Pitching The Writer

• Entrepreneurs & their teams have access to Cameron monthly
• They get access to his skills at 1/10th the cost of hiring him full-time.
• They get access to him whenever they need – just like having him in their back pocket
• They aren’t locked in to expensive contracts
• They don’t have the office space, equipment, HR, and insurance costs of a full-time employee.

For the last couple of months Robert Graham Designs has been dressing me for all my speaking events, and social engagements where I’m around other CEOs and business people.

Yesterday while attending a charity event in the city filled with Vancouver business elite I was asked 5 times where I got the shirt I was wearing. a) Made me feel great cuz no one asked when I was wearing a boring button down and b) Robert Graham Designs got more word of mouth and buzz being generated.

You’ll see me for the rest of 2010 & 2011 wearing Robert Graham clothing. The brand’s Credo “Knowledge Wisdom Truth” is embroidered on every shirt. As a business coach and mentor, I always want to look my best when I talk to CEO’s all over the world. Who’s dressing you?

I’d love to say that I was chilling out at Whistler and I came up with this brilliant idea to let you promote your blog here, but I cannot take credit.

This will get you free PR. I learned about this idea from a great friend Gini Dietrich of The Fight Against Destructive Spin.

Turns out she learned about it a couple of weeks ago, from Toronto HAPPO champion, Danny Brown, invited his blog readers to pimp their blogs in the comments of his blog. You should go check it out – An Invite to Pimp Your Blog

So, you can do the same here. Let’s see what kinds of blogs you have and let’s see if we can find you some new readers.

Please include the following:

1. The blog’s name and link

2. A one sentence description about why someone should read your blog.

3. Your full name

4. Your Twitter handle (if you have one)

As an alternative, if you don’t have a blog, give us one blog post you’d like me to write about in the comments.

Go ahead! Promote your blog here…

I just realized how lucky I am. 

Over the past twenty years that I’ve been a business coach, I’ve worked REALLY hard to build awesome companies, build great teams, and build the trust of entrepreneurs around the world.

I was just getting ready to upload this photo and realized that these six companies are ones I’m humbled to have built the trust of.

Five of these great brands have paid $2,500 each to put their logo on my laptop for 2010.

The companies are: Outsourcing Things Done, Maverick Business Adventures, Grasshopper.com, Media Temple, and Hire Better.  I got so lucky to find such awesome ones.  And in the process I turned down many others (some who just didn’t get in early enough, and others who weren’t just the perfect fit yet).  Anyway – thanks to all of them.

Yes they are paying me – but you all know me – I wouldn’t rave about them if I didn’t love them.  And if anything changed – I’d be the first to give them there money back and take the sticker off too.

I’m lucky to have such great brands supporting me that you’d be smart to check out too.

Lastly, yes there are 6 stickers here.  I gave one free spot away to the non-profit that I support.  I contacted the CEO of Kiva.org and asked him if he’d like to be on my laptop with the other brands.  He loved the idea and said yes.  I then told him I’d give them the spot for free because their mission was so similar to mine.  They are all about helping entrepreneurs grow too.

This year, I’ll be speaking in front of tens of thousands of entrepreneurs.  They’ll all see these six logos.  And trust me, I’ll be raving about them all year too.

Tyler Wright PR Guru

Here is the third step in getting free PR:

Step 3.  Pick Up The Phone

Two years ago I was speaking at the 20^th anniversary of Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) in Las Vegas. It is not unusual for people to come up after I present to say hello, ask questions, or ask for my contact info. Not a big deal and it usually doesn’t result in much more than a couple second interactions. And ya, this time was different.

A young EO guy I’d never met before named John Ruhlin engaged me in conversation and asked if it was me who was coming to Cleveland to speak at their EO Chapter the following week. He also asked what my plans were the night before. I answered yes that in fact I was going to be coming to his city and that I would more than likely be taking advantage of the dollar being weak and shopping at my favorite store, Brooks Brothers.

We made plans to grab dinner and see a Cavs basketball game after I was done shopping. Someone offering to grab dinner and a sporting event is a nice gesture in business, but not a big deal or out of the ordinary, right??

Well, as it would turn out, coming in that day was a traveler’s nightmare. I had multiple delays and had to beg my way onto a flight that was pulling away from the jet way. I had to text John and let him know that I was coming in 5 hours later than expected and that I understood if he wanted to cancel. He casually reassured me that it was no problem, that he was waiting at the bar in my hotel and that I should get checked in, take my bags upstairs and come down refreshed for a great night. I thought, even though I didn’t get to go shopping I can still enjoy a great meal and take in a little Lebron James. All in all not a bad way to spend an evening in Cleveland. That is what I was expecting…

I got to the hotel and when I went to walk into my room, my jaw dropped. Spread out folded and hanging across my entire room were dozens of suit jackets, pants, shirts, and sweaters…and not just any dress clothes, they were Brooks Brothers dress clothes. My entire room looked like I had walked into a Brooks Brothers retail store. And it was all in my size.

Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. John, the EO guy had casually asked me what size I wore in an email that week because he said he wanted to send me his company T-shirt.

He’d just pulled off this amazing, mind-altering experience of service (what he calls “strategic appreciation”) and we weren’t even at dinner yet. I took as many pictures on my phone as I could, texted them to my wife, and realized I needed to call John DiJulius to change the example I gave him for his book on the best customer service I had ever experienced.

When I walked into the bar, John looked up with a grin and said, “You enjoyed your Brooks Brothers store?”

Over dinner and the game John explained how using ultra high-end gifts helps him land meetings with CEOs or keep top client relationships amazing.

