3 Action Items That Can Screw Up Your Business 👀

Brian goes over principles, strategies and tactics and how they can work in your business.

Transcription

Three action items that can screw up your business.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I’m holding a pen, I’ve got this here, it’s already written in, I’m not going to write too much more on it than I could think of. And the reason is that I’ve already recorded this, well, I attempted to record it, I attempted to put this together and went through a very nice talk to a camera that wasn’t recording. So here we go again.

Not that you need to know that.

This, what is this all about you, you’ve probably seen multiple things like this before, this is a remake of a video that I did when I first started the show.

And I have to keep going back to a lot of these principles, to reinstate them to keep everybody on track. Because not everybody sees your stuff all the time, we talk about that a lot, too, that’s kind of a principle when it comes to content marketing is not everybody sees everything.

So you have to repeat yourself, I’m going to tell you about this because it is so useful. It is so important when you’re dealing with any type of organization, or you’re trying to accomplish anything with other people that you understand these different areas.

And this all has to do with an action within your business.

Now, this can work anywhere to this isn’t just business, any type of action, any type of when you’re attempting to reach some type of a goal when you’re trying to build something, that these type of things are important.

So let me explain them to you real quick. These are principles, strategies, and tactics, everything that you do, or talk about, fits somewhere in here when it comes to your business. Let’s start at the bottom.

People do these in different ways but I’m going to deal with the importance.

The level of importance is on the bottom, the important part that you need before everything else is your principles to your business.

Now, we talked about principle yesterday in terms of truth and something that’s very solid, and something that’s very noble.

This is more of how you translate that into your business, where are you going with your business, what’s the point of your business, more than likely, those are the ideas of your business that are not going to change. There are certain pieces that will not change, they may adjust over time in terms of your understanding of them.

But the idea is they’re solid, they’re the foundation of your business. That’s what a principle is, that’s and you’re not gonna you don’t need a lot and they don’t even need to be written down.

But they do need to be understood, the ideas need to be understood, and they need to be understood by anybody that is working within that business that is working with you on a regular basis to do these other things, strategies are the next level strategies are plans, any type of planning whatsoever, short term long term, the idea is that they don’t last forever, strategies do not last forever.

So you can’t just fall in love with a strategy and hold on to it. But you do need to stick with it long enough to see it through. A strategy has a beginning, middle, and end a strategy is we want to achieve blank.

So this is how we’re going to get here from point A to point B, that we got to get from one place to the other strategies, the roadmap. A lot of people have trouble with strategies, I’ve worked with multiple clients and partners that don’t think in that way. They just want to jump in and move and get going. And they don’t need to know where they’re going or how strategies are necessary.

Eventually, in the early stages of business and early stages of any type of process. You may need to kind of knock things around before you even know where you’re going. But strategies are necessary eventually. And it’s funny because my mind thinks in more of a principal strategy area and everybody’s a little bit different. Everyone’s brain works a little bit differently.

Some people are very turned on by this last one tactics. tactics are the sexy thing and in all business, okay. They’re the hot thing. They’re the thing that gets you excited.

That’s a shiny object. It’s the thing. It’s the tick-tock marketing. It’s Facebook ads.

It’s that the thing that people are thinking and talking about right now, by its nature, tactics are temporary. Tactics are the actions, the action items, the way you’re going to achieve a specific strategy. But like I said, strategies don’t last forever. But tactics last an even shorter period of time.

Tactics can change on a day-to-day basis. Never fall in love with tactics, but realize everyone’s brain works differently. And we all tend to centralize in one of these areas.

And if I’m talking strategy in principle, a lot of times I’ll have a real tough time working with somebody and trying to it’s like a different language, trying to explain it to someone who’s caught up on a tactic, who’s just enjoying the journey and working in a specific area.

But they don’t know how to how to communicate on plan mode, on any type of plans whatsoever. Everybody’s different, there’s nothing wrong, nothing wrong or right with any of it.

But you eventually need to have somebody in your organization that can translate between all these different modes, and get everyone working together. It’s important that everyone understands the principles, that everyone understands that the strategies are there to serve the principles and that the tactics are there to serve the strategies. If you do that, things work.

