebody else will work for them, and the other half to get the idea that it does no good to work because they don’t get to enjoy the fruit of their labor. (Adrian Rogers, Ten Secrets for a Successful Family: A Perfect 10 for Homes that Win.  Crossway Books, 1998, p. 138).

He also said:

You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

That just says it so clear. Like it or not (And there is something wrong with you if you don;t like it) we deserve the proceeds of the work we do, and the want of the work we fail to do.  Marketing, Selling, Product development, whatever, we are rewarded not only on the hard work we put in, but how smart we put that work in.

The truth is you can work very hard on something that nobody wants, and as long as you know that fact, you are essentially working a hobby.  But if you work hard on something nobody wants and you don’t know it, you are not working smart, and you will not receive rewards for that either.

So hard work, done smartly, with the proper attitude will produce results.  Here is the problem… once you have achieved those results we have governments that want to take them away from you and I.  I would submit that in this case, you need to plan for that – that is part of working smart.

The problem is that the government, and more specifically the power brokers within it, would very much like to give what you have created through the sweat of your brow and the hard thinking and trials you have done, to those who produce nothing (except for more votes to the aforementioned power-brokers).  Allowing them to do so is not smart, so you are left with a few options.  The smart entrepreneur considers this and uses it to his advantage.

Governments are notoriously slow – so being able to switch your business model quickly before they can regulate it or take it over is a plus.  Case in point: Recently in North Carolina, Video Poker gambling was outlawed, so those who owned these systems changed the game to a “Sweepstakes” game and sold “shares of usage time” on the game.  They continued on in business.  Now the government is coming after that, so they will have to change again.

In the same way other entrepreneurs will have to change.  The ridiculous (and wholly unconstitutional) “Health Care Power Grab Bill” seeks to tax Tanning Salons.  What these savvy businessmen and women need to do is to change the model, twist the rules, and fight the system.

The goal is simple – keep the thieving and frankly evil government out of our pockets, and keep our wealth which we earned to ourselves.  Ultimately we will have to fight and overcome the government, and that will take a lot of money, so it is imperative that we keep what we have and what we earn.

By peaceful and legal means if possible, by any means necessary.

David T. McKee

Move it too fast in one direction, and it "bounces"...

Within the realm of political science there is a concept called “The Overton Widow” – which has been popularized by radio and television talk show host “Glenn Beck” who has recently released a fiction book based on the concept.

The idea is this: That there is a window of “acceptable” political opinions that can be voiced with varying degrees of acceptance. anything outside the window is viewed as “not acceptable” or “radical”. The ambitions of politicians over the long haul is to shape public opinion by “moving” or “expanding/contracting” this window of acceptable ideas.

After thinking about this a bit, it occurs to me that this concept applies to all areas of collaborative discourse where there are more than one person (and perhaps in a schizo way, it can even apply to a single individual). Smaller groups with a more cohesive overall plans (Say a team of engineers) will have a large window that will encompass most of the possible spectrum of ideas within the group, without much need for moving or shaping the window. Larger groups, or groups that employ more “Brain Storming” and creative types would have a larger spectrum and smaller, more variable windows of opinion.

But if you look at our current political climate, you will see something else – what I like to call “The Overton Bounce”. This is the case where someone attempted to move the window (The Democratic party in the last presidential election) towards a more radical, socialistic idea of government. When that did not work out so well, the window bounced like the ball in the old-fashioned pong games and started moving quickly towards the political “right” and toward “more freedom” and less desire to trust politicians of any party.

(And I might add, that is a good thing)

So in your collaborative campaigns for Marketing your products, do you take stock of the Overton window of public opinion about what your product offers? Do you even know what people think about your service in general, that, if you shifted that window just a little, could reap you great benifits?

Something to think about.

David T. McKee

• The Fear of Failure…is Failure.
• Failure is not an option…it is a necessity.
• Failure is…the staircase to Success.

