Another BlitzLocal colleague and I were discussing “leadership” and what that truly meant.  We came up with this analogy, which I hope you’ll enjoy.

Imagine you move rocks for a living.  The more rocks you move, the more you’re paid.  You don’t move rocks, you don’t get paid.  Thus, you understand the direct linkage between putting in time and compensation.  This is the hourly wage model– some rock movers get paid more than others, whether flipping burgers, working in a big corporation, or drilling teeth. The more teeth you can drill, the more you’re paid.  Are you a corporate wage slave or someone who is paid piecemeal?  This was me for twenty years of my life– a prostitute selling my time for money. Whether I billed $5 per hour or $250– it was the same thing. One day in the proverbial quarry, you decide that moving more rocks to get paid more was not the right answer.  At best, you might move 20% more rocks than the other guy in a particular day, but it wasn’t sustainable.  So you leave the quarry for 7 days, much to the surprise of your fellow laborers. In that time you move no rocks and make no income.

THE SHIFT

But when you come back, you are driving a bulldozer.  Now, in one day you are able to move 100 times what a single laborer can do. But to get that bulldozer, you had to temporarily earn nothing– plus spend money to buy the vehicle and spend time learning how to drive the thing.  Your fellow laborers, noses down, continue to keep moving rocks– they don’t look up to see you in the bulldozer. They have heard about bulldozers in the magazines, but never thought it was something possible for them.

You hang out with the other guys driving bulldozers.  You have newfound wealth, which is fleeting, since the crowd you run with also enjoys the same standard of living.  You’re right back in the middle of your peers.  It feels great to be 100 times more productive than you were before, but you’re not quite fulfilled.

ANOTHER SHIFT

So you leave the quarry again and disappear for 7 days.  In that time you move no rocks and make no income.  And when you return, you are back with 100 bulldozers and 100 other eager new bulldozer operators. You’ve opened a bulldozer training school!  Flocks of manual laborers who used to move rocks now come to be trained by you.  And you make a commission on the rocks they move, since these laborers didn’t have enough money to buy their own bulldozers.  These laborers are now moving 100 times what they did before, but given the costs of training, equipment, and your profit, they only make 10 times what they did before.  Still, they are happy.

And you are temporarily happy.  With 100 bulldozer operators moving 100 times as many rocks as a single man can do, you’re at 10,000 times your earlier productivity.  Your lifestyle has changed, too.  You have have a Granite Card by American Express and have a new mansion in Boulder. People admire you–you’re a ROCK star. They think that the secret to your success is getting stoned.

But it’s not enough– something inside you is not quite satisfied.  You can only train so many new bulldozer operators per day.  You’re still moving rocks in a sense, just mass quantities. Growth in your bulldozer school is directly related to the amount of time you’ve put in.  So one day you close the bulldozer school.  The press thinks you’ve gone mad– that you’ve lost your marble.

SCALE UP AGAIN

You disappear for 7 days.  And when you return, you’re holding a brochure in your hand– “How to Open Your Own Bulldozer Training School”.  You’re created a franchise model, where you are training up other school owners. You have first hand experience in training new bulldozer operators, so new school owners can rely on your experience.  You now have sold 100 franchises, each one with a happy owner training 100 bulldozer operators, who in turn do the work of 100 laborers.  That’s 1 million times leverage.

THE LESSON

You would not have been able to pull this off unless you had personal experience moving rocks, driving bulldozers, training bulldozer operators, and running a franchised business.  You were able to take your knowledge and multiply it.   If you didn’t intimately understand each aspect of the business, scaling up would have just multiplied losses.

Now examine your life and what you do.  Are you moving rocks or are you multiplying? Writing software is a multiplication process.  You can write one copy and sell it an infinite number of times.  You could hand-build a single PPC campaign for a client or perhaps write a campaign management tool that can do it over and over in an automated fashion.  But just like the rock moving analogy, if you aren’t a practitioner with hands-on experience in managing campaigns, your automation won’t be effective.  There are lots of guys selling software that builds websites, manages PPC campaigns, creates SEO reports, sends out emails, and any variety of tasks.

If you want to create massive value, consider the rocks that you are moving. Can you write software or processes that can make life easier for others– or perhaps do some task faster, more effectively, or at lower cost?  Everyone has something they know exceedingly well.  What is that skill for you?  You don’t have to be able to write code.  Software is nothing more than rules for machines, just like processes are rules for humans.

McDonalds is a software company that just happens to make burgers.  People go to McDonalds not because it has the most delicious burgers, but for the consistency of the food and the experience. You can take pimply-faced teens all over the world, minds distracted with their latest relationship dramas, speaking different languages, skilled or not– and still turn out that same value meal each time. That’s process for you.

NOW IT’S YOUR TURN

BlitzLocal is about empowering individuals to become entrepreneurs– we provide the tools and process to allow folks who know little about internet marketing, but are eager and willing to learn, to perform like experts. Our analysts are trained to help small business owners grow their practices.  We’re about the little guy helping the little guy.  Do you want to be a part of our team?  Contact me to find out more.

