About the author: Dr Alex Davidovic
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Hi!
It's an honor that you'd like to know more about me, and to this aim on this page I share with you some of my thoughts, achievements and shortcomings.
In this picture, taken from a conference in Melbourne, I am delivering a speech and looking all businessy...
...but when I am not doing that, I prefer jeans and a t-shirt to a suit and tie :) |
I am a single father of two, make my living from Internet businesses and writing, and I am generally a good guy.
On uni degrees
I have a B.A. in English Literature, B.Sc. (Hons) in Computer Science, and Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science from the University of South Australia (UNISA). Well, having one or more uni degrees does not necessarily make you an educated person - but it sure makes finding a job easier :)
In my case it didn't help much, though: the closest I ever came to being an employee was one year I spent as a university lecturer on a contract. To me, minding my own businesses and helping others with theirs is always more satisfying than being an employee.
You see, when I was a kid my father told me that to keep my life interesting I should be changing either jobs or women. Believe me, it is much easier to change jobs, which is probably why I am interested in so many things, too many in fact. Why too many? Because your eye is no longer on the ball, your energy is no longer focused, and this stops you from getting to the very top in one chosen discipline. Being pulled in too many directions is my main weakness.
Having too many interests is not practical - but it makes life more fun :)
On changing women
Back to the topic of changing women - I've tried it, but it's just not my thing, I am faithful to the core. I was married for 16 years before my wife got tired of me. What can you do...
2 years after the divorce I had a serious relationship with a lovely lady (albeit somewhat younger than myself) and nearly got married again, but it was not to be. Ah, to cut a long story short I've been single for so long that I probably no longer present a good value for the opposite sex... but I am hopeful... and I don't give up.
My son and daughter mean the world to me and I am lucky to have some truly wonderful friends. Let's not forget Buffy (the Vampire Slayer), my spirited Pomeranian x Chihuahua, who provided the inspiration for the 'underdog' in my book Underdog Marketing and the Underdog Marketing Challenge, a 12-step business-boosting program that I run.
On success
Success comes in many forms. You are a success if your family and friends love you and respect you; if you save a life; if you find a cure for a disease; if you create wealth; if you win at Wimbledon, if you beat an addiction...
The list is endless and very relative - we all define success in terms of what is important to us. Here I'd like to share with you some of the thoughts that have been helping me over the years.
Before I started writing books and running Internet businesses, I toured the world as a chess player. In 1987 I won the title of an International Chess Master; winning games and tournaments felt great; holding a trophy with a money-prize in my pocket felt great...
...but the feeling of representing Australia in two Chess Olympiads, in Manila (Philippines) in 1992 and Elista (Kalmykia) in 1998, now that's something hard to compete with. In two Olympiads I played the total of 20 games and only lost one, either winning or drawing all other games.
If you'd like to see a good fight, here are few selected games:
With my reasonably good chess skills I was lucky to teach some of the bright young minds. Seeing your students win is just fantastic: one won the Youth World Championship, twelve won the Australian Championship titles for their age groups, and great many won the State Championships. My success was contributing to their success. It felt great! Giving your attention to people other than yourself generally adds value to your life.
Interestingly, later I was able to apply the same principles that drive success in chess to business - be it my own or one of my clients'. Here's some of what I've learned:
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Saying "I CAN" goes a long way
Winners are often not top-rated, or most experienced, or most knowledgeable - but they win anyway. As it happens, it is not the fastest who win the race, but the ones who believe they can.
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Concrete goals beat abstract dreams
Are you trying to "do as best as you can"? And just what would that be? Drop this and set yourself a goal that is concrete, not abstract, and challenging, not impossible. A business that sets out to increase their share of the market by 3% in the next 6 months will always do better than the business aiming to "reach its full market potential"
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Give!
Knowing what you want
is great - but to reach your goals you have to be prepared to give something in return. Say: "This is what I want, and to get there I am prepared to give [time/money/resources...]"
Once you decide, stick to your decision.
Many marketers openly profess that success is "leaving no money on the table", or in other words squeezing every dollar they possibly can from their customers. To me this is not success, it's a rip-off! As an alternative to manipulative hard-sell marketing, here is Dr Alex's 3-step business-success formula:
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Define you market precisely and find out exactly what they want and value
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Over-deliver, focusing your efforts to truly serving the customer rather than on making sales, and
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Reflect your customers' values back to them through PR and marketing.
Do this consistently, and it is hard to go wrong!
On marketing
How come I got into marketing? In 1997 as one of 4 members of the UNISA team, I represented Australia at the EDS Business Case Challenge in Plano, Texas. We went as far as semi-finals, which was fantastic. However, in the semis we lost to Carnegie Mellon purely on the strength of their marketing, even though our business case was clearly stronger.
That got me thinking: OS/2 versus Windows, Beta versus VHS... better-quality products are regularly beaten by their inferior counterparts because of a strong marketing message.
Intrigued, I consumed one marketing book after another, mixing what I was learning with my own ideas and putting everything to the test through my Internet businesses.
Did it always work? Here I'd like to be able to tell you I was a genius creating instant success stories - but the truth is, I made more mistakes than many. Here are some that are stuck in my memory:
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Registering the meaningless domain name for my first website
The name of the c-point.com website has nothing to do with the nature of the business, making it twice as hard to get the good search engine ranking, get people to remember it, and associate it with products on it.
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Creating and releasing products with disregard for the demand and the competition
The result was a total waste of time and effort on products like Web Effects (a visual web editor no-one noticed) or Quick Setup (yet another setup program), which had to be retired without ever breaking even.
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Naming a software product range "Antechinus ®"
This is the name no-one can remember or even pronounce! By the way, antechinus is a cute (but utterly unknown!) Australian marsupial. Only 5% of the males survive the mating season, the rest get so wired-up that they do not know when to stop and die of exhaustion (ah, with any luck I'd like to go this way in my old age!).
I thought I was being clever, but giving the name of a sex-crazed animal no-one knows to the product range was quite simply a silly thing to do.
However, the biggest mistake I ever made, dwarfing all the others by comparison, was trying to do everything myself. I don't think that even 48-hour day would have been enough for me - and I was slow to realize it! It took me 3 years and several burnouts to overcome this madness and start employing people and forging partnerships.
What can you do... you cut your losses, learn from your mistakes, and get on with your business.
I am happy that there is one HUGE mistake that many people make but I never have: namely, to stop learning. Once I paid $10,000 in a single go for the one-on-one mentoring via Internet Marketing Center. Was it worth it? You bet - there is no substitute for the advice of experts.
Investing in yourself, in your knowledge, is essential. What do you think, what comes first - investing in yourself or investing in shares?
On what I love to do
Luckily, having well-run Internet businesses I have the means and time to indulge in things I dove doing - spending time with my family and friends, beach-going, snow-skiing, playing a tune on my guitar, having a karate work-out (I got brown belt from Go-Kan-Ryu), playing addicting games, writing, traveling...
...or sometimes just quietly listening to the music and reading :)
On what I write about
Together with legendary PR-wizard Penelope Herbert, I've written a book (about to be published) about insanely-clever, cost-effective marketing for every budget. It is called: "Underdog Marketing: Enrich Your Reputation, Fashion Free Publicity and Wrestle Your Market Share from the Top Dogs"
How to contact me
My email address used to be here, but instead of getting fan mail from beautiful women taken by my charm and personality (which I was hoping for), I was getting heaps of spam (a set-back!).
So, why not follow me on Twitter, and use it to message me. Or, you can always reach me through Ecademy.
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