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There is a kind of cruel, ancient story that goes like this… A group of people are standing at a river bank and suddenly they hear the pained cries of a baby. Shocked by what they are hearing, they then see an infant floating in discomfort in the water.

One person immediately dives in to rescue the child. But as the rescue is commencing, yet another baby comes floating down the river in the same way, and then another and another! People continue jumping in to save the babies and then see that one person has started to walk away from the group towards the bridge.

Angrily they shout at the person, “Where do you think you are going? Come here and help!”

The response was this: “I am. I’m going upstream to stop whoever’s throwing babies into the river!

The story is a mad one, but if we remove the content of the story and just focus on the metaphor, there is a massive lesson for us to learn both in business and in life.

When your online business is not working as well as you might hope and customers are not buying or your sales material isn’t converting – do not a/ blame them or b/ dive straight in and see the problem from the end.

You must go back to your strategy and check what is going on behind the scenes – what are you missing in the back-end that the front-end users are experiencing? It’s about focusing on the source of the problem and healing it, rather than trying to bail yourself out by adding more money or focus into something that is already flawed and not working. You need better foundations.

Imagine that the babies are your customers and each one is unhappy, there is no point in wasting your energy dealing with customers by trying to convince them that everything is fine and that they are wrong because your site/strategy (whatever) is perfect and other people have ‘said so’, instead go to the source – listen to them – why are people leaving? Why are the numbers decreasing? Why are people complaining? What can you do as a whole rather than trying to deal with the consequences?

Below are 3 overlooked things that I want you to focus on and see if there are any corrections to be made within your business that may be stopping your business from growing:

1. Are you using old strategies? Long form articles, chasing influencers and buying links are all old-school strategies that won’t grow your online business or presence as much as you think they might. It might have worked then, but you must move with whatever is working now.

2. Are you copying others or being authentic? We are told to model the already successful and yes, this is good. But not at the cost of who you are. People want an original, not a clone. If they want the person you are copying, they’ll go with them. You need to be you and don’t copy everything that the successful leaders are doing. What you want is to take what you need from others and design your own brand around it in a personal ‘you’ way.

3. Are you focused on building traffic? It doesn’t matter how good your website looks or how your funnels are set up… If you don’t have website traffic, you don’t have a business.

Current strategies that build traffic include interviews, podcasts and writing guest posts for large authority publications. You can always jazz up your systems if you have an audience, but it’s ineffective the other way around.

Ultimately, the problem unfortunately lies with you and how you are marketing, not the customers. If something isn’t going the way you want, don’t dive into the river to try and fix it, go to the bridge and see the root of the problem before moving on or throwing more money into an existing and floundering strategy.

During school, our professor gave us a pop quiz. I was a pretty smart student and had gotten through the other questions quite easily, until I read the last one: “What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?” I imagined this to be some kind of joke.

But when I thought about it, I realized I had seen the cleaning woman many times. She was short, dark haired and in her 60’s, but how would I know her name? I didn’t.

I handed in my paper, and just left the last question blank. Just before I left I asked the teacher if the last question would count towards our grade. “Absolutely,” said the professor.

“No matter what career you choose in life, you will meet many people. All are important. They deserve your attention and care, even if just by a smile and greeting.”

I’ve never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was Clara.

Online, it is not as easy to obtain first names as it is in person but at least we have a better way to store them when our memories fail.

The professor was right, in fact, as it turns out, our names are so important to us that hearing them lights up entirely different part of our brain than any other words, scientists tell us.

Using your customer’s name makes them like you more, also using your own name makes the interaction feel more personal, too.

For example, who would you rather get an email from, “John” or “The Support Team”?

Personal names make a shopping experience much more enjoyable as does hanging out with people who know your name in real life, it just feels more respectful, more engaging and friendly.

Firstly, when sending emails, avoid the lazy trap of ‘Dear Customer’. Use their first name every time.

If customers call you, try and use their name in the first sentence as an instant rapport builder. This is especially helpful in calming an irate customer down quite quickly by seeming more authentic and familiar.

For some of you, when booking a callback, arranging a meeting or getting people to leave their names and numbers, ensure you have their names written in your diary on that date and any other bits of information you can get in that first interaction.

Then when you recall accurately the words of the last conversation you had with them or ask them a more familiar question using their name, you’ll instantly make the customer feel like you know them and so they relax with you.

