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It was Steve Jobs who said, “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” What do you think it takes to be a leader? Before answering this question, see what a few other people had to say when asked the question:
So what do you think? What is the single most important skill that the leaders of the future will need? Leave a comment for me below. I’d love to start a discussion on this topic.
One of the dominant behavioral traits of history’s most successful Entrepreneurial CEOs is: tenacity.
When you look it up in any dictionary you’ll soon discover that it’s typically defined with two-word combinations such as: persistent determination, stubborn perseverance and unrelenting doggedness.
Anytime a behavioral trait like that requires an adjective and a noun to be defined accurately, it’s something I enjoy looking into.
Biographer Dr. Gene Landrum reports, “Creative geniuses (like Walt Disney) never give up and therefore seldom succumb to the vagaries of change and innovation.”
When Disney drew the first Mortimer Mouse (later Mickey Mouse) many of his associates, including his brother, Roy, laughed at his creation.
His colleagues and critics did the same for The Three Little Pigs and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Both animated productions were labeled “Disney’s Folly.”
Walt’s Disneyland idea was ridiculed as a “carny” idea from a man with a “Barnum and Bailey” mentality. Now it and it’s sister park Disney World are know as “the happiest place on earth.”
But Disney never allowed expert opinion or adversity to halt him from creating what he recognized as unique and innovative children’s entertainment.
It was his tenacity as an Entrepreneurial CEO that enabled him to protect his ideas and confidence to consequently build the world’s most famous animation empire and amusement park!
Disney was extremely productive with approximately 700 films in fourteen languages to his credit. By the beginning of the 21st century, over a billion people had paid admission to see his films.
In my view, it was his tenacity, not his creativity, that inaugurated the Golden Era of Disney (between 1936 and 1941) when he produced many of the greatest animated movies in history.
But it didn’t start out “golden” because in 1934 when Disney decided to produce Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (the first full-length animated feature film), motion picture critics went into shock.
“How could a fairy tale suspend the interest of a viewing audience through over a half-dozen reels of action?” they sneered.
Almost everyone in the motion picture world regarded the movie, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as “Disney’s Folly.”
But Disney didn’t give up on his dream. When the bankers refused to fund this story of a fantasy princess whose innocence wins out over the wicked witch, Disney was out of money half-way through filming.
The extreme pressure and anxiety caused Walt to suffer his third nervous breakdown in 1935.
Again, Disney’s tenacious resolve never gave in to those wanting him to stop the project. Although the film almost destroyed his marriage (he often slept at the studio night-after-night), in mid-1935 he finally convinced Bank of America to loan him $5 million to complete the animated film.
The release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is Walt Disney’s crowning achievement and a great example of how a tenacious Entrepreneurial CEO can add massive value to the rest of the world.
Twenty million saw the movie during the first 18 months of its release. Time magazine hailed it as a masterpiece and Variety called it an “all-time box office champ.”
At a time when movie tickets sold for twenty-five cents each, it’s remarkable that Snow White could earn $8 million its first year out of the gate and an unprecedented $100 million by 1991!
The movie was shown in eight languages and enthralled audiences strolled out of the theatres humming, “Heigh ho, heigh ho … it’s off to work we go.”
I want you to remember Walt Disney’s tenacity the next time you see a Mickey Mouse T-shirt in an airport or theme store in any city in the world. His theme parks in Anaheim, Orlando, Tokyo and Paris attract over 65 million visitors annually.
By 1995, the company Walt Disney tenaciously built employed over 100,000 people and shocked the financial world when Michael Eisner announced on July 31st, 1995 (13 years ago today) the acquisition of ABC for $19 billion.
But the most astonishing fact of all is that of the dozens of animated movies that have since produced hundreds of millions in revenues worldwide, two-thirds of them were considered a loser on Walt Disney’s first release!
This over-achieving high school dropout overcame the ridicule from his colleagues and critics, he sidestepped multiple flirtations with bankruptcy (including two bankruptcy filings in the early 1920s) and pushed through eight (yes, eight) nervous breakdowns!
His optimism can be summed-up in two sentences he was known to say often: “If management likes my projects, I seriously question proceeding. If they disdain them totally, I proceed immediately.”
Bottom Line? – Tenacity is one of the main traits of any successful Entreprenurial CEO.
Are you ready to learn more about how to be more like Disney? If so, click here to access over 4 hours of my TeleSeminar Secrets Training.
