Fwd: Yes, these six rules apply to you ...

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Oren Klaff <oren@pitchanything.com>
Date: Thu, Apr 30, 2020 at 8:00 AM
Subject: Yes, these six rules apply to you ...
To: <stevescott@techacq.com>

There are Six Rules, and number six is the most important.

INTRODUCING SIX RULES YOU NEED TO FOLLOW. But first ...

Here's a picture of me a few weeks ago, just having a fun day with my son. Just minding my own business on a cloudy day ...

Suddenly ... I hear a Park Ranger's whistle freaking out: Fweet!! Fweeeet!! She comes running up to me, panting ... She says, "Sir, please stand back from the water. .. And Sir, didn't you see the sign?! This time of year we have ... ZOMBIE SLEEPER WAVES. They come out of nowhere, pull you into the water, and ... you're ... gone." ME: GONE? WTF? Zombie Waves? The park ranger points behind me .... and I notice this ...

OH. Those waves!! And here's the sign I didn't read: !! THE MOST DEADLY BEACH IN CALIFORNIA. !! DON'T TURN YOUR BACK TO THE OCEAN !! ALWAYS WATCH FOR SLEEPER WAVES SO how in the hell do you miss THAT sign?

My first small error was thinking, I'm not going in the water today so there are no "rules to follow." My second error was thinking "Signs are for Other People to read ..." And my third error ... "Most rules don't apply to me anyway." Once the park ranger showed me how I was on The Deadliest Beach in California ... It became obvious. And that evening, alone by the campfire having a beer, I started thinking ... Right now, all my clients are walking on their own "deadliest beach" ... They are NOT reading the signs carefully ... They do NOT believe "the rules apply to me." Could this be YOU in some small way? If you're looking for REVENUE, calling customers, prospecting and giving pitches for money ... The Rules Do Apply To You. But which rules exactly? Here's the basic Rules of Customer Money today. When you get the chance to pitch a client for business or money RULE 1: Stop making "Discovery calls" where you ask the prospect a dozen or a hundred manipulative questions. This is annoying, and people are stressed out and too tired of this discovery-call-game, where you ask all kinds of weak "rapport" and "information gathering" questions that add no value to their day. RULE 2: Know a lot about their business before you have the call. Really do some deep research. If you say to me, "Hey Oren, tell me a little about yourself and the company, and where you want to be in 24 months" it's a huge red flag: you don't understand what I really do. I'll get off that call in 30 seconds as politely as I can, or impolitely as I can, I don't give a *#$&&. Why should I? You didn't. RULE 3. Go Fast and quickly get to the details of what problem you can solve and why solve it now. RULE 4: Add value ... People ... buyers ... investors ... they come to calls to hear about novel solutions to their most difficult problems, and to gain helpful insights from you. People do not want to be on calls about costly ways to "maybe" solve some of their minor problems. RULE 5: Don't be Needy Neediness kills deals. If you need more on this, read Pitch Anything, chapter 4. Rule 6: CONTROL THE PROCESS ... as you can see, rules 1-5 are easy to follow. But rule 6 is a paradox. Because .... people don't want to be controlled ... at all ... in any way. And today, people are already stressed out by Covid. Any kind of "control" tactic will trigger "avoidance." Buyers and investors will pull-back from even a minor control tactic, even one as innocent as saying .. "So, do we have a deal?" "But Oren," you might ask, "it's an impossible situation." How do I get "CONTROL" if buyers pull-away form any kind of control? The answer is simple. You have to Get Control at one time ... ... and then Use Control at a DIFFERENT TIME. Then, your control is invisible. Now you can see why most people misunderstand the concept of "control." They think you Get Control and Use Control in the same moment. They believe getting control is a singe action that you "do". That's incorrect. In fact, you can have control and never use it. But when a buyer can see and feel your attempts to take things over, they can feel manipulated. This is why the true experts in making a pitch or presentation will Get Control of the Process at the beginning of the presentation ... but only use it 30 minutes or an hour later ...at the end. So what are the "tactics" of getting control, and how is all this done in practice? That's the topic of my presentation tomorrow.

