It can be tricky, but it definitely is something to answer, if you want to feel like you’re following a path towards success.

A Few of My Business Models

For example, here are a few business models that I’m currently executing against to make business for myself:

• New Marketing Labs is a marketing consulting company. It follows the service model. Charge clients for services and deliver against the promises made in the contract. The basics of the model are to charge companies for service, to pay employees to execute the service, and make small profits off the margin.
• [chrisbrogan.com] is a media platform. It makes some money via affiliate ads like my support of Thesis (affiliate link), but more so, it’s a media hub that lets me point towards projects and ideas I think are interesting. It’s lead generation for my professional speaking. It’s lead generation for NML. So, the site isn’t the business model, exactly, but it’s part of other models.
• Professional speaker – I make money off speaking professionally to companies about marketing, online media, community, sales, lead generation, and topics like that. It’s a simple model, where you make money for intellectual property, but it’s a tricky model in that you have to be there to earn the money. It’s an “active income” model.
• Third Tribe Marketing is a media model as well. Build an active community, give it useful information, provide it lots of resources, and make money off the membership dues. This is a bit more passive (I’m on there daily for 1-2 hours a day), but it’s a little easier than flying all over the world speaking, so it’s a great business line to add to what else I’m doing.
• Books and other media. You don’t get rich selling books. But they’re great lead generators for other business.

So, those are just some of my own business models. In there, I didn’t mention events, which can be a good model for earning money. I didn’t talk about informational products, which can be lucrative. I didn’t talk about a lot of ways one can make money.

Find Models and Mentors

One of the best things you can do for yourself, should you want to improve your own business, is figure out models and/or find passive mentors. For instance, when I read Business Stripped Bare, by Sir Richard Branson, I felt like I’d found a kindred spirit in how he likes to organize his companies. I thought, “Wow, I’m not crazy.” It’s not like I spent any time across a table with Sir Richard. I simply read his book, took scores of notes, and then tried applying bits of his ideas to my own work, and found out what worked.

I do this with as many business books as I can get my hands on. I look for the bits I can apply. I also do that with blogs, and I do it with videos (you do watch TED, don’t you?).

Figuring out models is tons of fun, too. For instance, I had a great talk with John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing for some content I was building for Third Tribe, and John was talking about how he built out his training package, how he built a network of people to refer business into, and some of the other facets of his business. It’s all very replicable, all without ripping off John, and all something you could build towards growing out another niche.

I had a great talk the other night with Joe Sorge (I’ve talked about Joe’s business before), where I riffed some of my new business ideas off him, and he gave me his experiences back. It was immediately apparent that Joe was far more than a guy who sold hamburgers. The more we talked, the more I realized that he had a lot of experience in picking apart business models and finding inspiration to make them succeed.

Modeling Your Own Business

Ray Kroc used to quiz MBA students as to what business he was in. Everyone thought he was in the hamburger business. When I heard this, I thought, “A-ha. No. He’s in the franchising business.” But no, I was wrong, too. Ray was in the real estate business. McDonalds owns more real estate (more PRIME real estate, by the way) than even the Catholic Church. When you look at a business, the model isn’t always immediately apparent.

What’s your business’s model? How are you looking to make money? What is the longer-term vision behind your company? Have you modeled it?

Here’s a hint, by the way: in doing this, in taking out a piece of paper and writing down what you think your business is, if you can’t describe it in just a few words, it might not be a very successful model. Further, if you don’t work on ways to emulate some of the more successful models that are out there, you might be missing the opportunity to learn and piggy-back off the success of other pioneers.

Ted Turner turned billboard profits into a media company by having the vision to see that he wasn’t in the billboard business. What business are you in? How wide can you cast your vision, while still keeping the model simple?

The Internet has given us simple means to create businesses out of nothing. But to sustain them, we need solid models. What’s yours?

I’m not surprised, but I’m also wondering what we can all take from that. See, the problem is that our social media efforts will fail the same way. News issues and concerns hit companies all the time. How do they respond? I just went looking for a few social media people who I imagined would be responding to international news stories about their company. Not a word. So, instead of being lit up to keep relationships afloat, I’m seeing silence.