I have to admit– the restaurants, hotel suites, and first class flights are nice.  It’s even nicer to be able to tell folks about it, since you’re getting twice the benefit (enjoying plus telling).  Is there anything wrong with wanting to enjoy the good life?  Does that make me evil or greedy?  Hey, you only live once.

And as for showing off, isn’t that part of the game?  Just look at the food pictures that JohnChow.com takes or the lifestyles that other affiliates openly broadcast to the world.  In fact, I think it’s a legitimate business expense. My business as an affiliate marketer and ability to broker deals is largely based on my reputation.  Thus, when folks gossip about my lifestyle, I consider it to be free PR.  And it’s better than paid advertising– it’s more believable.   And why not take friends out to nice places?   You’re building relationships, plus they’ll return the favor to you.

But now that I’ve created a “baller” reputation, I’ve had to strive hard to maintain it, even when I’m broke.  The reason I fly first class now is that I’m afraid of someone seeing me fly coach.  Yeah, the seat is bigger and the food is much better.  But really, if someone who knows me happens to see me in coach, my reputation will be ruined.  They will go and tell everyone.  Plus, I’ll have less to talk about when I’m hanging around other affiliates that I’m trying to impress.  I might even be made fun of or folks might not think that I’m a serious player in business.  They’ll think that I’m just fronting.

The nice thing about affiliate marketing is that I can avoid discussion of what I actually do.  Obviously, because of my lifestyle, I “must” be successful.  But what offers am I running, how do I get that traffic, what’s my payout, do I actually have any true expertise– those questions will remain unanswered.  Of course, I’m not going to tell you– that’s how I make money and I’m not about to broadcast my secrets to the world, you understand?  If I was doing agency-level work, such as had clients, then you could look at the clients I have and evaluate my work and that of my “team”.

But I am a one-man promotional vehicle.  My “team” consists of loose relationships with other affiliate marketers and some contract Indians I once hired on a job board.  I actually have no operating or project management expertise.  In fact, I don’t understand the basic differences between personal and corporate finance– I run them all under my personal bank account, which gets me into trouble with the IRS.  But if you ask me, I will deny any problems.  My ego and image is priority #1.  Everyone else is boasting about their earnings that don’t exist, so this is just part of the game. And was with any game, you do whatever it takes to win.  All is fair in love and war and affiliate marketing.

Maintaining my front is getting increasingly difficult. Bernard Madoff was able to keep it going for 4 years before being found out a couple weeks ago.  Reed Slatkin, one of the other larger Ponzi frauds in history, was able to keep it going for 15 years.  But what you don’t know won’t hurt you.  Like they say– if you got it, flaunt it.  Or as Mark Twain would say, “The secret to success is to be genuine– fake that, and you’ve got it made.”

People, this is the American dream.  We know that Hollywood actors are just pretending and nobody has a problem with that. And nobody thinks twice about how most marketing is just thinly veiled lies about whether that attractive young lady will actually have sex with you holding that particular brand of beer, or whether a certain diet supplement will really make you attractive or increase/decrease a particular body part’s size. Hey– want to lose weight quickly, by the way?

There’s a sucker born every minute, so if it isn’t me selling you those items, it will be someone else. Caveat emptor (or “buyer beware” for those of you who don’t know Latin).  If you’re dumb enough to fall for these marketing tricks, then you deserve to have your money taken from you.  I don’t have time to discuss the difference between ethical and legal.  I follow the Golden Rule– whoever has the gold, makes the rules. Did I mention–there’s money to be made!  I’ll steal from you, too, if you’re dumb enough to be taken.  And what do you call a dumb criminal?  One that gets caught.

Do you know me? Is this you?

I decided to join Technorati today to see how my blog stacks up against the zillion other blogs out there.  I’m not a public figure, nor do I blog much, so I don’t expect much of anything here.  Part of what’s required to join is to verify that you own your blog.  Thus, I am pasting in this code:

I’m competing against my friend, Larby Amirouche, to see who can get a higher ranking in the blogosphere.

Today I received two “urgent” messages from a Facebook user named Brian Zisk. They are both similar in content and tone, so I’ll just post one of them below.   There is a game on Facebook called “Friends For Sale“.  You buy and sell friends, and in the process are able to give them nicknames, send them virtual gifts, and write on their walls.

For fun, I bought a number of folks and promoted the company that I work at.  I even promoted the affiliate marketing blog of a friend, who was promoted on TechCrunch.  Turns out, this Brian Zisk fellow carried out his threat.  My current status message in this game is now ”I’m the ShitzLocal.com Spammer. Boycott my company!“

For a proponent of the arts and self-expression, it’s surprising to see someone get his panties in a wad over a silly Facebook game.

  

Facebook

to Dennis

Reply

Brian sent you a message.

——————–
Subject: Please… Time sensitive…

Dear Dennis Yu,

Please change the message under my name on friends for sale  to something like it was before, or anything non-offensive, but please remove the reference to your company from my listing the next time you log in so I do not have to see the association, or I will buy you on friends for sale and you will most likely not be happy with the text I associate with your name and company.

I am sure this is but a misunderstanding, but do not find it amusing, and would appreciate you removing this irritation ASAP.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Brian Zisk