Well, if you don’t, I see over and over and over again, businesses that fall into both focusing too much on the principle or too much in the tactics, and not including enough strategy, or getting caught up with the strategy and not switching it up quick enough.

Thinking that the strategy is the principle, you can see how this can get confusing over time. If you have worked in a business, especially with a lot of people, you know what I’m talking about here, and you’ll be able to probably tell me better than I could tell you where this mix-up happens. It happens all the time.

And so I always that the new businesses that I partner up with because I’m a business investor. So when I’m partnering up with businesses, these are some of the principles that we need to walk through, we need to have a common language. And so one of the common these common terms is the idea of principles, strategies and tactics.

Hopefully, you could use that as you move ahead to because it really is helpful when you’re having conversations and trying to build something that lasts.

Hopefully, that makes sense to you.

We’ve I’ve got my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

This is all based on how do you design a strategy and it pulls you back to your principles in these early stages and builds long-term strategies to be able to make yourself completely competition-proof.

That’s what the book is all about. It’s Amazon, you get a free copy, or you go purchase a copy but get up go get a free copy of my website, AmazonProofBook.com.

We’ll be back here tomorrow.

In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

You, Meth-Heads & Pink Envelopes

http://DreamBizChat.com

You, Meth-Heads & Pink Envelopes.

What do these things all have to do with each other?

Well, we’re going to cover that today.

Hi, I’m Brian Pombo welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live. Coming to you live everyday. Today we are back at the head quarters for brianjpombo.com. We’re here in Grants Pass, Oregon.

So wanted to tell you a quick story and a really interesting marketing tactic that is based on principles of human psychology and go through that in a second. It all starts back, Oh, probably 15 years ago.

I was working for the government down in California State government. So working for the state assembly at the time, which is in the legislature. And it was just a short period of time that I’ve found myself working in the government, which I recommend for everyone to try out just for the education. But regardless, we’ll get into those stories another time.

But this specific story, I believe it was some form of class being put on for government employees by, I believe it was the state highway patrol. Which is in California, it’s called the CHP, the California highway patrol.

They were putting on a class all about, identity theft, which at the time was, was kind of a really hot buzzword that had started coming out. It was becoming something that was being much more widely talked about, especially with the internet, that had just started firing up and getting popular and everything.

So everyone was really freaked out about it.

Identity theft and what’s it all means and where’s it all, you know, how do you prevent it?

I learned some things there that I haven’t heard often enough and I’m not sure if it’s all still true, but at the time they were saying that across the board, that the highest amount of people doing identity theft, at least in California at the time, were drug dealers of some sort.

They were the ones taking part in an identity theft.

So what they do is they would grab either mail straight out of somebody’s mailbox. I mean, they honestly would grab shredded documents from the trash of businesses and so forth. Shredded documents.

They’d take it back and these guys were so strung out on meth that they needed something to do and they need somewhere to put all this energy. And they said they’ve gone into these places and found it time and time again where they had someone sitting there and placing the shredded papers back together and taping them back together piece by piece.

Now this was before cross shredded shredders were as common, but that was one of the things they were recommending and said they’re not going to do that with it’s cross shred. It’s just too much.

But if it’s just a big long piece that they could take that and put it together and all they’re looking for is an address, an address and a name that they can tie together.

If they can intercept that mail, then they can create an identity or they can use the identity that’s already tied with that mailing address.

So how does this all tie together?

Well, I learned back then and that from that point on I started cross shredding all my mail. Especially the envelopes that have the information on the outside with your name and your address and that, which is a funny thing.

I never would have thought it would have been necessary, but for some reason that it really was a huge way that they were at least at the time stealing identities. The other thing I did was I went out, I lived out in the country at the time and I’ve got a locking mailbox.

Well, fast forward it years later I didn’t have a locking mailbox at my last address. We’re actually going to be putting one in here at the new address. But the old address, we didn’t have one and I was friends with somebody that ran a private mailbox in town.

So we started getting all of our stuff at this private mailbox. And to this day, I still get a whole lot of my business work and everything through this private mailbox.

It really does cut down on the identity theft, because she’s very careful about the people she hires and everything else.

So I haven’t had an issue with identity theft since having all my mail go there. Not that they can’t get it somewhere else online or otherwise.

So how’s this all tie into business and everything else?

