Amazon went down a year or so ago, and everyone was appoplectic.

Bluehost goes down, and people totally lose their shit.

…

They say “if a vendor impacted your business, you’d bitch too.”

No.  I pick my vendors. I vet them.  I also don’t rely on them.  Not since Netmeg told me not to.

If a contractor screws up an animation, I’ll be just fine.  Their deadlines and the delivery date are decoupled and we’ll do it.

I won’t have anyone to blame.  Because bottom line: it is my fault.  Clients don’t want excuses.  They want results.  Passing the buck onto clients is the province of losers.

Anything that a vendor screws up is my fault. I picked the vendor.  I could have done a better job, but that entitled, snotty, stupid attitude that people have towards their vendors is perplexing.  Because, who picked them?

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That is to say in one year, it is throwing off enough income to pay 2 people, to grow at a steady clip and to make money.  All of this is happening even though:

• We don’t have a “tagline”
• We don’t have a coherently presented website (I hate it)
• We don’t have a mission statement
• We have yet to spend one dollar on advertising
• We don’t have products listed on our site.
• We don’t have a content strategy.
• We don’t have employees.

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I do this using a variety of tools, mostly RSS.  Following comments feeds on a WordPress blog is easy. Following twitter is easy.  Setting alerts is easy.

I don’t feel the need to comment that often.  I learn a lot. I follow 9 men and 3 women.  All of ‘em are folks I admire. A couple may have figured it out, but I don’t say anything explicitly.

I am guessing that everyone I’m following is going to have massive success.  Many have.

It’s my obsession. And it’s fun.

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“Believe me, there is no insight to be gathered from the life of the working-class milieu…”
-Tom Wolfe

I don’t know what the future holds.  But I do believe that there will be even more stratification in “class” than there is today. I don’t know if it’s a problem or not. If everyone gains, but many gain the most, what does that mean?

The gains from the current software revolution are accruing to a relatively small subset of the population. About 90 million iPhones have been made and about 75% of them are in service world wide.  (Back of envelope calculation from Wikipedia and AdMob).  5.3 Billion people have access to mobile phones.  Only 302mm are smartphones.  This is 4% of the population, roughly.

That’s an elite set of people, any way you shake it.

The gains from our advances are accruing to this small set of elite. It’s going to get more pronounced as the gains become less trivial.  Right now, you can get by – even productively – without a smartphone, without much more than an older laptop.

Having studied product for 2 years now, it seems to me that we’re on the cusp of a wave of health related products that are non trivial and non incremental. The first wave is products like the Up and the Fitbit.  The next wave is coming and I don’t know precisely what it’s going to be, but it appears to me that humans will have instruments with and software enhancements within a decade.

Companies like Nike are going to be every bit as relevant as companies like Pfeizer–maybe moreso because the FDA can’t regulate bytes in the same way that they regulate ingestables. (They will try. Hackers will work around regulations with ease).

Institutions such as politics and presidents and universities and careers are going to become more and more irrelevant as we head towards something of a Singularity.  Being in position to participate in these gains seems, to me, to be one of the most incredible opportunities that has ever existed.

[pullquote]The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed. -William Gibson[/pullquote]

What’s going to become of the vast working class? The people unaware of the changes that are coming? I don’t think that they are going to be able to legislate or bully their way past this particular collective rope.  I think that, over all, things will be much better for them, compared to any other generation.  But, there will be more income and lifestyle stratification than anything we’ve ever seen.

If you get to live 140 years, but your neighbor gets 300 years, are you better or worse off? What if you are smarter and more capable than any generation, but you have only 1/50th the cognitive power of some new elite class?

Accrued advantages start out tiny, but accumulate fast.  It’s already begun.   When it’s more than gadgets or 10 extra years or wealth, what then?  What if it’s the beginnings of a new form of humanity?

What, when the miracle of this transcendence is inevitably only bestowed on a small fraction of of us?  Are we worse off because some of us achieved a higher plane of existence (and we would dare to hope, enlightenment)?  We have already gained longer lives, we have already achieved.  If some folks widen their gains, is that bad?

Is it vulgar to make arrangements to step into the category of people that ascend?

