The Gorilla Pimp only knows one way to communicate, “It is my way or the dead way.” It is effective even if it does seem cruel. Other pimps steer clear of the Gorilla Pimps because they are likely to set you on fire in the middle of the street just to make a point. But their tactics work. Girls are too terrified to leave or disobey and competing pimps would sometimes just move to another neighborhood.

Real pimps an players will tell you that true smooth pimping is when the girls actually love their pimp. They WANT to give them all the money. The loyalty is to the death and those girls will go out and recruit other girls to help out their “family”.

Gorilla pimps go after the weak and strong. They don’t care. They scare their employees into submission and their competition into leaving. Every pimp and hustler has a litle Gorilla in them, but the smart ones keep him in the cage unless absolutely neccesary.

So now that you know what a Gorilla Pimp is, lets talk about the business equivelent – Guerrilla Pimping. And yes that term is copyrighted and no you cant use it. I am writing a book about Guerrilla Pimping so sit back and get  a sneak peek.

I had a phone call yesterday froma  friend who was looking to bounce some ideas off of me. He had been going to networking meetings and different mixers to listen to marketing experts. They had all kinds of ideas but none applied to what he was doing. He was feeling like he was wasting his time.

I told him that it was time to take his marketing to the next level. Publicity Stunts. Street level guerilla marketing.

People have a funny idea of what a publicity stunt is. They think it is cheezy and obvious. It doesnt have to be. But even if it is…so what?

The point of marketing and advertising is exposure. Rememebr what they say? “Any press is good press.” I would be willing to go to jail on a $500 trespassing ticket to get front page and news media exposure in the right context. A $500 ticket and a slap on the wrist for $15,000 worth of exposure? Yeah, that math works out.

The second thing people are afraid of (other than embarrasing themself) is creating a war or pissing off other businesses. I don’t get this. If you have no relationship with these other businesses, why do you care? I have sent people to stand at other clubs and stand at the end of the line and tell people to come to my spot. Give the people a free pass to not pay a cover charge or whatever. That’s Guerilla Pimping. My team did this and drove 20 or 30 people to my bar. That equated to $600 in “free” money and exposure. What did the other club say? Nothing.

I sent 12 people out to crash a big business shopping center sponsored event. This shopping center is a block away from my restaurant and bar. They will not let me participate because I am not in their shopping center. But thats ok. I have other ways. By the time the security guard found one of my street team members and notified a Sheriff to remove them from the property, the other 11 had already distributed 1,600 flyers – in 40 minutes. This resulted in $1,000 in extra business. It cost me $40 and free t-shirts for the kids doing the flyers.

Next week at the same event (they do this event 4 times duing the summer) I will have a guy in  mascot costume go out and pomote. I’m not going to say exactly what I am going to do, but if I get caught, what will happen? The photographer I have going with my mascot will be photographing the local Sheriffs escorting my mascot off the property. My photographer has press credentials and does work for the local paper on the freelance basis. The next day that picture will make the paper. Hopefully front page. Either way I will have video and photos to distribute online and off. I will make wanted posters of my mascot and have them distributed. I will make the mascot character an infamous local figure. I will put a bounty on his head and offer cash prizes to anyone who can catch him and bring him back – alive and unhurt of course. My first reward will be to the Sheriffs who catch him this Friday. I may even show up with a giant check made out to one of their sponsored charitable organizations. Of course, with a photographer and press release in hand sent in advance to the local media with an apology from the mascot. No reason to make the cops look bad. We might need them later.

Yes this will make the paper and probably make the local news.

How many people will be on the look out for the mascot? How many people will talk about it? How many people will come by the business after seeing the exposure, news, mascot – whatever? How much will it cost? $50 for the guy to walk around town for a few hours and the cost of the costume. Photos of the winners will be posted inside on a wall of “Bounty Hunters”. Is this all goofy? Hell yeah. I won’t lie. It sounds dumb as hell.

