I’ve worked with some very successful entrepreneurs.

I’ve had some success, myself.

I’ve written about my frustration with the 4-hour work week, and about the nastiness that is the biz opp side of Internet and information marketing.

Here’s where they all collapse into the ultimate test for any entrepreneur.

If you are building a business and one of your driving questions is, “how can I build a business that will make it so I don’t have to work too much?” — you aren’t cut out for building a business.

Dump the entrepreneurial dreams, save up some money, and buy a franchise. The steady and safe return with minimal owner involvement is what they were created for.

But if you are striking out in the world, finding your own path, and seeking to create value with a new venture where before there was none … well, if you want to know the secret beyond all secrets it is simply this:

You have to love the work.

Building a business is hard. You will be battered and bruised. You will make mistakes. And while mentors, roadmaps, resources, and support are out there; when everyone and everything is telling you to give up, only your effort and resolve will see you through.

If you hate the work, if you are working so that you “don’t have to work” … you’ll never make it over the hump. At the first sign of challenge you’ll give up and go home, because you were never invested in the work to begin with.

When you love the work?

When you love the work — and not just when it is easy or pleasant … but because in your bones you feel is HAS to be done and you are the one to be doing it — then you find your strength and resolve. And it is in those moments of strength and resolve when you have the opportunity to make magic.

One of the groups I’m most often asked about marketing to is the affluent.

Regardless of what you might have been told or seen on the nightly news, this segment of the population still has money to spend, is the last group to be impacted by economic turmoil, and they are still spending money today.

But there is a catch.

The way the affluent are spending money today is different then how things were just a few years ago.

To be perfectly clear — they are still spending, but they are spending differently.

If you are currently marketing to the affluent and want to continue, or want to expand your business to the affluent, paying attention to how things are changing is critical.

Which brings me to perspective.

You see, one of the things I do whenever I develop a new marketing campaign is to search for and understand Perspectives.

Let me explain what I mean…

I grew up in a lower middle class neighborhood outside of Baltimore.

Baltimore is a blue-collar town. And even when my own economic situation moved beyond lower middle class, my perspective on the world is still heavily imprinted by growing up “Rosanne-style.”

It always will be.

That doesn’t mean I can’t understand, market to, or appeal to people who have never known what it is like to stretch a dollar to get something to eat. I can, do, and if I may be so modest … will say I am exceptionally good at it.

It does mean that, as a professional marketer, I have to be aware of my own biases and seek out people and experiences that help me to understand and appeal to people who have had different experiences than my own.

In case you missed that “writer-downer” …

**If you plan to market to more than just yourself, it is critical that you do what it takes to understand your customer in a very deep and profound way.**

In fact, many marketing failures can be traced right back to skipping over that step.

Last November, I met someone whose youth couldn’t have been more different than my own.

She grew up with private planes and vacation homes.

Disposable income was a given.

Financial security always present.

And that has carried right through her adult life.

She “gets” what it is to live like that, and what it takes to appeal to people like her.

And, it turns out, she has dedicated her razor-sharp mind to helping other business owners learn *exactly* what it takes to develop, market and sell products and services to the affluent consumer.

Her name is Kelly O’Neil.

A few weeks ago she interviewed me about using remote presentations — teleseminars, webinars and videos — to market to the affluent. Among other things, we talked about how one of my students generated more than $3 million dollars with a single teleseminar to affluent consumers.

That interview is now part of something she calls, “Marketing to Millionaire’s University.”

For the next few days, Kelly is giving me the chance to pass on a VIP Preview Invitation to look into the program *and* get an amazingly generous 25% discount coupon should you decide to invest in any of the courses.

The catch? It is only good until Midnight, Pacific time, Saturday, October 31st.

So, let me make this simple.

If you are or are considering marketing to the affluent, you need to look into what Kelly has to offer.

Here’s the code for your 25% off discount (good only until the 31st): M2MEJV09

Now, click here to go to Marketing to Millionaire’s University.

If you have been following me for any period of time you know that I rarely if ever recommend someone. That above is an affiliate link, but if you’d rather visit without me getting credit, feel free — here’s the normal url.

Thank me later.

Be well,
Michael Cage

Sarah is a small business owner who lives in a state of steady crisis reaction.

She is well-versed in dealing with the crisis of the moment, even skilled at it.

