so2 – rhizomatic architecture

Under some small convincing (and it was small) a dear friend of mine convinced me that I should email Ramit Sethi and see if he could not help me with my 2011 new years goals.

To set the record straight, I don’t have resolutions. Resolutions are stupid. Resolutions have the unspoken implication that we have been doing something wrong all along and that we need to reform. Sometimes in majorly dramatic ways. And human beings are not that great at suddenly changing habits. Habits are what make us who we are; since we can’t think or react to everything with our full attention. Habits are what allow a virtuoso pianist to excel with seemingly impossible pieces but it’s also what causes any other pianist to fail (the hundreds and thousands of times they try to tackle that same piece).

Plus the majority of resolutions are vague. Vagueness does not lend itself to developing a plan or a metric on how to achieve something. And the achieving of that something is what we want to do. So be concrete and have a plan.

So instead of resolutions I have goals. Goals are great. I do have them. One of them is to get out of debt. I am in debt because 2010 has been a bad year for me, financially. I spent too much money trying to patch a dying relationship, for much of 2010 and while I was doing that I also neglected my work and my business. As a result I didn’t exactly make very much. In theory I should have even still, made out okay, but like I said I spent too much. And it’s not like the money is the issue; it’s what I did with the money… trying to find new things for us to do together… But more on that some other time.

Back to Ramit Sethi. In case you don’t know who he is, he is you should check this out: Ramit Sethi I haven’t read all of his things or perused the amazing amount of content online surrounding him but I have a great deal of respect for what he’s done. Since he asked for each of us to include as much detail as possible, I took about two hours in the course of working on other things at work to craft a careful email. I tried not to include too much detail. But since the business I have is a particularly odd one, I felt I needed to explain some of the background involved. If he gave a suggestion that I had already tried that would be useless. So I tried to give as much detail as I thought he might need.

I had an idea of what he would say though. So I have included the dialogue below.

In case you are wondering, I’ve given much thought about whether to post or not…. I decided why not. It’s not offensive. And there’s something to be learned from it. I could learn from this. So here goes:

I said:

Hello Ramit,

My cousin, who reads your blog, has convinced me to write this email and explore this opportunity. First off, just a little background — I have read and enjoyed your book I Will Teach You to be Rich and I have watched quite a few of your videos on youtube. I find what you have to say to be interesting and I have an idea of what you might say in response to this email — but of course I have no idea what you will actually say.

I would like to sign up for your earn1k.com but I do not have 1k as I am currently in debt due to trying to finance a failed relationship. I am attempting to get my personal finances in order but as of yet have not made enough to get out of debt.

The biggest goal I have for 2011 involves a company I run with a partner of mine called Yours Truly Accessibility. We would like for this company to be profitable. My goal for 2011 is to get YTA into the green. Currently it is in the red (because of taxes) but was in the black for much of 2010. If anything, we need to work on our marketing. Can you give some suggestions as to what we should or should not look further into? But before you can address that, I think I need to give you some background on our unique company.

Company Background
This is a small company that offers consultation to businesses for compliance with State and Federal laws for disability access. Basically any place that is open to the public and accepts public funds needs to comply otherwise they could be sued for an act of discrimination under the Federal and California Civil Code. With this comes a maximum of $4,000.00 of damages per instance. Given the complexity of the California Building Code (CBC) and the Federal Civil Code (Americans with Disabilities Act 1990 and 2010, Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines 2004, Architectural Barriers Act 1968, and so on) businesses need experienced professionals who are experts in this very narrow field in order to successfully navigate these compliance laws. Most businesses, and architects do not realize this until they are sued. Overwhelmingly architects will claim they don’t need us because they are already experts. But they do need us, and in conversation I can catch many of them saying things that are just untrue. I don’t want to offend any of them, but it seems that their license gets in the way of their ability to acknowledge what they do or do not know. Attorneys, of course, love us.

Without getting too detailed, there are several external factors that structure our niche:
Neither the legal profession nor the construction and design industry covers this field. The CBC is under the purview of architects and contractors but they know nothing about the Civil Code. The California Civil Code and the Federal Civil Code are legal areas but the determination of compliance is measured in the building code, something attorneys know nothing about.
Local enforcement agencies like the county and city building department are state entities and do not have jurisdiction or responsibility to enforce Federal Civil Code. At various points the CBC portion of access conflicts with the ADA.
While this area is beginning to become more noticed by many struggling architects and contractors, they still lack the experience — the many years and thousands of sites that I have inspected, consulted in and been an expert witness for. Most of this experience was done under a different company, so I do not have working relations with those schools, cities and businesses.

Marketing
I think this is enough background here. We do have working relations with a Disabled Rights Non-profit but our main marketing approach is to network with the existing business community through local Chambers of Commerce and bar associations. Our greatest sources for referrals are attorneys. In order to be a better resource for attorneys and businesses, we started to give MCLE seminars and free informative ADA seminars to Chambers of Commerce starting in 2009. We also have maintained a blog on accessibility and have done some youtube videos in which we give out general tips.

We have had some success through these avenues, it takes such a long time to contact the people in charge and have them host it. We don’t want to host the seminar ourselves because of the cost involved. Going through existing organizations with existing members would guarantee us a better turn-out.

