Cat's Eye Marketing Blog

Midnight Train to Portland: Playing with the 'Competition'

Okay, it wasn't midnight. And there were no competitors.

But I did ride an Amtrak train last weekend. I was traveling with my Biznik friends, some of which I had never met.

"Online social networking site" is too lame a term for what Biznik is. I call Biznik my virtual sandbox. Huge virtual sandbox.

The magical mystery—ahem, I mean Biznik—train (also known as the Amtrak 513) started way up north in Bellingham, WA and picked up Biznikers along the way. It stopped at the Tacoma station for one minute on Saturday, long enough for me to jump on.

Aside from their Biznik avatars, I knew some people only from our online conversations, forum discussions, and articles they might have written. Yet I felt I knew them well. 

Others I had hosted live workshops with or shared a lunch with at a networking event.

Some I had never had one interaction with. But here we were, sharing the same space.

Portland: a fine city for spunky entrepreneurs

Now it's kind of karma-like that we would end our train trip in Portland. People there don't exactly fit the mold. Bicycle commuters.

Vegetarians. Tree huggers. Spunky protestors fire-bombing a Starbucks. Or storming City Hall to demand that Wal-Mart pack its bags.

Portlanders have an independent streak. They don't blindly follow the crowd. It's okay to be different in Portland. A little funky. A little counter culture. Just like us. 

The train ride was amazing. Eleven entrepreneurs. Eleven unique voices.

One woman had been an undercover cop back in the days when most female officers didn't get respect from their bosses, who were usually men.

Another was a graphic designer whose heart was broken when she volunteered at an animal shelter and saw good dogs dropped off for "behavior issues. " She decided to start a second business as a dog trainer. 

I sat across from a brilliant and intuitive Bizniker who knows gobs of stuff about raw foods, long distance cycling, and using bio-energy and quantum physics to help us biz owners align with our mission and life purpose.

Whew! And that was just three of my train companions.

One train car. Two hours. A billion stories.

Why we went to Portland

Lori Richardson in Bellingham and Tshombe Brown in Portland had a crazy idea one day. What if a bunch of talented solopreneurs left the isolation of their offices and home studies for two days and came together to think about ways to collaborate?

Wait. Let's put them on a train to Portland and see what happens when they get there.

Now, some people think it a little strange to meet up with people, some of whom do the very thing you do, and think of ways to help each other. Are we insane?

Partnering. Collaborating. Community building. Sharing. Leveraging.

We know those words. We've practiced rolling them around in our mouths.

"Collaboration is so much better than competition," we say. "Let's work together. Support each other. How can I help you get what you need?"

But what does that really mean? How does it look when we do that and what happens as a result?

Café mochas, cappuccinos, and chats about collaboration

We ate and laughed and ate again. We listened to hysterical stories told from the heart. We were led on walking tours and visits to the "Saturday Farmers Market" on Sunday (more Portland quirkiness), sometimes resembling a high-energy group of distracted first graders at Disneyland. We engaged in café conversations, as Chris Brogan calls them, around just what collaboration means and whether it is even a valuable thing.

We didn't all agree. But that made it all the more fascinating.

We are living in ground-breaking times for small business. People are tired of the corporate bailouts, the huge bonuses for misbehaving executives, the absence of values and ethics. The old way of doing business hasn't really worked that well.

It's time for a new model. 

5 things I learned (actually, some of it I already knew):

1. Community building and collaboration have nothing to do with age. I've seen younger entrepreneurs with a competition mindset and 60-year-olds who place sharing and building partnerships center stage in their business practices.

2. We don't know all the ways we can share until we start talking. I got to know an awesome auctioneer and connected the dots to the director of a huge nonprofit client of mine whose gala auction is their fundraising event of the year.

3. Because someone is in the same business as me doesn't mean we can't find ways to support each other. Two copywriters. Two graphic designers. Two business coaches. But not one of us had the same strengths the same target clients, the same niches. And even if we did, we could still find ways to share our skills, learn from each other, support the value each of us brings to the table. 

