October 31, 2008 - 6:13 am

Our FAST180 community is growing! Yes, we have a very long way to go, lots of stuff to learn and experience, but so far, so good. A small nucleus of steady listeners is forming. No surprise, these are mostly people Nate and I already know.

Sure, we have a few folks we've never met, including our first visitor from outside the USA, someone from Canada. But by and large, our regulars right now (I'm calling them our "Pioneers,") are people we already have a relationship with.

And it's no surprise. Building the FAST180 is the same challenge as building "Credibility" with your networking partners: people do business with people they like and trust.

So this whole process of building the FAST180 community is a real life example of the VCP Process® in action! For the uninitiated, "V" stands for Visibility, "C" for Credibility, and "P" for Profitability.

Essentially, VCP are the three stages of building a networking relationship. The phrase was coined by Dr. Ivan Misner, founder of BNI and widely regarded as the World's leading authority on networking.

In short, people need to know who you are and what you do, which is Visibility. Then comes Credibility, where people can trust you to not only do a good job, but more to the point, they know you will make them look good when the new prospect reports back to them about the GREAT job you did!

Of course, Profitability is the final step where people not only know who you are and what you do, and that they can trust you to do a great job, but they actually create business for you by acting as your "Sales Force" and telling people why they should do business with you. This is what I call being a "Bragging Buddy."

OK, back to FAST180. I was really happy with the announcement we made on the Official BNI Yahoo Group. The post covered a five week spread (this week, last week, and the next three weeks) which I'm hoping will convey an understanding that this is a weekly event.

As far as tracking results, we definitely got some pop from the exposure. Not nearly as much as I could hope for, but a good start on the long road to Visibility. That's right, the vast majority of the 4,600+ BNI members who get those emails have no idea who I am. Yes, a bunch of ‘em know Nate, and that's a good thing, but the simple fact right now is that the FAST180 is not even at Visibility in the mind's eye of our primary target market!

So that's where our work is. Getting the word out. Well, at least part of the work. Lots of other stuff going on too, with learning more about webcast technology, website building, marketing, etc., but right now simply gaining Visibility for the webcasts is on the front burner.

While pondering the inescapable grasp of the VCP Process (wouldn't it be great if we could just snap our fingers and create a huge audience?!?), I got an idea. And yes, I got the idea while walking Buddy the wonder dog. Here it is: Create a network of FAST180 "Reps." People who are regular listeners, BNI members, and are willing to announce our upcoming webcast to their BNI Chapter during the announcements portion of the BNI Meeting agenda. I will also create a small, quarter page promotional flyer they can printout and bring to the meetings if they want.

Of course, the first group of Reps will largely be our "Pioneers." FAST180 not only has Visibility to this small, but highly skilled group of networkers, it also has Credibility to these folks. Our Pioneers know we are going to provide valuable information, a few laughs, and a nice, warm and fuzzy sense of community. That's why they join us each week.

If these people take the next step, and become a FAST180 "Bragging Buddy" carrying our message to the people they have a VCP Relationship with (the other members of their networking groups), we will gain Visibility and a measure of Credibility within that group.

Hearing first hand endorsements from someone the networking group already knows, likes and trusts, should help people in the group gain interest in the webcasts. At least that's the theory!

We'll see what happens when this adventure in networking continues...

 

10/24/08 - 6:53 am

Good news on the promotion front! Had a terrific conversation with Tony Dalia, an Executive Director with BNI in southern California. In addition to his work as an ED, Tony manages and moderates the "Official BNI Yahoo Email Group," which has over 4,500 subscribers from around the world. 

Personally, I'm a longtime lurker/learner on that list. Basically, networking die-hards from around the world discuss issues, good, bad, funny and otherwise, regarding their participation in BNI. Things like should you pass referrals to visitors? Or, how do you increase membership and generate more referrals?

The group also discusses conflict resolution issues among members of a BNI Chapter, how to make the meetings more efficient, effective, and yes, FUN, just about anything pertaining to networking within the BNI system.

And of course, these networking mavens are the exact target market for the FAST180 Webcasts. Our approach is to provide as much value and benefit to the listeners as we can, with practical information to help networkers generate more referrals for others, and in turn receive referrals from them. In essence, "Givers Gain," which is BNI's mantra.

So anyway, as moderator of this email group, Tony holds the power to approve any messages before they are posted online. Solicitations are 'verboten' on this list, so I was concerned about being allowed to post a weekly announcement of what we are doing with FAST180. 

No worries. Tony sees that we are focusing on giving mximum value to our audience and he gave me the green light, so we are ready to rock! I will post our first message to the BNI Official Yahoo group next Wednesday, so we will see how much of an impact that will have on our number of listeners.  