But where and how else will I get $50,000 in media placement, exposure, free advertising and word of mouth marketing for $250 total out of pocket expense?

Thats Guerrilla Pimping.

That’s Hustling

Take some notes. Some of the greatest marketing takes place without any money out of pocket. Think about those smooth pimps who go out and talk those women into selling their bodies and giving the money to the pimp. What did that cost them? Nothing but time to learn the game.

I’m giving you the tools, you just have to work your hustle.

What can you do to put your business between the customers you want and your competition. Thats Guerrilla Pimping.

Keep Hustling

Normally it is two guys squared up, ready to fight. Both are willing to go the next step, but neither wants to commit to the next step on their own. But no matter what the circumstances, neither wants to take the first punch. They each want the other to make the first move so that they can react. They are waiting to follow, neither want to lead.

That strategy has always bothered me. In the schoolyard, guys would talk tough. They would bump chests, push each other, talk about each other’s mommas – they would do everything but commit to the first punch. This is what I knew of school yard fights in the 3^rd grade. It took an older guy to teach me that it was the one who threw that first punch who usually came out on top. It was the guy who had the heart to act first.

R.T. was an O.G. in the literal sense. He was my best friend’s older brother. He was a gangster who worked his way to the top of the game (at the street level that is). He died around the age of 26 doing gangster shit. But before that, R.T. taught me how to fight. My dad taught me how to box, my mom taught me how to find sticks and rocks when your hands can’t do the job (see how men and women attack a problem differently?). R.T. taught me how to survive for real.

R.T. told me that if someone comes up and pushes you, you were to drop a hammer on them. There was no pushing back and getting into a tussle. I was told to hit them until I couldn’t move my arms any more – then you kick them. This is survival in the jungle. There is no such thing as a dirty or a fair fight. There was only surviving the fight. You keep moving until you can’t move anymore. That’s how you get what you want. That’s how you survive.

So, while messing around with a friend, I said “Come on man, there is nothing between us but air and opportunity” it stuck in my head. I thought about all the times I let air keep me from my goals. I let air keep me from opportunities.

I was at a high school graduation in San Diego, which was attended by Tony Robbins. You might remember Tony Robbins from his Personal Power self-improvement books and tapes and infomercials. Tony was about 12 feet away from me. I wanted to go over and shake his enormous hand (no offense Tony, if you happen to catch this, but come on man…), maybe get a picture of us together.

I don’t get squishy over celebrities (he is not the first and only one I have ever met) but this was pretty cool and I respect what he was able to do – he started out broke too. Plus he wasn’t celebrity by pretending to be someone else. He was a celebrity based on his Hustle – there is a difference.

My sister-in-law is a friend of his son’s. They went to high school together and we were all there at their high school graduation. I stood there and invented a dozen reasons to NOT go over to him just to say hi. My wife and her family tried to motivate me to go over. I said no…

“This is a personal occasion, I don’t want to bother him”
“He is with his family”
“It would be rude”
“I don’t want to interrupt”

The truth is that for some reason, walking the 12 feet to say “hi” scared me. It didn’t feel like it at the time – at the time it felt like it would be inappropriate. But now I realize that it was fear.

Admitting that you are afraid is a hard fact to swallow. I’m no punk. I have stood eyeball to eyeball with people that wanted to kill me, even shot at me. I have been surrounded, outnumbered and outgunned and survived. I have been in high-speed pursuits with the police and got away. I have looked at my family through the wrong side of wired glass. I have played with high explosives and lived. I have been through some scary stuff and have been able to keep my cool. Introducing myself to a stranger is nothing compared to that stuff. But for some reason, I seemed to care about what might happen if I went over and put out a hand to this guy.

What is the most I could have gained?

A huge contact
A friend
A mentor

What is the worst that could have happened?

He could have said “Nice to meet you.” and walked away. I mean he wasn’t going to punch me in the throat for saying hi.

Afterward I told myself that this would not happen again.