As of yet, there isn’t much competition as most businesses do not know that we even exist. Most businesses are apathetic unless the business owners become frightened of being sued or are already sued. Ideally, we would like businesses to hire us before they are sued as after they are sued they still need to hire us anyway (and pay for the lawsuit and/or the settlement). I don’t think the goal to becoming profitable is to charge more. If we were busy that would be fine, but as it is, businesses are not forthcoming because accessibility is viewed as damage control. Providing access is important but it’s not urgent. Many businesses take the unethical attitude that “yes, we are not in compliance but we are going to wait to be sued before we do anything.” Furthermore, small businesses have very tight margins. They require a great deal of time and hand-holding. I would rather not run a company where we do work once and then forgo future service, but I also don’t want the mom and pop shops to keep calling about every little issue several months after we’ve done work for them. Perhaps we need to find a third purely marketing individual?

What we have started to do this year was to call every single Chamber of Commerce we could find, and offer them a free ADA seminar to be set at a date of their choosing for 2011. As this is a recent endeavor, we have yet to see how well Chambers respond. At first talk, most Chambers seem apathetic. A few Chambers are angry and don’t want our help. The Chambers most eager for us to give a talk to their members are ones in which many of their members have been sued. If Chambers host us for a talk, they will inevitably look better to their members (as trying to help)… and it’s not like they can turn to anyone else to speak, as there isn’t anyone else in Los Angeles that can offer the level of expertise that we do. I do intend to aggressively follow up with every Chamber until they give me a resounding “NO”. Beyond performing public speaking engagements and following up with the Chambers which would like for us to help them, is there any other kind of avenue that you think we should be pursuing?

I realize this is fairly long — but I did want it to be brief. There are some long term goals we want to implement and are in the process of implementing but those are at least a year or half a year off. In the meanwhile, short term survival is really very important. Should you need any more information, please let me know.

I thank you for your time and your open invitation.
Looking forward to your correspondence

Best Regards

—
Alex Lee

His reply was almost instantaneous. I drove home and when I got home he had already replied. He said:

Sorry, this is really long. Do you have 1 question for me?

I had a sinking feeling, but thought I should do as he said. (After all, it is insanely long). I said:

How can I market our inspections to businesses better?

He replied with:

i cover this in my Earn1k course (earn1k.com)

you can also get jay abraham’s book, getting more out of all you’ve got

All in all, a disappointing exchange. Maybe he’s swamped with emails, I can get that. And I see what he’s doing. By asking for questions he’s doing research on his readership. He’s taking notes on where he can help the most people, and find out how to satisfy his readers. That’s cool, but in answering him, I gave him a genuine response that took a bit of effort. Or maybe I misunderstood his request for a question and asked the wrong kind of question.

Now, I understand you can’t get anything for free but here is the deal: He’s done plenty of work building up his clientile, his readership. He’s put in hours and hours of thought. He’s helped plenty of people. He’s been on TV. I’m sure he must feel that he has plenty of cred. I mean, credit. He’s built up his reputation. But in asking for 1k he’s changed the nature of the game. Asking for $10 for a book is one thing, but 1k is alot of money. If anything he should value my 1k more than I do, which means giving a little bit more to earn that trust so that I part with it. If he feels that he’s earned it, then well, from this entry it’s obvious that he hasn’t earned it from me (although I am sure he’s earned it may times over for other people).

After all, I have no idea what his earn1k program would do or if it’s scammy. It feels scammy. But I am not willing to take that risk at all. Now I am even less willing to take it.

I do wish him well, and he is young and smart. I am sure if the earn1k program doesn’t take off, he’ll find some way to recover. But conversely I do have a feeling it will take off… though there are no secrets to success. Just mindfulness and hardwork.

A different good friend of mine made the observation ‘ppl don’t win the lottery twice. people seem to think that if they got it once that they can easily get it again.’ Now of course Ramit has worked hard for what he’s got. He’s put in ALOT of man hours. But a large part of that involves meeting the right people, talking and learning from the right people, and learning the right lessons at the right time. You can be sure that for ever Ramit Sethi who is a successful blogger and writer there are tons more who work just as hard but don’t have nearly the same success for whatever reason. It may be time and place, it may be the influence of those around them. It may be them. Who knows, if we knew what the secret of success is, we would all be successful.

I understand the concept of success relies strongly on the concept of failure. (But not necessarily)… And those are all just concepts. Is it possible for everyone to be successful? In theory yes. Ramit in his book I Teach You to be Rich defines success not as money but as being able to do what you love. Part of that means allocating your resources (time and money) to the things that you love and not to the things that you don’t… but also to pay good attention to set up structures and habits for the things you don’t love so you can maintain those necessary ‘boring activities’ going (my words not necessarily his) so that we can continue to maintain our relative lifestyles.

I agree whole heartedly with that. I also liked his book so much I bought two copies and gave both out as Christmas presents for the end of 2010.

So that’s it. I am up to 1033 words at the time of this writing (atleast in this edit), and still going. And no, this is my blog ‘space’ and I will ramble as much as I like. Should I narrow this post down to one sentence?

NEVER TAKE YOUR SUCCESS AS A SIGN THAT YOU’VE MADE IT. DON’T COMPROMISE, PUT FORTH YOUR BEST EFFORT, AS ALWAYS.

The game changes with each plateau we hit, and the hill gets steeper. We have to build on our past success not ride on it. Anyway, this entry is mainly for my own notes. I am sure that I will need to be reminded over and over of the above, as time goes on… Unfortunately, sometimes when we (as individuals and as a people) get that taste of blissful happiness, we can forget to be our good selves and just get plain fucking stupid, and greedy. All relationships included, even the ones we don’t have.