Maverick and Company

THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING

It’s the gift that keeps on giving…the new client. And this year, Santa would like you to have a whole bunch of them. Unfortunately elves are more skilled at toy trains than people, so I’ll be playing the role of Santa’s Little Helper this year with a marketing assignment. While everyone else is goofing around on Facebook or emptying out the 7,429 emails from their inbox, you can be setting yourself up for a GREAT 2010.

SPEND YOUR DECEMBER DOING RESEARCH & RECONNECTING

December is typically a tough month to call ON clients. They’re distracted and busy and it can be tough to get decisions made. Ironically, these same facts make December a great month to CALL clients. The conversation to have is not necessarily one about the next sale, but rather the first one. Put together a list of your best clients, the ones you adore and would love to clone. Your goal is to spend some time on the phone with those people finding out: WHAT TO TALK ABOUT …How they describe you and the services you provide …What they say when they refer you to other people (if they do) …How they describe the problem or situation that made them work with you in the first place When you understand how YOUR best clients think about themselves, their situation, your services and your solution, you’ll have all the raw materials you need to develop marketing materials and sales strategies to find MORE best clients…no Santa or reindeer required.

BONUS OPPORTUNITY FOR NEW REFERRALS

Want new referrals from your old clients? One of the best ways is to use the Story Strategy while you’ve got them on the phone. Before you start your phone calls, spend some time thinking of 3 good stories about projects you’re currently working on, people you’re currently working for or awesome results you’re already achieving. Doing so is a great way to educate your clients about what you do AND teach them what to say to connect you to referrals. You can use this technique in ALL your conversations and probably should. Stories are easy to remember and that makes them one of the most efficient ways to make yourself more referable. Over time, telling enough stories to enough people will help you generate a steady flow of great referrals.

FOR BEST RESULTS ADD MAVERICK & COMPANY

I’m playing the role of Santa’s Little Helper this month and have some really great specials on marketing packages. Contact me directly, these deals will go fast, like milk and cookies in front of a fat guy in a red suit.

Why MAVERICK?

Naming a company is a tough thing to do. I picked MAVERICK for a range of reasons (in part, it had been a nickname of mine.) Beyond the unmistakable cool factor of the name itself however, the actual story of Samuel Maverick perfectly highlights two of the core ideas we believe in here at MAVERICK & COMPANY.

THE HISTORY

First a little bit about how the word itself became a part of our culture. The Merriam-Webster Book of New Word Histories MAVERICK: In south Texas in the middle of the 19th century lived a lawyer, Samuel A. Maverick [[1803-1870]], who was to have his name immortalized because of some cattle that happened to come into his possession. He was not a cattleman himself, but a client of his gave him 400 head of cattle in lieu of a $1200 debt. Maverick had no use for the cattle, and so left them in the care of one of his men. The cattle were never branded and were allowed to roam at will. Inclined to take advantage of this situation, neighboring cattlemen burned their own brands on the strays, which were then herded with their own. Although Maverick eventually sold his depleted herd, the term ‘maverick’ to designate any unbranded cattle caught on and spread throughout the West. By 1890 the term had acquired the transferred sense ‘a rootless wanderer.’ American travelers abroad carried this sense of ‘maverick’ with them, and the British were quick to adopt the useful appellation. . . . . .About the same time, ‘maverick’ was applied to a member of a group who refused to accept one or more of the policies espoused by that group. Political mavericks have bolted their parties, religious mavericks have been tried for heresy, and intellectual and artistic mavericks have set independent courses of pursuit, refusing to be ‘branded’ with restrictive or conformist labels.

OUR APPROACH

Here at MAVERICK & COMPANY we take a straightforward approach to working with businesses. We believe two important lessons can be taken from the story of Samuel Maverick and the mythology his story inspired. 1. BE A MAVERICK A maverick is someone who is unafraid of taking risks, breaking rules when necessary and is not someone who has a need to follow the status quo. BE a maverick. Be willing to bend, challenge or break the rules. Don’t just do things that way because you’re supposed to or that’s the way everyone else does them. Especially when it comes to building your business, one of the best things you can do is break some rules, do your own thing, go your own way and then let your competition try to keep up with you. 2. BRAND YOUR CATTLE Sometimes the simplest, most traditional solution is also the best one. Samuel Maverick lost a ton of money because he wouldn’t take the small, simple, rational step of just branding his cattle. So while it’s good to try new things and approaches, one of the other best things you can do as you build your business is to brand your cattle. There is no value in being wild for wild’s sake. Many people associate the word MAVERICK with innovative thinking, a willingness to take risks, and the cool factor often attached to people and ideas “outside the system.” Here at MAVERICK & COMPANY, we believe those things too. Alternately, less commonly and JUST as important for us is the idea that a real MAVERICK must also be willing to do the most revolutionary thing of all, play by the rules. At the heart of our brand is a deliberate tension between the renegade and the conservative. We believe that being willing to do ANYTHING gives you the extraordinary opportunity to do the SMARTEST thing-which is sometimes the flashy, risky, seems-crazy approach and sometimes is a the most simple, boring traditional one. Be a MAVERICK. Brand Your Cattle.