When the stakes are high ... and you really want to close a deal, it's essential to Control the Process without being rude, needy or pushy in any way. You need Total Control while still being kind, thoughtful, empathetic and helpful ...

So here's the question to ask yourself: If you knew for certain how to get control at the start of a presentation... .... would you know HOW to use it at the end of the presentation? This answer is easier than you may think... Want to see how I do it? Tomorrow, FRIDAY 5/1 at 12pm Los Angeles, I'm getting together with a small group of dealmakers, executives, and serious entrepreneurs to help them close more deals using my methods. Want to join us? I'll coach you through it. YOU should take this session. When you're in control, you don't have to deal with you're prospects excuses, stall tactics, or "Covid" rationalizations. You just close deals. Today. To get into this class, you have to join Pitch Mastery here. Access the webinar: HOW TO GET AND KEEP CONTROL This is only available from inside the Pitch Mastery platform. Are you coming on Friday? Pitch Mastery gets you access to this training. JOIN HERE - Oren ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Manage your subscription PITCHANYTHING  5825 Avenida Encinas #111 Carlsbad, California 92008 United States

Fwd: How the Best Leaders Prioritize Their Time

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Ron Friedman, Ph.D. <ron@ignite80.com>
Date: Tue, Apr 28, 2020 at 7:07 AM
Subject: How the Best Leaders Prioritize Their Time
To: <stevescott@techacq.com>

Hi Steve,

One challenge we all face on a daily basis is deciding how best to invest our time. In many jobs, the possibilities are infinite. And the higher up you climb, the more freedom you get.

So how do you choose what to work on next?

Business author Mike Michalowicz has a clever solution. In his upcoming book, Fix This Next, Michalowicz offers a roadmap to help business leaders and entrepreneurs decide where to focus their attention.

If you've taken a psychology class, it's likely to look familiar. That's because Michalowicz's approach builds on Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Maslow believed we can't achieve our full potential until we've first satisfied our basic, lower-level needs—like the need for food and water (which he called "physiological"), safety and belonging.

Michalowicz suggests that a similar idea applies to the world of business. In order for an organization to function at its best, they also need to satisfy a number of basic, lower-level needs as well.

Here's Michaelowicz's business hierarchy of needs:

To celebrate the release of Fix This Next, I invited Mike Michaelowicz to share a few insights he discovered while writing the book.
 
Here's what he had to say:

Mike, take us through your model. How does it work?

Within Maslow's Hierarchy, the base is physiological, then there is safety, followed by belonging and love, esteem, and finally, self-actualization. The Business Hierarchy of Needs follows this model by replacing our human needs with those of our business. So you have sales (the base-level), profit, order, impact, and legacy.

The Business Hierarchy of Needs is the compass that moves your business towards the vision you originally had. By applying it, you can assess your business to see what requires repair.

When something is broken in our business, our first instinct is to sell more, when chances are we really need to put a better profit or efficiency system in place. You may think you want to have an impact and a legacy, but you don't have the efficiency to support it. By using The Business Hierarchy of Needs, you'll revert to the base level needs, and then make sure they are met before you elevate to higher levels.

How do you figure out where your organization stands on the Business Hierarchy of Needs?

You always start at the base level of the Business Hierarchy of Needs (sales) and, going upward, you ask two questions: "Is there any?" and "Is it adequate?"

For example, are there any sales? If there are no sales, you have a sales problem, and you're not creating cash. If there are sales, then the second question is, "Are there adequate sales to support a degree of profit." If yes, then you go to the profit level, and you ask, "Is there any?" and "Is it adequate?"  We keep repeating this question sequence up through the levels until the answer is no.

Once you figure out where you stand on the pyramid, what do you do next?

Once you know where you are in the Business Hierarchy of Needs, that's the challenge you tackle.

If you have multiple needs that are not satisfied, always revert to the most foundational need. That's our vital need. We have to have a strong enough foundation to support the levels above it.

The important thing you need to understand is that the Business Hierarchy of Needs is not a ladder. It is not about climbing to the top and waving at your friends below. You will climb, but you will also go back down as you cycle through to build a stronger, healthier foundation.