If your gonna do it...you might as well do it epic!

We hear many things that describe what success is, what it should be, how we should handle it when it comes, how to pursue it, etc.  One of the few things we hear about, and seem to always avoids when possible is the topic of Failure…especially when it is our own failure.  So, to start off with three bullet points that proclaim that failure is necessary may seem a bit odd and off-putting at first.

The fact is, failure is a necessity towards the achievement of success.  As the third bullet point states, the staircase to success is made of failure – and that makes sense if you think about it.  Success is the final destination for our plans or goals – (you do have plans and goals don’t you?).   The fact is, to actually get to the success we want, we must face that fact that along the way we will have some failure – that is, things will not go the way we hoped, ideas will not pan out, people will disappoint, or…maybe we will crash our dirt-bike.  The fact is, things are going to go wrong in varying degrees.  This “staircase to Success” does  not have uniform sized steps (don’t tell OSHA!), the failures that make up these steps vary from little almost unnoticeable little bumps, to eight foot wall-sized giants that you have to scale.

The fact is, these steps of failure are only steps as long as you are willing to do two things:

1.) Get back up and dust yourself off.

2.) Learn from the failure and use that knowledge to step up.

Remember, success is little more than getting up one more time then you fall down…and you will fall down.  As Soichiro Honda (founder of Honda Corporation) said – “Success is 99% failure”.

How true that is.

So how do we get into the proper frame of mind to build success on our failures and see those failures as lessons and/or directions that lead us to success?

One word: Humility.

Let me tell you an unflattering story about myself that demonstrates this: The other day a man selling magazines came to the door of my house – a door which my wife had placed a “Happy Easter” sign on.  Well, I am not too keen on door to door salesmen.  After an initial pleasant greeting by the man, I curtly asked if he was “selling something” and that I was not interested.  He kept smiling, said “God Bless!”, waved and went on his way.  I went back into my house smugly thinking that “I told him!”

What was blatantly obvious to everyone but me, however, was that I had been rude and frankly disrespectful to a man who was just trying to make a living in a very difficult job in a very bad economy.  My wife was quick to point this out (I thank God for her!) – I quickly realized just how awful I had failed in a relationship with another human being. I had missed an opportunity to speak life into another persons day.

Some think that avoiding failure is paramount; so much so that it is to be avoided at all costs. This is actually a form of destructive pride.  Humility is understanding that we are not perfect (not even close), that we have things to learn, we need to grow, that we have weaknesses and missing parts, and most importantly we are nearly blind most of the time.  That being the case, our failures are a teacher that helps us to see better, and to see our own areas of need.

What should my next response be after realizing how I had failed (and had failed to even notice it without my wife’s help)? Well, I could sit and stew about it, try to rationalize it, or I could learn from it and remember the next time I have to answer the door for a salesman  not forget to put myself in the place of the other person before I speak or act.

The bigger lesson here is: Humility in our failure allows us to Learn from it, and Grow big enough to take the next step.

Reality is only too willing to leave us at the step we are at – and allow us to keep falling until we are ready to grow a bit more.

Failure.  Embrace it as a teacher and the map to all of your success.

-DTM

Run Forrest, Run!

And with that we see a poignant story about a unique man who seemingly walks into fame and fortune without even noticing. This man, Forrest Gump, from his name to his demeanor seems ridiculous, and retarded. But, as his momma told him…Stupid is, as stupid does.

I could not help but notice deep truths that were buried in this gem of a movie/novel that has been part of some serious political discussions and even controversy. What I want to focus on is how a simple man of simple truths can indeed walk through life and push the problems it brings with it aside almost as if those problems were nothing more than smoke.

The first truth that Forrest utters we have already quoted: “Stupid is as Stupid does…” The fact that Forrest is a bit slow is completely balanced by the fact that he believes in black and white truth. Stupid people are those who do stupid things – and it is ironic that it is Jenny he says this too first, as she epitomizes stupidity throughout the movie with every act she takes, except for the one of being Forrest’s friend, and at the end of the movie, finally his love.