4. Getting to know two people really well is better than listening to 12 people take 5 minutes each to answer the question, "What do you do?" In our whirly-twirly business lives, we don't always take time to get to know our colleagues, customers, and clients. Incredible things happen when you take the time to develop those relationships.

5. We don't always approach a problem from the same perspective. Each of us had unique observations and interesting ideas about collaboration and competition. For instance, collaboration can give us an advantage over big businesses, but healthy competition can lead to innovation and greater efficiency, and more customer choices.

And one more thing I learned:

Figuring out who owes what on dinners the brewpub put on one bill can be a nightmare. Okay, the Saturday night dinner was still a very fun experience. But I just wanted to give Tshombe, our gracious host, a big hug when it was all over. 

That's my train story. Got one of your own?

'Imaginary Friends': Why Fakey E-mail Messages Turn Off Your Prospects

At first I thought I was just weird. I don't fit the norm.

Okay, I guess I've always known that. I have a highly tuned BS-o-meter. I can smell phoniness a mile away.

So last week, when I got 12 personally addressed e-mails from perfect strangers with my name neatly inserted with some program's merge function, I was prompted to write this letter:

Dear Email Marketer:

I know that mass e-mail marketing is a numbers game. You are looking for a 1-3% favorable response.

And yes, with a B.A. degree in psychology, I understand what's at play here. People like to get messages from other humans, not robots. We like to feel special. Unique.

But we also get it when we are being, well, used.

Manipulated.

Problem is, when you insert my name randomly, I don't feel all that special. In fact, it screams SPAM!

But personalizing the message gets you more opens and clicks, you say. 

Well, yes, it might. But too many times the message that follows the "Dear Judy" is stiff, formal, stilted, and highly impersonal. So you lose me.

Don't pretend you know me

Judy, save 40% if you act today!!!!

Hi Judy, I have some terrific news for you! 

What would you think, Judy, if I told you could take a luxury cruise to Puerto Vallarta for just $99?

When I get a hard-sell email from someone I don't know, and they have inserted my name in the first line, I'm not really all that impressed. It's not like I say: Wow, they know my name!

It's more like: Who the H*** is this?

I'm a real person

Finding my name and sprinkling it throughout your sales message? Profoundly simple.

But gathering enough information about me to know the kinds of products I like, my fears, my deepest needs? Not so much.

A truly personalized e-mail marketing message, one that hits me in the perfect spot at the perfect time, is built with careful attention to things like:

• which emails I have opened before

• which parts of your website I clicked through to after receiving, say, a particular e-newsletter

• how I found you in the first place and what kind of relationship I already have with you

• what offers I have responded to in the past

• and a zillion other details

Call it what you want. Target marketing. List segmentation. Or something else. Just don't think you know me because you know my name. 

It's so superficial. 

Everything I Know About Being an Entrepreneur I Learned From My Dad: A Father's Day Tribute

He didn't have an MBA. In fact, my dad had to quit high school in the 11^th grade to take a job to help support his brothers and sisters.

He worked at the Grays Harbor Chair Factory in Aberdeen, Washington, a small, blue-collar lumber town in the Pacific Northwest.

Then he got as job as a cement truck driver at Graystone of Grays Harbor. He later moved up to "batchman" and then foreman of the plant.

Most nights, he would shuffle in through the kitchen door, big black lunch pail in hand. All I would see were his bright blue eyes peering out through a light gray coating of cement dust.

Looking back, I suppose all he wanted to do was take off his caked, high-top work boots and settle into the olive green recliner with his Daily World.

But right away I would start pestering him with my "12 Degrees of Why" questions. Patient he was, and tolerant of curious 7-year-olds. 

Tell me. What does your father do?

Once I read a comment on a blog. The business owner said that when he interviews someone for a job in his company, he always asks, "What did your father do?" Said it was a good indicator of how "entrepreneurial" the candidate was.

Aside from that being a sexist question (what if your mom had been the CEO of Xerox or PepsiCo, both run by women, by the way), we all have certain traits that help us run our businesses, but not all of us come from the same mold.