I hope you've enjoyed this brief interview and found at least one valuable insight that you can use. You can learn more about Fix This Next (and support your local bookstore), by going right over here.

All the best,
Ron

Ron Friedman, Ph.D.
(Web) www.ignite80.com
(Book) The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace
(Speaking) Presentation Highlights
(Twitter) @RonFriedman
(LinkedIn) Connect 

In case you're wondering, you're receiving this email because you opted in to receive updates from me, either through my webinar, The Peak Work Performance Summit, The Peak Performance Formula, or the book website for The Best Place to Work.

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Fwd: A Super Costly Mistake You Can't Be Making During Covid

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Oren Klaff <oren@pitchanything.com>
Date: Thu, Apr 23, 2020 at 8:06 AM
Subject: A Super Costly Mistake You Can't Be Making During Covid
To: <stevescott@techacq.com>

We all make mistakes, but why make this one?

Insights from the author of Pitch Anything & Flip the Script

Are you in CONTROL?? You control your time. You control your money ... Maybe birth control ... What about Self Control?

In this email, and in the next few weeks, I'm talking to you about CONTROL. You might be uncomfortable with this. You might not like the idea that you need more control of people and situations. Which is a strange subject - I know. I wrote an entire book on it called Flip the Script. CONTROL is a weird subject because it turns out -- You cannot control other people. If you try to tell someone what to think, or do ... they will resist you. But in order to close any kind of business deal... you HAVE to control what someone thinks. If you don't have this kind of control, they will either be confused, or look somewhere else for a deal. AND THIS is where the big mistakes come from. For a moment, think about a deal you're working on right now ... one that is just NOT CLOSING. How did you get here? FIRST, you had a meeting. And you gave a hell of a good presentation. You were impressive. The prospect was ALL IN on what you offer. You and the prospect became new-found "friends" in just a short 60 minutes. That was easy. NEXT, He asks for an agreement. You email one over. It looks "good," he says in a reply email. THEN COMES THE DARKNESS. The prospect has lost enthusiasm. The replies come slow ... and then ... No reply at all. YOU HAVE LOST CONTROL.

Now it's time to get control back. Your first email attempt is polite: > Let's do a call to review the agreement... tuesday work? But nothing comes back. So you text and you email again: > It's been 10 days, let's get this back on track ... wednesday good for a call? Silence. You send a more serious sounding email and voicemail: > Have not heard from you ... What's the status here? But still, nothing. You sent 3 perfectly reasonable requests to advance the deal forward.

Mistakes have been made. Here's what probably happened: 1. You read too much into the first meeting Some people just love new ideas, solving problems, and meeting interesting people like you ... but they don't have the time, money or influence to move forward. 2. You didn't create a Backdoor Backdoors are undocumented ways of accessing systems without needing to be authenticated by a gatekeeper. You can build social backdoors, just like software ones ... giving you can access to decision makers even when they stop responding to you. Once the backdoor is in place, you can use it for continued access to a system, a person or a group. In every new deal where you have access to the decision maker, always create a backdoor. 3. Your follow-up emails sounded "needy" and they felt "ignorable." In other words, you lost status. Once you were out-of-sight and out-of-mind, working with you was no longer a priority for the prospect.

