Anthony G Adams - Blog

Can you bite-size your business?


What I mean is, can you give out a tiny fraction of your product/service for free? If you sell M&Ms, you've won. Literally. 

If you run a hedge fund or sell lawnmowers, it's a little trickier, but it's worth considering and re-structuring your business around.

I'm not suggesting rampant, unfocused sample handouts. Those don't work too well, especially if you are a small business. I've tried it. We handed out 500 vials of THC at a St. Patrick's Day parade as part of our unofficial product launch and saw exactly $0 in return.

But get a bite-sized amount of your company in front of the right people; a cutting edge distribution company, an influential blogger, and things can happen.

This doesn't just apply to a physical good. You can put out a free eBook or write a blog and suddenly people see you as an expert in a particular field. If you do graphic design, send a prospective client a tiny sample for free to use however they want. If you know about search engine optimization, suggest a minor, but important, change to a potential customer.


They WILL be back for more. And it's honest work.

Fact: It's HARD to get listed in Wikipedia. So after a year-long battle with their evil content police, this finally exists, and I'm very proud it does:

THC-The Hangover Cure in Wikipedia

Which leads me to another point. I've run into countless Gen-Y social media gurus/ninjas/rockstars/whatever the hip buzzword is these days making vague claims about their success online. When pressed to explain exactly how they make money, they can't point to anything verifiable like this. They revert back to being "Rockstars at Tweeting" or "The Young Successful 20-something World Traveling Cubicle Escaping Ninja." 


Great.

If this is true, if you are making money online, show us. It shouldn't be hard. Show us third party listing from VERIFIABLE sites like Wikipedia. I'm not saying I'm rich, far from it, but people buy my product. My company has cash flow. And it has nothing to do with the quality of my tweets. Or my tweet-to-follower ratio. So if you are 21 and you've made six figures online, that's INCREDIBLE. Now prove it. 


It just doesn't help when your video blogs are being filmed from what appears to be the guest bedroom at your parent's house....

I use Elance.com to find and help companies in need of search engine optimization. If you have any sort of computer skill, it's worth checking out, whether it's graphic design, copy-writing, Excel creation, iPhone App creation, local business seo, whatever. In theory, you can work from anywhere in the world with nothing more than a laptop and internet connection. Incredible.


What I don't get is the following request, which I see way too often, from potential clients:

"We are a (fill in the blank) company in Cleveland looking to place naturally in Google for (highly competitive and thus highly profitable search term, like "Cleveland lawyer"). We expect results in ten business days. Our budget is $300."

The ability to rank well for the term central to you business, in this case, lawyer, is only worth $300? If I had a local business, like a plumber, my first order of business would be to get my site showing up naturally for key terms. If you want it done right, I can tell you from experience, it's going to cost more than $300 and take more than ten days to see results. No legit local business SEO firm would take on such a project.

Or you can go the cheap route, hire some faceless company in India and let them work their black-hat SEO magic and maybe get you some quick results. At least until Google, who is much smarter than they, or you, or I, figures out this erosion in quality search results, which is pretty central to Google's ridiculous success last I checked, and banishes your site for being shady. 


Back to the drawing board.


Invest some money in SEO. It's literally the best investment any local business can make. But you get what you pay for and it's too important to half-ass it on the cheap.

And as a side note, anyone who guarantees you results in under a month is being dishonest. That's not to say it won't happen, but allot a month before you plan on seeing changes, just to be safe.

Recent interview I did with Idea Mensch:


http://ideamensch.com/anthony-adams/

They aren't mutually exclusive.

First, strive to be, uh, first. 

Or, I suppose:

First. Strive to be first. 


If you are going into a venture with the intention of being your competition's kryptonite, you've already lost simply by limiting yourself. Look at Apple. The iPhone sparked a wave of 'iPhone Killers' according to competing marketing departments. And none of it sticks. Every new touch phone just wants to be an iPhone.


