Hope all's well with you, and I hope your business is on the way to the stratosphere! I know since you're one of the smart entrepreneurs who reads this email, and others like it I'm sure, you are doing well...hopefully even fabulous! I know one of my readers is...Lance, good on you! I can't divulge any specifics without permission, but I can say the numbers on his recent roll out are impressive by any standard. He's a smart chap...and a daily reader of my marketing messages. This weekend I was at the health food store and overhead a guy who, I'm guessing, wasn't doing too well...at least not as well as us'ns (pronounced US-uns...means us smart people vs those other people). I had stopped to pick up some fish oil, good for inflammation and sometimes called natures Prozac...you just need to be careful about what kind of fish oil you get, and a bucket of my favorite superfood. The superfood is 65 smackers a bucket, which lasts me about 2 weeks, but it's full of all kinds of great green leafy alkaline veggies plus a ton of probiotics. This kind of stuff can make a real difference in your day. So when I was checking out, I overhead this guy in the line next to me...."The sign on the juice said $7.99" Cashier: "Yessir" "Then why did it ring up for $9.99?" "It was probably a different juice that was $7.99, sir" "Oh...can I take this back and get the other juice?" "Yessir" And with that he grabbed the bottle of juice and headed back to the back of the store. A couple of thoughts that ran through my mind: 1. If you're looking for cheap, why don't you go to Publix, they have juice for $1.69, instead of $7.99 2. You're gonna walk all the way back to the back of the store, look around for the cheaper juice, walk all the way back to the front of the store and start the checkout process all over again just to save 2 buckaroos. What is you time worth, buddy? Number 2 is the one that's important for you. (Hey that rhymes!) What is your time worth? Don't get me wrong, if the guy was going to get the juice he wanted because he grabbed the wrong brand...no worries, vbut he was going to save 2 bucks...poor choice. I see otherwise knowledgeable, capable, well meaning entrepreneurs doing the same thing, metaphorically. They spend their time doing the most inane stuff. I mean, I understand if you're just starting and don't have the cash to hire someone just yet, but I've seen men and women, who are perfectly capable of hiring someone to handle some grunt work, who insist on doing it themselves....blowing off really high value important work. I just don't get it. Well, actually I do. It's easy to do the grunt work, allows you to tell yourself you're working without doing anything that's hard or uncomfortable. I get it, I used to do the same thing. Lunch meeting that last 2 hours...I was working, I had to meet with the vendor. Driving out to a job to deliver material, when I could've had it delivered or had someone else do it. All ways of hiding from what I should be doing. Today, if I do this kind of stuff I'm honest with myself, "OK I'm gonna play hookey today and just do some menial crap because I don't want to do the high value work." If you're honest with yourself, fine. But if you lie to yourself, "I couldn't do <thus and so important work> today because I had to go run around all day and do errands," well you got a problem. You should ALWAYS spend time at your highest and best value work. Sometimes, like with a new business, that's just not possible. Most of the time, it is possible. And possible or not, you should always be honest with yourself when you're not doing your highest and best value work. So what you have to ask yourself is every minute of everyday is, "Am I working at my highest and best value?" If not, you're walk to in the back of the store just to save 2 bucks...but you're missing $100 to save the 2! To your success Everte Farnell
I Don’t Bounce Like I Used To…
Every father wants to be the cool Dad! And you know the email's gonna be funny with any opening like that! lol Seriously, we all want to be the cool Dad, so we do things that are, sometimes, a bit questionable...some folks (like the ladies we love) might even call the thing we do down right dumb! I remember when I was a child, I used to LOVE to jump ramps. I would use anything as a ramp...a speed bump, a side walk, curb, virtually anything I could get air on...I did. It was great fun, and I only ended up with one serious injury, and that wasn't even a broken bone. So last week when my son came to me and asked me to build him a ramp for his remote control truck, I said sure... Then he said he wanted to use it for his scooter too (and my eyes started gleaming) and his bicycle (there you go son!) I was, honestly, jazzed. I searched on Youtube for "how to build a bike ramp," got a few videos, looked at them and found the design I thought was most stable, and off we went to Home Depot for 2 2X4's and a couple sheets of plywood. I laid out the plywood and used a sharpie to draw my patterns, cut the 2x4's to size and started cutting the plywood. Unfortunately, my cordless circular saw has batteries that are shot. So we wrapped up for the evening. A few days later, after I got home from work, we went back to Home Depot and I bought a corded (A/C powered) circular saw and shot home to finish the cuts. Yesterday we finished putting the whole