Daniel Dessinger

Category: business

  • The Entrepreneur’s Hierarchy Of Needs

    I’m halfway through Module Two of Jeff Walker‘s Product Launch Formula class online. We’re elbow deep in product testing at the Dessinger homestead, and Jeff is helping to frame the launch we will undertake in the very near future.

    During one of the first videos of PLF Core, Jeff introduced a chart he called the Entrepreneur’s Hierarchy of Needs. If you’re unfamiliar with the original hierarchy of needs chart by Maslow, it’s structured to show the order of needs which people are driven to satisfy. You don’t attempt to facilitate world peace, for example, when you haven’t had enough food or water to keep you alive. So basic survival comes first, and we work our way up from there.

    The Entrepreneur’s Hierarchy of Needs looks a little different, but if you’ve ever tried to venture out on your own, I think you might identify with this order.

     

    The Entrepreneur's Hierarchy

     

    Show Me the Money

    When starting a business or launching a product, you start to meet a core need: You gotta make some money. Maybe you lost your day job. Maybe you’re adding children to the family and yesterday’s income doesn’t cut it anymore. Maybe you moved from Fort Worth to Los Angeles and you can’t even afford to eat anymore. Whatever the case, you launch your first product or business to earn money. To stay alive.

    You might put in 17 hour days to build that first launch. You might work for 2 years straight with no days off. But eventually, you launch your product and you start making real money. Check.

    Redeeming the Time

    It’s great to not starve or get kicked out onto the street. So earning money from your own business feels great for quite a while. The sense of accomplishment is palpable. But eventually, the long hours required to maintain the income you’ve acquired takes its toll. There are missed playdates and holidays and family dinners. You realize that if something doesn’t change your children will grow up without knowing you. So you look to redeem your Time.

    Some people solve the problem of Time by choosing to earn less. They see how much they can make in their current state of endless frenzy and they decide to make less by working less often. In a best case scenario, this works, and you can eek by on a lower income and get back some of that sanity you surrendered when you started this whole thing.

    Seriously, Time is important. Without time, you lose mental bandwidth to process information and think clearly. Without personal time, you miss out on feeling human, which accumulates until your health can become the biggest issue in your life.

    So you adapt and change. You start thinking about delegating, hiring employees, and passive income. Your effort shifts from simple but grueling product creation and support to legitimately sustainable offerings.

    Relationships

    Hopefully you haven’t lost all your friends by the time you get to focus on reestablishing relationships. Children and spouses are usually first, but close personal friends, siblings and parents rank up there too. No one is an island. We each need other people to balance us out, help us connect, and allow us opportunities to care and to give.

    Reaching the relationship stage is key for long-term quality of life. Until you have people you can count on, EVERYTHING is harder. And I mean everything. Until you begin building relationships, you’ll have less support, less fulfillment, less feedback, less encouragement, less connection, and less motivation.

    Purpose

    If all goes relatively well and your business is thriving under your management, you have personal time to feel human, and you feel close to the people you love most, it’s time to address your purpose.

    Making money is great, but financial gains rarely satisfy anyone. Having BFFs is also amazing, but friends are people you walk shoulder to shoulder with, toward a common goal. What do you hope to accomplish? Not just in earnings. What mark do you want to make on the world?

    Your own personal needs come first. You can’t save someone else if you’re drowning. So you take care of you. Then you take care of others.

    Maybe you want to teach younger adults to do what you’ve done only faster. Maybe you want to adopt animals that need to be rescued. Maybe you shape your business into a mechanism that causes social change. Maybe you use your success and reputation to influence CEOs, politicians, or celebrities.

    The possibilities are endless. But the entrepreneur isn’t done until he or she is fulfilling a purpose greater than themselves.

    Food for thought. Thanks to Jeff Walker for the inspiration. Hopefully you’ll find it useful as you navigate your own path.

     

  • Raising Children to Think Like Entrepreneurs

    This is one of my favorite all-time family pics. I call this “Beach Hustle.”

    My daughter Katie wasn’t reading yet, so don’t geek out too much. But I love this photograph because it puts two worlds together that I couldn’t have imagined a decade ago. My daughter has a wholly different understanding of normal than I had at her age.

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  • Four Levels of Reputation Monitoring Prowess

    Everyone comes to the Reputation Monitoring party at one stage or another. Maybe you’re a rookie, bumbling around and covering up your mistakes because you don’t know any better. Maybe you’re an empath, getting dirty in the trenches while you ooze sympathy for everyone’s feelings. Perhaps  you’re a veteran, wise enough to know thy enemy before he strikes.  But maybe, just maybe, you’re a Jedi, aware of all things at all times. Dynamically in touch with The Force.