When the going gets tough, how will you respond on these new social channels? How will you use the Internet as a primary driver instead of as a bolt-on?

David Weinberger’s story points out that the Internet presence of these companies was obviously an afterthought to their telephone presence. More than two decades after companies have come to the web, they still look at their online presence as secondary.

Social media’s even newer. How will it fare?

Something to think about. Are you in? Or are you just setting up a facade?

(If you’re blogging for pleasure or your own entertainment, skip this post and read any of these wonderful stories.)

Is the purpose of your blog easy to define? What are you aiming towards accomplishing with it? How are you testing whether or not you’re reaching your desired effect?

My blog has changed a lot over the years. At first, I blogged just for pleasure. Then, I realized that I was developing a community, and that my community wanted some consistent, useful information, so somewhere around a few years ago, things started to make more sense. Here’s a little bit of the backstory.

My Blog’s Many Faces

When I started my blog many years ago (it skittered across several domains before I landed in “real” blog software), it was for fiction. I wrote stories. Then, I wrote about fitness and nutrition. Then, I wrote about self-improvement. Then, I wrote about new media. I went from that into writing about social networks and social media, and then eventually, I moved into how businesses could use social media to improve.

What am I writing about these days? Human business. It’s essentially the idea that relationships and human-shaped experiences serve business much better than cold marketing and afterthought customer service.

What will I write about next? I’m planning some changes to [chrisbrogan.com] in the near term. My redesign by Snowy Day Design is just the beginning, and you’ll be invited along for the ride. That said, I won’t change direction too far afield. You’ll most likely still like it.

Keeping a Focus and a Purpose

Your blog is a media property. It’s also a tool that allows you to build relationships (should that be of interest), to notify and inform (if you like telling the news), to reflect and react (if you like being a commentator), to report (if that’s something you enjoy doing), or a tool to educate, instruct, or establish thought leadership. It can be a call to action, a lead generator, a showcase for your talents, and many other things.

The question is: what will you choose as your focus, and how do you define its purpose?

Can you blog without purpose? Absolutely. Can you unfocus your blog? It happens all the time.

But your community (or your audience, if you’re not as close to them) are there with an expectation. They are seeking whatever it is you’ve been offering along the way. They want your best, and they want your material to enlighten, entertain, inform, inspire, or any of several other functions.

With that in mind, and accepting that things change over time, my question remains: what is the focus and purpose of your blog?

Photo credit respres

There’s a lot of that in self-improvement, in motivation, in marketing.

We say similar things a different way, working away at what’s inside you. When I think about you, and all the confidence hiding below your surface waiting to be pulled forth, I think about what we could accomplish if it were coaxed out. You’re confident in some things, and very uncomfortable with others. Imagine if more of what came out was the confidence, the conviction, the passion (which I recently heard described as the intersection of anger and love).

People say that I write about business the way others write about relationships. That’s because business is relationships. That’s how I see it. Who do you deal with? People. Who do you sit around with all day in office buildings? People. Everything you’re doing in your nonprofit to raise more funds, to get more awareness, to build a following is human-based.

We’re all looking for ways to sink the meanings in deeper. We’re all looking for tools to equip us. You came here for that today. You come here for that all the time. You trust me to say something that will spark an idea, and you will then take that idea and make some value of it. I shared with you the difference between recipe and restaurant, and maybe you got value from thinking of how you process (and then APPLY/EXECUTE the information).

But it’s all 100 words for snow, and we’re all talking about talking, and that’s how it’s supposed to be, and you saying “that’s nothing I haven’t heard before” means that the universe is saying back to you, “Yeah, but did you DO anything with it?”

Photo credit kevindooley

In August 2003, I decided to get healthy. So did Kat. We started with nutrition. We lost a little weight. Then we lost some more. We worked on our fitness. Then we did even more. Then I got into running. And by November 2004, I ran and completed a trail marathon. I sure didn’t wake up one morning in November 65 pounds thinner and start running. It was built on several hundred (thousand?) little victories along the way.

Start With Little Flags and Bigger Flags

One way to start achieving your own victories is to know what you’re aiming to accomplish. For instance, if you hate your job, plant a positive flag in the ground that says, “I’m going to change roles/careers.” That’ll be your bigger flag. If you want to get really specific, you should consider adding things like dates to your flags. (Otherwise, they’re more like dreams.)

