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Why Self-Fulfilling Prophecies Help You (and how to use them)

J D — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 01:01:53 +0000

Here is Jun Loayza’s contribution to the Success Factors blog series. Check back daily for more updates in January 2009.

The concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy refers to a false statement that changes your behavior so that the statement comes true. Suppose, for example, that you thought you would fail your upcoming test so you neglected to study. Your self-fulling prophecy made you ignore test preparation and ignoring test preparation fulfilled your self-fulfilling prophecy. But psychology aside, in the remaining part of this article I will show you how the self-fulfilling prophecy can help you and your business.

1. Create Your Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Just like the thought of failure can make you fail, the thought of success can make you succeed. So, be sure you craft a self-fulfilling prophecy that aligns with your business goals. Please note, you need to be specific. You can’t say something like, “I will be rich” or “I will be CEO.” Instead, you need to break your prophecy down to its core. For example, we know rich people know how to make money, but more importantly, they know how to save money. Now how easy does “deposit one dollar per day into my savings account” sound compared to “save money?”

2. Plant the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Seeds

When I rushed Delta Sigma Pi, I was terrified of public speaking. To my dismay, one of our tasks required just that. My group and I were given an object and we had to create an infomercial with five minutes of preparation. I was the group leader, so they decided I had to present and I thought I flopped. Later that night, Yu-Kai, the CEO of Future Delivery, said to me “I first noticed you during that infomercial. You caught the attention of the whole room.”

Fast forwarding a few months, I know I’m good at public speaking. Yu-Kai planted the seed, whether it was true or false, and now I crush speeches regularly. So, if you want to grow your business, you should look out for what other people say about you since every compliment is a potential seed of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

On the flip side, you can also plant your own self-fulfilling prophecy seeds. You can do this by crafting a specific self-fulfilling prophecy as mentioned above.

3. Water The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Seeds

The seeds are planted, but without water, they won’t grow. Yu-Kai wanted me to grow from a good public speaker, to a great public speaker, so he bought me three books: Never Eat Alone, Made to Stick, and Good to Great. He knew that practice doesn’t make perfect, but instead, perfect practice makes perfect. So, these three handbooks was his way of watering my public speaking seed and it worked.

Like what Yu-Kai did for me, you need to do for your business. If you want to be the star salesmen, you need to make those extra sales calls. You need to study the latest trends in persuasion and how to sell. This effort is what makes the self-fulfilling prophecy come true.

4. Even the Biggest Trees Need Water

Despite being a confident publich speaker, Yu-kai consistently reminds me that he thinks I’m the best. He gives me positive reinforcement and provides me with much water for growth because after all, even the biggest trees still need water.

I remember last March when I saw an MBA student give the greatest speech I had ever seen. Yu-kai turned to me and said, “You’re way better than him.” I thought he was joking, but he was being sincere. Now I had to live up to Yu-kai’s expectations of me.

Now if you’re looking to apply this to your business, you may not always have someone like Yu-kai pumping you up. However, you need to live up to your own expectations and goals. After all, the only thing worse than letting someone down is letting yourself down.

The Bottom Line

As John Steinbeck once said, “It is the nature of man to achieve greatness when greatness is expected of him.” So, make sure you expect greatness from yourself and your colleagues and you will develop the most powerful self-fulfilling prophecy in business.

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Jun Loayza is the founder of Future Delivery. Find out more about him at his personal blog and feel free to contact him at Jun.Loayza (at) FutureDelivery.tv

How Customer Vanity Can Improve Your Business

J D — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 03:47:50 +0000

Do you want to learn how to make your company successful? Join Prevential and follow the Success Factors blog series daily in January 2009.

People love the sound of their own names. They want people to remember their names. They want businesses to recognize their names. More importantly, they want their names to mean something to other people. So, let’s talk about how promoting vanity helped some businesses.

The Larry David Sandwich

How many of you are fans of “Curb Your Enthusiasm?” For those of you who aren’t, there was an episode where a deli named their sandwiches after local people, most of which were celebrities. These people would compete with each other over whos sandwich was better. They would tell their friends about their sandwiches and bring them to the deli to try it. In short, the deli tapped into the local vanity market and sold a ton of sandwiches.

Names, Names, Names

Now, consider the local newspaper success story Chip and Dan Heath talk about in “Made to Stick.” The Daily Record, founded by Hoover Adams, focused on “names, names, names.” This strategy helped them take this local newspaper from startup to the number one Dunn, North Carolina newspaper. Or, more specifically, one of the only local papers that had more subscriptions than people living in town.Overall, The Daily Record crushed the competition because they stuck to their local roots by using community names and community pictures.

