Experience Success By Looking At Things Differently.
Viagra Was Created To Help Lower Pressure, But It Raised Something Else.
*This article was written by U.S. SBA Entrepreneur of the Year, Author, Tulsa Motivational Speaker, Founder of DJ Connection Tulsa Wedding DJs, Las Vegas Motivational Speaker, Founder of Juliet Films Tulsa Wedding Videographers, Founder of the Tulsa Bridal Association, Founder of A-Lot-of-Things, Clay Clark.
In order to become truly successful in business, you have to train yourself to become a “delusional optimist.” Frankly, it’s not good enough to be a positive person, or a person who is somewhat positive. You must be able to put a positive spin on every situation. You must then be able to deliver that positive spin to yourself and to those that you come in contact with in a convincing way.
In March of 1998 a team of scientists at Pfizer Laboratories were working the development of a drug called “slidenafil” (which is the active drug in Viagra). The drug was designed to help lower the blood pressure of patients. However, Dr. Brian Klee (who was the Senior Medical Director at Pfizer) said, “But one thing that was found during those trials is that people didn’t want to give the medication back because of the side effect of having erections that were harder, firmer and lasted longer.” The team was disappointed beyond belief. Some of the most brilliant minds on the planet had spent years of their life working together to help lower the dangerously high blood pressure levels that some people were experiencing. Who would want a drug like this? They thought surely no one would ever want a drug that caused a long-lasting erection. And they were right. No one would want to take a blood pressure medicine that produced the side-effect of a long-lasting erection. However, 35 million men globally did want a drug that caused long-lasting erections that produced the side-effects of lower blood pressure. Take a moment to ponder and reflect upon the profoundness of this story. One of the most successful pharmaceutical drugs of all time was created by accident.
In my own business career as a serial entrepreneur I have run into this idea countless times. And to help you MAKE MORE MONEY THROUGH INNOVATIVE THINKING & MARKETING I shall now provide you with two quick examples from my own business career. As you read these stories think about how they relate directly you and your career. Take notes, write down action steps and feel your innovative thinking skills increasing.
Story #1:
When I first started really marketing DJ Connection, every other DJ company in Tulsa focused their advertising and marketing on the concept of “allowing the bride to meet the DJ” and “having over 100,000 songs to choose from.” Because I was unaware of the importance of differentiating myself in the marketplace, and because I was 20 I thought I would just do exactly what they were doing. In my mind that made sense. If it worked for them, it would work for me.
Because I had spent a immense amount of time working in phone sales at Faith Highway, Impact Ministries, Tax & Accounting Software and West Telecommunications it was easy for me to book nearly any human that called me. However, I quickly found out that arranging a time for the bride to meet the DJ was becoming harder and harder. Most the brides that called worked during the day, and most of the DJs entertained at night. The brides always wanted to meet the DJs on the nights and weekends and DJs always worked on the nights and weekends. The further expand upon the problem, it was very tough to arrange a meeting between the bride and the DJ that produced good results. When the brides met the DJs they would immediately begin asking them a laundry list of questions. The DJs who were phenomenal entertainers, but who were not sales people could never answer the questions just right. I remember one bride asked DJ Jay, “what is overall favorite kind of music?” He candidly responded that he like “classic rock.” In her mind that was a deal breaker because she like hip-hop. Another bride as DJ Rubideaux, “how would you announce us?” He excitedly told her, “Ladies and Gentlemen it is now time to introduce the incredible Mr. & Mrs. Thompson!!!!” Almost instantly she decided that we were “too over the top” for her. This pattern continued over and over until the thought finally occurred to me. We are never going to be able to guess at what the Bride wants consistently. So we to start interviewing the bride. We need to start telling the bride that we will assign her DJ to her based upon our interview with her and her overall preferences.
This one little idea changed the game. Pretty soon we built a list of nearly 100 questions that we asked the bride. We began telling the brides that we would like to meet with them to go over all of their preferences so that we could assign a DJ to them that would be a perfect fit for them instead of having to guess at what their preferences were. We then began to take super-detailed notes during these meetings. We began asking the brides what music they liked and what music they didn’t like. We asked them how interactive of a DJ they were looking for. We began asking them what they didn’t want out of their DJ experience. It was magic!
Once we had collected all of their information, we then would assign the DJ based upon their super-detailed preferences. With this new information the quality of our shows went up and our closing percentage on the sales calls dramatically increased as well. We had completely taken the guesswork out of the experience. I could have just put my head in my rear and have been overwhelmed by the negativity of constant rejections, but instead I chose to learn from it. I chose to ask myself, “what did I learn from this experience?” “Why did the bride not book?” “What could we do better next time?”
