When starting a business, gathering an audience or seeking people who will believe and even notice you is the hardest part. Today, Ken Courtright teaches us that we can all wear capes and be that person everyone adores. Using his wife’s efforts in gathering friends for his son by throwing a party, Ken notes one cool thing that can have a domino effect in terms of referrals and reputation. Learn how people will see you in a different light – like you’re wearing a Superman cape.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Wear Your Cape
This episode, as well as all episodes leading up to our Digital Footprint Conference, are sponsored by Digital Footprint. You can find it at DigitalFootprint.net. It’s a Forbes recognized can’t miss, must attend Business Growth Conference. Why? It’s because business owners from all over the world fly in to listen to people that have or are currently managing global businesses. All of which started as a small business. Speakers after speakers are on our stage doing nothing but telling business owners exactly what they did to get there and how they can replicate these techniques.
It is an absolute blast. It’s my favorite three days of the year. We put a little half a day in the beginning. We’re doing something cool with the Women’s Day. We’ve got a bunch of TED talks from some stud women coming in from all over the world. It’s cool. I hope to see you guys there. I was watching as my wife did something incredibly brilliant, as she usually does, and she decided to have a party for my nine-year-old son, Kenny. Why? No reason. She noticed that Kenny was in a brand new school and he like I was when I was his age is, shy and timid. I didn’t say a peep until I was in high school. I was introverted and quiet.
Kenny is literally mini-me. He loves playing on the computer and he loves keeping to himself. He could easily go through the whole school year to find out he didn’t talk to three people. My wife Kerri, the brilliant intuitive that she is, she spotted that he wasn’t walking up to kids. Boys weren’t walking up to Kenny. She did not want him to go through the whole school year like that. What does Kerri do? She contacts the school, “I want to have a party for my son. How do I get these in all the boys’ in the fourth-grade backpack?” The school told Kerri what to do. She puts them in RSVP, regrets only. Sure enough that Sunday, nine of the fourteen boys showed up.
When you are a salesperson who is trying to move a product or service, everyone in the industry views you as a stranger. Click To TweetFor 3 to 4 hours, jumped on the jumpy jump, squirted each other with squirt guns, and played on the beach. I took them tubing on the boat and they had a blast. Some of the parents stayed over and at the end of the day, some of the comments to my son from the little boys were, “Kenny, that was awesome.” “Kenny, when is the next party you’re having?” “Kenny, can I come back over?” It was so cool and they were all getting along. Kenny, all of a sudden, was the superstar of the group. How does this relate to business? Extremely. When you’re going through life, if you’re a salesperson or a business owner, in any capacity trying to move a product or a service, you are viewed initially the same way these boys viewed my son.
They saw him there in school. These other fourteen boys saw Kenny. They didn’t have a reason to approach him. He was quiet because he looked like Kenny. However, when you have an event that a lot of people get together on and have an absolute blast and they know you were the reason it happened, all of a sudden, you’re wearing a cape. My son walked into that school and the other boy saw him coming from a mile away. Figuratively, my son is now wearing a Superman cape for the next couple of few weeks. He’s the coolest kid in school. He will never be viewed again. Even the word of mouth that spread to the five boys that didn’t make it was fairly heavy. We felt it. We heard about it.
How do we bring this back to business? In business, I strongly suggest you find a way to do something cool. When you do something cool and when you be cool, it also puts a figurative Cape on you. Why do we spend more on a weekend than on my first home holding an annual event? We do it because it’s cool. We do it because a lot of people come in and see us in a completely different light after they attend a three-day event. Let’s talk about some different phases a business owner could be in. You could be an entrepreneur, you could be an upstart, you could have ten employees or you could have 1,000 employees. The question is, what are some things from the solopreneur to the upstart to the big business owner, what can you do that’s cool that a group of people would see you in a different light and then see you moving forward wearing a Superman cape?
Number one, you could start a cool meetup. You could find out what the people in your area want to connect on and be the actual starter, the igniter, the beginning person that starts a meetup around a cool topic, not the boring topic of, “Let’s get together and swap leads.” Come up with a cool topic that if the world heard about it, it would be a viral concept and people would want to come to your meetup. Do some homework online, find out what meetups are hot and come up with an idea that’s cool. You could also donate time to a cool place. Maybe there’s a charity or an organization that tugs at your heart. It’s cool. Why not donate time and do it? Quite frankly, because it’s the right thing to do, do it till it hurts.
The concept here is, find something that would allow you to take your eyes off yourself. Put them on other people to the point when you walk in that building, you say to yourself, “I am officially tuning my world out. I’m tuning this world in until I leave this building or this location.” When you do things like that, that’s cool. My wife and I got invited to the ShareASale conference on the rooftop of the Paris Hotel in Vegas every year. ShareASale is a cool company. The first time I went, I have never been able to view ShareASale the same again. They displayed their personality and they showed how cool of a company they are. There are other competitors for ShareASale but I wouldn’t use them. Why? It’s because ShareASale is cool.
We’re in 2016 where people want to do business with cool people and cool companies. The days of being the best price or the best product, I’m not saying don’t be the best, be the absolute best. There is something to say for marketing yourself and marketing your company as cool. This is a psychological event. My son will never be viewed the same again in that school. He has buddies for intuit. Unless he does something stupid, he’s going to have buddies for life. The question is, what party can you throw? What meetup can you start? Where can you donate your time or make an impact to the point where large bodies of audiences see you as cool and figuratively for the rest of your life, see you wearing a cape? Meaning when you walk in a room, people see you coming. See you at our event, and I’ll see you on the trail. Take care.
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