I’m getting there. I’m getting there.

One of the things that happens is if they we’re out of town and didn’t to the mailbox often enough that things start piling up. So I ended up with two of these letters and I’ll show you, I’ll show you the other side so you can’t see my address.

But you got these two envelopes that were bright pink and they had the same address on them, but they had the same return address on them, but there were two different dates.

Well, I’m like, what is it?

And I looked at who sent it. These were sent by Michael Senoff.

Michael Senoff is a fellow that I’ve mentioned previously. He runs HardToFindSeminars.com you can check out any of his stuff. He’s a famous interviewer, interviewed tons of marketing people and business people and all of these different issues that he has an interest in.

He’s gone out, interviewed these people, and then produce products based on this wide range of interviews, you know, 400, 500 interviews plus or however many he’s had through the years.

He’s had the website up since, 2002 I think, and fabulous material.

I definitely recommended anything you get from Michael Senoff, but I open these envelopes and they’re empty.

Why do I have two empty envelopes from two different dates?

Well, it turns out that I had purchased two separate things from him and these are were sent automatically, so I send an email out to them.

I say, what’s the deal with the empty pink envelopes?

What’s going on here?

And he comes back with a form letter that you could tell that it was a link. It was an email that was to a link. You go to this website and it says, Oh, obviously you’ve gotten my empty pink envelopes.

Let me tell you what it’s all about. I ended up with a bunch of these envelopes that I needed to get rid of and I figured what better than to just send them out to people that I’ve already done business with.

Now, he has all digital products.

Let me just say this part, he has all digital products.

How did he end up with my email address?

While he does all of his work through PayPal.

So if you purchase anything through PayPal and they’d give you access to the addresses of everybody that you’re doing business with.

So that’s where he got my address, my business address.

So he said, if you’ve received one of these and you asked about it, I’m going to give you a special offer specifically for people that asked about the empty envelopes. Now I could have let this go and just seen it as a flub.

And I imagine a lot of people do, or I say, oh, that’s interesting.

I wonder what that’s about and forget about it and never go back to it, but I had to know. I send them, I said, I got to know what this is about because I knew there was a reason behind it.

I won’t end up with two separate ones.

So it was a sale. It was a specific sale.

Now what’s the point of all this?

It’s a tactic for one thing. It’s a tactic. It’s a way to get your audience, your customer base to respond. The more you respond, the more you can intrigue them, the more you tie them in and you make them a part of your family.

It’s a very simple concept, but it’s all about demanding action. That’s a huge lesson that I get from these is demanding action.

Now there’s another thing that you get out of it, and that’s the concept that we’ve talked about in, How to Amazon Proof Your Business.

You know in that string of videos, you’d go watch those or read my upcoming book on it.

But it’s that concept of being different, just showing up in a different way, doing something completely absurd, completely different standing out. This is standing out. Simple, simple, simple. I mean, it’s nothing but a simple forever stamp on there. It’s nothing major.

This didn’t cost that much to send out, but it draws you in and it demands action.

Now most of the people, I guarantee you, most of the people that get these, nothing ever happens with them, but the people that do are tied in even closer to him and what he provides than anything else and was a great deal he offered to, it really was, I jumped on it.

I jumped on it, I did. I took advantage of it. I’m happy. I did already.

The material that he has is so good, but that’s a tactic.

It’s a simple tactic, but if you understand the psychology behind it, it’s huge and if you take something like that and do it at just the right time with your customer base, you’re going to draw them in and make a huge difference.

Make a big splash.

That’s all I got for today. Hey, you have a great night. Get out there and let the magic happen.

Standing Out With Direct Mail Grabbers

http://DreamBizChat.com

Standing out with direct mail grabbers.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live brought to you live every day from Grants Pass Oregon back here.

Today we’re looking specifically at a piece of mail that dropped in and this is one that anyone that’s in Southern Oregon has probably gotten these before from Butler Automotive Group. They sell a Ford’s and Acura’s.

It’s with a large dealerships here locally and if you asked me before which, well, I’ll help go cover that in a second.

I want to show you one specific thing about this piece of junk mail that I lovingly refer to a junk mail. Because I work a lot and in junk mail, I help people to use even physical direct mail like this to get attention.

