I watch a lot of movies – all sorts, but in my movie tastes I’m not that evolved. I especially like eighties and nineties action pictures.  I really like movies like the Die Hard series and Lethal Weapon, even the new version of the Bourne Ultimatum.  And what I’ve learned from watching of these kinds of movies is that the hero – the one who kills all the bad guys – does not win by hunkering down, staying in hiding and waiting for them to come to him.  He wins by running right out in front of the villains – charging towards them with everything he’s got and screaming at the top of his lungs.  He lunges towards the competition firing – as they say – with both barrels.   He puts himself at tremendous risk and doesn’t quit until it’s over.  That’s the unreasonable approach.

Your number one job as an extraordinary entrepreneur is to have an extraordinary vision.  Your number two task is to execute until that vision comes to life. 

If your vision is important enough you most likely can’t do it all yourself.  That’s why you build an organization in the first place. If you’re more of a lone ranger you have contractors, or outsource relationships, or joint venture partners.  Problem is, once you have these relationships, these people must be in action or you get nothing.

Key question: Does anyone do anything meaningful without someone asking him or her to, and without them promising to it in return?

I call this a request, and making requests is the thing that causes people to get things done.  Want something done? Just ask.  Little requests are easy.  People say yes.

But big requests carry their own little problem.

Most of us, even leaders, hate rejection. So we only ask for small things, easy-to-do things, wimpy things.  It’s rare that we ask for what we really want.

We cut back our expectations. Our scaled-down requests make it easy for others to say yes, but those requests get us results far below what we really want. After a while, we just accept the fact that we can’t ask too much from people, and our expectations drop without our realizing it.

Here’s a little secret that can make things easier for you:

A request is not a demand or an order. When you are “asking” (that’s what makes it a request) people can say “No.” Or they can counter-propose something different.  They can renegotiate.  

In each case, you’ll get something, and that something is always better than nothing. Often it’s a whole lot better.

So go ahead, and be unreasonable. 

Ask for the moon. 

Ask for whatever it is you need and want — no matter what.  

“Ask, and it shall be given you; . . . knock, and it shall be opened unto you,” says the Bible.  If you are going to knock, don’t be meek about it.  

Knock on the big doors. Knock loudly.

Someone might just answer.

Speaking of unreasonable requests, I have an unreasonable offer for you.

By now, you’ve probably read your copy of Being Unreasonable.  (If you haven’t, go get a copy at www.be-unreasonable .com, or wherever you buy books.) and you may be thinking about who you know who hasn’t read it yet. 

Go ahead, buy some copies and give them away.  Use Amazon’s free shipping and send them directly, or get a few copies and give them to colleagues, employees, friends.

I want to reward you for your generosity and give you a few gifts for buying multiple copies.

Buy 3 copies, send me a receipt, and I’ll send you an autographed copy of  Faster Than The Speed of Change.

Buy 13 copies and you can be my guest at the Unreasonable Profits teleseminar series.  (You can find out more about his at www.unreasonableprofits.com.)  That’s a great deal; it’s about the same price as the teleseminar, and you get to give the books as gifts besides.

Buy 54 copies, and I’ll spend two hours on the phone with you – all at one time or in several shorter meetings; whatever is worth more to you.  People typically pay $2,000 for a couple of hours for my world-class business advice – the kind that could change the future of your company and as you can imagine, I don’t have a lot of these “blocks” to give away, so act quickly if you’re interested.

Lastly - buy 144 copies of Be Unreasonable, you will be my guest at a closed-door round table that I’m holding for a few special guests.  There is no price tag on this rare event, but my conference room only holds 10, which leaves room for nine people.  This unique meeting will take place in November, and I guarantee you, being there will rocket your business.  And I mean rocket in every dimension.  We will change the way you think about your company, and if you’re like my clients – the ones who pay $15,000 for this kind of meeting – you could solve your most pressing problems and even figure out how to quickly double, triple, or grow your business ten-fold. 

That’s my unreasonable request.  Go out and buy some books.  Lots of them.  And send me the receipts.

I got an email this morning that asked the following question:

I read your article on Value Proposition and ROI. Your examples deal with physical products. I coach people in so-called ’soft skills’ - presentations, speaking and listening, enhancing imagination. I can detail many positive outcomes but do not know how to quantify the results of such training. Therefore I don’t know how to use the methods you suggest. Can you help me?