"Oren, how can I fix this situation?" First, stop communicating. Stop emailing, stop txt'ing and leaving emails. You're only making things worse. Second, immediately find yourself a "Cut-out" to set the next meeting. In espionage parlance, a cut-out is a mutually trusted intermediary, that facilitates the exchange of information between agents. In your case, the job of the Cut-out is to set meetings. Your cut-out , who is likely your assistant or a colleague. has to do all the organizing for the next phone call or meeting. There's no other way. This works. And I can give you many more steps to Get Back In Control ... But that would just be an Emergency Backup Plan. And you don't need "Emergency Plans." Because you should never have made these mistakes in the first place. Let me show you how to correctly get CONTROL of your deals. You can do this as well as the best negotiators on Wall Street, the best deal makers in Silicon Valley ... and certainly better than the leaders in your industry. You need to figure this stuff out: 1. How to Accurately Read the "buying temperature" of your prospect at the end of the first meeting 2. How to Build a backdoor into the prospect so you always have access to him 3. And The Awareness to Never Be Needy or send a low-status email. These three steps will always keep you in control. IF you get just one of these wrong, then you already know ... you're in trouble. Of course, you might still "win the deal" but you're going to be discounting and giving away free services the whole time. And look, I understand, you cannot truly control another person. But you can control yourself. You can control the lens that others see you through. And you can set up situations where you remain in control (or you LEAVE.) Control is about your pitch, your behavior, your voice, your attitude, your value ... ... it all has to fit together into a precise plan. I'd like to show you how to do all this correctly. READ THE PROSPECT BUILD BACKDOORS USE CUT-OUTS CREATE HIGH STATUS STAY IN CONTROL This happens on FRIDAY. On Friday 5/1, I'm doing a webinar on this. You'll see how to use these five concepts together in every situation ... The webinar is called - GET AND KEEP CONTROL I have done this thousands of times and find it quite easy - but I've been doing this for 20 years. I'll coach you through it. You can join me on FRIDAY May 1st on an hour-long training on HOW TO GET AND KEEP CONTROL. YOU should take this session. When you're in control, you don't have to deal with you're prospects excuses, his stall tactics, or his "Covid" rationalizations. You just close deals. Today. Right now. To get into this class, you have to join Pitch Mastery here. You can get access to the webinar HOW TO GET AND KEEP CONTROL inside of Pitch Mastery. Are you coming next Friday? Pitch Mastery gives you access to this training. JOIN HERE - Oren NOTE: I'm working on several COVID deals and meeting some incredible health professionals -- doctors, nurses and everyone down the line -- these are the rightful and obvious heroes of the 2020 pandemic. As I have said many times, our society rests on the backs of a lot of people who are manning the front lines, while we get to chill at home. So to those at the front, I say; Thank You.

Subscription Options PITCHANYTHING  5825 Avenida Encinas #111 Carlsbad, California 92008 United States

Fwd: China's Ascendancy: The Central Event of this Century

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Gilder's Daily Prophecy <dailyprophecy@mail.gilderpress.com>
Date: Fri, Apr 17, 2020 at 9:37 AM
Subject: China's Ascendancy: The Central Event of this Century
To: <STEVESCOTT@techacq.com>