There is nothing that Apple knew how to do that Nokia, Motorola, etc. didn't. They took cell phones to a place they had never been before instead of making just another cell phone. They did it first and created the category. They decided against making an average phone for average people and created something that a lot of people still don't understand, but those that 'got it' stood in line over night to get their hands on one. That's incredible. Hence the outpouring of news coverage/free advertising.


I'm very down on the concept of 'selling' as a result. Your product is your sales force.

It's a shame that Terry Carter from How I Changed Careers and I don't live in the same city. 

People like him are hard to find and I could spend hours picking his brain.

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Terry for his blog and we had a nice phone interview. It was one of those rare meetings where, despite having never the person on the other end of the phone, I felt like we had known each other for years and were totally on the same page. This doesn't happen often enough and it's refreshing to talk to a like-minded entrepreneur.

What I appreciate most about Terry, and I try to do the same as much as possible, is that he didn't view my age as a detriment. He didn't talk down to me and he didn't drop my interview when he found out I was in my mid-twenties and not "experienced enough". This drove me crazy at my last job and I still encounter it all the time.  I try to do the same with people like Josh Goler and it's nice to be treated as an equal.

This is far too rare these days. If you work with recent college grads, get their opinion on Twitter. Have them put together a presentation on how they think your company can use it to improve business. Believe it or not, they have skills you don't. Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it's dumb.


Even better, talk to your 12 year old cousin about how he uses Ustream. You might learn something.

Very proud to see this shout out from Jim Cramer's Mainstreet:

http://www.mainstreet.com/slideshow/lifestyle/food-drink/weird-cures-bad-hangovers


and an interview with How I Changed Careers:

http://howichangedcareers.com/2010/03/22/i-created-thc-the-hangover-cure/

If you are about to graduate college, this is for you. One of my biggest frustrations coming out of school was the lack of available literature on exactly what the working world did from 9 to 5, so Ill try my best to shed some light on it. From personal experience:

First, your degree is nothing more than a certificate of attendance. Yes, even an MBA. It simply says you were capable of waking up on time for four years instead of sleeping in when the weather sucked. Having a 'business' degree does not entitle you to act like Ari Gold. I promise you, you haven't learned anything. In fact, at the rate things are changing, you probably did yourself a disservice getting that MBA instead of entering the real world or starting your own thing on the side. It's all outdated.

Try to work for a small company that gives you some sort of control and the ability to make mistakes. Direct interaction with upper management/the owner is a plus. The danger in working for a hulking leviathan (any company on the Fortune 500) is that you will inevitably be handled with kids gloves, not learn anything, and think this existence is normal. You won't be allowed to make mistakes or have any say in anything. It's dangerous to their bottom line. This does NOT equal experience. It's glorified day care with a side of brainwashing thrown in.

Speaking of day care, my last job had a 'training' class for recent college grads. I was lucky to have prior experience and didn't have to take it. Wearing a suit does not make you important. Wearing a pink tie does not make you Trump Junior. Seriously, this is not where you want to be, I'd take the small company over the big one any day and I've worked at both. 


As a real world example, I came from a small company to a big one and was a top performer immediately, simply because so much less was expected of me, and then I got lazy. The people I worked with at the large company would be eaten alive by people at the small company, I have no doubt.

You won't do much. So don't act important. 


Be humble. 

Career fairs are not fair. If recruiters are seeking you out, how good can the job really be?

Take on a mentor. And when I say mentor, don't hope someone assigns you one. Find someone who strikes you as interesting and ask to learn from them. If they say no, they are probably bitter/overly self-important and not worth your time anyway. I've always loved telling people everything I know because it forces me to learn more to stay ahead of the curve. The good ones will say yes.

Finally, understand the days of working for one company for 40 years are over. Don't plan on being there long term. And start something on the side, no matter how dumb it might seem. And invest X % of your paycheck towards growing your idea, it will keep you sane. You need something to look forward to on your own terms.