And that brings us to our call on Wednesday. Our Guest, Jon Kenton was outstanding! Lots of timely, practical insight into networking effectively during this crap economic tailspin the globe is in at the moment. Of course his distinguished Brittish accent and international experience were a perfect compliment to his message. Good stuff!  

Unfortunately, due to some technical issues, we got reports from several people who were unable to get on the line, contributing to a disappointing turnout. The fact that it was the first game of the World Series didn't help either. Last week, it was the third and final presidential debate. I took a quick look at the calendar and it turns out that the day before Thanksgiving, as well as both Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve also fall on a Wednesday... OUCH!

OK, let's focus for a moment on our goal of increasing the number of webcast listeners. After plugging the webcast at my BNI Chapter on Thursday morning, my first promotional effort was to create a MySpace page. I spent several hours putting it together withth intent of having something at least halfway decent before contacting anybody.

So after uploading a great photo to be my online image featuring Marcia and I from Sunset Canyon, a very scenic roadside attraction on the I-17 between Prescott and Phoenix, I typed a short bio with favorite books, movies, music, etc.

The colorful background on the MySpace page is the first photo I ever took with a digital camera on a slow shutter speed at a concert. It was the Dirty Dozen Brass Band opening up for Widespread Panic at the House of Blues in Las Vegas many moons ago… the combination of vivid colors and impressionistic treatment created by the slow shutter speed blew me away as soon as I saw it on my computer screen, instantly becoming my favorite mode for music photo journalism. More on that some other time...

So I created a page that I could live with, at least for now, and started contacting people from BNI. I ran a search on the MySpace website for anyone with "Business Network, BNI" on their page and came up with 195 matches. Many of those were somehow pertaining to a band called BNI, which I had never heard of. Others were just random matches of my search words with no connection to what I was looking for.

But there were a legit 70 or so BNI people out there, and I sent each an email introducing my self and inviting them to join us for the FAST180 webcasts. Got emails from three and I'm not sure if any were on the webcast.

Oh well, I'm learning. For the FAST180, I think we are in good position now with an opportunity to build our listener base thru a symbiotic relationship with the Official BNI Email Group next week, and then in about three weeks, doing the same thing live and in person at the upcoming BNI Int'l Conference in Long Beach.

We plan on handing out quarter page flyers promoting the webcast right after the conference, with our very special guest, Norm Dominguez, CEO of BNI, and also Nate's dad.

If things go well with both of these promotions, we should be on our way toward building momentum. I want to get the numbers up to 1,000 a week and I have no idea how long that will take. I guess that's what makes this particular networking adventure so darned exciting!

10/19/08 - 7:29 am 

Got a lot done yesterday. Started with adding some functionality to the website Nate & I launched a few weeks ago to promote the webcasts.

The name "FAST180" came to me while I was walking my dog Buddy. I get a lot of my best ideas during our morning walks. Buddy is a 5 year old American Bulldog and Lab mix. Lots of energy and even more personality, he's pretty big and oh-so-quick! When I'm not straining with his leash every time we pass another dog, I get a chance to think.

I was originally playing with website names (URL) including the number 360 to reflect a well rounded, 360 degree perspective, but everything I came up with had already been taken. So as I pulled Buddy away from a little poodle and her owner coming toward us on the sidewalk, the number 180 jumped into my head along with the concept of change, fast change, turning things around and doing a 180, a "FAST 180!"

OK, back to yesterday. I started by adding a "hit counter," so we can track the growth of our audience. Took a lot longer than I thought. I'm not a computer wizmo, but I do have a few skills and am able to hack around a little with websites, so I purchased the FAST180.com URL, as well as DreamWeaver software to build the website, and an account with GoDaddy.com to host it online.

The site started with a very short bio for Nate and myself, along with our special guest, and, the phone number to dial into and a link to click directly into the webcast.

Now it's going to be a weekly routine to change the website after the webcast to show the next week's featured guest and also an archived recording of each webcast.

After a few hours, I got the hit counter to work and it's actually very cool! One of the neatest things is that it shows you on a map where the visitors are located. We intend to make the webcasts a truly international event, so seeing where the visitors are from on a global map is awesome!

Once the hit counter was working, I switched gears to copy the webcast recording to an archive so listeners can go back in time to see what the might have missed and featured guests can use for marketing, etc.

Didn't have much luck with this part of the process. I am going to bring in one my friends who knows about working with "mp3" files, which the format these audio recordings are saved in.

The good news is the Xiosoft keeps a recoding of the webcast on their website for 30 days, so I was able to link to that recording on the website update, which is a 'good enough' band aid for the moment.

After resigning myself that the link to Xiosoft would be good enough for now, I contacted next week's speaker to get a little bio, so I could update the speaker info and get the updated website posted.

Got that done and I think we are good to go for the webcast next week!

