Night two of Lance Armstrong with Oprah brought something we hadn’t seen in night one, emotion.

1. Contrition and sorrow. We saw a wee bit of it? This was most evident when Lance attempted to not break down as he spoke of telling his 13-year-old son the truth and asking him not to defend his dad anymore.  This was also evident Oprah read the letter from the mom of the leukemia patient. Lance does have feelings, they have been suppressed in order to maintain control and win=at-all-costs.

2. Process. Maybe Lance has been hanging out with Cowboys coach Jason Garrett, but the word came up many times in the interview. This shows there is some wisdom present in his mind and/or counselors. He has spent a lifetime creating a mental pattern of win at all costs.

3. Freedom through Truth. Oprah encouraged and challenged Lance at then end of the interview to worry less about Lance the competitor and allow these events to become Lance the better man.

It appears his ex-wife Kristen still has a massive amount of influence upon Lance and is encouraging him to heal. As a follower of Christ, she has exhibited grace and forgiveness to Lance throughout their divorce and this ordeal.

She is even supportive now, which is self-less, because Lance’s incredible loss of sponsorship money surely affects the 30% child support (if standard Texas law applies) she receives. He is blessed by God to have her in his life in this way.

Personal thoughts: Oprah ended the interview quoting what Lance has said earlier….The truth will set you free. While the little t truth is very necessary to his recovery process, the big T truth is more important. Christ said, in addition to the verse alluded to above, “I am the way, the TRUTH, and the life, no one comes to the Father but through me.”

If anyone needed a perfect Father in their life, it is Lance. It appears that much of his drive to succeed at any cost finds it root in the lack of relationship with his biological father. He stated that he and his mother never go back and talk about the past. But the past is present with us all whether we talk about it on not. The road we walk (or ride) on today comes from the past. My prayer is that Lance would embrace the pain, find the root of all of this, and bring it to God, the Perfect Father.

So Lance comes clean.  While it was interesting that Oprah started the interview with simple Yes and No questions–was this to help Lance or clear the air of the biggest question first–I was waiting for the deeper questions to see what was going on under the hood in Lance’s heart. Perhaps we’ll get more of these type questions in night two.

As the interview proceeded, here are 5 things to note regarding Lance’s answers and how he communicated.

1. Omerta stands. In Italian, omerta means secret. Cyclist have historically practiced omerta. It is similar to the code of blue in the police force where everything within the force stays in the force. Armstrong refused to name names or even hint at implicating anyone else–even Dr. Ferrari, who is fairly well known to have been a PED supplier. Armstrong always despised those who broke omerta in regards to him, and it appears he will not break it for others.

Some thought he might go with a scorched earth policy, throwing everyone under the bus to make himself look better, or at least to emphasize the “everyone was doing it” mentality.

If he has to testify before USADA under oath, it will be interesting to see if he starts naming others in exchange for a reduced ban which would allow him to resume triathlons again. Or, perhaps his hatred for USADA will override this and he will keep silent.

2. Liar vs. A Lie. Several times in the interview when Lance disagreed with something–such as the claim that he doped in ’09 and ’10 Tour de France–it seemed he wanted to go into the old mode of disparaging the source. You could read the internal battle on his face.

Instead, he would pause, gather himself and call the statement a lie, but not resort to attacking the person’s character. This will hopefully be a developing change in his responses.

3. Lack of emotion. Lance likes control. He stated so in the interview repeatedly. A lot of people who grow up loving control learn to suppress their emotions because feelings are seen as a weakness. Even in his apologies to those he hurt, there appeared to me to be a lack of emotional understanding of what damage he had truly done.

Perhaps, he does possess this contrition and regret  and manages to quash it in public. Or possibly because of extended suppression he is emotionally calloused. Just maybe, as he walks out from under the shadows of denial and into sunshine of the truth, he will thaw over time.

4. Parsing. There was a consistent parsing in order to define truth, as when he seemed to justify the things he about Betsy Andreau by saying I called her crazy and a b&$%#, but never fat. Somehow, the fact the she added this claim to his comments, if indeed she did, relegated the two other insults having minimal effect in Lance’s mind. Perhaps from years of being an athlete he thinks calling someone fat is one of the worst things that you can do, and the other two terms aren’t as offensive.

5. Source of pain.  Armstrong spoke of a relentless will to win at all costs “wherever that came from.” If you read his life story, it is pretty easy to see where that insatiable desire arose. His father was an alcoholic that created havoc and his step-dad appears to be a militaristic disciplinarian absent of an emotional connection with Lance. His life seems to be centered around showing those two men and himself that he doesn’t really need anyone to be a success and that he is a winner. In his recovery, Armstrong will have to wrestle with these two relationships to gain freedom.

Stay tune for night two this evening……

Background: Oprah Winfrey is interviewing now defrocked 7 time Tour de France Winner, Lance Armstrong. Unless you have been off the planet for the last 3 months, you probably know Lance was found guilty of violating United States Anti-Doping Agency rules by using performance enhancing drugs throughout his career–including EPO, cortisone, and blood doping. He is also accused by some former teammates (Tyler Hamilton, Jonathan Vaughters, and Floyd Landis) of strongly encouraging –read pressuring– them to use PED’s, as well. Lance has vehemently denied this throughout his career, bringing napalm-like lawsuits  against any accuser, whether former friend or foe.