Oh and stay away from garbage insurance/financial planning jobs. These are bad. If you are 22 and being courted by a company to be a 'financial planner' it simply means they want you to bug all your friends and family about their shitty life insurance policies. You aren't Gordon Gecko and you aren't managing a hedge fund, no matter how cool it might sound at first.

I've known Robert Evans for over a decade. He's been a professional wrestler since he was 17, which is pretty remarkable to begin with. I still remember going to his first show. Hours of footage from his career can be found on Youtube.

I'll get to the importance of his career choice in a bit, but first, let's look at the big picture:

Seth Godin's new book, Linchpin, talks about the importance of being indispensable in your work life. Everyone should be asking themselves what they provide that no one else can. I was not indispensable in my last job and was fired as a result. It was a powerful wake up call to say the least, but I'd be crazy to try and argue my termination as unjustified. 

With outsourcing just a phone call away, and a hungry developing world full of people who can put together spreadsheets, send emails and handle customer calls for a fraction of your salary, coupled with our less-than-stellar economic climate right now, your job is most certainly NOT safe. So become indispensable....

When I started my business, I had no idea what search engine optimization was, much less a desire to learn it. Less than a year later, I offer SEO consulting to businesses across the country. Elance.com has me in the top 5% of all SEO experts on their site (70k + SEO providers offering the same services, seriously). I learned this skill from doing something different. It's just one more way to market myself.


Robert Evans is indispensable. By being unreasonable and doing something he loves (wrestling), doing it well, and sticking with it long enough, he has a unique skill set you can't learn in school, including, but not limited to:

-More public speaking experience than anyone I know, certainly anyone my age. And he's damn good at it. And I'm not talking about reading through PowerPoint slides to a half-awake audience in a Ramada conference room, I'm talking about evoking raw emotion from rabid crowds of hundreds of people hanging on his every word. He's been doing it for years. He is an expert at public speaking. That's useful.

-Acting/public performance. Much like public speaking, he's been involved in countless video and live productions related to his craft.

-Teaching. Robert could open a wrestling academy and teach everything he knows about the wrestling business. While this is a niche service, there are plenty of people looking to break into the business at any given time who will pay good money on an ongoing basis for advice.

These skills are all a bi-product of being unreasonable. You don't get any of them by following the rules and listening to other people and sitting in meetings and asking permission to do anything not in the job description. I've seen first-hand plenty of people not understanding what he does:

"So, you like, wanna be Hulk Hogan or something?"

What's funny is that these questions usually come from people who are miserable in their jobs and doing nothing to escape. They are being reasonable. And somehow the guy doing what he loves for no one but himself is doing something weird. That same guy also has hundreds of people chanting his name on Saturdays. I've heard it. It's loud.

You don't get that rush at an office. Ever. 

Point being: If you hate your job, you really do have options. Start something on the side, no matter how small and inane it might seem at first. Seriously, if you REALLY like drinking exotic new beers from around the world, set up a free blog and review a new one every other day. But that means actually doing it. 


No more watching obscure NCAA bowl games and March Madness and other throw-away, garbage, forget-the-workweek activities with the hubby and your equally miserable friends hiding their disappointment in career choice behind a new coffee table from fucking Crate and Barrel. No more bitching about not have enough time. You have time. And no, you really don't need to watch the Chuck season premiere, that show sucks anyway.


The best part: You'll learn a ton of new skills without even trying. You might start producing video reviews of new, exotic beers for your blog and after some trial and error, you are suddenly a video production expert. There's a market for that. I certainly don't know how to do that. And even better, it's a skill you can do from anywhere that has internet access. Like poolside with your family on your own time. Incredible.

Be unreasonable. Do something no one understands, stick with it, and you will have more to offer than you could possibly hope to by following the rules and waiting for something good to happen. It won't. Can you argue with that? 

Oh, and if your parents have a problem with this unconventional way of thinking, kindly explain to them that it's not 1980 and being a cute young professional with a college degree from a state school in something vague like 'Management" means much less than it used to and you value your own sanity enough to go about making sure you control your own life.