I finally got a Amazon Kindle and I love the “My Clippings” feature which lets you select certain text and save it for reviewing later. The first book I read was Seth Godin’s new book Linchpin and wanted to share a couple of excerpts that particularly stuck out to me.

Being in my position, especially at such a young age, will present a constant battle with just how far to push the envelope of new ideas, when to fight for what you believe in, and how to convince complacent people to get on board.

With that said, I thought I would leave some of my superiors and colleagues a couple of excerpts from Linchpin before I wear them out and they stick me in the basement.

• An artist’s job is to change us. When you have a boss, your job is to please the boss, not change her. It’s okay to have someone you work for, someone who watches over you, someone who pays you. But the moment you treat that person like a boss, like someone in charge of your movements and output, you are a cog, not an artist.

• When you hire a vice president for business development, it’s a given that he’s not going to be your errand boy. You’re not paying all this money for someone who will merely go down a checklist you’ve created and who will ask you before making nay decisions. Of course not. It’s his job to innovate, to create new opportunities, to connect with hard-to-reach people, and to follow the long lien on the way to success.
  

As I write this I am thinking of many of my college buddies I graduated with just 9 short months ago and many of the people I know trying to skate their way through their final semester of college.

If you think I will blame your failed job search on your GPA or your useless psychology major you better look elsewhere. While GPA looks good on a resume, that exact thinking is why you’re living in your parent’s basement gaining rank on Call of Duty.

1.) You think you deserve better.

I cannot count how many times I have heard unemployed college graduates tell me they were either offered a job or neglected to apply because they think they deserve better. Let me break it to you… If you are unemployed it is for a reason. It doesn’t matter who or what you blame your joblessness on if you are still bar tending on the weekends to make ends meer you are not above anything.

If you aren’t employed it is because you haven’t proven yourself and/or have no experience. If you don’t get off your ass and do something you will never develop any marketable skills. If too much time passes between graduation and an interview you might as well put your hat back on and apply at Harpos because no good company is going to take a chance on someone with a 6 month unemployment gap since graduation.

2.) Everyone you know you met at a frat party.

If you haven’t heard “getting a job is all about who you know” then you are in for some real trouble. If you have and you listened to that advice then you probably haven’t even read this far. Your frat brothers, like Mark Dischert, are a great network but they are either competing for the same jobs as you or haven’t been employed long enough to be in an influential enough position to really matter.

Now you could be like most pampered college graduates and call on the network of your parents to get your first job or you could actually put in the work to build your own network in between Homecoming marriage parties and beer pong tournaments.

I’ve told this story before but I am where I am today because I reached out to Brant Bukowsky my junior year sometime after reading an article about the some VA loan company in the Columbia Tribune. I was really impressed with the way he and Brock did business and I just had to meet this self made guy. After meeting him for lunch at Jazz and running a crazy brain idea past him I had added someone to my network and learned quite a few things. After losing out to the formidable Bryan Helmig for a part-time job opportunity with one of Brant’s companies he came back and offered me a job without any real plan for something for me to do. A year or so later I had graduated and started working full time for VAMC.

I still don’t have a real job title or a manual for my job but I love what I do and get to learn from some of the best. Without the gumption to reach out and build my network there’s a chance I would be unemployed today. I still make it a habit to reach out to people I need or want to know and build my network.

3.) You have been brainwashed.

Ever since you can remember you were taught to conform to the masses in the classroom. As long as you conformed and got good grades you were told doors would open up for you. Get A’s and you’ll get into a great college. Get A’s in college and you’ll get a great job.  It was the foundation of the American dream.

Seth Godin describes it best in his new book Linchpin:

Being good at school is a fine skill if you intend to do school forever. For the rest of us, being good at school is a little like being good at Frisbee. It’s nice, but its not relevant unless your career involves homework assignments, looking through textbooks for answers that are already known to your supervisors, complying with instructions and then, in high pressure settings regurgitating those facts with limited processing on your part.

About 2-3 years ago when there was a surplus of college grads and a shortage of new jobs, smart businesses got wise and started looking beyond the GPA to find linchpin applicants. The same GPA you were brainwashed to think would land you a great career in today’s job market matters about as much as you being STUCO president your senior year in high school.

4.) You didn’t do anything different.

What have you done throughout your college career that sets you apart from the other jobless people you graduated college with? Were you in a sorority or fraternity? Cool, you probably make a sweet t-shirt design. Did you have an internship at a Fortune 500 company? That’s great! I bet you stamp mail like a champ.

Odds are your “accomplishments” are full of a bunch of fluff and don’t include anything with real results. You may have done some stuff in college but the odds are it was the same stuff everyone around you was doing.

My favorite was student’s boasting about AKPsi at Mizzou. AKPsi is a business fraternity with hundreds of business school students who have all pledged allegiance in search of resume fluff but never did anything but attend meetings.

If half of the people you have graduated with can add the same accomplishment to their resume it’s useless. If you want to get out of your parents basement do something different no one else can say they have done.  Go beyond the borders of your campus and websites promising you a great internship.

