Crippled CEO Blog #065:
Once per year, I tell my Facebook friends I’ll help them solve any problem or answer any question, then attempt to seriously reply to each one. Last year, I published the questions and answers as a blog post, and I liked it, so I decided to do it again. A few of this year’s responses contain some detailed, tactical business/marketing/sales advice – stuff you can just literally copy and do yourself – so I think it should be really useful for folks. With no further ado, the questions and answers.
Q: What is the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything?
A: Besides 42, cultivating kindness.
Q: Marketing small business online
A: Here you go. 😊 https://crippledceo.com/2019/11/crippled-ceo-blog-006-only-advertise-online/
Q: How to start a business. Registering/licensing. Idk what I’m doing 😩
A: You should hire Jennifer Gomez to help you register an LLC or Sub-S corporation. Also, the registration is the easiest part. You should be asking how to get customers.
Q: What should be the topic of the first book I write? (Jennifer Gomez, who asked this, is an estate attorney.)
A: “How I Defied the Odds by Being Gifted with Gravity-Defying Physical Attributes and Chose a Career Path That They Didn’t Help With One Bit”
Or…
“The Intersection of Volunteering and Law/High-Priced Professional Services: Doing Good While Doing Well”
Or…
“Hanging out with Musical Legends, and Other Stories of a 5th Grader”
Or…
“How to Kick Ass After You’re Dead / Everyone dies; how not to screw it up”
Q: What’s a good way to get an investment partner or partners without giving up complete control/majority ownership of a business?
I understand from their perspective they want to be able to make money, this isn’t out of the kindness of their hearts. But this is something I don’t want to sell in a decade, it’s something I want to last for generations. As such I want to be able to retain ownership.
A: Get loans instead. Lines of credit, SBA loans, etc.
Q: Why are yawns contagious?
A: Yawning is caused by a neurological virus. When you yawn, the virus travels out of your mouth and infects the people around you, who in turn are forced to yawn. Also, none of that is true.
Experts have published research that suggests the human propensity for contagious yawning is triggered automatically by primitive reflexes in the primary motor cortex — an area of the brain responsible for motor function.
One theory is that contagious yawning is related to empathy, and that people with higher levels of empathy yawn more often when someone else yawns, compared to people with lower levels of empathy or those with a mental disorder.
“Researchers have seen that yawning may not be as contagious to people with autism or schizophrenia,” Williamson said in a university news release. “More research is being done to determine the cause of this.”
She also noted that children under the age of 4 and older adults are less likely to yawn in response to somebody else yawning.
Q: Why is the world so ableist? Why do people treat us like tiny children that can’t do anything? It’s a whole new world chair level and one of my goals is to bitch and email and call until things are more accessible.
A: Because most people aren’t disabled. We are a very tiny minority.
Because most people who can’t do the things that we need help with are tiny children. Also, it is impossible for a regular person to gauge our capabilities, and not helping is rude.
I would avoid bitching and calling. Systemic change is slow and difficult. Spend that time making your own world more accessible and improving your own situation. That is a much better use of your energy.
Q: I do not have one million followers on Tiktok. Help me solve this problem in a way that doesn’t involve jeopardizing being an orthodontist or overtly exploiting my wife.
A: Before I finished your comment, I was going to go immediately towards exploiting your wife.
Post more. Keep getting better. Be super consistent. Exploit women who aren’t your wife. Grow your other channels. Use them to feed each other. Collaborate more with creators SMALLER or the same size as you and do it often.
Q: Do you think the KOMBI KEG would be a good franchise to invest in? I have the information packet here and I want to do it more than anything but the price tag scares me.
A: No.
Q: Need someone who wants to do good with their $$
A major company, or investors and backers for our non profit “ReesSpecht the Water” national water safety campaign
A: Make a list of 100 dream sponsors.
Plan out a creative mail and call campaign that will go to each of them.
For instance, first send them a toy Rubik’s cube. Along with it, send a letter explaining how reducing the number of fatal drownings is a puzzle, like the cube, and you need her help to solve it.
Next, send a cheap compass along with a letter saying how you know which way to go to stop children from drowning, you just need her help.
Follow up with a call.
Keep sending cheap $1-5 “gifts”, one per week, along with notes connecting them to what you’re doing, like the Rubik’s cube and compass, and then call after every 2 or 3 you send.
Send this pre-crafted, prepared campaign to your 100 DREAM sponsors. If you get one, you’re set, but I’d wager you get at least a few, if you really do it and you’re consistent. It might take 15 weekly letters with $1 gifts, but it’ll work eventually.
Q: How do I become the number one pool fence dealer/installer in the nation?
A: You do a loop of four things. The first thing you do is advertise. You get with Doug Betensky and you spend as much as you can on advertising as possible until you are too busy to continue answering the phone almost every time it rings/servicing customers properly. Step 2 is to be the king of communication. Answer every call. Get back to people right away. Let people know what’s going on. And so on. This gets hard when you get busy. This will typically start to suffer, and that’s how you know that you need to start finding help.
The next step is to create happy customers. This sounds obvious, but it is a commitment you need to take fully to heart. It means being willing to lose money on a job if you have to. How much would you pay to erase a one star review? That’s the question I always ask myself. Put yourself in a mindset where your instinct is to take short term hits knowing they will result in long-term success. Don’t nickel and dime. Don’t be petty. Give people more than they deserve.
Encourage these happy customers to leave you positive reviews and recommend you to their friends. Maybe offer them free lights for their reviews or something. But you need the reviews and the referrals. It makes your advertising more effective. You have to spend less on Google and Facebook to get jobs if you have great reviews, and you will also close a higher percentage of your estimates.
Then, take the money from the jobs you’ve done, from the additional jobs you got through referrals, and if you can handle it, invest more in advertising. For us, advertising on Google and Facebook is always a positive investment. You always get a profitable return. If you have the capacity to handle the work, you should spend as much as Google and Facebook will let you. You will eventually come to a point where you just can’t spend anymore money on those platforms, where there just aren’t any more clicks to get. But we can figure out what to do after that. If that is your issue, you are probably getting pretty close to being near the top of the list.
That’s it. That’s how to become the top dealer in the country. Guaranteed.
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