My Pre-New Year’s Resolution

I’m doing something today that I should have been doing for months, and that is FINALLY posting something on this blog! A blogger I’m not, but my pre-New Year’s resolution is to start blogging more often.

It was my intention when I first started this blog to write something at least weekly. Ha! It
just wasn’t happening; and it wasn’t because I didn’t have anything to say.

I was doing lots (and lots) of things, so I certainly had something to talk about. Most of the things would certainly benefit other people (if they knew about them), and one or two of them might even offer someone a life-changing piece of information if I’d only gotten around to sharing it. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to share, it seemed I never got around to it; or when I got around to it, the words didn’t want to come out right.

Was it procrastination, trepidation, hesitation, or intimidation? I couldn’t be sure. All of them could be applied, but none of them hit it directly on the head until…

I got this book; yep, this book. It’s funny because I’d heard of the author by chance. I got an email during the summer about a series of live tele-seminars this guy was doing. The emails showed the guests and their scheduled days, and one of the guests happened to be a friend of mine so I planned to listen.

On the appointed day I listened as planned. The host seemed like a genuine “sweetie.” Such a “sweetie” in fact, I planned on finding out just who he was . Anyway, since the interview was live I sent an email and we three had a brief exchange throughout the interview. It was great. Afterwards I looked up the host and read his website and what exactly he was known for in his field. Interesting…

Nevertheless, as it can be with a “hesitating, procrastinating,” intimidated person with some measure of trepidation, I didn’t re-visit his site until some months later, and even then nothing different happened.

Then one day I was ordering books and I remembered him. So I order his book. The price was reasonable, the information (if it were viable), would and could be exceptionally useful, and the fellow as I said before, seemed to be a genuine “sweetie”- and my friend, whom I held in the highest regard seemed to enjoy his company.

The book arrived a few days later and it seemed so interesting that I put it in my pocket on my way out the door just in case I had a few minutes to read at it, before I got a chance to read it. Well I read at it just enough to intrigue me and make me anxious to read it for real. Maybe there was something in there for me which didn’t involve chanting, a special diet, or a jillion dollars to implement.

Well, there was definitely something in there. Round about chapter 3, a big giant fist popped right out of the book and punched me in the face! When I regained consciousness, I found myself in the midst of sending an email to the author…!

AND HERE WE ARE TODAY!

Who was the author and ”sweetie”? Noah St. John, PhD. And the name of this particular book (he has more than one) is The Secret Code of Success; available on Amazon.com for less than $20.00.

As I said before, no chanting, or other crazy B.S. involved in the secret code of success- just thinking!

As a human service provider, teacher, consultant and sales person, I’m in the people business. Not only that, I’ve had some experience being a “people” myself for a while so I recognize a universal human truth when I see it (sooner or later).

Dr. St. John is known for identifying a human tendency he calls “success anorexia.” The ability that human beings have of depriving themselves and their businesses of success!

The Bible says the power of life and death are in the tongue, and so they are. It further says that “as a man thinketh, so is he,” true again.

Peter Senge (1999) calls it mental models, and warns against their ability to stifle an organization’s growth and success. He advocates “metanoia” or a changing of the mind.

Kuhn called it a “paradigm shift” or a change in thinking (1962). Whatever you call it, if you are subconsciously depriving yourself and your agency of success, you need to recognize the symptoms and begin to change the way you think.

That’s where Noah comes in. In my delirium of discovering how much more effective I could be if I stopped engaging in the subconscious act of “success anorexia.” Why do I say “subconscious”, because none of us would knowingly or intentionally sabotage ourselves or our businesses, and on the surface, it appears we are doing all the right things, nevertheless…

You’re probably thinking right about now:

1). “I thought this was a blog for grant writers.” You’re right, it is. But this affects grant writers, and nonprofit organizations too. If you’ve ever heard or said these words, “we’re a nonprofit, we’re not supposed to have money”, or “we’re never gonna get this grant, there’s too many other people applying for it – we’re too small, too new, too whatever” then Noah’s information will help you. I once spent two hours with a woman going over every detail of a grant application she wanted to apply for only to hear her say at the end, “well, I don’t think ____ is going to go for the cash match anyway…” What the Hell was that? She gave up even before she tried it!