Then, plant some smaller flags. For instance, having some extra money stashed away so you can cover your transition for a few months might be a good way to accomplish your bigger flag goal. So, how will you get that money? Maybe it will be to start an eBay business. (My friend Marsha Collier is THE author of all the best books about eBay and eBay businesses.) With extra revenue, you’ll reach another little flag that builds up to your next victory.

See how it works? Put out a bigger flag that signifies your victory: “I’ll work independently 8 months from now.” Then, figure out how many little flags you’ll need to put in the sand for all the little victories that will get you there. “I’ll look to start taking in an extra $2000/month within 60 days.” From there, figuring out HOW is a bit more concrete.

Praise Each Little Victory. Then Move on.

On your way to success, make sure you praise your accomplishments. I’m working on my fitness and nutrition again after a long hiatus. At the time I wrote this, I’d lost 10 pounds in my first two weeks. I’m happy with that progress. But, I’m also not going to linger. I’m going to work harder at getting more fit, at reducing my calorie intake a bit more (I’m not eating a fad diet and I’m certainly eating more than enough food), and working those little victories. But I just accept each win, nod, and move on.

Never Justify

One secret to your little victories: never use one to justify a fallback. “Well, I did lose 10 pounds. I’ll just have this vat-sized popcorn at the movie theater.” No. Never. That’s how you got there in the first place. Apply this thinking liberally over all the other things you do. If you get a win with one client, never let that be a reason to mess up with another. Treat every victory as crucial to your success, or you’ll risk eroding your success.

Your Flags, Not Everyone’s Flags

The flags you set for yourself, the little victories, are yours. They pertain to goals you’ve made. Sometimes, on the way to success, our passion to be helpful sometimes overrides our sense that our efforts are our own, and not prescriptive across everyone else. That’s when we risk coming off as preachy. For instance, just because you realize that Twitter and Facebook are the wave of the future doesn’t mean that everyone else who doesn’t is a jerk, behind the times, and doesn’t get it. Maybe those aren’t the flags those people are working towards. Maybe their victories are different than yours.

Work your own flags.

Praise Others Often

The best thing you can do with success is share it. Praise others along the way. Be grateful. Thank others. Share as much of the stage and spotlight as you can. Hoard nothing. Instead, give as much praise away as possible and keep only what you can’t possibly deny to yourself. Your success was made up of many other helping hands. Do what you can to thank them.

Success Accepts Temporary Setbacks and Failures

I called my business New Marketing Labs because I wanted us to always be experimenting. We win business by telling our partners that sometimes we’re not sure the outcome of our efforts until we give it a try. We have, on many occasions, told someone in a meeting, “We’re not really sure if this will yield, but we’re going to try it, and if it does, we’ll do it some more. If it doesn’t, we’ll figure out how to make things work.”

Experimentation, failure, and setbacks are all part of the map. Just don’t dwell on them. Airplanes are off-course 90% of the time, I once read. As long as they land safely and on time (oh, how I wish), that’s good enough for everyone involved. Accept your setbacks (but learn from them).

What Happens With Success

Depending on your views, what happens next is usually the most important. When I’m successful, I do what I can to educate others in how they can accomplish what I’ve done, or at least they can have access to the tools I used to get there. Teaching, raising others up, doing what one can to bring success to others is perhaps the biggest measure of the real value of success. It’s not money that determines success. It’s not fame. It’s the chance to help others with their own success that I value most of all.

Our efforts to achieve success hinge on little victories. When it’s all said and done, after 10,000 hours of hard work, the external sense that it all seems effortless is just another external sign that you’ve worked hard to achieve your position. But it’s really only the start of another kind of effort, complete with more little victories to be had along the way.

What about you? Does that describe your own successes? How are you planting your small flags? What do you find discouraging?

Every week, I smile and appreciate the feedback. That’s what you do with feedback. You mine it to see if there’s something of value. You take the better parts. You consider the lenses that people use to say what they’ve said, and you move forward.