In the words of this French general, strategist, and philosopher… April 17, 2020 UNSUBSCRIBE | ARCHIVES Bear market "cure" discovered? Everyone's working on a cure for the coronavirus… But don't we need a cure for this bear market, too? Of course we do. Thing is, one of our most respected writer-researchers may actually have found one. In six months of trading, it's proven 83% accurate. Best part: It has nothing to do with stocks, and it's designed to work in all market conditions… Doesn't that sound like a "cure" for your bear market fears? Judge for yourself here. China's Ascendancy: The Central Event of this Century Dear Daily Prophecy Reader, Feeling the power and pressure of ascendant American industry and technology in the 1960s, French leader Jean Jacques Servan–Schreiber flung into the world his book, Le Defi Americain, or The American Challenge. This 1967 tract sought to rouse the Europeans to the coming economic contest, which would differ from past struggles over wealth and land: "The wealth we seek does not lie in the earth or in numbers of men or in machines, but in the human spirit. And particularly in the ability of men to think and to create." Since that worldwide best–seller on the astonishing creativity of American enterprise — a force that would dominate the following four decades — the world has turned again. Rather than Europe facing an American challenge, the United States now confronts a towering challenge from a triumphant China. In this time of coronavirus and hostility toward Chinese communists, it is easy to forget that the current contretemps is the merest of motes in the Amazonian currents of historic change. Again, a French thinker has taken the lead in expounding the nature of the epoch. He is Eric de la Maisonneuve, a French general, strategist, and philosopher who has spent much of the last decade in China. Challenging Western Logic In his Les Defis Chinois: La Revolution de Xi Jinping, he wants us to understand that the China ascendancy is the central event of this century. "Caught in the whirlwinds of a historic river and led despite themselves toward a large wide opacity," both the Chinese and Americans may fail to grasp the immensity of the moment. It is hard for devout capitalists like me to recognize the dimensions of the Chinese defi. Mounting the challenge amazingly is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under a devout professed Maoist and even Marxist, Xi Jinping. Maisonneuve, however, wants us to understand that Chinese culture is fully comfortable with contradictions that would tear us apart. Xi combines a sedulous socialism with a sage practical mastery of markets and new technology. Western logic is binary, governed by the so–called law of the excluded middle — things are either one thing or the other, true or not, never both. Beyond these binaries of Western logic, China occupies an excluded "middle kingdom," a Zhongguo. Here, ordinary logic may give way to elusive but encompassing unities that bridge the contradictions. These unities could be deemed analogous to the quantum superpositions that the Chinese are avidly embracing in their lavish quantum computing programs. Lifetime President of the People's Republic of China and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, Xi showed his dialectical mastery in October. He continued odious crackdowns on major Chinese entrepreneurs such as Jack Ma of Alibaba and Peter Ma of Tencent, who were apparently driven into early retirement for gaining eminence that outstripped the CCP. But at the same time, in a major address to the CCP's Central Committee, he called on the country and the party to "seize the opportunity" of blockchain technology. With their distributed architecture, where content is secured by replication through every node, blockchains are the ultimate heterarchy or peer–to–peer technology. They intrinsically give individuals power, identity, and immutable attestation against top–down regimes. Simply shocking is the range and reach of Xi's grasp of the promise and implications of this paramount new tool of capitalism. He transcends all the myopic cavils and misgivings of Western governments and his own, such as the previous Chinese cryptocurrency ban and foolish Congressional fears over Facebook's proposed Libra. Libra was a blockchain based currency that was to serve the billions of Facebook's social network customers, but Congressmen of both parties treated it like a snake on a plane. By contrast, Xi declared: "We must take the blockchain as an important breakthrough for independent innovation of core technologies…and accelerate the development of blockchain technology in industrial innovation." In his speech of an hour and a half, Xi further called for "implementing the rule of law" into existing and future blockchain systems. Thus, the Communist party attempts to bridge the logical conflict by policing this new architecture of individual rights, which in its early manifestations in China as elsewhere was fraught with hustles and scams. Declaring that blockchain have a range of applications, from financing businesses and managing monies to mass transit and overcoming poverty, he called for the creation of "Blockchain–plus." This would be a software platform and "development kit" for launching new applications for personal advancement, education, employment, food and medicinal safety. That was in October, just six months ago. But already leading in internet and smart phone finance with WeChat wallet and Alipay and Ping An AI loans and insurance, China is forging ahead with what is described as a "grand strategy to lead a global monetary and digital transformation of the world economy." 100 Little-Known Ways To Maximize Your Retirement Benefits This mysterious guide to maximizing your retirement benefits is waiting to be claimed… Here's a small sample of little-known methods you'll find inside… Boost Your Benefits by 32% Using the "Hiccup" Technique. Learn how some seniors are using this special "hiccup" strategy to increase their retirement benefit payouts by 32%. (Page 243) Hit the Benefits "Reset Button." Not happy with your current benefits? Learn how some folks are legally "resetting" their benefits for WAY bigger monthly payouts. (Page 245) The "$24,000 Switch Strategy." Discover a wrinkle that allows some retirees to switch to a higher benefit in the future… for up to $24K in extra retirement income. (Page 82) You'll find them all… and more than 90 additional retirement benefit maximizing methods inside. Click here to learn how to claim your copy now.  