This may not apply directly to you, but to others you work with, perhaps even your ED or CEO. Their success anorexia has a direct effect on YOU; your motivation, your salary, your creativity, and your willingness to try new things.

Or you may be thinking:

2). “Are you selling something?” Nope (hahaha) I’m not. As a matter of fact in my extended state of delirium, I invited Dr. St. John to do a webinar for all of my friends in the nonprofit world, and he said “YES.” How cool is that. I’m so excited I don’t know what to say (so I won’t tell you that I don’t know the first damn thing about a webinar except how to listen to one. But this is such a monumental opportunity that I’ll figure it out. We can all learn together how easy is it for a newbie to use GoToWebinar).

The webinar is scheduled for Thursday, January 27th, 2011 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.I will post information on how to register as we get closer to the date. In the meantime, if you’d like, there is a sign up box on my website for “Priority Notification”, you can submit that with your first name and email address and that way you’ll be on the mailing list and will be automatically notified and sent a link to register.

This webinar is FREE. Consider it a public service. If this works out, I’d like to be able to bring you more webinars like this one throughout the year with information that will help you and your business efforts really excel in 2011.

To your success!
And remember…

“LG Baby” (Life’s good!)

4GrantWriters.com

Learn more about Noah St. John here: www.SuccessClinic.com

A Direct Marketing approach to Proposal Writing to Increase your Annual Grant Income Exponentially

The grant writing and submission process is in many ways, very much like Direct Response Marketing (Rogers, Kim, 2010). Direct Response Marketing is the sale of something to a single individual, usually one sale at a time. Even though the original RFP (request for proposal) may be seen by hundreds, or even thousands, it’s seen by and responded to by one person or organization at a time.

Direct response marketing can further be defined as selling a product (usually by mail or over the internet) that the purchaser pays for before actually getting. A funded grant application is payment for a program or project the funder has yet to receive.

Grant writing is the sale of an idea to a funding entity (which should be thought of as a single individual). In as much as, you have little personal contact with the entity you are soliciting funds from, whether by phone, mail, or e-mail, it is necessary to create an application that will speak for you in an individual and memorable way, and ultimately elicit an action. Your application is submitted in the midst of hundreds if not thousands of other applications – a cacophonous din of “fund me”, “fund me”, “fund me;” which begets the question posed by the Funder, “who should we fund, and why?”

In their online course, 21 Mind Motivators, (2002) Yanik Silver and Alex Mandossian quote the following from Jay Conrad Levinson, “as Direct Response Marketers, you have to go after mind share, not market share.” Too many times, we as grant writers are looking for “market share.” There is way too much competition for us to successfully capture the “market share” of any particular type of funding, however, if we can successfully capture the “mind share” of a funding entity, we will have tapped into a flowing stream of consistently available capitol. How do we accomplish this goal? By establishing relationships with our funders, one mind at a time!

“It is estimated that 95% of the reason a prospect buys involves a subconscious decision. The purpose of this book is to show you what goes on during the sales process that triggers a sale and how the subconscious mind responds to various aspects of an offer.” (Sugarman, Triggers, 1999) To paraphrase the above quote, we can estimate that 95% of the reason a funder funds, involves a subconscious decision.

I realized a number of years ago the correlation between grant writing and direct sales. I began working on the development of strategies and techniques that would maximize the grant writer’s efforts, streamline their workload, decrease their grant related spending, and increase their grant related income. The outcome of this effort has become the “Give Me the Money” Creative Grant Writing Training series.

It behooves us as grant writers to study proven marketing, copy writing, and social networking techniques, and determine how many, and where, they can be successfully incorporated into a proposal. You may not be able to use all of them all of the time, but you will be able to use some of them all of the time, and given enough applications, you’ll find you’ve used quite a few of these elements.