So good, in fact, that when those moments of opportunity arise when she can step back and focus on the business at a systemic level, it is so uncomfortable and unknown that it never happens.

Opportunity is lost.

Wasted.

Soon another crisis looms. Demanding attention, getting a rise from those crisis-loving brain chemicals.

(If such a crisis doesn’t “pop up” … Sarah might well “create” it all on her own. Nature abhors a vacuum, ya know.)

Sarah’s is a comfortable position for far too many small business owners.

Moving beyond it is one of the key distinctions that mark the leap from small business owner to entrepreneur.

Three small business strategy questions

Here’s a simple exercise to test your clarity.

Don’t worry, you can answer at home with the curtains drawn. Be honest, no one else will know.

• Why does your business exist — what is its purpose in the world?
• How does your business sustain itself while fulfilling that purpose?
• What are the 3 key things you are focusing on this quarter to serve the last two questions?

If you can’t answer those questions in a flash, without hesitation, you are due a strategy day.

Ponder the big questions and how you day-to-day actions either serves your vision, detracts from your vision, or are absolutely aimless because you have no vision.

Let’s start at the beginning.

I don’t hate Timothy Ferriss, nor do I hate his book, “The Four Hour Work Week.”

In fact, I think the book is excellent in many ways on a tactical level.

What I do hate is the underlying philosophy that makes an idea like The 4- Hour Work Week so appealing.

I will go so far as to say that the reason I am in business … doing what I love doing, sharing what I discover with other entrepreneurs … is to get as many people as possible away from this mentality.

Let me explain…

For years, we have been taught that work is something you have to do … so that you can do what you really want while you are not working.

Most of us, as kids, were indoctrinated in that industrial-age philosophy.

The skeleton of the myth is that you …

… go to school so you can get good grades
… so you can get into a good college where you get good grades
… so you can get a good job where you can work your way up the ladder
… so you can “suck it up and do your time” at work while you enjoy your life on the evening, weekends and eventually when you retire.

People who believe in this kind of work/life separation are also those most likely to say:

“It’s just business, nothing personal.”

It manifests in entrepreneurs who believe they can be bastards in business, but “as long as they show up at church on Sunday” … they are still “good people.”

And, most common of all, it manifests in entrepreneurs who mistakenly believe they have escaped the old “job myth” because they have their own business. Yet when they substitute “successful business” for “good job” in the above myth, the realization that they are still living by those old industrial age roles sinks in.

By the way, I’m not saying there is something “wrong” with that. Only that you should think accurately about what you are doing and why you are doing it.

…and ask yourself if that is really what you want your life to be about.

The whole traditional myth is summed up nicely in a country song:

I don’t have to be me till Monday
Friday, Saturday, Sunday
I ain’t gonna face reality
Three days without punching a time clock
Three nights of goin’ non stop
No work and all play
I don’t have to be me, till Monday

I find this myth repulsive.

It deadens the soul.

It “teaches” us to ignore our gifts and our passions in favor of what others tell us is possible.

It was “useful” for the industrial age.

But it’s bullshit.

And along comes the 4-Hour Work Week and some people think they have found sweet escape.

But it is really just the same old myth taken to a hedonistic extreme.

Work still sucks.

So do as little of it as you can.

And live your life on your own terms the rest of the time.

It is the same philosophy which permeates the “Internet marketing” world.

It is the core promise of the stereotypical “get rich quick” pitch.

Does anyone doubt the “1 Hour Work Week” isn’t far behind?

The “17 Minute Work Week” after that?

And they’ll sell a ton.

They’ll sell precisely because they are piggybacking on that tired, old myth that just about everyone is living through.

Here’s what I believe …

The world doesn’t need any more people selling crap so they can live a playboy’s life.

It needs people who are committed and passionate about who they are and what impact they want to be having. People for whom each day is an opportunity to do what they love, experience the ripples flowing from their efforts, and be well rewarded for it.

What is that thing that, if you were to choose to do it … fully and without compromise … would stir your soul?

Truth is … at this point, making one million or ten million or fifty million in a business is commonplace.

I’m not saying it is always easy. Only that the path is known and clear, and can be duplicated when you are willing to make the required sacrifices.