I wanted to take some time to share a great blog post that was recently posted on the Click and Be Free blog.
It’s a the first of a series of blog posts that ask the following question: Judgment versus experience, what matters most?
It’s a question that Fast Company has asked the most successful entrepreneurs, leaders, and businesspeople to answer on one of their sister websites, www.30secondmba.com.
So what do you think is more important in business, judgement, or experience?
Here are two responses that you might want to take into consideration before deciding.
Can’t decide yet? Look for the next installment of the series to watch more responses.
My friend & Marketing Maven who has taught me what I know about Membership Sites is crushing his new launch with northward of 41% sales conversion! See if you can guess who he is…
In 2008, he started on the Net from scratch – by 2010 he was a millionaire.He’s an integrity-centered guy who tells it like it is on his videos. He never arm-twists any of his visitors to buy…he just tells you the truth and as a result in just 3 short years has built an empire online that few can hold a candle to :)
If you’ve got a spare 90 seconds right now, then grab your mouse and check out why his students call him the #1 Internet coach: http://www.ReplyToAlex.com/mentor.
I rarely give any other marketer this sort of acknowledgment, but this guy is a gentleman and he’s a close friend of mine. So, do yourself a favor and get in on his latest money making system designed deliberately for marketers who hate technology ;) Forward this blog post to any friend or family member whom you feel can also benefit from my friend’s world-class money making system.
One the most important internet marketing secrets is to block out your prime time hours.
What is a prime time hour?
A prime time hour is anything you control 100% percent of and is going to generate revenue for you now or sometime in the future. Now, you can have just one prime-time hour a day or two a day, even four a day. I have four. I don’t think you should have more than four. Most people don’t have any.
Think about this. If you only have one prime-time hour a day and you work five days a week – many of us work many more than that – that’s 225 work days per year. How many prime-time, revenue-generating hours are you giving yourself as a gift for the year? You are giving yourself 225 hours.
As a guerilla marketer, don’t you think you can generate some revenue with that? I think so. Isn’t it a sin not to? Aren’t we robbing ourselves? I would like all of you to block out one prime-time hour a day starting next week.
Which hour is the most important of the day? It’s the first hour of the day. Why? You are fresher in the morning than you are after having been beaten down by the events of the day. You start with the positive.
But, what is the first thing that you typically do when you get in front of your computer? Check email. Is that an interruption? Yes.
And worse, it can start your whole day off badly. What if you wake up and see an email from someone asking for a refund? Doesn’t that put you into some type of emotional tail spin which you don’t want to be a part of?
Now, what if you do this instead? Rather than checking your email, you generate revenue for one full hour first. Don’t you feel good about yourself? You’ve already crossed out some things on your master action to-do list. You can handle that bad news a little better now. See what I am saying?
When people get the bad news first, they concentrate on that bad news, not the good news. When you start with good news, it is not so bad afterwards.
So, start with good news. Start your day with a revenue-generating activity. Make sure if you only have one prime-time hour, that hour is in the very beginning. Eventually, you want no less than two hours a day that are prime time.
Another element of prime time is to focus only on revenue-generating activities you can control. I think everyone knows what that means. The third element is always avoid the daily interruptions you cannot control, like email. Just turn email off. Don’t listen to your voicemail. Don’t take phone calls. That’s why you have voice mail (but don’t listen to your voice mail either). Don’t open your letters. Tell your family it’s prime time and have them support you in saying they cannot enter the office or call you. (Unless, heaven forbid, it’s an emergency.)
Start with a revenue-generating activity, and you will feel great about yourself.
How are you using (or how will you use) your prime time hour(s)? Leave a comment for me in the comments section below.
There are so many actions you need to take to be successful in internet marketing that I create a daily master to do list.
I don’t use a palm pilot or Outlook for this. I use a physical master to-do list. It’s very important you do it this way because this is the way that works. I’ve tried it other ways and it hasn’t worked – it was overwhelming.
I am looking at my yellow pad that’s about five inches wide by seven inches tall. It’s a small junior legal pad with 50 sheets on it. It’s yellow and has about 20 lines on it.
I use this pad because I like to fill it up. When I fill it up, I feel like I’m doing something.
This pad is where I put my master to-do list. My list is not written the day I want to do those things, it’s written the day before – sometimes a few days before. You want to write your master to-do list for the future.
Why? Because it’s easier to come to a desk that’s clean and has a master to-do list that’s already been written sitting on it – that way, you can start your first prime-time hour by attacking that list and crossing things out.