thing together. That ramp is rock solid...it's a ramp I would've died for when I was 8! I was encouraging him to take a jump, when the Gorgeous and Stunningly Smart Mrs Farnell walked out and almost had a fit. "The ramps too high" "He's gonna get hurt" "Cut the ramp in half so it's not so high" On and on. When I told her she was being silly, she suggested, "Then why don't you jump it on your bike!" The thought ran through my head, "Hmmm..... I would be the cool Dad for sure! You know you'll fall, right? Yeah, but I can make the jump then I might fall once I land but I'll just land in the grass...no problem! And even if I fall while the bike's still in the air, it won't hurt that bad." So off I go to get my bike. Yes I did, and as you might have guessed by now I biffed, bigger then a brahma bull on steroids! AND IT HURT!! It hurt a damned site more than it hurt when I was 13, I can tell you that. The Gorgeous and Stunningly Smart Mrs. Farnell ran an Epsom salt bath for me and I retreated into out jacuzzi style tub for some recuperation. I guess what was true a few years ago ain't true any longer. I know you're laughing, saying "Duh Everte! You aren't as young as you used to be." But the question is, are you making the same mistake in your business? What are you assuming is it true today because it was true a decade ago...five years ago....2 years ago...6 months ago? Yes, we need to have some basis for doing business, but we also must test and measure our assumptions, lest we end up like me, hitting the ground hard...and hurting more than I ever thought possible What was true yesterday isn't necessarily true today. Trust me, I learned the hard way! To your Success, Everte Farnell
“You Only Hit Where You Aim”
For those of you who don't know, in a past life" before I met my wife and, fell in love and had children, I ran around hustling pool. I didn't play pool, I was the "stake horse" or the guy who put up the money for the hustler, Li'l Donnie Carlin, to play. We were pretty much a team...everyone in town knew Donnie and I ran together. Donnie, was 20 some years older than me, and was a real Peter Pan, if you know what I'm sayin'. We had some fun times and some great stories...some of which I can't tell to this day! Funny thing is I learned a LOT about business from hustling pool with Li'l Donnie and listening to his stories. I cataloged a number of the stories in a book called "The Pool Hustler's MBA," which is out of print, but I am really seriously thinking about putting up a Kindle version. So one day Li'l Donnie and I are at a pool hall in St Pete knocking around a few balls hoping someone would show up and want to play. (Playing means there's money on the line, practicing means there's no cash on the game.) Donnie was an infinitely better player than I was, as a matter of fact, I wasn't a very good pool player at all, but I did a nice job making sure the people Donnie beat didn't try and beat him up! When I got down to take a shot, I was going to cut the object ball in the right far corner pocket and bank the cue so I would be left with a shot on one of 2 balls. As I got down on the ball, I hadn't decided which of the 2 balls I wanted to end up behind. Carlin said "STOP STOP! You can't land the ball in a spot you haven't chosen! Look," and he walked back to the 2 balls I was looking at finishing behind, and said," you want to end your shot here (behind ball number 1) or here (behind ball number 2). But if you don't decide which position you want, you'll end up here (in between the 2 ideal spots...but with no shot on any ball)" I said, "You gonna let me shoot or not?" "OK Steve, go ahead..." (OK Steve was a code word for Donnie, it meant you were being an idiot and a know it all) So I took my shot. Cut the object ball in nicely, but the cue ended up exactly in between the 2 places I wanted it to be. I was amazed, Carlin had predicted to within a 1/8 of an inch where the cue would stop. And Li'l Donnie took great pleasure in telling me how amazing it was that he had predicted it with such exacting accuracy. lol What he said next was, however, profound. "You can't hit a target you don't have, Everte. You have to decide where you want to end up...period! If you have 2 targets you'll hit right in between, and miss both." A lot of marketing does exactly what I did on that pool table 12 13 years ago. The entrepreneurs writing the ads want to brand themselves, generate leads, feed their ego, and impress the folks at the wife's club. Trying to hit all those targets means you don't hit any. Of course, I'm a direct response guy, which means I think an ad should generate revenue, turn a profitable ROI...period! If we use pretty ads to do that, fine. If we use ugly...fine. Photos If they're needed. A lot of copy? If the dollar fly in the door with it. Generating money is the only reason to run an ad as far as I'm concerned. Brand yourself with PR if you'd like, and it's a smart thing to do, but keep your ad budget reserved for profitable ventures! To Your Success! Everte Farnell PS. A lot of folks have been inquiring about creating a client relationship with me. If you'd like to check on it, fax 1 page detailing your business to 941-761-5167 and we can set up a time to talk. Please tell me a little about your business and a bit about what challenge you'd like to work on. Thanks! Now go get a check!