So why do we do it? Why do we let the air between us and opportunity hold us back? Fear of failure? Maybe. Fear of the unknown? Are we afraid that someone who you want to meet will look at you and dismiss you as irrelevant? All of this is bullshit.

I gave this dude power over me. From 12 feet away he was controlling my actions. He didn’t even know he had pimped me. More accurately, I pimped myself.

Nothing, short of a gun to your head, should ever prevent you from advancing your hustle. Never hesitate to go up and say something to anyone. If you are at the store and you see a guy rockin a Rolex and a tight suit. Say hi. Introduce yourself. Ask what he (or she) does. Ask for a card. Write on the back of the card a quick summary of what you talked about and where you met.

Get used to doing this. I have made many contacts from chance encounters. I have boxes of business cards that I have picked up from people. If anything you will have a cool mailing list of people that you could either sell to or hit up to finance your next project. No matter what, you will build a database of people who are already on their hustle. And that is a good list to have.

Never let yourself pimp yourself. Never let air prevent you from making a move. Never let air get between you and opportunity.

Keep Hustling

One thing that is pretty much available to anyone in the United States is Internet access. Coffee shops, libraries, Internet cafes, schools are all potential sources of computers with cheap or free internet access.

Now, you might not be able to charge folks to use these free computers (but if you can, I might have a job for you because that would mean you are on top of your sales hustle). Anyway, so you now have this incredible resource. Every day, people like you are making a few dollars to a few thousand dollars using the Internet. I have. I was making a few hundred dollars a month on eBay about 8 years ago spending about 4 hours a month posting items and mailing them out. I didn’t do anything special. I could probably start it up again if I wanted too, but it was boring. I make better money now doing things that are more fun for me – and isn’t that the real hustle?

Now this doesn’t mean that I don’t still spend time online. I spend time for fun and I spend time for work. I visit a lot of different sites but most recently I have noticed a trend. Some call it social media, some call it social networking and some call it online “friending”. Whatever you call it, it is this century’s way of pooling your resources to get your hustle off the ground.

I am putting out a list here of sites that I visit and use on the daily basis. Some of these I may only use a few times a week because they don’t require my constant attention. Others I use when I have questions or feel the need to reach out a little. Some help me maintain my “real world” contacts and other help me meet new people who help me grow my personal empire.

These are sites that you can use to build your hustle, your crew, or plan your organization.

Money

You may know from a previous post that there are a lot of places online to find some seed capital. Here are just a few.

• Prosper
• Zopa
• Lending Club
• Kiva (for our international readers)
• Loanio
• Virgin Money

Personal Networking

Networking is important. It is really how you build your crew. When I used to run around in the streets, people knew me. I had a reputation. People knew that they could come to me to find some hard to find items or to find a deal. When I grew up, got straight and wanted to expand my hustle, I realized that I needed to create a NEW network. That guy who can get you car stereos on the cheap isn’t going to help much when you want to land that million-dollar contract. This is what you need to do – make new contacts. Each of these sites can help.

• Tribe find people in your area working their own hustles.
• Myspace the easiest to get going because you already know someone on MySpace. Yeah, you really do.
• Facebook This site used to be invite only. It is basically a MySpace knock off for the college set. Now, it is the “friendly” equivalent to LinkedIn.
• LinkedIn I have clients, colleagues and friends who contact me through LinkedIn. It is strictly business oriented. And when I get a new business card, this is the first place I go to see if we are going to hook up.
• MeetUp this site helps you find and meet people in person. My only warning here is that the entrepreneur groups have a lot of MLM salespeople. MLM is not my kind of hustle, if you can hump it out, more power to you.

Business Communities

Business Communities can be networking resources, but I find them more of a collaborative tool. This is where like minded people get together and expose each other to industry related news, advice and tips. I probably use these sites as much as the networking sites.

• Bank of America Small Business Online Community is a pretty cool site where you can get some advice.
• Microsoft Startup Center
• American Express Open Forum is a place where small business owners get together to share tips and ideas.
• Advisor Garage is a site where business pros ca offer help to those coming up. It is still in Beta phase now but looks promising.
• Entrepreneur.com Another resource site for you know who
• Small Business Wiki is a dumb name for a site like the others above. Dumb name, but a good resource.