It’s all about standing out.

If you can stand out with your customers, you have a chance of being heard and then eventually take them down the line of being known, liked, and trusted.

Right.

How do you get known?

First you got to stand up.

You got to be rise above everything and oftentimes when we get a bunch of stuff in the mail, we parse through it pretty quick.

Pay attention, next time you grab the mail and you’ve got a handful of things, what are you doing?

You’re looking for, okay, what’s the stuff I don’t need?

What does this stuff that I don’t even need to think about, look at or do anything else with?

One of these would normally be something that you would just kind of toss aside the differences with this particular one is that it comes with a little key.

That’s an actual physical key.

Now it hasn’t been cut specifically so that it works on anything, but it’s one of those deals that they send you an actual key, taped on here and it says your odds of winning this SUV is one in 71,158 if you received a key and your confirmation code matches the prize board, you are the winner of a 2019 Ford Escape SC or 25,000 cash.

That’s all this is.

This is a representative.

But many people don’t know why, something like this is in a piece of mail and it’s because it stops you.

It stops you and in the industry, it’s referred to as lumpy mail or as a grabber.

I remember Gary Halbert, a famous marketing genius, used to talk about grabbers.

Often times they talk about those being in an envelope, but this is an example of a free mailer that is, you know, it’s a regular mailer that you normally just kind of toss aside, but this grabs your attention.

It’s a little heavier and if you’re feeling something a little lumpy in it and you’re going to pay attention to this little key, whether you’ve received one of these before or not.

I always notice this little key when it shows up it comes a couple times a year that they do this same deal over and over again.

I can tell you it probably works for them because they do it over and over and over again.

So it must be working.

It must be worth tossing in a little bit of extra metal and plastic into the cost of the mailer to get that extra little attention to make you stop a little. Just a little bit and pay a little closer attention to their little piece of mail here rather than just tossing it aside like every other piece of junk mail that just kinda comes through and it’s obvious.

It’s obvious right off the right off the bat. It’s an ad, but this little grabber stops you.

It’s all about standing out.

Now I don’t know whether it works for them or not.

They may just be doing it because they’ve always done it.

It’s funny how businesses can work sometimes.

I’d love to find out if you are in the Southern Oregon area and you know anything about the Butler Automotive Group or the marketing people that work with them to to build this little thing.

I’d be interested to know how well it works for them because I could tell you, I could always talk about a piece of mail like this with the keys a few times a year.

It was always one of those things that’s always on my mind, but I couldn’t tell you which automotive group did it.

I really couldn’t.

I knew it was one of the big ones, but I couldn’t tell you that it was Butler Automotive Group.

So it’s not a name recognition thing that they were going for.

They’re going for specific people. I think specific people that are in the market for a car and just trying to get your attention, that split second longer may just do the trick.

That’s just one example.

There are a million examples.

I love lumpy mail.

I love any type of mail that’s different and odd and off the wall.

Most people don’t know you can mail just about anything.

There are people that mail coconuts that all you do is you, if you put a label on it and you can fit the postage on it, you can get it through the mail.

As long as it’s not hazardous or anything.

Well, I know you can do something’s alive. You can send chicken eggs through the mail, you can send chickens in the mail, but you got to do it a special way.

But you could take a coconut and hollow it out and seal it back together and you could have that be a mailer.

I mean there were a million things out there. 3D Mail Results, I think I’ve talked about on here before.

3DMailResults.com I think is the website. They’ve got some great examples of lumpy mail, but I just want you to think of the concept of standing out about being just just different enough, it a little bit more attention.

Now, if you could be more different, if you could be more outrageous, if you could stand out a whole lot more, that’s a key to really being able to capture people’s imaginations and to get them to pay attention a little bit longer so that they get to that point with it.

They Know, they Like and they Trust you and that leads the way to having an ongoing customer or client.

So just a little piece. If you’d like to see how you can standout more as a business, then I’d love to be able to talk to you.

Go to BrianJPombo.com and you could also go to a DreamBizChat.com especially if you are a business owner or executive that’s in the self-reliance field, meaning you have products and services that encourage people to become more self reliant.

Go to DreamBizChat.com the link is in the description above, below, depending on where you’re watching or listening to this so you have a great day.

In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.