China Advances Further This week came two more fateful steps. China announced a new testing environment for its proposed central bank digital currency. This venture aims to replace the RMB and other currencies around the globe with new digital systems. It follows the inspiration of longtime Chinese Central Bank statesman Zhao Xiaochuan, an advocate of internet banking who challenged the world's central bankers in 2009 to develop a new global currency like Keynes's "bancor" with ties to gold. Then, next week on April 25 comes the launch of China's national blockchain platform, the Blockchain Service Network (BSN). This is a software regime that will enable developers to plug in and code blockchain applications, both permissioned and exclusive such as Hyperledger (from an IBM consortium), and permission less, such as EOS and Ethereum. Significant was the specific embrace of EOS and Ethereum, two of the major Western blockchains, with smart contracts and native currencies. Both these systems spring from fervent libertarian and individualist philosophies. In my introduction to Nathan Lewis' definitive study — Gold: The Final Standard — I told the story of "bold mariners" in Polynesian Island tribes who crafted elaborate canoes for traversing large distances at sea and catching hauls of fish, but then over the decades allowed these skills to slip away. Their descendants ended up isolated on small islands, close to starvation, and headed for extinction. Margaret Mead describes the men gazing fecklessly at the sea as if it were an alien realm irrelevant to their shortage of food or possibilities of travel. She asks: "If simple men on islands forgot how to build canoes, might more complex people also forget something equally essential to their lives?" Nathan Lewis tells how very complex human societies, led by sophisticated politicians and economists, lost their crucial ability to provide stable money as a tool for trade and economic growth. Thus, they are jeopardizing the future of capitalist economies and the world trade that sustains them. As altogether blindly as those starving Polynesian warriors gazing at the sea, the world's monetary experts look out on the turbulent oceans of chaotic currency trading that replaced the gold standard and show no awareness that anything is awry. According to late 2019 data from the Bank of International Settlements, this sea of currency trading now churns away at a rate of $6.7 trillion per day, up 30 percent in three years. In a hypertrophy of finance, this huge turbulence is as much as 73 times all trade in goods and services, 25 times all global GDP. Yet all the Forex trading arrives at no reliable values to guide entrepreneurs and producers of real goods and services. The currency bloat has brought economic doldrums, time horizon shrinkage, no return for savers, and trade wars. While Central Bankers hack global currencies for the benefit of politicians, saboteurs hack the Internet at an ever–increasing rate. While spending on Internet security rises some 20 percent a year, the number of breaches of items of personal data soared eightfold in 2019, from a billion items to eight billion. The blockchain is the answer to both these hacking crises. Are we really going to close down our economy for "viral new mania," while the Chinese take the lead in the paramount new technologies of the day? Regards, George Gilder Editor, Gilder's Daily Prophecy #1 Futurist Says: Get Ready for This Global "Reboot" George Gilder has a shocking message for anybody with money in the bank… with a job that pays in dollars… or who carries a smartphone in their pocket. "Brace yourself," he says, "for the coming $16.8 trillion global 'reboot' ahead." It could radically transform the way just about every major corporation does business. It could change the way you get paid, save and invest for retirement. And, says George, it could make you exceedingly rich — click here to see why. To end your Gilder's Daily Prophecy e-mail subscription and associated external offers sent from Gilder's Daily Prophecy, click here to unsubscribe. If you are having trouble receiving your Gilder's Daily Prophecy subscription, you can ensure its arrival in your mailbox by whitelisting Gilder's Daily Prophecy. Gilder's Daily Prophecy is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. Please read our Privacy Statement. Gilder Press, a division of Laissez Faire Books, LLC. 808 Saint Paul Street, Baltimore MD 21202. Nothing in this e-mail should be considered personalized financial advice. Although our employees may answer your general customer service questions, they are not licensed under securities laws to address your particular investment situation. No communication by our employees to you should be deemed as personalized financial advice. We expressly forbid our writers from having a financial interest in any security recommended to our readers. All of our employees and agents must wait 24 hours after online publication or 72 hours after the mailing of a printed-only publication prior to following an initial recommendation. Any investments recommended in this letter should be made only after consulting with your investment advisor and only after reviewing the prospectus or financial statements of the company. © 2020 Gilder Press, a division of Laissez Faire Books, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Protected by copyright laws of the United States and international treaties. This newsletter may only be used pursuant to the subscription agreement and any reproduction, copying, or redistribution (electronic or otherwise, including on the world wide web), in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited without the express written permission of Gilder Press, a division of Laissez Faire Books, LLC. EMAIL REFERENCE ID: 401GDPED01