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Let me preface by saying that I am unemployable. I can’t keep a job. I’ve never had the temperament to be an employee.  At various times, I’ve been contemptuous of employees, I’ve been envious.  Working for myself isn’t a choice, it’s a necessity.  My family doesn’t understand that.  That I have to live or die on my own. Heather was viciously angry when things were grim in 2007-2008.  I didn’t have options other people do.

I do, however, know how to get hired. I do it with Simplifilm regularly, and I don’t have the skills to do animation. I’m going to give as many of my thoughts as possible.

1.) Handle the basics – don’t seem crazy.   Privacy is a relic.  Put pictures up, have a basic web presence. This means, for people, LinkedIn and Facebook. If you’re in tech, a Blog. This means that we connect with 100 or more friends on the services.  Have a blog with something to say about your industry.  Yes, web privacy sucks, but listen: we don’t want to be that guy.

2.) Have a story and a message: “I’m doing paid consulting right now, but, of course, I’m open to a wide variety of business arrangements.”  Listen, everybody puts on a brave face. Everybody makes it seem like they left voluntarily.  Nobody is fooled. If you were canned, say “Yeah, I was canned.”  Because they’ll figure it out. Do it matter of factly.

3.) Write To The Essence: I see resumes and LinkedIn Profiles that say nothing, but have a laundry list of skills, as if stuffing keywords in there is going to yield better results.  Say what you do, phrase it how you want to do:

“I move people from PHP to Rails.”

“I get search traffic via organic links.”

Whatever.  Write to the essence of what you do.

4.) Start with Gigs: Write proposals, start with gigs. Do paid work.  A fish can swim in an inch of water.  You need cash coming in, even if it’s not the most you’ve made.  If you can’t get cash, fine whatever. Do free work.  Whatever it takes to not be in the Job Search Funk.  When I was having a hard time finding website business, the stink of despair got on me. My timings were off.  It was obvious I wasn’t busy and that lessened my chances.  So when I learned to start doing free sites, that kept me busy.

Looking for a job is like looking to get married before you date. I don’t understand how that would work. So I’d skip it.  Gigs-then-Jobs.  Handle business arrangements upfront.

5.) Connect with 10 people each day.  It’s 2 per hour for 5 hours. ToutApp is one conversation starter. You don’t need an agenda, mix it up. You needn’t always get it out that you’re looking for work, people get it.

6.) Help (without expectation) one person per day:  Listen, this is a big thing, but if you help people, you change your focus from the “woe is me introspection” to the “i’m here to help,” vibe. You can’t do favors with any expectation that it will come back ,

This is about what I know. This will get you hired. Because you lose the focus on “Woe is Me, I need a Job,” and become, “Hey, here I am, let me help.”

We hope you liked this. Comments are off, but you’re welcome to email me at chris@genuinechris.com. I check every other day or so.

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This article got a little long, but it’ covers:

• What Hustle Really Is
• How I present myself (and how I sometime screw it up)
• How To Pitch
• Who To Pitch

If you want to upgrade your connections, you need to read this article. If you’re stuck and aren’t getting traction, read this. If content marketing isn’t yet efficient for you, read this.

Hustle Is An Enlightened Numbers Game

So I meet people. On purpose. Many folks I meet  are great people. Some of the great people want to work with me. Some people we “sync” with.

Some we don’t. I’m fine both ways.  If I didn’t meet people, I wouldn’t meet some I clicked with.

I used to have a fit when someone would get the wrong assumption. Some people that don’t yet know me think that I’m needy because I call first. I’m hungry, not desperate. I’m trying to be OK with the idea that some people won’t ever get that. It’s hard, no lie.

Churning up contacts, deliberately saying hi, trying to give serious value by sharing what you know helps.  Creates options. It helps me, and it helps others. Every day I make a connection or two, and I make introductions.

No use telling people “Hey, don’t give me options…” if they don’t work.

I ping a couple dozen people each day. That habit, more than anything I do, amasses options for me. This is important because we can then choose to work with the best possible people. This continually upgrades our business (and my life).

Because of the volume of people I connect with, I’m more or ness inoculated from anyone. Nobody can be my “meal ticket”.  Simplifilm could lose our top 5 clients tomorrow and still be the same business, we’d still sell every Simplifilm we can make. (Don’t worry, I’m not going to engage in pointless destruction).