One of John’s companies, Ruhlin Promotion Group, specialized in doing crazy things like sending a $500 Cutco knife set in 5 consecutive packages to a CEO asking them to “carve out time” for a meeting.

After the Brooks Brothers experience and yes the awesome Cutco knives he sent me engraved with my company BackPocket COO logo, I will meet John Ruhlin anytime, anyplace, and refer him to anybody because I can only hope more and more people get to experience the Ruhlin Promotion Group treatment first hand.

Pretty excited to get all these five brands on my laptop.  The first company’s stickers Media Temple arrived today.

Here is the 5th (and final company) sponsoring my laptop in 2010.  Their clients know that the most substantial advantage over the competition is employees.  Hire Better Solutions helps exceptional companies distinguish themselves through the execution of the best hiring practices from the top business thinkers of our time like Jim Collins, Brad Smart and Verne Harnish.

Empowers Leading Companies to Easily & Confidently Make Great Hiring Decisions

The other four brands to take laptop spots are:

Outsourcing Things Done , Maverick Business Adventures , Media Temple and Grasshopper.com Check them out.  I introduced them on earlier blogs too.

If anyone asks about their stickers, I’ll be sending them to whatever website/email address they want.

Another company is sponsoring the back of my iPhone too…

The logos will be in front of thousands of entrepreneurs and business people throughout North America.  And they’ll get tons of exposure on my Blog, Twitter, FaceBook & LinkedIn.

This can either be a great tool for companies or a complete waste of time and energy.  I’ve been using social media for years and I know what fits for my company and what doesn’t.  I’ve spent time thinking strategically about how I can leverage components of it and what not to use it for, too.

First order of business? Get on Facebook.  It may seem daunting at first, but you’ll figure it out, trust me!  If you don’t figure it out, it’ll figure itself out for you.  Just don’t get sucked into all the stupid stuff with it.  Put your business profile on Facebook and people will start finding you and linking to you, and all of a sudden you’ll realize that people are learning more about what you do and remembering more about what you do because of this social networking tool.  Don’t bother wasting time with all the silly stuff meant for teenagers – think of Facebook as a resume, except an interactive, colorful one. Ensure it shows the best side of you, but more importantly, the real you.  Start focusing your time on adding all the friends and business associates you know.  If you start with that, and reading the messages people put up, you’ll get the hang out of it.  If it makes sense for your company (it doesn’t for most) then get someone in marketing or sales to set up and manage a “Fan Page” for your company.

LinkedIn is the same thing as an online resume.  Get on there, too!  It’s the new way that people are networking.  I’ve been on LinkedIn for close to 10 years now.  People aren’t going to Board of Trade events to meet each other anymore.  They are way over that.  It’s a waste of time.  I don’t have time to go down to a Board of Trade, pay for parking, walk in, talk to bunch of suits, come back out and realize I’ve got all these business cards to type up.  Eeeeew!  The new economy doesn’t work that way.  You’ll meet a lot more people using the technology that’s out there online, and free.  You won’t build the one-on-one relationships using Facebook and LinkedIn but you will identify potentially useful connections faster, and set-up time to interact outside of LinkedIn. Set up your entire profile so that others can find you easily.  When you or your team are hiring people check out their profiles on both Facebook and LinkedIn, too.  You’ll learn a lot about them.

I’ve been using Twitter since early 2008, and rank in the top 2,500 people in the world to follow.  Follow @cameronherold and you’ll learn a ton about how to use the site for marketing and customer service.  And there are even tools now that allow you to use Twitter in private spaces, one of which is called “Yammer.” Set up Yammer and you can “tweet” inside your own company privately and have the same interaction you would on Twitter—just within your own parameters.

I’ve started using Twitter as my note-taking tool while at conferences.  It allows me to multi task: I share with the people following me while reminding myself of the important points in a presentation. I type each idea or thought from a conference into Twitter.  And at the end of the day, I simply copy and paste all of my tweets into a Word Doc.

Jump in.  It’s easier than you think.

To days ago I decided to sell 5 spots on my laptop to 5 great brands to advertise on for 2010 (4 are already taken, only 1 left).

Another company will be taking the back of my iPhone – so that’s now sold too.

The most recent two brands to take spots are:

3rd spot went to Media Temple – an awesome company that hosts websites for large companies like (Starbucks, Sony & Volkswagen) & small companies (too many to list

The company grabbing spot #4 is Grasshopper.com – Great brand that launched last year in an awesome way sending chocolate covered grasshoppers to thousands of bloggers & media.  They provide a virtual phone system designed for entrepreneurs.  Check em out.

The first two spots went to Outsourcing Things Done and Maverick Business Adventures who I introduced on the blog post before this one.

If you want your company name & logo in front of thousands of entrepreneurs and business people throughout North America and occasionally globally along with these four early adopters this year – move fast.

Only 1 spot left.

I’ll be speaking at dozens of conferences again, flying business class on all flights, and spending time in airport business lounges.  My MacBook Air is with me and pretty much always out and being used.  I take it out in all my meetings regardless of who I’m working with.

And I’m also planning to post about it the companies sponsoring my laptop on my Blog, Twitter, FaceBook & LinkedIn.

If you sponsor my Laptop for 2010, your logo will be seen by tens of thousands of influential business people & CEOs.

I’m also planning to get my laptop some press this year too…

It’s pretty widely known that my nickname is ‘Connector’ so you know I’ll be telling everyone that your company is sponsoring my laptop too.

The price for a spot is $2,500. That comes out to about $200 a month, or $50 a week. Your company logo will stay on my laptop all year, and you’ll “own” that piece of real estate on my laptop case.

If anyone asks about your sticker, I’ll send him or her to whatever website/email address you want. Want in? Email me – Cameron@BackPocketCOO.com