Here are the Top Five Questions  Oprah should ask Lance:

1. You once said, ”All endurance athletes are running away from something inside themselves.” What were you running from?

2. What deep within drove you to a “win at any cost” attitude?

3. Is their a core element of your identity you thought you’d lose if you weren’t Lance the Champion and just Lance the Very Incredible Rider? For the record, you were talented before the EPO, I “raced” you in triathlons–you were burning good. TDF 7x, I don’t know, but burning good.

4. Do you think you pressured other teammates to dope and, if so, how does it feel now that they got caught up in the wake of your desire to win?

5. If you could go back and repair any relationship, which is the first one you’d want to repair?

More than the how did you hide it, why did you payoff UCI and why did you deny it so long, these questions should be asked.

Like her or not, Oprah is great at getting into someone’s soul.

Mike Tyson broke down crying on her show and told of his emptiness and longing to be loved. Before, Mike Tyson was biting off peoples’ ears (okay person’s).

Now is your chance, Oprah. Now is your chance, Lance. Forgiveness is available upon confession. Trust me, I know.

When: The special 90-minute episode of Oprah’s Next Chapter will air Thursday, January 17, from 9 to 10:30 p.m. ET/PT on OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network. In addition, the interview will be simultaneously streamed LIVE worldwide on Oprah.com.

There is a difference between accurate and precise marketing. The sweet spot is when the two converge. See how your marketing fares by applying this post I wrote for Miller Public Relations.

http://millerpublicrelations.com/2012/08/accuracy-vs-precision-in-marketing/

A recent article I wrote for Miller Public Relations on how to nurture those hard earned leads. Assign each a bucket and treat accordingly. Here’s how….

The Lead Buckets: Nurturing Your Leads Toward The Sale

At a recent medal ceremony,  the host country, Kuwait,  played the national anthem of Kazakhstan. Except, oops, it wasn’t the true national anthem it was one done by actor Sasha Cohen as his character Borat.

Here is the real Kazakhstan National Anthem

The Borat anthem was accidentally played by organizers at a medal ceremony at the Arab Shooting Championships. Gold medalist Maria Dmitrienko stood on the podium looking bemused at the mix-up, which was described as a “scandal” by Kazakh Foreign Ministry spokesman Ilyas Omarov.

The false anthem – which extols Kazakhstan’s potassium and prostitutes and memorably contains the line “Kazakhstan – greatest country in the world, all other countries are run by little girls” – was played in the 2006 movie Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

Quote from The Atlantic.

Former Soviet Kazakhstan is Central Asia’s largest economy and hopes to become one of the world’s top energy exporters by 2020.

Ten sources chose very different headlines in response to a recent medical study. Which headline you read could, in this case, be a matter of life or death. Read the article I authored at Miller Public Relations.

Writing your headlines matters. Get it concise, accurate and yes, attention grabbing.

Is your brand dopamine friendly? Read my recent article for Miller Public Relations and find out.

Click to open in your web browser. Click to magnify if necessary.

The job market is still tough. You must do something to break through the drudgery a hiring manager is experiencing as he goes through cover letter after bland cover letter. (Trust me, I just read through 80 resumes for a position we needed filled).

My recent job landing came through unique efforts and opportunities. It all started with my creative cover letter.

I was determined to have a unique, humorous approach to my job search. I started a temporary Facebook account in which I loaded in the content I wanted, did a screen capture. I then edited the screen capture with Photoshop mock-up of a Facebook wall and used humorous status updates that reflected the true value I could bring as employee. After converting this to a pdf, I then attached this creative cover letter to my traditional cover letter, and my resume and began launching it out. I made sure the title on the pdf file of the creative cover letter had a catchy title. I experimented with different titles including Whacky Cover Letter, Unorthodox Cover Letter, Funny Cover Letter, Facebook Cover Letter,etc. on different launches.

The Results

I had for some time sent out a serious cover letter and resume into the black hole of monster.com. Five days after creating the cover letter, I, on a whim, decided to check craigslist for some freelance copywriting opportunities. I came across the opportunity for a social media manager position at a mid-cities public relations agency. I shot my creative cover letter out on a Saturday  morning and within 15 minutes had a call back from the company COO. He asked if I could come into their boutique public relations firm for an interview for their social media manager position. During the interview, it didn’t take long for me and the COO to realize I was a “wee bit” overqualified for the position. As we ended our interview, the COO mentioned that he felt for some reason, I really needed to meet his wife, the company CEO. Two days later that meeting happened, and she led off the conversation saying the creativity visible in the cover letter compelled her to meet with me. Her staff had vetted me and she was impressed. I was made an offer on the spot to become Senior Account Executive.

Lessons to draw upon.

Be creative. Do something to set yourself apart. Consider an add-on to your traditional cover letter.