College Girls on College Humor

When I was in college I remember these two girls. They went out one night and drank too much. They ended up making out and pictures were taken of them. About a week later, one of the girls said, “How cool is this? We’re on College Humor.” They told their friends about it and asked us to check it out. College Humor gave people their five minutes of fame and every person featured talked about it, which resulted in more traffic for College Humor.

More recently, they launched the “Hottest College Girl” contest where they ask for user submissions and let the community vote on the hottest college girl. Since these girls want to win, they will tell their friends and family to vote resulting in more traffic for College Humor.

The Success Factors Prescription

You now know three things:

How a deli built buzz
How a newspaper crushed its competition,
How College Humor grew organic traffic

But, now you are asking yourself, “What can this information do for me? How can it improve my business?”

1. Make Your Customers Celebrities - The college girls were personally involved in promoting the College Humor website since they wanted votes to win the contest. So, you should look to make your customers personally involved in promoting your business. For example, when Shoemoney sends out a free Shoemoney t-shirt, he asks people to take a picture wearing it. They’re glad to do it because they get on Shoemoney’s popular website, and he’s glad to let them because he gets free promotion.

2. Find the Influencers and Talk About Them - The deli found the local influencers and played on their vanity. While the influencers argued over who had a better sandwich, several local customers would be buying the sandwiches and trying it for themselves. You can look to use this in your business by getting the big name influencers involved. For bloggers, you don’t need these celebrities to promote you. Instead, write an article about them and see what happens.

3. Join the Community – The Daily Record joined the local community and stayed local, which made local people want to read it. You can accomplish this by immersing yourself in your niche and never leaving. For example, now that Darren Rowse started Twitip, have you noticed how much he talks about Twitter on Twitter?

What Do You Think?

Do you have anything to add? Leave a comment.

Why You Should Use Humor in Business

J D — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 18:15:38 +0000

Photo courtesy of Grace Wong

Do you know why laughter is powerful? It makes people feel great. After all, who wouldn’t want to walk around with a huge smile on their face?

Earlier this week, I wrote an article detailing how professional comedians make people laugh. In it, I go over three sure-fire joke templates of the pros (Chris Rock, Rodney Dangerfield, etc…). Gyutae Park from Winning the Web was kind enough to publish it on his blog and it has started a decent discussion. However, I wanted to elaborate on the importance of humor in business and blogging.

Humor Makes People Listen

The main challenge in business and blogging is getting people to pay attention to you. They need to take time out of their day and give it to you for a few seconds. To make matters worse, you are competing with everything else that demands people’s attention (advertisements, living, work, etc.).

But do you really know what you’re up against? Not only are you in competition with other people and business, but you are also fighting the human body. People are bombarded with so much noise that they learn how to tune everything out. So, if you want to get noticed, you need to make sure you’re not tuned out.

Humor solves this problem. Bad jokes, good jokes, any jokes. As long as you stray from the norm, people will listen to you because you’re doing something different.

When I was reading Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, they talked about a flight attendant who remixed the traditional safety procedure. Instead of going through the very informative safety session, she made it into a stand-up comedy session. She made jokes about disco balls, bright lights, exits, and safety belts. You can bet each passenger listened to her and understood what she was saying.

Just remember people need to listen to you before they buy anything from you. So, you need to make people listen.

Humor is Personal

How many times have you been told that the key to creating a successful business is by being personally involved with your customers? A million times I’m sure.

Humor is a great way to get personal with your customers. Even if your jokes are bad or offensive, it will promote some kind of response. It will create a conversation. It will make people remember you. It will show people that you’re willing to put yourself out there and see what happens. Just take a look at how Gary Vaynerchuk sells. He just puts himself out there and he built a loyal following.

A few months ago a co-worker mentioned to me, “How come people seemingly tell you everything?” I didn’t really know the answer to this question until a few weeks ago. People trust me because I am always putting myself out there with bad jokes, good jokes, boring jokes, and offensive jokes. They feel like they can tell me anything because I tell them anything. I put myself out there and talk about what I think and as a result, they talk about what they think.

By now you can imagine how great this is for business. When people trust you, they are more willing to become die-hard customers. They will be more willing to become part of that 20% that gets you that 80%.

The Humor Bottom Line

I’m not telling you to go overboard with humor. Too much of it can be detrimental to your reputation, but a controlled amount can be the difference between success and failure.

The master playwright Herbert Gardner once said, “once you get people laughing, you can tell them anything” and he could not be more right. This specifically applies to you and me because once you get people laughing, you can also sell them anything.

So what do you think? Do you think humor is a great way to add some “spice” to your business? Do you think it will help you become more successful?