If working with one company is not appealing, fine. There are many, many more. Hustling has so many benefits. We’re often in the exact right place at the exact right time because of hustle. Because we can be in a lot of places at once with the tools today.

When my messaging is off with someone? I note it, correct it and drive on. The sea is full of fish. I don’t care which of the many qualified fish I catch.

Even now when we’re busy as can be – I hustle. Because of this, I was able to slide in 2 “quick” jobs last week for companies that I’ve wanted to work with since forever.  It’s not much in the way of revenue. We helped, we got an account our competitors didn’t.  We can prove we’re great, and then the people we work with will be able to refer us out.  Options amass.

Present Yourself Correctly: People Will Help

Some of the more effective pitches I’ve given others are without the pretense of something to give. I used to puff myself up and exaggerate my achievements. As if that was believable. 

Last week, I got Ryan Holiday to send me some great writers to work on stuff for Simplifilm. I won’t likely be ever in position to help him much (though I would if I could and I made that clear). He helped, didn’t cost him but a couple minutes, and he made a great connection for me.  His post is a great primer on pitching.  So is this.

I’ve made plenty of other connections with “nothing to trade but gratitude.” Way better than “false promises nobody believes.”

If you’re sane, when you pitch, you get better at pitching. Look at feedback. It’s not “more hype,” that helps, it’s “less hype.”

If you’re not sane, you’re in PR. You’re getting worse and worse at it as time exposes you for the fraud you are.

This isn’t an unusual story: PR firm pitched the Bloggess.  Badly.  After Jen said no, and had her automated but fun reply in place, the firm punitively said “Oh, look, we won’t place ads with you, nyah-nyah-nyah”   As if that was really going to happen. The retroactive, stupid impotent punishment is exactly the same type of entitled thinking that gets PR firms sending me nonsense.

Even though I have zero reach, I get still PR pitches a couple times a week.  They are never relevant. I have one that is, based on my distaste for oDesk. That got me engaged. Only one that knew me.

I get a lot of people trying to get a free Simplifilm.

Generally, I send a polite no if it’s not a fit.   (Hint: it’s not a fit. We don’t need exposure, we’re booked through March. I don’t want to ‘graduate’ from hustling.)

When Global Entrepreneurship Week pinged, our missions are aligned so I said yes, under these conditions. Win.  There was no hype or pretense that I wasn’t just being generous. I wasn’t told “it was massive exposure,”  I was simply asked for help.

I always thank people for giving us some option. The classy ones say something like: “Bummer, I figured. I just wanted to work with you guys, if we ever get the budget together, I want to afford you.”  The stupid ones say, “Well, you’re a fool, you missed out on all this (imaginary) business I was going to send.”   (Hint: wilcomes never happen for anyone).

The Stink of Despair Will Destroy Your Hustle.

The fact that I can afford to fire my clients is liberating.  I don’t have to react to the insanity. That means I don’t twist myself into knots over nothing anymore.

I can afford this because I hustle.

I don’t self destruct. I can leave them to their insanity.  I never  feel trapped. I can either take their shit…or not, but there’s no bluster, no drama. I don’t get that sick, panicked, stuck feeling I used to get when everything was life and death.  When I was shitlessly scared.

I don’t feel that fear. (Read this post by Willie Jackson. It’s fabulous).

That fear creates the stench of despair.  Despair is the most unattractive quality that someone can have. The desperate oversell. It makes us tell obvious, stupid lies (Well, I quit my job because I was too honest/competent/hardworking for them).  

The fear makes people blunder into remarks that reveal that they need you to like them.  That’s the biggest repellant on the planet.

People need help.  They pretend it’s a business opportunity.  Nobody is fooled. Generous people help because that’s who they are, and how they got there.

Think about  college – or a Chamber of Commerce networking situation.  The salesman who calls.  Is there anything more profoundly unattractive than someone that has no sense of self? Some dude that just needs you to like ‘em?

