Stop Sharing!
Posted on | September 15, 2011 | 1 Comment
Facebook, Twitter, blogs, real conversations (did we forget about them?) – it seems like it’s all about sharing information these days in the new business world. I have shared a lot of information in a lot of places. I share on Facebook and Twitter – articles, thoughts, pictures, and more. On this blog, I write about diamonds, gold, the jewelry market and music. You may remember an earlier post I wrote, The Grateful Dead Created Social Networking. My idea was later made into a book “Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead” by two other guys – a popular marketer, David Meerman Scott, and the CEO of Hubspot, Brian Halligan. Did they have my same idea? Yes. Did I have it first? Maybe. But they executed on that idea and I did not, so they win.
Of course, I’m not looking to get rich writing a book about The Grateful Dead, I prefer to just listen. However, when it comes to buying/selling jewelry, I take it very seriously. About 3-4 years ago, I was asked to speak at the JCK Las Vegas Jewelry Show – the topic, Social Media of course. I said yes and went with a friend, who owned an email marketing company, to give a talk. The first year it was not very popular, but once Facebook caught on, it got more a lot more attention. I went on to speak at JCK for a few years and at The Couture Show, the JA Show, The Instore Show and other jewelry trade shows. After doing all of this, I sat back and thought about why I was doing it. Although my father was proud, he often asked me, “Why are you giving away your secrets? Don’ tell nobody nothin’!” For me, it was a combination of ego, the need to become an industry thought leader, and not being able to say no…and also somehow buying into the myth that the more I talk about this stuff, the more I will grow as a businessman. After about the third year, I had spent a lot of my time on this and was not getting paid for my time. (directly) I did make some nice connections, but my time is money and most of these trade shows did not pay, except for a trip. So I stopped, sat back, and watched the other guys talk about the same topics. Well, since then, we’ve been doing a lot more actual business and using my techniques to make real money, so I’m happy – although I’ll admit I miss it a little.
However, something recently happened to me that validated my father’s words. I told another person/acquaintance/friend about what I was doing in the diamond buying industry. Not every detail, but a little. My current partner also spoke to him since they used to do business together. Now he’s copied my site and even took some identical pictures and logos from my site. I’m not really worried about it because once you have a website up, it’s for public consumption. Also, the other site happens to be a terrible offering. However, it did remind me that’s it’s not always cool to tell people about your business or post about your business, even if it gets a lot of “likes” and comments. Remember, no one cares about your business more than you do and everyone has an agenda, whether they admit it or not, or whether it is conscious or not. So my lesson is BE CAREFUL OF WHAT YOU SHARE – online or real time. The one thing that I do take comfort in is the fact that it’s all about EXECUTION and I am confident that we know how to do that!
Tags: grateful dead marketing > JCK show > sharing > sharing on social networks > trade secrets
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