Success or Significance
The alarm went off at 6:50am this morning. I don't remember it going off, but I know it did because after I hit snooze and it rang again at 6:59, then 7:08. Seven am comes early when you're working until 1 in the morning! I rubbed my eyes and forced myself out of bed, against every desire in my body. A shower and my Psycho-Cyb exercises (by the way if you're not hip to Psycho-Cybernetics you must run over the MattFurey.com and look for "Zero Resistance Living" on his products page. Yes, he's a friend, no it's not an affiliate link, and as The Fabulous T-Birds said in '89...That's Powerful Stuff!), I threw on some clothes, ask my wife to cook me a scrambled egg (she was cooking eggs for the children) and grab a glass of Super Food drink. Run run run!! That 20 minutes in bed really put me behind for the day, and I was running late. I ran out of the house to put my briefcase and assorted stuff in my big Dodge Ram Charger Power Wagon. It's big, guzzles gas and feels like an IV of pure testosterone when I'm driving it down the road, or off the road for that matter. Folks stay out of the way when they see it coming! lol When I run back into the house to grab a few more things I hear a little voice from the other room say, "Da Da". "I'll be out to kiss you in a minute, Bamber." (Bamber is short for Baby Amber) "Da Da's getting ready to go to work baby," I hear the Beautiful Mrs. Farnell say to our daughter. Then I hear her say to me, "She wants you to sit with her for a minute, sweetie." Then the kicker, Bamber says in a sad voice, "Da Da go bye bye?" And the whole world stopped! There was nothing in the world in that moment but me and my children. I sat with that little girl, and my older daughter jumped in my lap. And for 5 minutes all was right with the world. Yes, Yes, I know world, but the emergency is going to have to wait. My daughters want their daddy! No, it's not the most efficient use of that 5 minutes this morning, but it was the highest and best use of that time...period. Sometimes, you just gotta STOP for a few minutes and enjoy the world...and reinforce someone's belief about how wonderful the world can be. If you're not taking a few minutes and "smelling the roses" every now and again you'll just run yourself out. So yeah, I was running 5 minutes later, but my baby girls know their daddy loves 'em. That's the difference between success and significance To your successful Everte Farnell PS. If you'd like to see a picture from this morning go check out my Facebook Wall. Facebook.com/Everte.Farnell While you're there make a point of friending, liking, subscribing or whatever your supposed to do to stay up to date.
5 Billion years old, and the secret to building wealth!
On Saturday my wife and I and our 4 children, quite a brood, headed out to the Bishop planetarium for a fun, educational, family day. We try and make sure I spend at least one day a week with no work, nothing but time with the family. Of course, I often work from home, so I do spend a lot of time with my babies, but too much of it is distracted time...time spent rushing to the next project or getting a drink in between work sessions. So we like to reserve at least one day as family day..no work, just me with my wife and babies. So anyway, we went to the Bishop Planetarium because we had never been there before, as unbelievable as that is, since we live about 10 minutes away. Turns out it was family day at the Planetarium, which was really cool because they had dinner, a lot of functions for the children and some really great shows. One of the shows had my 7 year old and my 3 year old enthralled. It was a cartoon, on the planetarium ceiling, which showed a couple of children flying through the galaxy in a cardboard rocket, assisted by a talking astronomy book. HA! Fantastic. The show that really blew me away, though, was the show for the adults. Turns out the arms of the Milky Way, including our Sun, rotate around the center of the galaxy..imagine that!! It takes 20 MILLION YEARS for one revolution...and here's the amazing thing, our sun has been around 20 TIMES!! That means it's 5,000,000,000 years old! Amazing. Think of this, although the stars in the sky change, they have barely moved since the dawn of mankind. What's 50,000 years or so on a 250,000,000 year rotation, or a 5,000,000,000 year life span? The thought is incredible, the world will come into being, flourish, die and us with it, and the total time measured in a star's age will be a tick of the second hand?!? Makes me feel small, and in awe of the entire universal dance. However, just as classic mechanics and quantum physics run by different rules, so do the stars and our lives. Fact is, our lives are important. Our children of dire importance, and what we do while we're here critical to our posterity. I don't need to focus on a star's life, I'm not a star! I can focus on the importance of my life. However, we can take a lesson from the stars and put it to work in our businesses. The sky seems never changing to us...seems constant, always there. There are a few businesses that have lasting, ever green, control marketing campaigns. They are constant, rarely changing, producing results month in, month out...year in, year out. Those marketing campaigns produce wealth for the owners of the business. Consistent, predicable, constant...much like the stars. Sure, over the course of years they have to be tweaked, reworked here and there...just like the stars change over the eons. However, those little changes do nothing to reduce the dependability of a truly solid control marketing campaign. That should be your goal from a marketing prospective. To achieve it is damned hard, marketing testing measuring spending money to get nothing in return. It's a pain. Once you have it, though, your wealth will be as predictable as the stars! To your successful Everte Farnell PS. This program is likely going to involve some direct mail....most do. No matter what business you're in, direct mail can turn millions in profits for you. It's scalable, can be tested for little money, and once it's perfected it can produce the kind of profits you've never seen before. Don't fall into the "direct mail doesn't work" trap. Even Google uses it to advertise their Adwords program...Irony!