The other thing that Forrest does is that he never accepts failure, in fact he is incapable of even imagining what failure is. He simply does whatever he does. Once he has decided on a course, he simply does it, obstacles are nothing more that a challenge that has to be met, without any consideration of being stopped by them. In other words, do…or do not. Anything else is just you standing in the way.

There are many other things in this story that I could point to, but these two are the real gems that if we put into practice in our own lives, will lead to success in our endeavors:

1.)Don’t do stupid things.
2.)Whatever you have decided to do, do.

Ability varies, education is not wisdom, and unemployed geniuses can be found on every street corner. The truth is that those who succeed have decided that they will succeed long before they even set their hand to their next project.

Success is as Success does.

David T. McKee

(Looking for Part I? Here you go: The Top 3 SEO Tips and Tricks)

Links! Links! Links! I say!

The Chains that Bind...

That is what you hear, and it is correct for the most part – at least it is partially true.  But before you go off to every social site on the planet to build back-link love, you might want to concentrate on the most important part…

Content.

If your content sucks (and there are so many ways that it can suck) your links are worthless.  Yes, I know someone is shouting that there are tons of horrible sites that are currently getting good SERPS or even have a high PR – but don’t count on that happening for too much longer now that Google has started using their new Caffeine algorithms. The other search engines are sure to follow suit.  Content is King, and it will remain king.

That being said, you still do need to know how to build good back links.  So how do you do this?

Well, lets look closer at what a link actually is – it represents on its most basic level a relationship.  It is a relationship between one site and another – and it should represent a relationship that brings value, hopefully to both sites.

And that in a nutshell, what Google and all the other search engines are trying to tell you with the search results you gather.  Their whole reason for creating ever more complex algorithms is to bring the searcher just such results. For much of the time it has been marketers intention to game that system (not all marketers, but many).

So, here is my 2 cents on how to gain good SEO, and before I go on, let me challenge you.  Go to Google and type in “The Top 3 Copywriting” – and you will see that I hold both the number 1 and number 2 position for that key-phrase (as of the writing of this post Jan 28th).  I do know a bit about what I am talking about.  (By the way I currently have the number 3 position for “The Top 3 SEO” -not too bad eh?).

Other than good content, highly targeted keywords and key-phrases are a necessity.  Make sure they are in your content.  If your domain name has your keywords all the better (actually that is a real good help when starting out, but gets less important as you add content and good links).

Back-links from high PR sites: This goes without saying, but if you can get back-links from highly rated sites such as high traffic forums, blogs, and social networks, that is going to bring a nice bit of PR juice to your site.  You can also use reciprocal sites, however the juice goes both ways there and you build up more slowly (which is not necessarily a bad thing).

Traffic.  Google monitors the traffic to your site, and the more you have the higher your rating – yes, I know, that is a bit of a catch-22, I need ratings to get traffic, and I need traffic to get ratings! What to do!

Go back to the basics, that’s what.  Submit your site to every search engine including some of the specialty search sites (check out Search Engine Watch for lists of these at: searchenginewatch.com).

But you simply cannot beat real relationship links.  Just like business in the real world where you network with real people, on the net is no different. Behind every one of those great sites are great people – get to know them, perhaps by posting good commentary on their blogs, and eventually becoming a guest contributor.  Guess what, that kind of link is very powerful!

You can, of course, go the latest fad – massive spider-webs of low value links from dozens of social web-sites, “Link-Wheels”, etc.  That stuff can bring some immediate impact, but search engines are getting wise to these synthetic methods and are even penalizing and de-indexing sites in some cases because of it.

The truth is, if your site has real value – you will have real valuable visitors.  In the end, traffic is not as important as paying customers, and a lower volume but steady stream of paying customers is way more valuable than a massive stream of traffic that buys nothing.  And that is true any day.

-David T. McKee