On November 1, 2004, exactly 5 years and 5 days ago, I did a terrible, stupid, beautiful thing. I started my own company.

I didn’t really know what I was doing. I didn’t have a plan or a marketing strategy for finding new clients. I didn’t have a mentor to show me what to do or a coach to help me get it done. I didn’t have enough cash reserves for tough times. I didn’t really even know how to explain what I did. I would not recommend starting a company the way I started mine. Deciding to work for yourself is a foolish, foolish thing to do. Your company is a version of you, your mistakes, your immaturity, your impulsiveness. Everything you wish were different about you will become an exponentially bigger problem inside your business. It will, often, be uncomfortable even when it’s going really well. So you see, it was a terrible, stupid thing to start my own business. In fact, it still is.

WHAT I LEARNED FROM MAVERICK

But as I stop to look back on these past five years and five days since I became the Maverick of MAVERICK & COMPANY, I still love the terrible, stupid beautiful mess I’ve gotten myself into. Because just as your business will show you all your faults, it will also show you where to grow. If you’ll let it, your business will help you fill in the gaps of who you are as a human being. If you let it, your business will turn you into a better person, a bigger person. In that spirit, here are 5 things MAVERICK has taught me in the past 5 years and 5 days:

1. THE RAIN ALWAYS COMES—No matter how bad it is, it will always get better. Even in the dessert, even if it takes 100 years, the rain ALWAYS comes. Your job in life is to remember that, store some water and hang in there.
2. GO TO THE ZOO—I’ve learned I can’t force life to go the way I want. Often, the harder I push, the harder things become. I get more tense, less happy and opportunities dry up. In these instances, I got o the zoo to see the gorilla babies. They romp and play and tease the big male gorillas (also a terrible, beautiful, stupid thing to do.) And something about watching them, brings me back to me. When it isn’t working, stop working, go play.
3. GROW YOUR OWN CONFIDENCE—Many people get their confidence from their results. Doing it that way severely limits the amount of good you can do in the world. Your confidence level is critical to your effectiveness. You need to know how to grow your own, protect it and restore it, whether or not your have the results RIGHT NOW.
4. EVERYBODY’S AN IDIOT—I’ve now worked with thousands of people and hundreds of groups. What I’ve noticed is that everybody is an idiot. Almost nobody does all the stuff they should. Everybody could be doing it better. They’re all imperfect and it mostly works out anyway. Everybody’s an idiot, including me, and we still manage to run great companies, raise great families and make a difference in the world. MAVERICK taught me that being an idiot is the beginning, not the end.
5. I’M AWESOME—I sort of knew this before but working for myself, the way I’ve dealt with the hard times, the stuff I’ve built and the sense of humor I’ve (mostly) maintained prove to me that I am, in fact, awesome. And if that didn’t do it, the fan mail, the fan emails, the grateful phone calls, the tears of recognition and the way I see faith come back to the faces in the audience…THOSE things tell me that I am (mostly) being the person I said I would be. Knowing THAT is, as they say, priceless. I am awesome and awesomely blessed.

It’s not just beautiful, it’s a true miracle, a divine event to be able to do something you love, give the gift you’ve been given to give, and pay your bills all at the same time. The very best parts of my life are coming up with new ideas and hearing how people use them to have more of what they want and these are things I get to do ALMOST EVERY SINGLE DAY. I don’t know what will happen in the next 5 years and 5 days…I’ve at least learned not to guess or try to predict. But I can say that if the next 5 & 5 went half as well, if I was half as blessed, if I got to make half the difference I have so far…that would work for me.

Here’s to this terrible, stupid, beautiful dream of mine that came true and here’s to YOURS. Thank you, Alecia