Be willing to use atypical channels (yes, craiglist even).

Don’t fall into the myth that you have to know someone within the company. While it does help, it isn’t always necessary. I had absolutely no connections to anyone within the public relations firm.

Keep up your hope with hope (help one person everyday while you job searching).

Take the interview even if it is a company you’d like to work with but not the exact position you desire. On the other hand, if it is the exact position you want but in a company you’d never want to work for, skip it, unless you merely want to practice interviewing. Get in the door of your preferred companies or businesses, shine in the interview, and trust God with the details.

(or How To Stop Believing Marketing Gibberish)

Use this  Marketing Math Made Simple chart to improve your marketing efforts by bringing them into the real, harsh world of P&L, expenses, and cashflow. The mere mention of these terms gives marketers the willies, yet this is what keeps business owners up at night.

Here is Marketing Math Made Simple:

Profits, Revenue and Expenses

The goal of business is to make a difference in the world while earning maximum profit. I know some forgo the “make a difference world” piece; they shouldn’t. The only way to increase profit is 1) increase revenue or 2) decrease expenses.

Marketing is not an investment.

While many marketers will use the term return on investment when referring to marketing, in its truest sense, this is incorrect. In an investment, you place principal into things–stocks, businesses, oil wells–that return dividends on the leverage of your principal. At the end of the investment, you earn back your principal plus dividends (unless it all went south, of course).  The object invested in can be sold if necessary to get a return of principal–house, oil well, stocks. This is not how marketing works.

Marketing is an expense.

When you buy a print ad, radio spot, or Facebook ad, your “principal” is forever gone. You cannot resale the ad or spot. Good business owners realize marketing is a necessary expense of doing business–like a computer, or staff, or stationery. It is tempting for marketing people to try to sell their services as an investment. “Would you like to invest in your business?” sounds like a much better selling point than, “Would you like to incur some new expenses?”But better-pitch-point does not equal true.

Some expenses are good expenses.

Buying  new computers when your old ones won’t compute the task at hand without smoking, sputtering and wasting time, good expense. Spending money on new staff when your current staff is overloaded and you’ve tried less expensive efficiency tools (project management software, shock collars, etc.), good expense. Staying in a five-star hotel on business trips, bad expense. Good expenses open up the funnel of potential business growth and reduce the bottleneck of inefficiency. Bad expenses are silly.

Profit is the true measure.

The crux of Marketing Math Made Simple is that profit should increase at a greater rate than the associated marketing expenses. Granted it will take time for marketing to have affect. Some marketers and business owners will allow marketing expenses to accumulate ad infinitum without ever seeing a increase in profit. If so, marketing becomes a bad expense.

How We Use Marketing Math in Our Approach at Jordan P. Fowler Consulting

If you spend any time around us, you will quickly pick up on our evidenced based business development and marketing approach. While we may use the terms “brand awareness,” “increased followers” and other marketing speak, we realize they are never the end game.

The only measure of successful marketing is INCREASED PROFITS resulting from a growth of revenue that outpaces marketing expenses incurred. 

1. We conduct a BeFogFree exercise.

This provide incredible clarity of your unique core values and make key business model adjustments before amplifying your core uniqueness through marketing. (Read more on BeFogFree).

2. We establish a clear “You are Here” profit metric.

We determine your present metric of profit, revenue, and expenses. If this is not known, progress cannot be measured.

3. We conduct an efficiency study to reduce expenses and eliminate headaches.

We assess your current business systems and processes, making efficiency recommendations to reduce operating expenses and ready you for increased growth as a result of your marketing. This helps eliminates those nagging business headaches.

4.We set marketing budgets together.

We sit down with you to determine what market expenses you can incur that make good sense based upon our marketing research (consumer, competitor, etc.) allowing us to finance the best marketing strategies possible.

5. We share your comprehensive strategic report.

The results of 1-5 are presented to you in our Comprehensive Strategic Report including our BeFogFree findings, Headache Eliminators, and Value Amplifying marketing strategy. At this time we set an official date for a formal progress review to see if your Marketing Success Ratio has increased and by what degree. Rest assured that we are monitoring this throughout the process

6. We execute the marketing strategies, amplifying your value.

Upon your approval we create the need marketing products (ads, website, social media sites, etc) measuring and tracking results in partnership with you and your staff. We take your unique, distinct value and crank it to 11 for the world to hear.

7. We do our formal review.

This is where the evidence that your marketing is working becomes empirically clear . We analyze your initial Marketing Success Ratio versus current Marketing Success Ratio versus our goal for improvement in the ratio.

a. If the desired improvement in the ratio is not achieved, we check to see if more leads have been generated. If they have, we work with you to close the breakdown gap on your end with customer service staff training, additional operations analysis, etc.

b. If you haven’t received more leads, we can adjust or marketing strategies or we invite you to fire us! Not many marketing agencies will give you that invitation–we do.

8. We repeat steps 3-7.

We invite you to call us at 817-889-1487 to set up a free consultation to see how our proven business development and marketing process can increase your profits and provide you more peace of mind and sanity.