Greetings Floor Dealers!
How A Healthy Disdain For Crowd Behavior Has Improved My Life
I’m not sure when I developed a dislike for following the herd, but I do know this: I didn’t set out to dislike crowd behavior, I’ve just never really cared for it. I think I’m just contrarian by nature. If a group of people go left around the telephone pole, I want to go right.
For many a moon I’ve been a proponent of the idea that it’s usually better to ask forgiveness than permission. Asking permission is what the crowd does, so just on that basis alone I don’t want to ask. Besides that, most of the rules that society considers “unbreakable” are actually quite breakable. You’ve just got to have the guts to do some breakin’. No, I’m not talking about breaking the law; I’m talking about the “rules.” Big difference.
Yes, following this philosophy has gotten me into trouble a few times, but over the course of my life the benefits of have far, far, far outweighed the negatives. In fact, a major reason I’m a coach and bringing my club members tools to help them grow their business is because of my willingness to do the opposite of the majority. What does the majority do? Work as employees at 9-5 jobs they hate. Yuck.
Not long ago I made the mistake of going to a Sam’s Club gas station. My gas cap is on the driver’s side, but there were long lines at all the pumps on that side. Normally this would just be a matter of pulling in from the other direction, but the lanes leading up to the pumps are one-way. So, liking lines about as much as I like crowd behavior, I put my car in reverse and drove in the correct direction (albeit backwards) up to one of the pumps. Well it only took the attendant about 30 seconds to run over and tell me that this was against the rules.
(As an aside: I couldn’t help but notice that before my misdeed this attendant was doing nothing; just standing there. As long as Sam’s Club was paying him to stand around, why not have him provide good service to their paying customers by offering to check their oil, wash windshields, etc., etc., etc.? Apparently Sam’s is more interested in policing rather than servicing their customers. Just another reason I never go to Sam’s or Walmart unless I have absolutely, positively no other choice. Which is rarely. They both suck on many, many levels.)
At any rate, the attendant essentially told me that I had to pull up to the pump like everyone else. This grated me on two levels: first, as stated before he was more interested in policing me than providing good service, and second (and this is my point) in order to purchase their product I would have to follow the crowd.
One could argue whether Sam’s was right or wrong, whether they had liability concerns, etc., but that’s not my point. Regardless of the legitimacy of the request, being told to “do what everyone else does” grated on me.
In another business (mortgages), it was suggested to me that I should go to the Board of Realtors meetings, hand out business cards, and try to get Realtors to do business with me. I found many Realtors to be arrogant and full of themselves, and the thought of begging them for business made me ill. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t work with the good ones; I just refused to chase them or do any butt-kissing. At the time I said to myself, “I will never set foot in one of those meetings unless I’m the speaker.” And for three years I never went.
So, how has all this “rule breaking” and “crowd behavior avoidance” benefitted me? Well, let’s look at the examples I gave.
By refusing to go to the Board of Realtors meetings, it forced me to come up with other ways to develop relationships with Realtors. Ultimately this culminated in my partner and I starting a “coaching club” for Realtors (Tracy Tolleson’s Pinnacle Club) where I was able to coach them in how to build their business. This was quite different than the begging and pleading and butt-kissing many loan officers think they must subject themselves to in order to gain Realtor loyalty. Instead of chasing Realtors, they were coming to us. On our terms. This positioned us as Trusted Advisors to be respected rather than as “golden retrievers” sent to fetch things whenever they snapped their fingers. Biiiiig difference. When I finally went to a Board of Realtors meeting, it was to stand in front of the group of 200 Realtors and promote a seminar. NO butt-kissing.