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  • Premium Outlet Mall Coming to South Grand Prairie

    NBC's local Channel 5 News team just announced that a premium outlet shopping mall is headed for south Grand Prairie. Along the Hwy 360 and I-20 corridor, a San Marcos-style outlet mall is planned for the near future. Christmas shopping fanatics like the Wellspring Church women's group will no longer have to travel hours beyond the DFW metroplex to get the best deals on popular name brand items. 

    Only a few short miles from Parks Mall, this new outlet mall will make Interstate 20 the place to go for all your gift shopping needs. Hopefully, the Hwy 161 (George Bush Turnpike) extension will be completed by the time of the outlet mall's grand opening. The southbound side of the turnpike currently ends at Airport Freeway in Irving, but construction has been underway for some time to extend the turnpike through Grand Prairie, intersecting with I-30 and eventually I-20 as well. 

    In the mid-cities area, Parks Mall, North East Mall, and Southlake Town Square are currently the three best shopping areas between Dallas and Fort Worth.

    Planned store names have not yet been released for the new outlet mall. We'll keep you updated on the construction and other newsworthy items.

  • Bank of America Mortgage Software Intentionally Flawed?

    Bank of America

    It's a sad day when you realize that you can't trust an institution like Bank of America to deal fairly. You would expect a Fortune 500 company like Bank of America to ensure that their software was functional and capable of serving the needs of their customers. Not so.

    Recent experience has taught me that this banking and lending giant "can't" find the time or money to fix an error in their software that would make the lending customer service experience as smooth and functional as it should be. 

    Warning: If you have a home loan with Bank of America, they have orchestrated their software to be "flawed" so that any payment towards principle only will be mishandled and at least partially applied towards your regular monthly payment and interest.  

    That's right. Although there is an option to pay towards principle only, you the customer have to call the customer service department and explain to someone (who has apparently never experienced this issue before) that they have misapplied your payment and you have to make sure they reappropriate the payment towards principle only. 

    IF YOU DO NOT HOLD THEIR HANDS, BANK OF AMERICA WILL MISAPPLY YOUR PAYMENT AND YOU WILL UNWITTINGLY PAY FOR MORE INTEREST THAN IS NECESSARY. 

    This is beyond sad and pathetic. This is borderline criminal. If 10,000 borrowers made one extra house payment per year towards principle and didn't realize how BofA was "unintentionally" misapplying their payments, Bank of America profits an extra million dollars per year. That might sound like nothing to one of the nation's largest financial institutions, but that's an extremely costly error for a company with the billions to correct such an issue.

    There is no excuse for this error. I wish I could tell you that they will fix this issue quickly. However, Bank of America has been misapplying extra payments for years. There's no telling how many people have lost equity in their homes due to blind trust in a company that says you can easily make a payment towards the principle of your home.

    Someone will inevitably accuse me of being incapable of properly making or specifying that each payment was strictly intended for principle. Had several Bank of America representatives not admitted to the flaw in their software, I would consider the possibility that this issue is due to incompetence on my part. Unfortunately, the burden of responsibility does not fall on my shoulders, but rather the corporation.

    I apparently never received the memo that informed us all that companies no longer have to provide honest and accurate service in order to prosper. My bad.

  • Internal Linking Strategies For Blogs

    Okay, half of my friends and family already checked out because the title involves search engine optimization. That's okay. Those of you willing and brave enough to continue, let's get on with it. 

    As a search marketer, one of the key strategies I employ in on-site optimization includes internal linking strategy. Here's a quick summary of how it works, from the beginning: 

    Step 1: Keyword Research

    Step 2: META Tag Optimization

    Step 3: Content and Header Tag Revisions

    Step 4: Internal Linking 

    Step 5: External Linking 

    If you want an explanation of these basic concepts, visit any one of a hundred SEO blogs and search for these terms. Or, you can wait for a few weeks and I will begin recovering all the SEO basics on another blog which I will announce soon. For now, I'm only covering Step #4 as it applies to a blog. 

    The thought occurred to me months ago after I had written a blog post about how my wife loves the affordable women's clothing at Papaya Clothing Store in the Grapevine Mills Mall. Actually, it was also after my most popular post was written on the Papaya Clothing website. That second post, written in April 2007 (only three months ago), received more than 1,000 visitors the first month simply by ranking at the bottom of the first page on Google for "Papaya Clothing". After I saw that jump in my analytics, I decided to test something out. I wrote two more blog posts referencing Papaya and linked back to that second post from each of them. My ranking jumped from #8 or #9 to #2 within a couple weeks.

    Granted, many phrases are more competitive and getting solid results take much more work. But the results I saw were phenomenal. I now receive more than 13k visitors per month just reading my few posts about Papaya Clothing. It's ridiculous. Of course, it really helps that the company has taken more than a year to build a website and has only an unlaunched tester site to show for the time and money lost. 