Just because my dad drove a cement truck, doesn't mean I didn't learn valuable lessons from him.

A few of of my dad's lessons in entrepreneurship

Find a way around obstacles by thinking in different ways.

When the muddy banks of the Wishkah River flooded the road, he invented what his fellow workers fondly labeled the "Spaur Board."

It was a long piece of plywood fashioned over the car's front fender to create a makeshift bulldozer. He was a little late to work that day, but he made it. No one else did.

See the humor in everyday mishaps.

When my mom bought a new gadget, say, a can opener, and it didn't work as advertised, my dad would grumble, "I bet that was invented by some guy's brother-in-law. 

His explanation was that some man was pressured to give his wife's sorry, clueless brother a job. The guy had no skills, but, hey, he was the boss's wife's brother, so he was hired.

So he comes into the board room one day with a goofy idea for a can opener. But everyone is afraid to shoot his idea down because he's the boss's brother-in-law. The "some guy's brother-in-law" story was pulled out whenever something we bought didn't work right.

When times are tough, call on your team to roll up their sleeves and get to work.

Added expenses for new school clothes or a broken hot water heater? Find more income streams.

Like bark peeling. My sisters and I, under the watchful eye of our parents, would go beyond the back yard to the old growth forest where the cascara trees grew. At the age of 5, I learned to shimmy up the tree.

Perched on a strong branch, I would slit the bark straight down in a vertical line with my handmade knife. The hard part was pushing the fingers around the tree, underneath the slick, inside edges of the smooth gray bark, past the sharp notches that stung my hand.

If I did it right, I could pull the bark away in one long piece, kind of like those people who can take the skin from an apple in one long peel.

I would stuff the pungent bark into my scratchy gunny sack and sell it later at Mr. Reid's store: 5 cents a pound for wet bark, ten for dry. Mr. Reid sold the dried bark to Eli Lily Company because its main ingredient, cascara sagrada, was used to make Fletcher's Castori and other retchingly bitter-tasting laxatives.

I learned that there was always a way to make a few bucks if I needed it. My dad taught me that.

Thanks, dad

You taught me way, way more than that. Lessons that I use every day of my life as I juggle the challenges of running my own business.

How to be inventive with limited resources. How to practice patience. How to understand other points of view. How not to take myself too seriously.

I can't thank you enough for those lessons.

And just the other day, when I gave up on my leaky fountain pen, I looked at my ink-stained hands and back at the pen, then said said out loud, "I bet some guy's brother-in-law made this."

'Crazy Cat' Edition: Does the Real You Show Up Online?

My odd-eyed Turkish Van cat Nuz has multiple personality disorder. 

Okay, he doesn't really show multiple personalities because he's a cat. It's more like multiple animalities.

He usually displays them when he's trying to talk me into something. But sometimes it's when he's yawning. Or bird watching.

This morning, I swear to God, he did this short "whinny" sound, just like a pony.

I was working on the laptop at the dining room table. After neighing, he trotted into the kitchen and sat on the tile by the refrigerator, with that laser-focused stare of his aimed at me. The old Friskies Chicken and Salmon con game.

A cat with identity issues

Nuz, at different times, and God only knows for what reasons, has made a flat, nasal sound—sort of like a duck—chattered like a squirrel, and warbled like a songbird. Sometimes he produces a perfectly mimicked bull's snort. He even growls like a bulldog and, oddly enough, fetches pieces of wadded up paper and drops them at my feet, ears perked, waiting for me to toss them across the room again.

Problem is, Nuz never knows who he is. I never know who he is until he shows up. And when he does, he decides who he wants to be at that moment.

Not your consistent, "I can trust you because I know you will always be a cat" kind of guy.

Do you have identity issues? 

I'm working with a couple of new clients who have asked me exciting, insightful questions from the start. Stuff that made me feel how lucky I am to be playing in their sandbox.

"I want you to help me figure out who I am, said one, an executive coach with a highly specialized and very cool niche, "and how to build an online identity that shows how unique I am."