Web Resources

• Google Analytics if your business has a website, then you need this. On one of my businesses, I track visitors, get their network location and call them up. I tell them “Thanks for visiting my website, I am calling to see if you had any questions not answered by my site.” This site is also cool if you do any marketing. You can watch your visitors spike when a new ad or marketing campaign launches and know what works.
• Google Alerts I get emails every day of my name popping up online or one of my businesses or competitors showing up in the news. This is how I do it. It gives you an excellent competitive advantage.

Money Services

Everyone needs some help figuring out their money. It is easier when all your money fits in your pockets, but when you start pulling in a little extra, things get complicated. It is better to learn good habits now.

• Mint.com is a free money management site. It has a lot of cool features including letting you know when your credit card payments and bills are due via email (mine go to my cell phone). It is like a free version of quicken but a lot easier to use.
• Geezeo.com another money management site. This one has a forum called “Money Confessions” where people anonymously post how they are spending their money.
• Wesabe Another online money management site worth mentioning.
• CreditKarma is a site that lets you monitor your credit score any time you want. This site is FREE and legit.
• PayPal – Love it or hate it, Paypal is the leading way to exchange money between individuals online. Owned by eBay.
• Google Checkout – Google’s service for buying items in online stores without giving your credit card details to the merchant. No person-to-person exchanges.
• MoneyBookers – a popular alternative to PayPal, especially in countries where PayPal still doesn’t let users receive funds.
• Billster allows you to track your bills as well as helps you figure out how to split shared bills with your friends, partners or roommates.
• Annual Credit Report The government offers this site so you can get a free copy of your credit reports. It’s free, once a year.

Information and Resources

There is a lot of information out there. Here is a good start to get you rolling. This is one list that I will keep updating so check back.

• SlideShare is a site where business pros upload their PowerPoint presentations. Now you can see how the big rollers are getting the job done. This helps for that first time you have to give a presentation to a room full of suits.
• DocStoc.com There are a lot of free and downloadable documents including Non-Disclosure Agreements and Independent Contractor Agreements. It doesn’t beat a lawyer – but it is cheaper.
• SBA Small Business Planner more business help from the government
• SCORE is a site to find a mentor to give you a hand up.
• IdeaBlob is a place where people throw out ideas for new businesses or products. You never know where that next idea will come from.
• EntreWiki same thing as IdeaBlob.

So obviously this isn’t every site out there. It isn’t even a complete list of the best sites out there. It is just a list of good sites that I visit. If you are reading this post, and you run a valuable site like these, post a comment. If it looks good, I will allow it through so others can check it out. If you have a site that you don’t run but you know is cool, post it and I will set it up for others too. Also, check back because I will be updating this post as better sites show up.

Keep Hustling

But some of these people took the time to learn a trade, get educated or whatever. They were in a place where they were stripped of everything except time. Time was their only commodity. It was also their burden. So these people took the only thing that they had in abundance – time and used it to their advantage. They leveraged their time to organize their hustle.

While I work, and while I drive and even right now as I type this, I am learning something. At work, I listen to the radio (news, business, current events) and sometimes I listen to podcasts. Podcasts are like MP3s on different things (business, money skills and stuff like that). In the car I listen to books on CD or talk radio. At home I watch business oriented shows like The Big Idea, The Millionaire Inside, Big Spender (Larry Winget), Kitchen Nightmares (I have two food establishments). American Inventor, Suze Orman, Dragon’s Den and on and on. I watch TV that fills my mind with ideas and tools to make a difference in my financial life. I use a Tivo to capture these shows when I am away and watch them at my convenience.

You never know where inspiration will come from. You never know where you will find that next big idea. But I know that if you only fill your head with mind candy, all you will have is mental constipation.