    My point is that I'd never paid much attention to internal linking within my own blogs. I'm all over the map with my blogging, and it just never occurred to me until then that it could be very useful to use some of the same principles for a blog that I use on static websites. It's the visual blog style that probably kept me from thinking about it. I mean, even when I look at my own home page, I only see the most recent 10 posts or so. Everything prior to that is filed in Archives and fades from view.

    Blog categories are an excellent way to keep tabs on what you've written before. Of course, you can always do a site search if you've incorporated search functionality. So here's the easiest way to go about building internal links on your site:

    Rule #1 – When writing a new post, search your own blog for references to the same subject or keywords. Copy those specific post URLs and use them in hyperlinks on the new post.

    Rule #2 – As an alternative, determine which category your new post falls under and search that category's archives for pages to link to in your new post.  

    There you have it. Basic. Simple. Link to your own posts. I'll give more specific advice on internal blog linking in the new blog which will be announced soon.  

  • The Need for Reputation Management Increases Across the Web

    As I mentioned previously in ReputationAdvisor.com, the "web 2.0" space (sorry Nathan – I know how much you love that term) has grown and matured to the point that the what is written or posted on the Internet can make or break a company's profitability. Reputation was a priceless commodity back in 1950s small town America. Then cities expanded and companies branched out and a bad rep here or there still allowed for success in other towns or regions.

    The consumer had no way to expose a fraud or a bad deal to the masses. Newspapers, books, and radio were the primary methods of communicating to the public. Television obviously took over as the most popular mass media communications method, but the stations were run by the rich minority, leaving the public with little more than gossip and petitions to spread the word of malpractice. 

    The Internet levels the playing field once and for all. Even the most average person can create a blog or join a forum and post their experiences and opinions of the various businesses they've encountered. We live in an unprecedented age of consumer power. A timely message delivered in the right place online by a single consumer can literally cost a business millions of dollars in sales and reputation repair. 

    The Internet also allows for corporations to flood the space with positive messages and claims to good intentions and benevolent deeds. Any business willing to dedicate some time and money can seriously spin their online image in any way they see fit.

    The Web is the battlefield, and some corporations are just waking up to the realization that cyber slander can destroy their profits. I'm thinking of one small to mid-sized oil and gas company in particular. A disgruntled ex-salesperson posted a slanderous accusation against the company on a very influential investor forum. This forum was already crooked to begin with, since the forum owner propagated false accusations against similar oil and gas companies in order to win the confidence of the seeking investor. The owner would then direct the disillusioned investor toward an "honest" organization which he coincidentally benefited from. 

    This is a black hat marketing method which earns no respect from me. This forum abuses the power of its influence to slander others in order to keep the spoils. But this oil and gas company now finds itself in a dilemma: what do we do about these horrible things which our ex-employees and competitors are saying about us?

    That is the million dollar question (or multi-million dollar, as I've seen businesses drop like flies). Bad online reputation may not end your business, but it can undo years of costly progress.

    If you and your business have already suffered loss from bad online reputation, there is no time to wait. Contact a reputation management professional immediately. 

    If your business is expanding on the Web, now is the time to put a campaign into place that will protect your reputation in the future. Unsatisfied customers are inevitable. You can't please everyone all the time. But you can proactively protect your business from bad press that could cripple your business. 

    For more information about protecting your good name on the Web, contact me at [email protected].  

  • Gen Y Sets New Standards for Career Ambitions

    Penelope Trunk wrote a blog post referencing a report written by Stan Smith. She quotes Smith concerning Gen X and Gen Y: "The real revolution is a decrease in career ambition in favor of family time, less travel, and less personal pressure."

    While Baby Boomers still set the standard for most corporations, that reality is already changing and will soon change completely. One of the most frustrating realities is the "Reality is set by the majority" principle. If 198 out of 200 people in a company believe that working overtime to meet a deadline is more important than family time, then that is the truth at that company. The remaining two people who believe that family time should never be compromised under any circumstances fit into the irresponsible /not-a-team-player category because they do not share the overarching value of the company.

    Put those same two people with 198 similar people, and their beliefs are suddenly the moral majority. Those previous overtime workers? They are suddenly workaholics, a despised and unhealthy minority who constantly work as they avoid home life like the plague.

    So corporate values are set and enforced by the majority. This is why it excites me to be "officially" part of Generation Y. I will accept that label more so now than ever because of the attitude Gen Y brings to the workplace. We are the product of workaholic parents. Our parents never lived the "good life" because they got themselves into so much debt that they never found a way out. We, like our parents before us, are reactionary. We might produce workaholic children (who knows?), but we are determined to balance the life our parents couldn't.