But building a business that is an expression of who is it you most want to be in this world … a business that actually makes a difference … that, to me, is truly something to celebrate. And I believe that is becoming more and more true as we shift away from a commodity-driven era and into one where, increasingly, our choices are made as much by ours values as our wallets.

Think Steve Jobs to John Scully …

“Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?”

Which brings me to an interesting point.

While I think the philosophy Timothy Ferris offers in the 4-Hour Work Week is a freshly-polished version of the same old industrial-age myth, my experience of how he does what he does is quite the opposite.

To be clear, I don’t know him and have never spoken with him.

I do think I’d like him a lot … he strikes me as the kind of guy who’d be willing to engage passionately in a conversation like this. And I respect smart people with big ideas who have the guts to put them out in the world, no matter whether I agree or disagree.

My sense is that Timothy loves what he does … feels strongly about his message and the impact it can and has had … and I believe he happily works a lot more than 4 hours per week at it as a result. I absolutely believe he does what I envision the highest form of entrepreneurship to be about … I just wish he were teaching it, too.

Just because marketing advice is repeated often … doesn’t make it true.

“Find a need and fill it … that is the key to successfully marketing a business.” – Someone who needs to be slapped around a little bit.

Truth is, follow this “find a need and fill it” advice and you are inviting commodity pricing.

Think about it…

People NEED to get their roof repaired … but they WANT on-time, courteous service, clean workers and a guarantee their roof won’t leak again.

People NEED a computer network set up … but they WANT someone who understands their business, will suggest things to make it run smoother before a breakdown prompts it, and won’t make them feel stupid by talking geek to them.

People NEED to have a cavity filled … but they WANT to look good and have a pain-free experience in a friendly office with warm people.

People price shop for what they need, and even that makes them grumpy.

People pay premium prices for what they want, and they love it.

Go to an Apple Store. Play marketing anthropologist. Really observe the people. You’ll “get it” in less than an hour.

Service business, retail business, business-to-business, whatever your business…

…if your business struggles with commodity pricing or if you have to “justify” your price more than once in a blue moon … betcha an iPhone (ahem, another example) you are focusing on what your customers or clients need, and aren’t paying attention to what they want. And that makes them begin to not want you.

Forget find a need and fill it.

Find a want, touch your market … and lead a movement.

I talked about this in today’s Aggressive Marketing & Entrepreneurship Daily Podcast (along with a discussion about when to release version 1 of your product or service, true entrepreneurial competencies, and how to stay passionate and energized in your business). If you haven’t listened yet … what are you waiting for? … I’m on Episode #4. (Subscribe in iTunes.)

Exceptional experiences that pack a story to tell are the new luxury marketing offers. (And there is a lesson here for all businesses, marketing to the affluent or not, so read on.)

People with disposable, six-figure incomes are spending money on luxury goods that used to be reserved for the “upper crust” of society. These are the mass affluent, and they have been written about in exhausting detail.

Ages ago, in order to come away with that uber-trendy LV bag, you had to go to a boutique where you were treated like a king or queen before receiving your prize. At full retail price. Nowadays, it is as likely to have been purchased at CostCo or a discounter on the web.

This democratization of luxury goods has destroyed a major selling point: Exclusivity.

Cynical or not, most luxury goods are sold at a premium in large part due to the social message they communicate. When “everyone” has access to what used to make your social group “unique” … the symbols begin to lose their meaning.

BTW, in case you have your nose up at the “snobs” who would drop $2k on a handbag to show off … keep in mind that everything from tribal tattoos, hybrid vehicles, fair trade coffee and Apple Computers are sold the same way.

Identifying your “tribe” through your “stuff” isn’t a rich person’s disease … it’s a condition of social humans. You and I included. Deal with it.

So … with luxury goods becoming less exclusive and more available with every passing day, their value as symbols decreases. When that happens, the people who used to value the symbols seek out the next big thing.

Today, that “thing” takes the form of experiences.

The value of an experience is not limited to the experience itself. It includes the story you get to tell about the experience from that point forward.

Two weeks ago, I flew home from a speaking gig in Dallas.

I’m not a “suit guy” … but the man sitting next to me had a stunning suit on and I told him I loved it. What followed was a 30 minute discussion about how he had flown three times to London, spent the better part of a day each time with a Saville Row tailor, and almost 9 months later this suit was the result. Good story.

He almost certainly paid upwards of $10,000 for the entire experience.