With practice, using these elements, and realizing opportunities to use these elements will become second nature to you. You will see yourself as an artist, and each new application as a fresh canvas on which to paint a masterpiece.

Excerpted from Rogers, Kim, (2010) 33 Funder-Friendly Elements no grant proposal should be without, Bridgeton, NJ, The K R Company, publishers)

Visit http://www.4GrantWriters.com to download your complimentary copy of: How to Increase your Annual Grant Income by 25%; an executive brief presenting a candid overview of the funding challenges faced by agencies and organizations with suggestions for viable solutions that can easily be incorporated into the grant writing process to increase funding.

When you meet a Legend…

I had the pleasure of meeting and dining with living marketing legend, Joseph (Joe) Sugarman on a recent trip to Las Vegas.

Joe is the success behind the BluBlocker sunglasses empire and the reason all of us can pick up our phones, dial an 800 number, and shop with our credit cards. Before Joe started that trend, you had to fill out the order form, and send it in with your check or money order. Unless you’re my age, you don’t even remember that.

He’s also the author of numerous books, and the legend that other legends read. During dinner, he told me the following story… when copywriter David Ogilvy passed away, he sent his library of marketing and copywriting books to a student of his named Dr. N. Joe happened to meet Dr. N at a seminar where Dr. N told him that David Ogilvy had one of his books; Success Forces, in which he had highlighted many passages throughout. Dr. N promised to send Joe the book. Joe was humbled and excited that a legend like David Ogilvy would find principles and concepts in his book worth highlighting… I was impressed; not that David Ogilvy would highlight Joe’s ideas and concepts, but that Joe was so genuinely touched, and humbled by the action.

So what actually makes someone a legend?

When I first returned from Vegas I was so anxious to record my meeting and time spent with Joe that I wanted to start writing right away. The only problem was I didn’t know what to say!

Should I regurgitate all the information so readily available about him on the internet?

Should I squeal like a school-girl while I relay my excitement of walking into the restaurant, seeing and then sitting with the man whose book I “plagiarized” as he so lovingly put it to me (with both his blessing and permission).

Should I gush, and tell you how witty, charming, thoughtful, interesting, genuine and wonderful I found him to be, or should I tell you how it felt to be in the presence of “Greatness?”

I finally opted for the “presence of Greatness” approach. First I had to examine myself to see if I was having a star-struck moment, or if I had anything to measure it against.

I have to admit the only other time I ever considered myself in the presence of “Greatness” was when I had the opportunity to meet and talk with boxing legend Muhammad Ali. Now before you think I’m some kind of Goober, let me say that I know lots of celebrities. However, being a celebrity doesn’t make you great. Greatness is about more than celebrity.

The Oxford Dictionary defines “Greatness,” as ”wonderful, first-rate, notable, distinguished; chief or principle; noble or lofty character; of high rank, official position, or social standing, much in use or favor, of extraordinary powers; having unusual merit; very admirable, remarkable; exceptionally outstanding, famous, skillful; expert, great persons, collectively,”(meaning that Joe certainly is in that category of copywriting and marketing greats like John Caples, Bruce Barton, Claude Hopkins, Elmer Wheeler, Maxwell Sackheim, Albert Lasker, Raymond Rubicam, and Leo Burnett),and “a person who has achieved importance or distinction in a field.” All of those words describe Joe Sugarman; his body of work, his contributions to the field of advertising, marketing, and copywriting, and his generosity as a human being. Joe is in demand at everyone’s conference, bootcamp, or seminar. He is the subject of countless interviews, film clips, and citations.

Many people are striving to be the next “guru,” star, or internet celebrity, and in so doing, lose sight of the things most important in life – laughter, learning, compassion, and people. None of those are out of Joe Sugarman’s line of vision.

Kim Rogers

Me & Joe Sugarman after dinner in Vegas

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