I feel like hammered….
When I get sick I just drop. Yes, I am a first rate sissy when it comes to germs. Thankfully I'm only sick once a year, I don't think I could deal with the ribbing I get from my wife, who's just the opposite. When she gets sick she just pushes through....of course I'm generally only sick for a day or two and she might be sick for a week or more. You tell me who has the better plan. Today I feel like hammered crap! So I took a day off work, because the funk I have has made it's run through the rest of my family and they all had it for a week or more and were really sick. I just don't have time to be down too long, so a day off today averts a week off starting on Thursday. Being sick gets me thinking how important a system is. Right now there is activity going on that's paying my bills. I don't need to be there every hour of every day, no need for it. I have marketing systems, sales systems, we are fine tuning operations systems (which will allow me to easily sell the company if I choose)...the entire business can be run on autopilot. Of course, of those systems, the marketing and sales systems are the most important. Without those, nothing else matters. Random acts of marketing are no good, trust me I know! I've spent untold amounts of money randomly trying this and that, and it all works out to bupkis! Test and measure and develop the system, and you will not be disappointed...promise! To your success! Everte Farnell PS. I know this ain't my best work...bear with me, I have a GREAT story tomorrow, I just don't have it in me today to tell it right now. A hint: the number 5,000,000,000 is in it, and I promise...it's not what you're thinking. PPS. I have a boat load of email to respond to since Friday. Bear with me and I'll be back to each and every one of you, you have my word.
Back When I Was Broke…
15, 18 years ago I was living in St. Petersburg off 4th street. I owned the house…bought it from the previous owner because they were getting close to foreclosure. The lady who owned the house, Geri, had been recently widowed and wanted to leave the house. She couldn't afford it anymore and had a bunch of bad memories there.
Funny enough, turned out Geri and her husband had a contentious plural marriage. When the husband died, the 2 wives went their separate ways. I bought the house from Geri on a quit claim deed and didn't do a title search. Junet, yes that's how she spelled it, showed up one day banging on the door yelling about why people were in her house.
I learned my lesson about not doing a title search, I promise.
I met with Junet and her aunt to try and negotiate something but they were completely unreasonable. She wanted half of the value of the house, but there was no equity in the house. Amazing!
When it was clear we weren't getting anywhere I contacted the lender….
But I am straying far, far away from the point of this email, ask me about it one day when we see each other…it's a great story.
Anyway, I was sitting around the house one afternoon and someone knocked at the door. When I answered there stood a door-to-door salesman who was hockin' a $20 coupon book for a local restaurant.
Even though I was broke, I lived pretty well back then, but I wasn't interested in this particular restaurant so I nicely told the guy no thank you. (I spent time knocking doors at one point and I would never be nasty with one of those guys. It's hard work and I have respect for guys and gals who'd rather go bust their butt than live off the system!)
Then the most amazing things happened….he thanked me for my time and did everything he could do to live by the old Zig Ziglar rule…Whether you make the sale or not you should always try to leave the prospect in such a way that the next salesman can gain his/her attention even easier than you did.
This guy did it, and I was impressed.
I went back inside and thought to myself, "You know that guy's working hard for a $20 sales. He probably only makes $10 from it…I should buy one of those books from him."