5.) You still wear a baseball cap.

I am not saying throw away the Cardinals hat you wore during every televised game of the 2006 World Series season. I am just saying you need to get out of the baseball cap mentality and prepare for the real world. Wearing a baseball cap is just a metaphor I use to describe those who haven’t quite moved on from their intramural sport glory days.

Your days slamming Natty Light’s, Tonic Thursdays, and frat tees are over. If you want to get a real job hang up the hat and start looking and acting like you are gainfully employed. I may get some slack considering I work at a company where sandals are normal and shorts are acceptable but that’s just the corporate culture I lucked out with. If you want to get a job start acting and dressing for the part.

I work with a bunch of entrepreneurial minded big thinkers with a lot of success among us so one can only imagine that in the spirit of the game we can sometimes get ahead of ourselves.

I may be the worst offender of them all but I cannot help it. I can have a 10 year vision before we can even have our first employee. What may be one of my greatest strengths could be one of my greatest weaknesses. With a lot of amazing deals coming through our growth partner initiative it is important we focus on getting the horse before the cart now more than ever before. How you ask?

#1 Justify the concept first.

A lot of times what we may think will work won’t. No matter how hard we try or how much faith we may have in some great idea if people don’t buy it we don’t have anything. Sometimes I am so worried about burning leads and customers I want to be sure we are 100% set up in an ideal situation to handle a large volume of business before we even close our first deal.

While some people may disagree, if it truly is the next multi-million dollar idea you will have a constant flow of new customers to draw from and burning the first 1,000 or so while you get underway won’t matter because a great idea will always have new customer’s lining up at your door.

Justify the concept first then go buy the cart you need to take your business to the next level.

#2 Cash flow as soon as possible.

Being in the situation I am it is sometimes hard to focus on cash flow. However great of a competitive advantage it is to have nearly unlimited funding, not focusing on cash flow can also be your greatest demise.

Sometimes one can get caught up in all the tangibles that aren’t really necessary. I am not talking about buying a company jet before your company hits green. But do you really need 26-inch monitors when a 17-inch will do just fine

A lot can be said for a boot strapped company that makes it through tough times and also comes out on top. A company that cannot cash flow is nothing more than some rich venture capitalists hobby.

If you can cash flow first on a smaller scale then you can go buy your cart and look towards the future.

#3 Get experience before getting wild.

We are great marketers. We claim to be nothing else. When we enter an industry we will enter it without knowledge any greater than the BS the first page of a Google search will get you. In the case of surety bonds or a similar untapped industry we will be on the first page before we even know what we are doing.

Regardless, it is important to get a knowledge and understanding of the industry before evaluating progress and moving past phase one. You may think you want to do all commercial surety bonds, but with a little experience and knowledge you may determine it is better to be the best at being a mortgage broker bond agency and market exclusively to that niche.

If you had bought the cart before you had a strong horse you could potentially overlook a golden opportunity or be too far along to capitalize on a golden opportunity and miss out on your next million dollar idea.

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If you truly think you have the next great idea and are ready to hire a dozen people and invest a million dollars all I ask is that you step back and evaluate your position.

Do you really have a great idea?
Have you justified your idea first?
Is your idea cash flowing?
Have you gained enough experience to dominate an industry or your niche?

Running a bail bond company seems pretty juvenile compared to some of the things I want to accomplish throughout my working career but being a bail bondsman in Columbia, Missouri has taught me a few valuable lessons in life I wouldn’t trade for $1mm…. unless it was cash.

1.) How to read people

I get a phone call at 3:00am for a possession of controlled substance and a possession of paraphernalia. In Boone County this is a $5,000 bond. The person on the other line could be the worried sister of someone who just made a honest mistake tossing a loose Adderall in their purse out of the prescription bottle or the person could be a crack head trying to get their crack head friend out of jail before they start feigning again.

I can ask all the questions I want but no says they have to tell me the truth. When I ask questions I am not looking for an answer as much as I am looking for a reaction. Are you lying to me or are you being truthful? Making the wrong assumption could cost me $5,000 in this case. I can’t read their facial expressions, I can’t see what they look like, I can’t run a credit check. I essentially have to make a decision on a $5,000 loan from a 5-minute phone call.

No one ever taught me how to determine if someone is a crack head or a good human being I just learned it being a bail bondsman.

2.) How to relate to people

I get to talk to a lot of unique people. I may not bond everyone out that calls me but the weirdos and yahoos do occasionally call my phone. Not everyone I meet is bad either. I just get a very diverse group of callers. Everyone from your typical thug, to his baby moma, to the scared 18 year old student who just got a DWI, to that scared 18 year old’s parent who wants to be sure I am not some weirdo bondsman like they see on TV whom they looked up online and are about to give their credit card information to.

Relating and talking to each one of these people all require a different tone, a different personality, and a different script. All want to hear something different. Some want you to curse the police while others want you to calm them down and tell them how it’s really not that big of a deal. I read people quickly and if the bond is one I want to write I will bring myself to their level to relate to them and tell them what they want to hear. I don’t lie to them. I just relate to them; however unique they may be.