    Which is why the quote above is so important. Decreased ambition in favor of family time. Less personal pressure. In a phrase: Quality of life. That is our pursuit. We may or may not know how to actually attain said higher quality of life, but we are dead set on pursuing it.

    Which really only begs the question: what is it that you see as the answer for Quality of Life? Is it life on an island? In the mountains? Urban loft? Small town community? Farm life? Ministry? Culture? Vacations? Writing at your own pace? 

    We all have different paths, but the same goal. What path are you on? 

  • Using Traditional Media to Educate the Masses About Search Marketing

    time to rethinkRand posted an SEOMoz comment this morning, with some illustrations of really underhanded advertising for search marketing. He then asked a question I have asked myself for months:

    “So what are we to do, fellow SEOs? After 10 years of attempting to educate the outside world, is it time to give up the game and just accept the fact that SEO will always have negative, inaccurate associations and a shroud of mystery? Or… are there new approaches that could be taken to better inform a clearly curious and often desperate public?”

    As influential as Google and Amazon have been in Internet history, they both made an effort to market themselves via television, radio, film, and print. And the core principal at work then is the same now: if you want to educate or influence the masses, reach them where they live.

    You can’t educate the masses with an SEO blog. Trust me, I have dozens of friends and acquaintances who use MySpace and visit my blog, but they hate it when I write anything SEO related.

    In order to educate the public, you have to entertain them at the same time. Someone needs to spearhead this. Let’s look at the two easiest ways to educate the public:

    1. Find a budding movie scriptwriter and write a main character to be an SEO. Without overtly preaching about the industry, teach the public about SEO through the comments and experiences of the character. This is an extremely powerful (and expensive) method.

    2. Get the financial backing to create some infomercials. Make them cool (think Mac & PC), funny (Sonic DriveThru commercials), or edgy (TRUTH campaign). Create 5-10 commercials, each that covers one topic or exposes one unethical practice. Let each one air for a month or two before moving on to the next.

    Both of these ideas are ridiculously expensive. But how did Amazon brand itself? Traditional media. We should give Amazon a lot of credit for building the Internet user base. Millions of people discovered for the first time that they could purchase items online, and the rest was history. But it took reaching them through the mediums they use most.

    Internet use is definitely on the rise. In the future, I expect most Americans with Internet access will have a website of some sort. eBusiness will continue to rise. Search marketing is a vital aspect of eCommerce. It’s unavoidable.

    Are commercial spots and movie appearances pipe dreams? Maybe. But someone will do it someday, and they will become instant experts in the minds of millions. If ever there was an open opportunity to make a name for one’s self in search marketing, this is it. Throw a few million at it and watch what happens. Of course, once the rabbit is out of the hat, expect to see the unethical marketers create 30 minute infomercials on late night television promising millions if you create an instant SEO shop or use their services.

    There will be abuse of every inspiration. The only way to combat that abuse may be to get enough SEO professionals to band together to support this ad campaign that the space is flooded with support and verification.

    Thoughts?

  • 2 Mistakes Beginners Make When Building A Website

    Today, we’re talking about online user experience. Granted, this is the type of post that belongs on my Reputation Management blog, so I’ll be brief and expand on it there later. It’s still worth my time to cover these topics here or on MySpace because those are the places where my Internet illiterate friends hang out, and they represent the types of people who will “discover” the amazing opportunities made available by the Web, and without some kind of help they’ll throw up the ugliest or most unusable site you can imagine.

    Here are the 2 biggest mistakes people make when designing and developing their first website:

    1. FLASH – I don’t care how cool FLASH looks, designing your entire site in FLASH is a HORRIBLE idea. Don’t do it! I don’t care about how cool it looks, it’s a waste of your marketing dollars. Google and Yahoo! will not be able to index your site’s pages, which means you will get crap for search engine results. And in case you didn’t already know, the number one way people locate websites is by searching Google or Yahoo!. You absolutely cannot ignore this fact and must build your site to meet the standards of “crawlable” site.

    2. Content Overload – No matter what you’ve seen from circa 1997 web designs, it does not help your website or company to place thousands of words on a single page. It’s a waste. Limit each page of information to 300-400 words. If you have that much more to say on a subject, think a little more strategically and organize your points so you can turn that one massive page into multiple, easy-to-digest pages. On the flip side, it’s equally unhelpful to have next to nothing on each page. If writing isn’t your strength, sub out the work to a professional copywriter (hmmm…. I wonder who?).
    In EVERY situation, research what will improve online user experience for your targeted readers. There is tons of information out there to help you do it right the first time. You can always call me if you want to connect with someone offering professional design and SEO.

    Once you’ve been around the SEO industry for awhile, you’ll get comfortable with the basic requirements of site design, development, and copywriting. Until then, feel free to shoot me your questions and I’ll be happy to help out.