Archive | May, 2019

There’s a ferocious killer that halts success more than anything else. This one success killer has ended the hopes and dreams of countless entrepreneurs. No, it’s not the lack of a great idea, inadequate funding or not knowing how to pull it all off. So… What is it?…

It’s waiting to get started. Waiting for the perfect moment. Waiting until everything is just right. Waiting for permission from the marketing Gods to begin building your business.

Waiting has killed more businesses and deprived more entrepreneurs of their fortunes than anything else.

Which is why I propose this: Start now, BEFORE you are ready.

When you come up with a new idea, do you feel like you need to get everything just right before you can get started? Most people do – but the problem is you’ll never get everything just right. You will always find something else that needs doing before you can begin, and so you will never start. Or eventually, one day months from now, you will finally get started only to realize you’ve run out of steam and no longer have an enthusiasm for your venture. It’s too late.

So why not start now? When you wait you get sidetracked and distracted. You listen to feedback from people who tell you it’s a bad idea. You talk yourself out of it. Sometimes you just forget about it completely, and there’s another opportunity lost forever.

Worse still, when you wait someone else can get the jump on you. Realize this – every time you have a great idea, there are other people in the world having that same idea. Do you want to be the first, or do you want to be an “also ran?” Take action and you’ll be a prosperous leader instead of a follower begging for crumbs.

Be impatient. Figure out how to get your idea out there sooner rather than later, even if you’re not ready. Are you writing a book? Give away the first chapters or the first version and ask for feedback. Gather email addresses to let people know when the book is ready. Launch the first version as an inexpensive Kindle book, get more feedback and re-release it as a hardcover. You could have waited until you thought it was perfect and released as a hardcover to start with, but you would have missed out on the buzz you created and the feedback you received to make it even better.

If you wait to start, you’ll go through the entire process of writing and perfecting and publishing the book before you even know if there is a market for it, before you know how it will be received and whether or not people will buy it. By waiting you could spend the next year of your life on a project that yields nothing but frustration. Had you started marketing it immediately, you could have course corrected along the way to create a product the market truly wanted.

No matter what you’re doing, you can start right now. Even the act of starting gives you a momentum that can carry you through to the end. Take the book – with all the feedback you receive along the way, you’ll write a book people love, so now you can start a coaching program based on the book. Should you wait until you get the coaching program just right? No! Start now and perfect it as you go.

One more benefit of starting now – enthusiasm. When are you the most enthusiastic: When you first think of an idea, or 6 months later? When you’ve already experienced some success, or when that idea has been sitting on a shelf? By starting today you immediately make progress and get feedback, thus building your enthusiasm even further. When you work in a vacuum getting ready to start, you lose enthusiasm.

All the greats start now, whether that means writing the business plan now, writing the first chapter now, setting up the website now, getting feedback from social media now, etc.

Whatever your new idea is, start now and in 30 days you will be well on your way to seeing your idea not only begin to come to fruition, but also succeed in dramatic fashion.

Michael was working his Internet information business 60+ hours per week and making good money, but he had no time to enjoy it. The moment he launched a new product he was already knee deep in his next one. He had no sense of direction, only of acting and reacting on little more than impulse and gut instinct. And his gut was now telling him he couldn’t keep this up much longer.

Isabelle was doing virtual training and consulting. A 40 hour week seemed like a vacation since many of her weeks were close to 80 hours. She would even get up at 3 in the morning to coach people in other time zones. It was a constant race to try to keep up, and her health was starting to fail.

Many marketers can relate all too well to Michael and Isabelle. Take a look back over the previous month and ask yourself this question: Are you spending so much time working IN your business that you have no time to work ON your business?

If you’re racing from creating one product to the next, doing one product launch after the next, setting up the next JV and the next website and so forth, you’re probably doing okay financially. Not great, but okay. You’re constantly chasing that next big thing that will earn you enough to give you some breathing room. Even then, you won’t get to lounge long before it’s time to do it all again.