I wanted to get up right then and there and do a back flip. (Didn't, though. There wasn't enough room in this particular Starbucks.)

The other client, a leadership development trainer, said, "I want a website that shows my values and personality, complete with my crazy sense of humor."

Wow. Two people in one week who get how important it is to have a face and a unique voice on the Web.

Find your true self. And show it.

Before I help these two clients create their perfect blogs and websites, I'll be taking each of them through a thinking process, with questions such as these, so their real selves show up consistently and they attract the people who are comfortable working with him and who they were meant to serve:

What are the top three things you believe about people?

If you could describe yourself with three adjectives, what would they be?

Why are you doing what you do? What do you love most about the business you are in?

Name your top three passions. (This will lead you to the things you really care about and eventually to the stories you want to tell your customers.)

What's the best compliment you ever got from a customer?

What expressions do you use a lot with customers or clients? Favorite quotes? (The language piece that is so important to making you sound authentic.)

If you are writing your own website copy, or having someone else do it for you, give a little thought to these questions. And ask yourself other ones.

Listen to the answers.

Because the last thing you want is for your customers to think you are just like Nuz, the 'crazy cat.' 

The World's Oldest Twitterer: Social Media Lessons from @IvyBean104

Her name is Ivy Bean. She has 16,719 followers on Twitter, including self-help guru Tony Robbins, actress Demi Moore and the LA Times.

When Ivy Bean joined Facebook last year, she became, at age 103, the oldest member, beating out a 97-year-old woman from France. Now she has stormed the micro-blogging world.

Her Twitter name is @IvyBean104 and she lives at the Hillside Manor in Bradford, England. Initially there was some controversy about whether the story was staged. Someone at Geek Squad UK had visited the home and set her up.

But it doesn't seem to have been a media event or one-time "photo op" because she is still twittering. And, whether she had some help or not, I think it's very cool that someone would learn a new skill at the age of 104. Talk about your life-long learner.

@IvyBean104's Twitter lessons (really applies to all social media)

Between naps, eating "ice lollies" (popsicles?) having cups of tea, and cheering on her favorites on Deal or No Deal, @IvyBean104, in fewer than 3 weeks, is practicing strategies that some of us social networking masters have failed to master.

Lesson one: be your authentic self

On May 16, @IvyBean104 twittered:

Me and my friend mabel are going to have a game of connect 4

(yes, no punctuation, no capital letters)

May 16, later: 

i won 3 games but poor mabel cant see very well so a bit of cheating going on

Assuming it was @IvyBean doing the "bit of cheating," she is showing us she is not perfect, that she has her flaws.

Lesson two: leave links with entertaining, interesting information

May 18, from @IvyBean104:

hello why not come see me win my gold medal at the over 75 olympic games at www.133hillsidemanor.co.uk. We had such a good day.

Okay, someone is going to have to show @IvyBean104 how to edit a video, but this is hilarious. Kind of reminds me of John Cleese, who I expect to be popping up from behind a bush. Ivy Bean has invited us to share an experience she had.

Lesson three: share humorous observations and allow people to get to know you

May 26:

My friend mabel looks like she has been on a motor bike ride her hair is all stuck up with the wind and I laughed my head off at her

All right. That wasn't real nice, but it was funny.

Lesson four: engage in conversations and show empathy 

May 15, from one of @IvyBean104's followers, @pennydrops, talking about the TV show, Deal or No Deal:

@IvyBean104: Do you think they will win big tonight on Deal or No Deal and do you respect the banker?

May 15, from @IvyBean104: 

@pennydrops everyone should win big grrr at the banker. 

In this short interaction, @IvyBean104 responded to a question and showed us a little part of herself in the process. 

And, finally, lesson five: encourage others 

May 15, from @IvyBean104:

@adam_lambert good luck

Now I may be one of the only two people on the planet who doesn't watch the show, but I believe that Adam Lambert was one of two contestants left in this year's final episode of American Idol. And, yes, she is following Adam, Demi Moore, John Cleese, and 123 other people. 