The icky odor of bragging about imaginary goals. People with a severe need for approbation are tough to respect.  It’s not as much the neediness as it is the pretense that the neediness is not there. You aren’t folling anyone. You’re coming off as both needy and you insult their intelligence by lying.

Trust that the hustle will work, and it will.

How To Pitch:

The tools will come and go. Right now, I like the telephone, Twitter, Google Reader/Alerts and Tout.  When reader and G+ are more tightly integrated, I’ll probably get into that. But the tools will come and go. I have been paying some attention to LinkedIn, and I might try  a little harder with that.

First, be honest. You won’t fool anyone. Trying is an insult to their intelligence and is a poor way to begin a relationship. Exaggerating your connections, resources or skills isn’t going to work long term anyway.

Next: be specific. If you are pitching, pitch. Here are my lead lines that work:

• “I saw your neat article in _________. Noticed you didn’t have  yet a demo video….if that’s on your roadmap, I wanted to make you aware of us.”
• “I saw your video, and it seems that you could improve it…with some minor tweaks…here’s what I’d try”

Dear  (person I’m pitching).
I’m (Chris Johnson)  and I (make demo movies)
I know you because (you were mentioned in Tech Crunch/Write an Awesome Blog/came out of stealth)
I was hoping  you’d be willing to (introduce me to ________).
When you do I’ll ____________,
Even if you can’t help on this one, feel free to call on me for anything I can help with in the future.
Thanks so much,
_________

Now, don’t brag about your work ethic, abilities or other intangible achievements.  Greg Swann calls this “bragging about your imaginary dick.” I’ve done it a billion times, and when I stopped, people responded to my pitches. Look, I can show the work we’ve done. That work speaks for itself. It’s beyond obvious we’re good. People brag about what’s about to happen.  Nobody believes intangibles. And, if you spread BS about yourself, especially BS that a simple Google Search can dispel…

Finally, don’t pitch before you’re ready.  I used to fall into this. Bragging about a dream or something. “Hey, I’m going to do this someday, will you join me when that happens?”  ”Sure, kid, sure I will.”  Keep it real.

If you just want a connection, say that I send articles to people I follow that don’t yet know me. I often just want a connection or to have a virtual lunch. Sometimes it goes somewhere, sometimes it doesn’t.

Don’t have expectations. Let go. I want to meet people that are interesting. I don’t do it just with people I want to do business with.   I want to share and discover music, or just have a connection somewhere. Ammassing options helps.

Pitch To Help: Look, before you pitch, you’re doing it with the idea that you’re helping someone else. You want your pitch to be of service.

Those are the parameters. There might be common sense exceptions.  There are a couple conflicting ideas,  this is what you need to stay cognizant of when you want to be effective.

How To Choose Who To Pitch (The Actual Hustle)

This is the fun part. I used to have GTD oriented convoluted, stupid systems in place. The complexity of my system kept me from really operating on a high level.  I was paralyzed constantly on what to do next, so I refined my system, instead of made connections.

This is what happens – you read the many content marketing blogs. They dutifly convince you that you need 18 steps to being ready to get ready to sell. (No. Take action and go to where you’re drawn and do it with aplomb).

I fixed it. I read stuff in my Reader, and ping folks in the morning that wrote good articles.  I generally don’t comment on blogs, as personal brief emails are better.

I switched it to simple: I  ping 20 or so people each day.  Some mix of strangers, close friends and mere acquaintances. I largely use Tout nowadays for this. (I just started – I’ll blog it at the Simplifilm blog next week).

I even ping people that I know don’t like me much. On purpose. Because it’s hard. Because you’re drawn away from it. When I ping some dude that I know dislikes me, I can ping anyone.  Real world: Grant Griffiths of Headway Themes disliked me. He’s now one of our most important and most generous clients. He’s done business 3 times. And  I’ve lost track of their referrals.

I even pitch people I don’t like.  Because why the hell not.  I’m wrong a lot about people, and I don’t want my mood the moment I met someone to obstruct work. We all have defects.