The point of this post is to help you realize that if you are struggling, you might need to change your approach. Take a look at your environment. What do you have in abundance? Are you willing to take a risk? Are you ready to do something completely different? You might embarrass yourself but who cares? Seriously, think about that… who cares? I did a presentation once where I was completely outclassed by the competition. I was the last presenter trying to earn a contract from a very big client for a multi-million dollar contract. The other presenters brought in teams of people. They were huge companies. I was the only person from my company. We had one office and my competition had two or three offices.

I gave my presentation and answered their questions. I had nothing to lose. I felt like I could not win in competition with these other companies. My only option was to either win or lose based on my integrity, ability and who I was. I had to convey what I was willing to do to win their business and fulfill the obligations that came with it. I was honest and blunt. I was blunt to the point where I told one of the board members that if they adopted a new policy, I would no longer do business with them (as a consumer of their product). This upset her greatly. But then I explained why. I also explained what they could do to keep my business but also accomplish their goals.

Two days went by and I had not heard anything. I sent an email to one of the executives that I met that day and told him that they shouldn’t worry about our size. I can hire the people it would take to do their work. They should just know that they will get our complete efforts and we will help them to succeed.

Within the hour, the executive called me back and let me know that we did not win the contract. They were compelled to go with the much larger company for logistical purposes. However he told me how impressed he was with my presentation. Not that it was fancy or special but that it was honest and candid. This is why he was stipulating in the contract with this other company that they were required to work with my company on special projects. So, instead of the huge contract, I got a piece. I was happy with a piece. That piece was worth several hundred thousand dollars of business. It also gave me the opportunity to be in a great position when the contract comes up for renewal – once I prove that they should have gone with us for the whole contract.

So, the moral is, I was nervous, outnumbered, unprepared and I didn’t care. I sucked it up and leveraged what I had – experience in that industry and the balls to walk into that meeting cold and dominate the room. I accepted that I would likely not win the contract so I didn’t have anything to lose. But I was hungry enough to chase after it like a starving dog after a bone.

And no one gets between a hungry dog and his bone.

Keep Hustling

Update

I got an email from a reader who asked which podcasts I listen to and where to find them.

I jump around a lot because some days I want to listen about investing, sometimes entrepreneurship or somedays maybe just marketing or sales. Anyway, here are a few places I go to find podcasts.

Podcast Alley
iTunes Podcasts but you have to use iTunes I think. I use iTunes a lot for podcasts.
Podcasts.com
Podcasts.net
Small Business Podcast Directory
Small Business Trends Radio
Duct Tape Marketing

I am pretty good at it once I set my mind that I have to do it. It is building up that initial momentum. It is taking that first step, making that first sales call. It is putting on a tie and knocking on that first door. I will find any reason I can to postpone making my sales calls. I will check my emails, post to this (or one of the many other blogs I run). I will go to the bathroom, grab a drink, fold my socks. I will avoid sales at all costs. But, then I will take a deep breath, grab my desk with both hands and say out loud “The closed mouth goes hungry”. Yeah, I say it out loud.

Obviously this is a metaphor for baby birds. If the baby bird doesn’t chirp, it doesn’t get any food. This is the most basic reality of sales. If you don’t do it – you will starve to death. Pretty much everyone has to come to terms with it at some point. Hopefully, if you aren’t particularly skilled at sales, you can add a salesperson to your crew. But you don’t have to. To be a good sales person you only have to do one thing:

Be enthusiastic about your product.

I have sold a lot of things in my life. This key bit of information is critical. If you are enthusiastic about your product, you will learn about it and begin to condition your mind to where you will see how it can positively affect anyones life or business. You will begin to believe in your product. If you believe in it, you can convince your customers to believe in it.

Of course you can always starve to death. That option is never off the table.