So, if you've been thinking about giving Twitter a try, maybe it's time. If someone 104 can learn how to use it, well…

Feel free to follow @IvyBean104 or @catseyewriter, or both of us.

No Time for Relationship Marketing: Why Can't I Just Sell Stuff?

Because selling without a relationship first makes me run away.

Remember the last time you were at the mall and you avoided eye contact with that carnival barker ahem, I mean, 22-year old clerk, at the T-shirt kiosk?

Or the time you got an email sales blast from some robot marketer you didn't even know and they called you by your first name? ("Hi Judy, I've been meaning to tell you about this cool [fill in the blank] we're offering only for the next 24 hours!!!!")

Always, the exclamation points.

In Internet marketing, we run away from people who pretend to know us but don't have a clue who we really are.

If you get this, you are in the top 5 percent of marketers on the web today.

Because I don't really know if I need your products or services yet.

Sometimes I don't know at first that I even need what you are trying to sell to me. It's pretty hard to establish a need, make an emotional connection, build credibility, and sell, all in one swoop.

Try a little empathy first. Relate to your reader. (There's that word again.) What are their problems, fears, dreams?

Because I've been screwed over before.

In other words, I don't trust you because that last guy took my money and gave me a crappy product and when I tried to reach him, I got no answer.

If you give first, your promises will be more likely to be believed.

Because there are too many others just like you out there.

But wait. Mr. Rogers said, "You are special. You are the only one like you."

How can you show that? Not by waving red-letter signs with exclamation points. You could try to have a conversation. Tell your customers and readers just why you can solve their problems better than anyone else. Why you are different.

Because I'm having an 'Alexander and the Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day' day

Like the boy in the picture book, maybe I woke up with gum in my hair and my brothers found the prizes in the cereal box and I got nothing and my teacher didn't like my drawing of the invisible castle and my dentist told me I have a cavity and…You get the point.

If you catch me on a bad day and I don't know who you are anyway, well, I'm not going to listen to you. Because I'm having a bad day, okay?

But if you are more of a friend, if you've been giving me good stuff all along and I happen to have a bad day, I'm probably not going to cross you off my list. I'll go back to your offer when I'm feeling better. Or I'll respond to another offer down the road.

My relationship marketing story

About a week and a half ago, I was honored to be a guest on The Brent and Brandi Show, an entertaining and engaging Internet radio show on marketing and branding. We talked about creative storytelling in the context of relationship marketing and, more specifically, content marketing. You can listen to the show here.

Do opportunities like this come out of the blue? I don't think so.

I met Brent Haeseker and Brandi Pierce on biznik.com, the ultra-cool business networking site for solopreneurs and indie professionals. We started talking online. We commented on each other's articles.

Later, Brent signed up for my weekly marketing etip and then subscribed to the blog. We were building the relationship. 

Six months later, I was a guest on the Brent and Brandi Show. Relationships don't always take six months to develop, but the point is, Brent and Brandi felt like they knew me. They had read my content and saw me as a credible "expert." How cool is that?

So, yeah, relationship marketing works for me. In so many ways and on so many levels.

What about you? Have good things come to you from relationship marketing?

P.S. Wanna start building more relationships? Follow me on Twitter!

I've Wanted to Be An SOB for a While. And Now I Am!

Seriously. Liz Strauss just called me an SOB. And I have the badge to prove it. (See official-looking pink badge on side of post.)

Wait. It's not the kind of SOB you think. Besides, I'm a woman so that would be physically impossible. 

This SOB is short for Successful and Outstanding Blogger. Liz, who has been called "the most influential relational blogger on the Internet," and was also named one of the 50 Most Powerful and Influential Women of Social Media, started the SOB club as a fun way to gather together bloggers who, in her words, "take the conversation to their readers, contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better and make our businesses stronger."

I am honored and humbled to join this amazing group of bloggers. Visit Liz's website and you'll find an A-Z Directory with the names of a bunch of very cool bloggers who are doing "successful and outstanding things." Actually I'm a little in awe of this company I'm keeping. 