The funny part, to me, is that over the last year, while every week I have somehow been called out for something bad I’ve done, I’ve also done the following (forgive my bragging; it’s my birthday today):

• Launched a company that started in the black and finished strong in its first year.
• Doubled my company’s revenue in the first few months of 2010.
• Worked with over 20 Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 clients.
• Co-wrote a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling book.
• Wrote and published another successful book.
• Helped launch a successful online marketing community forum.
• Spoke professionally at over 100 events globally in front of tens of thousands of people.
• Raised money for different charity projects every month of 2009, and on track for every month of 2010.
• Appeared on Dr. Phil, in BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, and several other publications.
• And gave you something to think about just about every day of the year.

While you’re over there blogging about my demise, I’ll be over here figuring out the future and being helpful to as many people as I can.

Show me a shark. I’ll jump it. (No, not you, Georgia Aquarium, but you were kind to offer.)

Update: Kenneth Lim reminded me of this great video Colin Browning did last year:

But the other day, Mashable posted a video that Ben Folds had done, where he would sing spontaneous songs to whatever he saw on the screen during Chatroulette. He calls these “ode to Merton,” and the backstory there is that this other person, Merton, would sing songs to people that connected with him on the service. Ben Folds, being something of a celebrity, has since overshadowed Merton in some senses, while still paying homage. But that’s not really the main point.

The following video is what Ben was doing. NOTE: Some NOT SAFE FOR WORK/KIDS language in the video.

The main point is this: after watching Ben Folds in this video a few times, I was reminded that I like his music. More so, I liked that he embraced a new technology like Chatroulette. More so, I appreciate that he could be extemporaneous. And that, friends, sold Ben one more album. Here’s an amazon affiliate link to the album I bought.

Marketing is sometimes about exposure, awareness, and getting us to connect with the product. By watching Ben interact with people on Chatroulette, I connected with the spirit of what he was doing, and he made another sale. That’s the takeaway.

What say you?

As With All Things, Goals First

I decided to tell myself the story of me, the story of me for the next few years. This comes from my experience with Don Miller’s book. In my efforts to determine how to conduct my business and my life, I started with goals. I won’t share the details, but I have goals for (in no order):

• New Marketing Labs.
• Books and other publications.
• Professional speaking.
• My new business (not yet announced, but maybe by end of week) and related projects like Third Tribe Marketing.
• [chrisbrogan.com] – some changes coming here.
• Work/Life balance
• Fitness/Nutrition

Those are the major buckets, at least. And I cut those down from 17 projects. I killed about 10 over the last two days. That was first: deciding what goals would yield the best rewards for me (I measured “best” by happiness, satisfaction, money, time).

By starting with my goals for those various buckets/roles, I can then ask myself every time something new comes in: “Does this contribute to the success of my goals?” Having the answer this this is golden.

Actual Paper

I use paper when I redraw. I quite literally draw little pictures with circles or boxes, and I do lots of simple math (I really only know how to do simple math, but if I wrote just “math,” you’d think that I was doing something huge).

On paper, it’s a lot easier to see what’s working for me. For instance, I’m a believer in the mindset of having multiple revenue streams. I have a job (president of New Marketing Labs), but I also make some of my money speaking professional, through my affiliate programs, my books, and through a few other sources.

When I put down what I could make from where, it helps me understand where to focus some of my attention to achieve my revenue goals. But then, I have to overlay the “time” goals, the happiness goals, etc. With PAPER, it’s a lot easier to overlay information for my consideration. For instance, I can draw a little “$, T, H” symbol for money, time, happiness and determine which meets more of the criteria. Make sense?

Silence

This part is the hardest for me. I don’t really handle silence well (thinking about you, Alanis). But I can’t do what I’m doing to redraw, answer emails, tweet, and all that. I paused a lot of the external noise so that I could find some silence. I’m still doing it as I type this. And yet, I sneak back into my noise because that’s part of my job, and thus, at present, I have to maintain some of it.

But, if you asked, silence would be a vital element to the process, and I’ve done what I can to silence the noise when I can.

Lots of Questions

I described the process to a friend the other day like this: “You might see a chip of paint peeling on the wall and think, ‘huh, this wall needs painting.’ I look at the chip of paint and think, ‘should this wall even be here? Should *I* even be here?’”