Since this is such an important question, I thought I’d post my response here:

I know it sounds unreasonable, but you’ve got to be able to put a number on it. The reason “soft skills” people tend to charge less, and earn less, is because they don’t go through the exercise of pinpointing the value.

If someone becomes a stronger speaker, how much will it impact their speaking fees? And if they don’t charge for speaking, what do they hope to get from that improved skill? What will the downstream effects be? Will they sell more, or perhaps gain support for important ideas or campaigns? Why do they want to be a stronger speaker, anyway? You must have an answer to the question, “why do it?”

At some point, if the “soft skill” doesn’t lead to an increase in productivity, and somehow profits – why are they trying to learn it? Why should the invest?

Let’s take the idea one step further to something as abstract as “enhanced imagination. “ Why should someone pay you for this? While it might seem obvious, you want to make sure what’s obvious to you is explicit for your potential client. The answer the comes to my mind is that enhanced imagination will lead to more effective product development, or stronger sales presentations — something like that. Which in turn will lead to something that either earns income or saves income. But that’s in my mind - what is in theirs?

You may think it is unreasonable - crass even - to try to reduce everything to dollars and cents, but if it doesn’t come down – in some way – to a return on investment, why should a business, or a business person, spend their money with you. If it’s not commercial– it’s not a business. It’s a hobby. An avocation. A pastime. But then you’re in a whole different kind of market, and a completely different selling proposition. Businesses are in business to make money, and if you’re soft skill doesn’t help them do it, they should spend their money on something else. When you can clarify how your services do that, the sky’s the limit.

Just got back from a trip to the Dalmatian coast in Croatia, and while en-route and in-situ, I made a little distinction about lines. Lines of people, that is. In Germany, lines are quite robust. People get on that at the rear, and they maintain their structure - in other words, the people who get on the line first, get off it first. In America, most people respect lines - but those who don’t - the line cheaters - are often the subject of vocal and occasionally martial conflict. In other words, people who cut the line get yelled at and into fights. “Hey buddy - the line starts back there!” In Croatia, I discovered that lines are simply a suggestion. Line form, and some people follow them, while many others ignore the lines completely and simply push to the front.

So this brings up an interesting question - not just about lines but about rules in general. When should you follow them and when not? In Croatia, I was standing in line while all these people started to cut in front. Since no one seemed to react or even care, after applying a little game theory, I jumped the line as well.

When you consider that playing buy the rules may not be in your best interest, you have to evaluate the consequences of breaking them. In every case, one will outweigh the other. It’s not cut-and-dried.

Anyone who has read Be Unreasonable knows how I feel about price cutting and the best response to it, so I was happy (and surprised) to read McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc felt the same way.  In 1960, one of his Knoxville franchisee was being hammered by a competitor offering five hamburgers for thirty cents. Can you imagine, thirty cents! Even so, the customers still came over to McDonald’s for the fries and shakes. So the competitor hit harder - with a hamburger, milkshake and fries for ten cents.  The reasonable response would have been to cut prices and at least match the other guy’s offer  – following him down the road to pricing ruin. 

Ray’s response? 

“If we can’t do it by offering a better fifteen-cent hamburger, by being better merchandisers, by proving faster service and a cleaner place, then I would rather be broke tomorrow and start all over again in something else.”

I heard this while speaking with my friend Mark Levy, who heard it from some branding guy, he couldn’t remember whom. “Positioning is dead,” the guy said. Since both Mark and I are positioning people this was of major interest.

He said that positioning was dead because the people, the users, the community… they were creating the positions of companies by participating in Web 2.0. He believed that companies’ positions were defined by what was being said about them in the infosphere.

This is total nonsense. While Web 2.0 gives people a voice and amplifies the conversation, you have to ask where the conversation comes from in the first place.

Look–most people, bloggers included, want to be lead. They want to be told what to think about and how to think. Then they can react and respond, but not until then. It’s very rare that people initiate the conversation. Those who do are called “thought leaders,” everyone else is part of the crowd.

Positioning is all about framing a context that defines what people need to think about. Positioning is about providing the seeds that ultimately flower into conversation. Reasonable people take the seeds and help them germinate. Unreasonable people create the seeds. Good positioning unreasonably tells people what to think in the first place.

Web 2.0 is a fabulous development in how people and businesses communicate. It’s like going from a one-way street to multi-lane boulevard. Just don’t get deluded into seeing this as creativity. Most of the time it’s just traffic.