Could he have have received a similar quality suit from a Washington D.C. tailor (or a Saville Row tailor who travelled to DC)? Certainly. For less money? Absolutely. But would it have been nearly as good a story to tell? Not even close.

Let’s turn this to geek culture.

Everyone in the blogging world is aware of Hugh’s project with Thomas Mahon, English Cut. Is there anyone out there who does not believe that an English Cut suit does not carry a premium in Silicon Valley … not only because of the quality … but because of the story it allows the wearer to tell? Ozwald Boateng may be hot stuff in LA, but my money is on English Cut being the one people in the cutting edge world of tech “get.”

In case you are wondering, I’m not writing all of this to talk about going bespoke.

I don’t care what you sell. When you engineer your offerings to include an exceptional experience and a great story to tell about it … you have a point of differentiation and the seed of incredible word-of-mouth marketing it’ll take ages for the competition to catch up to.

If you honestly evaluate your advertising using the five questions in this message, one of two things will happen:

• You’ll discover that your advertising provides compelling and powerful answers to each and every question. If so, congratulations—you’re in the top 1% of all small business advertisers, and you’re achieving amazing results from your advertising.

or

• You’ll find that your advertising is totally focused on the wrong person—it’s focused on you or your business instead of on the perfect client in your target market. If this is you, don’t feel too badly—99% of all small businesses fall into this category. Their advertising isn’t very effective and earns, at best, a small “fair share” of available business … and it only gets that much because the competition’s advertising is equally horrible.

Let me stress one very important point before you continue: do not make this an intellectual exercise.

Think of your image of the perfect client. Then physically pull out your advertisements, sit down, and answer the following five questions as if your perfect client were asking them.

These questions will make demands upon your advertising that are very different from traditional advertising. Answering may seem strange at first, but stick with it. If your current advertising doesn’t provide compelling answers, start to think about how you could change it so that it does.

Small Business Advertising Question #1: “Why Are You Bothering Me?”

FACT: Advertising is an interruption.

Your ideal clients didn’t wake up this morning, get out of bed, and proclaim, “Wow, I sure hope someone advertises to me today.” The real world simply doesn’t work that way.

Your ideal clients, however, did get out of bed with business problems, goals, and other things that are important to them. If your advertising doesn’t grab their attention with a compelling reason that’s important to them (not you, but them), it will be thrown in the trash or just ignored.

If you don’t know what’s on your ideal client’s mind, you have no business putting together an advertisement … yet.

Go back to market research, and learn more about your target market. The research and understanding are key to generating responses to your advertising.

Small Business Advertising Question #2: “What Does It Have to Do with Me?”

After you capture your clients’ attention, you must get their interest.

Every once in a while, an advertisement will run in the Wall Street Journal with a huge, bold headline that simply says:

SEX!

Does it get people’s attention? Sure. But the next line is, “Now that I have your attention, let me tell you about my worn-out, dusty shoes.” Well, unless you’re interested in worn-out, dusty shoes, your interest in the advertisement stops right there and you move onto the next page.

So you see, once you grab their attention, you must get them interested … immediately! You can do this by telling them what the advertisement’s information has to do with the things they consider to be important. Again, this is about what they consider to be important, not what you consider to be important.

A tried-and-true way to capture interest is to state the biggest possible benefit or promise you’re able to make to your target market. If you know your market well, this is a sure-fire way to keep prospective clients reading.

Small Business Advertising Question #3: “Why Should I Believe You?”

Prove it!

Decision makers default to skepticism, not belief, about your claims. If you don’t give your prospects powerful and compelling reasons to believe what you claim in your advertising, they won’t.

It’s your job to provide the proof they need to believe what you’re communicating. If your advertising doesn’t provide proof, get to work and add it in.

For every promise you make and every benefit you list, ask the question: “Why should I believe you?” Then answer the question using one of the seven methods of adding overwhelming proof to your advertising (my three favorites are testimonials, case studies, and photographs). Or answer the question as if you were sitting in front of a prospect who asked you that very question.

Small Business Advertising Question #4: “What Should I Do About It?”

Just listing a phone number or website URL isn’t enough. I’m consistently amazed by the number of advertisements I critique that lack a compelling offer and clear directions for how to act on it.