I look at the frames through which I see things. For instance, do you see yourself as an employee or a leader? I know some people who make amazing employees, but who are horrible leaders. I’m not even the best leader (Justin can tell you that), but I’m a great operator/thinker/tinkerer. I’m the kind of person who can see something unique, noodle it into a working prototype, and then get others to weaponize it (most of the time). Knowing this about myself lets me know which types of businesses I’ll be better suited to create/operate.

What types of questions are helpful to redrawing?

• Does this make me happy?
• Who am I doing this for?
• Does this add to my primary goals?
• Where am I? Is this where I want to be?
• If I stop doing this, what really happens?
• What would be totally fun? Can I feed my family doing that?
• What would my ideal day look like?
• How many airplanes do I really want to be on in a given year?

These are somewhat from my perspective, and somewhat generic. You can make your own questions. They’re free. The answers sometimes cost money, but the questions are free.

Action Plans

Goals without plans are meaningless. Plans without deadlines and measurements are wishes. Thus, I have plans in place. They are very flexible plans, and they rotate on a few of my goal/measurement hinges from above, but they are clear and I will know if I achieve what I set out to do.

The thing is, I know that I won’t be successful if all I do is write out some new plans about my business. It won’t work. I learned that from reading and exercising what I learned in Switch, by Chip and Dan Heath. So, I have to build the entire frame of what I do. Here’s some of what’s included in that framing work (in no real order, and in no real system – YET):

• Put time blocks in place for correspondence. Stop checking mail 45,974 times a day.
• Set time limits on RSS reading.
• Start my day with fitness, not email.
• 2000 words a day (some days, I did 4000; others I did 0. I want to steady-state this).
• Mind everything I eat.
• Move daily.

You know, things like that. But then, I also have real live plans with numbers and dates attached to most of those. Like weight goals, fitness goals, etc. So that’s the most important part.

Finally, Check-Ins

In this case, I mean check-ins to reconsider how I’m doing with my framing. I have mine set for every four months. That way, I can analyze a bit at a time, without tweaking it so often that I feel I’m not getting any traction. But without checking in, I don’t get the chance to see if this is all making sense and heading towards an end goal.

That’s the stuff I’ve put into it.

Your Mileage Will Vary- Try Anyway

Lots of us get stuck and stay stuck. Lots of us worry about things outside our control. Lots of times, we’re looking at that peeling chip of paint and not the wall, the house, the town, the land. But we can choose to redraw. We can choose to really look at every decision we’re actively living with, and see whether there aren’t better ways to reach our goals.

Does this make sense to you? Have you ever tried a process like this? How did it help?

How have you come to the decisions you’ve made right now, and what do they mean to you?

Pow. I just made a goofy location game into a business tool, and I gave the sagging postal service something that would be worth money that they could charge me in service fees.

What do you think?

Today, I started a thread about examining our habits, so that we determine how we’ve configured our days and so we think harder about things we’re doing that maybe are just habitual, but not helpful.

I also talked to someone about his pricing model for a software launch he’s about to have, gave feedback on a new website my friend Lisa launched for her pilates studio, talked about books to improve our effectiveness, and weighed in on a few other decision-making posts.

What’s exciting about it is that because it’s a somewhat closed off community, we feel more open to share from our gut and from our business perspective. The other thing that I like about it is that we’re all sharing and helping each other. It’s not like the four founders sit around on thrones and everyone else grovels. We’re all doing peer learning, my favorite kind. And I learn just as much from others as they do from me.

When I was trying to figure all this out, I’d spend tons on attending conferences. I’d fly all over the place, hoping for at least two nuggets, and a handful of business cards to show for my efforts. With a project like Third Tribe, you get the best part of a conference, without the airplane rides and hotel rooms. Oh, and it costs less than most conferences, especially if you use it daily like I do.

I’m thinking that there are lots of other ways people could use a private community to build their community’s value. I mean, Third Tribe Marketing is for marketers, and we’re really learning a lot from each other, but what about a small private community for cycling, for franchisees, for photographers?

Where are your little hide-outs? Can you see your business or your blog sustaining a small, private community?

And if you’re a member of Third Tribe, what have you found to be good, bad, or otherwise?