Another trick of the name remembering trade is to create stories or rhymes in your head associated with the person’s name you want to remember and genuinely try to use it when you bump into them. It’s a great way to build connections and friends in person that may one day be useful to your company or idea, on or offline.

People like their name being used, and it will be a boost to your business and relationships in general if you make the effort to use them every chance you get.

That’s the question posed in an online forum recently. Answers ran the gamut of the spectrum, but here are the 28 I found especially helpful, in completely random order…

Become financially educated. Read personal finance management books, starting with Rich Dad Poor Dad. Learn how to budget and how to invest.

Live frugally. If you’re thinking you can’t save more of your money, take a look at homeless people who live on almost nothing. Yes, you can save money. Stop eating out so often. Cancel the cable. Don’t buy a new car. Don’t buy a new used car until you absolutely need one.

Always pay yourself first. Devote the first 10-30% of your pay to savings and investments.

Spend money on assets (real estate, stocks, bonds, etc.) not liabilities (everything that loses value the moment you purchase it). Thinking of buying a new car even though your old one is fine? Take that money and invest it in your business, in stocks, in real estate or something that is an asset. Then buy a good used car in a few years, when you really need one.

Don’t care what people think of you. Your neighbors think you’re poor because you don’t buy new cars? Little do they know that $20,000 you would have spent on a car is now earning you a 10% compound interest rate.

Invest in yourself. Self-education equals new knowledge. Add execution to that new knowledge and you get results. Repeat continuously.

Find ways to help as many people as possible. The more you can help others get what they want, the more money you can make.

Scale. Don’t render services when you can mass produce products. Better to make a $10 profit on a million sales than a $1,000 profit on 100 sales.

Stuck on services? Go upscale. If you’re going to render services, find the niches that pay the most.

Have multiple streams of income. This way if something happens to one, you are still in good shape overall.

Sell stuff. Lots of stuff. Hire others to help you, so that your earnings are no longer tied to your hours.

Always keep the return on investment in mind, whether your investment is time or money.

When you want to buy something, figure out how to make the money. Don’t take money out of your savings to buy a car or a vacation. Instead, figure out how to make the extra money needed to cover the new expense.

Be friends with people who have more money than you. Their mindsets and thought processes will rub off on you. That said, do not try to compete with them – keep the car and house you have now, at least for a while.

Leverage your abilities to their fullest extent instead of working harder to get ahead. Forget working hard and focus on working smart. For example, a personal coach can create a course and sell it for $297 a million times over, but can only coach a few people one-on-one at any given time.

Take calculated risks. Failure is a part of the journey. If you’re too afraid to fail, you will never take the smart, calculated risks needed to become wealthy.

Use your head more than your heart. Make your financial decisions based on provable fact rather than gut instinct.

If you have a business, work ON it, not in it. Your labor isn’t needed to make the business a success – your ideas and leadership are.

Things like sports and entertainment are simply distractions for the masses. While you’re watching sports and shows 2-6 hours a day, the rich are making million dollar contacts, doing deals and starting businesses. If you get more of whatever you focus on – maybe it’s time to stop focusing on distractions and start focusing on your finances.

Bad decisions are better than no decisions. Any decision that moves you forward is better than total inaction. The key is make decisions quickly and work until you get results.

Confidence and belief in your ability will take you further, faster. The higher your confidence and the more you believe in what you’re doing, the easier it is to bring others on board, to convince buyers and to make money.

Having a lot of money doesn’t change life as much as you think. It’s not a magic shield from illness, tragedy or loss. You’re no smarter for having it (although perhaps wiser if you made the money yourself.) You still have problems, although they might be an entirely new set of problems. On the plus side, you never have to worry about putting food on the table or paying bills, which frees you up to think about bigger things.

People will look at you differently when you are rich. The upside is they respect you more. The downside is most people will want something from you.

It’s best to not flaunt your money, but instead put it to work to make more money. Many millionaires drive beat up cars and live in perfectly average homes. Few people know they are rich and they like it that way.

Don’t buy stuff you don’t need. Rent it, borrow it or do without. And don’t carry a balance on credit cards. Ever.

Never borrow money to make discretionary purchases. Only borrow money to make money.

Start with the end in mind. If you’re starting a company, from day 1 ask yourself what to do to make your company as valuable as possible so you can one day sell it for millions.

Lastly, having money is power. Power to help any charity you choose. Power to help anybody or anyone. Power to make positive changes in your community, positively impact the lives of others and make the world a better place.