My 3-minute promo speech went something like this: “I developed a six-figure income in nine months, and I did not do it by canvassing neighborhoods, cold-calling, door-knocking, or any of the other things we are taught to do. I quit work each day at 5:00, I never work weekends, and I never, ever, ever give out my cell phone number or home phone. In fact you can see that I’m not even wearing a cell phone. (As I said this I would do a complete turn so they could see that there were no electronic devices clipped to my belt.) I only return phone calls one hour each day. Yet my business is quite successful and my clients love me. If you would like learn how I accomplished this, and how you can do the same, then I’d like to invite you to my ‘Six-Figure System’ seminar…” You have to be familiar with the mortgage/real estate business to realize how radical this was. In those industries you are taught that to be successful you must have your cell phone surgically grafted to the side of your head, that you must give out all your phone numbers (home included), that you must be willing to see clients at all hours of the day or night even if it’s your kid’s birthday, and that you have to work weekends. Well, I have no doubt that I annoyed some people in that room, but a group came to our seminar and some became our strategic alliance partners and sent us business. Which is what we wanted. So by not following the crowd I was able to build a fairly lucrative mortgage practice very quickly, and get Realtors to send me business WITHOUT all the manual-labor cold-call grunt work. And no butt-kissing.
By refusing to get a 9-5 job that I did not like, it forced me to take a different path in life. I spent most of my adult life as an entrepreneur building various businesses. This was a benefit because it allowed me to make more money and have more freedom than working for others. While building those businesses I refused to follow the advertising techniques of whichever industry I was in. This forced me to get coaching, learn unconventional marketing strategies, and to work outside of industry norms while building my business. Ultimately I was able to be successful far more quickly, and have far greater satisfaction with my businesses, than if I’d followed the crowd.
So how can a disdain for crowd behavior be of benefit to you? (Or if “disdain” is too strong a word, how about “suspicion” or “dislike.”) Hopefully just from reading this you’ve already gleaned some key concepts that you can apply in your own business and life. But let’s break it down.
Just by being an Inner Circle Club member you are part of a tiny minority of flooring dealers. (If you’re a Platinum member, then you’re the ONLY dealer in your entire market area with access to my Platinum systems.) The fact is, the vast majority of flooring dealers (and owners of any kind of business) are content to follow the status quo. Therefore you’ve already demonstrated a willingness to part ways with the crowd just by being in the Inner Circle Club! (It’s not called “Inner Circle” for nothing.) So give yourself a pat on the back for that. You truly deserve it.
Most of the marketing concepts I teach go against industry norms.
Industry advertising norms
- Slick, glossy, full-color, photos of products
- Traditional, brand-building, image-building types of pieces
- Name, rank, serial number ads (Business name at the top, bullets of features & teaser prices, phone number and address at the bottom)
- Attempt to “get their name out there” and build “name recognition”
- Almost impossible to track results
- Everyone copies everyone else. It’s the blind-and-dumb leading the blind-and-dumb leading the blind-and-dumb.
Inner Circle Club marketing concepts—go against the norm
- White paper (often times), black print, no photos of products
- Emotional direct response marketing—designed to compel immediate response
- Uses direct response formulas such as P.A.S. (problem, agitate, solve) A.I.D.A. (attention, interest, desire, action), and others.
- Gets the client “in here” (store) rather than trying get the store name “out there” because you only make money when clients come in. Name recognition is a happy side-benefit, not the major goal of the marketing.
- Easy to track results.
- Uses little-known, unorthodox, highly effective marketing methods. Intelligent, coachable entrepreneurs, dissatisfied with the status quo, with minds that are open to new concepts.
Compare points one through six. There are some powerful differences. By being willing to go against crowd behavior you benefit from these differences, and set yourself apart from all the other dealers. This gives you much more control over your situation, and enables you to build your Ideal Business and Ideal Lifestyle.
Just by being a part of the Inner Circle Club you have shown some level dislike or distrust of crowd behavior; at the very least you’ve demonstrated a willingness to break from the crowd. You’re blazing your own path. You should feel good about that.
To Tons Of Customers!
Jim Augustus Armstrong is The “Coach”
Jim Augustus Armstrong is the President of Flooring Success Systems, a program that equips dealers to double their profits, cut their work hours in half and beat the boxes! Many dealers have totally transformed their businesses and their lives for the better after joining Flooring Success Systems.
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