Have you given prospects a specific step to take in order to begin the process of becoming your client? The key word here is “specific.” Tell the prospects exactly what to do, how to do it, and what they’ll get as a result.

Small Business Advertising Question #5: “Why Should I Do It Right Now?”

A “cute” theory espoused by many so-called advertising gurus is that decision makers will remember you or your firm when it comes time to take action, even if they don’t take action right away.

But “reality” (you know—studies, statistics, and empirical evidence) shows that notion to be utterly false.

If your prospects don’t take the action you want when your message is in front of them, it’s highly unlikely that they’ll come back to it at a later date.

Sure, they might “mean to” take action later. They might file the ad in the pile of things to do, put it on a corkboard, or stick in the pile of “really important” stuff on their desk. But the end result is usually that your message is put aside and forgotten.

Your advertising must give prospects a compelling reason to act immediately. What will they gain if they do? What will they lose if they don’t?

Wrapping It Up

While advertising salespeople like to talk about image, exposure, and awareness, your focus belongs on making sales and on results you can deposit in your bank account. These questions will help you create advertising to do just that.

Over a year ago I posted about an experience at one of my local Starbucks. I had my days mixed up and pulled up an hour before they opened with a serious caffeine fix. You can read all about it here, but I’ll give you the nutshell version:

As I was leaving a barista who was getting the store ready to open came out to get me, asked me if I wanted a drink, invited me in and took care of me. He didn’t have to do it, but he did, and I think it is an amazing testament to the hiring practices of Starbucks that they sort for people who “get” what a great customer experience is all about.

From the original post:

Managers at Starbucks put tremendous attention into hiring good “people people.” People who enjoy interacting with and pleasing others. Their hiring and training process is designed … systematically … to produce events like the one I described. It isn’t an accident. It isn’t left to chance. And it’s part of why they win.

Fast-forward to yesterday, and I was browsing through my local Borders and saw this book. Turns out, my story made the book.

What didn’t make the book, was the following:

The barista’s name is Wen, and he works at this Starbucks. If you are flying into Dulles, live or work around Herdon, Reston, Chantilly or Sterling … pop in and tell Wen he is famous … and appreciated. If you are from Starbucks, give the dude a raise. He and people like him make you look good.

UPDATE: Incidentally, the lesson to take from this is not to mandate that your employees do 2.3 good things per day. That’d be as silly as mandating that all the introverts in your company magically transform into extroverts. The lesson is that Starbucks (or, at the very least, the management in our region) makes it a point to hire people for whom doing things the “Starbucks” way will be easy and natural. Do that well and the company can step out of the way and let the employees be themselves.

A software product I use has undergone massive changes over the last 6 months. So much so they skipped from version 1 to version 3.

In response to complaints about the changes on their forum, they offered the following basic response:

We did version #1 and people complained, so we completely changed the ways things work to do version #3. And we still get the same complaints!

There is a very subtle and potentially damaging message being offered here.

It says, “we are a rudderless ship, being blown about by the whims of the sea.”

Some would look at this situation and say things are great … that this is an example of a customer-driven company. To an extent, I agree.

The problem is that I have no idea what they’ll be moving towards tomorrow … next week … next month … or next year.

Many businesses talk about the importance of building a relationship with their customers. But a relationship is a long-term commitment, and without a core philosophy that I can buy into beyond the here and now … I’m missing a huge part of what I need to make a decision.

Think about it this way…

Switching from PCs to Apple computers was a big jump. I had to relearn a new OS, all new apps, find new resources sites to get things done. What encouraged me to do it wasn’t the pretty hardware (though it certainly caught my eye) … it was knowing their commitment to a philosophy of “it just works” going into the future. I was buying into a year from now as much as I was buying into today. Make sense?

Contrast that with the core philosophy of the Microsoft PC … well, do it if you can figure out what it is.

Here is an interesting question…

Imagine that I am a “perfect customer” for you. Now imagine I am standing in front of you and ask, “What are you doing right now, behind the scenes, to make my life even better going forward? And what is driving you to do it?”

Wouldn’t a good answer to that go a very long way to getting me beyond buying your product and to buying into a relationship with you?

P.S. Ever wonder why “behind-the-scenes” blogs are so effective? Why we like to see the development process, as it is happening? It feels good to know people are working, day-in and day-out, to help your life work better. Right?