Understand, I didn't want the book, didn't use the book, but I liked the guy selling it so I called him back and bought.
And there you have it…The key is to have someone like you. Some people ask me why I wear a kilt, why I wear a beard, why I have a foul mouth sometimes, why I talk about politics…basically why I break almost every rule you've ever been taught about business.
It's because for people who I resonate with, they like me a lot…and I like them.
So we end up doing a lot of business. A business relationship based solely on products and services and not on any kind of personal relationship is a tenuous business relationship at best.
The trick is to stay in contact with your customers and prospects so they feel like they have a relationship with you. When they feel that way, your income is far better protected against competitors.
To your success
Everte
PS. I did use one coupon and the restaurant was really not that good. They were doing a lot of smart marketing, but the food was menza menza, service OK. I never went back, but I was glad to have purchased that coupon book. That kid earned the sale that day!
But MY Business is Different!
Do you know where the drive thru restaurant came from? It was a revolution in fast food, a business model that defines the industry today, an innovation responsible for hundreds of millions (billions?) of dollars in sales. Today, without a drive thru, no fast food restaurant can survive. But where did the idea come from. Well, one day some fast food executive was using the drive thru at his bank, and the idea hit him...the drinks would make a mess, but we could send the burgers and fries through the shoot! Why do I bring that up? Well I was at a local business group last night, the Tampa Bay Business Owners. (TBBO.org. By the way, if you are in or around Tampa and you're not involved in the TBBO, what are you doing with yourself? Whether you have a multi-million dollar business like mine of a small business you're trying to grow, TBBO can help. Chris and Katie, the owners, are wonderful. Get to the website and get to the functions. Tell 'em Everte sent cha for a special gift from me. Back to last night...) I had an occasion to talk with a great guy who has just opened his business. When I suggested the mastermind group TBBO offers, he wanted to make sure the businesses in the group were like his so it would be helpful. Unfortunately, too many business owner have this same idea, that they can only learn to build their business from people who are in their same or very similar business. However, the fast food exec would've never come up with the drive thru had (s)he kept clinging to that delusion. Here's what happens, a business owner has a problem and starts doing something to take care of it. Then other business owners in the same industry see what business owner A is doing and they copy it, normally badly. Then people see the copycats, and they copy them, normally badly, and the cycle keeps on. And you end up with an industry in which businesses are doing a bad job copying businesses, who did a bad job copying businesses, who did a bad job copying businesses, who did a bad job copying a business, whose owner did something smart to handle a problem 50 years ago that likely doesn't exist anymore. And they all do it because, "that's the way business is done in this industry!" Can you imagine a dumber reason to do something in your business?! It's called marketing incest, and it works just like the real thing..that is each successive generation gets dumber and dumber! In the guys defense from last night, he was new to business. If you're past the newby stage as a business owner, and you're still clinging to the idea you can only learn via marketing incest...STOP!! You have to expose yourself to other ideas and other industries to get the raw mental material to make real breakthroughs. That's one of the advantages of these blog posts, I am exposed to all kinds of industries, businesses and entrepreneurs, many, many of whom are doing a lot of very smart things. That exposure seeps through to these emails, so by a close and regular reading you can really find some gems...promise! Talk with you tomorrow. Everte Farnell PS. Some folks have asked me about taking on client work. Yes I am, yes I am picky, and yes I'd be happy to look at your situation. Just a few things, first I don't work for Banks or insurance companies. It's a shame because I know some very good people in the insurance business, but the companies, by and large, are very open about lobbying the government and other businesses to try and get people forced to buy their products (car insurance, home owners if you have a mortgage, and now health insurance). I can't, in good conscious, help an industry whose practices are so diametrically opposed to my libertarian beliefs (EnoughLies.com) So if you're not in an industry that has loads of government regulation, and your not in the banking or insurance industry, and you'd like me to take a look at your project, please fax 1 page with some specifics about your business and your project to 941-761-5167 and I'll have my office call you back within 7 days to let you know if I'd like to set a phone appointment and set up a mutually good time for the appointment, if appropriate. Thanks and I look forward to talking with you tomorrow, same bat-channel!