So, there are a lot of ways to sell. And like everything else, the most painful are usually the most effective

The Face to Face: I can walk in off the street and talk to someone about whatever I am selling and close about 50% of my sales calls. Now that is a crazy number and any professional sales person will tell you that I am full of crap. So I will qualify that statement by saying, I rarely walk in off the street cold. Before I hit the door, I hit the internet. I do my research. I know who is the person in charge of buying what I am selling. I know what their business is and by that I know what their needs are. If I am selling computers and I sell to banks, I know a bank rotates their hardware every 5 years. I walk into the bank and take a look at their systems. If I see 4 or 5 year old computers – I know that they are in a buying position. If Bob Smith is VP of technology, I go in and ask for him. Go in prepared. Have your numbers, marketing kit, sales brochure, business cards and most importantly, a contract. They want your product, just give them a reason to buy it from you. Let them know that you are going to personally guarantee their buying experience (and make sure that you follow up and meet that obligation)

Cold Calls: Cold calls rarely end up closing a sale. The numbers batted around are between 1% and 10% for cold calls. That is less than 1% on the first call. Cold calls are door openers. It is simply a way to put your name in the hands of the person that you are calling and trying to sell. It is the equivalent of handing someone a business card. They think about your product while you are on the phone with them and as soon as you hang up, they cant remember your name or the name of your business. That’s why the key to success in cold calling is follow-up. Get their email address and send them emails with information. If you cant get them to respond, send incentives (lunch meetings, discounts etc.). Send them to your website. If you can, get them to your website while you are on the phone with them to give them a virtual tour of your product. Do as many things as you can to make as many mental connections to your product and to you as possible. That is how you make cold calling effective.

Direct Mail: This is sending out a postcard or a flier or a letter or something via the mail to make that connection. This is probably the easiest and least effective way to make a sale unless you are in the pizza business, flower business, online sales, or financial industry. It works for these types of businesses. Obviously because pizza shops give out coupons for free pizzas and such. Flower shops do most of their work over the phone, and if you have a postcard in hand, then you don’t have to look for a phone book. And when was the last time you walked into a bank to sign up for a credit card? However, as easy as this may be, the response rate generally acknowledged is about 0.05% 0.50%. That means you might get one response for every 1,000 postcards, you might get 5 calls. Not very good odds. Especially if you are paying $.25 for postage per card plus another $.75 for design and printing. That is $200 per customer at the highest response rate. You had better have a good markup.

So, thats it. And for those who say “But, I’m not good at sales.” I say bullshit. Anyone can sell. Whether they like to or not is another matter. But seeing how this site is about taking street skills and applying them to the business world let me show some things to you.

A pimp can convince a woman to sell her body and give the money to the pimp – if you can do this, you can sell ketchup popsicles to a woman in white gloves.

A hooker, no matter how unattractive will walk up to a car, to someone she/he has never met and make a sale. If you have the courage to do this, you can sell ice cubes to eskimos.

A drug dealer will risk jail, beatdowns and addiction to push their product – if you have this kind of determination, you can sell flashlights to the blind.

If you have ever talked your way out of a fight, if you have ever convinced someone to sleep with you, if you have survived to the age of 18 in the ghettos and slums of this country – then you know how to sell. You just have to decide to do it.

Ice-T said something once that I have always found interesting. When trying to sell himself as a rapper, he walked into the office of the top-dog and told this guy “I am a rapper and I will make you some hit records”. The producer, in disbelief asked him if he had some samples of his work. Ice-T asked him why is he going to let him listen to his work. He knows its good and he knows it will sell. Why is he going o give it to this guy for free? He told the guy “If I had a box of hand grenades, do you think I am going to let you take one and throw it for free? No. Either you believe that the hand grenades are going to work, or I will sell them to someone else.” The producer, impressed by his logic and balls asked him “Wow, did you learn that in business school?” Ice simply said “No, but I have sold a lot of hand grenades”.

Obviously I am paraphrasing, but this is what makes Ice-T a Hustler. He turned the skills he developed in the streets and turned them from selling dope and pimping into rapping and acting.

It doesn’t matter what your product is, you have the skills to sell it. You have what it takes, if you didn’t you wouldn’t still be reading.

Keep Hustlin.