No one ever taught me how to relate to different people and talk to them on their level I just learned it being a bail bondsman.

3.) How to deal with bureaucracy

Anyone that has dealt with our countries criminal court system knows how big of a headache it can be. Not only is it slow and inefficient but its not a perfect system. It is not even close to a perfect system.

I have had to deal with a judge who did not know the law and as a result entered a final forfeiture and handed me a $15,000 bill. Dealing with judges is a difficult thing. Since they are there to interpret the law many of them feel as though they can essentially write the law. Do I shove statues in their face and prove them wrong? Damaging their ego and inevitably risking mistreatment until the day they resign. Or do I just pay the $15,000 bill and write it off as a business expense?

There really is no right answer to this. The confines of bureaucracy aren’t meant to confine the ones who actually make the rules. Its only meant to confine the lowly bail bondsman who has to play by the judges rules. However incorrect they may be.

No one ever taught me how to deal with egotistical judges and their asinine rulings I just learned it being a bail bondsman.

4.) How to deal with people

If you are around me on a daily basis you have seen and heard the different ways I deal with different people. This is not entirely the same as relating to people but more so getting your point across to people and also getting them to do what you want.

Some people go to court because they will always go to court, some people go to court because they don’t want you to call their parents and some people only go to court because you threatened to kick their door down during a Thanksgiving meal with their entire family as witnesses. Whatever their motivation is I have to first read people quickly and find out what I need to say or do ensure that they go to court. Some people I just need to write the date down on a business card and others I have to pull out all the tricks. There is no magic trick or secret formula. It is different for everyone.

No one ever taught me how to influence people to get them to do what I want I just learned it being a bail bondsman.

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All of these valuable lessons and skills I learned being a bail bondsman have made me into who I am today.

Some people may look down upon on the bail bond profession but the lessons learned answering 3:00am phone calls from crack heads prepared me far better for life and the working world than my $80k textbook university education.

**Shout out to my father for successfully getting through his first year as a new St. Louis bail bonds company with zero forfeitures.

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I read the article below and thought it would be appropriate for a QOTW.

The New Information Goldmine

What data could one compile that would have value?

Think of some companies you know….

Could any of those industries benefit from having access to better data, and data that is organized and search-able so value can be derived from it?

It may be likely that the data that is most difficult to obtain and thus least likely to be in an existing database is data not in digital format. What data could this include? Could you come up with a process that could be easily repeatable and allow you to streamline the data entry?

What industries value data the most (advertising, financial, etc)? What ways could you collect data that only you would have, meaning you would have a monopoly on it?  A viral application (FB), toolbar, a format where they have incentive to provide you information (maybe a dating site where you get free access to if you fill out detailed information, what else?).

Image Source: Anne Helmond

You can find out more about Bryan Rahn and join in the discussion over on his blog at www.lifeintheblue.com.

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http://www.inc.com/inc5000/2009/company-profile.html?id=200900350

Number 35 on the Inc 500 List – Diapers.com. I think this company could relate to the branding conversations we have been having.  Before you spend much time on the site, you should just go to the home page and write down your very first impressions: Diapers.com

• What does this site provide?
• Who is their target audience?
• What is the UVP of this site?

When I first saw the site on the Inc list, I thought, “I remember seeing them around online before. Do they really do that much business only selling diapers? But within just a few seconds of being on the site I can tell they provide all kinds of baby gear. The site feels very “soft” and friendly. Inviting and welcoming. From what I can gather, the target market of diapers.com is people with not a lot of spare time who are willing to pay well above Wal Mart prices for relatively simple baby gear. It seems to me like their UVP is that they can get you items fast. It is necessary that their items ship quickly, and they arrive within one day. Shipping is free over $49 or else it is $10.
So, I would pose the following questions –

1. Is diapers.com brandable?
2. Have they successfully branded themselves?
3. How does this relate to branding any of our sites?

In my opinion, yes, they have a brandable name. It doesn’t matter that they sell way more than diapers, but diapers.com is enough to let you know this is a site for baby gear. I think people buy from diapers.com because it is easy. We think that is a reason why a lot of people work with us, to avoid the red tape. It doesn’t really matter that they don’t just sell diapers. If people buy because of benefits, then the only real benefit of diapers.com is that they do not have to go to the store. This is similar to the benefit we provide, that they don’t have to go to a local lender, who may be less experienced.

It seems that diapers.com figured out that what people want the  most is to be able to avoid having to go to the store to buy baby gear, even at lower prices. We need to figure out what people want the most from us.

Do they want:

• specialists?
• ease?
• quickness?
• lowest cost?

A lot of people have avoided answering these questions due to the famous ‘boxes’ where we can try to catch all different kinds of people who want different things. But I think for actually ‘branding’ we have to have 1 simple answer to the question “Why do people want to use us?”  We have to find what the single thing potential buyers are most hung up, nervous or apprehensive about, and then be the answer to that problem. Much like diapers.com is the answer to people who don’t want to go to the store problem.