But for right now if you keep going, the money will continue to come in. If you stop, the money will soon stop. Am I right?

In other words, you are your business. You’ve essentially built a job for yourself and that’s not bad. But do you know what’s better? Building a BUSINESS for yourself.

You have some great ideas on the back burner that you KNOW will earn you serious income, but right now you’re so busy working in your business – treating your business like a job – that you can’t possibly start on those ideas. You don’t have the time and you certainly don’t have the energy.

But what if you could work less and earn more, while continuing to provide great value to your customers and clients? What if you could take a step back and start working ON your business for a change? And what if, in the process, you freed up a major portion of your time to pursue activities you love?

It is possible, and here’s how: First, take stock of what you’re doing right now in your day-to-day activities that drain your time and energy. These are things that need to be done, but you’re not that crazy about doing them.

Second, list the things you spend time on that don’t generate income.

Third, list the things you do that take a great amount of time but do generate income.

Fourth – and this applies only if you provide services – what services do you supply one-on-one that could be done for a much larger audience? For example, a coach might work one-on-one, but that same coach could also work with a group.

Fifth, make a list of the things you do within your business that you LOVE doing. Hopefully these are things that also make income.

Now then, your fifth list is what we call your “genius.” These are (hopefully) the things you were born to do. You’re good at them and you love doing them. You’re not going to touch this list, unless it’s to increase the time you spend on these activities.

However, the other three or four lists are about to be torn apart. Go back through these lists and for each item, decide if you’re going to ditch it or delegate it. If it’s not necessary to earn income, then obviously you’re going to ditch it. If it’s important for your business’ income but you don’t like doing it, you’re going to delegate it. Guaranteed there are plenty of people out there who will be better at these tasks than you who will be thrilled for the work. Outsource to someplace like the Philippines to find excellent workers who can perform within your budget.

Now search for ways to leverage your already existing content. For example, if you’ve written ebooks or courses on a topic, can you turn that content into a home study course or webinar series? If you coach one-on-one, can you use the same coaching materials to coach an entire group at once?

Look for ways to take your current content assets and use them for higher and more profitable purposes. If you work with brick and mortar businesses, stop seeing them one-on-one and start giving group trainings to show them what they need done to bring their businesses into the world of search and social media. While talking to 20 business owners one-on-one could take you an entire week, you can talk to twice that number in one afternoon in a classroom setting. Plus you don’t have to worry about closing – those who are interested will be eager to hire you before it’s too late and you’re booked solid.

Bottom Line: Delegate those things that aren’t your genius and leverage your assets so you get far more done in far less time.

You’ll earn more – perhaps exponentially more – and you’ll have more time to enjoy it.

And as a BIG added bonus, when the day comes to sell your business you’ll get a much better price for it, because your business will be far more profitable and not nearly so labor intensive for the new owner.

There is an expression that accurately illustrates the strategy of far too many marketers: “Throw it against the wall and see if it sticks.”

They are continually trying this and that, hopping from one social media venue to another, one method to another, with no real strategy or idea of what they are doing. The result is they enjoy only sporadic success at best, and usually failure.

If this sounds like you, I challenge you to create a marketing strategy for yourself right now. Sit down with pen and paper and write – on one page – your strategy for marketing your product or service. You might not know what the best strategy is, but that’s not even important at this point. Just get something down and then begin following it consistently and persistently.

For example, what method(s) are you going to use to get new prospects? How, where and when are you going to use these methods? What is the first action you want a prospect to take, or what is the first thing you do for that prospect? How do you follow up? And so forth.

When you see something is working, adjust your strategy to do more of that. If something isn’t working, remove it from your strategy. But ALWAYS keep a one page record of your current working strategy and stick to it. When you make a change, make a new page and keep it at your desk or work area.

In my experience having this one page marketing strategy will do a great deal to focus your efforts and reduce your frustration of endlessly spinning your wheels and getting no where. Put it into practice and see how fast you can grow by staying deeply FOCUSED.