Story #2:
Starting a business in hard. When I started DJ Connection it took me nearly 3 years just to figure out how not to be a complete loser. It took me 4 more years to learn how to build a duplicatable and scalable system. It took profound meetings with Clifton Taulbert and Terry Fisher for me to learn how to become a great father and a great business person. It took an all-day meeting with the Founder of Hobby Lobby, David Green for me to understand that I should not feel even slightly guilty about firing an willfully underperforming employee. It took a life-changing breakfast meeting with Chet Cadieux for me to learn how to systematically manage the quality control of our people in the field. It took me nearly 2 years of horrific trial and error DJ experiences before I learned how to truly keep a crowd entertained. Basically it took me AN UNBELIEVABLE AMOUNT OF TIME to learn how to be successful in business. In fact it takes some business people even longer to figure out how to become successful in business. Thus, once I started winning business awards my phone started blowing up with questions from business people and entrepreneurs throughout the country. They kept calling all the time asking the same questions, “Hey Mr. Clark, I would be honored if I could meet you for lunch.” “Hey Mr. Clark, I would love to pick your brain.” “Mr. Clay I don’t know if you remember me, but I sat behind you in college, I was wondering if I could pick your brain.” And I loved helping these people. Thus, I would take time out of my schedule to help these people. The ones that took action become super successful. A 21 year old dude named Roger was named “Tulsa’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year.” Countless people went on to achieve success. Meanwhile I was finding that my schedule was becoming depleted of time and I was not financially benefiting from their successes at all.
I also found myself becoming irate with the people who had the audacity to take my time and to “pick my brain,” but not the diligence, the effort or the self-discipline needed to actually take action. I just wanted to hunt down these people one by one to tell them, “Give me back my time you time-sucking-slacker!” But that would have not been positive. I also noticed a pattern. I noticed that “intenders” always showed up later and never were prepared. They were weak as humans which is why they were weak in business. I noticed that the people who showed up early and were prepared were the “doers” and the “success stories waiting to happen.” Basically one group of people valued my time and their time and the other group did not. I was frustrated beyond belief! It might sound hilarious to you reading this, but I would drive home in my car dwelling on how mad I was at these time wasters. Then a week or two would go buy and I drive home in my car dwelling about how happy I was that one of the “doers” had become super-successful. Their thankyou letters fueled me. It was awesome to see someone go from A to B in their life quickly simply because they now knew what to do and they were now willing to do it.
Then one day as I was thinking about how pathetic the “intenders” were I asked myself, “Super negative self, what can you learn from this? How can you turn this negative energy into positive energy? How can you avoid the time-wasters and embrace the action-takers.” Then it hit me! Boom! I decided I would begin charging the people I met with what my time was worth if I had been spending it working in my own businesses instead of helping them with theirs. The people who were morons would never be willing to pay, because these were the same people were weren’t willing to get off of their couch! The idiots would never pay me $1,500 for a monthly business coaching. The pathetic companies would never pay $8,000 to grow their businesses quickly. These time-wasters never invested in education, they never read and they were never willing to inconvenience themselves to do anything. These people loved to blame the economy, their childhood, their community and everyone but themselves. And the doers would totally embrace this concept. They understood the value of paying for advertising that produced positive cash flow, on-going education, nice homes, nice vehicles and a toothbrush. These doers got up early and worked hard all day. These people hit the ground running every day and would were willing to do whatever it takes. These people would totally be willing to pay $1,500 if it made them $150,000. These people would totally be willing to pay $8,000 if it would make their University or company $100,000 + every year. Yes! This idea was going to work!
Today, I have a waiting list of people beating down my door for consulting. Just today I had a lady call me about publishing a book, a Doctor call me about branding and marketing his company while reducing his overhead, a social media professional from Houston call me about helping her leverage her brand, a Leadership Expert call me about learning how to effectively cold-call, a Search Engine Optimization Expert call me about learning how to sell more products from the stage, a Men’s Grooming Lounge talk with me about how to build a more effective membership system, etc…It’s amazing! These people are winning awards and I am feeling great. I turned the negative into a positive simply by looking at things differently.
Just in the past 2 months (as I’m writing this) one of our coaching clients has become the top bean selling Barista in his Starbucks region, a gourmet cookie company won a $30,000 prize package for their excellence in entrepreneurship, and the Tulsa Men’s Barbershop has been featured in 7 publications in their first 9 weeks of business. It’s crazy what happens when you simply change the way you look at things. Now when I drive home I say to myself, “I love these people. I’m blessed to know them!” And the morons don’t get to me anymore. They weed themselves out. They aren’t willing to pay, just like they aren’t willing to do anything productive with their lives.
My friend if you will just FORCE YOURSELF TO LOOK AT THINGS DIFFERENTLY and to FIND THE POSITIVITY IN EVERY SITUATION YOU WILL WIN!