Be sure when you visit Liz's site to read more about SOBCon, her incredible biz school for bloggers, in Chicago next year, starting on April 30. It's the most talked about blogging conference in the world of social media.

Thanks, Liz, for the recognition! I'll do my best to live up to it. 

Doing What You Think You Can't: Marketing for Scaredy-Cats

If you are a small business, chances are you've seen it all. You've done it all—or most of it.

As solopreneurs and small biz owners, we wear a million hats.

Seriously. I take out the garbage. I clean the office because my irresponsible cleaning man (notice I didn't say woman) never shows up.

Oh, wait. I don't have a cleaning man.

I make frequent trips to the bank to make sure the business checking account isn't in Overdraft Land. I make the coffee. And pour it. And deliver it to myself. And wash the cup. I fan the business bills out, then put them in neat little piles with dark pink sticky backs: Mail on the 5^th. Mail on the 10^th. Mail on the 20^th.

I answer my own phone (when I'm not in the bathroom). I take breaks to throw slices of whole wheat bread over the deck to the mama deer and her baby. Okay, that one was a little weird.

But what is it that we like to do?

When we—you and me— are deciding how to spend our workday, especially when it comes to the marketing part, we don't just throw a dart and see where it lands. (Well, maybe some of us do.)

Some things we do only because there is no one else to do them.

Then there are the parts of running our business that get us excited. The things that don't seem like a chore. The reason we went into business in the first place.

Funny how it works.

The things I like to do are the things I do best.

Or maybe it's the other way around.

I am best at the things I like to do.

Okay, if you don't have a left brain, like me, you are probably way beyond confused by now. You were probably the one who skipped right over those SAT questions on deductive reasoning.

For me, what I like to do, and what I do best are one and the same: crawling deep inside my brain and excavating new ideas. Telling stories. Not fiction (although that's cool, too). Stories that help small biz owners sell more of their products and services.

And blogging. I love to blog.

I like writing our marketing etips, coming up with new ways to get solopreneurs excited about marketing.

And shaking snow globes and watching the flakes fall. Still trying to figure out how to tie that into my writing. 

These are all solitary things, these things I like to do.

Does this blog post have a point? (As Steve Martin says, 'It makes it so much more interesting for the reader.')

Well, yes, I do have a point.

Many "experts" tell us to focus on our strengths, the things God, the universe, or whatever you want to call it, gifted us with.

You know, that day the fairy sprinkled you with dust and said, "You shall be able to attach a soup spoon to your nose and it will stay even if you shake your head." (Or whatever you’ve been gifted with.)

For me, it was turning out a decent sentence. Sometimes while making people laugh.

It never was giving a speech or acting in a play or, say, being a guest on a live radio show.

So what I did a month ago was a big deal. I climbed the steps to the high dive, and said (looks over edge nervously), "Okay. I'll do that one thing that ties my stomach in a double –strength knot. I will be interviewed on the radio."

Meaning live radio. No rewrites until I get the words perfect. No delete key if I screw up. Oh, and did I say it would be live?

Do the thing you thought you could not do.

When my daughter was in 8^th grade, her middle school had a program called "Dragon Slayers." Each month they would choose something the kids had never done, something that sounded scary hard to them. And they would all go out and do it.

Building self-esteem, they called it. 

Once they went rock rappelling. You know, that thing where you walk backwards down the face of a mountain with only a harness, gear, anchors, rope, and a large cup of courage? 

Another time they went white water rafting. 

Well, I decided to do the thing my middle school self fears most: being on stage. On May 15, I will be a guest on The Brent & Brandi Radio Show.

I got charmed into appearing to talk about storytelling and content marketing by the talented Brent Haeseker and the captivating Brandi Pierce, co-hosts extraordinaire. Please visit their websites and see all the other cool things they are doing.

If you have an hour—which you will never get back, mind you— tune in here. Would love to know that I have a silent, but supportive, audience. 

That's Friday, May 15, 1pm PST, 4pm Eastern time. Somewhere around 2pm, I think, if you are on Central time. 

I'll be there. Because I have a mountain to climb. Or a dragon to slay. Or whatever.