The Only 3 Ways to Improve Sales
Several years ago, on a Saturday night, Rach and the babies were at her sisters and I was having a George Thorogood night...that is I was drinking alone! About 2 and half scotches into the night I decided I needed to look at some marketing/business building videos I've had sitting on my shelf for a while...Yeah I know, I was drinking alone and the best idea I could come up with was to watch marketing videos. I'm not sure if I'm a marketing geek or not...but I think so. So anyway, I tossed this video in of Jay Abraham, a guy who I had never seen up to that point BUT who I have made a habit of studying from that point on. The just of his 2 hour speech...Jay can be a bit verbose but he's very knowledgeable... was that there are only 3 ways to increase sales. Even half in the bag I knew what I was listening to was profound! Don't be fooled because of the simplicity, the fact is what I'm about to share with you changed my business life, and has allowed me to build businesses with lightening speed, namely starting a company in October of 2008 and writing a mill-yun (spam filter alert) bucks in business in just 16 months, and bought another company and 10X the sales in just 2 years. So don't think because what I'm sharing is simple that it's not extremely powerful....what I'm about to tell you is incredibly powerful. So the 3 ways to build a business, Increase new customers, Increase customer value, and Increase customer frequency That's it, but the exciting stuff happens when you increase new lead flow just a little, then increase customer value just a little, and finally increase frequency just a little. The increases become exponential, and sales grow lightening fast. Specific example are beyond the scope of this email, but sit down with a calculator and play with some numbers...you'll be floored, I promise! Here's to you success! Everte
Justin Bieber and Rascal Flatts?
OK, I was on Youtube earlier today to listen to a song I hadn't heard in a while. While there I saw another song that I liked so I clicked on it.
Then on that page I saw an advertisement about a new release for Justin Bieber featuring Rascal Flatts.
Let me write that again, Justin Bieber FEATURING Rascal Flatts.
Even if you're not a fan of country music or pop music you'd have to be living under a rock not to know who these people are. Justin Bieber is the pop sensation who got his start on Youtube, and Rascall Flatts has been topping the country charts for 11 years with sappy, silly, girly love songs. Think Air Supply of the Country world.
OK, so they are doing a duet, but for Justin Bieber to get top billing seems….it seems…it just doesn't seem right. I mean really, Rascall Flatts has been topping charts since Bieber was 6 years old. SIX! So why are these guys willing to play second banana to a kid who's still wet behind the ears?
The answer is because they're brilliant.
Now I understand why Rascall Flatts has been on the charts for so long with such an obvious lack of talent. (No they aren't my favs. I should say I don't like Bieber's stuff either but I find his story inspiring. To see what can happen when you just won' t give up and won't take no for an answer and are willing to work hard, well let's just say my kids are getting a copy of his movie when it comes out on DVD for sure. )
See, Justin Bieber has an entire market he has become VERY popular with. A fan base he owns. And Rascall Flatts knows they can get very real and penetrating access to that fan base by singing back up on some stupid love song for Bieber.
It's not a fan base they would otherwise have access to, and they get access with the endorsement of Bieber, a BIG thing to his fans.
They're big enough to demand billing and smart enough to be willing to play second fiddle to a child. Shrewd…very very shrewd.
If your not catching on to the genius, allow me to say it this way, Bieber has a group of customers Flatts want to get too. They understand they have to constantly be “out there” constantly expose themselves to new customers, constantly make connections with other artists and their customers. (we could go into changes in the music business that makes this critical but that for another post)
Flatts knows the old idea of just making records and getting play on country music radio ain't gonna cut it for long, and they obviously want to be around a while.
Flatts has credibility with their market and Bieber wants that (We haven't even talked about that yet. Again, for another post, perhaps.)
The way Flatts gets exposure to Biebers market is to sing “back up” for him on a song. They get billing to his market and low and behold their record sales go up!
This falls into the category, do you want to be right or rich?
You have to choose. I choose rich personally!
Flatts obviously have their ego tied to record sales and money earned, not tied to some self limiting prideful idea about “who they are.”
You know the story about the waiter and the keynote speaker at a convention. The speaker wanted more mashed potatoes, the waiter said he couldn’t have more, the speaker proudly told the waiter he was the star of the show and the waiter reminded the speaker he was the guy who controlled the mashed potatoes.
Flatts understands what it takes to make record sales, and as such they rarely have trouble finding companies to produce their records.
Bieber is managed by Usher, who is a hard working SOB himself, so I can only assume he is getting a real education about how to stay famous.
So who has access to customers you could be selling to, who could give you a real and powerful endorsement, and who would be willing if you were willing to put your pride aside and play second fiddle?