I select people from a variety of sources:

• Past Clients/Acquaintances/One Time Leads  Batchblue tells me who to pitch.  These are friends and past clients. Everyone’s on a system and I get an email each morning. If I don’t have time, I just ignore it without worry.
• People I love to follow: I think of people when I read stuff. I send them articles.
• Strangers that are moving up in the world: I read Tech Blogs and set a reminder to pitch them 3 days out (hint: if they get a writeup in Tech Crunch/Gizmondo/TheNextWeb EVERYONE is pitching them).
• Long Shots: These are the people I’d love to work with. I follow up with 11-12 people that are long term dreams. I got one recently.

This enough. I ping mostly to say “Hi” with a purpose. I follow my scripts. I’m building a Tout library for quickly tweakable scripts to use. I’m here to help, no expectations.  I’m around to help.

The ethos that I have: I’m making myself available to be of service. No expectations. No drama. No problems. I hustle because it’s who I am and it’s what I do. When things are right, this is how it all works.

You’ve learned how I built Simplifilm into what will be a substantial business. In less than a year. What are you doing to pitch? How are you getting better?  I want to know. Please feel free to email me: chris@genuinechris.com. I prefer conversations to comments, and I’ve enjoyed meeting people in private. I check that email every day or two, and I respond to everything right now.

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I used the directions here to make it happen.

Anyway, I sill find myself going to Yahoo.Com about 3 times a week.  Just the home page. The habit isn’t worn out even though I’ve put a barrier up.

It gets to how hard it is to change a habit.

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When we built Simplifilm it was pro from the start.  Not an addict’s business, but a real business devoted to craft.

We revere our customers. Not ourselves. That’s made an enormous difference in the quality of the message and work I’m getting to do.

You can’t summon reverence for a boofy haired realtor.

Reverence is the secret ingredient. You have to revere your clients, your work. Protect it from drama, mania.

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The attitude isn’t meant as an insult, and it’s really just a reflection of their own insecurity, but it eats me up. I always feel like I need to point out, “listen, jerk, I do the business I want how I want to do it, all the time.”  Gets me nowhere. But there’s this dumb attitude where people presume Ineed something from them. I need nothing, I make my own luck.

Bill Gates? Just some guy. If I don’t do business with him, there’s Bezos, Elison, Zuck, Benioff, etc.  There are many people to work with. There are many people that we can work with. It’s a great honor to work with everyone, but at some point every client is completely fungible and replacable. It does me not one shred of good to point this out.

But it is on my mind plain as day. I can’t hide my thought.

.:.

The other part of my day is a waste of time with low end ad agencies. Loads of them. They pretend they have a product that they are pitching or schlepping. They aren’t. They just want to talk to us. And they ask about a reseller agreement. All the time.

When I say no to the business I wasn’t ever getting anyway, I’m mocked. I’m given a lecture about how I should run my business. I’ve given the same lecture when I was unable to meet payroll, so I get that impulse. I have compassion.

But it grates on me daily. People want what we’re offering, at the level we’re offering it.

Why I have to be nice to someone that is wasting my time with a delusion that will never happen, I don’t know. Talking to me, a vendor, isn’t going to solve the revenue problem that they have.

And I’m stuck talking do them. Nonsellers.

.:.

Then there are the wilcomes. People promise me a bunch of future business for taking one on the chin now.

They premise is that I should do something cheaply for relationship they won’t fulfill with reach they don’t have. Classy people with reach and referrals have always paid the first time. They have the money.

I’m supposed to think that it’s in my best interests to drop my price.

And it never is, ever.

But I have to pretend like it is. Or somehow, I’m the asshole. Not once has a “wilcome” worked out.  A small discount on an early deal does occasionally benefit me, but not generally.

Business wise, right now, I don’t want for anything. I have ideas, a team, and I’m growing. So why do I have to entertain this crowd?

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For most of my life I was of the opinion that real change was a good week away. Like I’d have plenty in a short period of time.  I would turn that corner.

I thought a loan, a sale, or even an infusion of VC cash would make me be my real self, the one that had money to do something. I figured all I needed was $20k and all would be well.

Most people live their entire lives this way.  I promise you.

If – at any time in my life – I had gotten this dough it would simply have been squandered.

Right now, it’s not the case. I’ve earned it, and I’m not giddy about it. I’m happy, I’m pleased. I’m not self-satisfied nor am I a ball of energy that can’t wait to spend it.

This means I might keep it.

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