Isn’t that a lot easier than trying to invent things to do?
The master to do list
The master to-do list is the first element – write out your action items. Remember, this is action management. Write out your action management in advance – at least a day before. Don’t write any more than 20 actions per day. I typically complete anywhere between 15 and 20. That’s all that’s humanly possible.
The second element is as I execute each action item, I cross out those suckers with a red felt-tip pen I bought specifically for that purpose. Do you know why I do that? I get to see all I’ve accomplished. I feel so good when I write those things down, and then cross them out with a red pen because they’re done.
At the end of the day, what happens?
The third element of creating your master to-do list. What do I do if I have three or four actions left over on my list? I put them on a new list. Let’s say it’s Tuesday. I’m going to flip the page. Make sure you flip the page. At the end of my day, I just cross out all of the ones I’m going to flip to the next day. That is very important. I cross out every single one, and I flip the ones I haven’t completed to the next day. If I have twelve left over, I didn’t have a very well-managed day, but I have twelve things to start out with tomorrow.
So, maybe I can do better.
Crossing out every single one of those actions is so satisfying to me, even though I have more for the next day, because the next day hasn’t started. I take the sheet of paper from today, scrunch it up and throw it in the wastebasket. That day is gone.
And are you ready to learn more about how I do it?
Then I invite you to check out http://www.AlexMandossianToday.com to claim your access to over 4 hours of my TeleSeminar Secrets Training.
Look for the TeleSeminar Secrets logo…fair enough?
How do you boost your productivity with creating case studies?
First, what is a case study? In the area of testimonials and endorsements, I think the lowest level is an endorsement. That is something that’s said about you, something nice, typically by a friend or colleague. It doesn’t hold as much water as a testimonial.
A testimonial is the next level where someone has purchased your product or service and has said something good about it because it worked.
A case study is the highest level. A case study is a business story about how your product or service has assisted or shown them how to get to the promise land — to get to the result they’ve been looking for.
I have three tips to make your case studies more productive.
To see the tips, look through the document below:
Do you have video testimonials from your customers? If so, please provide a brief explanation in the comments section below about how you were able to get it, and feel free to share the link to the video if you have uploaded it online.
Humans are influenced by the following 6 major principles. Try to build them into your content and copy.
1) Law of reciprocation: if they do something nice, we feel obligated to give something back.
2) Law of commitment and consistency: if we made a commitment in the past we do all we can to remain committed to those past actions/choices.
UIBC
3) Law of social proof: when we don’t know what to do we look around to see what others are doing; it’s why testimonials work.
4) The liking principal: we do business with people we like. Compliment sincerely and they will like you.
5) Authority: when we don’t know what to do, we look around to people in authority.6) The law of scarcity: is it always going to be available to me, and if it’s not, I better get it now. We want what we can’t have. We want what is scarce. Scarcity drives up our need to have it.
6) The law of scarcity: is it always going to be available to me, and if it’s not, I better get it now. We want what we can’t have. We want what is scarce. Scarcity drives up our need to have it.
At our program, The Ultimate Internet Bootcamp (UIBC), we infuse these principles into all that we do.
My guess is you have examples of using one or more of these 6 principles. Or you have questions about using these. I want to hear them. Leave your comment on this post!
Marketing is war, anyway you look at it. You are battling other competitors. You are battling for mindshare of your prospects, customers and evangelists. Marketing IS combat and you NEED a strategy.
Jay Conrad Levinson, the father of Guerrilla Marketing, has been teaching this since the 80’s. He has millions of books that have been printed in over 38 languages.
According to him, I have done more Guerrilla Marketing plans than anyone else living on the planet. I think there are about 8000 people who have learned how to write a Guerrilla Marketing plan through me.
Many of those plans have been one-on-ones. I think I have done over 3,000 one-on-ones in about five years. It’s phenomenal. I do group sessions now, and I teach one-on-many.
Like many others, you can join the ranks of successful people that are using this powerful tool to build and grow their business.
Are you ready to get started? If so, click the image below to download your copy of my free E-book: the 7 Step Guerrilla Marketing Action Plan:
How many emails do you get each day? How many emails do you get each hour? How many emails are in your inbox right now that have gone unread? I have three tips for you that will boost your email productivity. Watch the video below to find out what they are:
What other tips do you have? Leave a comment on my Facebook page today.