 10/17/08 - 6:07 am

So anyway, here's the deal. I need to sell books. Lots of books. Why? We'll get to that later. Right now I want to focus on the goal: selling books. And I'm not just talking about my books. The idea to is to support a community of "intellectual property" generators... people who write, make music and other art forms.  

For my part, I am currently working on two books. Relix - from the Beginning, a Musical Journal, and Referral Frenzy!, a business building "How To."

I'm very excited about both. The Relix book is being published by Backbeat Books (Hal Leonard Publishing) and is going to be an awesome, all color "Best Of" retrospective of Relix magazine's first twenty five years of rock and roll journalism. Lots of great photos, interviews, artwork and feature articles spanning from the mid 70s to Y2K.

My co-author Toni Brown was editor/publisher of Relix and along with her husband Ed (AKA the "scan master") we are deep into production with a deadline of completing the manuscript by the end of the year.

Referral Frenzy! taps into the other side of my world, business and networking. I'm planning for it to come out in the spring. In the mean time, I am trying to build a "platform," or network of people who might be interested in these books as well as other projects the FAST180 community creates. 

And that leads us to the webcasts.

I've teamed up with a dynamic young man named Nathan Dominguez. Nate is the Executive Director for Business Network Int'l in Arizona. BNI is the world's largest networking organization, currently in 40 countries with over 110,000 members.

BNI is a franchise and Nate owns BNI Southwest, which covers most of Arizona, as well as parts of New Mexico, Colorado and Texas. Son of BNI's CEO Norm Dominguez, Nate grew up with BNI and now, at age 27 he is widely regarded as a leader in the "next generation" of Business Networking.

I am located about 90 miles north of Phoenix, in a beautiful little mountain town called Prescott. My involvement with BNI dates back to the early '90s in Las Vegas, where I started networking with BNI to build my Real Estate appraisal business. My business exploded and things went so well, I wound up retiring at age 38 after about 5 years of building the business.

I've always been a music freak and I pursued that passion for several years as a music journalist bouncing around the country writing for a variety of magazines. My travels lead me to Ocean Beach, a funky little surf town in San Diego. That's where I met my beautiful wife, Marcia.

We moved to Prescott back in 2002 and started a BNI Chapter here to support my re-entry into the wacky world of Real Estate, this time in sales as a Realtor.

These days I'm an Area Director for BNI, which means I oversee the Chapters of BNI in this area. Right now we have two Chapters, one here in Prescott, the other in Sedona, about 50 minutes away to the northeast.

Anyway, to make a long story short, Nate and I have been working on getting these webcasts off the ground since June and we finally made it happen last night. We had a terrific Special Guest, Phil Guinouard, a great guy from the Biltmore Power Chapter of BNI in Phoenix, one of the largest Chapters in the world with over 60 members.

Phil was an expert in turning around failing businesses and now he has a full time network marketing business with a company that makes health and wellness products called Melaluca. He was a great guest and we plan on having him back!

From a technology standpoint, the webcast came off with just a few minor glitches. We got cut off right at the end because we went past the allotted 30 minutes I originally scheduled into the webcast system. There is a feature to extend in 15 minute increments, but I hit the button too close (3 seconds) to the deadline. Next time, I'll give it a few minutes rather than a few seconds.

Also, in preparation we ran several tests to make sure we had a grasp of the basics, but last night for the first time, we recorded the webcast, and when I hit the record button, the counter showing the number of attendees went away. At the time I hit record we had 14 people online with us. So we don't know the exact number of people who joined us.

Last item was the funny sound effects that can be used during the webcasts. From laughter and applause to gun shots, rim shots and shattering glass, I think these sound effects will add a nice "fun factor" to the webcasts, but they weren't working for me last night. So I called Xiosoft, the company providing the webcast technology and they answered all my questions. With any luck at all, we should locked and fully loaded for next week's webcast, funny sound effects included.

Nate and I have made a commitment to make Referral Frenzy! a best seller, with the goal of breaking the record for the number of books sold in a single day for an independently published book. So obviously, building an audience for the webcasts now will hopefully position us to blow it out in 6-8 months when the book hits.

This journal is the story, as it unfolds, of Nate and I using (and learning about) technology as well as old school face-to-face, word-of-mouth networking, to make Referral Frenzy! a blockbuster.

In addition to exploring webcast technology, this is also a journey into online networking. I've heard a lot about websites like MySpace, Linked In, Meet Up, and YouTube, but have never looked at them. That changes today! Now that we have the weekly webcast, we have something to promote! Let the games begin...

10/16/08 - 5:37 am

We had our first webcast last night and I'm still buzzing! By all accounts, it went well. Now the trick is to be consistent, repeating the process each and every Wednesday night at 6pm Pacific.

I would like to savor the afterglow a little more but I've got to get ready for my networking meeting at 7am.